Rock
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After it won the Grammy Award for song of the year Feb. 5, Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That” reaches Billboard’s charts for the first time, debuting on multiple lists dated Feb. 18.
The song even reaches No. 1 on one of the surveys, bowing atop Rock Digital Song Sales with 9,000 downloads sold in the Feb. 3-9 tracking week, a 9,947% increase over a negligible amount the previous period, according to Luminate.
It’s Raitt’s first No. 1 on the chart, which began in 2010. Previously, she reached a No. 3 best in 2020 via her co-bill with John Prine, “Angel From Montgomery,” following Prine’s death.
“That” also debuts at No. 6 on the all-format Digital Song Sales ranking, her first top 10.
Elsewhere, the track is No. 26 on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. In addition to its sales, “That” earned 1.4 million official U.S. streams, a 2,955% boost from 45,000 the previous week.
Raitt’s album of the same name, released in 2022, returns to the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart at No. 46 with 7,000 equivalent album units earned, up 1,121%. It premiered at No. 6 in May 2022.
The set also re-appears on Americana/Folk Albums at No. 9, after debuting at No. 1 in May 2022.
In all, Raitt’s song catalog jumped 109% in streams, to 5.8 million Feb. 3-9 vs. 2.8 million the previous week. Removing “That” from the equation, it’s still a 62% leap to 4.4 million from 2.7 million.
Meanwhile, one of her classic returns to a Billboard chart: “Something to Talk About,” which debuts at No. 18 on Rock Digital Song Sales (1,000 sold, up 679%). It became a No. 5 hit in 1991 on the Billboard Hot 100, to date her top-performing song on the survey.
The self-written “That” won song of the year honors at the 65th Grammy Awards, marking Raitt’s second big-four category victory, after Nick of Time took album of the year honors in 1990. “That” is also now being promoted to adult alternative radio as the new single from her latest set, after “Made Up Mind” hit No. 17 on Adult Alternative Airplay last April.
Music history is littered with tales of shoulda, coulda, woulda. But after Rihanna soared to new heights during her instant-classic Super Bowl LVII halftime show one of the least likely headlines to emerge in the wake of her performance linked the singer to the last band on Earth you’d imagine.
“True story. There is a version of a @Hoobastank song featuring @rihanna when she was a ‘newer’ artist,” tweeted the California nu-metal band’s singer, Doug Robb on Tuesday. “Displaying a total lack of foresight, we didn’t use that version of the song for the album. We also didn’t think ‘The Reason’ was a single though either so… Oops.”
The accompanying video mashed up a clip of Rihanna’s halftime extravaganza with ‘Stank’s hit “Crawling in the Dark.” After a fan asked, Hobbs said the unreleased version was for the song “Inside of You,” the second single from the group’s third album, Every Man for Himself. When another wondered if it would be kosher to release it now as a bonus track, Robb said, “not sure.”
Robb also did an interview with ALT98.7FM radio host Ted Stryker elaborating on the story. He said during the sessions for Every Man, their label Island/Def Jam — Rihanna was signed to Def Jam at the time — approached them asking if they’d be up for including one of their new acts on a song. “Which is pretty common… we’re like, ‘cool, sure, like, what song?’,” he said they asked.
They landed on “Inside of You,” which the band sent to RihRih’s camp back in 2005. “They chopped it up and rearranged some parts because it wasn’t written as a duet or anything, so they had to extend some part and they sent it back and they basically put this pre-chorus where Rihanna wrote some new lyrics and sang a melody,” he said. The group listened to it and because they were so used to hearing it the way they originally wrote it, “nobody really loved it.”
Robb said they ran into Rihanna a few times during that album cycle and she was always, “super cool and so there was never any hard feelings.” And, believe it or not, Robb said they don’t regret saying no to the feature. “I don’t think anybody loved it at the time,” he said, admitting that he hasn’t listened to it in years, but that the subject comes up every once in a while and they all have a laugh about it.
“‘Dude, can you believe we nixed Rihanna on one of our songs?’,” Robb said the band’s members ask each other.
Check out Robb’s tweets below.
True story. There is a version of a @Hoobastank song featuring @rihanna when she was a “newer” artist. Displaying a total lack of foresight, we didn’t use that version of the song for the album. We also didn’t think The Reason was a single though either so…🤦🏻Oops 🤷🏻 pic.twitter.com/NjIAj4IMGM— Doug Robb (@HoobaDoug) February 14, 2023
Dave Davies learned the hard way this week what happens when there’s a glitch in the Matrix. After The Kinks announced the upcoming release of a 60th anniversary celebration of the legendary British band with a two-part anthology called The Journey, Twitter apparently flagged the band’s name as “sensitive content.”
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That sent guitarist Dave Davies down a Twitterhole, unleashing a flurry of tweets in which he told chief Twit, Elon Musk, that he’s tired of waiting for him to get it right. “Dear @elonmusk would @twiiter please stop putting warnings on everything from ‘the Kinks’. We are just trying to promote our Kinks music,” Davies tweeted on Wednesday. The tweet linked to a previous one in which Davies invited fans to check out the band’s TikTok promo for the set, which featured a message at the bottom that read, “We put a warning on this Tweet because it might have sensitive content.”
A short time later, Davies gave Musk a bit of a lesson on his group’s background, tweeting, “The Kinks are a brand name. We have been called the Kinks since 1963.” When another user told Davies that Twitter had apparently reviewed the matter and removed the sensitive content warning, apologizing for helping them “catch that mistake,” Davies was not impressed.
“That’s impossible,” he wrote. “The word robot should be banned. We got robots running our lives. At least I’m a Kink and not a f–in robot.” He also had a bit of fun in the end, responding to a fan’s plea to Musk to “Give the People What They Want!” — a play on the title of the band’s 1981 album — quipping, “give the people what Elon Musk wants.”
The Twit Snit came just hours after The Kinks announced the March 24 release of The Journey — Part 1, a 2CD, 2LP collection that will kick off a two-year celebration of their 60th anniversary. Part one of the anthology — curated by the band according to themes including “Songs about becoming a man, the search for adventure, finding an identity and a girl” — will feature such beloved hits as “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Tired of Waiting For You” and “Waterloo Sunset.”
Check out Davies’ tweets below.
That’s impossible. The word robot should be banned. We got robots running our lives. At least I’m a Kink and not a fukin robot. https://t.co/d9vKKG13TK— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) February 15, 2023
Former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley launched an atypical bid for the White House in a pretty typical fashion on Wednesday (Feb. 15). The Republican taking on her former boss, one-term president Donald Trump, revved up the crowd at her Charleston, South Carolina announcement this morning by walking on to one of the most beloved underdog fight anthems of all-time: Survivor‘s 1982 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Eye of the Tiger.”
“Stop using my f—ing song!,” the hit’s co-writer, Survivor keyboardist Frankie Sullivan, tells Billboard about his reaction to finding out about the latest politician’s attempt to co-opt the track he wrote for Sylvester Stallone’s classic underdog film, Rocky III. “This morning I get up and I’m doing my thing, writing and i turn on my phone and it explodes and I’m like, ‘What happened is my mom okay?’ That song belongs with the Rocky franchise and they don’t ask because they’d get a no. Absolutely.”
Haley, 51, who has leaned into her story of being a woman and person of color — she is the child of Indian immigrants — and who rose to the highest office in the South is the first member of the GOP to officially announce a bid to take on twice-impeached Trump, whose third bid for the White House has so far failed to catch fire. At press time, a spokesperson for Haley had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
Back in 2016, Republican Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign had to pay a $25,000 settlement over claims they used “Eye of the Tiger” at a rally with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who made headlines for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Sullivan says he is really protective of the song, but unlike the suit he filed against the former Arkansas Governor, he’s not currently planning to launch a legal fight with Haley.
“I don’t care who it is, I don’t think it’s appropriate, especially with ‘Tiger,’ since it’s such a special song,” he says of the track that he notes hit No. 1 in 39 countries and has become shorthand for a hard workout or, to quote the indelible lyrics, “rising up to the challenge.”
“I have no idea why any politician would play that as a walk on,” he adds, laughing, “I would say you have to have balls… but in this situation that doesn’t apply.” Teetotaler Sullivan says he doesn’t know much about Haley — and tries not to mix politics and entertainment because that would be “the dirtiest martini anyone ever drank” — but thinks her use of “Tiger” is a “sick way to promote the song. I wish they would just stop this nonsense!”
He recalled that when Trump played “Tiger” at campaign rallies he had his lawyer call the Apprentice star’s team and the usage stopped without incident. But, to be honest, he’s tired of playing this game and though he isn’t on the phone with his lawyer, it’s enough already. “I’m amused, but is this s–t really still going on?” he wonders.
Though Haley is expected to distance herself from the disgraced president facing a raft of lawsuits for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election — as well as his alleged corrupt business practices and allegations of sexual assault — by choosing the beloved theme song from the Rocky threequel she definitely tore a page from Trump’s populist soundtrack playbook.
During his first White House run, Trump fell afoul of more than a dozen major rock and pop acts by using their music during his rallies to pump up the crowd. In November, the estate of Isaac Hayes threatened legal action against the former reality star within an hour of Trump’s third announcement to stop him from using “Hold On I’m Coming” at his events; Hayes, who died in 2008 at age 65, co-wrote the 1966 Sam & Dave hit with David Porter.
On his way out of office after being defeated by Pres. Joe Biden, the Village People also called out “bully” ex-president Trump for playing their gay anthem “Y.M.C.A.” one more time against their wishes at his sparsely attended farewell event on Jan. 20, 2021.
For years Trump ignored pleas from a long list of famous acts to cease and desist from using their music during his rallies and political events and in addition to the costumed disco act, the legacy manager for Laura Branigan took issue with Trump playing her hit “Gloria” at his final official appearance as well. Over the five years of his campaigns and presidency, artists ranging from Adele to Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, R.E.M., Aerosmith, Panic! at the Disco, Guns N’ Roses, The Rolling Stones, Rihanna and the estates of Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty and Prince have vociferously objected to Trump playing their music at his rallies.
Check out a tweet with footage of the Survivor walk-on below.
Lizzy McAlpine’s bucket list is a thing to behold. On Zoom from her L.A. home, the ascendant singer-songwriter holds her Notes app to the camera and begins scrolling. And scrolling.
This is no scatterbrained cluster of “maybe someday”s. No, this is a meticulously plotted ledger of life goals, dozens of lines deep. The achievements she’s yet to check off vary in prestige, from playing Coachella and winning a Grammy to creating a special Lizzy McAlpine taco at HomeState, the Los Angeles chain where Phoebe Bridgers concocted her own vegan dish last year.
A handful of goals have already been accomplished, courtesy of the tireless 23-year-old artist’s ascendence on social media and her arresting sophomore album, Five Seconds Flat. The 2022 LP corralled droves of new fans with its subtle folk-pop devastations, speckled with touches of jazz, R&B and notable features from FINNEAS and Jacob Collier. (It also broke her to a new level on streaming, with her catalog having now earned 245.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.)
Among the doleful tracks was “Ceilings,” a plot-twisty ballad of heart-stomping hallucinations, which has taken off on TikTok these last three months and proven the singer’s biggest breakout hit so far. Tens of thousands of videos using a sped-up version of “Ceilings” have amassed more than 235 million views, and translated to more than 30 million official on-demand U.S. streams.
While soaring numbers online are no guarantee for real-life ticket sales, McAlpine has had little trouble developing a devout IRL audience. Last fall, she knocked “headline a tour” off her list, playing mid-size clubs like The Troubadour in Hollywood and Webster Hall in New York. Now, her new roadshow kicking off in April is sold-out across the U.S. and filling the biggest rooms of her career so far — among them Terminal 5 and Brooklyn Steel in NY, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and two nights at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C.
“It’s a level up from the last tour in terms of venue size and also just production-wise, we’re kind of elevating everything, which is very exciting,” McAlpine says. “It becomes more of a theatrical production at this level, and that is very fun for me.”
“Theatrical” is apt for McAlpine, as her stark songwriting style merges the hyper-specific, heartrending lyrics of Bridgers or Olivia Rodrigo — stolen glances over 7-Eleven Slurpees, visions of McAlpine’s suburban Philadelphia-area upbringing — with the sweeping crests and falls of a Sara Bareilles Broadway score.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bridgers and Bareilles are both admirers of McAlpine; each has DMed the newcomer, singing her praises. Bareilles tells Billboard she messaged McAlpine after watching McAlpine cover her tune “When He Sees Me,” from Broadway’s Waitress.
“As a writer, she has a great capacity to make very mundane experiences interesting and has an exceptionally detailed perspective,” Bareilles says. “It’s the great trick of great writing; specificity is universal.”
McAlpine has had plenty of practice, beginning to write songs on piano at age 12 and picking up the guitar a year or two later. She attended Berklee College of Music for two years — “a huge growing period for me as an artist and also as a human,” she says — before dropping out to pursue her career.
Her soft-treading debut LP Give Me a Minute was a promising start, but her career didn’t truly gain steam until the pandemic forced everyone inside. While some homebound musicians took time to regroup, McAlpine kept working, regularly live-streaming on Instagram, dropping singles and cultivating a committed audience on TikTok. It was there that a snippet of an unfinished song, called “You Ruined the 1975” — a relatable ode to exes who tarnish the bands we love, performed sitting on her bathroom floor — was launched to viral heights in summer 2020, notching more than 8 million views and spurring countless covers.
“I couldn’t quite understand fully the gravity of it,” she says of her social media success. “I was just in my room alone. All I could see was a screen with a bunch of people saying, ‘Oh, this is so good.’ It didn’t really hit me until I toured for the first time, because I could actually see the people.”
Lizzy McAlpine
Caity Krone
Though McAlpine still regularly uses the app, she’s wary of associating herself too closely with the platform.
“I have a love/hate relationship with TikTok,” she says. “I feel like I can see the benefits of it, which is why I post. But if I didn’t have to post, I would not be posting on TikTok.”
Yet she cannot avoid the recent TikTok trend of mostly young women running down dark streets, wildly lip-syncing to the bridge of “Ceilings” as though their lives depend on it. The clips’ exaggerated drama contrasts with the understated desperation of tracks like “Erase Me” and “Hate to be Lame,” the latter track being short for a tragic apology: “Hate to be lame but I might love you.”
In terms of visuals to pair with her music, the artist much prefers longform treatments to bite-size morsels. Ever ambitious, McAlpine wrote a screenplay to accompany the release of Five Seconds Flat last April, which birthed the half-hour short film Five Seconds Flat, The Film, directed by Gus Black (Joshua Bassett, Deftones, Eels). In the film, which gracefully interweaves five songs from the album with dialogue, McAlpine stars as her younger self: anxious, lovelorn, searching for passion and identity. She’s excellent in the dramatic role, floundering through young romance’s brutal volatility, like a character from a Sally Rooney novel.
“[The film] was based on my first real relationship in high school,” she says. “And every time he would break up with me — like every other week — I felt like I was literally dying, like my soul was being ripped out of my body. So I just kind of channeled that.”
Sam Bailey, founder and managing director of Harbour Artists & Music and McAlpine’s manager, says he’s never worked with an artist so driven.
“She’s incredibly ambitious, proactive and prolific,” he says. “You can be the most talented artist in the world and never get out of bed in the morning, but she does. She wants to do a million things all at once – and wants to do them now.”
Lizzy McAlpine
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Naturally, McAlpine is already working on her next album. While no hard details are available, she’s happy to tease its direction.
“I feel like [Give Me a Minute] was close to what I think that I actually sound like. And then [Five Seconds Flat], I was trying to go as far away from that as possible, just to differentiate myself and not get stuck in the genre. … This [new] album won’t sound like the first album, but it’s definitely closer to what I think I actually sound like as an artist. It feels like the most authentic music I’ve ever written.”
While McAlpine hopes not to be pigeonholed, she doesn’t mind falling under the “sad girl” label, however, often assigned to her slightly older constituents like Bridgers and Julien Baker, and more recently Gracie Abrams and Holly Humberstone.
“I mean, it is sad — I write sad music,” she assures. “I don’t see that as a bad thing. I think that’s a powerful thing.”
Metallica‘s All Without Our Hands foundation has donated more than $250,000 to aid victims of the Feb. 6 magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria that has killed 41,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
“We’re at a loss for words to describe the devastation in southern Turkey and northern Syria. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake has reduced the entire region to rubble. The death toll continues to rise, tragically exceeding 36,000 lives lost,” the band wrote in a tweet announcing their donations to Direct Relief and World Central Kitchen to help deliver medical aid and meals.
“Two of @AWMHFoundation’s partner organizations, @DirectRelief & @WCKitchen, have boots on the ground providing medical aid & food to the victims of this disaster. #AWMH is providing $125k to each organization to support their efforts,” they added.
The massive quake and a series of aftershocks have left tens of thousands dead, injured more than 114,000 and displaced two million people while carving a path of destruction that leveled 6,500 buildings, many of them crushing victims who were sleeping when the early morning temblor struck.
The donation from the metal icons is just the latest charitable news from their AWMH foundation, coming on the heels of the more than $3 million raised by their Dec. 16 Helping Hands concert in Los Angeles at the Microsoft Theater, with funds earmarked for efforts to support workforce education, fight hunger and provide disaster relief.
The gig hosted by late night’s Jimmy Kimmel was streamed live on Paramount+ and also featured sets from Greta Van Fleet, a surprise appearance by St. Vincent and Robert Downey Jr. introducing the headliners. The Helping Hands Concert and a parallel auction honored a number of local organizations, including: Baby2Baby, First Star, Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, mikeroweWorks Foundation, and The Skatepark Project.
See Metallica’s tweets below.
We’re at a loss for words to describe the devastation in southern Turkey and northern Syria. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake has reduced the entire region to rubble. The death toll continues to rise, tragically exceeding 36,000 lives lost… (1/3) pic.twitter.com/baxRXFiNUf— Metallica (@Metallica) February 14, 2023
Paramore are back, baby. They’re back with a new album, This Is Time (via Atlantic Records), their first in six years. They’re back (soon) with a major tour. And they’re back on our TV screens.
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On Tuesday night (Feb. 14), Hayley Williams, Zac Farro, Taylor York and a backing cast stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live for a performance of “Running Out of Time,” lifted from their sixth and latest album.
Kimmel was a handy warm-up for the reunited pop-punk outfit. They’re all set to hit the road for a global trek in support of the LP, kicking off in South America in early March, followed by a U.K. jaunt in April, and a North American run starting in May.
Along the way, they’ll perform at London’s O2 Arena, New York’s Madison Square Garden, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, and hit a set at Bonnaroo in Nashville, TN.
This Is Time is the followup to 2017’s After Laughter, which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 chart, and is one of the band’s three top 10 appearances, including their self-titled 2013 leader.
This Is Time got away to a fast start in the U.K. It was the leader on the midweek chart, blowing away its nearest competition by 2:1, according to the Official Charts Company.
Watch the late-night performance below.
“Ghosts Again,” Depeche Mode’s first single since 2017, debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs chart, powered by Twitter, dated Feb. 18.
Billboard’s Hot Trending charts, powered by Twitter, track global music-related trends and conversations in real-time across Twitter, viewable over either the last 24 hours or past seven days. A weekly, 20-position version of the chart, covering activity from Friday through Thursday of each week, posts alongside Billboard’s other weekly charts on Billboard.com each Tuesday, with the latest tracking period running Feb. 3-9.
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“Ghosts” was released Feb. 9. Despite just one day of data toward the latest tracking week, it not only earned a No. 1 debut on Hot Trending Songs but is also bubbling under Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart.
It’s the first taste of music from Memento Mori, the band’s 15th studio album and first since 2017’s Spirit. Due March 24, it’s the group’s first LP since the death of keyboardist Andy Fletcher last year.
Further appearances for “Ghosts” are expected on the Billboard charts dated Feb. 25.
Future’s “I’m Dat N***a,” from his 2022 album I Never Liked You, follows at No. 2. Its surge in activity is owed to a viral social media post showing LeBron James playing the song after he broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record on Feb. 7.
New music from Gracie Abrams, BSS, Linkin Park, Luke Combs and more also appears.
Keep visiting Billboard.com for the constantly evolving Hot Trending Songs rankings, and check in each Tuesday for the latest weekly chart.
“We’ll never do a second album again,” jokes Inhaler’s Elijah Hewson, feigning the exhaustion that, at this time last year, was very real for the well-coiffed singer-guitarist and his Inhaler band mates.
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After two years of pandemic dormancy, the Irish pop-rockers stormed the stage in 2022, amassing more than 100 gigs in support of It Won’t Always Be Like This, the group’s blistering post-punk-goes-pop 2021 debut. The album, which was largely written and recorded during COVID, hit No. 1 in the U.K. and the Dubliners’ native Ireland, shocking the new-coming foursome.
And so came the need for a worthy follow-up — this time on a working band’s notoriously chaotic schedule. But the tireless lads pulled it off, booking long studio hours in early 2022, between tour stints and festival sets.
Just 15 months after their thrilling curtain-raiser — and with nerve-racking slots at Glastonbury and Lollapalooza now in the rear-view — Inhaler returns with Cuts and Bruises, another jangle-and-thump effort full of confidence and anthemic abandon, out this Friday (Feb. 17) through Geffen. The guitar-heavy sequel sharply merges callbacks to the band’s ‘80s muses — The Stone Roses, Joy Division — with touches of American fascination, courtesy of the band’s run of packed club shows across the U.S. last spring. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have joined the party as influences.
After last year’s hectic return to normalcy, the band — Hewson, guitarist Rob Keating, bassist Josh Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon — plans for a busy 2023, with another list of festivals booked, not to mention opening slots for Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys. It’s easy to imagine a 1975-like obsession before this next album cycle is finished, although the band mates, who have been making noise together since their early teens, can scarcely believe any of it.
Billboard caught up with the ascendant band to retrace their wild 2022, unpack the origins of Cuts and Bruises, and learn how a well-timed documentary influenced their promising next chapter.
How was your very busy 2022, and being able to get back on stage and debut songs written in pandemic isolation?
Ryan McMahon: When we went back to gigging, seeing all these new, unfamiliar faces, singing back the songs was quite a shock to our system. And that was crazy for us to get back out touring and going into places in America, for example, where we never thought we’d be able to go and people knew our songs. We were talking a lot about how we’re very guilty of feeling like we’ve got this sense of imposter syndrome in our minds. We don’t feel worthy, in a lot of ways, of some of the things we get to do.
How has the reception been with U.S. fans, who have been a little slower to catch Inhaler fever?
RM: It’s surreal, because we always pictured America as this fictional place.
Elijah Hewson: I think people [in America] listen to music in a really different way than they do in Europe. Not that it’s like they don’t listen to music as much in Europe, but I feel like when we came here, right off the bat, people were very warm to us and we felt like it gave us a lot of drive and a lot of it made us feel like, oh, “Come on, lads.” And I guess it’s that age-old thing of Irish people coming to America and feeling like the whole world’s at their feet, at their fingertips.
Since you last spoke to Billboard, your debut album, It Won’t Always Be Like This, hit No. 1 in several countries, including your native Ireland. What’s it like to have a chart-topper in your own country?
RM: We still almost feel like it didn’t happen. I mean, when you get into a band when you’re 12 or 13, you don’t ever think that you’re going to go and take on the world with your boys. You just want to get into a room and make noise, because you’re not really that good at anything else. And so fast forward nine, 10 years later, and you wake up to find out that your album that you wrote during a pandemic is No. 1 in the country that you grew up in? It’s hard to put into words, really.
Let’s talk about the new album. First off, why call it Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we kind of realized that being in a band is maybe, sounds silly, but more of a commitment than we thought. Not in a sense that we have to work, but I think in relation to our relationships with each other. It’s a little bit like a marriage, and I think there’s always going to be a little bit of residual scar tissue left over after so many years of working and playing with each other.
We’re starting to realize that it’s important to look after those relationships and pay attention to them, and we have a responsibility to look after each other. And I think that just kept coming up, after the pandemic and being on the road together, it just felt like the only thing we could write about. So I guess the title reflects that, in a way. And it’s not a serious injury. It’s something that we’re able to brush off and heal from.
In a way, the pandemic bought you guys extra time to fine-tune your first album. But Cuts and Bruises was made in the real world, in between a rigorous touring schedule. How much harder was this one to finish?
EH: Switching between those two processes was very exhausting. And I think we all kind of crawled out the back end of 2021 just feeling like we were just really, really — not burnt out, but I think we’d given everything that we could, and I think in some ways the pressure of that, and the spontaneity of it, and the speed at which we did things probably did help the album. And thankfully, we had our producer [Antony Genn] in there to kind of light the fire under our arse, as he often does. And that really kept us on the straight and narrow while we were back in the studio.
How did this new influx of touring experience — and growing confidence in your abilities — influence the writing of Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we learned a lot of lessons on the first one, and I think when we came into the second we had a better picture of how we wanted to do things. … I think the main thing we said is we wanted less information, to let the songs breathe a bit.
I think we were just more confident, and you don’t have to add as much if you are confident in the songs and material. And that was the basis of what we went off and I think it guided us pretty well. But other than that, I mean, you’re going in hoping that you come out with something at the end that is bigger than the sum of its parts. I don’t think anybody really knows what they’re doing. And as David Bowie said, “If you knew what you were doing, it’d be boring. You’d be disappointed.”
Is there one song on the new album you’d point to as the guiding light for what this project is trying to say?
EH: Maybe “Now You Got Me,” because it’s about commitment to something, and a lot of the lyrics are about joining the band and stuff like that. And I think that paints a picture, for me, of the whole album and where we are right now.
RM: [The song] sums up just the overall residing theme of it being an album of love songs, about loving your friends, really.
You guys talk a lot about being in a band and your commitment to each other. I know you all watched The Beatles documentary Get Back, which touches on some similar themes. How did that impact how Inhaler functions?
EH: It couldn’t have come out at a better time for us to be preparing to go into a studio to make a new album. And it was also very interesting for us to watch that and watch some of the conversations that they’d be having with each other as the biggest and best band to ever exist. And we’re just watching it going, “Hey, we argue about that!”
The lead single “These Are the Days” is a big, anthemic song. How’d you land on it to introduce the new album?
JJ: It was funny, because “These Are the Days” was kind of overlooked at the time but we played it to our producers and our managers and they were like, “Hey, there’s something there. Let’s get cooking on that straight away.” Even though it was one of the later demos to arrive, it was one of the first songs we’d finished and we thought it was a good way of coming back into releasing music and saying, “Hey, here we are again. Are people still interested in us?” It just worked out in that way.
How about “If You’re Going to Break My Heart,” which is a departure for you guys? It sounds like an American folk or country song.
RM: That came to us from listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and The Band and Bruce Springsteen, and us falling in love with America, really, and touring it and visiting places like Nashville and sort of familiarizing ourselves a bit more with country music and the storytelling that goes behind that. In music, country artists are the best storytellers. I think that’s what we were aiming for. I think that song actually came fairly naturally to us in the studio, because it’s not super rigid-sounding. It’s a lot more loose and it sounds like a live band, which is, again, what we wanted to achieve with this record.
What does it mean to you to be a rock band in 2023 that’s still finding an audience in real life, especially as so many artists your age are living on TikTok?
EH: It’s everything to us. When we were kids, the most uncool thing you could do was pick up a guitar and join a band. And everyone was like, “Oh, that’s cute.” I think we were just doing it for ourselves, really, because that’s how we found each other — we just wanted to listen to Stone Roses and Joy Division, and it drew us close.
And we saw Arctic Monkeys came out with AM in 2013 and that was very guitar-driven, and “Do I Wanna Know?,” it was a huge single, and I think that gave us a little bit of hope. And I also think that maybe people are just sick of hearing stuff that doesn’t feel authentic. And I think it doesn’t get much more authentic than hearing the clang of a guitar, and that’s a very visceral, physical sound. Maybe that’s why people like listening to bands like us, I guess. But we’re still like, a “pop and roll.” We’re not like idols. We’re still very kind of freaked out that this has even happened.
Just two weeks after hitting the road for their 2023 international tour, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band added a slew of new dates to the North American portion of the outing. On Tuesday (Feb. 14), the band announced additional shows in 18 cities, kicking off with an August 9 gig at Chicago’s legendary Wrigley Field through a Dec. 8 gig at San Francisco’s Chase Center.
The new shows also include multiple-night stands at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank park, New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena and Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. Tickets for the 22 new North American shows will go on sale over the next two weeks, with the first onsale kicking off this Friday (Feb. 17) at 10 a.m. local time.
The tour will be using Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan service for many of the cities (you can pre-register for VF here); VF is open through Sunday (Feb. 19) at 11:59 p.m. ET. Tickets for the show at Wrigley Field and Citizens Bank Park will be sold directly by the stadiums.
Springsteen kicked off the band’s tour with their first North American show in seven years in Tampa, Florida on Feb. 1, but by Friday they were already down a few members. The group’s show in Dallas, Texas was missing both guitarist Steven Van Zandt and violinist/singer Soozie Tyrel, who sat out after testing positive for COVID-19 ahead of their tour stop at the American Airlines Center, while Springsteen’s wife singer/guitarist Patti Scialfa was also absent from the stage for undisclosed reasons.
At press time, Billboard had reached out to Springsteen and the E Street Band’s rep for comment on whether the next planned tour stop, on Tuesday (Feb. 14) in Houston, Texas, will feature the full band.
Check out the new dates for Springsteen & the E Street Band’s 2023 North American tour below:
August 9 – Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field (Onsale: February 17 at 10:00 a.m. CT)
August 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ Citizens Bank Park (Onsale: February 28 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
August 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Citizens Bank Park (Onsale: February 28 at 10:00 AM ET
August 24 – Foxborough, MA @ Gillette Stadium (Verified Fan Onsale: February 27 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
August 28 – Washington, DC @ Nationals Park (Verified Fan Onsale: February 28 at 10:00 a.m. ET )
August 30 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium (Verified Fan Onsale: February 24 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Sept. 1 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium (Verified Fan Onsale: February 24 at 12:00 p.m. ET)
Sept. 7 – Syracuse, NY @ JMA Wireless Dome (Verified Fan Onsale: February 24 at 10:00 a.m. ET
Sept. 9 – Baltimore, MD @ Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Verified Fan Onsale: February 28 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Sept. 12 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Nov. 3 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. PT)
Nov. 6 – Edmonton, AB @ Rogers Place (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. MT)
Nov. 8 – Calgary, AB @ Scotiabank Saddledome (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. MT)
Nov. 10 – Winnipeg, MB @ Canada Life Centre (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. CT)
Nov. 14 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Nov. 16 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Nov. 18 – Ottawa, ON @ Canadian Tire Centre (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Nov. 20 – Montreal, QC @ Centre Bell (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. ET)
Nov. 30 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center (Verified Fan Onsale: February 22 at 10:00 a.m. MT)
Dec. 4 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. PT)
Dec. 6 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum (Verified Fan Onsale: February 23 at 10:00 a.m. PT)
Dec. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center (Verified Fan Onsale: Feb. 23 at 10 a.m. PT)