Pepsi won’t sit out the Super Bowl, but some of its commercials will. The beverage giant, one of the biggest and most reliable sponsors of the annual football extravaganza, is benching traditional Super Bowl ads for its flagship soda. Instead, says Todd Kaplan, Pepsi’s vice president of marketing, “we are going to double down on
Music
We all enter 2021 facing many challenges, and in the scheme of things this one is pretty minor: Advance notice of album release dates is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The “surprise drop” that Beyonce pioneered in 2013 in a flurry of non-disclosure agreements is fast becoming the norm, especially since the absence
Rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black are among the celebrities in line for President Donald Trump’s pardons. According to a report from Bloomberg, Trump is considering pardoning Wayne, with whom he posed for a photo during the presidential campaign. Wayne pled guilty in federal district court in December for illegally possessing a loaded, gold-plated handgun,
Mike Dean has made a name for himself as one of hip-hop’s top producers, having worked on seminal records by the likes of Kanye West (“College Dropout,” “Late Registration,” “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”), Travis Scott (“Astroworld”), Beyonce (“Lemonade”), Pusha T (“Daytona”) and dozens more. His work as an ace arranger and engineer, in addition
Avowed Trump-supporting musician Ariel Pink has come under fire after he was seen attending the rally that turned into a riot in Washington, D.C. Wednesday. In a tweet Thursday morning, he confirmed his participation, but denied being part of the mob that assaulted the nation’s capitol shortly after Donald J. Trump spoke. “i was in
An employed silence. A scratchy phonograph playing a theme inspired by Yiddish music. An exercise in minimalism. Those are some of the components in scores belonging to films flying under the radar as awards season begins — but might not be when all is said and done. Variety looks at some of those works and
Music streaming was down in the early days of the pandemic, but that turned around in a big hurry as quarantining went on — so much so that the year 2020 ended up setting a streaming record in America, increasing 17% for the year to end with an unprecedented 872.6 billion streams. The flagship artist
CAA has promoted Jim Burtson to the post of president, a move that is another sign of generational changes at the agency. CAA’s trio of co-chairmen — Kevin Huvane, Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett — are staying put. But Lovett is giving up the president title that he has held since 1995. “The primary role
The music-publishing catalog of songwriter-producer Dan Wilson, known for his hits with Adele, the (Dixie) Chicks and his own band Semisonic, has been acquired by Primary Wave. Terms of the deal include some of Wilson’s biggest hits: three from Adele, including the smash “Someone Like You”; six from the (Dixie) Chicks, including their Grammy-winning hit
The announcement Tuesday that the Grammy Awards will be moved from January 31 to March 14 took many people by surprise but did not come as a shock: The show is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, which has seen a dramatic spike in Covid-19 patients and is currently ranked by FEMA as the
A number of prominent musicians spoke up on social media about the rioting by supporters of Donald J. Trump on Capitol Hill Wednesday, most either condemning the president for being responsible for the violence or comparing the tame law enforcement response to what went down during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Some were not
Stephanie O’Keefe was elected the first woman president in the 123-year history of American Federation of Musicians Local 47, which represents 6,000 musicians in the Los Angeles area. O’Keefe, a professional French horn player, has performed and recorded with such artists as Lady Gaga, Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, Diana Krall, Barry Manilow, Herbie Hancock and
The needlessly controversial Senate Electoral College Certification is not one of the first placed we’d expect to hear a Foo Fighters reference, but Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar more than rose to the occasion. Directly following Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s plainly misleading call for an examination of election results in several states, Klobuchar not only rebutted
If you ever loved, liked or even hated “Rent,” there’s a fair chance that you’ve never been able to hear a set of numerals large enough to include a comma without having that musical’s signature song, “Seasons of Love,” come into your mind with its familiar chorus: “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes…
In March, Brian Stokes Mitchell was just four days away from performing a concert at New York’s City Center when the pandemic forced theaters to close. All the other jobs that Mitchell, who won a Tony in 2000 for his performance in “Kiss Me Kate,” had lined up for the year also vanished. In April,
Glassnote founder Daniel Glass and the company’s GM Chris Scully have announced the formation of Connection Music Publishing. They have appointed publishing industry-veteran Jackie Post as the new company’s head of publishing. According to the announcement, Connection will have “the same ethos Glassnote has carried” through its 14 years as a formidable indie label, with successful releases
John Fogerty has dropped a pointed new song called “Weeping in the Promised Land,” a gospel-flavored, piano-driven lament about the state of the country and the world. With multiple references to President Trump as a “forked-tongued Pharoah” as well as Covid (“With dread in their eyes all the nurses are crying”) and the deaths of
The nation is bracing today for a rumble in Congress and political theater in the streets of Washington, D.C. as the House and Senate hold a joint session today to certify the electoral college vote in the 2020 Presidential race. A typically ceremonial session of counting the electoral votes submitted by each state has turned
In its third major acquisition of the week, Hipgnosis Songs has acquired 50% of Neil Young’s worldwide copyright and income interests in his entire song catalog, which comprises 1,180 songs, including such hits as “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “Helpless,” “Hey Hey My My (Into the Black),” “Ohio,” “Old Man,” “Mr. Soul,” “Like a
Music mogul Dr. Dre suffered an apparent brain aneurysm on Monday and is currently receiving treatment at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His team issued a statement from him Tuesday night, saying, “Thanks to my family, friends and fans for their interest and well wishes. I’m doing great and getting excellent care from my medical
It’s official, not just fan lore: the eighth album by Taylor’s Swift, “Folklore,” has gone down as the No. 1 album of 2020, finishing the year with 2.3 million album units. It pulled ahead in the end over Lil Baby’s star-making sophomore effort, “My Turn,” which came in second with 2.1 million in the album-equivalent-unit
Gene Rumsey, a veteran music business executive who held top posts at the Capitol-EMI and later Concord label groups, died Jan. 1 at age 67. Rumsey died at home in Westlake Village, Calif. The cause of death was cancer, after a 13-year struggle with the disease. In the latter part of his career, Rumsey had
Between the multiple official videos, late-night TV and eye-popping awards-show performances the Weeknd has done around his latest “After Hours” album, we’ll admit we lost the bad-night-in-Las-Vegas plotline after he got decapitated in the “In Your Eyes” clip in the middle of last year. But the story continues, in a way, in the latest official
UPDATED: The Grammy Awards are being postponed until March 14 due to coronavirus-related concerns, a rep for the show confirms to Variety. “After thoughtful conversations with health experts, our host and artists scheduled to appear, we are rescheduling the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards to be broadcast Sunday, March 14, 2021,” a statement reads. “The deteriorating
In a judicial opinion filed last month, The State of Maryland’s highest court ruled that rap lyrics may be admitted in court as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. This blatantly racist decision is a travesty that sets a dangerous precedent. The case involves the January 2017 killing of George Forrester, who was shot by a
The get-out-the-vote effort in Georgia’s senatorial run-off today is getting a boost from more than 70 artists who’ve signed up to participate in #iVoted Festival Georgia, an eight-and-a-half hour livestream. The webcast, designed as a reward for Georgians who provide evidence they’ve cast ballots in the crucial election, will include performances by Jason Isbell and
Back in October, in advance of the presidential election, country star Maren Morris surprise-released “Better Than We Found It,” a track that she herself described as a “protest song,” along with a video that addressed the issues of immigration and Black Lives Matter. “I wanted to write something to address exactly how I feel right
Hipgnosis Songs kept busy over the holiday: Not 24 hours after the fast-growing company announced that it acquired Jimmy Iovine’s production catalog, it announced it has acquired the music publishing rights of Lindsey Buckingham, best known for his work with Fleetwood Mac. Along with the 25% share it acquired in September, Hipgnosis — which has
After coming under continual fire in the four days since she played the New Year’s Eve party at Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, as the other performers that night have, Terri Nunn of the group Berlin has issued an apology for the controversial gig, saying she didn’t know it would be perceived as taking a
Playboi Carti interrupted Taylor Swift’s run at the top of the album chart as his late December release “Whole Lotta Red” debuted at No. 1 with 94,100 album units. At No. 2, Lil Durk’s “The Voice” nearly counted as a debut, too, although it had slipped into the lower ranks of the chart last week