State Champ Radio Rock
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The Ataris are honoring the late father of lead singer Kris Roe with a new 7-inch single that includes Roe’s father’s ashes mixed in to the vinyl.
“Car Song,” now available in limited edition 7-inch vinyl, was written in honor of Roe’s father, who passed away in 2014 due to complications related to alcoholism. In his honor, a portion of the proceeds from the “Car Song” 7-inch release will go to Shatterproof, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending addiction.
“I’ve always been so lucky to have my dad’s unwavering support for The Ataris. He wasn’t just a fan — he was a fixture of our community. He would often interact with fans on the band’s message board, film live sets, and share them with everyone—everyone knew him. He was a huge part of the band’s journey,” Roe said in a press release. “When I read about a service that would press a loved one’s ashes into vinyl, it instantly hit me. What better way to honor my dad than making him a permanent part of the music he always loved? It felt like the most meaningful tribute I could give him.”
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“Car Song” is the first new release in 15 years for the Ataris, who also released a Breaking Bad-inspired video for the track that pays tribute to Walter White, Saul Goodman and the cinematic universe of one of modern television’s most celebrated franchises.
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The video comes amid the band’s continued reunion around the original lineup for their 2003 So Long, Astoria album, which began late last year and includes Roe, bassist Mike Davenport, guitarist John Collura, and drummer Chris Knapp. So Long, Astoria was released through Columbia Records in 2003 and sold over 700,000 copies in the US, making it the sole record from The Ataris’ to be certified gold.
“Car Song” is the first release from The Ataris’ yet-to-be-announced album and comes after Roe purchased the white Volvo featured in the final season of Breaking Bad. Roe reportedly purchased the Volvo from a friend who worked as an assistant director on the show and later found a receipt in the car signed by actor Bryan Cranston in the glovebox.
“I like to say that Walter White’s Volvo was the catalyst for ‘Car Song’ and the new album,” Roe said in a press release announcing the single. “It all just came together from there, and now, here we are.”
Watch the full video for “Car Song” below:
Fitz and the Tantrums have returned: the pop-rock group have announced that their sixth studio album, Man on the Moon, will be released on July 25 through Atlantic Records, and unveiled the title track of the upcoming full-length on Wednesday (May 7).
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The follow-up to 2022’s Let Yourself Free was a product of feeling less beholden to straining for hits in the studio, says band leader Michael Fitzpatrick. “I think after our first radio hit with ‘Out Of My League,’ there was this insane amount of pressure to keep delivering hits,” he says of the band’s breakthrough 2013 single. “Then we had an even bigger hit with ‘HandClap,’ and there was even more expectation and pressure.
“But today?!” Fitzpatrick continues. “No one knows what a hit is anymore, the landscape is totally different, and that was actually incredibly liberating for us during the making of this record. We said ‘screw it,’ and just did what we wanted 1000% of the time. Zero compromise and all feeling. The air finally came back into the room and writing songs felt joyful and easy again.”
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That process began with the title track, which will serve as the new album’s lead single. While the band released album track “Ruin the Night” in March, “Man on the Moon” represents a jolt of energy for the group, and a return to the soul-pop sound that has defined some of their most well-loved hits.
“‘Man On The Moon’ came about organically in the early days of the writing process for the album,” says Fitzpatrick. “The feelings and ideas that I wanted to write about just kept pointing us back in the Motown/soul direction. Honestly, it kinda felt like coming home.”
After touring extensively behind Let Yourself Free, Fitz and the Tantrums will kick off a summer headlining run on July 24 in San Diego on the eve of the album release. The 31-city North American tour will feature Aloe Blacc and Neal Francis as special guests on select dates, while Ax and the Hatchetman, SNACKTIME and Gable Price and Friends will serve as openers.
Check out the track list to Fitz and the Tantrums’ Man on the Moon and watch the video for the title track below:
“The Good The Bad The Ugly”
“Man On The Moon”
“Withdrawals”
“Oh Maria”
“Ruin The Night”
“Where I Go”
“Young Days”
“Perfume”
“Umbrella”
“Queen of Hearts”
“Waste My Time”
“OK OK OK”
“Motion”
“One Day”
Linkin Park have been on such a roll over the past year that they recently did something they’ve rarely done in the past: write new music on the road. Fans will get to hear the fruits of that labor on May 16 with the release of a deluxe edition of last year’s surprise comeback album, From Zero.
Two of the three new bonus tracks on that special edition, “Up From the Bottom and “Let You Fade,” were finished after the initial sessions for the long-running rock band’s first effort with new singer Emily Armstrong; the former was written in between tour dates and the latter was started during the album sessions and finished after its release.
With “Up From the Bottom” just out, Billboard asked what it feels like to keep the chart momentum of the 2.0 lineup rolling after the group announced their revival in 2024, seven years after the 2017 death of original singer Chester Bennington. “A day in the life,” Armstrong laughed, as singer/guitarist Mike Shinoda teased that his newest bandmate is already “super jaded” at this point. “She’s just so used to it,” he said in the video you can watch in full above. “She was so down to earth in the beginning.”
Shinoda said LP wrote “Up From the Bottom” at the end of last year and though it was the last new song they laid down for the deluxe, it was the quickest one to wrap. “It’s kind of fun having that shorter momentum,” he said, noting that typically the band is “so meticulous” that it was a breath of fresh air to turn something so quickly.
He also said that “Let You Fade” started off as a not-as-loud song on a demo that just didn’t make the cut before the group pivoted to a piano-and-vocals only arrangement that was transformed into a song that starts off really loud and goes quiet on the bridge. “That piano and vocal thing was the second demo [we recorded during the initial sessions],” Shinoda said. “Of the three it’s probably my favorite.”
The expanded album will also feature the new song “Unshatter,” a track Shinoda said LP began working on when they were first just getting to know Armstrong.
In fact, she was so new that Shinoda said when he began playing back Armstrong’s wailing vocal on the song new drummer Colin Brittain heard the screaming on the bridge from the control room and said, “‘oh you know who she sounds like? The singer from Dead Sara,’” which, of course is exactly who she is. “He said, ‘dude, really? She’s soooo good!’”
And while Armstrong said they’re thinking about putting a small recording studio on their tour bus, Shinoda cautioned fans not to expect more new music this year since LP will be on the road for much of 2025. Speaking of which, with a 27-song, two-hour running time straining their ability to get all the fan favorites and deep tracks into the mix, Armstrong joked, “I think we should play four hours.”
Perhaps it’s that adrenalin, or maybe her take-no-prisoners performance style, but Shinoda said having Armstrong front the band has earned him some serious cool dad points at home. “I have daughters and having them see Emily and be like, ‘Whoa! She is so cool!’,” is a huge boost. “They say this all the time… they’re like, ‘Emily’s so cool,’” he said as Armstrong soaked up the kind words. “They think she’s the coolest human on Earth. They’re like, ‘dad, you’re not that cool. She’s very cool.’”
The band will be on stage on Tuesday night (May 6) at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C.
British rocker Yungblud announced on Tuesday (May 6) that his new album, Idols, will be released on June 20, and confirmed that it is the first part of an upcoming double LP; the second part of the collection is yet to be announced.
The release is the artist born Dominic Harrison’s fourth album under the Yungblud moniker, and is described by the Doncaster-born musician as “a love letter to self-reclamation … to rock music … [and] to life in all it’s f–king madness.”
In an accompanying statement, Yungblud said that the record explores the theme of hero-worship. “We turn to others for an identity before turning to ourselves. Self-belief, self-reclamation, self-evolution and change. As we grow up, we lose our belief in magic and mystery. We begin to rationalize everything; our cage walls build up.”
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The LP was recorded in Leeds, England, near his hometown of Doncaster in Yorkshire, and he said in the press release that he “wanted to make a project that didn’t focus on singles or anything else except feeling and world-building,” and described the project as having “no limitations.”
That much was obvious with its lead single and album opener “Hello Heaven, Hello,” a nine-minute mini-rock opera and latest single “Lovesick Lullaby.” The record was produced by close collaborator Matt Schwartz, Bob Bradley and touring guitarist Adam Warrington.
Yungblud’s past two records — Weird! (2020) and Yungblud (2022) — both hit No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart, with the latter giving him a career high of No. 45 on the Billboard 200. Idols is his first record on Island Records (U.K.) and Capitol Records (U.S.) following his previous home of Geffen/Interscope.
Speaking to Billboard U.K. in August, he shared details on the label move. “It’s a new phase in my life and these labels are so classic, and this new album feels like it belongs on prestigious labels like that,” he said. “The last few months have been a lot more creatively fruitful and inspiring. I really had a choice about staying in the comfort zone or do I want to go to different places and experiment.”
Following its inaugural edition in 2024, his Bludfest event will return on June 21 in Milton Keynes, England, and features appearances from Yungblud, Chase Atlantic, Rachel Chinouriri and more.
See the Idols tracklist and his album announcement on Instagram below:
“Hello Heaven, Hello”
“Idols Pt I”
“Lovesick Lullaby”
“Zombie”
“The Greatest Parade”
“Change”
“Monday Murder”
“Ghosts”
“Fire”
“War”
“Idols Pt II”
“Supermoon”
He’s here to answer all your questions about how the Rock Hall works.
Chappell Roan is no piker when it comes to belting out a tune. But on the latest episode of Heart singer Ann Wilson‘s After Dinner Thinks podcast, the “Pink Pony Club” singer made a bold statement about the number one voice in rock. “You’re rockin’ mama! I’m rockin’ because you rockin’, really, truly,” Roan told the singer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band.
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“I think you have the best voice in rock,” Roan said to Wilson, noting that “nothing” has ever made her feel as powerful as when she sang Heart’s iconic hit “Barracuda” onstage at the Austin City Limits festival in 2024, introducing it as her “favorite song.”
“I was like, ‘actually, this is the coolest song ever. And I feel like a rock star!,” Roan said. Fellow guest Lucy Dacus recalled the pair talking about the cover, with Roan telling her at the time, “I remember when you were like, ‘I’m gonna cover this because I want to feel what it feels like in my body to be a rocker like that.’”
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Wilson agreed that it’s a whole different thing to rock out on stage, with Roan saying that pop is fine, but rock, well, it’s a different beast. “A song like that… you can’t hold it in like that. It has to be an independence of the soul where you just let it go and you go, ‘what the f–k? This is a physical event,” Wilson said.
After watching a Heart show before the pod recording, Dacus opined on how most self-described rockers are wannabes who are just pretending, or trying to be a “rock character or avatar. Y’all are just ‘bees,’ you’re not wannabes… they’re trying to be you.”
That comment got Roan going, with the “Hot To Go” singer slamming “b–ches who will never come out on stage. They’re just like, ‘oh! I can’t. My arm hurts!’ Like you are… that is punk!”
Elsewhere in the chat, the three women talked about how style plays into their identity, Dacus asked Wilson is she’d ever considered retiring from music and Roan wondered how the singer handled the huge success and pressure to follow-up Heart’s smash 1975 debut album, Dreamboat Annie, when the group went in to record the follow-up. Dacus also talked about attending a Heart show with her birth mother, with Wilson sharing her moving journey adopting two children.
Definitely stick around until the end, because Wilson opened up about her record label once sending Paula Abdul to teach Heart some choreography, a move that did not go well.
Chappell Roan, Lucy Dacus and Ann Wilson
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Oasis’ reunion tour kicks off in just under two months, but there’s still plenty of questions around the shows, including: what will be played and who will be joining Noel and Liam Gallagher on stage when it all kicks off in Cardiff, Wales on July 4?
While a number of U.K. tabloids have been doing their best to get the scoop on the brothers’ reconciliation, frontman Liam has been using his X (formerly Twitter) profile to plant nuggets of information and strike down any inaccurate reports.
Over the weekend The Sun shared a pair of reports about the upcoming tour. One claimed that Noel and Liam were planning to have separate dressing rooms, and that friends of both brothers were restricted in where they could spend the after parties. It reported that “if you’re on Noel’s list but fancy going across to say hello to Liam, it’s going to be a case of trying to blag entry. It seems like they are totally separate events.” The report claimed: “It’s gutting for people who want to hang out with both of them but it seems they’re keeping it all at a distance.”
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Liam responded to the story and said that “After party’s are for w–––s,” throwing cold water on the idea that they were being kept separated. “I’m getting straight of after the gigs get my beauty sleep this level of sexiness doesn’t happen by staying up talking bollox to bellends.”
After party’s are for wankers I’m getting straight of after the gigs get my beauty sleep this level of sexiness doesn’t happen by staying up talking bollox to bellends— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) May 3, 2025
A second article in the The Sun on Sunday said that Oasis were set to drop the song “Hello” from its setlist due to its connection to convicted pedophile Gary Glitter. The 1995 song, which opened their sophomore album (Whats The Story) Morning Glory?, features the lines “Hello, hello, it’s good to be back, it’s good to be back.” The lyrics and melody mirror Glitter’s 1973 song “Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again,” and Glitter was credited as a writer on the Oasis song alongside writing partner Mike Leadner.
The story added, “The lyrics of the song would obviously have been a good fit for the reunion tour but the band have decided to leave it in the past. It would be inappropriate to play it given its connotations to Glitter and his convictions.” Glam rock star Glitter was convicted of child sexual abuse in 2006 and has faced a number of court cases since; he is currently being held in a U.K. prison for breaching his release conditions.
The Sun’s reporting was once again slapped down by Liam on his X account on Monday (May 5), confirming that the song will appear on the setlist. “We’ll be playing HELLO trust me,” he responded to one fan. He also debunked a rumoured leaked setlist and confirmed that none of his solo songs would appear in the shows.
“Hello” featured prominently in the band’s setlist following its release and appeared at their 1996 appearances at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire. The song fell out of rotation around 2002, but was played a number of times during Liam’s solo tours from 2020 onwards.
The band are set to open their tour on July 4 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, before a further run of shows in the U.K. and Ireland, before heading to North America, Latin America, Asia and Australasia.
We’ll be playing HELLO trust me— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) May 5, 2025
Morrissey is planning to get back on stage at Centennial Hall in Tucson, AZ on Monday night (May 5) after postponing a pair of shows on his spring U.S. tour over the weekend due to health issues. “The Morrissey tour will reconvene at Tucson Centennial Hall (Arizona) on Monday 5 May,” the singer wrote on Instagram on Sunday (May 4).
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“Following the [April 30] show at The Fox in Bakersfield, Morrissey contracted a severe sinusitis attack and was treated at Coronado Hospital in San Diego,” the statement continued. “Missed shows at Rancho Mirage [May 3] and San Diego [May 1] are not cancelled and now have new dates. Morrissey, the band and crew, are very appreciative of those who convey understanding at difficult moments during tours.”
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The show at the San Diego Civic Theatre originally scheduled for May 1 has been pushed back until Jan., 6, 2026, while the May 3 show that was scheduled to hit the Agua Caliente Resort in Rancho Mirage, CA is now slated for Oct. 24. Morrissey, 65, released his most recent solo album, I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, in 2020. In November, the singer singer claimed that his as-yet-unreleased album, Bonfire of Teenagers, has been shelved so far because of his various controversial statements. “As you know, nobody will release my music anymore,” Morrissey told a crowd in New Jersey. “As you know because I’m a chief exponent of free speech. In England at least, it’s now criminalized.”
In 2019, Morrissey supported the far-right Britain First political party and while his Bonfire of Teenagers LP was scheduled for release in February 2023, it was pulled from calendars a few months before its street date with the singer claiming its “fate is exclusively in the hands of Capitol Records (Los Angeles.)”
After winding down his U.S. swing with shows in Atlanta and St. Petersburg and Hollywood, FL later this month the former Smiths singer will hit the U.K. and Ireland for his first shows there since 2023, with planned shows in Dublin (May 31), Glasgow (June 4-5) and Manchester (June 7); he will then embark on a summer run of European shows.
Rebecca and Megan Lovell, otherwise known as the musical duo Larkin Poe, are the first to say they aren’t breaking new musical ground. “We’re all derivative,” Rebecca says to Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from a tour stop in Boise, Idaho. “There are very few original ideas.”
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Take “Easy Love Pt. 1,” an upbeat, Bonnie Raitt-styled number from the group’s new album, Bloom. “That’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s a song that is built upon basically the changes [of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s] ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” says Rebecca.
Then again, the Georgia-raised, Nashville-based sisters are taking the blues and Southern rock to unlikely places. In January, the sisters visited Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform “Easy Love Pt. 1.” Not many blues-based artists get a national television audience these days. And few women are winning a Grammy award for best contemporary blues album, which Larkin Poe did in 2024 for its 2022 set, Blood Harmony.
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Guitar-playing Rebecca and lap steel guitar-playing Megan deserve credit for crafting an accessible, modern spin on traditional music. The sisters have succeeded in honoring the histories of some great American musical genres without being afraid to finding their own approach to a familiar sound.
Over the years, the Lovell sisters, who began Larkin Poe in 2010, incorporated beats to their music and occasionally changed the lyric of a cover song. “I do think that there is this temptation at times for — and I hear it a lot in the blues, specifically on a lot of the festival touring circuit that we’ve done — you speak with the same metaphor. You are honoring the past, and you’re putting this whole genre of music kind of behind glass. And it’s a little museum. And we look at it, but we don’t engage, we don’t tweak it. And so I think, very respectfully, Megan and I, over the years, have done our best to get in there, and if we’re going to do a blues cover and there’s a lyric in there that we don’t agree with, we’ll change it. And and we do so with utmost respect, because we respect the songs, and we believe that art and genres of music, specifically traditional American music, needs to evolve.”
Bloom “is a little bit of a departure,” says Rebecca. “It embraces a lot of different types of Southern music that we previously were maybe limiting ourselves [to] a little bit in order to be a blues-fronted outfit. Because I do think [Bloom is] more driven by melody, whereas previous records were more driven by riffs.”
Following the release of Bloom, Larkin Poe reached No. 11 on the Top Album Sales chart, No. 16 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart, No. 20 on the Vinyl Albums chart and No. 66 on Billboard’s Artist 100 chart. Larkin Poe arguably has a stronger presence on the road, though, and has spent 2025 performing at mid-sized clubs and theaters across the U.S. In March, the band set sail on Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea cruise.
The sisters, who began their career in music as folk trio The Lovell Sisters with older sister Jessica, began their appreciation of blues music in their late teens. “We unbraided some of the hillbilly jazz influence of our bluegrass upbringing in order to allow more soul into the music,” says Rebecca. “And I do have to shout out Son House and Skip James, those two artists specifically as really capturing our imagination for turn of the century blues and showing us the possibility of a human voice and an acoustic or electric guitar.”
They were prompted to dig deeper into the blues when on tour with Elvis Costello, who Rebecca calls “a fount of knowledge.” Since Rebecca and Megan were listening to the Allman Brothers, Costello encouraged them to follow the group’s history and research its musical predecessors. “That definitely influenced us to go back and do our research about where these songs were coming from,” says Rebecca.
Listen to the entire interview with Rebecca and Megan Lovell using the embedded Spotify player below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
“Back in the day,” Chubby Checker tells Billboard from his home in New Jersey, “I said, ‘I don’t want to be in the Rock Hall when I’m dead. I want to smell my flowers when I’m here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little late in the game, I would admit, but I’m still alive to see Chubby Checker in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
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Eligible since the first Rock Hall class in 1986, the 83-year-old responsible for “The Twist” and other dance sensations will finally arrive in the shrine during the Nov. 8 induction ceremony in Los Angeles — on his first nomination, no less. That’s come as a surprise, even shock, to many fans since the news broke about Checker’s induction, but the South Carolina native (born Ernest Evans) says it’s not something he’s been fretting about over the years.
“It’s another milestone — and the beat goes on,” he notes.
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Nevertheless, Checker famously protested outside of the Rock Hall museum in Cleveland back in 2002, but he clarifies that it wasn’t simply about his exclusion from the ranks. “I wanted people to know that Chubby’s music was not being played, that’s all it was,” he explains. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The best thing for any artist is to get his music played, and my music wasn’t getting played and I was a little upset about it. You can walk into the supermarket and hear (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…but not ‘The Twist,’ and you look around the supermarket and every company’s got some kind of twist product, you know? I did it very nicely. I didn’t try to cause any problems. I never protested anything in my life except that.”
Checker will, of course, enter the Rock Hall with ample credentials as a groundbreaker and architect. Inspired to pursue music after seeing country great Ernest Tubb perform at a South Carolina fair when he was four years old, Checker and his family moved to South Philadelphia and he began singing doo-wop as a youth. Nicknamed Chubby by a boss at the produce market where he worked, he auditioned as a teen for American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose wife Barbara added Checker as a surname as a salute to Fats Domino.
Checker imitated Domino, Elvis Presley and other poplar singers at the time for a 1959 single called “The Class,” after which Clark suggested he take on “The Twist,” which was written by Hank Ballard — based on dances he saw teenagers doing in Tampa, Fla. It was only a modest success for him and his band, the Midnighters. Adding dance moves to his performance, Checker took the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during September 1960 and then for a second time in January 1962 — the only single to do that until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” decades down the road.
“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have on the dance floor — and is still giving us that,” says Checker, who despite his Philadelphia roots was a supporter of the Rock Hall being built in Cleveland, in deference to pioneering radio DJ Alan Freed. “Before (‘The Twist’), Elvis and Little Richard and Bill Haley and Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, they were doing the swing to their songs. Then Chubby Checker comes along and…the whole world changed.” Checker followed “The Twist” with other dance songs, including “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Again” and a resurrection of the late ‘40s dance “The Hucklebuck.”
“Chubby Checker never left the dance floor,” he says. “I used to call myself the wheel that rock rolls on, because anyone after Chubby Checker who had a song that you could dance to, they were in my world, that I brought to the dance floor. Dancing to the beat is what we brought, and it’s still there — no matter what it is. It’s called the boogie, and the boogie is still going on. Someone once said, ‘Chubby, you want to do a disco song?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”
In all, Checker has had 32 songs (and seven top 10 hits) on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2008 Billboard honored “The Twist” as No. 1 on the Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs list, which it held until the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” took the honor in 2021. Nevertheless, Checker notes, “it will always be the No. 1 song. There will be a number two No. 1 song, a number three No. 1 song, but (‘The Twist’) was the first and will always be the first.”
“The Twist” has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. The Rock Hall honored “The Twist” in 2018 by inducting the single as part of a new initiative — a practice that has not been repeated since.
Checker has no intention of recording anything new — “How am I gonna invent the wheel twice?” he asks — but still performs regularly. And that continuing demand, he says, has mitigated any disappointment he may have felt while waiting for his Rock Hall induction.
“Listen, I’m a blessed human being,” Checker says. “In spite of everything, my dreams come true every day. Every time I go on stage my dream comes true, my dream is renewed — that’s what keeps me going. I’m a blessed man in this world.”
