Rock

05 Jun 2023

Hayley Williams Apologizes for Kicking Fans Out of Paramore Show: ‘I Don’t Feel Proud’

Hayley Williams has had a change of heart following a recent viral moment she says she’s “really not proud of.”

Last week, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter was captured on video kicking a pair of rowdy concertgoers out of a Paramore show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. But even though fans in the audience and online praised Williams for her actions at the time, she’s now posted a lengthy apology for having “embarrassed the hell out of these two people, without truly knowing what the situation was.”

“My insides were triggered from numerous personal experiences not fit for a blog post or a microphone on stage at an arena,” she recalled in a Saturday (June 3) post on Paramore’s Discord channel. “My outsides were trying to maintain control of a situation I felt that myself and my bandmates were responsible for. Without the opportunity for a proper back and forth (and with a looming, strict show-curfew in the back of my mind), I bared my teeth like a mother wolf.”

“As a group – all 25,000 of us or so – exiled these people from the show in record time,” continued the “Still Into You” singer. “It was a moment that I would not fully process for a couple of days, when a friend showed me a video from the inside of the crowd, up close to the action.”

In the viral video, a young man can be seen aggressively pushing through the crowd to get closer to a young woman while Williams and her bandmates, Taylor York and Zac Farro, perform “Figure 8,” one of their This Is Why songs. As the situation on the floor became more heated, Williams abruptly stopped the show to scold, “Yes, I will embarrass both of you … find somewhere else to take care of that sh-t.”

In hindsight, though, the Good Dye Young founder worries that she “abused my responsibility and my platform in that moment … that I hurt those two in a way that will outlast the momentary discomfort of their poor concert etiquette.”

“I feel the same tension in this moment that I wrote about all over the new album,” she continued. “I love to say we make a safe space at our shows each night … but I’m also the one who may throw someone out without really even knowing what exactly is going on.”

“So, if you are those two people … I am sorry for whatever shame or embarrassment I may have caused you,” Williams added, revealing she “cried” for them after seeing the video. “I’m not telling you that it’s perfectly fine to act entitled or ignorant at a show. I’m just saying that I’m sorry that I handled the whole situation like the arbiter of the same type of cancel culture that doesn’t often teach or lead in any productive way.”

In the Discord post, Williams also walked back on an incendiary statement she made at another recent Paramore performance: “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re f–king dead to me.”

“I hate that the only thing I really know to say to people I deem racist or bigoted in any way is ‘you’re dead to me’ when I know that message isn’t the kind that’s going to change a hateful heart,” she wrote. “How can I feel soft and tragic about it in one moment and ragey and rigid the next? Because that’s human.”

04 Jun 2023

Matty Healy Kisses Security Guard at The 1975 Gig in Denmark

Matty Healy has been known to kiss fans, and even one of his bandmates, as part of his stage act with The 1975 during fan favorite “Robbers.” One time, he sucked someone’s thumb.

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But since Healy’s been rumored to be dating Taylor Swift, music fans have favored analyzing their apparent romance over his intimate onstage antics. Recently Healy was busy showing up for Swift during Eras Tour weekends in Nashville and Philadelphia, and now he’s back on the road with his band.

At The 1975’s performance at Denmark’s NorthSide Festival this weekend, the kiss returned. This time, Healy, bottle of alcohol in hand, knelt in front of a smiling security guard at the fest and smooched him on the lips — after asking for his consent. “Wanna kiss me?” he mouthed to him before going for it.

While Healy hasn’t dropped snogging from his routine, he did make it a point to not lock lips with anyone right in front of Swift when she made a surprise appearance at The 1975’s show at London’s O2 Arena in January. At the concert — where Swift gave an impromptu live performance of her own “Anti-Hero” and The 1975’s “The City” — Healy announced to the audience, “I’m not kissing anybody in front of Taylor Swift. Have some respect. In front of the queen? It’s not happening.”

During The 1975’s set at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival last weekend, Healy seemingly brought up the Swift dating rumors. He cleverly addressed them by revealing nothing at all.

“Is it all a bit? Is it sincere? Will he ever address it? All of these questions and more will be ignored in the next hour,” Healy quipped, presumably referencing his rumored relationship.

See Healy’s latest stage kiss in the fan footage below. The 1975’s upcoming tour dates can be found here.

03 Jun 2023

Noel Gallagher Doubles Down on His Dislike of ‘That F—ing 1975’

Noel Gallagher didn’t have any nice things to say about The 1975 recently, after Matty Healy suggested Noel and estranged brother Liam owe it to Oasis fans to get over their “mard” and reunite. Noel still doesn’t have any nice things to say.

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“He needs to go over how s— his band is and split up,” Gallagher — who just released Council Skies, his latest album with High Flying Birds — had snapped back at Healy’s comment in May.

Now, in a new interview with NME, Gallagher was asked whether he feels Oasis continues to influence contemporary bands today. The topic detoured into him talking about the state of rock … and The 1975.

“Oasis’ influence, I think, was for people to f—ing start a band in the first place. I do meet loads of guys who say that and that’s great. There are a lot of them around, it’s just a pity guitar music has become marginalized. You’ve either got to be rock, or that f—ing 1975. At the BRITs, The 1975 won Best Rock or some f—ing s—,” Gallagher is quoted as saying in the piece published Saturday (June 3).

“I was watching it with my kids, two teenage lads, thinking, ‘Is it me being a grumpy old man, or is this s—?’” he recalled. “They were both going, ‘Oh no, this is f—ing s—’. The 1975, Best Rock Band? Someone needs to re-define that immediately, because that is… I don’t know what that is, but it’s certainly not f—ing rock. Whatever rock is, that’s not it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, when Gallagher was chatting about flaws on his albums (he says his recordings are “not perfect by any means”), NME presented a question related to Healy’s rumored girlfriend, Taylor Swift: “Would you ever do a Taylor Swift and re-record your past albums?”

“What’s the point?” Gallagher said. “Could you imagine the outrage? I’d rather push on and try new things.”

See the full interview here.

02 Jun 2023

Iam Tongi Earns His First Billboard No. 1 After ‘American Idol’ Coronation

Newly crowned American Idol winner Iam Tongi sends a pair of songs onto Billboard’s Rock Digital Song Sales chart (dated June 3), paced by his original track “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which soars in at No. 1.

The song bows with 11,000 downloads sold May 19-25, according to Luminate.

It’s followed by his cover of ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All,” which debuts at No. 19 with 2,000 sold. The song jumps 559% in sales; he initially made it available for download in March and performed it during the ABC competition’s top 20 episode in April.

“I’ll Be Seeing You” also debuts at No. 2 on the all-format Digital Song Sales survey.

In all, Tongi’s catalog so far moved 17,000 downloads May 19-25, a 1,899% boost from 1,000 sold May 12-18. His songs “Trust Me,” “Gone,” “Dreams” and “Efiafi,” the latter featuring Manatau Tuifua, all also accumulated 1,000 paid downloads apiece in that span.

“I’ll Be Seeing You” additionally opens on a pair of multimetric Billboard charts, at Nos. 19 and 23 on Hot Rock Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, respectively. In addition to its sales, the song earned 911,000 official U.S. streams.

Tongi, 18, won the latest season of American Idol May 21, becoming the first Pacific Islander champion in the show’s history, dating its launch on Fox in 2002. He auditioned with a cover of James Blunt’s 2019 song “Monsters” and performed it with Blunt on the finale; sparked by their duet, Blunt’s “Monsters” bounds back onto Digital Song Sales at No. 3 with 10,000 sold, up 925%. It debuted at No. 3 with 9,000 sold in March, then fueled by Tongi’s audition.

02 Jun 2023

Coldplay Tout 5 Million Trees Planted So Far on Music of the Spheres Tour

Before hitting the road last March, Coldplay set some very ambitious environmental goals for their massive Music of the Spheres world tour. Their overarching aim was to reduce the carbon footprint from their 2016/2017 Head Full of Dreams stadium tour by more than 50%.

In a statement on Friday (June 2), the band said that the Spheres tour has so far produced 47% less CO2e emissions than their last outing and that they’ve planted five million trees to date, or roughly one for every one of the seven million tickets sold so far.

“When we first announced the Music Of The Spheres Tour, we hoped to make it as environmentally beneficial as possible and reduce our direct carbon emissions (from show production, freight, band and crew travel) by 50%,” read the statement, which said the data has been independently assessed and validated by professor John E. Fernandez of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI).

While the numbers are a “good start… and something that our incredible crew should be very proud of,” Coldplay said there is definitely still room for improvement. “Now that we’re into the second year of the tour, we’ve started to run the entire show (audio, lights, lasers etc) from an electric battery system that allows us to use 100% renewable energy as efficiently as possible,” it continued. “We have been using electric vehicles and alternative fuels wherever we can, as well as reducing waste and plastic usage to a minimum.”

They also thanked the crew that has allowed them to achieve their goals, as well as the fans who have helped power the stage batteries using the exercise bikes and kinetic dance floors, as well as those who’ve walked, used bicycles, ride shares or public transportation to get to the gigs, brought their own refillable water bottles and returned the LED wristbands after each concert.

“And just by coming you have had a tree planted, and helped a range of environmental organizations like The Ocean Cleanup and ClientEarth (a team of lawyers who defend the environment). Thank you all and hopefully this time next year we will have made big improvements.”

In an accompanying statement, MIT’s Fernandez added, “Based on a detailed review of the work of Coldplay’s sustainability team in assessing and advising the band and management on the CO2e impact of touring, we fully endorse this effort as critically important, scientifically rigorous and of the highest quality. 

Fernandez said MIT ESI endorses the work Coldplay has done as an “important and substantive step toward a new era of eventually achieving carbon neutral music events by major artists. The band deserves significant praise in commissioning the work and acting as the vanguard for the global music industry as it begins to take seriously the reality of living and making music in the Anthropocene.” 

Coldplay also shared a number of other environmental data points for the tour so far, including:

— The five million trees planted amount to 5,000 hectares of land restored across 17 countries and 21 planting projects.

— One solar-powered River Interceptor deployed in March 2021 in the Klang River in Malaysia with 158 tons of waste and 13 tons of ocean-bound plastic removed since the start of the tour.

— An 86% average return rate for the reusable, plant-based LED writstbands.

— 15kWh average power per show generation through in-show solar installations, kinetic dance floors and power bikes, which was enough to power the satellite stage performances each night and provide phone, laptop and tool-charging stations for the crew.

— 66% of all tour waste diverted from landfills.

— 3,770 meals and 73 kg of toiletries donated from tour catering to the unhoused.

— Financial support to environmental organizations including ClientEarth,The Ocean Cleanup, Climeworks, Sea Shepherd, Project Seagrass, Sustainable Food Trust, Cleaner Seas Group, Food Forest Project, Knowledge Pele, Conservation Collective and others

02 Jun 2023

Here’s Why Swifties Think ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ Will Feature Paramore’s Hayley Williams

Hayley Williams recently got tight-lipped after seemingly teasing a collaboration with Taylor Swift, but fans sure would like her to speak now.

At a recent Ulta meet-and-greet event, the Paramore frontwoman was captured on video accepting a homemade Speak Now-themed bracelet from a fan. “Let me just tell you, this is coming at a very interesting time that you’re giving me this to wear,” Williams said with a pointed smile while taking the bracelet. “And that’s all I’ll say.”

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here. First and foremost, Swift just announced a couple weeks ago that her next re-recorded album would be Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), surprising her Eras Tour crowd in Nashville with news that the project is set to arrive July 7.

The original 2010 Speak Now famously has no collaborations and was entirely self-written by Swift, but the pop star’s past two Taylor’s Version projects — Red and Fearless — both had a variety of guest appearances on previously unreleased “Vault” tracks. For instance, Phoebe Bridgers added duet vocals to “Nothing New” on Red (Taylor’s Version), and Keith Urban did the same for Fearless (Taylor’s Version) bonus track “That’s When.”

Plus, the “Still Into You” singer has previously said that Speak Now is her favorite of Swift’s eras, and in 2011, Williams made a guest appearance at one of the pop superstar’s Speak Now Tour shows. The longtime friends rocked out together on stage, and the “Anti-Hero” musician helped the Paramore singer perform the band’s Riot! track “That’s What You Get.”

Speaking of eras and tours, Paramore also opened for Swift’s first few Eras Tour shows in Glendale, Ariz., earlier this year.

“Having Paramore join me on tour is such an honor,” Swift told Billboard of the performances for the band’s January cover story. “We came up alongside each other as Nashville teenagers writing our own music, so it feels insanely special to kick off the tour together nearly two decades later … Hayley is such a riveting performer because she’s so multifaceted — bold and playful and ferocious and completely in command.”

Put that all together, and you’ve got a pretty compelling case that Williams may be getting a spot on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). At least, fans certainly think so. “Pretending not to care about the potential taylor and hayley collab on speak now tv so they announce it faster,” joked one Swiftie on Twitter.

“hayley motherf–king williams if you/paramore are featured on speak now taylor’s version i am going to levitate to places undiscovered by drugs or science please god,” tweeted another.

See more fan posts below:

02 Jun 2023

Hayley Williams Has Stark Warning For Fans Who Support This Republican Presidential Candidate

As the 2024 presidential race starts to heat up with more than half a dozen republicans already throwing their hats in the ring to take on President Biden, Paramore singer Hayley Williams told New Jersey fans that she’s not afraid to get political from the stage.

In fact, the outspoken vocalist told the crowd at the Adjacent Music Festival in Atlantic City last weekend that if they’re supporting a particular candidate they can take a hike. “I’ll be happy to tell you I’m very f–king comfortable talking politics,” Williams said during Paramore’s headlining set to the screams of fans. “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re f–king dead to me. Is that comfortable enough for anyone?”

It should come as little surprise that Williams is not a fan of the Florida governor and self-proclaimed “anti-woke” warrior who earlier this year signed a series of discriminatory bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community that the Human Rights Campaign called “extreme.” Among them was the so-called “don’t say gay” bill that prohibits educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity from pre-K through eighth grade, as well as another bill severely restricting banning gender-affirming care and another that criminalized transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity.

Williams was among the participants at the March 20 Love Rising benefit in Nashville to support Tennessee-based LGBTQ organizations. “Once again our state has passed two regressive and unfathomably harmful bills,” Williams wrote on her Instagram Story in late February, after the Tennessee House passed legislation banning drag performances and gender-affirming care. “We stand in solidarity with our LGBTQIA+ family and local LGBTQIA+ orgs in this fight, not only for inclusion for our friends and family in the queer community, but for radical acceptance and empowerment for each of them.”

Tennessee native Williams doubled-down, saying that “drag is not a crime… gender-affirming healthcare for all, including our youth, is a necessity.”

Check out Williams’ comments below.

02 Jun 2023

Foo Fighters Distill Heartbreak, Embark on Next Chapter With ‘But Here We Are’: Stream It Now

Great art is so often hewn from struggle. Dave Grohl knows all about it.

Following the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain, and the immediate disbanding of Nirvana, the grunge great’s drummer Grohl focused his grief and energies on a new project, Foo Fighters.

A year later, Foo Fighters dropped its self-titled debut album. Grohl sang every line and played every instrument, with the exception of a guitar part on “X-Static”.

The Foos are now members of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 2022 (Grohl was also elevated as a member of Nirvana, in 2014), and 11 albums deep in a rocking career, one that was ignited by struggle.

Grohl and his Foos have had to pick up their shattered pieces once again following the untimely death last March of their talismanic drummer, Taylor Hawkins. Working through heartbreak, the band reassembled those pieces for But Here We Are, the Foos’ 11th and latest studio album, which dropped at the stroke of midnight.

Produced by years-long collaborator Greg Kurstin, the set is described a “brutally honest and emotionally raw response” to tragedy, and “the first chapter of the band’s new life.”

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Spanning 10 tracks, But Here We Are opens with the first single “Rescued,” which dropped April 19.

Grohl returns to his familiar duties behind the kit on the new LP, though Josh Freese was recently unveiled as the Foos’ full-time drummer, making his live concert debut with the group on May 21 for a performance that included new cut “Show Me How” and the title track. Freese, a veteran studio/touring drummer, has played with acts including Guns N’ Roses, A Perfect Circle, and Nine Inch Nails, was revealed as during a livestream, “Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts”.

The Foos will rumble through the summer with a full itinerary, including more than a dozen festival appearances at Boston Calling, Sonic Temple, Rock Am Ring, Bonnaroo, Ottawa Bluesfest, Harley-Davidson Homecoming, Fuji Rock, Wildlands, Outside Lands, Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Riot Fest, Sea.Hear.Now, Louder Than Life, Ohana and ACL, as well as a number of North American and international headlining dates.

And Here We Are is the followup to 2021’s Medicine at Midnight, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, one of the band’s nine top 10 appearances on the chart, two of which hit No. 1.

Stream it below.

01 Jun 2023

Linkin Park’s ‘Numb’ Video Surpasses 2 Billion YouTube Views

It’s been 20 years since Linkin Park rocked the music world with their 2003 hit “Numb,” and this week, the emotionally charged music video hit 2 billion views on YouTube. It’s the band’s first clip to achieve the impressive milestone.

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The “Numb” music video hit one billion views back in 2018, a year after fans launched an unofficial campaign following the death of frontman Chester Bennington on July 20, 2017, to help push the video to the one billion view mark.

The song was Linkin Park’s third single off their 2003 sophomore album, Meteora. “Numb” topped Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart, as did other enduring hits from the project, including “Breaking the Habit,” “Faint,” “Somewhere I Belong” and “Lying From You.”

The album got a 20th Anniversary Edition release back in April, featuring multiple previously unreleased songs, in addition to demos, live shows, B-sides and previously unaired footage with the band.

Watch Linkin Park’s “Numb” music video below.

01 Jun 2023

New Little Richard PBS Doc Details Gay Origins of ‘Tutti Frutti’: ‘This Ain’t About Ice Cream’

Little Richard knew exactly what he was doing when he sang the seemingly gibberish lyrics “Awop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boom/ If it don’t fit, don’t force it/ You can grease it and make it easy.” The iconic couplet he originally wrote for his 1955 breakthrough hit “Tutti Fruitti” is explored in a new episode of PBS’ American Masters, “Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which will debut on public stations on Friday (June 2) at 9 p.m. ET as pat of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and African American Music Appreciation Month.

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The show, which features interviews with the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, Nile Rodgers, Pat Boone, Ringo Starr, Bobby Rush and Big Freedia, as well as activist/drag performer Sir Lady Java and Richard’s spiritual advisor, Rev. Bill Minson, tells the origin story of Richard (born Richard Wayne Penniman) from a child prodigy steeped in the world of gospel to global rock stardom; it features never-before heard audio recordings of Richard made by his authorized biographer, Charles White, who is also featured.

In a Billboard exclusive clip from the show (see below), Little Richard’s bandmates and contemporaries talk about the origin story of “Tutti Frutti,” which was birthed at the raucous Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans. “When we went into the Drew Drop Inn there was a piano… and that’s when I began to know and understand Little Richard,” says Specialty Records producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell.

“‘Cause that’s all you gotta do is give Richard an audience, turn the lights on and show is on,” Blackwell says. Richard’s longtime keyboard player and friend Ronald “Ron” Jones adds that one day Richard jumped on the piano and played the “alop-bam-boom” riff and his producers asked about the hook they’d never heard before, even though the singer — who died in May 2020 at age 87 of bone cancer — had been using it for years while playing to Black audiences on the Chitlin’ Circuit.

In the episode we hear archival tape of Richard reciting the next two lines in the chorus, “If you want it, you got it/ Tutti-frutti, good booty.” The lyrics, of course, could be interpreted as being about gay sex, laughs Deacon John Moore, a blues musician who recorded with Richard. “They’re not gonna play that on the radio. ‘Tutti-frutti, good booty!’ And everybody knew this ain’t about ice cream!”

The bottom line from Richard’s producer, though, was that regardless of what he was singing about, “Tutti Fruitti” sounded like a slam-dunk hit record. Informed that he would have to clean up the “smutty” lyrics a bit to get airplay, Richard agreed, with Blackwell explaining how they changed the first bit to “tutti frutti, oh rootie,” while adding girls named Sue and Daisy. After two or three takes, history was made.

The PBS doc follows on the heels of producer/director and former label exec Lisa Cortés’ recent doc, Little Richard: I Am Everything, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has been streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV since April.

Watch the American Masters preview below and watch the full episode on Friday night.