Rock
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Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten joined The Pogues on stage to perform “Streams Of Whiskey” in Dublin, Ireland on Tuesday night (Dec. 17). Watch fan-filmed footage here.
The Pogues played a one-off show at the city’s 3Arena yesterday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their 1984 debut LP, Red Roses For Me. The gig featured a wealth of special guests, including Nadine Shah, members of Lankum, rapper Kojaque and John Francis Flynn, among others. Fontaines D.C. drummer Tom Coll also performed as part of the live band.
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Following the death of singer Shane MacGowan last year, the current Pogues line-up consists of singer Spider Stacy, and founding members Jem Finer and James Fearnley. The band recently announced their first headline tour in 13 years – and first since MacGowan’s passing – to mark the 40th anniversary of their second album, Rum Sodomy & The Lash.
Scheduled for May 2025, the upcoming trek will include dates in London, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, and Newcastle. Further details and ticketing information can be found via The Pogues’ official website.
Chatten paid tribute to MacGowan after he died aged 65 last November. “So long North Star,” he wrote on Instagram. “I will love you forever.” Speaking to Billboard earlier this year, he explained the impact that the songwriter’s passing had on the recording process for Fontaines D.C.’s fourth LP, Romance.
“We were in the middle of recording the album when Shane died,” he said. “And I had to f–king take a break. I was really, deeply affected by it. Partly because he enhanced my relationship with my family! You know, he connected me to my Irishness maybe in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do without him.”
In 2020, Fontaines D.C. shared a cover of “I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day,” a traditional Irish song made famous by The Pogues, for SiriusXM.
System of a Down‘s 2025 is starting to get pretty packed. The “Chop Suey!” band announced on Monday (Dec. 16) that they will expand on the already announced North American stadium dates they recently announced with a run of South American stadium gigs.
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The seven-show Wake Up! South America stadium tour is slated to kick off on April 24 in Bogota, Colombia at the Estadio Nemésio Camacho El Campin, followed by a show in Cercado De Lima, Peru at the Estadio Nacional. The tour will move on to Chile, Argentina and Brazil, wrapping up with a run of three shows in Curitiba, Rio De Janieiro and São Paulo. The concerts will be SOAD’s first trip to South America since 2015. No opening acts have been announced for the South American shows.
Fans can sign up for first access to a pre-sale beginning Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time (Peru at 8 a.m.), with a general on-sale beginning at noon local time on Thursday (Dec. 19).
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The reveal came after the band announced a run of 2025 North American shows that will kick off at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ on August 27-28 with special guests Korn, as well as two night at Soldier Field in Chicago (August 31-Sept. 1) with Avenged Sevenfold and a final stop at Rogers Stadium in Toronto on Sept. 3 and 5 with Deftones.
SOAD went on hiatus in 2006, with band members splitting off to pursue side projects before reforming in 2011 for a run of European festival dates, which was followed by a series of festival and sporadic headlining gigs over the next decade. Despite teasing a return to the studio to work on a follow-up album to their 2005 double release, Mezmerize and Hypnotize, at press time there was no information on the band’s as-yet-untitled sixth studio album.
Check out the announcement and full list of announced 2025 SOAD tour dates below.
April 24 – Bogota, CO @ Estadio Nemesio Camacho El CampinApril 27 – Lima, PE @ Estadio NacionalApril 30 – Santiago, CL @ Parque Estadio NacionalMay 3 – Buenos Aires, AR @ Estadio Velez SarsfieldMay 6 – Curitiba, BR @ Estadio Couto PereiraMay 8 – Rio de Janeiro, BR @ Estadio Nilton SantonMay 10 – São Paulo, BR @ Allianz ParqueAugust 27 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium %August 28 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium %August 31 – Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field *Sept. 1 – Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field *Sept. 3 – Toronto, ON @ Rogers Stadium ^Sept. 5 – Toronto, ON @ Rogers Stadium ^
% = w/ Korn, Polyphia, and Wisp* = w/ Avenged Sevenfold, Polyphia, and Wisp^ = w/ Deftones, Polyphia, and Wisp
Coldplay crowns Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart. Not far removed, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Metallica follow in the top 10. Half of the ranking’s upper tier is made up of rock acts, allowing the long-dominant genre to have the biggest piece of the Boxscore pie. Among all dollars earned by 2024’s top 100 touring acts, rock is responsible for 36%, more than any other genre.
Rock’s rule is easily explained by its five acts in the top 10. But among artists between Nos. 11-20 on Top Tours, there is just one more name to add: Eagles at No. 19. Dominated by classic rock acts with chart-topping albums from the 1960s and ‘70s, the genre’s towering lead on stage has shrunk considerably over the course of the 21st century.
For every year but one between 2000-2010, rock acts represented more than 50% of Top Tours revenue, peaking at 68% in 2003. It’s only managed that once in the years since, when U2, Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay lined up at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in 2017. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, rock’s share bumped up and down year-to-year, but generally shifted from the majority to the mid-40% range, and now to the mid-30% range.
Watch the clip below to see how the genre makeup of Billboard’s top 100 tours has evolved over the course of the 21st century.
Rock’s share of the top 100 tours is actually up from last year, bumping from 32.4% to 36%. Still, it’s been below 40% for four of the last five years (excluding 2020 and 2021 because of venue closures due to COVID-19), off from an average of 57% throughout the 2000s decade. The genre’s reliance on legendary bands has left a gap as younger acts from other styles elevate to stadium status.
Pop is next in line, with 16.4% of 2024’s top 100 grosses. P!nk, Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo lead the charge, ticking up from last year’s 15.8%. One major caveat is the absence of Taylor Swift and the gargantuan grosses of The Eras Tour. While overall tour figures were published by The New York Times, data was not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, which means that its earnings are excluded from this equation. It’s estimated that if this year’s grosses were reported, pop would reign supreme with 27-28%, sending rock into the 20%s in both 2023 and 2024.
Pop and rock have been the top two touring genres for every year this century, with the lone exception of 2003, when country music narrowly out-paced pop, 13% to 12.2%. But while they remain on top, the spread has become significantly more even in the post-pandemic years.
Latin music and rap both posted record highs this year, up to 15.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The former hit a new peak in 2022, when Bad Bunny had the year’s biggest tour, becoming the first artist who doesn’t primarily perform in English to earn top year-end honors. While no Latin act has reached those heights since, his stadium success is no longer an anomaly. Luis Miguel grossed $290.4 million this year, and four other Spanish-speaking artists crossed the $100 million threshold. At 5.3% in 2019, Latin artists returned from the pandemic at 12.1% in 2022, then 11.5% in 2023, and now approaching 16% in 2024.
Rap artists have yet to scale their touring business to the extent of their streaming prowess, but this year made quite a dent. The genre’s top-100 share shot from 2.7% to 5.7%, more than doubling its representation and eclipsing its prior peak from 2019. Four women helped push hip-hop’s boundaries, with Doja Cat, Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj outnumbering male rappers on the Top Tours chart for the first time. Plus, Travis Scott scores the genre’s biggest year-end gross ever, at $168 million.
The oscillations of each genre’s performance from one year to the next often comes down to scheduling. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour was impactful enough to shift R&B artists from 5.3% in 2022 to 15.2% in 2023 and back to 5.9% in 2024. But the progression from pop and rock owning a combined 78.5% in 2000 to 52% in 2024 is indicative of gradual growth from a wide variety of diverse artists harnessing the power of their global audiences.
Lady Gaga has one mode: all-in. That’s the lesson Little Monsters learned (again) over the weekend when Mother Monster hopped in the car with Zane Lowe for a surprise A Carpool Karaoke Christmas special — which also featured Dua Lipa and Chappell Roan — and talked about the time she was told to dial it […]
Tom DeLonge is offering his thoughts on the mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey.
On Saturday (Dec. 14), the Blink-182 guitarist and UFO aficionado shared a post on social media, proposing a theory about the mass drone sightings that have been reported across the Garden State in recent weeks.
“The drones that are being discussed, can hover for six hours, and then disappear once they are spotted,” DeLonge wrote on Instagram. “This is why it’s been hard to get facts from any US Agency. Some of them can even move into the ocean, and then back up to the air. Which is called ‘transmedium travel.’ A very hard thing to do.”
The drone sightings, which have also been reported in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut since late November, are currently under investigation by local, state and federal authorities, who remain puzzled by the flying objects.
On Friday (Dec. 13), White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby downplayed the sightings, suggesting that people may be misidentifying manned aircraft as drones, according to the New York Post. He also assured the public that there was no cause for concern. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy reported nearly 50 sightings in the state alone just last week, NPR reports.
DeLonge, who has dedicated many years to researching and raising awareness about UFOs, compared the current sightings to mass UFO reports from the 1960s.
“There’s a strong possibility that these drones are ‘mimicking’ other aircraft,” the Blink-182 co-founder speculated, sharing a 1960s document about a military base that had “experienced a considerable number of reports of unidentified flying objects.”
He continued, “It’s all something to consider, and [although] we don’t have all the facts yet, we do know that UFOs play with ‘mimicry’ and that has been known for quite some time. Why? To get us to notice them without a major freak out? Who knows… but well, we are noticing nonetheless.”
Check out DeLonge’s full post about the East Coast drone sightings on Instagram here.
Larry Mullen Jr. may have spent his career drumming, but that doesn’t mean it all comes easily to him. In a new interview with Times Radio published Thursday (Dec. 12), the U2 percussionist revealed that he has long struggled with dyscalculia — a learning disorder related to mathematics — that sometimes interferes with his ability to play.
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While speaking to the publication about his work on the soundtrack for Anna Toomey’s Left Behind documentary, which tells the story of five mothers working to establish New York’s first school for dyslexics, Mullen Jr. said that he’s “always known that there’s something not particularly right with the way that I deal with numbers.”
“I’m numerically challenged,” he continued. “And I realized recently that I have dyscalculia, which is a sub-version of dyslexia. So I can’t count [and] I can’t add.”
According to Cleveland Clinic, dyscalculia interrupts the areas in the brain that process skills related to numerical comprehension, similar to how dyslexia complicates the brain’s ability to read. For Mullen Jr., the disorder makes it difficult for him to count through measures of music while he’s playing alongside bandmates Bono, the Edge and Adam Clayton.
“When people watch me play sometimes, they say, ‘You look pained,’” he told Times Radio. “I am pained, because I’m trying to count the bars. I had to find ways of doing this — and counting bars is like climbing Everest.”
Featuring music written and produced by Mullen Jr., Left Behind first premiered at Woodstock Film Festival in October. The documentary’s story hit close to home for the U2 band member in more ways than one, he says, as one of his sons also struggles with a learning disability.
“Making the music through the eyes of my dyslexic son felt personal and visceral,” shared Mullen Jr.
The interview comes just a couple weeks after the Nov. 22 arrival of U2’s How to Re-assemble an Atomic Bomb, a special release celebrating the 20-year anniversary of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb that features previously unreleased tracks from the 2004 album’s recording sessions. In September, the rock band premiered V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film at Sphere Las Vegas, an onscreen playback of the group’s historic residency at Las Vegas’ The Sphere.
U2’s most recent album was Songs of Surrender, which arrived in March 2023. The project reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200.
Myles Smith’s “Stargazing” caps a triumphant 27-week trip to No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, rising a spot on the tally dated Dec. 21.
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“Stargazing” reigns with 4.7 million audience impressions, up 15%, on alternative, adult alternative and mainstream rock reporting stations in the week ending Dec. 12, according to Luminate.
The song wraps the lengthiest rise to No. 1 by a solo male, and ties for the fifth-longest overall, since Rock & Alternative Airplay began in June 2009.
Longest Rises to No. 1, Rock & Alternative Airplay:33 weeks, “Out of My League,” Fitz and the Tantrums (reached No. 1 in 2013)30, “First, “Cold War Kids (2015)29, “Running Up That Hill,” Meg Myers (2020)29, “Trampoline,” SHAED (2019)27, “Stargazing,” Myles Smith (2024)27, “All My Favorite Songs,” Weezer (2021)26, “Way Down We Go,” KALEO (2016)24, “Broken,” lovelytheband (2018)24, “Tighten Up,” The Black Keys (2010)
“Stargazing” is Smith’s first Rock & Alternative Airplay ruler, earned with the British singer-songwriter’s first entry on the ranking. He’s the third act to score an initial leader on the chart this year, following The Offspring (“Make It All Right”), Hozier (“Too Sweet”) and Pearl Jam (“Dark Matter”). He’s the first to achieve the feat with a maiden hit since Giovannie & the Hired Guns, with “Ramon Ayala,” in 2022. Before Smith, Alice Merton last achieved the feat among soloists as a lead act, with “No Roots” in 2018.
Along the way to its Rock & Alternative Airplay coronation, “Stargazing” led the Alternative Airplay chart in September. (It ranks at No. 5 on the latest tally.) It also leads Adult Pop Airplay for a second week, following a week atop Pop Airplay. It becomes just the eighth song to have hit No. 1 on Rock & Alternative Airplay, Alternative Airplay, Adult Pop Airplay and Pop Airplay, joining Hozier’s “Too Sweet” earlier in 2024, Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” (2018-19), Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still” (2017), Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” (2015-16), Lorde’s “Royals” (2013), fun.’s “We Are Young,” featuring Janelle Monáe (2012) and Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know,” featuring Kimbra (2012).
“Stargazing,” which also reached No. 4 on Adult Alternative Airplay, ranked at No. 3 on the most recently published Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart (dated Dec. 14, reflecting the Nov. 29-Dec. 5 tracking week), with 53.4 million audience impressions across all radio formats, 6.3 million official U.S. streams and 1,000 sold.
“Stargazing” is on Smith’s EP A Minute…, which debuted at its No. 25 high on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated Nov. 23.
All Billboard charts dated Dec. 21 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, Dec. 17.
The Head and the Heart notches its fifth leader on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart, vaulting three places to No. 1 on the Dec. 21-dated survey with “Arrow.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The band previously topped the Adult Alternative Airplay tally with “Virginia (Wind in […]
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From Linkin Park 2.0’s BBMA debut to Teddy Swims, Jelly Roll, Coldplay, Fuerzo Regida and Stray Kids, we’ve got all of Thursday night’s (Dec. 12) sets here for you.
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The 2024 Billboard Music Awards presented by Marriott Bonvoy are in the books, with multiple artists taking home awards in between memorable performances from Stray Kids, Jelly Roll and more. Shaboozey was the first star to take the stage at the ceremony Thursday night (Dec. 13) — a fitting kickoff considering his single “A Bar […]