Music

Another shoe has fallen in the succession of music stars reluctantly acknowledging that early and mid-summer 2021 are not going to be tenable for staging major national tours. Kenny Chesney, the only other artist besides Taylor Swift who had a series of stadium gigs pushed back from last summer to this summer, has joined her

Variety’s cover star Phoebe Bridgers, Run the Jewels and Perfume Genius are among the top nominees for the American Association of Independent Music’s annual Libera Awards, which are presented by Merlin. The awards, which celebrate the independent-music community, will be held virtually for the second consecutive year and will take place on June 17. Produced

Legendary singer Linda Ronstadt has sold her recorded music assets to Irving Azoff’s new venture, Iconic Artists Group. According to the announcement, Iconic will partner with Ronstadt and her team (specifically longtime manager John Boylan and personal assistant Janet Stark) to market her catalog. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, beyond a rep noting that the deal

JT Gray, the owner and co-founder of the Station Inn, a mecca for bluegrass and roots music enthusiasts in Nashville since the mid-’70s, died Saturday at age 75. The club attributed the death to pre-existing conditions. Gray had been featured on last Sunday night’s Grammys, as producers picked the Station Inn as one of four

“Alone Together,” a documentary about the creation of Charli XCX’s 2020 album “How I’m Feeling Now,” aims to show how the singer pulled together a full-fledged project last year under quarantine conditions and an arbitrarily fast, self-imposed deadline. But, in truth, the film is really the second time the album’s creation has been documented. The

Amid all the headlines that came out of the 2021 Grammy Awards, one that should have been bigger is what a huge night it was for independent labels and artists: For the first time, more than half of the winners were independent artists — i.e. artists affiliated with labels that are at least 51% independently

Even in the world of stan-dom, Lana Del Rey fans can be alarmingly intense. People who are ordinarily calm and composed will suddenly get slightly wild-eyed when her name is mentioned, their voices growing breathy as if channeling her, saying, “Oh, I love her!” and gushing in an almost hypnotized way that seems to carry

Before his “Friends Keep Secrets 2” album comes out next week — a collection that includes his platinum-plated “Lonely” collab with Justin Bieber (which also appears on Bieber’s own new album, out this weekend) — there are two key things to know about songwriter/producer Benny Blanco. The first is that he loves working almost exclusively

Tiana Major9’s 2019 collaboration with Earthgang, “Collide,” entered 2021 with two major milestones under its belt: it was the love theme for the 2019 Daniel Kaluuya drama “Queen & Slim,” and one of five 2020 Grammy nominees for Best R&B Song (which Robert Glasper ended up taking home last weekend). Not too shabby for the

When Warner Bros. greenlit Zack Snyder’s return to the troubled “Justice League,” vastly expanding and reediting the film into a new edition that debuts March 18 on HBO Max, one of Snyder’s first calls was to composer Tom Holkenborg. The Dutch-born, L.A.-based composer (known in the pop world as Junkie XL) had written some 40

On Saturday (March 20), Duran Duran cofounder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes will release the first music from a collaborative project with British artist and singer/violinist Wendy Bevan. While in lockdown over the past year, Rhodes (in London) and Bevan (in Los Angeles) collaborated on a monumental series of 52 cinematic instrumentals inspired by the Universe. The recordings

Justin Bieber’s last album, “Changes,” was one of the most quotable albums of 2020. That was not a good thing. The ick ran pretty thick in a collection of songs that invited fans to join the singer and his bride in their honeymoon suite but left the less voyeuristic among them thinking: Maybe you had

Rita Wilson was honored earlier today with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the 20210 Installation Gala. I caught up with a the “Sleepless in Seattle” star, 64, yesterday to talk about her start in the business, being mentored by Nora Ephron and battling COVID with husband Tom Hanks during the early

“I’ve come to the conclusion in my 40 years of living that I’m just not good at winning,” Chris Daughtry sighs. Whether being eliminated early in competition on “American Idol” — unfairly, many felt — or as the lovable Rottweiler on “The Masked Singer,” Daughtry’s track record hasn’t been very good. “I can hold my

Although some Zoom-style collaborating was inevitable in making “Zoom In,” his five-track extended-play mini-album, Ringo Starr did allow a few vetted friends inside his L.A. home studio, even if some never got far beyond the welcome mat. It provided relief from brooding over having his second planned summer tour with his All Starr Band canceled

One of the many remarkable things about first time Grammy executive producer Ben Winston and Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason jr. is that they basically haven’t stopped working since the show ended on Sunday night. Winston opens our chat by saying, “Oh, I’m straight back at it — I’ve done three ‘Late Late Shows’ since

UPDATED: Kenny Wayne Shepherd is no longer a contender for this year’s Blues Music Awards, due to controversy over his “Dukes of Hazzard” replica car and its Confederate flag imagery, which had been recently been called out by concerned and angry members of the sponsoring Blues Foundation organization. The Blues Foundation also announced that Ken

Besides boosting artists’ egos, Sunday night’s Grammy Awards gave a real leap to a number of performers’ sales and streaming figures, according to a report from Rolling Stone that measured the immediate impact on numbers for some of the best-known and least-known musicians of the evening. The exposure benefitted everyone from stars like Megan Thee

Lego Ventures, the investment arm of the Danish toy company, named Cecilia Qvist, formerly Spotify’s global head of markets, as its new head. With Qvist’s appointment, Lego Ventures will boost its focus on two strategic investment spaces: digital play and “super-charging education,” Lego Group said in a statement. Qvist had joined Spotify in 2017 and

Just under a year ago, Live Nation, the world’s largest live-entertainment company, launched Crew Nation, a charitable fund to which it contributed an initial $5 million donation, to help support concert crews around the world. It would then match the next $5 million given by artists, fans and employees dollar for dollar. The company announced today that

DJ Cassidy, whose popular “Pass the Mic” all-star video jams were most recently part of the Biden/Harris inaugural programs, has made a deal with BET to produce six “Mic” specials during 2021, all of them set to follow the network’s annual awards shows or other major programming. The first of the six, dubbed “DJ Cassidy’s

At the end of 2019, singer Jason Derulo’s career was at a low ebb. While the singer had enjoyed a string of multiplatinum singles and Teen Choice Awards in the early 2010s, he hadn’t had a major hit in several years, and an attempt at branching into acting — er, in the epic star-studded flop

In the last few years, I’ve happily watched and reviewed documentaries about Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish, both of which were presented on major streaming services (“Gaga: Five Foot Two” on Netflix, the current “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry” on Apple Plus) and made with the full cooperation of the artists in question.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is moving from October 2021 to April of 2022, two industry sources with knowledge of the situation tell Variety. It is expected that the country-music themed Stagecoach festival, which takes place the weekend after Coachella’s two weekends, will move as well. Reps for Goldenvoice, the event’s promoter, and AEG

Island Records has offered Justin Eshak and Imran Majid positions as the label’s new co-heads, and multiple sources tell Variety the pair has accepted. Eshak and Majid, pictured right and left above, respectively, were most recently executive VPs and co-heads of A&R at Columbia Records, roles they’d held since 2018. The two replace former president/CEO Darcus

UPDATED: After months of rumors, Paradigm Talent Agency have announced an agreement in principle under which Casey Wasserman’s Wasserman film will acquire Paradigm’s North American live music representation business and form a new operating unit, Paradigm reps confirmed to Variety. Details of the new company, including name and configuration, will be shared by Wasserman after

Luke Mitzman of 100 Management is partnering with Pulse Management, the companies have announced. Matt McNeal, who has been working as a publishing A&R consultant for parent company Pulse Music Group will also be joining the management team in a dual role for both the publishing and management divisions. (Pictured L-R (front): Ashley Calhoun, SVP, Pulse Music Group; Mitzman; Josh

James Levine, one of the most renowned conductors of the modern era, whose career at the helm of the Metropolitan Opera crashed amid sexual abuse allegations in 2018, has died at age 77. He was reported Wednesday to have died at home in Palm Springs on March 9. No cause of death was given, nor

Fresh off of being named to BBC Radio 1’s 2021 Brit List and landing a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group, UK newcomer Holly Humberstone has signed with Polydor Records, Darkroom and Interscope Records. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter released several singles in 2020 to rave reviews and had completed a European tour opening for Lewis

In recent years, the Grammy Awards have taken advantage of having so many top artists in one place by taping a second show a day or two after the main Grammy ceremony, all-star tributes to artists like Prince, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and others. While this year was different in many ways, they did it