Rock
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Sum 41 singer Deryck Whibley is happy to be home and resting after being hospitalized last week for pneumonia. But in a post to fans on Tuesday (Sept. 19) the 43-year-old pop-punk frontman said he’s not quite “out of the woods” yet. “I wanted to take a min to say thank you to everyone for […]
Although British rock band The Last Dinner Party scored a top 10 alternative hit with their debut single, for the five women that comprise the group, they’d been preparing for this moment for years. Just before beginning university in 2020, lead singer Abigail Morris, bassist Georgia Davies and vocalist/guitarist Lizzie Mayland crossed paths and became fast friends, bonding over musical interests. (Morris and Davies attended King’s College London; Mayland at Goldsmiths.) “We would go to gigs all the time, researching and thinking about starting a band,” Morris explains. “We were very intellectual about it for a long time.”
They soon recruited lead guitarist Emily Roberts and vocalist/keyboardist Aurora Nischevi, both of whom were involved in the local music circuit. The five began writing music together at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, though their first release wouldn’t come for nearly three years — but the wait paid off. “Nothing Matters,” the cinematic alt-rock debut single that arrived in April has become a force at radio, reaching a new high of No. 8 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated Sept. 23.
While fleshing out its sound, the group built a fan base by testing its material in pubs and small venues around London. “In the age of TikTok, people thought unless you have a song go viral, there’s no way of generating a following,” Morris says. “Ours just felt like a more natural thing. We had much more of a jumping off point from playing shows to seven people who don’t give a f–k to [then] playing much larger shows.”
From left: Georgia Davies, Emily Roberts, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nischevi, and Lizzie Mayland of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
From left: Emily Roberts, Lizzie Mayland, Georgia Davies, Abigail Morris and Aurora Nischevi of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
As the band’s stature in the local scene grew, it wasn’t long before it gained traction in the industry, too: after Q Prime’s Tara Richardson heard about The Last Dinner Party through an audio engineer that worked with the act in the studio, she received four “very impressive” demos, she says. Subsequently, she saw the band perform live in early 2022, and almost immediately, she signed the act to the management firm. By May, the group had scored a record deal with Island. “It’s just so refreshing to see young, strong women,” Richardson says. “They’re not arrogant; they’re not out to prove themselves. They’re just doing what they do, and if you don’t like it, they’re completely fine with it.”
By the start of 2023, with a team in place, the group prepared to officially launch its recording career with “Nothing Matters.” “We built a reputation around the London live circuit and had a bit of buzz around our first release,” says Davies. “This wasn’t a dress rehearsal.” Adds Morris: “You only get one debut.”
With a swelling bridge and a cheeky hook, “Nothing Matters” originally began as a “slow, sad ballad” that Morris wrote about a then-current romantic relationship. “I very rarely write love songs — I only write about heartbreak,” she says with a laugh. “It’s just easier and more dramatic. [But] I was with my boyfriend at the time and I was very happy.” Davies remembers the bandmates then “throwing everything at” the simple piano ballad in the studio, playing around with guitar solos, horn sections and vocal tones. “It was really a song that became itself once it was in the hands of the band,” Davies says. “It was one completely different thing when it first started and it needed to be played live and have everyone’s input.”
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The song officially arrived on April 19, and was paired with a Pride & Prejudice-coded music video that delivered dark academia with an edgy girl-band twist. “It captures the spirit of what we’re doing now,” Morris says. “ ‘Nothing Matters’ has that maximalist, tortuous freedom that we have and want for the rest of the record.” By the summer, “Nothing Matters” had become a radio hit: in early July, it debuted on Adult Alternative Airplay; the following month, it did so on Rock & Alternative Airplay.
Since the breakthrough hit arrived, The Last Dinner Party has grown its touring platform well beyond the pubs from their early days, supporting Florence + the Machine and Hozier on separate runs and performing at major festivals including Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds. The band will soon embark on a 10-stop U.K. headlining tour, followed by five dates in the U.S. It’ll have two other singles in tow for the trek: The bouncy pop-rock “Sinner” dropped in late June, and its next release, which the band calls a “left turn,” is due to arrive by the end of September.
With a debut album expected sometime in 2024, The Last Dinner Party’s members seem completely in sync: Morris and Davies finishing each other’s sentences multiple times during our interview, including when discussing what keeps the band’s emotional bond so strong. “I think what’s missing in a lot of artists [is] a commitment to themselves because they want to seem cool or ironic,” says Davies. “I want people to see our sincerity and be themselves too.”
“We advise them, but at the end of the day, they know what they’re doing,” says Richardson. “They have mood boards — everything has already been discussed. Excuse the French, but they’re not f–king around.”
From left: Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts and Aurora Nischevi of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
From left: Georgia Davies, Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Aurora Nischevi and Lizzie Mayland of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
A version of this story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023 issue of Billboard.
Just days after Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner was removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s Board of Directors following an interview with the New York Times in which he addressed criticism of the myopic scope of his new book, The Masters, the members of Living Colour weighed in on the controversy in a pointed statement.
The pioneering 1980s “Cult of Personality” funk metal band — whose guitarist, Vernon Reid, helped form the Black Rock Coalition in 1985 — said the fact that Wenner would title his book The Masters without including a single woman or Black artist is absurd on its face. “The very idea of a book called The Masters‘ which blatantly omits the essential contributions of Black, people of color and women to Rock & Pop Culture speaks to a much larger and more systemic problem,” wrote the band, whose members include singer Corey Glover, bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun.
“His New York Times interview statement that African American and female artists are not ‘articulate’ enough to express themselves about their own work is absurd on its face,” it continued. “For someone who has chronicled the musical landscape for over 50 years, it is an insult to those of us who sit at the feet of these overlooked geniuses.”
In the Times interview, Wenner, 77, discussed the book that collects interviews he’s done over the years for the magazine, comprised of only white men, including U2’s Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon and more. No women or people of color are included in the book, with Wenner noting in the introduction that neither made the cut because they were not in his “zeitgeist.”
“When I was referring to the zeitgeist, I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers, OK? Just to get that accurate,” Wenner told the Times’ David Marchese. “The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”
Wenner then attempted to clarify his views, saying, “It’s not that they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni [Mitchell] was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock … Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”
Wenner, who founded the magazine in 1967 and was its editor and editorial director until 2019, was removed from the board of the RRHOF on Saturday after an emergency vote in which all the board members except for one chose to oust him; hours later he issued an apology for his comments.
“In my interview with The New York Times, I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks,” he said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter. “The Masters is a collection of interviews I’ve done over the years that seemed to me to best represent an idea of rock ‘n’ roll’s impact on my world; they were not meant to represent the whole of music and it’s diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career. They don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists whose music and ideas I revere and will celebrate and promote as long as I live. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences.”
The Living Colour statement said that as far as the band was concerned, the apology did not temper the original comments by Wenner. Futher, the said the book’s lack of diverse voices, especially from someone who chronicled the rock music landscape for half a century, was an affront on multiple levels. “It is an insult to those of us who sit at the feet of these overlooked geniuses. To hear that he believes Stevie Wonder isn’t articulate enough to express his thoughts on any given subject is quite frankly, insulting,” they wrote. “To hear that Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Tina Turner, or any of the many Woman artists that he chooses not to mention, are not worthy of the status of Master, smacks of sexist gatekeeping, and exclusionary behavior.”
The statement concluded, “Mr. Werner’s [sic] apology only solidifies the idea. That his book is a reflection of his worldview suggests that it is narrow & small indeed.”
Wenner was inducted into the RRHOF as a non-performer in 2004 and was one of the founders of the Foundation in 1983; her served as the Foundation’s chairman from 2006-2020. He left Rolling Stone in 2019 when the publication was acquired by Penske Media Corporation, which is also Billboard‘s parent company.
RS — whose president and CEO is Wenner’s son, Gus Wenner — issued a statement on Monday (Sept. 18) distancing itself from the magazine’s founder. “Jann Wenner’s recent statement to the New York Times do not represent the value and practices of today’s Rolling Stone,” the publication tweeted. “Jann Wenner has not been directly involved in our operations since 2019. Out purpose, especially since his departure, has been to tell stories that reflect the diversity of voices and experiences that shape our world. At Rolling Stone‘s core is the understanding that music above all can bring us together, not divide us.”
See Living Colour and RS‘s statements below.
ESPN’s Monday Night Football put a fresh spin on a nostalgic hit Monday night (Sept. 18), as the broadcast opened with a new music video featuring Chris Stapleton, Snoop Dogg and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana reimagining Phil Collins‘ classic “In the Air Tonight.” The clip led into ESPN’s broadcast of the New Orleans Saints facing […]
Congratulations are in order for Billy Corgan and Chloe Mendel, who tied the knot on Saturday (Sept. 16) after more than a decade together. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman revealed the exciting news to Chicago’s WGN TV at the band’s pop-up celebration for the 30th anniversary of their seminal 1993 album Siamese Dream at Madame Zuzu’s in […]
The long wait is almost over. Blink-182 finally announced the release date and track list for their eagerly anticipated reunion album on Monday morning (Sept. 18). The trio’s first new album with returning OG member singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge since 2011, ONE MORE TIME…, is due out on Oct. 20 via Columbia Records; the title track will drop at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday (Sept. 21).
The news was announced via a nearly four-minute video montage uploaded on Monday in which the group — which also includes bassist/singer Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker — discussed childhood trauma and chaos that birthed the band in a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe; that full interview will be uploaded soon.
“Blink was always a way to force the happiness in the room,” says DeLonge in the clip, which chronicles the hurt feelings and press pile-on that accompanied the guitarist’s departure in 2015. “I definitely didn’t want to hold these guys back in any kind of way,” the band’s co-founder says emotionally in the Lowe interview, recalling a conversation with his wife in which he told her he might not ever play music again.
However, when Hoppus shared that he was battling the blood cancer diffuse large B-cell lymphoma — the bassist announced in April 2022 that he was cancer-free — DeLonge said the news made him think that playing music with his friends was “the only thing I want to do.”
The video preview features a sneak listen to three new songs, including the emotional title track ballad, which Barker says dives into the question of “why does it take these catastrophes like me being in a plane crash or Mark being sick for our band to get back together?” Barker was nearly killed in a Sept. 2008 plane crash that took the lives of four passengers and critically injured his friend Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein.
The song tackles those traumas head-on with the lines, “I wish they told us it should take a sickness/ Or airplanes falling out the sky.” Hoppus tells Lowe that the chemotherapy he underwent “wrecked” his vocal cords and resulted in him visiting a vocal coach to even get him to the point where the band could play Coachella earlier this year. “When it’s the three of us onstage I feel unstoppable, we f—ing crush,” Hoppus says.
The bassist also dives into the intense feelings he felt after his diagnosis and the struggle during treatment, with DeLonge saying once he heard his friend was sick “nothing matters, really,” and Barker adding that he always knew the trio’s “brotherhood wouldn’t ever deteriorate… or wouldn’t be there.” Other songs previewed in the video include the uplifting rocker “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got” and the blitzing “Anthem Part 3.”
According to a release announcing the project, ONE MORE TIME… was recorded during the band’s 2023 reunion tour, which kicked off with a surprise last-minute addition to the lineup for April’s Coachella Festival. Produced by Barker, it features 17 new songs that “capture the band at the top of their game, layering in themes of tragedy, triumph and most importantly, brotherhood.” To date they’ve previewed the collection with the single “Edging,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart in November, after topping the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart.
Hoppus promises that this is, without a doubt, “one of the best albums we’ve ever made.”
Check out the track list for ONE MORE TIME… and watch the trailer below.
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ONE MORE TIME… tracklist
“Anthem Part 3”
“Dance With Me”
“Fell in Love”
“Terrified”
“One More Time”
“More Than You Know”
“Turn This Off!”
“When We Were Young”
“Edging”
“You Don’t Know What You’ve Got”
“Blink Wave”
“Bad News”
“Hurt (Interlude)”
“Turpentine”
“Fuck Face”
“Other Side”
“Childhood”
Sum 41 singer Deryck Whibley was rushed to the hospital due to a bout of pneumonia that wife Ariana Cooper Whibley said could have resulted in heart failure. “Deryck and I were suppose to be in Chicago right now, celebrating our eight year wedding anniversary but the universe had a different plan for us,” wrote […]
If you’ve been blasting Olivia Rodrigo‘s GUTS album in your room lately and you find your dad singing along a bit too excitedly to “Get Him Back!,” you’re not alone. The 20-year-old singer told People magazine that her angsty pop-punk anthems about teenage drama and the pain of being pure at heart appear to be landing with fans beyond her Gen Z target audience.
“I actually think that I’m really excited by the way that people are getting behind artists that normally would be deemed for young people,” she told the magazine. “I love interacting with fans who are my age and people who are going through the struggles that I’m going through in real time, but it’s been really fun also to experience those girls’ dads be like, ‘Wow, I remember when I was going through that heartbreak.’”
Specifically, Rodrigo said her Grammy-winning Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 breakthrough single “Drivers License” seemed to cross over to a much wider audience than listeners her age experiencing the highs and lows of first love. “I remember when that came out, people of all walks of life would just come up to me and be like, ‘I remember exactly where I was when I was experiencing that heartbreak for the first time,’” Rodrigo said of the 2021 hit. “It’s just such a cool thing to see that we’re all so much more alike than we are different. It just makes me feel less alone. I’m just like, ‘Wow, my experiences aren’t really that unique. Everyone has experienced some sort of pain or loss and insecurity.’”
The good news for Rodrigo — whose sophomore album, GUTS, just debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart in its first week — was that her songs are making it so that “people are starting to take teenage girl music a little more seriously, which I’m really happy about.”
It’s not just dads, though, according to The Daily Beast (pay-walled). The site spoke to AP reporter Maria Sherman, who said that she’s noticed another recent evolution in the demo obsessing over Rodrigo’s music that further widens the singer’s reach. “We’re seeing that conversation evolve where it’s accepted that people of all ages, particularly older women, are relating to and feeling for Olivia Rodrigo, and now there’s a connection with men, too,” she said. “Not to say that they weren’t listening to it, but I’ve certainly seen this conversation come up quite a bit.”
These millennial men, dubbed “Rodri-Bros” by the Beast, have no problem singing along, and relating to, the singer’s emo tales of romantic wreckage. One of those bros, 35-year-old Brooklynite Jeff, said he was a fan because of the “Gen Z of it all. I think I’m just sort of fascinated by that generation. In the last few years, I’ve started realizing that as a smack-dab-in-the-middle millennial, I’m no longer part of the young, fun, progressive generation, at least comparatively. I really like the openness and maturity and vulnerability in her music that I think is indicative of a lot of Gen Z.”
The allure might also have something to do with an initial attraction to Rodrigo’s signature sound, which mixes pop songcraft with a heavy nod to late ’90s and early 2000’s bands that appealed to these guys in the first place, including My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Dashboard Confessional.
The main reason so many of these wicked sensitive dudes say they aren’t afraid to harmonize along with “Deja Vu,” though, is precisely because Rodrigo taps so directly into the universal feelings of being a teenager. “She captures a lot of the experience of being an insecure teen without compromising a more adult voice to do so,” said married high school teacher Jesse, 34. “Even if you don’t like her music, I don’t know that there are many artists that are able to thread that needle in the same way.”
Thirty Seconds to Mars‘ sixth album, It’s the End of the World But It’s a Beautiful Day, has topped this week’s new music poll. Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (Sept. 15) on Billboard, choosing the latest from brothers Jared and Shannon Leto as their favorite new music release of the past week. […]
U2 has unveiled a brand new song ahead of its Las Vegas residency. On Saturday night (Sept. 16), the veteran U.K. Rock and Roll Hall of Famers debuted new track “Atomic City” during a music video shoot in downtown Las Vegas. The song is expected to be released in conjunction with the launch of U2’s […]