Music

While TikTok superstar Addison Rae is usually seen mouthing the words of other people’s songs, the dancer, actor and recording artist is preparing to release more of her own music. In an interview with Variety, Rae, who tops the list of highest-paid TikTokers, revealed she is working on a new EP out “really, really soon,” with

Chuck E. Weiss, the musician who helped launch the Viper Room with Johnny Depp and was a fixture of Los Angeles’ music scene for decades, died Tuesday. He was 76. His bandmate Jimmy Wood confirmed his death, telling Variety, “Chuck E. Weiss left the room yesterday morning around 8:30. JJ Holiday was by his side.

Music memorabilia collectors finally have a TV show to justify their obsession, or at least reassure them they’re hardly alone in their mania. AXS TV will premiere “Rock My Collection,” a new series co-hosted by Ahmet Zappa and appraiser Stephen Braitman, on August 15 at 8 p.m. ET/5 PT. Zappa and Braitman will be joined

Yasiin Bey, the musician formerly known as Mos Def, will portray jazz piano legend Thelonious Monk in the biopic “Thelonious,” which is slated to begin production in the summer of 2022. The project is being brought to the screen by Jupiter Rising Film and its co-founders, Alberto Marzan and Peter Lord Moreland. Moreland will also

California’s beloved Desert Daze festival will return to Lake Perris outside Riverside on Nov. 12-14, with headlining performances by the War On Drugs (in their only show of 2021), Kamasi Washington, Toro y Moi and Japanese Breakfast. According to organizers, the event “will be scaled down to keep us together in spirit while socially distanced,”

Eric Clapton will not perform at venues that require proof of vaccination. “Following the PM’s announcement on Monday the 19th of July 2021, I feel honour bound to make an announcement of my own: I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present. Unless there

The latest spate of stories on Britney Spears’ oppressive 13-year conservatorship have been dominating the entertainment headlines for the past month. On June 24, the pop star gave her first public testimony in court that was livestreamed to the media. “I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized,” she told a Los Angeles probate judge. “I

It is expected that President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden will attend. Earlier this year, the couple participated virtually in the event. This follows a time-out in which Donald Trump, deeply disliked by large swaths of the arts communities, did not take part in any of the three Kennedy Center Honors held during

After 13 years of being silenced, Britney Spears’ voice has been heard around the world. Following scathing June 23 testimony in Los Angeles when the Princess of Pop told the judge her conservatorship is “abusive,” Spears gave her second voluntary testimony this summer, speaking to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge on July 14 and

The cast of “The Devil Wears Prada” is reuniting for a good cause. Fans have until Aug. 3 to bid on a Zoom meet-and-greet with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. The Charitybuzz auction benefits the Lollipop Theater Network, a 20-year-old nationwide organization that creates entertainment experiences for children facing life-threatening illnesses.

Unless you’ve been sleeping as long as Rip Van Winkle, you know TikTok has become the new big man on music’s campus and a catalyst for pop culture. How many times, after all, did you see that TikTok ad on fall telecasts featuring Fleetwood Mac, thanks to skateboarding app user Nathan Apodaca and his bottle

Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.” Kate Beckinsale is “highly” doubtful that another “Underworld” will be made, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t up for playing Selene in a sixth movie. “I really wanted them to do an ‘Underworld’-‘Blade’ mashup. What a duo that would be,” she told me at the premiere of her

Sex Pistols lead singer John Lydon — better known by his stage name of Johnny Rotten — has revealed he turned down an opportunity to be depicted in “The Crown” after objecting to the show’s “distortion” of history. The dispute with “The Crown,” which Lydon described as “an infuriating issue,” emerged during a court case

Brandi Carlile goes full glam — and fully emotional — in the Courteney Cox-directed video for her new single “Right on Time,” released Wednesday simultaneously with the full details about her forthcoming album, “In These Silent Days.” [embedded content] Cox is known mostly for being in music videos, not behind the scenes on them, thanks

Bob Dylan’s “Bootleg Series” of archival releases recently passed its 20th anniversary without any set yet dedicated solely to his work in the 1980s. The first half of that decade gets its due, finally, with the upcoming release of a 5-CD set that collects outtakes, alternate versions and live or rehearsal tracks from the eras

Management company the Core Entertainment and Universal Music Canada have announced a joint venture “designed to offer Canadian artists a collaborative and integrated approach to releasing music worldwide,” according to the announcement. The joint venture’s first recording artist signing is Grammy-nominated, Nashville-based Canadian singer-songwriter Steven Lee Olsen, who is set to release new music at

Glastonbury has scrapped plans for its mini-concert in September. Emily Eavis, co-organizer of the iconic U.K. music festival, confirmed in an Instagram post on Tuesday that a planned fall event called “Equinox,” which was set to run mid-September, has been called off due to “a number of reasons.” “We’re putting all of our energy into

The scandal over sexual misconduct allegations against multi-hyphenate superstar Kris Wu has grown beyond the scope of mere celebrity gossip to become a significant incident with public-interest implications, Chinese state media declared Tuesday.  The rebukes from the country’s top official news outlets, whose stances align with that of the ruling Communist Party, likely indicate trouble

Elvis Costello and the Imposters, who had to interrupt a spring 2020 U.K. tour when the pandemic kicked in, will be picking up where they didn’t leave off — as kings of America, hitting the U.S. for a month-long theater tour in October and November. It may be no accident that the tour kickoff gig

Kanye West has confirmed that his new album, “Donda,” drops on Friday. The release date was established during Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Tuesday within a Beats by Dre ad featuring track star Sha’Carri Richardson, which West scored and edited. The commercial previews the track “No Child Left Behind” from the album, an

Despite being sued by Jay-Z and despite a court order placing limits on what he’s allowed to sell, Damon Dash did what he said he was going to do during an interview with Variety: He’s officially started an auction for his third of Roc-A-Fella Inc. — and its sole asset, Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt” album —

A so-called “Britney bill” has been introduced in Congress, with bipartisan backers, designed to crack down on conservatorship abuse in the wake of heightened public attention to the issue due to Britney Spears’ headline-making court case. But the “Free Britney” movement is not welcoming it with universally open arms. Florida Democrat Charlie Crist and South

H.E.R.’s Lights On Festival is going bicoastal. A New York edition of her previously Bay-area-only festival has just been added, set to take place Oct. 21-22 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn with Maxwell as a co-headliner and a dozen support acts announced. The New York expansion follows a near-instantaneous sellout for the second annual west

When filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan was giving notes to singer-songwriter Saleka Shyamalan — his daughter — one song he played for her was the U2 hit “With or Without You.” The director had recruited Saleka, no stranger to collaborating with her father, to write a track for his latest film “Old,” which opens in theaters

Oak View Group — the venue-development, advisory, and investment company for the sports and live entertainment industries founded by Irving Azoff and Tim Lieweke — has announced a long-term partnership with Ticketmaster, the Live Nation-owned largest ticketing company in the world, covering six of OVG’s new arenas. Those include New York’s UBS Arena, Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena,

A month after Sony Music Entertainment announced that it will waive unrecouped debts for artists who signed with the company before 2000, its publishing company has joined the program as well. The program, part of a larger effort called Artists Forward, means that eligible songwriters who had not recouped their advances and/or other expenses will

Oscar-winning filmmaker Rodney Rothman (“Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”) and former MGM co-president of production Adam Rosenberg have teamed up to launch the new “event entertainment” company, Modern Magic. “Helping lead the team that made Into the Spider-Verse was a life-altering experience that forever changed what I thought was possible,” Rothman said, announcing the new venture.

Coldplay have announced the release of their ninth studio album, “Music of the Spheres,” arriving on October 15. The band announced the Max Martin-produced album on Instagram via a handwritten note alongside an album trailer, which combines an animated cosmic journey through the album’s planetary artwork with short clips of the album’s 12 tracks. The

The iHeartCountry Festival is among those rejoining the un-virtual ranks this year, as the annual broadcast will return to its previous home of the Frank Erwin Center in Austin on Oct. 30 for an event set to go out live over iHeartMedia’s 150-plus country stations. Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Little Big Town, Carly Pearce, Jake

For today’s finale of “Mind Wide Open,” the IGTV series and podcast hosted by Chris Cornell’s daughter, Lily Cornell Silver, she welcomes her mother, longtime Alice in Chains and Soundgarden manager Susan Silver.  According to the announcement, Susan — who rarely does interviews — and Lily will talk about “the relationship between a parent and child with