Music

Country star Morgan Wallen is ending 2021 in a place few would have expected to find him a few months ago: in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s R&B/hip-hop chart. “Broadway Girls,” his collaboration with rapper Lil Durk, came out just before Christmas and ascended this week to the top of the chart that perhaps

One thing that probably all sides of a divided nation can agree on: Ted Nugent, for better or worse, is almost certainly never getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And the right-wing rocker says he’s fine with that , claiming he’d just as soon not be part of a hall that includes

Hollywood has all but given up on ringing in 2022. COVID’s highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has ripped through the country at a shockingly fast rate, has prompted a wave of New Year’s Eve entertainment cancellations. Fox scrapped its “New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast,” and Phish rescheduled their “New Year’s Run” concerts. Still, the

For most, the pandemic with its lockdowns and quarantines has meant days filled with repetition. Working from home, sticking to a routine, indulging in smaller circles of pre-vetted activities — the beat goes on and on and on. If 2020 brought back the guitar (credit: Harry Styles), 2021 was the year of the drummer —

The group Dead & Company is offering a break to fans experiencing second thoughts about attending the Playing in the Sand festival in Mexico next month. The shows will go on as planned, but the band and festival promoter have set up a brief window in which ticket holders concerned about traveling during the omicron

LL Cool J is pulling out of this year’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2022″ after testing positive for COVID-19. The ABC special, which is marking its 50th anniversary this year, is still moving forward as planned with hosts Seacrest and Liza Koshy, but will have to make an adjustment due

Ruling on a dispute between Live Nation and AEG/Goldenvoice over a New Year’s Eve festival on tribal land in the city of Coachella, a judge has declared that Live Nation can continue selling tickets for the Dec. 31 show, knocking down a request from Goldenvoice for a restraining order halting sales. The event had originally

Angela “Angie” Kukawski, a Los Angeles-based business manager who worked at Boulevard Management in Woodland Hills, where high-net worth clients included Nicki Minaj, has died, the Ventura County Coroner confirmed to Variety. She was 55 and the cause of death appears to be homicide, according to sources who point to an incident on December 22

Harry Colomby, who made the unusual career transition from high school teacher to talent manager at the invitation of jazz great Thelonious Monk, died Dec. 25 from multiple causes at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 92. Although Monk was his first client, Colomby’s career expanded to film and television, managing both comedian John

Shane McAnally might have ended up being the most visible songwriter working in Nashville today even if he hadn’t starred in two seasons of a prime-time show about songwriting, “Songland”… though it didn’t hurt that the NBC series made him a household face as well as liner-notes name. Currently, he has four songs on the

“The Music Man” will cancel performances through Jan. 1 after Hugh Jackman tested positive for COVID-19. The revival of Meredith Willson’s classic musical is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway. However, like many other shows, it is struggling to keep its cast and crew healthy at a time when COVID is surging and omicron

Travis Scott and Dior won’t be in business together after all, or at least not in the near future, as Dior announced the line it was developing with Scott’s Cactus Jack brand would be “postpone(d) indefinitely” in the wake of the Astroworld tragedy. In a statement issued to WWD, the luxury fashion brand said: “Out

Adele and Mariah Carey dominated the respective worlds of albums and singles in the week leading up to Christmas, to no one’s surprise. A fresh album by Roddy Ricch was the lone wild card thrown into the holiday mix at the last minute, but its modest returns stood no danger of toppling Adele from her

Issa Rae, whose five-season run with HBO’s “Insecure” came to a close with a finale this weekend, has dipped more than a toe into the music business. She’s started her own record label, Raedio, and is producing a new show about aspiring rappers, using her existing career to help launch music ones. But rather than

J.D. Crowe, a banjo player who helped define the instrument for generations of bluegrass fans, died Friday, his family announced on Facebook. “This morning at around 3 a.m,, our dad, JD Crowe, went home. Prayers needed for all during this difficult time,” family members said in a post on his fan club page. Testimonials began

Three members of superstar K-pop group BTS have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past two days, their management company Big Hit Music has announced. On Saturday, RM and Jin tested positive for COVID-19 one day after fellow member Suga was also diagnosed. The three members completed their second rounds of COVID vaccinations in late

The best holiday song of the year isn’t on a Christmas album. It’s St. Vincent’s “..At the Holiday Party,” a track from her album “Daddy’s Home,” which takes a look at the other side of seasonal revelry — that feeling of being alone in the crowd and trying to put on a festive face while

An animated river runs through Joni Mitchell’s video oeuvre now, as a 50-year-old song that has been gradually drafted into the holiday music canon, “River,” has just gotten its first music video. The clip made its debut with little time to spare in this “Blue” semicentennial year, premiering two days before Christmas. [embedded content] The

A specter of Harry Styles floats in Greg Penny’s studio, located in an industrial park in Ojai, California. In this 3,000-square-foot, high-ceilinged space that feels like a warehouse, a makeshift acoustically-treated room is created from compressed cotton panels made from shredded T-shirts. These panels hang from a truss that looks like it should be on

Phish, who have made a tradition out of New Year’s Eve concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden, have rescheduled their 2021-22 “New Year’s Run” due to the surge of Covid-19 in the New York area. The shows will now take place April 20-23, 2022, including a three-set show (as originally planned for New Year’s

Attorneys for the members of Nirvana have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed in August by the man who was the “naked baby” on the cover of the 1991 “Nevermind” album, on the basis that the legal arguments that the image constitutes child pornography are decades too late as well as too silly.

Olivia Rodrigo, BTS, Bad Bunny, Doja Cat, Pooh Shiesty were among the artists topping the major streaming services’ year-end charts, according to a list distributed Thursday by the Digital Media Association, of which Amazon, Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify and YouTube are members. DIMA noted that streaming continued to rise in 2021, and that major hip-hop

Fandoms like to argue over whether Mariah Carey or Darlene Love is the true queen of Christmas. But can you really be queen if you aren’t doing Christmas music full-time? That is the musical question raised by a lesser known contender for the throne, Elizabeth Chan, who has staked her claim as the only singer-songwriter

Coldplay is set to stop making music in 2025, lead singer Chris Martin has confirmed. The vocalist made the announcement during a pre-recorded BBC radio show, which he is co-presenting with British host Jo Whiley. Although the Christmas-themed show is set to be broadcast on Thursday evening, a clip in which Martin confirmed the band’s

After a spate of bad publicity over winning a Goliath-versus-David lawsuit, Eric Clapton’s management has announced it does not intend to collect the money owed by a German woman who was sued for putting a bootleg CD of a 1980s Clapton concert up for sale on eBay. The woman had been ordered to pay approximately

Britney Spears continues to use Instagram as her connection to her fans, teasing that a “new song [is] in the works” and posting a video of herself doing some wailing vocal runs on Wednesday. “I just realized this today guys,” she wrote in the caption before referencing the recent end of the 13-year conservatorship under

On Wednesday, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” the first single from his third studio album, ÷ (Divide), became the first song to reach three billion streams on Spotify. While the songs with a billion-plus streams aren’t that uncommon — Spotify’s “Billions Club” playlist has more than 190 songs, including several others from Sheeran — three billion is

UPDATED: Members of a congressional committee sent Live Nation an open letter Wednesday asking for written answers to questions relating to the deadly Astroworld Festival debacle Nov. 5, contending that “the tragedy at Astroworld Festival follows a long line of other tragic events and safety violations involving Live Nation.” The letter, signed by Carolyn B.

It’s been another tumultuous year for the U.K. music business. Some issues were hangovers from 2020 – the seemingly endless COVID crisis and the related ongoing live-sector meltdown – but there were also plenty of new angles to get to grips with. So, as the industry cancels its holiday parties (thanks Omicron!) and dreams of

On theme with her latest album “Solar Power,” Lorde has managed to turn video shoots for its songs into beach vacations — the latest of which is a bucolic seaside romp for “Leader of a New Regime.” Directed by Lorde and Joel Kefali, the clip was presumably filmed in her native New Zealand and combines