Rock
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As part of our annual Indie Now package, we asked notable figures in the independent scene to offer advice on how to succeed in the industry. Below, Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin talks to Billboard‘s Jason Lipshutz.
I think the label “DIY” is a little misleading — like you’re out on this island, fighting your way toward some sort of success or fame. To me, it’s really about doing it with all the people around you. The DIY community is what sends artists into the next levels of their careers, so it’s about surrounding yourself with people whom you believe in, who believe in you and want to support you. For me, that was mostly going to shows, meeting people who liked music that I liked [and] being open to new situations.
When you place yourself in a community, you learn about your own skill set and what other people are really good at — you realize you’re not an A-plus graphic designer but know how to record a band. Being able to produce and write with people comes naturally to me, and I like being around musicians, so it becomes this endless feedback loop of, “How can we help each other?”
Recording is more accessible than ever [right now] — if you have a laptop, or even an iPhone, you can do so much. It’s so easy to jump in with a limited set of tools, and the best way to get comfortable in that setting is to just do it over and over again: Practice, sit in your room with a guitar, record yourself, and listen back. Some of the music that I’m most blown away by is from high school kids with Ableton on their laptops, making crazy stuff. Or someone who went to a Goodwill, got a tape recorder and started there.
There’s a lot of talk on the internet now about the sustainability of the music industry — it’s hard to tour, and it’s often not fiscally rewarding while also taking a lot of time and energy. With live music feeling a little tenuous, I think DIY could come back stronger than ever because nothing beats a basement show. And that’s what will come back if middle-tier artists can’t afford to put on shows at a 500-capacity venue with sound and lights. We’ll get to go back to the basics of finding a warehouse and a community and feeding the scene.
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
Get ready, North America — Paramore is coming. On Friday (Nov. 4), bandmates Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro announced plans to embark on an arena tour in 2023, with shows in 26 cities across the United States and Canada.
The tour, simply titled Paramore in North America, kicks off in Charlotte, N.C., on May 23 — five days after the pop-punk group opens for Taylor Swift at one show on her recently announced Eras Tour — and ends in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 2 next year. Bloc Party, Foals, The Linda Lindas and Genesis Owusuare are slated to open for the band at select shows on the trek, which will also make stops at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Austin’s Moody Center, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum and more.
Tickets go on general sale at 10 a.m. local time next Friday (Nov. 11), and will be available on Paramore’s website. A presale for American Express cardholders will go live 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday (Nov. 9), meanwhile a general presale for verified fans starts at 8 a.m. local time the following day.
Fans have until Monday (Nov. 7) to register for both presales on Ticketmaster’s website. A portion of ticket sales for all North American shows will be donated to eco-conscious hunger relief nonprofit Support + Feed and environmental nonprofit REVERB.
The tour will follow the Feb. 10 release of Paramore’s sixth studio album This Is Why, the band’s first LP in almost six years. The record’s lead single — which doubles as the title track — dropped in September.
The “This Is Why” era comes after Paramore took a nearly five-year hiatus from releasing music and performing. The trio made their official return to touring this fall with a run of intimate North American shows, their first circuit since 2017’s After Laughter Tour.
See the full list of dates for Paramore’s 2023 North American tour below:
PARAMORE IN NORTH AMERICA TOUR DATES
Tue May 23 – Charlotte, NC – Spectrum Center*×
Thu May 25 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena*×
Sat May 27 – Atlantic City, NJ – Adjacent Festival!
Tue May 30 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden*×
Fri June 02 – Washington, DC – Capital One Arena*×
Sun Jun 04 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse*×
Mon Jun 05 – Indianapolis, IN – Gainbridge Fieldhouse*×
Wed Jun 07 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena*×
Thu Jun 08 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena*×
Sat Jun 10 – Columbus, OH – Schottenstein Center*×
Sun Jun 11 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paint Arena*×
Tue Jun 13 – Orlando, FL – Amway Center*×
Wed Jun 14 – Hollywood, FL – Hard Rock Live*×
Thu Jul 06 – New Orleans, LA – Smoothie King Center+°
Sat Jul 08 – Fort Worth, TX – Dickies Arena+°
Sun Jul 09 – Austin, TX – Moody Center+°
Tue Jul 11 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center+°
Thu Jul 13 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena+°
Sun Jul 16 – San Diego, CA – Viejas Arena+
Wed Jul 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Kia Forum+
Sat Jul 22 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center+
Mon Jul 24 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena+°
Tue Jul 25 – Portland, OR – Veterans Memorial Coliseum+°
Thu Jul 27 – Salt Lake City, UT – Vivint Arena+°
Sat Jul 29 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center+°
Sun Jul 30 – St Louis, MO – Enterprise Center+°
Wed Aug 02 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center+°
*With Support Bloc Party
+With Support from Foals
°With Support from The Linda Lindas
×With Support from Genesis Owusu
!Festival Performance
It’s fitting that Phoenix’s live show, specifically on a temperate night at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 9, is buzzing with electric energy. After all, the lauded French band — consisting of members (and decades-long pals) Thomas Mars, Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz, Deck D’Arcy and Christian Mazzalai — had been waiting with bated breath and crossed fingers for this exact moment.
After a glittering showcase of the band’s beloved material — including the No. 6-charting Adult Alternative Airplay hit “Entertainment,” fan favorite “Too Young” from its self-titled debut LP and multiple cuts from the group’s Grammy-winning classic Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix — the quartet stripped things back for the live debut of “Winter Solstice,” a stark insight into Phoenix’s mindset amid a pandemic that left the members starving for connection. That outlook frames the band’s seventh studio album, Alpha Zulu, out now via Glassnote Records.
To be clear, Phoenix “didn’t want to make a cliché pandemic album” with Alpha Zulu. But when France was under lockdown due to COVID-19 and Mars was separated from his friends, musical bits acted as the band’s letters to each other. On the other side of the world away from Branco, Mazzalai and Deck, Mars penned and recorded stream-of-consciousness lyrics that would later become “Winter Solstice” to speak to the isolation he felt amid the wildfires in northern California. Out of this bleakness, the light that would inspire the rest of Alpha Zulu started to shine through.
“It sounds corny, but music became the way to communicate when we were separated. It was our way of saying we knew everybody was okay, but on standby,” Mars explains of the brooding, synth-driven track over a four-way Zoom call, accompanied by his bandmates. “We wanted something to happen in our lives, but the only thing that could happen was a good song and the possibility of playing it live someday.”
The quartet didn’t want to steep in the sorrow for too long. “After we recorded ‘Winter Solstice,’ we wanted to escape and think about a brighter future,” Branco adds. As lockdown restrictions across countries began to ease, hope started to break through the clouds. In between pockets of travel for Mars — “he could come back to Paris, but no more than a week or 10 days and had to rush back because of new waves in other parts of the world,” according to D’Arcy — Phoenix was feverish with inspiration when they finally were able to reconvene.
Hunkered down for weeks in a storage room-turned-studio located at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs (“real studios are very boring,” says Branco), the musicians were immersed in both chaos and solitude, a combination that set their creativity aflame.
“We were surrounded by Napoleon’s throne and works from the medieval period and the second century. All this culture melting together in a sordid, empty museum with no one seeing us…it was a big mess!” Mazzalai explains with a certain glee. “But it was helpful to us. Very freeing and joyful, in a way.”
He further recalls, “We’ve never been that inspired, because Thomas was stuck in confinement during lockdown for many months in the United States. It was the first time we didn’t see Thomas for more than a month, so once he could travel to the studio after weeks of waiting, we produced more than ever. It was maybe the most creative time of our entire life.”
“The stillness made recording the album even more intense for us. The world was asleep, and that gave gravity to us and depth to the record,” Mars adds.
The trying conditions resulted in some of Phoenix’s brightest and most ambitious work to date. “After Midnight,” a cut from the top half of Alpha Zulu, sees the group tapping into a euphoria that leaves its listener equal parts jittery and energized; “Season 2” calls back to Phoenix’s classic — and infectious — use of wordplay (“giddy up, I’m bored”), while “Artefact” highlights the band’s consistent, artful use of synthesizers and lyrical repetitions, also seen in the tongue twisters on the album’s title track, “Alpha Zulu.”
For the first time, the band needed a friend to help bring one of its songs to life. On single “Tonight,” Phoenix enlists fellow indie pop heavyweight Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend to provide supporting vocals and a verse on the upbeat track. Marking the band’s first time collaborating with another artist, the band spent months cultivating a relationship with Koenig. At first, the uptempo track started off like any other Phoenix song, with the group jotting down lyric ideas on the makeshift studio’s whiteboard and assigning names to each of the song’s parts for easy swapping. But when the track’s second verse rolled around (“What if we last ’til it’s dawn like you promised me?/ Who let the boys spill their entrée?”), the band knew something — or rather, someone — was missing.
“The playfulness of the track reminded us of Ezra, so we had to call him. We were intimate enough with him that we knew the song was safe,” Mars says. “If it wasn’t good, we wouldn’t have to put it out or he could say no if he didn’t like it. It’s rare that we know people well enough to do that.”
To be let into Phoenix’s circle is a privilege not afforded to many. The group — friends since elementary school who have been in a band together for the past 25 years — still manages to maintain an unwavering chemistry without resorting to breaking up or bringing in new members. So what’s the secret? “The lead singer is not one of the brothers. If you look at every band where the lead singer is one of the brothers, they’re totally collapsing and hating each other,” the frontman jokes.
The true formula to Phoenix’s tight-knit nature resides in the most benign form of communism — each member of the band has a hand in all moving parts. “We share everything in four, in a very communist manner,” Branco explains. “Our music belongs to us because we control everything, from the publishing to the production, the four of us, equally. It’s the French motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ (liberty, equality, fraternity).”
Whereas other bands might rely on the lead singer to craft lyrics or handle most of an album’s production, Branco insists It’s Never Been Like That for the French quartet: “There is not one of us that is more gifted than the other. There’s not that one genius songwriter and the others are just following. We are pretty average — or bad — when we are on our own, but when we add our forces, we produce a result that is better than the sum of our individual qualities. We know we need each other.”
The band’s unofficial member, Philippe Zdar, was also crucial to Phoenix’s friendship story. Alpha Zulu marks the first album the band has worked on without the guidance of the French music producer, who passed away in 2019 — the quartet touches on the producer’s passing in the LP’s stunning closer, “Identical.” The track, which also appears in Sofia Coppola’s (Mars’ wife) 2020 movie On the Rocks, serves double duty by shedding light on the band’s perception of life post-pandemic.
Speaking of Zdar’s role in “Identical,” Mars says the track “was the best way to end the album because he was the main thing that was missing in us working together. The song has the light at the end of the tunnel, which fits the pandemic. That’s the strong identity of the album. We’re trying not to be in denial of what happened or to wash it away. It’s a reminder that every album is a Polaroid of its time.”
Whereas Phoenix’s previous studio effort, 2017’s Ti Amo, saw the band tapping into Italo disco sounds and nostalgia sweeter than scoops of melted gelato, Alpha Zulu has no set purpose. There’s no obvious takeaway, just the unbridled “joy of creating things as different as possible from each other.”
The band’s message, however, has always remained the same — to infiltrate their listener’s most human senses to make them feel something at their core.
“The power of music…it’s like a charm or a spell. This magical trick that is so powerful that even us, the magicians, we don’t understand how it’s working,” says Branco. “That’s why we make music.”
Måneskin is all for keeping the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll alive — which is why the Italian rockers took issue with the MTV Video Music Awards censoring their performance back in August.
When Maneskin’s Victoria De Angelis suffered a wardrobe malfunction that left her chest exposed during their performance of the Alternative Airplay No. 1 hit “Supermodel,” the live broadcast cut away from the bassist to wide shots of the stage instead. In a new NME interview with De Angelis and frontman Damiano David published earlier this week, the duo shared that the censorship was a major disappointment to them as a band.
“It shows that there are still many, many prejudices towards rock bands and towards women,” David told NME. “There is a lot to work on and we try to do our part.”
The televised moment saw cameras at the awards show hastily panning away from the stage following De Angelis’ exposure and to an area containing empty seats; shortly after the moment, De Angelis went down into a pit of fans at the show to continue the performance.
“It’s sad, but it’s good that people then talk about it and think about it,” De Angelis added. “It’s stupid that there has to be this control and censorship over people’s bodies.”
On Sept. 6 — a week after the 2022 VMAs took place — MTV shared a “restored,” slightly less censored version of Måneskin’s performance. De Angelis’ wardrobe malfunction remains, though her bare chest is blurred in the final cut.
Revisit Måneskin’s performance of “Supermodel” at the 2022 MTV VMAs below.
“Is this America, or is this the bands?”
That’s the question that Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield remembers asking himself back in the ’90s, about the destructive impact that touring the United States seemed to have on so many bands (particularly British ones) of the era. At the time, the question was most directly inspired by his then-tourmates in Oasis and Screaming Trees, both of whom appeared to be disintegrating as the three acts were trekking across the U.S. in 1996. But Brett Anderson, leader of the London Suede, recalls his own band being something of a casualty of stateside touring in their own early days.
“I’ve seen bands fall apart in America – our own included, actually,” Anderson says. “And I’ve seen what it can do to you … I’m slightly wary of the pressures that the States kind of exerts on bands, actually.”
This wariness may have contributed to both bands — two of the U.K.’s most successful and best-enduring alt-rock outfits of the ’90s — mostly refraining from touring the States in recent years, with the London Suede’s last full U.S. trek now a full quarter-century in the rearview. But older, wiser, and newly motivated post-pandemic — and with a pair of excellent recent albums to promote in the Manics’ 2021 effort The Ultra Vivid Lament and London Suede’s September release Autofiction — the two veteran groups are linking up for a dozen North American tour dates, starting Thursday (Nov. 3) in Vancouver, and taking them to both U.S. coasts and a handful of cities in between. “We’re not all 25-year-old lunatics anymore, so hopefully we can bring a bit of judgment to bear with that,” Anderson says.
It also helps that the two groups, who toured together in Europe in 1994, are longtime well-wishers and kindred spirits. It’s a familiarity obvious in Billboard‘s Zoom conversation with Bradfield and Anderson, who spend the first five minutes catching up about each other’s lives, and laughing about how unimpressed their kids are with them. (“I think it doesn’t really matter what your parent does, they’re automatically uncool, aren’t they?” Anderson remarks. “It’s just the definition of being a parent — that they’re a bit naff, d’ya know what I mean?”)
Below, Billboard discusses the two bands’ histories of touring America with Bradfield and Anderson — as well as what they expect on this current tour, and why them actually getting along with one another is more the exception than the rule with bands of their era.
So obviously it’s been a while since you’ve both been on tour – and it’s even longer since you’ve been to the States, in both your instances. So what made now the right time?
Bradfield: I suppose I should just be really honest … after COVID, after lockdown, and then looking in the mirror too many times … as a band, we started talking about the things that we wanted to do again, just in case — well, just in case, really. And we had realized that we hadn’t toured America that much, and we wanted to go back. And places like America and Japan were places that we always want to go back to. It was just that thing of the near future not being so definite anymore – it spirited us on to actually do it again, I think.
Anderson: Yeah, uh, from our point of view – I can’t remember where the suggestion came from, but one day someone suggested this … did it come from you guys?
Bradfield: I think it may have come from our dear manager, Martin [Hall].
Anderson: Well, that’s lovely. Then it was a fantastic suggestion. Like most things with one’s career, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And I think that you kind of have this sort of idea that everyone’s got these incredibly sort of strategic plans for their careers, and it’s not really like that. You kinda stumble into things. Someone suggested it, and we thought, “Yeah! F–k it, why not? Let’s do it.”
Bradfield: We have no delusions about what we mean in America as a band, y’know, the Manics. And the idea of going with another band that could help us with the lifting – sometimes lift more than we could, or vice versa, just helping each other – was appealing to us. Because we’re not delusional about our status in America. And just touring with Suede, in terms of – some kind of kinship there, some kind of empathy that we share, I think – and the idea that we could actually help each other get there, and for it to mean something… we definitely looked at touring with Suede – with you, Brett – and we just thought, “God, that could just be a great experience for us,” simple as that.
Anderson: Yeah, I think the same for us. You know, we haven’t been to the States in such a long time, and it didn’t really ever go off for us in the States. I mean, the first album [1993’s Suede] did OK, and then after that we had to change the name [to The London Suede], and there’s a lot of s–t that went down … and we didn’t, we just sort of, we left it alone for a while.
And when [this tour] was suggested, it was almost like – you know, more than the sum of its parts, almost. It’s a thing with both bands together – I think we share, not the same fanbase, because that would be oversimplified, but I think we have a fanbase in common. Lots of people like both bands, there’s a similar kind of thread that runs through both bands. So it seemed like a really exciting prospect. And we’d toured together before and we’d always got on, so it seemed … like yeah, a bit of a no-brainer.
Bradfield: They know that we’re quick sound-checkers! [Both laugh.]
Had there ever been any discussions either between your two bands, or between your bands and other like-minded bands from your era, of doing kind of this package thing, and sort of doing the strength-in-numbers approach and maybe getting to the States last decade or the decade before?
Anderson: The problem is … we don’t really like many other bands. That’s our problem. We’re one of the most miserable bands in the music industry, d’you know what I mean? So the Manics are one of the few bands that we like.
James: As I remember, there was a quote from Richey [Edwards, late Manics lyricist/guitarist] before — somebody asked him why he didn’t really like other bands, and he went, “You wouldn’t ask other plumbers if they hang out with other plumbers. You wouldn’t ask James’ dad,” who was a carpenter, “if he hangs out with other carpenters. Why do bands need to hang out with each other?” And he has a point!
I grew up in the music press of the ‘80s, and I grew up with Ian McCulloch, Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, all just taking shots at each other all the time. There was open warfare! And it was kind of part of the game. So we kinda grew up with that culture in the press, that bands didn’t necessarily have to like each other. So Brett – I can concur with that. I don’t have many musician friends.
We had supported Suede in France, and a couple parts of Europe back in the ‘90s. And so we knew that it worked, and we knew that we got on with those guys, and we knew that – importantly — we can give each other space. You don’t have to prove to each other that you have to socialize all the time. And you know that you can get on if you have to socialize … So, unless we’ve all irrevocably changed since then, I think we should be OK again.
Was it sort of a rite of passage for U.K. bands back in those days to build your audience at home, and in Europe, and then come to the States and have a bit more of an up-and-down experience? You say that you don’t really like a lot of other bands, but would you talk to other bands and kind of compare experiences at the time?
Bradfield: There was a strange thing in the ‘90s, where you were goaded by the British music press that you hadn’t really made it if unless you sold records in America. But then when you went to America, you realized that the British music press – NME, Melody Maker, Sounds – meant f–k all in America. You know? In fact, when we first came to America, we were just called “typical NME band”; that was used as the open insult to describe us when we first came to America. But then we’d come back, and the NME would say, “Well, if you haven’t sold quite a lot of records in America, you haven’t really made it.”
So there was always this strange kind of like, back and forth thing going on about the pressure of having to sell records in America for it to sort of define you kind of thing, from the British music press.
Anderson: I think [touring America is] an interesting cocktail of things, isn’t it? So often what happens is: a band becomes successful in the U.K., and then they go to America, and … they find a challenge, because they’re not received as warmly in America. So straight away, their egos are damaged. I’m just talking about as a broad thing, not anyone specific. But that’s what happens, and you’re not playing in front of your London crowd or whatever? You’re in front of a much more disinterested crowd. And then the size of the country as well, just the physical size of the country. All of these elements kind of get thrown into the mix.
And then there’s obviously – when English bands are in America, there’s a kind of sort of carnival element to it, where you kind of almost feel like you’re on holiday. We definitely did that in the early ‘90s, you know, partying much too much. You feel as though you’re not really working, you’re kind of on one long jamboree, almost. And all these elements, and drugs and drink and stress – they’re very harmful to bands.
It’s a crucible that kind of makes you or breaks you. And some people come through it unscathed and some people don’t. But it’s all kind of part of the contract that you enter into, you know?
Do you have any really positive experiences that you remember – shows where you did find a small audience that was really invested in the band?
Bradfield: Oh, yeah! Absolutely, the first time I played in Detroit, I absolutely loved it. I had a great day in Detroit. I had the best hot wings ever. I played the best gig in front of 350 people in a 1,000-2,000 people room. But the 350 people there were absolutely amazing. I did the corny thing of, like – because I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for the Red Wings, the ice hockey team – and I went to the Hitsville museum, I had a great gig, I had great food … that was one perfect date, that was amazing.
And then I’ve had other nights there that were strange. [America] is just like any place, it’s a mixed experience. But the road feels like a very real place in America. The contrast of experiences is so enormous, that it feels like a very real journey when you come to America. But that’s what makes it exciting. That’s why we’re coming back. Because there is a challenge there. And there is a bit of fear there. But you know that when it clicks, it’s a great experience, too.
Anderson: I’d echo that. You know, it’s a big country – it’s like saying, “What’s it like touring Europe?” “Well, you know, Sweden is different from Spain, it’s very different from Austrian …” America’s almost like a lot of different countries [in one]. There’s no one American experience. And it’s difficult to really sort of sum it up like that. It’s like, some gigs will be great, and some gigs will be terrible, I’m sure …
Bradfield: Hey, Coach, thanks for the pep talk! [Both laugh.]
Have you found in general that bands from the U.K. from the ‘90s have more of a U.S. base now than when you were touring at the peak of your popularity?
Anderson: I’m kind of keeping my expectations low and then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s been such a long time ago since we’ve been to the States. I’d like to think that there’s kind of, y’know, universal appreciation of both bands. And as bands kind of age, they kind of like, grudgingly gain more respect. But who knows? It might be a disaster! I don’t think it will be, but …
Bradfield: I’ve done an interview like a week ago, and one journalist said, “These are quite small gigs for you.” I’m like, “F–k no! Some of these are quite big for us in America!” So we’re under no illusions.
Is there anything that you’re particularly looking forward to coming to America – places to visit, or venues you’ve never played before that you’re really excited to play for the first time?
Anderson: I’m looking forward to [all of it]. I’ve got that sort of slight nervousness, that slight sort of anticipation. But it could be really exciting. It’s going to be great touring with the Manics, and it’ll be great in the States, and let’s see what happens.
Bradfield: It kind of feels so novel to come back to America, that there will be that element of feeling like it’s the first time for a while. And you never know, it could be the last time! It could be.
Anderson: It could absolutely be the last time for us, as well. Who knows? We haven’t been there for 25 years. We might come back in another 25 years! It might very well be the last time we play for another 25 years. So if anyone is ummming and ahhhhing about it — come along, because you might as well see us now.
Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks are hitting the road next year for a very special concert series. On Wednesday (Nov. 2), the Piano Man took to Instagram to share that he and the Fleetwood Mac singer will be joining forces for a “one night only” event that turned out will be a little more than a single evening.
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“Two Icons – One Night Only, Billy Joel & @stevienicks, live at @attstadium on Saturday, April 8! Tickets go on-sale Friday, Nov. 11 at 10AM local time,” the “Uptown Girl” singer shared, along with a poster for the event to be held in Arlington.
Joel rolled out two more dates on his page on Thursday, revealing that Los Angeles and Nashville will also be getting concert dates on March 10 and May 19, respectively. Per Joel’s posts, tickets for the events will go on sale on Friday, Nov. 11, through Live Nation.
The “Rhiannon” singer also shared the news on Instagram Wednesday. “Excited to hit the road with the amazing @billyjoel in 2023,” she captioned her post. But, she also teased, potentially hinting at additional shows: “More soon!”
Fans in Joel’s posts expressed their excitement at his and Nicks’ joint venture, and begged for their cities to be added to the list, with one commenting, “ok now do this but in new york.” Requests from Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and Mexico also rounded out the list.
See Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks’ posts below.
RIP, good boy. Travis Barker mourned the death of his family’s dog Blue on social media Wednesday (Nov. 3).
“I’ll miss you Blue,” the Blink-182 rocker wrote in a heartbreaking Instagram Story of the French bulldog. “You were the best dog. I was always waiting for you to say something. Love you 4ever boy.”
He also tagged daughter Alabama Barker in the video, who posted her own heartfelt tribute to the pup on her Instagram account, even changing her bio to read “Forever blue.” “I love you blue,” she wrote, “you will never understand how much you helped me on my darkest days, you slept next to me, the way I would throw your ball and you would run with excitement, or the eyes you had that just touched everybody, I’ll never forget you my baby, I know you’ll have the most amazing time up in doggy heaven, until we meet again my love.”
Prior to Blue’s passing, the elder Barker’s social media as of late had consisted mainly of posts with wife Kourtney Kardashian, including a trio of snaps of the reality star posing in the bathtub while her hubby fawned over her “angel feet.”
In October, the drummer and Mark Hoppus reunited with their Blink-182 bandmate Tom DeLonge to drop “Edging,” their first new single together since 2014. The rock band will also embark on an international tour starting in March with stops headlining Lollapalooza Chile, Brazil and Argentina, as well as When We Were Young 2023.
Watch Barker and his daughter’s tributes to Blue here and here before they expire.
Britt Daniel was well into his thirties when he first got into dub music. In 2006, as his band Spoon was working on their sixth album — and eventual commercial peak — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, producer Mike McCarthy told Daniel to check out a new compilation, King Tubby’s In Fine Style, by the Jamaican sound engineer and dub pioneer King Tubby.
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“That record really had a big impact on the sound of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga,” the 51-year-old Spoon frontman tells Billboard. “Which is not a dub record. But there are trippy little dub elements all throughout it.”
For instance, “Finer Feelings” opens with a prominent sample from reggae singer Mikey Dread — which Daniel remembers clearing with Dread himself. “He was a real character. Very friendly to me, but at the same time, he seemed to hate lawyers,” Daniel says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I know you want to do it, but we do have to have something on paper.’ And if it came from the lawyer, he would just say, ‘No, no, no. This isn’t right.’”
In the years since, Spoon fans could be forgiven for not sensing much dub influence in the band’s famously exacting indie-rock hooks. Now, though, comes a fully fledged fusion: on Friday (Nov. 4), the Austin band will release Lucifer on the Moon, their first remix album, which is a song-by-song deconstruction of Spoon’s recent album Lucifer on the Sofa by Adrian Sherwood, the English dub producer and founder of On-U Sound Records. Sherwood turns tightly chiseled rockers like “On the Radio” and “The Hardest Cut” inside out, reimagining them with rattling rhythms, wobbly bass sounds and disorienting waves of vocal echo.
The idea grew out of a routine request from Spoon’s label, Matador, for bonus material from the band, such as B-sides or remixes. Daniel felt bored with cookie-cutter digital reworking. “I wanted to find someone who could do things in a less computer-y and more… musical way?” Daniel explains. “Adrian seemed like the right guy for that.”
He sent Sherwood the album and invited him to remix a few songs. Daniel gave him just a few instructions: “Avoid things that wouldn’t be possible on tape. Add whatever you want to add. Don’t make it computer-y. And the less modern, the better.”
A week later, the Spoon frontman received Sherwood’s dub-inspired remixes of “The Devil & Mister Jones” and “Astral Jacket.” He was blown away. “I was driving around in my car, listening to those mixes over and over again that night. I was very psyched,” Daniel said. “Next we said, ‘Well, maybe we should do one or two more.’ Then we got those done. And then we said, ‘Well, maybe we should do one or two more.’”
Pretty soon, Sherwood had remixed the entire record. Spoon decided to release it as a standalone companion piece to Lucifer on the Sofa, available digitally and on vinyl this week (and on CD in Japan).
If Spoon has a surprising kinship with dub, it derives from the fact that the band has long placed an emphasis on groove and empty space, epitomized in indelible tunes like “I Turn My Camera On” and “Stay Don’t Go.”
“When we started out, it wasn’t like that. A thing that would hit you over the head with our records was distorted rhythm guitar,” Daniel says. “At some point, around the Girls Can Tell era [in 2001], we started realizing that less could mean a lot more. When you get rid of that element, then a lot of what you’re focused on is the bass and drums. It makes the tracks feel more open. Around that time, people started to say we were minimalists.”
For Spoon, Lucifer on the Moon culminates a triumphant year of renewal and reinvigoration. After releasing Lucifer on the Sofa in February, the band spent a big chunk of 2022 on the road, touring both with labelmates Interpol and on their own headlining tour. Those runs have gone well, though Daniel concedes that it is not an easy time to be a mid-level touring band.
“It has been a much harder year to turn a profit,” the singer says. “We had like a week’s worth of shows in the middle of this tour that had to get postponed because a couple of us got COVID. We tacked them onto the end of the tour. But basically all that meant was, we were still paying for all of the crew, all of the busing, all of our trucking, everything for an additional week, but with the same amount of income. That made it a lot less profitable. It was almost unprofitable.”
Is it still worth it? “Yeah, it’s worth it. I have a good time,” Daniel says. “I guess we’re gonna have to assess how things go. Even on the tours where we didn’t have to postpone, the cost of busing is up two or three times what it was when we were touring last September. That takes a huge chunk. So that’s why, when I see Animal Collective canceling a tour, I’m not surprised. Things have just really gone nutty.”
Spoon’s future plans are uncertain. In March, Daniel made fans nervous when he admitted he wasn’t sure there would be another Spoon record after Lucifer. Asked to clarify, Daniel says, “Should we do another one? We will see. I don’t know what’s next. I haven’t figured that part out yet. We basically just finished touring.”
For years, Spoon has been held up by fans and critics as a paragon of indie-rock consistency. It’s hard not to wonder if they ever feel the urge to enter their ‘80s-Neil-Young phase and make a tossed-off record just for fun.
“Maybe we should do that,” Daniel laughs. “I do remember when [2010’s] Transference came out, a lot of people did not like that record, especially coming after Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which had some of our biggest, most commercial, universal songs. And then we came out with this record that was very much an ugly record. I think it’s a great record. But there were a lot of people that didn’t like it. Mostly did not get amazing reviews. We’ve done a record that people said was us falling off. And yet the word ‘consistent’ gets thrown about.”
Asked if he feels inclined to give any of Spoon’s prior albums the remix treatment, Daniel quickly points to the band’s 1996 debut, Telephono. “Not in terms of, like, a dub remix. I’d just been thinking of it in terms of, ‘Wow, I know we could make this sound so much better.’”
It’s the only Spoon album Daniel feels unsatisfied with. “It doesn’t feel as much like us,” he admits. “It’s like I almost don’t recognize the person who wrote those songs. Even when you get to [1998’s] A Series of Sneaks, that sounds more like us. And then Girls Can Tell really sounds like us. And then we settled in.”
I Prevail hits No. 1 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart for the second time, as “Bad Things” tops the Nov. 5-dated survey.
The song follows the two-week ruler “Hurricane,” the Michigan band’s first leader, in March 2020.
In between “Hurricane” and “Bad,” the band notched an additional Mainstream Rock Airplay entry, the Delaney Jane-featuring “Every Time You Leave,” which reached No. 3 in November 2020.
I Prevail first hit Mainstream Rock Airplay in 2015 with its amped-up cover of Taylor Swift‘s “Blank Space,” and boasts five top 10s to date.
Concurrently, “Bad” lifts 11-10 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.3 million audience impressions, up 6%, according to Luminate. It’s the band’s first top 10, having exceeded the No. 13 peak of “Hurricane.” In addition to its mainstream rock radio support, the song is receiving airplay on select alternative stations.
“Bad” also jumps 10-7 on the multi-metric Hot Hard Rock Songs list, after reaching No. 5 in September. Along with its radio airplay, the song earned 818,000 official U.S. streams in the Oct. 21-27 tracking week.
True Power, from which “Bad” is the lead single, debuted at No. 3 on Billboard‘s Top Hard Rock Albums chart dated Sept. 3 and has earned 53,000 equivalent album units since its release.
Maroon 5 has “one more” accomplishment to add to its list of accolades. On Wednesday (Nov. 2), YouTube announced that the pop rock band’s video for “One More Night” has entered the Billion Views Club.
The video sees lead singer Adam Levine split between two scenes — one of him training at a boxing facility that later leads to him facing against an opponent for a match, and another of him juggling family life with a partner and their young baby girl. After emerging triumphant, Levine comes home to find his home empty save for a few family photos and a trophy — his partner and daughter nowhere to be found.
According to YouTube, “One More Night” is the band’s third video to reach the billion views mark. “Sugar” and “Girls Like You” are the other two visuals.
Maroon 5, in a collaborative Instagram post with Universal Music Enterprises, shared its excitement at the new milestone. “One More Night” hit 1 BILLION views on YouTube in ten years!! Third @maroon5 track to reach this milestone, we can’t believe it,” both accounts captioned a behind-the-scenes video from “One More Night” of Levine in hair and makeup.
In addition to being Maroon 5’s third video to hit one billion views, “One More Night” was also the band’s third No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 after singles “Makes Me Wonder” (2007) and “Moves Like Jagger” featuring Christina Aguilera (2011). “One More Night” spent a total of 42 weeks on the Hot 100, with nine of those weeks in the No. 1 spot.
Revisit Maroon 5’s video for “One More Night” above, and check out the celebratory Instagram post below.