Some would say that the very idea of a “rock band” is a dated one in the music climate of 2019. So you have to give Muse credit for being the only major group to go for something that deliberately feels dated. They went all in on the ‘80s with the videos and cover art
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The lineup for Thursday’s 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards has grown, with the addition of the Backstreet Boys, Ella Mai, Lovelytheband, and Marshmello with special guest Lauv to the two-hour telecast, which will be broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater on Fox. Also joining the roster will be Travis Barker and Yungblud, slated to appear as
Filter frontman Richard Patrick is no stranger to controversy. His band’s biggest hit, “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” is about the public suicide of a Republican politician, and the singer was kicked off of Twitter for a comment he recalls as “something like ‘F— off and die’ directed to Newt Gingrich.” So last week, when Filter’s
March 12, 2019 9:22AM PT The songs of Britney Spears will be featured in “Once Upon a One More Time,” a musical comedy featuring 23 titles from the singer’s catalog, theater owner James L. Nederlander announced today. The show will have its premiere in fall at Broadway In Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theatre before heading to Broadway.
As streaming has altered the shape of the music industry, many companies have puzzled over what a modern record label should look like — and Atlantic Records in the U.K. today announced that it has altered its label structure to “respond to the evolved ways audiences receive and interact with entertainment” with some promotions and
“Leaving Neverland” has broken streaming records for the U.K.’s Channel 4, CEO Alex Mahon said Tuesday. During her keynote address at INTV in Jerusalem, Mahon said that Dan Reed’s controversial Michael Jackson documentary has also been the most downloaded Channel 4 show ever and took a 45% share of young audiences on linear TV. Mahon
The last time Sting appeared in a major car commercial, for Jaguar, he scored his biggest U.S. hit in six years with “Desert Rose,” which reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000 and marked a milestone in world music crossovers, featuring guest vocals sung in Algerian Arabic from singer Cheb Mami.
A new report from Berklee College of Music reveals that 78% of women working in the music industry experience gender bias while while more than half of respondents felt that their gender had affected their employment. The report offers a breakdown of the the socioeconomic landscape, exploring demographics, employment and the challenges that comes with
Sky Daniels, the veteran label and radio executive who helped launch Triple-A bastion KCSN/88.5 FM at Cal State Northridge in 2011, is stepping down from his post and retiring. Daniels helped build the station from the ground up, bringing in Tom Petty for a memorable benefit concert and hiring such local mainstays as Nic Harcourt,
Drummer Hal Blaine, who propelled dozens of major hit records during the ‘60s and ‘70s as a member of the “Wrecking Crew,” Hollywood’s elite, ubiquitous cadre of first-call studio musicians, died Monday, according to a statement from family members on his official Facebook page. He was 90. “May he rest forever on 2 and 4,”
March 11, 2019 3:23PM PT After nearly three years on the market, knighted rock star Rod Stewart and wife Penny Lancaster have finally sold Wood House, their historic and conspicuously opulent longtime country estate about an hours drive northeast of Central London in the historic market town of Epping that was last on the market
America is collectively a sucker for the Jonas Brothers again — or at least that’s the strong indication from first-week results for their comeback, a full decade after the trio last had a top 30 single. “Sucker” just became their first song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and the first by any band
Beyonce and Jay-Z will soon add yet another award to their shelves. GLAAD announced today that it will honor the two performers with the Vanguard Award at the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. The event will take place at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on March 28, 2019. Previous Vanguard Award honorees include Cher,
March 11, 2019 10:00AM PT Former Paradigm talent agency executive Brooke Jackson has joined management giant YM&U as chief operating officer for North America. YM&U was created last year after private equity firm Trilantic Europe acquired a majority stake in U.K. management firm James Grant Group. The company is a conglomeration of 14 different management
“Shallow” co-writer Anthony Rossomando, who shared in Lady Gaga’s Oscar for best original song, and country star Lee Ann Womack have joined the lineup of the 2019 edition of the ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo. To be held May 2 to 4 at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, the event brings together songwriters, composers,
March 11, 2019 5:59AM PT [embedded content] The co-writers behind “Devil May Cry 5” battle song Crimson Cloud talked about their process creating the song in a Variety exclusive video released Monday. Crimson Cloud is the battle theme for V, a new character for the “Devil May Cry” series introduced in the most recent title.
March 11, 2019 4:46AM PT Keith Flint died by hanging, an inquest into the death of The Prodigy’s frontman heard Monday. Local police found Flint dead at his home in Essex, England, on March 4. Band mate Liam Howlett said on Instagram at the time that Flint, 49, had committed suicide. The provisional cause of
Seung-ri, one of the biggest names in the K-pop firmament has been charged with supplying prostitutes. The singer, who denies the charges, on Monday announced that he will immediately retire from showbiz in order to protect his boy band Big Bang and its backer the talent agency YG Entertainment. “We booked Seung-ri and changed his
March 11, 2019 4:02AM PT Drake appears to have dropped a song featuring Michael Jackson from the set list of his U.K. concert tour, which kicked off in northern England on Sunday. According to website setlist.fm, the rapper’s performance at the Manchester Arena did not include “Don’t Matter to Me,” a track from his “Scorpion”
Booking anyone at all to appear in an Aretha Franklin tribute is an act of nerve, since she was arguably the one performer in pop music history who can be said to have had no real peers as a singer, even in her day, much less ours. With that as a given, “Aretha! A Grammy
The NAACP does not stand with R. Kelly. At Saturday’s nominees luncheon for the 50th NAACP Image Awards, the organization’s president and CEO Derrick Johnson slammed the R&B singer, who recently made waves in a CBS interview with Gayle King. In the viral clip, Kelly yells and cries as he denies his alleged sexual abuse
After the recent docuseries detailing sexual assault allegations about music icons Michael Jackson and R. Kelly, “Saturday Night Live’s” Pete Davidson took to the “Weekend Update” desk to try to institute a rule that if you still want to listen to their music, “you just have to admit they’re bad people.” “I’m not saying it’s
R. Kelly left Cook County Jail this afternoon for the second time in two weeks this morning after he paid more than $160,000 in overdue child support, according to the Chicago Sun-Times and multiple other media reports. Kelly said, “I promise we’re gonna straighten all this out. That’s all I can say right now. I
No matter how popular they might be, at nine concerts out of ten an artist is going to save their biggest hit for last — not only to build anticipation and give the audience a reason to stick around, but also as a kind of making-it-worth-the-wait master stroke. But Robyn — patron saint of intelligent
March 8, 2019 5:16PM PT We Are Hear, the music company co-founded by producers Linda Perry and Kerry Brown, is releasing a new track called “Freedom” in recognition of International Women’s Day. The song (listen here) is performed by We Are Hear artists Dorothy and Angel Haze and remixed by TROY NöKA. It serves to
Brandi Carlile and Maren Morris, both Grammy-winning singer-songwriters, discussed representation of women in the music industry and their female inspirations on International Women’s Day. The two sat down together at the historic RCA Studios in Nashville, where Elvis Presley once recorded music and Dolly Parton accidentally drove her car into a wall, for a Beats
“If only we could swap out Freddie Jackson for one of our own songs,” cracked an 18-year-old Donnie Wahlberg as he and his New Kids on the Block bandmate buddies cruised the streets of Boston in the final years of the 1980s on their way to a basketball game. It wasn’t that they didn’t like
March 8, 2019 4:07PM PT The infamous Alhambra, Calif., mansion where pioneering music producer Phil Spector shot and killed B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 has come up for sale at $5.5 million. Surrounded by unsightly suburban strip malls and perfectly ordinary middle-class homes and evocatively known as Pyrenees Castle, the 2.5-acre knoll-top estate’s turreted
“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett has been indicted on 16 counts of filing a false police report, stemming from his alleged staging of a Jan. 29 hate attack, Variety has confirmed. Smollett had previously been charged with a single count of filing a false police report, which carries the possibility of up to three years in
It was 2007 when Rick Gray, General Manager of Entertainment Operations at The Wynn in Las Vegas, first heard of a dynamic entertainer named Robbie Williams. He was flying back from England on Virgin Airlines when a video came on of a “performer who just knocked me out.” The video was of Williams covering songs