Rock
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Pete Wentz delved into a reflection on the ups and downs of his life in the newest issue of Nylon published this week, and how he’s grown from it.
One particular turning point in his life was in 2010, when he was in the process of splitting from then-wife Ashlee Simpson, raising their son Bronx and dealing with the reality that Fall Out Boy was going on a break. “My life was just like… a bomb had gone off in it,” he said of that time period, noting that he then had a crucial realization. “You’ve atrophied all of these life skills. I was like, ‘Oh. You have to figure out how to be happy as an adult.’”
Since then, the bomb has settled. The rocker has been with his longtime partner, Megan Camper, since 2011 and the couple shares Together, they share eight-year-old son Saint and four-year-old daughter Marvel.
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Fall Out Boy has also found their way back together. They’ve released a number of albums since their break, including 2013’s Save Rock and Roll, 2015’s American Beauty/American Psycho and 2018’s Mania. Now, the band is just days away from unveiling their eighth studio album, So Much (for) Stardust on March 24.
“Why don’t you just do the s— you want to do?” Wentz says is his current life philosophy. “Life is so short, and it’s so long, that maybe you should try crazy s— because it will break you out of the feeling of nihilism.”
Read the full interview here.
If you’re lucky in life you might land your dream job. And if you are way blessed you may score two good gigs. But pulling a dream double? That’s off-the-charts, go-play-the-lottery good luck.
That’s how pinball designer Jack Danger felt when he learned that his second-ever assignment for Stern Pinball was to create a Foo Fighters machine, complete with input from one of his favorite bands. “I was like ‘holy s–t!’,” Danger tells Billboard about his reaction when Stern asked him to get to work on one of their “cornerstone” titles — the handful of big-name games the company releases each year.
Danger says the band has “followed” him around his whole life, with many of the songs in the game holding deep meaning. “There’s me working at Subway making sandwiches [while listening to the Foo Fighters],” he says of the inclusion of 15 memory-sparking tracks including “All My Life,” “Best Of You,” “Breakout,” “Everlong,” “I’ll Stick Around,” “Learn to Fly,” “Monkey Wrench,” “My Hero and “This Is a Call,” among others. “And whenever a music game comes out it really speaks to fans of their music,” he says.
While he might have had an initial moment’s pause about working on “another music pinball machine,” the thought of having a hand in adding a new bone-rattling title to the roster of excellent ones out there already honoring bands including Rush, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin and Metallica, sealed the deal.
“We wanted to approach this game differently than just playing music videos and having some call outs to the group,” he says as his black cat strolls lazily across his lap during a recent Zoom call, shooing it away with the tatted-up knuckles on his left hand. “Early on, the band was so gung-ho, like ‘let’s f–king make this as cool as can be!’”
In fact, the only upfront feedback the Dave Grohl-led Rock and Roll Hall of Famers gave was that they wanted the design to be about the Foos touring in a van. That made sense, since Danger began his work around the time the group released their 2021 documentary about the topic: What Drives Us. It also helped that he was working with an all-star team, including Deadpool game programmer Tanio Klyce and artist Zombie Yeti, known for his colorful, killer illustrations on Stern’s Godzilla and Avengers Infinity Quest machines, as well as some classic Foos concert posters.
“‘I get those two to work on this machine? That’s a double-whammy! Holy s–t! I get to work with these people who made machines I love?,’” Danger recalls thinking about his all-star crew. Taking a cue from some of Yeti’s previous posters, they landed on a story about aliens — the Foos’ name was inspired by a WWII term for UFOs — pretending to be humans by wearing terrible disguises. That morphed into the final story of a fictional cartoon series, Foo Fighters Saturday Morning Action Time!, in which the Foos fight aliens and go on a quest to save rock ‘n’ roll from from a mysterious alien overlord and his robot army.
The end result includes a backglass (the upright portion that faces the player) in which a giant alien holds the band’s members in his outstretched hand as Grohl leaps out of a space ship and illustrations on the sides of the cabinet of the Foos in their tricked-out van, with late drummer Taylor Hawkins rocking out in the front seat next to keyboard player Rami Jaffee; those three, as well as guitarists Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel, offered creative input on the two-years-in-the-making game and are featured all over the cabinet.
Erik Wurtenberger, co-founder of Cincinnati’s annual Pincinnati pinball tournament and show — where pinheads can play everything from vintage machines to the latest models — says he hasn’t had a chance to play the Foos game yet, but he’s very eager to get his hands on it. “It looks very promising,” he says. He also says that the current crop of rock games from Stern are all “very good. From Rush to AC/DC, Metallica, KISS, Aerosmith, etc., Stern has done a fantastic job making these games.”
Wurtenberger says the rock games have all done very well at Pincinnati and titles like the Foos one are definitely bringing more people to pinball.
Danger, 42, began to turn heads in the pinball world nearly a decade ago when he helped pioneer the notion of streaming pinball play on Twitch under his nom-de-play, Dead Flip, including making suggestions to manufacturers about what would make their gameplay even better. Those videos caught the attention of Stern after Danger posted about his first home-brewed pinball design, which led to a job offer from Stern EVP/Chief Creative Officer George Gomez.
“I had built the resume that every designer needs to get a job, so they asked me to do this Jurassic Park home model and that sold pretty well,” says Danger of his first design. So, 14 months ago he began working on the Foos machine and, he says proudly, “we spoke with them and they were all in on any weird-ass thing we came up with.”
As for the songs that made the cut, Danger says they needed to have the energy to match the action of a fast-moving machine, with each track carefully curated to keep up with the streaking silver ball and upper-deck playfields. “We wanted this game to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon… and everything had to be cohesive with what you’re seeing an hearing,” he says. That included bringing in Brendon Small, the voice actor and musician who co-created the Adult Swim hard rock cartoon series Metalocalypse to voice the game’s ominous bad guy overlord alien.
There were originally plans to work more closely with the band on specific aspects of the game, but when Hawkins died unexpectedly in March 2022 Danger forged ahead with their blessing and alien marching orders.
“There was a moment where we were like, ‘do we keep moving forward with this?’ But we decided to give them time to grieve and not bother them, but from a manufacturing standpoint we had to keep on the timeline,” Danger says. Even so, as the team forged ahead, Danger crows that it was, “nothing but ‘f–k yeahs left and right,’” from the band and their team, which might explain why the game has more four-letter words than your average title.
A Stern rep says the limited-edition version of the game (1,000 units at $12,999) has already sold out, but the premium ($9,699) and pro editions ($6,999) are still available. If those are too pricey, you can look for the the game at bars and arcades around the country soon.
Check out pics of the Foo Fighters game below.
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
Courtesy of Stern Pinball
The Album
Rat Saw God, out 4/7 on Dead Oceans.
The Origin
As a kid growing up in Greensboro, N.C., Karly Hartzman “always wanted to be in a band, but wasn’t,” she tells Billboard. By “going to every show I could and photographing shows and making zines,” she eventually landed in a pop-punk band in high school – “just kind of noodling around” on a microKORG synthesizer – before taking up songwriting and performing in earnest as a student at University of North Carolina Asheville in the mid-’10s. After buying her friend’s guitar in junior year, Hartzman “just kind of fucked around until I made a sound that sounded good,” she says. “I taught myself on a combination of watching live videos of other bands on YouTube and learning covers. I still haven’t had a lesson really – so I’m just kind of flying by the seat of my pants.”
Hartzman conceived alt-country project Wednesday in 2017, subsequently turning to peers in Asheville’s robust indie circuit to make it a proper band. The following year’s self-released yep definitely served as a test run, before the band — by then comprised of Hartzman, Xandy Chelmis (lap steel), Alan Miller (drums), Margo Schultz (bass) and Daniel Gorham (guitar), released I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (“our first album, like with a label that we were excited about”) on Orindal in February 2020.
“The first time we felt validly like, ‘We’re doing music, this is a record we have on vinyl’ was right before the pandemic,” Hartzman says. “Our release show got canceled because of the pandemic. And then we weren’t playing any shows, [so we] had no idea how people felt about the album.”
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The Sound
Wednesday fuses traditional alt-rock hooks with enveloping shoegaze and country twang for music that’s both familiar and singular, and Hartzman’s evocative, specific songwriting draws on great country music storytellers – Drive-By Truckers, Lucinda Williams, “a lot of the outlaw country people” – who she credits for producing “some of the most amazing lyricism in the world.” Hartzman spent her North Carolina youth “hearing country songwriters ambiently kind of against your will, whether you liked it or not,” and spent years keeping the music at arm’s length due to its conservative cultural connotations. But she reconsidered her stance after discovering artists, like the Truckers, who “[embodied] the fact that you can enjoy country music and promote social justice.”
In 2022, Wednesday released a covers album, Moving the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up, that epitomized the band’s diverse interests, with songs by country legends (Gary Stewart, Roger Miller), alt-country greats (Vic Chesnutt, Drive-By Truckers), The Smashing Pumpkins, and contemporary Brooklyn DIY upstarts Hotline TNT. “We take all of the genres we do have influence from very seriously, and we have a deep love and appreciate for all of that music,” says Hartzman, describing the set as “less of us trying to replicate a sound and more us trying to do justice to where we’re from and how it influenced our taste.”
Another key element: Chelmis’ lap steel work, which took on a distinct character after he accidentally routed it through a distortion pedal and liked the sound. “He’s really revolutionizing that instrument,” Hartzman says. “When you tour with an instrument that is not just a regular guitar, I think it is really engaging, because it brings some of the magic back into music. Not knowing how something works as an audience member is one of the most fun experiences you can have — watching someone who has mastered this mysterious thing.”
The Breakthrough
With the pandemic raging in 2020, and little bearing on how much IWTTDYTS was or wasn’t catching on with audiences, Wednesday scored discounted studio time in Asheville and recorded Twin Plagues, which it released in August 2021. (Gorham departed Wednesday before the sessions and was replaced by Jake Lenderman.) When touring restarted and the band hit the road in support of the record, it was shocked by the way positive internet buzz had grown its real-life audiences. “We were like, ‘What the hell? When did this happen?’” Hartzman recalls. “It was very zero to 100 … very surreal. It felt like it didn’t happen fast, because it was years of standing still with the pandemic — but if you put the show before the pandemic next to a show after the pandemic, it’s a huge jump.”
The attention attracted more than just fans: Soon, Wednesday signed with Dead Oceans, the prominent indie label that has in recent years helped catapult Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski and Japanese Breakfast to stardom. (With a laugh, Hartzman describes Dead Oceans as “our Harvard, our reach label. I was like, ‘There is no f—king way.’”) The band returned to Asheville and holed up in a “fancy-schmancy studio” to record its Dead Oceans debut.
The resulting album, Rat Saw God, expands Twin Plagues’ rootsy scuzz to epic proportions; Wednesday announced their Dead Oceans signing to the public with the release of the set’s lead single “Bull Believer,” a blistering, eight-and-a-half-minute opus that covers lyrical ground from Spanish bullfighting to Mortal Kombat before dissolving into squalls of distortion and Hartzman’s shrieks. But otherwise, Rat Saw God finds strength in concision, as sturdy hooks score Hartzman’s vivid and often unsettling verses, where characters might doze off watching Formula One racing, get their stomach pumped after tripping too hard on Benadryl, or overdose in a Planet Fitness parking lot.
While Rat Saw God is sonic step forward for the band, it’s an even bigger advancement for Hartzman’s personal, detailed lyricism, which shines throughout. Take brief and breezy album closer “TV in the Gas Pump” (out today), something of a travelogue documenting a recent two-week Wednesday tour.
“The lyrics for that one were collected in a phone note,” Hartzman says. “Anytime I would see something out the van window or we had an experience that stuck with me, I would write it down.” At one gig, Chelmis took more mushrooms than he planned for a microdose, and found himself overwhelmed in a dollar store across the street from the venue – forever immortalized in the song’s final verse as “Violently came up/ In a Dollar General/ You took too much.”
The Future
As the latest standard-bearers of North Carolina’s prolific indie-rock scene – embodied by revered Durham-based label Merge, and artists including Superchunk, Polvo and Archers of Loaf – Wednesday wants to help their talented peers get their due. Last fall, the band took Raleigh shredders Truth Club on tour as support, and one of Asheville’s most promising young artists lives within Wednesday’s ranks: Lenderman, Hartzman’s partner and Wednesday’s guitarist, released his acclaimed album Boat Songs as MJ Lenderman in April 2022. “I like the fact that we’re kind of coming up together,” says Hartzman, who frequently plays in Lenderman’s band on his solo tours. “It’s very exciting and fun.”
Hartzman’s excited to see how fans receive Wednesday’s new material live once they’ve had time to digest it, and she emphasizes how invigorating life on the road is for her creatively. That said, she cherishes returning home to North Carolina. “I’m glad I live out of the way, where people don’t really give a f—k about indie music a lot of the time,” she says. “My life at home will stay really normal, and then I can have my Hannah Montana moment on tour, and then come home and, like, be a person.”
The Piece of Equipment You Couldn’t Live Without
“I have like a ’90s Rat distortion pedal – I use that and a tuner on stage.”
The Artist You Believe Deserves More Attention
“Honestly, I feel like it’s time for Unwound to get their flowers, especially because they’re playing again [on a just-concluded reunion tour]. I feel like I don’t see people talking about them and how influential and how much their sound has affected a lot of [artists], especially Philly shoegaze sounds. I’m an Unwound head. It’s one of my favorite bands.”
The Piece of Advice Every New Indie Artist Needs to Hear
“Don’t think about the audience that is going to hear your song when you’re writing and just think about what you want to say.”
The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry
“Oh lord. Everything? I think the first thing needs to be we need to change the way we pay opening bands. It’s really unsustainable for a band, especially if it’s a band in a van that’s trying to catch up with a band on a tour bus. It’s a really unsustainable practice.”
The Thing They Hope Fans Take Away From Their Album
“I just hope they hear this one and trust that I’m gonna keep making music. We’re signed to a bigger label and I think the sellout mentality, it scares a lot of people — but I feel like we are on a mission to stay very true to ourselves. I want them to trust that I’m going to keep doing whatever the f—k I want with my songs.”
Nothing can stop Virginia Tech students from supporting their team.
This year, the NCAA is hoping to keep on-campus host sites as neutral as possible by fining a host for playing traditional hype songs, such as Virginia Tech playing “Enter Sandman” as it usually does during women’s basketball games at Cassell Coliseum. Virginia Tech started playing the Metallica hit back in 2000 during the season opener for football at Lane Stadium.
While the NCAA is preventing actual venues from playing hype songs through their speakers, there’s nothing they can do about fans taking matters into their own hands. During VT’s Friday night (March 17) game against Chattanooga, Hokies supporters in the coliseum began belting the chorus to the heavy metal 1991 classic a capella, making for a special, uniting moment.
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It all paid off too, as Virginia Tech won 58-33 against Chattanooga.
Metallica shot to No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums and Hard Rock Albums tallies following the 2021 30th-anniversary reissue of its self-titled 1991 album, also known as “The Black Album.” The 30th anniversary reissue remasters the original 12 tracks and also includes a multi-disc box set including live versions, alternate takes and more.
Meanwhile, The Metallica Blacklist, the 53-song companion album featuring covers of Metallica’s tracklist from a variety of artists, also gained a No. 1 hit on the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales chart thanks to Miley Cyrus’ cover of “Nothing Else Matters,” featuring WATT, Elton John, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert Trujillo and Chad Smith.
Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lana Del Rey, Odesza, Karol G, The 1975 and Tomorrow X Together will headline this summer’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago. The annual throwdown in downtown will take place from August 3-6 in Grant Park and also feature sets from Fred Again…, Noah Kahan, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodies. J.I.D., Maggie Rogers, Carly Rae Jepsen, Diplo and Thirty Seconds to Mars.
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It will mark the first time headlining for Eilish and Lamar and Karol G will become the first female Latin artist to top the bill for the fest, which will host more than 170 bands on 9 stages over four days.
Also slate to perform are: NewJeans, Tems, Rina Sawayama, Lil Yachty, Morgan Wade, Lainey Wilson, Sudan Archives, Sabrina Carpenter, Suki Waterhouse, Louis the Child, Pusha T, Mt. Joy, Sofi Tukker, Portugal. the Man, Yung Gravy, Beabadoobee, Afrojack, Joey Bada$$, Sylvan Esso, Alex G, Knocked Loose, Foals, Maisie Peters, Peach Pit, Declan McKenna, The Knocks, Joy Oladokun and many more.
Fans can sign up for the SMS presale that kicks off on Thursday (March 23) at 10 a.m. CT here to get access to 4-day general admission tickets at the tier 1 price ($365) while supplies last; you can also sign up for 4-day GA+, VIP and Platinum tickets at that time. A public on-sale will take place following the pre-sale for any remaining tickets. One-day tickets and a lineup-by-day will be available at a later date.
Check out the full lineup for 2023 Lollapalooza below.
Courtesy Photo
Bruce Springsteen always knows how to give the people exactly what they want. The Boss proved it once again on Monday night (March 20) at Boston’s TD Garden Arena when he gave the Beantown faithful a taste of one of their hometown anthems when he busted out The Standells’ 1965 ode to some of the city’s iconic faces and places, “Dirty Water.”
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According to Boston.com, the run through the garage rock tune came at the top of a 50-minute encore and it was just one of several Boston mentions Bruce tossed out over the course of the show. The rocker also dedicated the classic “Thunder Road” to the nurses, doctors and staff at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and encouraged his fans to donate to the volunteers from the Greater Boston Food Bank who were set up around the arena.
“Dirty Water” was written by the Standells’ producer Ed Cobb, a California native, and it makes mentions of the city’s notoriously fouled Charles River and Boston Harbor (hence, “Dirty Water”), the totally unfair midnight curfew imposed upon female students at Boston University (“Frustrated women… have to be in by 12 o’clock”) as well as the subject of the recent Keira Knightley film Boston Strangler (“have you heard about the strangler?”).
In the years since, the song by the Los Angeles band has become an anthem for Boston sports teams, including hockey’s Boston Bruins and Boston Red Sox baseball team. “Dirty Water” peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1965.
Check out footage of the cover below from Boston.com’s Christopher Gavin.
Bruce Springsteen performs at TD Garden on March 20, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kevin Mazur/GI for Bruce Springsteen
Country, pop and Americana artists congregated at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Monday (March 20) for the benefit concert Love Rising to support the LGBTQIA+ community and to oppose a slate of bills that negatively impact the LGBTQIA+ community and transgender teens.
The arena was packed, as the evening featured a bill featuring Maren Morris, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Jason Isbell, Sheryl Crow, Allison Russell, Yola, Amanda Shires, Yola, Joy Oladokun, Jake Wesley Rogers, Wrabel, Brittany Howard, Fancy Hagood, Autumn Nicholas, Mya Byrne, Julien Baker, Shea Diamond and more. Sibling duo Brothers Osborne, who had been slated to perform during the show, was forced to back out of the performance just prior to the show, as member John Osborne and his wife Lucie were welcoming twins.
The concert also raised awareness and funds to battle a slate of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation — particularly Senate Bill 1/House Bill 1 and House Bill 9/Senate Bill 3, which ban drag shows in the presence of minors, and transgender procedures for minors. On March 2, Tennessee’s Gov. Bill Lee signed SB1/HB1 and SB3/HB9; SB3 takes effect April 1 and is already impacting live events and queer artists in the state.
Just days after these legislations were signed, four-time Grammy nominee Russell and radio personality Hunter Kelly (who hosts the LGBTQIA-themed country music show Proud Radio on Apple Music) began working to rally a stellar slate of artists from the Nashville music community and beyond to oppose the legislation.
The evening began with a video featuring cast members of RuPaul’s Drag Race Live!, with drag performer Asia O’Hara emceeing the evening.
“Drag is not a crime,” O’Hara said. “We are here tonight to say one thing and one thing only: Enough is enough.”
In addition to the top-shelf lineup of performers on hand, drag artists were featured throughout the evening, including Nashville-based Veronika Electronika, who said, “I think it comes down to our LGBTQIA+ communities are not being afford the same protections as other groups. … If you think this stops with legislation against the trans community and the drag community, wake up!”
The evening featured repeated calls for donations (by texting “Love” to 99126) to the organizations aided by the concert, including Inclusion Tennessee, OUTMemphis, Tennessee Equality Project and the Tennessee Pride Chamber, as well as Brandi Carlile’s Looking Out Foundation. (The Looking Out Foundation doubled donations up to $100,000.) Donations can still be made at propeller.la.
Nashville mayor John Cooper surprised the crowd by taking the stage to proclaim March 20 Love Rising Day in Nashville.
“Every person, regardless of who they love, how they dress and how they identify, deserves to be treated with love and respect,” Cooper said. “We will always be a welcoming city. Let me say that again: We will always be a welcoming city. I speak for all of Nashville when I say to all of our LGBTQ+ neighbors, we are glad you are here … we must support one another by speaking up and speaking out against discrimination and hate when we see it, because we are better and stronger together.”
Here, we look at 10 top moments from the evening:
Adeem the Artist
Nonbinary singer-songwriter Adeem the Artist expressed gratitude for the organizers of Love Rising, including Russell (who backed Adeem on banjo), David Macias and Ali Harnell.
“It’s a weird juxtaposition of jubilation and fear … I live in Tennessee a state that wants to criminalize my very identity,” they said before performing “For Judas” from their latest album, White Trash Revelry.
Jake Wesley Rogers
Queer performer Jake Wesley Rogers, whose career launched in Nashville, started off by telling a story of a childhood school memory, prior to launching into the dramatic “Pluto,” including the key line “at the end of the day, you and me are both the same/ We just wanna be loved.”
“A few weeks after our test, our teacher informed us that Pluto was no longer invited. It’s one of my earliest traumas, because if you are an outsider you know how that feels … Tonight, Nashville, we realize that oftentimes our insecurity is our superpower. Take all your fears, worries and let it explode in this arena and let in all the love that you are.”
Sheryl Crow
“This is a statement about what kind of world we want to live in, living our free truth … and that we don’t let politicians inflict their fear story on any of us,” Crow said before launching into her 1996 hit “Everyday Is a Winding Road.”
She later shared how she has to explain to her sons how “some people don’t get to live like they want to because it doesn’t align to someone’s political agenda.” Crow went on to perform “Hard to Make a Stand,” and encouraged those in the audience to register to vote.
Maren Morris
After performing “Crowded Table” alongside Russell, Oladokun, Amanda Shires and more, Morris returned to the stage for a solo performance, recalling how earlier in the day, her young son visited several drag queens in their dressing rooms and delighted in watching as they perfected their hair and makeup for the show.
“Yes, I introduced my son to some drag queens today, so Tennessee, f–king arrest me,” Morris said. She went on to perform “Better Than We Found It” and then welcomed drag performer Alexia Noelle to perform “Meet Me in the Middle.”
Joy Oladokun
Brandishing a guitar emblazoned with “Keep Hope Alive” Joy Oladokun performed the hopeful “Somehow, Things Just Get Better.”
“I never thought there would be a world where I could be out loud about who I love … it’s f–king hard to live here and specifically a country that feels like it’s always attacking who you are. It’s hard not to just hide in the f–king house and I wrote this about the cyclical nature of life and how things turn around hopefully,” Oladokun told the crowd.
Cidny Bullens
While taking the stage to introduce transgender performer Mya Byrne, Bullens took a moment to share a powerful testimony of a life that includes time performing with Elton John and Rod Stewart, singing lead vocals on the Grease soundtrack, and working in Nashville with artists including Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris and more. Bullens also spoke of physically transitioning from Cindy Bullens to Cidny Bullens in 2011.
Speaking of the ream of Tennessee legislations, Bullens said, “The state of Tennessee does not support me, or any other LGBTQ, transgender, or non-binary person. They targeted us all, they targeted humanity, they targeted love. This can’t stand because we won’t let it.”
Jason Isbell
“I can’t tell y’all how happy I am to be in this room with so many good people,” he said before launching into his now decade-old song “Cover Me Up.”
“Everybody deserves to be free to love yourself for who you are. You can’t really love someone else until you love who you are, so that should be available to everyone,” he said before welcoming the Rainbow Coalition band, which had been backing the artists all night, back to the stage. He continued with a rendition of Wet Willie’s “Keep on Smilin’,” tweaking a key lyric to say, “The state of Tennessee’s playing games/ And they say that you’re to blame.”
Hozier and Allison Russell
“What an honor it is to be part of this event, and to be part of your beautiful city” the Irish-born Hozier told the crowd while taking the stage. “[Irish political leader] James Connolly once said that no revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. There are so many elements of queer culture that are no less than revolutionary. In a time of fear-mongering, just standing up for who you are is revolutionary.”
One of the most powerful moments — in an evening filled with powerful moments — came as Hozier was joined by Russell to perform “Nina Cried Power,” with Russell’s fiery belting a perfect match for Hozier’s grainy, fervent voice.
Hayley Williams and Becca Mancari
Williams, known both for her solo work and with Paramore, recounted her family’s move to Nashville when she was 13, and how the community — in particular, the creatives in the LGBTQIA+ community — influenced her music and artistry. She also brought a moment of levity to the show, telling the crowd, “If you’re a drag performer — skilled, talented — I’m sure some of them wake up thinking, ‘Why did I shave my legs for this?’” Williams said, before performing Deana Carter’s 1997 hit “Did I Shave My Legs for This?”
Williams teamed with Becca Mancari for an acoustic rendition of “Inordinary” from Williams’ second solo album, Flowers for Vases/Descansos.
Russell, Ruby Amanfu and Shea Diamond
“Never let them extinguish your fire — we were all born into the same world. Nobody has the right to take your rights,” said singer-songwriter Shea Diamond. “We are so much bigger than the hate they divide us with … Trans is beautiful, and drag queens are saving the world. So in this moment, we can’t allow them to stop everything we’ve built.”
Brandi Carlile and her family, who could not be in attendance, sent in a video tribute and introduced Russell, who welcomed to the stage Ruby Amanfu to join Russell and Diamond. Together, their three illustrious voices elevated “A Beautiful Noise.”
Russell then welcomed her daughter and several friends to join them for “You’re Not Alone,” which Russell originally recorded with Carlile.
“This is circle work that we are engaged in,” Russell said. “Circles are powerful — there is no one above, no one below … every single one of us equal worthy and beautiful. There is nothing we together can’t do when we work together in these magic circles.”
Coldplay have made a habit of bringing special guests up for the late-show satellite stage acoustic jam session during their massive Music of the Spheres world tour. In the midst of their six-night stand at São Paulo, Brazil’s 77,000-capacity Estádio Cícero Pompeu de Toledo football stadium last week, they did it again, asking Lauren Mayberry of opening act Chvrches to lend her vocals to their 2019 Everyday Life song “Cry, Cry, Cry.”
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Mayberry posted video of the moment on Monday (March 20), in which Coldplay singer Chris Martin strums an acoustic guitar as the Chvrches singer — wearing a stunning disco ball-like floor-length shiny halter dress — sways gently before joining in.
“There are trees and flowers growing/ While Jizo Bodhisattva sings,” Martin croons, as Mayberry joins him on the chorus, “When you cry, cry, cry baby/ When you cry, cry, cry/ When you cry, cry, cry baby/ I’ll be by your side.” Mayberry appreciated the bonus stage time, thanking the band in her post of the duet, tweeting, “grateful to be on this tour and honoured to be asked to sing with the lads.”
It was a wild week in the largest city in Brazil, which also included a duet with legendary Brazilian samba singer Seu George on March 11, during which they performed his 2011 classic “Amiga Da Minha Mulher” at the first two shows of the run. The South American leg of the tour will wrap up with a run of shows at Estadio Nilton Santos Engenhao in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on March 25, 26 and 28 before moving on to another European swing that will run from May 17 through July 19 before a final North American string of dates in September that wraps with an Oct. 1 gig at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles.
The band’s concert movie, Coldplay — Music of the Spheres: Live at River Plate — which was recorded during their sold-out, 10-night run at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will screen in theaters worldwide on April 19 and 23.
Check out footage of the duet below.
Duran Duran took to Instagram on Tuesday (March 20) to confirm that they have a new album on the way this year, and surprised fans by announcing that former guitarist Andy Taylor will be playing guitar on select tracks.
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“Duran Duran are thrilled to confirm a special new music project is in the works, set for release later this year on BMG,” the group wrote in their social media statement. “The new recordings will feature extended Duran Duran family and friends, old and new, including our former bandmate Andy Taylor who will join us on guitar on a few tracks.”
When the group split in two in 1985, following the release of the James Bond theme “A View to A Kill,” Taylor and bassist John Taylor formed The Power Station with the late Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson, while the others created Arcadia. Taylor contributed to sessions for the 1986 album Notorious, then went his own way with a solo career. He’d reunite with DD for 2004’s Astronaut album, and for tour dates in support.
In 2018, he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. The guitarist was expected to join current members Simon LeBon, John Taylor, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor at Duran Duran’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November, but had to miss it due to his illness.
John Taylor recently discussed the upcoming Duran Duran album with The Mirror, and having Andy be part of it. “We’re working on an album right now that is going to be coming out at the end of the year and [Andy Taylor] is playing guitar,” the bassist explained. “There’s a lot of cover songs on the album, songs meaningful to us when we were kids. So having him be a part of that project is great.”
It’s been 10 years since Demi Lovato unveiled their power-fueled pop hit, “Heart Attack,” and now that the 30-year-old superstar is thriving making rock music, they’re revisiting the older hit with a fresh update.
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Lovato revealed via Instagram on Monday (March 20) that the rock version of “Heart Attack” will be arriving this Friday (March 24). “Heart Attack, but make it Rock,” they captioned the post, which features a short, guitar-centered snippet of the new track.
Upon its original release in early 2013, the song peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart dated April 27, 2013.
The Grammy-nominated Disney alum’s latest record marked a stark shift in image and sound from their revelatory 2021 album — Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over. Led by the singles “Skin of My Teeth,” “Substance” and “29,” 2022’s Holy Fvck took on a more rock, edgy sound. Holy Fvck features collaborations with Royal & the Serpent, YUNGBLUD, and Dead Sara, as well as writing and production credits from Warren “Oak” Felder, Michael Pollack, and Lovato themselves.
In early 2022, Lovato hosted a “funeral” for their pop music days, sharing an image to their Instagram page posing with both middle fingers up, joined by music executives from Island Records and manager Scooter Braun. Every person in the picture wore all black. “A funeral for my pop music,” Lovato captioned the image.