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For the record, Bono said he has never endorsed a politician for office. But when Jimmy Kimmel asked him on Tuesday night (May 27) where he stood in the ongoing, escalating battle between Donald Trump and Bruce Springsteen, the socially conscious U2 singer said there was only one endorsement he could possibly give.
“I think there’s only one ‘Boss’ in America,” the Irish rock legend responded cheekily in reference to Springsteen’s longtime nickname. The dig at the president came after a recent late night Truth Social rant in which Trump called for a “major investigation” into celebrities who supported former vice president Kamala Harris in her White House bid. “HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?” Trump wrote. “WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? …AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO???”
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According to Newsweek, there is no official record of any of those artist being paid to perform in support of Harris. In addition, Irish citizen Bono did not endorse a candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and did not participate in any campaign events.
That said, Bono was more than happy to be included in the Trump dump. “To be in the company of Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and Oprah, I’d play tambourine in that band,” he told Kimmel, clarifying that neither he nor U2 have ever “paid or played a show to support any candidate from any party. It has never happened. It’s called ‘Truth Social,’ but it seems to be very antisocial and it’s not very true,” he quipped about the president’s social media platform.
He did, however, suspect that his name may have made it into Trump’s rant because he co-founded the non-profit One Campaign, a global non-partisan organization that has raised millions to create economic opportunities in Africa. In the midst of the Trump administration’s unprecedented dismantling of U.S. government agencies — including efforts to completely defund and eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development — Bono noted that people across the political spectrum, including the many “very religious Catholics and evangelicals and conservatives” who support his organization are “very, very, very angry with the person that they voted into office having demolished instruments of mercy and compassion, like USAID or PEPFAR,” he said.
The latter is a reference to a global initiative launched by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003 that is credited to date with saving 26 million lives of people living with AIDS and and allowing nearly 8 million babies to be born with HIV infection. “They are not happy and there will be trouble,” Bono predicted of the blow-back from Trump’s actions.
While he was happy to weigh in on the American pop-litical back-and-forth, Bono was actually there to promote his new biographical film, Bono: Stories of Surrender, which premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday (May 30). In a rare TV chat appearance, the singer jokingly said the memoir-tuned-one-man-show-turned-film has him playing an “aging rock star on a massive ego trip… It’s quite a stretch.”
He briefly described how the film had him exploring his “rather complicated” relationship with his strong-willed late father, Brendan Robert Hewson, as well as his own struggles to be a good father and son. When Kimmel noted that the film got a nearly 9-minute ovation at its Cannes Film Festival debut, Bono, despite being one of the world’s biggest rock stars, admitted to feeling a sense of imposter syndrome while walking the red carpet at the glamorous French film fête.
In fact, he was somewhat unnerved to even sit with Kimmel, asking actress daughter Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters) for advice, which she dutifully provided. “‘Dad, just bring it,’” she counseled the 65-year-old music legend. “And I’m like, ‘bring what?,’” he replied. “She said, ‘it. It. Just answer Jimmy’s questions. None of the jazz conversation without full stops and commas. Just answer his question, no false modesty.’”
Sage advice indeed. So, when Kimmel asked what’s next for U2, Bono gave a somewhat jazz-less answer. “Oh, oh yes,” Bono said in response to a query about whether the band is recording new music. “We’ve been in a studio. I think you’ve sometimes got to deal with the past to get to the present… in order to make the sound of the future.”
Bono described the sound as that of “four men who feel like their lives depend on it,” noting that “nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one. And I’m feeling very strong about it.” The unnamed album would be the follow-up to 2023’s Songs of Surrender, which featured re-recorded versions of 40 of the group’s previously released tracks.
Pumping up the jazz, Bono said the new tracks are songs for the “kitchen… the speedway, the garage… just for every part of your life. Songs to make up to, songs to break up to.” The best news is that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is back in the fold following neck surgery that kept him out of U2’s residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere in late 2023 and early 2024. “He’s really innovative,” Bono said of the band’s time keeper.
Watch Bono on Jimmy Kimmel Live! below.
Wet Leg has shared the second taste of its upcoming album Moisturizer with the LP’s opening track, “CPR.” The song was released on Tuesday evening (May 27) and follows its live debut at a recent run of live shows. The group – led by singer Rhian Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers – headlined two nights […]
The see-saw story of The Who‘s drummer chair continued to tilt over the weekend when former, then current and then former again time keeper Zak Starkey clarified that he had not been fired from the band but rather “retired.” The 59-year-old son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and in-demand session player wrote in an Instagram […]
Tom Morello has never been one to mince words when it comes to his thoughts on Donald Trump. The firebrand Rage Against the Machine guitarist and solo star joined his friend and fellow rock agitator Bruce Springsteen over the weekend in giving a NSFW salute No. 27 from the stage.
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Performing at the Boston Calling 2025 music festival on Sunday (May 25), Morello took the stage in front of a towering backdrop that featured a series of images of the president amid a sea of oversized buttons that spelled out “F–K TRUMP.” If that message wasn’t clear enough, at one point during his set, Morello flipped his instrument up to play with his teeth and revealed another pointed message aimed at the current administration taped to the back of his guitar that read “F–k I.C.E.,” in seeming reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency charged with implementing Trump’s aggressive deportation policy.
Introducing a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” Morello dedicated the track to The Boss, noting that the rocker has been “in a tussle with the president lately” after the Jersey giant recently dubbed the current administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous,” a broadside that raised the ire of the commander in chief.
“Bruce is going after Trump because Bruce, his whole life, he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality,” Morello said. “And Trump is mad at him because Bruce draws a much bigger audience. F–k that guy.” According to Boston.com, at the top of his set, Morello invited fans to enjoy “the last big event before they throw us in jail.”
In the midst of the Trump administration’s attack on universities it claims are not doing enough to combat antisemitism, Morello also mentioned his alma mater, Harvard University, which has particularly drawn Trump’s ire. In its latest actions, the administration has threatened to strip the school of more than $3 billion in grants following Trump’s order to freeze more than $2.2 billion in federal funding grants for the university and threats to revoke its tax-exempt status. Morello praised Harvard’s recent decision to offer a free online course called “We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy.”
Morello, who graduated with honors from Harvard in 1986 with a B.A. in political science, described the class as a primer on “basic U.S. government, understanding the Constitution, and how to recognize a dictatorship takeover of your country.”
The lash out against Trump by Morello amid the president’s slash-and-burn reshaping of democratic norms came after Springsteen kicked off his Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Manchester, England on May 14 by lambasting the blitz of strong-arm actions that many political pundits have deemed authoritarian.
“In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” Springsteen told the crowd. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
As is his wont, Trump replied to Springsteen’s harsh words with one of his all-caps Truth Social disses, calling the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer “highly overrated” and “dumb as a rock.” The president continued, “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country.”
On the precipice of what many financial experts say could be a ruinous global recession sparked by Trump’s unpredictable, see-saw tariffs, the president continued his attacks on Springsteen over the ensuing days, adding in another of his favorite targets: Taylor Swift. On May 16, the 78-year-old leader of the free world wrote, “Has anyone noticed that, since i said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?‘”
While Swift has not responded to the unprovoked attack to date, Springsteen was unbowed, doubling down on his disdain for Trump on May 17, telling a crowd in Manchester, “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore… In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now… In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers,” calling Trump an “unfit president” who is running a “rogue government.”
Steve Earle has a number of events he can point to in his life to mark 50th anniversaries, but he’s clear about what’s sending him on his Fifty Years of Songs and Stories tour that kicks off May 25 in Decatur, Ala.
“It’s the 50th anniversary of me signing my first publishing contract – me officially in the music business,” Earle tells Billboard. That was in Nashville when, after a good six years of tooling around in Texas – including playing in his songwriting hero Townes Van Zandt’s band – Earle was working by day and playing at night, including as part of Guy Clark’s group. The song publishing company Sunbury-Dunbar made him a staff writer, though Earle would subsequently head back to Texas and then return to Nashville, where he became an artist in his own right with the 1982 EP Pink & Black; his career really took off with 1986’s Guitar Town, which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.
Earle, 70, has been going ever since, with hits, misses and a brief incarceration during the mid-‘90s for cocaine and weapons possession. Others – including Joan Baez, Travis Tritt, Robert Earl Keen and Stacy Dean Campbell – have recorded his songs, but Earle has remained determinedly and defiantly his own man, winning three Grammy Awards along the way and delving into other projects such as production (for Baez and Lucinda Williams), acting (HBO’s Treme and The Wire, off-Broadway’s Samara ) and theater (the Drama Desk Award-nominated Coal Country). His social and political activism led to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s shining star of abolition award in 2010, and in 2020 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Clearly, there will be a lot of stories to go with the songs when Earle hits the road (his shows will be mostly solo, though he’s playing a few dates with the band Reckless Kelly). “It’s not strictly chronological; that’s the backbone of it, but some songs I play are based on memories, so something I wrote a little later may pop up earlier in the show,” Earle explains. “It’s sort of built around telling stories; I try not to talk too much, but I’m good at that thing. I started in coffee houses, so that’s basically the deal.”
Earle is hoping to finish work on his next musical, a stage adaptation of the hit 1983 film Tender Mercies, while he’s out on the road. “I want to finish at least three songs so I have a draft,” he says. “These things take years to (complete). I’m just trying to live long enough to get the f–kin’ thing up.” He also appears on Willie Nile’s upcoming new album The Great Yellow Light and has recorded a “cosmic country” song, “Dead or Gone to Dallas,” for a split single he’s doing with Reckless Kelly. “It would work on Guitar Town,” Earle notes. “I was talking to Miranda Lambert; my family’s from the same part of Texas as she’s from, and she asked me if I ever went up there. I said, ‘Everyone I know is dead or gone to Dallas.’ She said, ‘Don’t write that with anybody!’” Earle has also finished “a big chunk of” a memoir as well as “a little bit of” a novel.
“I really mean to finish them before I die,” he says, noting that after turning 70 “you think about it even more. You wouldn’t think one number would make a difference more than any other number. But my father was only 74 when he died and my grandfather only lived to be 63. One uncle was 80 but the other died younger than my dad. And you get to be a certain age and your friends start dying. On my radio show [Hard Core Troubadour on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Channel] I used to do tributes occasionally; now it’s more often than I’d like.”
As he gets ready to hit the road with his Fifty Years of Songs and Stories Tour, we thought we’d get Earle to tell us the stories behind five key songs in his career. Check out Earle’s tour dates here.
“L.A. Freeway” (Guy Clark, 1970; covered by Steve Earle in 2019)
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Rosetta Tharpe was a trailblazing Black musician who found fame early on as a gospel artist before shifting to rock and roll and inspiring several future legends. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor has been tapped to pen a script for a biopic about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, with legendary rocker Mick Jagger serving as a producer.
Deadline reports that the Sister Rosetta Tharpe biopic was set in motion after Live Nation Productions reached out to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor to piece together the script. Along with Jagger’s Jagged Films, the film is also being produced by Tribeca Studios and Inaudible Productions.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe emerged on the music scene first in the world of gospel, releasing her first recordings at the age of 23 in 1938. One of the singles, “Rock Me,” would become a hit and influenced the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, among others.
Tharpe would mix gospel lyrics with secular music, which angered some. She went on to perform her mix of gospel and rhythm and blues, all accented by her guitar playing. The image of a Black woman singing gospel music inside secular establishments, along with her chosen instrument, caused many to not support her musical endeavors despite her quietly influencing future musical superstars along the way.
In interviews, Thapre essentially framed rock and roll as rhythm and blues at a faster pace. Sister Rosetta Tharpe passed away in 1973, but was acknowledged by her peers as a pioneering voice for rock and roll.
Along with the biopic, there will be a documentary about Tharpe centering on her contributions to music and her lasting influence, most especially in the world of guitars. The film will also pull from author Gayle Wald’s Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe biography.
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Sam Ryder is, undoubtedly, one of the United Kingdom’s greatest Eurovision success stories in recent years. At 2022’s Song Contest, he finished in 2nd place (its highest finish since 1998) and used that to springboard to a No. 1 album (There’s Nothing But Space, Man!), and cement himself as one of the scene’s most electrifying performers. Soon he was collaborating with Queen’s Brian May, performing in front of the Royal Family at Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee party, and bringing a puppyish enthusiasm to every booking.
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But even so, things in this industry can change in a heartbeat. In 2023, a leadership change at Parlophone Records meant that the executives that Ryder had signed with were leaving the label, and Ryder was caught in the middle: He saw the benefits of remaining on a major label, but felt indebted to the people who backed him when few others did.
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Ryder was not an overnight success. Prior to his selection for Eurovision, he gigged hard for a decade in various rock bands, and held down jobs in construction and hospitality. His rise on TikTok during the pandemic in 2020 eventually helped him land the spot for Eurovision in 2022, and it came when Ryder had just entered his 30s. His was a late-blooming success story and hard-fought for; he understood how fragile the industry can be, and how quickly it can all change.
When it came to the next phase of his career following his debut album success, he prioritized the things that were important to him: respecting the music-making process, and staying loyal. His new run of music — including “OH OK”, out Friday (May 23), and “White Lies” — is earthier, country-flecked as opposed to the glam-rock stylings of his debut. He thought about the artist he wanted to be, and how he can be authentic to his craft. He signed with Artist Theory, the new label from Nick Burgess and Jack Melhuish, who he met at Parlophone and left the major label system with them.
It’s a move that now looks savvy. The material he’s releasing showcases a new depth to his songwriting, and sits alongside Hozier and Noah Kahan’s rugged productions, all while retaining his powerhouse vocals and inimitable charm. In June, Ryder will perform at Glastonbury Festival for the first time; in November, Wembley Arena in London beckons, a sign that everything continues to move in the right direction for the singer-songwriter.
As he releases his new single “Oh OK,” Ryder tells Billboard U.K. about having faith in himself, his move to Nashville and the next phase of his career.
How would you describe this new era?
I’d call it the ‘frontier soul’ era. Soul music – that goes without saying. I sang that for years when I was at weddings and love it. But when I say frontier, think about the grandeur of old Hollywood and the richness in that aesthetic. The music is very much inspired by the Westerns that me and my grandad used to watch together. There’s a real attention to how the score and sound is recorded; films like Alexander the Great where the credits would roll up on screen first with a massive orchestra score. There’s such a richness in all of that aesthetic for me that I really enjoy.
You made the decision to head on a new journey with your label for this next album. Talk us through that…
A door was presented, to be real. At the time I remember feeling sad about it, even though it’s a choice we made, it felt exciting to a degree but daunting also. Parlophone had been there for the entire first album stint, which was amazing. Every challenge we met and exceeded. Parlophone, at that time, was the small dog in the fight. They’d reopened the label and had something to prove and the reason I chose it was because it felt like me; I hadn’t been given a chance until so much later on in my life to reach my potential.
When that label got dissolved essentially, [my] album had just gone to No. 1 and I was turning up to play a sold-out Hammersmith Apollo in London. It shows no one is ever safe from that happening to their label – it wasn’t a situation of the label wanting to go in a different direction, but all these amazing people were getting fired. I didn’t want to move to another major label where you’re an artist inherited rather than believed in and journeyed with.
The executives you worked with left an impression. You must have had faith in them in their next venture?
It’s not just faith, you’ve actually seen them in action and what they can do. Faith can be misconstrued in any industry. Any time you go and see a different label or management – which I’ve been through in my career – everyone gives you their best on that first meeting. It’s almost impossible to make a decision on anything but a gut instinct and a proof of concept; you’ve seen the lengths they’ll go to to make something happen and seen how collaborative they are and how they manage situations. Those are really important attributes.
It must have given you a lot more freedom in the way you approached the writing and recording process. Is that fair?
Yeah, I mean the way that people write music in the current industrial age of recording, you’re in sessions most days of the week with different people. You just end up collecting songs. That’s what I did for the first album and what a lot of my peers are doing as well. You can collect in the region of 100 songs, which, on paper, sounds great right? You’ve got all these songs, and everyone you work with is a great writer and then you put an album together of the best 12 songs.
The problem with that is that you don’t get a concept for the journey of a record, because everything in isolation sounds great and a single song sounds amazing. But put that together and it feels like you’re eating Big Macs and profiteroles for an hour; it just doesn’t feel nutritious.
Your journey has not been a typical one. Success came for you at a different period of your life than a lot of acts. What would you say to the next wave of people coming through when they’re faced with important business decisions like you had to make?
For any new artist, I know how exciting it would feel to come from making music in your bedroom to getting an email from one of the big three labels. I mean, take the meeting, of course. I have so much to thank major labels for; the experience was really magical. It wasn’t without its challenges, but nothing worth fighting for is going to be easy.
But I would say that there’s a really exciting conversation happening in the indie space. The idea of the major label system is slightly outdated. That’s not to say that the people working in those industries are outdated. They love music as much as you and I do. But they’re working in the confines of a massive beast. It’s like working with any big corporation, things happen slowly as there’s so many moving parts; an indie label can be a bit more nimble. I believe [the major’s] intentions are right, but it’s going to take time for change… and I haven’t got the time, man. I need to move quickly!
Have you always dreamt of heading to Nashville?
For the last 13 years the goal has been to get to Nashville and I’m so stoked we’ve been able to do it. I’ve bought a log cabin in the trees which is so peaceful. The city has absolutely exploded in the best way, but it’s still kept its heart and soul.
What is that music community like, particularly for someone moving into the area?
With Nashville, if the evidence of other people’s success doesn’t psych you out everywhere you look, it can be a really good motivational place to be. It’s the same with actors in Hollywood, I imagine. Maybe they go to the Walk of Fame and see these examples of past and present success which aren’t yours yet. It’s kind of the same with Nashville… but I don’t get psyched out by seeing that. I love it. I think that if it’s possible for them, it’s possible for me. It makes me feel like things are happening there and you’re at the epicentre of something special. And I think serendipity and spontaneity are so crucial in music and all the arts. That’s where the good stuff happens.
Heading to Nashville, writing and recording there and on your own terms with the new label must have brought the best out of your creativity, right?
It was nice to have that more manageable pace with it. In the past you just didn’t have time to sit and consider what you’re doing. Your schedule fills up so fast and there’s just not much time. When I look back, making music felt like the side project to everything else that needed to be done. The schedule was so crazy with everything else like promo and TV, that sitting and making music almost felt like a luxury. You’d make music in a room, and then send it off for someone else to mix it and master it or whatever. You never spend time really feeling what you want from a song. And that’s how albums sound as opposed to singles.
You’ll be playing Wembley Arena later this year. Was that always a goal for you?
It was definitely a goal, but as life went on it felt more like a pipe dream. My career started a lot later than some others in my peer group. In some ways it’s a blessing because I have the thickest skin in the game. The amount of times I was certain it wasn’t going to happen but I had to carry on doing it because I had literally no idea what else I was going to do.
Are you glad it happened at this stage of your life where you can appreciate the journey a bit more?
Oh definitely. If I had hit Wembley at a younger stage in my career, I think it might have come from a place of ego and to show everyone at school, or whoever doubted me, “Look what I can do.” Whereas now it’s more of a peaceful feeling where I’m so grateful and I don’t want to let anyone down. I know I won’t because I’ll put my all into the show.
So does Mad!, the title of Sparks’ new and 26th studio album, refer to brothers Ron and Russell Mael’s current temperament? Or is it simply a reference to their legendarily idiosyncratic creative comportment that’s made the pair a cult darling for the past 54 years?
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“Maybe a little of each,” Russell Mael tells Billboard as he travels from Philadelphia, where Sparks performed at NON-COMMvention the previous evening, to New York. “There’s the two general meanings of mad, being either angry or being crazy,” he says. “Just the overall ambience of the whole album seemed to lend itself to that title. But then you can exact from it, too, that it also is reflective of the general zeitgeist now, with what’s going on everywhere — in particular here (in the United States).”
The 12-song set, produced by the Maels and recorded with their regular touring band, comes as part of a particularly prolific period in Sparks’ career. It’s the group’s ninth studio album since the turn of the century and its third of the decade, directly following 2023’s The Girl is Crying in Her Latte. It also comes in the wake of Edgar Wright’s acclaimed 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers and the 2021 release of the Maels’ long-gestating film musical Annette, which produced not only a soundtrack album but also last year’s Annette — An Opera by Sparks (The Original 2013 Recordings).
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All of that, along with touring, has kept Sparks’ profile high, and there’s an undeniably triumphant — as well as defiant — message conveyed as Sparks kicks into Mad! with the forceful opening track “Do Things My Own Way.”
“You don’t like to be heavy-handed with a message like that,” Russell explains, “but it is kind of that statement, in a way. It kind of applies to how we think — from day one, even when we did our first album [1971’s Halfnelson, also the band’s name at the time] with Todd Rundgren (producing). He always encouraged us to keep the eccentricities that we just naturally had and to not smooth over the edges, don’t lose your character and personality. Even on that first album, he thought we’d created our own universe he’d never heard before. He said it was something from somewhere else, which is a nice thing to say, especially with a band that was just a new group.”
Sparks was celebrated last year with an outstanding contribution to music honor at the AIM Independent Music Awards. And though the group has only intersected with the pop mainstream on rare occasions — “Cool Places” with Jane Wiedlin hit the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983, and “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’” went top 10 on the Dance Club Songs chart in 1995 — the fact Sparks is still with us is proof that being a bit “weird” is not a bad thing.
“Things are on the upswing for Sparks,” Mael says. “I think there’s been this — especially in the last few years, since the Edgar Wright documentary, and since the Annette movie — whole new audience, some of whom didn’t even know the band at all but became aware of it through different channels than just us having our own album out. It’s not the typical career trajectory.”
Mad! was created in standard Sparks methodology, according to Mael, without a great deal of forethought — and, according to the vocalist, nothing held over from previous projects.
“Everything was done specifically for this album,” Mael says. “It’s a process where we’re pretty free to work however we want. Sometimes we’ll have a complete song that’s fully formed…or we come in with nothing at all planned and just sit down and see if something can come up from nothing. Having our own studio, you’re free to experiment in that way. We’ve been working together for so long now that we’re able to read what each other’s thoughts are regarding the songs or the recording process. That certainly makes it easier. It’s not starting off with any questions marks.”
The result on Mad! is unapologetically diverse — to its benefit. Musical and lyrical quirks about; “JanSport Backpack” is about just that, for instance, while “Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab” is a good-humored “mini-movie,” and “I-405 Rules” and “A Long Red Light” show the Maels are well attuned to traffic patterns in their native Los Angeles. The range of sounds, meanwhile, runs from the aggressive attack of “Hit Me, Baby” to the theatrical drama of “Don’t Dog It” to the string-fueled “I-405 Rules,” while a great deal of melodic pop floats through “A Little Bit of Light Banter,” “My Devotion,” “Drowned in a Sea of Tears” and the Mersey-meets-Bacharach majesty of “Lord Have Mercy.”
“I think we both have the same goal in mind… to try to come up with fresh approaches to the universe that Sparks has and has had since the very beginning and try to stretch that, or try to find new angles to be able to do in three-and-a-half-minute songs,” Mael says. “We both really like pop music, and we still feel there are ways to come up with stuff that will hopefully surprise a listener in this day and age. Pop music has been there a long time, so the trick is to see how you can take that form and still come up with something fresh — but not be weird just to be weird, or odd.”
Mad! also finds Sparks with a new label, Transgressive Records, after working with Island on The Girl is Crying in Her Latte. “Sometimes you just have to make moves,” Mael notes. “Transgressive heard the album; even referring back to ‘Do Things My Own Way,’ they told us they thought that was really a kind of manifesto of their label. They’ve all been huge Sparks fans for a long time. They really wanted to be involved not only ’cause they like us as a group, but they responded to this album and really felt a kinship to it. We’ve been lucky enough to work with people like Chris Blackwell at Island in the ‘70s, even Richard Branson at Virgin and of course Albert Grossman with Bearsville Records when we first started. It seems like in today’s musical climate there’s fewer and fewer of those visionary types. Transgressive shares that same kind of spirit, so it’s a good fit.”
Mad! will send Sparks back on the road, beginning June 8 in Japan and followed by an early summer trek through Europe before returning to North America starting Sept. 5 in Atlanta, with dates booked through Sept. 30 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Maels are also working on another movie musical that John Woo (Face/Off, Mission: Impossible 2, Silent Night) is on board to direct.
“We wanted to do another narrative project, ‘cause we really liked the whole process with Annette so much, really working and channeling our music in other ways,” says Mael, who describes the new piece as “really different in its approach than Annette.” The brothers read in an interview with Woo that he’s long wanted to make a musical and invited him to their studio to hear what they had.
“He said, ‘This is amazing, and I want to direct it,’ so we’ve been working with him to refine the story elements. He’s completely sold on the whole approach and all of the music. We have three really great producers now on the project; they’re out there trying to get all the financing together so we can start the production. We think it’s going to be something really amazing.”
Dead & Company have released new details about the Grateful Dead 60th-anniversary concerts at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park from Aug. 1-3, including the announcement of special guests booked to play each show. Bluegrass phenom Billy Strings will open the Aug. 1 concert, while singer/songwriter Sturgill Simpson, performing as Johnny Blue Skies, will perform Aug. […]
A English hard rock band that performs in masks and cloaks is not the type of artist that regularly visits the top of the Billboard 200 — yet anyone who had been paying attention to Sleep Token’s rise over the past few months knew that their fourth studio album, Even in Arcadia, was going to have a strong debut.
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After years of building a fan base, expanding their lore and inching onto the Billboard charts with increasingly higher peaks, the group kicked off the year by scoring their first career Hot 100 entries, as well as quickly selling out a slew of fall arena dates. When Even in Arcadia was released on May 9, its album tracks flooded streaming charts, a clear sign that the early enthusiasm around the album had coalesced upon its release.
Yet when the dust settled on its debut week, even the most bullish Sleep Token fan had to be pleasantly surprised: Even in Arcadia debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated May 24 with 127,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate — good enough to not only score Sleep Token’s biggest chart week ever, but the biggest total for a hard rock album in nearly two years, as well as the largest streaming week ever for a hard rock album. It’s the type of debut that blows away even the most hyped-up prognostications, and immediately makes Sleep Token one of the biggest stories in rock this year.
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The performance of this album cycle has “by far” surpassed expectations, RCA Records COO John Fleckenstein tells Billboard. Sleep Token — which debuted nearly a decade ago and has always remained under cover of anonymity, with band members never revealing their identities or speaking to the press — signed with RCA in early 2024 following the release of third album Take Me Back to Eden. That album became the band’s first to hit the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 16 in May 2023, and produced some of its first songs to hit the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.
Yet when “Emergence” — the six-and-a-half minute, multi-part prog-metal epic that opened the Arcadia era in March — debuted at No. 57 on the Hot 100 in March, thanks in part to some mind-boggling streaming numbers (9.9 million official U.S. streams from March 14-20, according to Luminate), RCA had to adjust its forecast for the commercial prospects for its host album, says Fleckenstein.
“We knew they were great, and they were potent,” he says. “But when ‘Emergence’ came out, that’s when we saw the reality of where the numbers had gotten to.”
“Emergence” was followed by “Caramel” — a more radio-friendly (yet no less audacious) single that somehow pulls off a fusion of rhythmic pop, shuffling reggaeton and a shrieking metal breakdown — and “Damocles,” Sleep Token’s version of a power ballad with twinkling pianos that morph into thundering guitars. Both of those songs hit the Hot 100 as well, at Nos. 34 and 47, respectively — and the fact that the second and third songs released from Even in Arcadia peaked higher than the first on the Hot 100 indicated to RCA that the host album was going to be a monster.
“Everyday along the path into this album, we were more and more confident that this was a big deal,” says Fleckenstein. “We just don’t see that kind of fan behavior and consistency, in terms of new music coming out.”
When RCA signed Sleep Token last year, Fleckenstein says that the two biggest indicators of the band’s upward trajectory were its rapid growth as a live act — the group leapt from clubs to theaters, and now to arenas, with strong ticket demand for each live run — and the online dedication of its fan base. The London natives have crafted a complex backstory over the year, with Sleep Token leader Vessel speaking of a higher power called Sleep and causing fans to parse through lyrics and messages to unlock new mysteries from their world.
For the band’s new major-label partner, Sleep Token’s anonymity has felt “liberating” as a promotional tool, says Fleckenstein, particularly in an era of artists oversharing on social media platforms. “So much of it is about the art that the band makes,” he notes. “The world that’s being created is being driven by the fans, and as we were building [the rollout] with the band, the part that was so rewarding was that we could not get more clever than this fan base.”
Case in point: in February, before the album cycle had truly started, the band launched a teaser site full of jumbled numbers and letters, which fans quickly found out related to the geographic coordinates of an 18th century monument in England. “It all happened in a blink!” Fleckenstein says with a laugh. “It’s because you’ve got a fan base that is undyingly passionate about this band.”
Now that Even in Arcadia is here, fans’ attention will now turn to how the album will be presented live: Sleep Token will perform the new material for the first time next month at a handful of European festivals before their U.S. arena tour kicks off on Sept. 16. In the meantime, the noise of this album debut has already unlocked opportunities for Sleep Token that aren’t normally reserved for hard rock acts: Vessel was featured as the main image of Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist on release day, for instance, and all 10 of the album’s tracks have made the Hot 100 chart. Combined with Ghost’s new album Skeletá debuting atop the Billboard 200 two weeks prior to Arcadia, a brand of new-school hard rock with baked-in mystique and accessible hooks is experiencing a mainstream boom that’s been years in the making.
“The numbers here are basically in line with high-caliber pop artists, in terms of consumption level,” says Fleckenstein of Sleep Token. “Up until this point, the focus has been on the fan base, and that won’t change — they’re the reason why we’re here… But in a lot of ways, the story from here will probably be that this isn’t some niche thing. There’s definitely a broader awakening here among media and partners that are looking at this in a different kind of way.”
A similar effect is trickling down to pop fans, too. “There are people that haven’t discovered this band yet, because they haven’t been part of the lore and they perceive it as metal, which may not be their genre of choice,” Fleckenstein says. “But it’s great music. And I think that’s going to be the road ahead.”