Rock
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Billie Joe Armstrong knows a thing or two about what it takes to rock a stadium crowd. So when the Green Day singer/guitarist attended one of Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour shows in Lyon, France at Groupama Stadium over the weekend he came away super-impressed by… well, all of it. The punk veteran posted a pic […]
A superstar group of rock icons will be featured on an upcoming tribute album honoring Jesse Malin as the beloved punk troubadour continues his recovery from a spinal stroke he suffered last year that left him partially paralyzed. Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin is due out on Sept. 20 and will feature Bruce Springsteen, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, late MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer (with the Kills’ Alison Mosshart), Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and many more.
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In a statement, D Generation singer and solo performer Malin, 57, said, “As always in my songs, the themes are all there — transcendence, positivity and global unity through music. This is what I love to do, and I’m going to do everything I can to keep doing it.” All proceeds from the album will go to Malin’s Sweet Relief artist fund.
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The album honoring the New York punk stalwart whose gutter poetry songwriting acumen has long made him a favorite among fellow songsmiths will also feature contributions from the Hold Steady, the Replacements/GNR’s Tommy Stinson, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr., the Wallflowers, Spoon, the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, Frank Turner and Rancid.
Malin revealed that. he suffered a spinal cord stroke while out to dinner with a friend in New York’s East Village in May 2023 that left him paralyzed from the waist down. When his insurance did not cover the significant medical bills he incurred, a Sweet Relief fundraiser was started to help with long-term care.
The album’s first single, the Bleachers’ “Prisoners of Paradise,” is out now and you can pre-order the album here. “Prisoners” originally appeared on Malin’s third solo studio album, 2007’s Glitter in the Gutter, which featured contributions from Springsteen, Wallflower’s Jakob Dylan, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett.
In an Instagram post, Malin said the song has always been one of his favorites, describing it as being about “new beginnings and rebirth… letting the past crumble and starting fresh.”
In a video update from Malin posted in March, the singer said he’d been receiving treatment and undergoing extensive physical therapy in Buenos Aires, Argentina for several weeks and that the doctors “are seeing some progress and I push forward every single day nonstop.” At the time he said he really missed playing music and was hoping to get back to it this fall. “It has been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through to say the least . You guys take care of each other please and don’t forget me,” he wrote.
A full track listing for the album has not yet been released.
Watch the “Prisoners of Paradise” visualizer below.
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Before Russell Crowe became an Oscar-winning actor starring in such films as A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator and L.A. Confidential, he was a musician. Crowe picked up his first guitar when he was six and has always made music alongside his more famous day job.
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The Australian performer will release his newest album, Prose and Cons, with his band Indoor Garden Party on Friday (June 7). This is not some vanity project, he tells Billboard. “This is an actual band of musicians. They play together,” he says. “We feel things out, we work out what works best and then we go and play them live and if another opportunity comes up, we discuss in our next rehearsal and adjust accordingly.”
The album is based in rock, but strays into other genres on such tunes as the fiery revival stomp, “Let Your Light Shine” or the country-tinged anthem, “Time & Kindness.”
The set came together over a multi-year period. “It’s been like a five-year process since we started playing around with the songs,” he says. “Probably of the original 11 or 12 songs I thought I was going to record, there’s maybe one or two that survived and the rest are songs that have come along.”
Crowe did the interview from his home studio in Australia, in front of a wall of classic guitars spanning the 1950s through the 1970s that he has acquired over the years, including a candy-apple red Fender Stratocaster “that’s played on a few Billboard Top 10 singles in its time,” he said.
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In addition to pulling one of those guitars down when he’s feeling inspired, Crowe met a luthier who now makes bespoke custom guitars for him and his friends. “We’re doing some insane things, man. One of the guitars we made is purely out of woods from Australia,” he says. “We made that for Ed Sheeran and gave it to him. He just turned around, grabbed it and sang a song which I’ve got on video. And that song, which hadn’t been released, two months later was like at the top of the charts around the world.”
Crowe and the band will embark on his first U.S. tour in more than a dozen years in August and the hand-picked stops will include Los Angeles’ acclaimed Whisky-A-Go-Go. Before Crowe hits the U.S., the band will have embark on a short European jaunt that includes the prestigious Glastonbury Festival in England alongside headliners SZA, Coldplay and Dua Lipa. The festival takes place June 26-30.
Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood posted a lengthy note on Tuesday (June 4) in response to renewed criticism for his long-running collaboration with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa after the pair played a show in Israel on May 26 in the midst of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Greenwood wrote that he’s playing festivals across Europe this summer with the band Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, noting that people are asking him why.
The guitarist has been collaborating with Tassa and releasing music with him since 2008, saying that he thinks an artistic collaboration that combines Arab and Jewish musicians is “worthwhile… And one that reminds everyone that the Jewish cultural roots in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back for thousands of years.”
The letter posted on X came after the pair played a show at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv last week, where they performed songs from their 2023 album Jarak Qaribak (Your Neighbor Is Your Friend), which features collaborations with artists from Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah. After the gig, the Jewish Chronicle reported that the BDS movement threatened to boycott Radiohead.
The movement, whose initial stand for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is a Palestinian-led effort to pressure Israel to withdraw from occupied territories and offer full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens while applying pressure to end investments in Israeli businesses and encourage sanctions against the Jewish state.
The BDS movement posted a message on Twitter after the show that read: “We call for peaceful, creative pressure on @radiohead to convincingly distance itself from this blatant complicity in the crime of crimes, or face grassroots measures.”
Greenwood reacted in his letter by noting that Tassa’s grandfather was one of the most famous Iraqi composers as part of the Al Kuwaity brothers, whose songs he said are still staples on Arab radio stations. “Others choose to believe this kind of project is unjustifiable, and are urging the silencing of this — or any — artistic effort made by Israeli Jews,” Greenwood wrote.
“But I can’t join that call: the silencing of Israeli filmmakers/musicians/dancers when their work tour abroad — especially when it’s at the urging of their fellow Western film makers/musicians/artists — feels unprogressive to me. Not least because it’s these people that are invariably the most progressive members of any society,” he continued.
The Tel Aviv show came after Greenwood was spotted at a protest in Israel calling for the release of the remaining 120 hostages being held by Hamas after the militant group’s murderous surprise Oct. 7 assault on Israel in which more than 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were murdered, sexually assaulted and attacked and more than 250 hostages were taken according to Israeli authorities. Israel launched a counter-attack aimed at eradicating Hamas that has now lasted eight months and resulted in the deaths of more than 36,000 Palestinians and injuries to more than 86,000 according to Palestinian authorities, as well as the destruction of much of the infrastructure in Gaza.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Greenwood is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katan, whose family lost a nephew who was called up to military service after the war began. Three days after Hamas’ attack, Greenwood tweeted, “Condolences to the families of the innocent concert goers, children and civilians of all ages murdered, raped or abducted in these massacres. It’s impossible not to despair.”
The Post reported that during the gig Tassa said, “there are musicians here, not politicians… music has always worked wonders, may we know better days and may everyone return safely.”
Greenwood wrote that he was grateful to be working with the many musicians he’s met while working on the collaborative project, “all of whom strike me as much braver — and taking far more of a principled risk — than those who are trying to shut us down, or who are now attempting to ascribe a sinister ulterior motivation to the band’s existence. There isn’t one: we are musicians honouring a shared culture, and I’ve been involved in this for nearly 20 years now.”
President Biden has been pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire proposal to end the war that has displaced more than a million Palestinians, with the U.S. commander in chief telling Time magazine this week that there is “every reason” for people to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation as he faces calls for new elections. A number of artists have also urgently called for an immediate ceasefire, including Paramore, Dua Lipa and Renée Rapp.
Greenwood ended the note by stressing that no art is as “‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us. How can it be? But doing nothing seems a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.”
He said that the latter is why he’s making music with this band, welcoming listeners to disagree with or ignore what they’re doing. “But I hope you now understand what the true motivation is, and can react to the music without suspicion or hate,” he said.
See Greenwood’s full letter below.
By the time Hootie & The Blowfish released their Atlantic Records debut, Cracked Rear View, on July 5, 1994, the band had already been together for more than eight years. Singer Darius Rucker and guitarist Mark Bryan met while attending the University of South Carolina and began gigging as a cover band called The Wolf Brothers. They were joined by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Brantley Smith, who was eventually replaced by Jim “Soni” Sonefeld. And Hootie & The Blowfish was born.
During the height of the grunge movement, Atlantic Records A&R executive Tim Sommer signed the quartet, which had already built a strong regional following for its jangly, harmony-filled pop rock songs and Rucker’s rich baritone. But the label’s expectations for the album were low.
“The only people [at Atlantic] championing us at the time were Tim and [Atlantic’s then-president] Danny Goldberg,” Rucker recalls. “One guy actually said that if they put Cracked Rear View out, they’d be the laughingstocks of the music business. Grunge was king, and nobody was looking for this pop/rock band out of South Carolina.”
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But Cracked Rear View surpassed all expectations — and then some, to put it mildly. Bolstered by the singalong, uplifting first single, “Hold My Hand,” the album bounced into the top spot on the Billboard 200 five times and has been certified 21 times platinum by the RIAA, signifying sales of more than 21 million units in the United States. The album, which took its name from a lyric in a John Hiatt song, is the highest-certified debut album of all time, according to RIAA data.
Thirty years later, to mark the anniversary of Cracked Rear View, Hootie & The Blowfish are staging the Summer Camp With Trucks Tour on a bill with Collective Soul and Edwin McCain.
Today, Bryan and Rucker fondly remember making the album with producer Don Gehman (R.E.M., John Mellencamp), whom they still work with; their favorite moment at the 1996 Grammy Awards; and where they were when the album first went to No. 1.
A promotional photo used on the band’s flyers in the early ’90s.
Courtesy of Hootie & the Blowfish
You started as a cover band, The Wolf Brothers. When did you start writing your own songs?
Mark Bryan: We were having fun doing the acoustic covers in the meantime, just the two of us. But I think we were always dreaming a little bigger, for sure. Then as Hootie, when we were in school, we started writing, but it was nothing we would want to share with you. (Laughs.)
Darius Rucker: We had decided that we wanted to make a change and [do] mostly originals. So when Brantley [Smith] left and with [Jim “Soni” Sonefeld] coming in, he made it an easy transition. We had written a couple of songs, but when Soni came in, we really started writing.
Soni came in with “Hold My Hand,” right?
Rucker: He played that the day he auditioned for us. He walked out of the room and I told the other guys, “He’s in the band!”
There were certain songwriters and acts you adored, like Radney Foster and R.E.M. How did they influence your sound?
Rucker: There’s always such a country element, and all of that comes from Radney Foster and [Bill] Lloyd. That jangly guitar we use definitely comes from R.E.M. [member] Peter Buck’s guitar with the jingle. It was rock’n’roll but it wasn’t metal. It was something we could do.
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Who is an act people would be surprised to know influenced the band?
Rucker: We listened to a lot of rap along with those country songs. Digital Underground and De La Soul and those bands. They influenced us in a big way. We still do [Digital Underground’s] “Freaks of the Industry.”
Why are the songs on the album credited to all four band members?
Bryan: We’ve split our publishing right down the middle from the very beginning. Nobody knew whose songs were going to be the hits. Our attorney was smart, and he was inspired by R.E.M. Not only did they inspire us musically, but they inspired us on the business side as well because they did the same thing. That fit with the way we were writing together anyway because everybody was bringing stuff in.
Despite the low expectations, the album took off. When did you realize you had a hit?
Bryan: Right when “Hold My Hand” hit, we realized our sound was connecting. Then it was “Let Her Cry,” “I Only Want To Be With You” and “Time.” A lot of times, it’s really hard for the artist, manager and label to decide what’s the right song for the [next] single. The funny thing about Cracked Rear View is there was never any question. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
Where were you when the album went to No. 1 for the first of its five times?
Rucker: We were on the road, and it had been moving [up the charts] so much, we were waiting for it to go to No. 1. Then you get that phone call that you’re finally the No. 1 record in the country. It was like, “Great. Let’s go play a show!” When you have so many naysayers and then you have the No. 1 record, it’s a pretty great feeling. You’re not [considered] cool, but you’re selling half a million albums a week.
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The melodies are so upbeat and jangly that it was easy to overlook a lot of the darkness or messages in the lyrics. For example, “Drowning” is about racism. Did you feel some people didn’t understand what you were saying?
Rucker: One hundred percent. I still don’t. “Hold My Hand” was a protest song. That’s a song about “Why are we hating each other?” You’ve got “Drowning,” and “Not Even the Trees” is such a dark song. “Let Her Cry” is a dark song. I think some people were caught up in “Hold My Hand” and “I Only Want To Be With You” and they didn’t look any deeper than that.
Bryan: I think Darius was very overt with “Drowning,” but that wasn’t our intention on a lot of our songs. It was more of that subtle approach to that, which is just treating each other right. I think there were other lyrics, here and there, where he was telling you about how he was feeling as a Black man in America at the time. It would have been nice if people caught up more on that. And I think from our end, too, with the fame that we got, we maybe had a responsibility to write into that a little more, and I don’t know if we ever resolved that.
For the 30th anniversary, do you wish people would give it a deeper listen?
Rucker: We wish they would but they won’t, and the thing that really matters to us is 23 million records sold [worldwide]. Success is the best revenge. Say what you want. Don’t put us on the ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We still have one of the top 10-selling records of all time.
Does the lack of recognition from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bother you?
Rucker: If we didn’t get in, that’s fine. But you really mean to tell us that we don’t even deserve to be on the ballot?
When was the last time you listened to Cracked Rear View from start to finish?
Rucker: 1994. I’m not one to listen to records after I put them out. Ever. I don’t really love to hear me sing, to be honest with you.
Bryan: When we played it in Mexico last April. We played it from start to finish.
A performance in Raleigh, N.C., during the 2019 Group Therapy Tour.
Todd & Chris Owyoung
In a shocking twist at the 1996 American Music Awards, Garth Brooks won favorite artist. He left the award on the podium, saying he didn’t deserve it and said backstage that you did.
Rucker: That’s one of the greatest, classiest things I’ve ever seen. When Garth did that, it just said so much to us about what we were doing for music. Every time I tell that story and he’s around, he says, “You know where our award is, Darius? On the mantel!” (Laughs.)
The next month, you won Grammys for best new artist and best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals. What do you remember from that night?
Rucker: We figured they had to give us best new artist because we sold so many records. But the second one, we thought [TLC’s] “Waterfalls” was going to win everything. KISS, in makeup for the first time since 1979, and Tupac [Shakur] walk out to present this category. We had just won best new artist and they rush us back to our seats. We’re drunk. We sit down and then Tupac says, “My boys, Hootie & The Blowfish.” That was unbelievable.
So “my boys” meant as much as the Grammy?
Rucker: Exactly! And KISS meant so much to all of us.
Bryan: I can’t physically remember being on the stage with KISS and Tupac. It was so much bigger than me that I almost blocked it out. Isn’t that crazy? It was so overwhelming that I didn’t embrace the moment maybe the way I would have now.
Thirty years later, what do you think is the album’s legacy?
Bryan: It seems to resonate in people’s lives in a very big way. Those stories like [it’s] their wedding song or they say, “It got me through my father’s death,” always keep coming back up to us, and it never gets old. What a great full-circle way as a songwriter to know that you’ve connected with people. As a songwriter and musician, you can’t ask for more. It’s such a dream come true to have made an album that has connected on such a level with people like that.
This story originally appeared in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The length of Taylor Swift‘s two-hour The Tortured Poets Department album is just smashing, as far as Billy Corgan is concerned.
In an Irish Times interview published Monday (June 3), the Smashing Pumpkins frontman defended the pop star’s polarizing decision to include a whopping 31 songs on her latest project, giving her high praise in the process.
“Taylor Swift is one of the most gifted pop artists of all time,” he told the publication. “How is it a bad thing that she’s releasing more music? I can’t follow that … You can go on Spotify and just skip it.
“People complained about the length of my last album, Atum,” he added, citing his band’s own two-hour-plus record released in 2023. “I thought, ‘Well, just go make your own playlist. Just listen to the record one time – rag over the six or 10 songs you like and make your own record.’ Why is this such a strange concept?”
The interview comes amid Swift’s sixth straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with Tortured Poets, which the 14-time Grammy winner had originally promoted as being just 16 tracks long. Two hours after it dropped at midnight on April 19, however, she unveiled 15 more songs as part of a surprise “Anthology” double album.
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The project went on to sell 2.61 million equivalent album units in its first week, blowing the singer’s previous personal benchmark of 1.653 million for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) out of the water. It also made Swift the first artist to ever occupy every spot of the Billboard Hot 100 top 14 at once, led by chart-topper “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone.
While making his case for Tortured Poets‘ run-time, Corgan also spoke about his late friend Sinéad O’Connor. The Irish singer-songwriter died of natural causes at age 56 last year.
“Let’s go back to Sinéad for a second,” the “1979” singer told the publication. “Now that Sinéad’s gone, would it be a bad thing if somebody turned up tomorrow and said, ‘Hey, I just found this tape, and there’s enough for 20′ – or 30 or 50 – ‘Sinéad songs.’ Would that be a bad thing?”
Nearly seven years ago, Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger and his wife, Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, a fellow musician, made a revolutionary discovery in the realm of skincare. The two, who share a love for science as well — Ann Marie majored in biology, later teaching physics and chemistry, while Mike is a Harvard graduate who has […]
For Zach Bryan’s The Quittin’ Time Tour, the fast-rising superstar has managed to make arenas feel like intimate backyard jam sessions – which is exactly what he delivered during his first of three nights at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com. With a stage situated in the center of the floor, allowing for every seat in the house […]
Lenny Kravitz brought a hefty dose of rock ‘n’ roll to London’s Wembley Stadium prior to the kickoff at the 2024 UEFA Champions League final. Ahead of the match between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid on Saturday (June 1), the 60-year-old performed shortened versions of some of his biggest songs. The rocker’s high energy six-minute […]
Steve Miller is sharing his thoughts on Eminem‘s new song “Houdini.”
On Saturday (June 1), the Steve Miller Band frontman praised Em after his group’s chart-topping song “Abracadabra” was interpolated in the rap superstar’s latest single.
“There is a long chain of stories, poetry, lyrics, and musical roots that have crossed cultures and generations inspiring the whole world for hundreds of years and in all those lines of thought, music, and rhythm there are special artists who take it all in and create new original ideas from their own feelings and experiences,” Miller wrote in a lengthy message on Instagram. “You are one of those timeless originators building something new on a long musical legacy of original artists.”
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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee continued, “I have always tried to credit, honor, and respect the major influencers in my life and to always credit, honor royalties and share knowledge of their work through my own work. I didn’t know it would be this way when I was a kid trying to make a living playing music and making records, I only knew I had to respect the art that came before me and fight for it too among all the crooks, thieves, and imposters.”
“Abracadabra” spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1982. Miller’s music has been sampled by numerous artists over the years, including other hip-hop stars like Nas, Lil Wayne, Ice Cube, Beastie Boys, and N.W.A.
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The rocker added that Eminem is one of the few artists “who take the time or make the effort to stand up for themselves and credit and respect their influencers at the same time.” He concluded his letter, writing, “Marshall Mathers you are an exception and on my short list of people who respect the art. To be included in your process feels good while I’m still singing and playing the music I love. I’m Honored.”
“Houdini” is the lead single off of Eminem’s 12th studio album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce), which is expected to arrive this summer. The upcoming set follows 2020’s Music to Be Murdered By, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
“Houdini” hit streaming services on Friday (May 31). The star-studded accompanying music video features cameos by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, among others.
Eminem announced plans for the new album shortly after his appearance at the 2024 NFL Draft, which happened to be in his hometown of Detroit. He used a clip in the mold of an Unsolved Mysteries episode featuring a cameo from 50 Cent. However, it was actually Dr. Dre who spilled the beans on Em’s next album during a late-night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March.
Read Miller’s full reaction to Eminem’s “Houdini” on Instagram below.