Music

The newly created Grammy Award for songwriter of the year is shaping up to be a tight race, with 62 potential nominees in contention, including such major hitmakers as The-Dream, Amy Allen, Natalie Hemby (pictured above, L-R), Justin Tranter, James Fauntleroy, Shane McAnally, Ali Tamposi, Kat Dahlia, Edgar Barrera, Omer Fedi, Scott Harris, Tobias Jesso

Grammy and Oscar winning singer-songwriter Sam Smith has announced their fourth studio album, “Gloria,” will be released on January 27, 2023 via Capitol Records. Made with longtime collaborators Jimmy Napes, Stargate and Max Martin stablemate Ilya, the album is described in the announcement as “not only a creative revelation but something of a personal revolution for the celebrated

In the digital age, the traditional songbook — filled with lyrics and sheet music and maybe some pictures — can feel like a lost art, but it certainly is not to classical musicians, and particularly musical theater veterans. So even for Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Pulitzer winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, his first songbook, containing 27 songs from “Hamilton,”

From familiar faces to rising stars and living legends, the producer of the year, non classical category promises to be one of the most hotly contested fields at the 2023 Grammy Awards. The leading contenders helped craft some of the year’s most acclaimed projects — elevating, refining, and, in some cases, reinventing the sounds of

When Dove Cameron sat down to write “Boyfriend,” the 26-year-old singer-actor thought no one would ever hear it. “It was my first foray into trying to write for myself,” Cameron tells Variety. “I was like, ‘I just want to write a song that I know no one’s gonna hear, just for me as an experiment.’” Then Cameron teased the demo on TikTok, and

After Kanye West unleashed more than three and a half hours of anti-Semitic rants, untruths about George Floyd and hostile comments toward everyone from Trevor Noah to Diddy during a Sunday appearance on Revolt.TV’s “Drink Champs,” interviewer N.O.R.E. apologized for using his platform to have such views aired during a call to the”Breakfast Club” on

With their first new album in five years and a long tour now underway, the members of Canadian dreampop outfit Alvvays are living the rock and roll dream. “We’re excited to be in a tin can for the next six weeks together, because that’s how healthy relationships function,” laughs singer Molly Rankin over Zoom from

Zendaya has conquered acting and singing, but now it sounds likes she’s going to impress us with her tennis skills. The “Euphoria” star trained for months for her role as a tennis player-turned-coach in Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film “Challengers.” “She’s wonderful,” Guadagnino told Variety Saturday night at the Academy Museum Gala. “I mean, wow. We

The Grammys’ new video game score category appears to be a success in its first year, as more than 70 original scores have been entered. First-round voting is underway now, and Recording Academy members have plenty to choose from. But will they vote based on popularity of the game or on quality of the music?

I’ve known the name Ron Delsener for as long as I can remember. Growing up in New York, I listened to a lot of radio — especially Q104.3 — and you’d hear ads for concerts at Madison Square Garden and Giants Stadium (pre-MetLife) brought to you by “Ron Delsener Presents.” Then you’d see his name

Rauw Alejandro, Chiquis, Jesse & Joy, Marco Antonio Solís and Sebastián Yatra will perform at the 23 rd annual Latin Grammy Awards, the Latin Recording Academy announced on Monday morning. Alejandro, who was nominated for Best New Artist in 2020, boasts a total of eight nominations for this year’s awards, including Record Of The Year

Hybe Entertainment, the management company behind K-Pop sensation BTS, says it has prepared for the band’s military service hiatus and that it is no longer a one-act operation. It promises: a multi-label strategy; a wider artist roster that will be boosted by four new ‘teams; further international expansion; and accelerated use of technology, following in-house

BTS, the biggest names in K-Pop, announced Monday that they will sign up for Korea’s mandatory military service, with Jin initiating the process at the end of October. The move means that the septet will become temporarily inactive as a group. But, “both the company and the members of BTS are looking forward to reconvening

Guess how many submissions Taylor Swift has on the preliminary Grammy ballot? If you know her all too well, you can probably intuit the answer to that one even before we tell you? It’s 13… of course. But there are many other burning questions about the ballot that has gone out to Recording Academy members

Keke Palmer has thrown her name in the hat for “Sister Act 3.” No, not a formal audition, but she showed off her vocal chops by singing a snippet of “Joyful, Joyful” on the carpet at the Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday evening. “I’m your girl,” Palmer said. “I’m ready.” “Sister Act”

Jin will be the next BTS member to release solo music, the singer announced during the band’s free-of-charge “Yet to Come” concert in South Korea on Saturday. Jin made sure to spare the details on names and dates, but he did state there was a single he made in collaboration “with someone that I’d always

The free concert by K-pop sensation BTS in Busan, Korea, was viewed by upwards of 49 million people on Saturday. The free-of-charge “BTS ‘Yet to Come’ in Busan” concert was held in support of Busan’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo and represented an attempt to introduce the city and Korean culture to global

Kelsea Ballerini walks into the penthouse suite of a West Hollywood hotel bearing a big smile, a full bottle of wine and two glasses, and this is immediately a good sign for an interview. She has a lot to toast, having just released a well-reviewed album, “Subject to Change,” and being about to play a

The fact that Nicki Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl” was shifted out of the Grammys’ rap categories and into the pop division on a preliminary ballot has nearly resulted in an international incident, given the ensuing publicity and controversy as voting began this week. It’s certainly resulted in the year’s most visible hip-hop feud, with a

With global box office receipts already exceeding $100 million, “Smile” is the breakout horror hit of 2022. And while pundits largely put the film’s success down to Parker Finn’s spooky premise and a razor-sharp marketing campaign, its secret sauce is arguably Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s inventive score. Built around an obscure instrument that mimics human

The centennial of Henry Mancini, composer of “The Pink Panther,” “Moon River” and other movie songs, isn’t until 2024. But the celebration began on Thursday when an all-star parade of Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning musicians got together to re-record one of his most famous works: “Peter Gunn.” With legendary composers John Williams and Herbie Hancock

Arcade Fire is having trouble keeping name acts in the opening slots for its arena tours. Beck has now dropped out of his position as the opener for the group’s U.S. tour, without any explanation so far. In an email sent to ticket buyers, Beck was described only as “unfortunately no longer able to join

Among the many oddities of a tumultuous, pandemic-addled year in music in 2020, the most surprising might have been that Taylor Swift’s massive “Folklore” was surpassed in consumption by the end of the year by an even more massive album from a still up-and-coming Atlanta rapper. Up until the release of “My Turn,” Lil Baby

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Deadheads, listen up. Tickets are finally available for Dead and Co.’s final tour, which kicks off next summer. The supergroup — consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann,

It’s only the first week of first-round voting for the Grammys, but the awards process has already stirred up a major controversy in the hip-hop world and beyond, bringing sparring between rappers Nicki Minaj and Latto out into the open after Minaj said she felt the Recording Academy was showing a bias toward Latto in

The Grammy for remixed recording (non-classical) is a notoriously difficult-to-predict category, with lesser-known names rubbing shoulders with giants of the touring DJ world annually among nominees.  But the space has gained increasing relevance in recent years as remixes such as Imanbek’s take on SAINt JHN’s “Roses” can now generate billions of streams globally. The Kazakh

February 2023 will be the first time a composer will walk away with a Grammy for scoring a video game. And many in the creative community are saying “it’s about time.” Game scores have, over the past two decades, become a huge part of the media music landscape. Yet, despite being eligible for music’s highest

We don’t talk about Bruno, but we should discuss “Encanto’s” chances at the Grammys. While the mega-selling soundtrack, which boasts eight original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, is likely to be nominated for compilation soundtrack for visual media, it has the bona fides for major category love too. In addition to glowing reviews, “Encanto” spent nine

Since the 1975’s debut in 2013, each successive album from the band has felt like a response to a dare. The most reliable constant has been the group’s brazen insistence on scrambling its sound — a strategy that culminated in 2020’s “Notes on a Conditional Form,” an album of such restless sprawl that it became

The story has become depressingly familiar over the past few weeks: After nearly two years of lockdown, thousands of musicians returned to the road this year, virtually all at the same time, vying for gigs at the same venues, buses from the same bus-rental companies — and most significantly, the same very limited disposable income