Rock
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Among the luminaries paying tribute to late Fleetwood Mac singer and lyricist Christine McVie on Wednesday (Nov. 3) was former President Bill Clinton. The two-term democrat and philanthropist mourned the passing of the 79-year-old rock icon, whose family said she died at a hospital at 79 after a “short illness.”
“I’m saddened by the passing of Christine McVie,” Clinton tweeted. “‘Don’t Stop’ was my ’92 campaign theme song – it perfectly captured the mood of a nation eager for better days.” Clinton included a short video with his message, in which the one of Mac’s most beloved singles — co-written by McVie, who also sang it alongside guitarist Lindsey Buckingham — unspools amid footage of the Clinton family on the campaign trail. The video notes that the tradition of presidential campaign songs dates back to 1800, when John Adams supporters sang “Liberty and Adams.”
Clinton, then the fresh face of a new generation of democrat leaders, was one of the first major party presidential Boomer candidates to embrace the rock era, making the Billboard Hot 100 No. 3 hit from Rumours the anthem of his White House bid. “I’m grateful to Christine & Fleetwood Mac for entrusting us with such a meaningful song. I will miss her,” Clinton wrote.
The accompanying video also noted that after splitting in 1987, the famously quarrelsome quintet reunited for one night to perform “Don’t Stop” at Clinton’s 1993 inaugural gala.
According to the singer’s family, she died “peacefully” at a hospital on Wednesday following a “short illness.” In a statement, the band said, “There are no words to describe our sadness at the passing of Christine McVie. She was truly one-of-a-kind, special and talented beyond measure. She was the best musician anyone could have in their band and the best friend anyone could have in their life. We were so lucky to have a life with her.”
Check out Clinton’s post below.
I’m saddened by the passing of Christine McVie. “Don’t Stop” was my ’92 campaign theme song – it perfectly captured the mood of a nation eager for better days. I’m grateful to Christine & Fleetwood Mac for entrusting us with such a meaningful song. I will miss her. pic.twitter.com/UPUvpDWRZB— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) December 1, 2022
Christine McVie died on Wednesday (Nov. 30) at age 79, and the music community immediately took to social media to honor the late Fleetwood Mac lyricist.
While McVie’s bandmates released a joint statement announcing her death, both Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood penned individual tributes to their friend on their personal Twitter accounts. “Part of my heart has flown away today.. I will miss everything about you Christine McVie,” the drummer wrote, in part, while Nicks shared a handwritten note using lyrics from Haim’s 2019 single “Hallelujah.”
“I am so sad to hear of Christine McVie going on to heaven,” tweeted Sheryl Crow. “The world feels weird without her here. What a legend and an icon and an amazing human being. RIP.”
Garbage was one of the first acts to react to the news, writing, “Gutted to learn about the passing of Christine McVie. Just gutted. Songbird forever.”
John Taylor shared his thoughts on behalf of Duran Duran, tweeting, “So so sad to hear about Christine McVie an artist I held dear and close to my heart. One of the greatest all time songwriters, singers, and band members, she radiated both purity and sass in equal measure, bringing light to the music of the 70s. RIP,” alongside a black-and-white portrait of the prolific singer-songwriter.
As one-fifth of the iconic band, some of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest songs written by McVie included “Songbird,” “You Make Loving Fun,” “Little Lies,” “Don’t Stop” and many more.
Read more tributes to McVie’s memory from Diane Warren, Bret Michaels, Ann Wilson and others below.
I am so sad to hear of Christine McVie going on to heaven. The world feels weird without her here. What a legend and an icon and an amazing human being. RIP https://t.co/nr6nfZ8rTM— Sheryl Crow (@SherylCrow) November 30, 2022
So so sad to hear about Christine McVie an artist I held dear and close to my heart. One of the greatest all time songwriters, singers, and band members, she radiated both purity and sass in equal measure, bringing light to the music of the 70s. RIP. – John pic.twitter.com/MkGqAD1wRV— Duran Duran (@duranduran) November 30, 2022
Gutted to learn about the passing of Christine McVie. Just gutted.Songbird forever. 🩸— Garbage (@garbage) November 30, 2022
What a tremendous loss to the music community. My deepest condolences to the family, friends & fans of Christine McVie.— Bret Michaels (@bretmichaels) November 30, 2022
Well this is some pretty sad shitty news. Always loved her. Always loved her songs. Sing in power Christine🎤💔Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 79 https://t.co/bX3Bu56WpT via @variety— Diane Warren (@Diane_Warren) November 30, 2022
As she was releasing her third solo album, In the Meantime, back in 2004, Christine McVie — then on hiatus from Fleetwood Mac — mused on what she liked most about making music.
“Songwriting has always been the favorite thing to do for me,” McVie told Billboard. “Traveling and touring and living out of a suitcase, I don’t like that nomadic life. But writing songs, absolutely. I wouldn’t want to stop that.”
And McVie did it very well.
She was, perhaps, Fleetwood Mac’s most consistent songwriter — which is not to denigrate Lindsey Buckingham and his quirks or Stevie Nicks and her ethereal whimsy. McVie was simply solid — “the pop songwriter” as Nicks once called her; when you heard one of her tunes you knew you’d get a solid melody, some undeniable hooks and easily relatable lyrics, maybe dressed up sonically by Buckingham.
There was more to McVie than Fleetwood Mac, of course. She started as Christine Perfect in the band Chicken Shack before joining the Mac, then went on to record three of her own albums and one in 2017 with Buckingham.
McVie — who received a Gold Badge of Merit from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 2006 — leaves behind a wealth of outstanding material and a body of work that runs deep. We’re confident the 10 songs selected here, in alphabetical order, comprise the best representation of her considerable craft and her indelible impact on the Billboard charts (not to mention a certain presidential campaign).
Shaky Knees is celebrating its 10 year anniversary in 2023, and the festival announced its jam-packed lineup on Wednesday (Nov. 30) for the three-day event.
The Killers, Muse and the Lumineers are set to headline the Atlanta festival, with additional performances by Greta Van Fleet, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tenacious D, The Mars Volta, Hozier, Flaming Lips, Manchester Orchestra, Grouplove, Phantogram, Father John Misty and many, many more.
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The 2022 Shaky Knees festival, as usual, brought high-profile acts including Green Day, Nine Inch Nails and My Morning Jacket to take over Atlanta.
The 2023 iteration of Shaky Knees festival will take place May 5 to 7 at Central Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Ticket presale begins Friday (Dec. 2) at 11 a.m. ET here, with ticket tiers available on a first come, first serve basis due to limited capacity. A general ticket onsale will be announced following the presale if there are remaining tickets.
See the full lineup below.
Disturbed crowns Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums charts, as Divisive bows at No. 1 on the Dec. 3-dated rankings.
Divisive starts with 26,000 equivalent album units earned in the Nov. 18-24 tracking week, according to Luminate, with 22,000 units via album sales.
Disturbed now boasts six No. 1s on Top Hard Rock Albums and five on Top Alternative Albums, which each began in 2007. The David Draiman-fronted band first ruled with 2008’s Indestructible and had most recently led with 2018’s Evolution. Disturbed’s only album in that span to hit No. 1 on Top Hard Rock Albums but not Top Alternative Albums was its 2011 B-sides round-up The Lost Children, which peaked at No. 4 on the latter list.
Only two acts have more No. 1s on Top Hard Rock Albums than Disturbed: Five Finger Death Punch and Pearl Jam, with seven apiece.
Most No. 1s, Top Hard Rock Albums7, Five Finger Death Punch7, Pearl Jam6, Disturbed6, Foo Fighters6, Korn6, Linkin Park5, Breaking Benjamin5, Lamb of God5, Marilyn Manson5, Nickelback
Divisive also begins at No. 3 on both Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums.
On the all-format Billboard 200, the album debuts at No. 13. The band counts five total No. 1s on the all-genre chart, beginning with Believe in 2002. The set also starts as the highest arrival on Top Album Sales, at No. 3, behind only Taylor Swift’s Midnights (57,000) and Michael Jackson’s reissued Thriller (27,000).
Concurrently, four songs from Divisive appear on Hot Hard Rock Songs, paced by lead single “Hey You” at No. 5. The song earned 2.7 million audience impressions on radio and 903,000 official U.S. streams from Nov. 18-24. It’s followed by “Bad Man,” new at No. 6 (1.6 million airplay impressions, 1.2 million streams and 1,000 sold).
“Hey You” ruled Mainstream Rock Airplay for three weeks in September, while “Bad Man” lifts 19-18 in its second week on the ranking.
The Rolling Stones announced a new definitive live album on Wednesday (Nov. 30), the 24-track GRRR Live! The collection due out on Feb. 10 via Mercury Studios features the biggest hits from throughout the legendary band’s 60-year career, including “Honky Tonk Women,” “Start Me Up,” “Get Off of My Cloud,,” “Paint it Black” and “Miss You.”
The album, which will be available in a variety of formats — 3LP black, 3LP colored white, 3LP red, 2CD, DVD + 2CD, BluRay + 2CD — with the BluRay and digital versions including Dolby Atmos. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2012 and 2013 on the 30-show 50 & Counting Tour, which included a Dec. 15, 2012 show at Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center that featured a number of special guests.
Some of those performances are chronicled on the album, including collabs with the Black Keys (“Who Do You Love?”), Lady Gaga (“Gimme Shelter”), Gary Clark Jr. and John Mayer (“Going Down”), former guitarist Mick Taylor (“Midnight Rambler”) and Bruce Springsteen (“Tumbling Dice.”) After its original airing on pay-per-view in 2012, recordings of the anniversary shows have not been available to fans until now. According to a release, the concert has been re-edited and remixed, with three songs from the Dec. 13 gig in Newark available as bonus features on the DVD and BluRay: “Respectable” (featuring Mayer), “Around and Around” and “Gimme Shelter.”
Check out the track listing for GRRR Live! below.
CD1
“Get Off Of My Cloud”
“The Last Time”
“It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)”
“Paint It Black”
“Gimme Shelter” (with Lady Gaga)
“Wild Horses”
“Going Down” (with John Mayer and Gary Clark Jr)
“Dead Flowers”
“Who Do You Love?” (with The Black Keys)
“Doom And Gloom”
“One More Shot”
“Miss You”
“Honky Tonk Women”
Band Introductions
CD2
“Before They Make Me Run”
“Happy”
“Midnight Rambler” (with Mick Taylor)
“Start Me Up”
“Tumbling Dice” (with Bruce Springsteen)
“Brown Sugar”
“Sympathy For the Devil”
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
After making his move for solo superstardom with 1979’s Off the Wall album — a tricky-enough transition from his childhood as the Little Brother in Charge in the Jackson 5 — Michael Jackson set out to beat himself when Thriller was released 40 years ago on Nov. 30, 1982.
With his trusted producer Quincy Jones back behind the boards, the then-burgeoning King of Pop delivered his crowning achievement — one that even he would fail to top before his untimely death at just 50 in 2009. The nine-track set topped the Billboard 200 for 37 nonconsecutive weeks and spawned seven singles — all of which hit the top 10 on the Hot 100, with “Billie Jean” and Beat It” going all the way to No. 1.
Sweeping the Grammys in 1984 (it nabbed eight trophies, including album of the year), Thriller went on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. It defined the modern pop blockbuster, leaving a blueprint for everyone from Usher and Justin Timberlake to Beyoncé to (of course) baby sis Janet Jackson.
Although Jackson’s crossover moves would never quite get him his soul card back, it opened up the eyes and the ears of the industry — and audiences around the world — to what music could sound, look and feel like if we blurred those tired old color lines.
And the thrill isn’t gone: The LP returned to the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Dec. 3, 2022) thanks to its 40th-anniversary reissue.
Here, we rank all nine tracks on a moonwalking masterpiece that provided the soundtrack for a generation.
Metallica recently changed their tune on licensing out music, and now, it’s paying off big time. In a Monday (Nov. 28) interview with Howard Stern, Lars Ulrich opened up about how the band’s game-changing collaboration with Stranger Things — which saw one of the show’s most pivotal season four scenes using “Master of Puppets” as a backing track — came to be, from start to finish.
“It used to be, with Metallica, we were always the ‘no’ guys,” Ulrich explained, saying he and his bandmates had never wanted to lend out their songs to TV and film projects until just a couple years ago, when they changed their minds.
“We did a 180,” the drummer shared. “We just said, ‘You know what? This is stupid. Why are we hanging onto these [songs] like they’re so important, like they’re the crown jewels?’ We started saying yes to everything. Let’s share our music with the world.”
After the Netflix sci-fi series heavily featured “Master of Puppets” in its season four finale — during a scene in which Joseph Quinn’s character Eddie epically performs the 1986 track in the Upside Down — Metallica experienced a surge in streams. Nearly four decades out from its original release, “Master of Puppets” made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100, skyrocketing to a peak at No. 35.
“It was such a mindf–k to see how that became a phenomenon,” Ulrich continued. “It was totally unexpected. Who would’ve thought 40 years later that these songs could still have that impact? We were psyched to be part of it.”
This isn’t the first time Metallica has shown love to Stranger Things following the tribute. The band gave its seal of approval four days after the season four finale dropped on Netflix, writing on Instagram that they were “blown away.” And just last month, frontman James Hetfield dressed up as Eddie for Halloween.
Over the summer, Metallica also met up with Quinn for an epic jam session, which Ulrich also talked about with Stern. “He came, we played together, he knew the song,” he raved. “He was such a sweetheart.”
Watch Lars Ulrich talk about Stranger Things with Howard Stern below:
It’s been a win-some, lose-some type of stretch for Weezer. In the “win” column, Rivers Cuomo and Co. are deep into their four-part seasonal offerings, the SZNZ series. And the “loss,” when Weezer’s planned Broadway residency in celebration of those EP cycles was seemingly scrapped due to reported poor box office and sky-high production costs.
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With the Broadway dream behind them, Weezer returns to SZNZ: Autumn, and the track “What Happens After You,” which is now visualized with a lo-fi music video.
Peter Quinn directs the clip, which sees a band of Cuomos take over the studio and cut loose.
Each SZNZ EP (pronounced “Seasons”) offers its “own palette of colors, creatures, and emotions to explore. They’re also being created in real time, made in tandem with the season themselves,” reads a statement.
Spring, Summer and Autumn have arrived. Winter is coming. When it does, the final EP in the collection “will create an incredible collection of some of Weezer’s best songs yet, which is no small feat for a band that never leaves the zeitgeist,” reps say.
Weezer kept the seasonal theme running when, during Halloween, the band kicked off its “Weezerween” pumpkin-carving competition, with the lucky winners scoring their “very own billboard somewhere in America.”
SZNZ: Winter is scheduled to drop Dec. 21. U.S. tour dates will follow in early 2023.
Watch the new video below:
The star-studded lineup for the 2023 Primavera Sound Festival was unveiled on Monday (Nov. 29), topped by Kendrick Lamar, Rosalía, Depeche Mode, Blur and Halsey. The event that will take place in both Barcelona (June 1-3) at Ciudad del Rock in Arganda Del Rey and Madrid (June 8-10) at the Parc Del Forum and also feature sets from Ghost, Darkside, Le Tigre, Turnstile, Sparks, Pusha T, Baby Keem, Skrillex, Bad Religion, The Mars Volta, Bad Gyal, Maneskin, St. Vince, the War on Drugs and many more.
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In addition, the Pet Shop Boys will play Wednesday’s (May 31) free show with Jake Bugg, Confidence man and La Paloma. Other acts slated to take the stage include: Japanese Breakfast, PinkPanthress, Christine and the Queens, Arlo Parks, The Voidz, Alex G, Built to Spill, The Moldy Peaches, Bleachers, Julia Jacklin, Caroline Polachek, Maggie Rogers, My Morning Jacket, Tokischa, Death Grips and more.
One-day and multi-day tickets will go on sale on Thursday (Dec. 1) at 12 p.m CET; more information on tickets here. Festival organizers announced earlier this year that 2023’s event would take place in Barcelona and Madrid for the first time, saying that the cities will “mirror” each other on consecutive summer weekends.
“Look for yourself in the Primavera Sound 2023 line-up… and find yourself,” organizers said in a statement in describing the mirror-image lineups. “Because we assure you that you are there. After twenty editions, the festival is the mirror in which the community that will come from near and far to Barcelona and for the first time to Madrid next June looks at itself and recognizes itself, but after everything it has experienced, this reflection goes in two directions, marking the richest musical itinerary we can think of: Primavera Sound also looks for and finds itself in its own audience.”
Check out the full poster below.