Music

Who says you can’t teach a classic-rock superstar new-media tricks? Paul McCartney seems to be taking some tips from Taylor Swift, in using visual iconography on social media to drop clues about an upcoming project, as she often has. In his case, it would seem, from all indications, to herald the release of a “McCartney

It’s looking more and more as though Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry plan to make the low-key but shockingly expensive seaside town of Montecito, Calif., their primary residence. The English actor and his pop music superstar fiancée — she a Santa Barbara native — have paid $14.2 million for an A-lister-worthy estate with nearly nine

Vivendi, parent company of Universal Music Group, confirmed that it plans to take UMG public in 2022. The long-expected news was announced as part of Vivendi’s third-quarter earnings report, released Tuesday. At the top of this year, a consortium led by Chinese media giant Tencent acquired a 10% stake in UMG for $3.3 billion, with

In one of the first big-scale livestreams by a major artist since the pandemic began, Billie Eilish will perform a reconfigured version of the set from her postponed “Where Do We Go?” tour this weekend. Using multiple cameras and XR technology, the event will be a virtual concert in a 3D rendered environment, according to

It’s actually a bit difficult to fathom now, but when legendary nightclub photographer Steve Eichner was first plying his trade in the ’90s, there was no social media, and barely an Internet with which to generate buzz around a candidly captured celebrity image. “My actual job was to get publicity for the clubs,” Eichner recalls,

Spencer Davis, the veteran British rock musician renowned for hits that bore his name but he did not sing, died in a hospital Monday while being treated for pneumonia, his agent told the BBC. He was 81. While the Spencer Davis Group performed for decades, its biggest hits — including such frequently covered mid-1960s classics

No rock critic could ever deign to critique the significance of Tom Petty any better than Benmont Tench, whose objectivity about the late superstar’s creative prowess and personal appeal is not much besmirched by the fact that he put in more than four decades of service in Petty’s bands, the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch. At one

Jennifer Nettles is set to receive the first honorary Equal Play Awards from the CMT Music Awards for her outspokenness and advocacy for women in country music, the network is revealing today. The presentation of the award to Nettles, who performs as a solo artist as well as half of the duo Sugarland, will be

Between the Save Our Stages Festival — which featured unique performances from Foo Fighters, Miley Cyrus, Phoebe Bridgers and many more — and the high-profile Biden-Harris campaign ad that highlighted Michigan’s legendary nightclub the Blind Pig, it was a big weekend for America’s independent concert venues. The Democratic presidential ticket and one of the world’s

‘In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the ’90s – Variety ‘In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the ’90s – Variety Oct 19, 2020 11:51pm PT In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s by Steve Eichner and Gabriel Sanchez © Prestel Verlag, Munich

The clock has tick-tocked in reverse to put a Fleetwood Mac album and single back in the top 10 43 years after their initial appearance. The group’s 1977 “Rumours,” one of the all-time blockbuster rock albums, has moved up to No. 9, a six-spot jump from the previous week. The song that’s driving the album’s

Jamie Lynn Spears announced her single, “Follow Me (Zoey 101)” will debut Oct. 22, with a global livestream event entitled “See It First: The Follow Me (Zoey 101) Experience” premiering Oct. 25. The new single, available via Republic Records and produced by record producer and DJ Chantel Jeffries, reimagines the original “Zoey 101” theme song,

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have signed with BMG to make their own music, marking their first recording contract as artists with releases due out in 2021. The very pinnacle of R&B’s turn from the funky and organically raw sounds of the 1980s to a still sweat-inducing sound that was sleek and synthetic throughout the decade,

Warner Music’s independent distribution division ADA launched on Monday in Japan, the world’s second-largest music market. Ex-Universal Music executive Kaz Aida will lead a local team out of Warner Music’s new Tokyo headquarters, reporting directly to Vic Horikiri, COO of Warner Music Japan. Eliah Seton, Warner Music’s president of independent music and creator services, called

Since lockdown began in March, songwriters have needed to adapt to a digital-first world. In-person sessions largely became a distant memory, replaced by more screen-time for artists who would normally be in the studio for hours. Zoom became a way of life, leaving some songwriters yearning for the days when kicking back in the studio

Noah Goldstein, a Grammy-winning producer who’s worked with Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Travis Scott, among others, has signed with Milk & Honey for management. Goldstein will be represented by founder and president Lucas Keller and general manager Nic Warner. Milk & Honey, the songwriter and producer management company which has offices in Los Angeles,

Hit 1970s pop song “We Are Family” is getting a special edition in support of coronavirus. Kim Sledge and social impact enterprise The World We Want are launching a cover of the classic 1979 Sister Sledge song, with part of the funds raised donated to the WHO Foundation to support the response to COVID-19. The

As the music-rights acquisition spree led by Hipgnosis, Primary Wave, Round Hill and others continues to heat up, Warner Music has thrown its hat into the ring, notifying Wall Street Monday that its acquisition group has raised $250 million via a private offering, noting that it “intends to use the net proceeds of the offering

In late 2019, British producer and songwriter Fraser T Smith travelled to New Orleans to meet Albert Woodfox, the former Black Panther who spent over 40 years in solitary confinement. The encounter was part of Smith’s debut solo album, “12 Questions,” an ambitious project that poses 12 big head-scratchers, such as “Is It Too Late

“Wildflowers” may be the most aggressively beloved of Tom Petty’s albums among his most serious fans, and no one has been more passionate about it than Adria Petty, the elder of the late musician’s two daughters. (Her sister is Annakim Violette Petty.) Even as the career-encompassing “American Treasure” boxed set was coming out in 2018,

The Eastside of Los Angeles is famously chock-full of architectural treasures, but among the most special properties is this gated mansion in the hills of Los Feliz. Fully walled and graced with an epic long driveway, the 93-year-old house was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, per the listing, by Henry Mather Greene —

Bob Biggs, who led the upstart Los Angeles punk rock label Slash Records to national prominence in the ‘80s, died Oct. 17 in Tehachapi, CA. He was 74, and had suffered from Lewys body dementia. Spawned by a loud, funny tabloid publication that touted the hard-edged acts that poured out of the Hollywood basement club

After a change of realtors and more than a year on and off the market, English former boybander Louis Tomlinson has finally succeeded in unloading his white elephant of a Hollywood Hills home, albeit at a precipitous loss. The 28-year-old’s 6,000-square-foot mansion, an architecturally fluid structure perhaps best-described as a neo-Georgian meets Art Deco-inspired contemporary

Sean “Diddy” Combs talked about his endorsement of Joe Biden for president and the launch of a Black political party during a conversation with Charlamagne Tha God that premiered Thursday. In a video uploaded by Revolt TV, the rapper also addressed his comment from earlier this year that Black people should “hold the vote hostage”

Not that we haven’t said this often in the months since this column debuted, but what a week to drop a new jam, huh? We’ve already written at length about Demi Lovato having her “VOTE” message muzzled by NBC after she performed her new song “Commander in Chief,” which slams President Trump and his policies

Bea Kristi, the British singer-songwriter behind the tongue-twisting moniker Beabadoobee, is bringing ’90s indie-rock back — even though she was born in 2000. Some may recognize the Beabadoobee name from her 2017 hit “Coffee” — which boasts over 50 million streams on Spotify — or from Powfu’s recent remix of the track, “Death Bed (Coffee

Eleven years after Neil Young put the first volume out — and maybe 11 years before fans thought they’d ever see the long-promised project — his “Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976” has officially landed on the release schedule for Nov. 20, as a 10-CD boxed set covering one of the most beloved parts of the musician’s

Colombian-American singer Sebastian Yatra is the premiere artist on “Live From My Den,” a new weekly performance series from Artists Den and Variety. The all-new digital series will feature contemporary artists performing live from the creative spaces of their homes, studios and cities most meaningful to them. New episodes of “Live From My Den” will premiere each

Metallica are one of the world’s biggest rock bands, due in no small part to the fact that they’ve toured every single year since 1982. Like a lot of musicians, they’d planned to do the same this year, but then 2020 happened. To make the best of the situation, the band is going to perform

The first posthumous Ennio Morricone album is ready for release. Four months after the Oscar-winning composer’s death in July, Morricone’s home label Decca Records and Italy’s CAM Sugar have joined forces on “Morricone Segreto,” a collection of pieces dating from the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s, featuring 7 previously unreleased tracks. “Morricone