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A full 10 years ago, global audiences got to know Andrew Hozier-Byrne — the Irish singer-songwriter known to most simply as Hozier — with his smash “Take Me to Church.” Written and released while he was still an independent artist playing Dublin open mics, the howling alt-folk ballad decried religious institutional hypocrisy and turned into enough of a surprise hit to get licensed to Columbia Records. It became omnipresent and climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100; Hozier, in turn, became one of 2014’s biggest breakout stars.

But over the next decade, he never matched its crossover success. That is, until this year: with “Too Sweet,” a slinky pop-soul ode to responsible decadence that once again made Hozier’s haunting wail unavoidable across multiple radio formats. The song (from his now ironically titled Unheard EP) became a runaway prerelease success in snippet form on TikTok, then on streaming services once the full song dropped in March, and then on the Hot 100 in April as it debuted at No. 5 and eventually did “Church” one better by topping the chart three weeks later, as well as the Pop Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay lists. For most artists who have gone 10 years without a major pop hit, its success would have been an absolute godsend — a comeback-marking, career-defining moment of validation.

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For Hozier? Eh, it was a nice bonus.

Which isn’t to say that he’s not thankful for the song’s streaming virality or for its subsequent pop radio crossover — the unassuming (and strikingly modest) artist projects only gratitude and humility when talking about his 2024 wins. It’s just that… well, the song’s chart takeover hasn’t really changed his career much yet.

“Ten years into your career, you know there’s going to be busy cycles, you know there’s going to be quiet cycles,” Hozier explains with a shrug.

This year obviously wasn’t one of the latter. He’s speaking to Billboard from Perth, Australia, on election night in America — which, with his jet-lagged sleep schedule, means he woke up in the “dark cloud” of Donald Trump’s electoral map takeover. “It feels like the world is controlled by gray-haired old men,” he says, then adds with a bit of mordant humor: “But in a few years… we can’t dodge coffins forever, you know?”

He has just had some rare time off — about three weeks, during which he recharged with friends and family in the countryside of Wicklow, Ireland, that he calls home — and is now between his two dates in Perth, part of a 12-show run Down Under that will take his total gigs for 2024 into the triple digits.Still, he says that when it comes to “Too Sweet,” 2024 hardly compares with his first turn in the pop spotlight. “When it was ‘Take Me to Church,’ that was the first song that I ever put out. So I was learning everything about everything all at once, also while trying to keep pace with this train that was moving,” he explains. “That was my whole life, was catching up with that song.”

Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.

Austin Hargrave

“Too Sweet,” on the other hand? “It kind of just put wind in the sails of a ship that was already sort of moving,” he says, still sounding unsure of how to best quantify the effect. “It was just like this thing that happened, and it’s been like a cherry on the cake.”

And while Hozier has never seemed one to puff up his own wins, this time his entire team also appears to view the boost from his recent striking success in relatively low-key terms. Caroline Downey, his longtime manager, sums up the impact of “Too Sweet” even more succinctly than the artist himself.

“It was just lovely,” she says. “A lovely surprise.”

Most artists with a single major hit follow a similar trajectory. Hozier, for the last decade, has not.

For one thing, though his lone visit to the Hot 100 in the 2010s was with “Take Me to Church,” he found greater success on other charts. He established a home base on Adult Alternative Airplay, where he scored six top five hits before the end of the decade — including a second No. 1 after “Take Me to Church” with 2018’s Mavis Staples-featuring “Nina Cried Power” — and he topped the Billboard 200 in 2019 with Wasteland, Baby!, which features the latter track.

More importantly, though, he developed a major live following. Hozier has spent his entire career as a road warrior, gradually leveling up in terms of venue size — and earning lifelong fans with his live combination of low-key charisma and soaring singalongs, elevated by his piercing baritone — but making sure not to skip steps, or markets. “I’ve been doing this 25 years, and I don’t know if there’s another artist at the agency that’s played as many markets as Andrew has played,” says WME senior partner/global co-head of music Kirk Sommer, who oversees his North American touring. “He’s just completely and utterly dedicated to his craft and plays each show as if it’s his last. And he’s really put in the work.”

On his 2023 tour in support of new album Unreal Unearth — his third top three entry on the Billboard 200 in as many tries — Hozier started to really see the fruits of that labor with some of his highest-profile venue plays to date, including his first headlining show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. While he has maintained his Adult Alternative audience from the prior decade, he also picked up a new, younger one on TikTok during the global coronavirus shutdown; they fell for the rock star’s modest Irish countryside lifestyle as much as his poetic lyrics and spirit-­lifting anthems.

“The fans seem to really enjoy that… I guess, like, domestic, sort of silly side of me?” he offers, somewhat incredulously. “During the pandemic, we’d do these kind of live readings on Instagram — I’d maybe read a few poems, or we’d do these Instagram Lives, play a few songs. I think maybe there’s a sort of lasting relationship that [makes it feel] like there’s an element of domesticity to me? And that’s why people are like, ‘Hey, talk to us about the bees that you’re keeping in your garden.’ ”

Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.

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While Hozier grew to an arena-level headliner and a TikTok sensation, his mainstream profile remained relatively low. Pop crossover was not a priority of his — “I was always wary of attempting to write hits for the sake of writing hits,” he says — and he has never been much of a critics’ darling or a Grammy favorite. (“Take Me to Church” scored a song of the year nod, but he hasn’t been nominated since; “Too Sweet” was snubbed for the 2025 awards.) Consequently, his sustained level of success escaped the notice of some less-plugged-in fans and media.

“We did have one interview he was doing at [a festival] where the interviewer said — I think [Hozier] nearly choked on his coffee — ‘Where have you been for 10 years?’ ” Downey recalls. “You’re going, “He’s about to close the festival tonight. He’s kind of been around…’ ”

Even before “Too Sweet,” though, Hozier’s rising success was increasingly evident — and his influence on a new generation of rootsy, big-voiced singer-songwriters equally hard to miss. In late 2023, he appeared on a new version of Noah Kahan’s Stick Season opener “Northern Attitude” — which not only returned Hozier to the Hot 100’s top 40 (at No. 37) for the first time since 2014, but contextualized him as a key influence on Kahan’s brand of alt-folk and as one of the artists who had laid the groundwork for the latter’s crossover success. And just days before the release of “Too Sweet,” Lollapalooza announced that Hozier would headline the August festival — his highest-profile bill-topping appearance to that point.

“I was like, ‘Well, how is this gonna go?’ ” Sommer says of checking out his client’s ultimately successful headliner turn in Chicago. “How’s it gonna go? There are gonna be people for as far as the eye can see!”

Meanwhile, Hozier was (perhaps unwittingly) developing an increasingly devoted corner of his fan base. The affection held for him in the lesbian community has already been a source of internet incredulity for years — “Why Do Lesbians Love Hozier?” blog explorations date back to the turn of the 2020s — though the conversation went overground this year when Lucy Dacus told The New York Times: “Lesbians love Hozier.” (Hozier, an outspoken LGBTQ+ ally, calls his support in the community “really, really wonderful, really sweet… there’s a lot of humor in it, too, and a lot of self-awareness.”)

Because Hozier’s career momentum was already trending in a positive direction, the success of “Too Sweet” can be interpreted as not just an effect, but also a cause of his recent revival. “The song, I think, is very special — it really connected with people on a lot of levels — so that is a part of [its success],” says Erika Alfredson, head of marketing at Columbia. “But it’s also a little bit of the market [being more open to him] and also a lot of the work that Andrew has done. And I think it very well could have happened with another song of his. This just happened to be the one.”

This helps explain why Hozier and his team are reserved about the impact “Too Sweet” has had on his career. Before the song’s March release, his 2024 tour dates (announced in January) had already sold out — even with its ambitious 100-plus-date routing that included three nights at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., and an unprecedented four nights at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium.

All of this adds up to “Too Sweet,” one of 2024’s biggest hits by just about any metric, essentially amounting to a nonessential luxury for Hozier. While the song’s success — which it achieved much quicker than the slow-burning smash that was “Take Me to Church” — has bowled over Hozier and his team, they’re hard-pressed to cite significant doors the song has opened for the already massive star.

Hozier does point to recent appearances on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and at the iHeart Radio Festival as two particular opportunities that “Too Sweet” may have made possible. But anyway, he says, his calendar was so packed this year that it might have been difficult for him to take advantage of more than that: “Because the tour schedule was already in place when that song blew up, [you’re still] fulfilling everything that you were planning on doing anyway. Your routing is done. So even when you get those invites, it can be a challenge.”

“Does it change [anything]?” Downey wonders aloud when reflecting on the song’s impact. “I guess it just reminds people that he’s there.”

Since it has worked so well for him so far, could Hozier just follow this career path indefinitely — plugging away as a live favorite, coming back with one gigantic pop smash every 10 years and then returning to business as usual?

“I mean, it’d be fun to be 44 and have a No. 1 hit! It’d be fun to be 54, to be 64… Can you guarantee me the No. 1 when I’m in my 80s?” he asks excitedly in response to the idea. “I’m going to be doing whatever I can to stay alive, man. I’m going to be hiring people to be doing all the weird blood transfusions, [to] hook me up to whatever machine.”

Regardless of whether he can still top the Hot 100 when he’s of retirement age, the plan from day one — which his team has enacted brilliantly over the past decade — was to have Hozier achieve the kind of long-term career stability where he could still be performing at a high level as a sexagenarian.

“ ‘We see you as a Bruce Springsteen — we see you as an artist who’ll still be releasing albums long after I’m gone,’ ” Downey remembers telling Hozier very early in his career. “He’s 34 years of age. We want to see him still working like U2 and Bruce Springsteen and a whole lot of other acts at 64. And the only way that I feel that he can do that is by pacing it. And actually not making decisions based on money and making decisions that are right for his long-term career, not his short-term.”

Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.

Austin Hargrave

And while “Too Sweet” might not have had much calculable immediate career impact for 2024 Hozier, it might very well move him closer to that long-term goal. Sommer has noted how Hozier’s social media and streaming stats have spiked since his “Too Sweet” success: between 1 million and 2 million new followers each on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, as well as an additional 30 million followers on Spotify. Those numbers indicated increased fan demand that could turbo-charge Hozier’s already-scorching live success.

“All those [2024] shows sold out instantly,” Sommer emphasizes. “So how much demand was there? How many people were unable to buy tickets at the time? And we really didn’t get carried away anywhere. We didn’t try to exhaust demand anywhere. So I would say that there was still pent-up demand after the March on-sale. And now we have this song…”

All of this has led Sommer to a conclusion that might stun any remaining listeners unaware of Hozier’s recent level-up — and maybe even a few who are: “I’m incredibly confident [that] he’s a stadium-level headliner.”

That may seem like a big leap for Hozier, who has never played a full arena tour in the United States — but Sommer doesn’t see it that way. “A lot of these amphitheaters are bigger than a lot of these indoor buildings,” he says. “You look at the [four nights at] Forest Hills… what’s that, 60,000 tickets? And it could’ve been more? We chose to play some select arenas in places just because we felt that it might be a better fan experience, and [Hozier is] very mindful of the fan experience. So by no means would this be skipping steps in any way.”

Downey says that the current live plan for Hozier (following his Dec. 21 appearance as musical guest on Saturday Night Live, his first since 2014) is to go back on the road next year, “kind of maybe May to October,” including some major festival headlining gigs, with dates to be announced soon. His own upcoming dates aren’t likely to be stadiums, but Downey agrees those are in his future. “I think that stadiums will definitely be on album four,” she says. “And I do think he’s ready… the slow burn, with the 10 years of him touring, has been from starting him small and gradually building and building and building, that he is perfectly comfortable now in arenas, and he’s perfectly comfortable playing to 40, 50,000 people in a field. So a stadium would be just the next step, I think. With ease.”

Hozier allows himself another rare moment of being pumped about his success when discussing this recent run of momentum — capped, if not created, by “Too Sweet” — and “the ambitious feeling of opportunity” that comes with following it up with all eyes once again upon him. “I can do ­whatever I want. I can do something totally different, I can respond to [“Too Sweet”] with something else, or something different… it’s nice,” he says. “It just feels like the sky is open, and ‘Off you go.’ ”

This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.

Primus may have found their new guy and he’s a guy you already know. After the veteran band revealed in late October that longtime drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander had unexpectedly departed the group, they put out an open call for a new timekeeper and one of the musicians who threw his sticks into the ring […]

Ocean City, Maryland, is gearing up for an unforgettable weekend of rock as the inaugural Boardwalk Rock Festival debuts May 17-18, 2025.
The two-day event will bring together some of the biggest names in rock history alongside contemporary favorites, headlined by Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Nickelback, and Shinedown.

For fans of rock history, the lineup is a dream come true. Def Leppard, whose classic albums Pyromania and Hysteria spawned multiple Billboard Hot 100 hits, including “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Love Bites,” remain a dominant force in arena rock.

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Joining them is Mötley Crüe, who made a mark on the Billboard 200 with Dr. Feelgood, their first album to reach No. 1, thanks to iconic tracks like “Kickstart My Heart” and the title track. Nickelback, a staple of modern rock with chart-toppers like “How You Remind Me” (a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit in 2001), will also headline, bringing their anthems to the boardwalk.

Rounding out the headliners is Shinedown, a consistent presence on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs Chart, with 18 No. 1 hits, including their enduring single “Second Chance.”

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Beyond the headliners, the festival’s stacked lineup includes Halestorm, whose album The Strange Case Of… peaked in the top 15 on the Billboard 200 and earned the band a Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. Alice Cooper, a pioneer of shock rock, will add his theatrical flair, having previously charted with hits like “Poison” on the Billboard Hot 100. Other notable acts include Bush, Chevelle, Three Days Grace, and Flyleaf with Lacey Sturm.

The festival will feature three stages—two on the beach and one on the iconic Ocean City boardwalk—offering fans a scenic and immersive experience. The event also includes access to the boardwalk’s restaurants, bars, and shops, along with Jolly Roger at the Pier amusement park, home to a Ferris wheel, double-decker carousel, roller coaster, and more.

Additional performers include Bret Michaels, Puddle of Mudd, 3 Doors Down, Extreme, The Struts, Everclear, Candlebox, Night Ranger, Dorothy, Black Stone Cherry, Royale Lynn, Crossfade, Trapt, Fuel, Saliva, and Tim Montana.

Tickets start at $165 for single-day general admission, with two-day passes available for $195. For fans looking to elevate their experience, the $3,950 “Ultimate” pass offers premium perks, including front-of-stage access, golf cart transportation, and exclusive lounges. Presale registration opens Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. ET, with general ticket sales beginning at 11 a.m. ET the same day.

Boardwalk Rock Festival is organized by Live Nation-owned C3 Presents, the team behind major festivals like Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.

After a smash reunion tour last summer, Creed are getting back on the road in 2025 for a huge North American sequel. After a pop-in at the Stagecoach Festival on April 26, the 23-city tour will kick off on July 9 at Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY, and keep the Scott Stapp-led group in amphitheaters and arenas through an August 20 gig at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta.
The follow-up to the band’s 2024 Summer of ’99 tour will feature rotating support from the same acts who opened last summer’s edition: 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Big Wreck and Mammoth WVH. A Live Nation presale for select dates will kick off on Thursday (Dec. 12) at 10 a.m. local time (code JOY), with a general onsale slated for Friday (Dec. 13) beginning at 10 a.m. local time here.

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According to a release announcing the new dates, the continuation of last year’s outing that had singer Stapp, guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips playing 60 sold-out shows and selling 800,000 tickets will also be preceded by the sold-out Summer of ’99 and Beyond Cruise (April 9-13) from Miami to Nassau.

“Thirty years in, it’s been a blessing to pick up right where we left off with longtime fans and to meet the next generation for the first time,” Stapp wrote in a statement about the follow-up to the band’s first tour in 12 years. “It’s been an incredible ride, and we aren’t done, so here’s to a ‘Summer’ that never ends. We’ll see you on the road.”

Check out the dates for Creed’s Summer of ’99 2025 North American tour below:

July 9 — Lexington, KY @ Rupp Arena – 3DD/MWVH

July 11 — Syracuse, NY @ Empower Federal Credit Union Amphitheater at Lakeview – 3DD/MWVH

July 12 |– Camden, NJ @ Freedom Mortgage Pavilion – 3DD

July 15 — Wantagh, NY @ Northwell at Jones Beach Theater – D/MWVH

July 16 — Scranton, PA @ The Pavilion at Montage Mountain – D/MWVH

July 20 — Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center – 3DD/MWVH

July 22 — Hartford, CT @ Xfinity Theatre – 3DD/MWVH

July 24 — Charleston, SC @ Credit One Stadium – 3DD/MWVH

July 26 — New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center – 3DD/MWVH

July 27 — Memphis, TN @ FedExForum – 3DD/MWVH

July 29 — Wichita, KS @ INTRUST Bank Arena – D/MWVH

August 1 — Lincoln, NE @ Pinnacle Bank Arena – D/MWVH

August 2 — Ridgedale, MO @ Thunder Ridge Nature Arena – D/MWVH

August 4 — Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater – D/MWVH

August 6 — Chula Vista, CA @ North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre – D/MWVH

August 7 — Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure Arena at Greater Palm Springs – 3DD/MWVH

August 9 — Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre – 3DD/MWVH

August 10 — Stateline, NV @ Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys – 3DD/MWVH (Not a Live Nation date) 

August 13 — Ridgefield, WA @ RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater – 3DD/MWVH

August 14 — Auburn, WA @ White River Amphitheatre – 3DD/MWVH

August 16 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena – BW/MWVH

August 19 — Edmonton, AB @ Rogers Place – BW/MWVH

August 20 — Calgary, AB @ Scotiabank Saddledome – BW/MWVH

Previously Announced CREED Dates: 

Dec. 28 — Durant, OK @ Choctaw Casino & Resort 

Dec. 30 — Las Vegas, NV @ The Colosseum 

Dec. 31 — Las Vegas, NV @ The Colosseum 

April 9 – April 13 — Miami – Nassau | Summer of ’99 and Beyond Cruise

April 26 — Indio, CA @ Stagecoach Festival

3DD – 3 Doors Down / D – Daughtry / BW – Big Wreck / MWVH – Mammoth WVH 

In 2021, Sam Fender shared “Seventeen Going Under,” the title track to his then-upcoming second LP, a tale of youthful anger, regret, longing and of a British society in collapse. That was how he saw it from his upbringing in the Newcastle area, but it resonated with listeners on the isles and beyond, nearly notching […]

Meg White turned 50 years old on Wednesday (Dec. 10), and to celebrate, her former husband and White Stripes bandmate Jack White took to Instagram to pay tribute to the drummer. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY to my big sister, the great Meg […]

James Taylor is hitting the road next summer with his all-star band for an extensive 2025 North American tour. The 23-date outing will feature support from vocal harmony trio Tiny Habits, with a presale for the show slated to open today (Dec. 10) at 10 a.m. local time; a JamesTaylor.com account is required in order to participate in the presale.

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The tour is slated to kick off on May 5 with a show at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, AZ, followed by amphitheater gigs in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Toronto before winding down at the BankNH Pavilion in Gilford, N.H. on July 1. The outing will feature a few double-downs, including a pair of nights at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego, a pair at the Santa Barbara Bowl in Santa Barbara, CA, two at the Chateau St. Michelle Winery in Seattle, WA and a double-night run at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO.

A Live Nation presale for select dates will kick off on Wednesday (Dec. 11) at 10 a.m. local time here (use code JOY). The general onsale will begin on Friday (Dec. 13) at 10 a.m. local time through Ticketmaster. According to Taylor’s announcement, more dates will be announced soon.

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The 76-year-old James is headed back on the road after a busy 2024, which found him hitting amphitheaters across the U.S. and playing a benefit Concert for Carolina in October to raise funds for North Carolinians impacted by Hurricane Helene, as well as performing at the DNC and at a Kamala Harris/Tim Walz rally in October.

See James Taylor’s 2025 U.S. summer tour dates below:

May 5 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint CenterMay 7 — Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure ArenaMay 8 — Highland, CA @ Yaamava TheaterMay 10 — San Diego, CA @ Rady ShellMay 11 — San Diego, CA @ Rady ShellMay 13 — Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara BowlMay 14 — Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara BowlMay 16 — Stanford, CA @ Frost AmphitheaterMay 17 — Lincoln, CA @ The Venue at Thunder ValleyMay 19 — Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes AmphitheatreMay 21 — Nampa, ID @ Ford AmphitheaterMay 23 — Ridgefield, WA @ RV Inn Style Resorts AmphitheatreMay 25 — Seattle, WA @ Chateau St. Michelle WineryMay 26 — Seattle, WA @ Chateau St. Michelle WineryJune 13 — Morrison, CO @ Red RocksJune 14 — Morrison, CO @ Red RocksJune 17 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel CenterJune 19 — Highland Park, IL @ RaviniaJune 21 — Milwaukee, WI @ SummerfestJune 23 — Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend AmphitheaterJune 24 — Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music CenterJune 27 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser StageJune 29 — Canandaigua, NY @ CMACJuly 1 — Gilford, NH @ BankNH Pavilion

Composer/producer Charlie Calello knew he was in the presence of something special when he began working on the landmark Eli and the Thirteenth Confession album with Laura Nyro early in 1968.

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“I first heard it in the studio; she played me the entire record…and I was dumbfounded,” Calello, who co-produced the album with Nyro, tells Billboard. “I’d never heard anything like it and still haven’t heard anything as good. There was never a record that was actually written by a composer who displayed her emotions and her feelings the way she did.”

Nyro’s musical legacy, complex and underappreciated, is being celebrated with the recent release of Hear My Song: The Collection 1966-1995, a limited-edition box set from Britain’s Madfish Records. It includes Nyro’s 10 studio albums, along with six live albums (two previously unreleased), the 1966 demo tape that landed her first recording contract at the age of 18 and a Live & Rarities disc including more demos, alternative versions, outtakes and live tracks. The collection also comes with a coffee-table sized book of liner notes by Vivien Goldman, a foreword by Elton John and remembrances from Calello, Jackson Browne, Clive Davis, Lou Adler, John Sebastian and others.

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The Bronx-born Nyro possessed a three-octave voice and was best known for songs such as “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “And When I Die” and “Stoney End” — which were turned into hits when covered by the Fifth Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Barbra Streisand. In addition to music Nyro was an avid feminist and animal rights activist. She passed away April 8, 1997 from ovarian cancer at the age of 49 (her mother died of the same disease, at the same age 22 years earlier) and was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2010) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2012).

In his foreword, John calls Nyro “one of my all time idols. She wrote songs that had no kind of fixed compass point, they had different sections, codas and various tempo changes. They remain as unique and absolutely spellbinding to this day as when I first heard them in the ‘60s…. She was a giant of a songwriter who sadly didn’t have the legacy and recognition she deserved during the years she was with us.”

Calello, who also co-produced Nyro’s 1976 album Smile, echoes John’s praise about Nyro’s fusion of pop, jazz, R&B and gospel. “The whole thing did not glue together from a pop standpoint,” he explains, “but yet when you collectively put it together, it was its own thing. It had all of those elements — it had the R&B, it had that jazz, all of it — and it also had the honesty she looked for. And also she would rein it in when things seemed to be getting out of control. It was really an amazing experience seeing her arrive at those conclusions.”

For Nyro’s son Gil Bianchini, Hear My Song is a welcome chronicle of his mother’s artistry. “I think it’s a great reminder of a real talent,” says Bianchini, a rapper who records under the moniker Gil-T. He’s also an associate producer of an upcoming documentary that’s in production with director Lisa D’Apolito (Love, Gilda), with no release date yet. “For people who sit down and really listen to the music…it’s not just a melody or a hook or whatever. I just think it’s a great collection of something that’s real and positive, but also something that’s reality-based and can really inspire. It’s a beautiful thing.”

The Hear My Song box set was produced by James Batsford, pulling together catalogs primarily from Sony Music and Concord/Craft, as well as from the Nyro Estate. It’s an outgrowth from a 2020 vinyl box set of Nyro’s Columbia Records recordings, and Batsford says that the CD package “gave us more room to be expansive and tell her story. It wasn’t a completest mentality; it’s more, ‘What are the touchstones of her career, and how can we bring it in an interesting way and include the best possible material out there?’ It’s not just, ‘What can we get our hands on?’ but ‘What’s the best we can get our hands on?’ and bring them together in one place.”

And when it comes to Nyro, Batsford adds, there’s quite a bit that can be considered best-possible.

“I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into her over the years from working on these records, and it astounds me how my favorite record changes from month to month,” he says. “She’s just such a great (artist). Your taste evolves with listening to her records. She’s just timeless.”

Producer Calello says he’s particularly happy Hear My Music includes a wealth of live material, including a pair of previously unreleased concerts from San Francisco in 1994, while Nyro was touring to promote her final album, 1993’s Walk The Dog & Light The Light. “You see the growth of her as a performer,” he says. “When I made Eli she didn’t want to tour; she was really afraid of the audience. But by the ‘80s she had gotten to the point where she loved performing and there was an energy. You could hear the growth and joy, and the performances are simply amazing.”

The 2013 release Live at Carnegie Hall: The Classic 1976 Radio Broadcast was not included, however, due to rights issues.

Batsford, meanwhile, says there’s more coming from the Nyro vaults. He’s planning a vinyl reissue of 2001’s posthumous Angel in the Dark during April on his own New Land Records. Looking ahead, Batsford promises that “there are some bits and pieces I can’t talk about yet. I’m aware of some rarities that exist that I’d love to help to bring to the public at some point. There is still stuff out there that wasn’t possible this time around but are things that will excite people down the line.”

System of a Down announced a trio of 2025 stadium shows featuring special guests Deftones, Korn and Avenged Sevenfold. The Live Nation-produced gigs will take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ on August 28 (with Korn), followed by Soldier Field in Chicago on August 31 (with Avenged Sevenfold) and Rogers Stadium in Toronto […]

It’s peculiar to hear Jacob Slater talk so effusively about “the quiet life” when he is renowned for one of the most intense, rib-shakingly loud live sets on the indie circuit. He’s the sort of artist, it seems, who is striving to find meaning in life’s simpler moments.

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“I haven’t had a break in a long while,” he says, eyes narrowing as he lights a cigarette. The smoke plumes drift towards a large Bob Dylan poster spread across the ceiling. “The sea is cold and there’s been waves here the past few days, so it’s been good to get back out there. I’m a little bit rusty, though, as I now spend so much time out of the water.”

The Wunderhorse frontman has been readjusting to the natural rhythms of life in his adopted locale of Newquay, Cornwall. It’s here where the 27-year-old trained as a surf instructor a few years ago, a solo venture that helped to relight his creative fire after burning bright and crashing out in the much-hyped but short-lived London punk band Dead Pretties. Recently, he has spent his time sleeping in, listening to records, and catching up with friends over coffee. Best of all, Slater says in a blissed-out tone, there is little to no mobile phone signal. The temptation to go off-grid clearly looms large.

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Returning to the coast has become an outlet for Slater’s newfound sense of lightness. Rarely at home, he’s spent much of 2024 insulated inside a touring bubble, playing shows across Europe with Fontaines D.C. and racking up huge British festival appearances at the likes of Reading & Leeds and TRNSMT. In August, Wunderhorse’s second LP, Midas (Communion Records), hit No.6 on the Official U.K. Charts upon release; a major feat, given that 2022 debut Cub failed to crack the Top 40.

On his birthday, Slater got a call from his manager saying they had booked a gig at London’s 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace next spring. In November, the group supported Fontaines D.C. throughout Europe, and now, through December, the band are opening for Sam Fender at arenas across the U.K. and Ireland, capping off an extraordinary year.

Though often mired in themes of self-destruction and volatility, the music of Wunderhorse is uplifting, cathartic, and compassionate. The four-piece are cult stars at the threshold of mainstream crossover, a reality that they are now encountering on the road. Each night, they come eye-to -eye with a predominantly young fanbase that has recently ballooned in size as a result of “unexpected” TikTok popularity. “Not to sound like an old man, but I really don’t know how that whole ‘online thing’ works. Yet it seems to be a real beast,” says Slater, speaking over video call.

It was after a headline show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands venue last month that Slater realized the band’s profile was changing. Combating a disrupted sleep schedule that had left him feeling like “a nocturnal creature,” he ventured out, alone, to walk off all the adrenaline he had worked up on stage. What he found was a city gradually revealing itself through characterful people, foggy images of bars shuttering up for the night, and the distant expanse of the M8 motorway. 

Only an hour earlier, with sweat beads lining his forehead, he had been growling into the mic, stomping as each song reached its soaring climax. Video footage of the performance circulated on social media the following day, with clips of gig-goers crying and barking doing the rounds. Wunderhorse may have already inspired fan tattoos and custom trainers, but this felt like a new level of visibility altogether.

“Recently, the audience has solidified a bit more in its demographic,” Slater explains. “At first, I didn’t quite know how to take it when people were telling us that we had young fans. But I remember when I was younger, music meant so much to me. It still does, of course, but music has a particular potency when you’re a teenager. If people are connecting with us at that age, then that’s amazing.”

Initially a one-man endeavour, the first seismic shift in Wunderhorse’s trajectory took place when Slater decided to expand the project to a full band in the early days of creating Midas. He brought Harry Tristan Fowler (guitar), Peter Woodin (bass) and Jamie Staples (drums) into the fold, having met each of them at gigs in London and their native Hertfordshire. Slater figured out early that the best way to approach music was to build his own world and invite people in; he and his bandmates soon honed their bluesy, expansive, emotionally-weathered sound after bonding over seminal records from Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.

The release of Cub, meanwhile, had left Slater feeling as though he was treading water as a lyricist. Much of the album’s writing resonated because of its unvarnished frankness about a dark personal history, traversing selfishness (“Purple”), nihilism, and traumatic teenage experiences (“Butterflies,” “Teal”). For its author, however – who was in recovery from addiction issues at the time – having to accept the circumstances of his previous life for what they were became too much of a mental burden to bear.

“This is probably not the stuff you’re meant to say in interviews, but I think every artist has songs they wrote when they were younger and now struggle with,” Slater says, grinning beneath a big, raggedy scarf. “You start to realize that, whatever you write, you’re going to have to live with it for a long time. If people are singing songs back to you and you don’t like the words that you’ve written, then you end up standing on stage feeling like you’ve deceived yourself.”

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Slater notes how his record contract stated that Cub was meant to see him “deliver 18 songs at a minimum.” Only 11 tracks made the final cut, and he put “any leftovers that didn’t fit into the Wunderhorse world” onto 2023 solo LP Pinky, I Love You. Curiously, eagle-eyed fans noticed that, a few weeks back, the earliest Wunderhorse music videos had been removed from YouTube; they responded by creating a Google Drive folder with all the newly missing clips. Today, Slater admits this was his doing: “If I had it my way, there would be no promo, there’d be no videos. I find it all really difficult because it’s not the way that my brain works.” 

Releasing Midas didn’t banish Slater’s feelings of alienation towards the music industry entirely, but it did explore a more peaceful coexistence within it. It seems as though the search for salvation he sings of on “Silver” is starting to bear fruit. Despite it all, Slater thinks that aspects of his life today would astound his younger self: he is thoughtful yet steadfast in describing how publications describing Wunderhorse as “generational,” only two albums in, can be disorienting for a musician still coming to terms with his changing stature. 

“Worrying whether you’re going to become this ‘grand thing’ that people are saying you are will only cause you to get in the way of yourself. Nobody even knows what such titles mean,” he says. “Any songwriter who has stood the test of time has managed to stay true to who they are. Like, did Bob Dylan wake up one day and go, ‘I’m gonna be generational?’ No.”

It’s clear that Slater sees a gap between his intentions and the public’s reaction to his musical output. He’ll later mention how Midas’ “Superman” was “completely misunderstood” by listeners, but he’s also trying to let go of these things which are out of his control. “Nobody’s ever going to feel what you felt when you wrote the song as everyone is at the center of their own universe,” he says. “And that’s part of the magic.” True self-acceptance: Slater is steadily getting there, inch-by-inch, wave-by-wave, song-by-song.