Rock
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Like many of us, David Bowie was one of American Fiction actor Jeffrey Wright’s all-time heroes. But unlike most of us, Wright not only got meet the late rock legend, he also had the opportunity to act alongside him in the 1996 biopic Basquiat, in which he played neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat alongside Bowie as pop art figurehead Andy Warhol.
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On The Kelly Clarkson Show on Friday (Jan. 19), Wright recalled meeting Bowie on the film in reaction to a picture Clarkson put on the big screen from a photo shoot the actor did with the “Space Oddity” singer to promote the biopic about the talented street-artist-turned-international-phenom.
“He meant the world to me,” Wright said of Bowie, who died of liver cancer in 2016 at 69. “There were periods of my life where his music was the soundtrack.” Wright describe the intense prep he did for the film — directed by artist Julian Schnabel — in which the actor painted for six months in Schnabel’s studio in the presence of dozens of original Basquiat paintings to get into character.
One day while working on a canvas, Wright said the door opened and Bowie — who also dabbled in painting, as well as quite a bit of big screen acting — walked in unexpectedly. “He kneels down next to me and he says, ‘do you mind if I watch?’,” Wright said Bowie asked. “And I said, ‘well, I think I’m gonna have to get used to it, yeah.’”
Wright recalled that they had a laugh and for the remainder of the shoot Bowie was “so generous and so smart and funny… and he couldn’t have been cooler to me.” In fact, one day he was in the hair and makeup trailer with Gary Oldman — who played a fictional composite character modeled on Schnabel — and Bowie walked in with a most incredible query. “‘Do you want to hear some music?’” the singer asked them.
“And we’re like, ‘huh?!’,” Wright remembers responding in gleeful shock. “And we’re like, ‘yeah David Bowie we’ll tolerate your music, yeah sure! Put in your little disc.’” What Bowie cued up were tracks from his then-unreleased new album, the arty concept song cycle Outside, which included some songs that ended up in the film.
“And we’re listening to it and we’re like, ‘Whoa!’ and David’s sitting there air-guitaring to his own music… and it was like, you know, the cool guy at school who found some obscure record somewhere and brought it in,” Wright recalled thinking. “Except the cool guy was David Bowie!”
American Fiction — about a struggling Black novelist horrified by the smash success of a racially charged book he wrote as as joke — is in theaters now.
Watch Wright talk about Bowie below.
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If you thought Dolly Parton was done rocking, think again. The country icon and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer celebrated her 78th birthday on Friday (Jan. 19) by dropping a deluxe version of her debut rock album, Rockstar. “It’s my Birthday so I’m going to give you a present!” Parton wrote on X. “I’m […]
Green Day are in full promotional blitz mode to support their just released new studio album, Saviors. In addition to talk show and radio appearances, the veteran pop-punk trio also went undercover, and underground, to film a bit for The Tonight Show earlier this week with host Jimmy Fallon in a New York City subway […]
No need to traverse a boulevard a broken dreams, a new Green Day album has finally arrived. Nearly four years since their last studio LP — 2020’s Father of All… — the iconic rockers are back with a brand new set featuring a slew of singles including the Rock Airplay chart-topper “The American Dream Is […]
Green Day didn’t want to be a bunch of American idiots, so they became Billboard chart titans instead. The iconic rockers are currently prepping the release of Saviors — their 14th studio album — and in anticipation of their latest LP, Billboard is reflecting on the band’s biggest chart achievements across their decades-long career.
The Cali-bred band made its first entry on a Billboard chart back in 1994 with “Longview,” their debut single. The track soared to No. 1 on Alternative Airplay, becoming the first of 12 for the Grammy-winning rock icons. Since “Longview,” Green Day has gone on to become the act with the second-most chart-toppers in Alternative Airplay history, alongside fellow rock bands Foo Fighters and Linkin Park (12).
Alternative Airplay has proven to be an area of dominance for Green Day. The band is tied with Red Hot Chili Peppers for the fourth-most Alternative Airplay entries of all time (37), and they also boast the third-most top 10 hits on the ranking (25). Over on Rock & Alternative Airplay, Green Day stands as the act with the second-most No. 1 hits (7).
Of course, Green Day wouldn’t be Green Day without its era-defining crossover success. The band has notched a pair of top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — both in 2006 — thanks to the beloved American Idiot singles “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (No. 2) and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” (No. 6). On the Billboard 200, the band has sent 11 titles to the top 10, including the chart-toppers American Idiot (2004, three weeks), 21st Century Breakdown (2009, one week) and Revolution Radio (2016, one week).
Although Saviors doesn’t hit DSPs until Jan. 19, the album has already helped the band increase some of its Billboard chart tallies. “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” the set’s lead single, peaked atop Rock Airplay and reached No. 22 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.
Check out the full Billboard Explains video on Green Day’s chart success above.
After that video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about Peso Pluma and the Mexican music boom, the role record labels play, origins of hip-hop, how Beyoncé arrived at Renaissance, the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and more.
Bring Me the Horizon notches its record-breaking fifth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, as “Kool-Aid” bows atop the Jan. 20-dated survey. The song debuts with 2.4 million official U.S. streams and 2,000 downloads sold Jan. 5-11, according to Luminate. The track is the Oli Sykes-fronted rockers’ first release since the departure […]
Paramore has once again pulled out of upcoming performances due to “unforeseen circumstances,” but worry not — it also looks like Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro may have new music in the works, implying that the band is still together and thriving.
In a Thursday (Jan. 18) post on Instagram Stories, a straightforward message said that due to “unforeseen circumstances, Paramore can no longer attend and perform at Vive Latino in Mexico City, Festival Estéreo Picnic in Bogotá, and Lollapalooza Brazil in São Paulo.” The statement also clarified that Nashville indie band Kings of Leon is set to replace the popp-rock trio at all three events.
The announcement comes two weeks after Paramore dropped out of this year’s iHeartRadio ALTer EGO show, also “due to unforeseen circumstances.” The band had also wiped their social media accounts clean around that time, leading some fans to worry about the its future.
Their most recent statement, however, said that Paramore “apologizes for any inconvenience” before teasing, “They will see you in the next era.”
Other than that, Paramore hasn’t addressed its withdrawal from shows or commented about what’s in store for the future. The group did, however, recently tease a Talking Heads tribute cover and music video with A24, with Williams unboxing an oversized David Byrne-esque suit jacket in a snippet from the project that ends with the frontwoman singing part of “Burning Down the House.”
The “Simmer” singer, York and Farro are also still set to support several of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour shows on the trek’s European leg this summer. And as far as any new music goes, Paramore is freshly finished with its contract with Atlantic Records, meaning the band is now a free agent for the first time in 20 years.
“We’ve been really lucky. We always will have gripes — it’s an industry — but we know that we’ve been really lucky,” Williams said prior to the release of Paramore’s most recent album, This is Why, last year. “It’s more just the fact that it’s time to f—ing finish something. And it’s time to know that we’re not doing the same s–t that we’ve been on since we were teenagers. It’s just going to feel so nice to start a new book. You know, like no more chapters of this one. Whole new book. And I’m excited.”
In 2023, a number of rock icons decided to talk about transgender kids and why they disapproved of giving them access to best-practice healthcare to help with their transition. In 2024, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong would like to break that trend.
In a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, the 51-year-old singer called out the conservative-led moral panic surrounding trans kids having access to gender-affirming care, criticizing those who would stand in the way of progress. “I just think they’re f–king close-minded,” he told the publication. “It’s like people are afraid of their children. Why would you be afraid? Why don’t you let your kid just be the kid that they are?”
Armstrong elaborated elsewhere, saying that seeing kids get to celebrate their identities earlier in life is a net positive, especially considering that his generation didn’t have that same luxury. “Nowadays it’s more common for kids to be LGBTQ, and there’s more support,” he said. “But for us, back in the day, that was like the beginning of when people were able to openly say things like that.”
When speaking about the band’s forthcoming song “Bobby Sox” (in which he nods to his own bisexuality by singing both “Do you wanna be my boyfriend?” and “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?”), Armstrong said it felt “liberating” to be in a place where he could sing about his sexuality. “It became more of a queer singalong.”
While 2023 was a record-breaking year for anti-LGBTQ legislation in the U.S., 2024 is already on track to break that record yet again. As of press time, the ACLU is already tracking more than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills in the 2024 legislative session, with 71 of those such bills aimed focused on “healthcare restrictions.”
Green Day, meanwhile, is gearing up for the release of the 14th studio album Saviors on Friday (Jan. 19). In its interview, the band said that the new album centers more plainly on America’s current political strife ahead of the 2024 election, returning to the socially conscious themes of some of their past albums such as American Idiot and Revolution Radio.
“We purposely stayed away from politics [on 2020’s Father of All…] just because everything was such an easy target,” Armstrong said. “We didn’t want to be like this CNN band. And I think in the back of our minds, we knew that MAGA and the divisiveness was gonna be there four years later anyway.”
The 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will feature headlining sets from The Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Killers and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals.
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The eight-day fest that takes place across 14 stages over two weekends — April 25-28 and May 2-5 — at the Fair Grounds Race Course, draws nearly half a million music lovers to a sprawling event that includes some of the biggest names in rock, pop, hip-hop, country, funk and jazz, including the usual compliment of homegrown legends.
Among the other acts slated to perform this year are: Hozier, Jon Batiste, Queen Latifah, Vampire Weekend, Greta Van Fleet, Heart, Widespread Panic, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Bonnie Raitt, Earth, Wind & Fire, Celebrating Jimmy Buffett with the Coral Reefer Band, Fantasia, The Revivalists, The Beach Boys, Big Freedia, Kem, Juvenile with Mannie Fresh, Irma Thomas, Joe Bonamassa, Steel Pulse, Cyril Neville, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Jeffrey Osborne and Rhiannon Giddens, and hundreds more.
This year’s Jazz Fest will also celebrate the music and culture of Colombia at the Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion, with 17 bands and a variety of artists sharing the unique sights and sounds from the South American nation, including Colombian salsa, cumbia, champeta, vallenato, chirimia, and currulao. There will also be daily parades honoring Colombia’s vibrant carnival spirit, with attendees getting opportunities to meet Indigenous and Afro-Colombian artisans, purchase their crafts and taste traditional Colombian food and drinks, according to a statement announcing the lineup.
Weekend and VIP packages are available here now, with single day tickets slated to go on sale in February; all tickets are subject to additional service fees and handling charges and an account with AXS is required for purchase. This year’s Jazz Fest will also offer a 4-day GA+ weekend pass for the first time, with access to an exclusive GA+ lounge with private restrooms, a full-service bar and shade. There will be a limited supply of 4-day second weekend passes including admission to the May 2 Rolling Stones set, the group’s only announced 2024 North American festival gig.
Stapleton, Killers, .Paak, Batiste and Vampire Weekend are the top line acts for the first weekend (April 25-28), with the Stones, Foo Fighters, Young, Hozier and Queen Latifah topping the list for the second weekend (May 2-5). Click here for the full day-by-day lineup.
Check out the 2024 lineup poster below.
In 2019, Alabama-born country–rock quintet The Red Clay Strays were plugging away at building a core fan base, playing small clubs and festivals around the Southeastern United States in hopes of exposure. “We were a bar band at the time, playing honky-tonks [with] no stability, really just chasing the dream,” harmonicist/guitarist/vocalist Drew Nix says. In the same breath, he acknowledges the toll such commitment took on their romantic partners. “We were like, ‘Our women have the short end of the stick of this. I wonder why they even like us.’”
The notion led Nix and the group’s lead singer Brandon Coleman, along with songwriter Dan Couch, to write “Wondering Why,” the band’s breakthrough hit from their 2022 album Moment of Truth, putting them on the mainstream map.
The bluesy romantic ballad depicts a committed, if unlikely, love story between an upper-class woman and a working-class man. (“I don’t know what happened, but it sure don’t add up on paper/ But when I close my eyes late at night, you can bet I thank my maker,” Coleman croons in the opening verse.) More than a year after its release, “Wondering Why” made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 — in late December, no less, even amid the typical influx of holiday songs on the all-genre chart. Now, the band’s first entry rises to a new No. 71 high on charts dated Jan. 20 as it builds at radio and streaming.
Composed of Coleman, Nix, Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass) and John Hall (drums), The Red Clay Strays have been making music since 2016, with most of the group meeting during college or through prior gigs. Crafting an amalgam of rockabilly, gospel, soul, blues and hints of country, Coleman’s barrel-chested vocal and 1950s Johnny Cash-meets-Jerry Lee Lewis onstage aesthetic shape what he refers to as “non-denominational rock’n’roll.”
While crafting its sound in the local circuit, the independent band began to add pieces to its team, including Conway Entertainment Group’s Cody Payne as manager. He first met the group in 2019 as a booking agent and later began working with the group through the company’s management arm, Ontourage Management. As his position continued to grow, so did the group’s fan base within the community and online: by the time the members felt ready to record a debut album, Payne played an instrumental role in igniting crowdfunding efforts to help with the financial struggles of paying for studio time.
“I built it on their website, straight PayPal,” Payne says. Despite not having an official monetary goal in mind, he recalls thinking that $30,000 would be enough to get the job done — and was floored as the total quickly soared past that number. “The first week we did over $50,000; by the end of it we had about $60,000.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
Using analog methods at a Huntsville, Ala. studio, the band spent just over a week creating Moment of Truth, which was subsequently self-released in April 2022. Though it was initially met with tepid commercial returns, at the start of the following year, Payne hired Coleman’s younger brother, Matthew — who is also one of the band’s primary songwriters — as a videographer to help grow The Red Clay Strays’ online presence. The band also signed with WME for booking representation in January 2023, and within the span of a few months, announced a series of high-profile opening gigs for Elle King, Eric Church and Dierks Bentley.
In May, the band began taking meetings with a handful of labels, with the members parsing the decision of whether to sign or remain independent — until they met with Thirty Tigers co-founder/president David Macias. “It just made more sense for us,” Coleman says. “Instead of giving us the dog and pony show, David gave us straight advice. There was no pitch. That’s what I wanted to hear. If I’m betting on anybody, I’m betting on us every time.” By September, following months of touring festivals including Lollapalooza and CMA Fest, The Red Clay Strays had officially signed to Thirty Tigers.
With Matthew’s help, the band began to upload an influx of clips, largely consisting of live performances, to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. “He was putting out reels and social numbers kept going up,” Payne says. “Wondering Why” has soundtracked more than 71,000 TikTok videos to date, along with a lyric video for the song that has compiled more than 2.5 million YouTube views.
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In the time since, “Wondering Why” has grown across formats and genres: on charts dated Jan. 20, the breakthrough hit holds at highs on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, reaches a new No. 19 best on Adult Alternative Airplay and sits at No. 22 on Hot Country Songs. Labels have again reached out, says Payne, though the band has no plans to move from Thirty Tigers.
Additionally, despite plans to release a follow-up project by early summer, the recent chart success has spurred second thoughts to “let ‘Wondering Why’ and Moment of Truth breathe a bit,” Payne adds. When the new album does arrive, it’ll boast production from Dave Cobb, thanks to Conway Entertainment Group’s Brandon Mauldin setting things in motion with mutual connection Shooter Jennings. “Since we’ve started, the goal from day one was to work with Dave Cobb,” Coleman says. “The fact that it actually happened is surreal.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
From left: Drew Nix, John Hall, Brandon Coleman, Andrew Bishop and Zach Rishel of The Red Clay Strays with their manager Cody Payne (third from left) in Red Rocks, CO.
Macie B. Coleman
In the meantime, the band will continue its Way Too Long headlining tour, in addition to more festival dates, including Boston Calling and Hinterland. Coleman knows as the hype for “Wondering Why” mounts, so too may the pressure to follow it up while the iron is hot — but he’s keeping his cool amid the band’s breakthrough moment.
“Everybody yelling at us to play it from the beginning of the show is kind of crazy, but it’s cool. I’m thankful for the recognition, but I always have it in my mind that people [go] viral for a month or two, then the next thing comes along.”
A version of this story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.