Music

Kane Brown’s “Heaven” is expected to be named the most-played song of 2018 at country radio when those stats are released shortly. It’s certainly the biggest pure country single of the year — the “pure” in that phrase being meant to indicate that there’s an asterisk, in the form of “Meant to Be.” The latter

November 30, 2018 4:21PM PT UPDATED: Jay-Z broke his Twitter silence Friday to clarify his verse on Meek Mill’s latest single ‘What’s Free.’ On the track, Jay-Z raps, “No red hat, don’t Michael and Prince me and Ye/ They separate you when you got Michael and Prince’s DNA/ I ain’t one of these house n—–

Lady Gaga has set the record straight about her text exchange with Kesha in which she made critical remarks about fellow pop artist Katy Perry. Gaga tweeted Friday that the texts were outdated and no longer reflect her feelings toward Perry. “Katy is my friend and is truly a kind soul,” she wrote. “End of

Four days after teasing out a clip of the music video for her latest single “Thank U, Next,” Ariana Grande has delivered in spades. Now it’s finally here, in all its early 2000s movie reference glory, complete with homages to classic romantic-comedies and countless subtle nods to pop culture sprinkled throughout. Here are all the

Archie Davis has been named SVP of Marketing at RCA Records, and he has also entered into a new joint venture label with the company entitled Six Course Music Group, it was announced today. As SVP of marketing, Davis will oversee campaigns for the company’s diverse roster; Six Course, of which Davis is CEO, is

November 30, 2018 11:57AM PT Singer-songwriter and rock-and-roll über-royal Joe Sumner has listed a quaint and casually polished California Craftsman cottage in the mega-trendy heart of Venice, Calif., at $2.995 million. Sumner, the eldest of Sting’s children and the frontman for Fiction Plane, purchased the property in August 2013 for $1.91 million. The property is

Two of the biggest film soundtracks of the past several years. Massive chart successes from acts well into their second decade of stardom. One of the last rock bands still ruling the pop charts. An inescapable radio smash pairing a Russian-born DJ and a Nashville singer-songwriter. And a flurry of fast-breaking young acts, including two

Republic Records chairman/CEO Monte Lipman takes the news that his company has been named Variety’s Hitmakers Label of the Year for the second time with all the humility, reserve and diffidence that we’ve come to expect out of one of the industry’s indisputable visionaries. “I am going to get so f–king hammered,” he jokes about

Drake’s longtime collaborator, Noah “40” Shebib (his nickname is short for 40 days and 40 nights), has credits on three of the year’s biggest hits, “God’s Plan,” “In My Feelings” and “Nice for What.” Yet if you asked the Toronto native why these songs took 2018 by storm, his self-effacing explanation is that, “Drake’s just

Even in the fast-paced stream-today, gone-tomorrow economy of modern-day hit songs, Post Malone is in a league of his own. The genre-bending artist has four of the most consumed tracks of 2018, each of which feels equally at home on a hip-hop playlist as it does a pop radio station. Credit part of that mass

“We could grow up, but it’s no fun that way, and so we treat love like it’s a Nintendo game.” Alessia Cara’s latest album dropped Friday. Packed with 15 songs stretched across 45 minutes, “Growing Pains’” highlight might be the namesake song, but among the list is one focused entirely on Nintendo gaming. “Nintendo Game”

November 30, 2018 7:58AM PT When you’re not charging money or putting out physical product, you can pretty much release your album on your own schedule, right? Months after he dropped four new songs in July, Chance the Rapper dropped two more out of a clear blue sky late Thursday, “My Own Thing” (featuring Joey Purp) and

November 29, 2018 3:00PM PT Seeing an early cut of Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” convinced composer Terence Blanchard that electric guitar should be the primary voice of the score. “When I saw those Afros and leather jackets and bellbottom pants, man, that brought me back to a period of my adolescence,” he says. Set in the

November 29, 2018 2:59PM PT Robbie Fairchild has joined the cast of Universal Pictures and Working Title’s film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats,” in which he will play the character Munkustrap. Based on “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot, the musical was one of the longest-running shows in West

November 29, 2018 2:40PM PT Two of eight-time Oscar nominee James Newton Howard’s three 2018 scores involved ballet and led to collaborations with high-profile artists from the concert world. Former L.A. Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Howard’s ballet music for “Red Sparrow,” while current Phil director Gustavo Dudamel conducted his score for “The Nutcracker

November 29, 2018 2:20PM PT Oscar winner Hans Zimmer has a long history with “Widows,” the heist thriller starring Viola Davis. Director Steve McQueen’s film is actually a remake of a 1983 British TV series scored by Zimmer’s London mentor, composer Stanley Myers. “I was making tea for Stanley,” he recalls. “I remember at the

It should be no surprise that elegant British crooner-composer Bryan Ferry has been influenced by Weimar Republic cabaret, Scott Joplin rags and Duke Ellington’s snazzy jazz throughout his 48-year-old career, both as Roxy Music’s frontman and as a solo artist. There have forever been hints of Brecht/Weill, Ellington and such in Ferry’s music and lyrics.

Of the 30 most-consumed songs featured on the 2018 Hitmakers list, several credit more than 10 songwriters and a few, like Travis Scott’s epic “Sicko Mode,” utilized as many as six producers. Some might scoff that it takes more than a dozen people to come up with a few minutes of music, but the truth

A new book is casting the spotlight on some of rock music’s biggest drummers in an effort to showcase the backbone — and backbeat — behind some of the world’s most iconic bands. “CRASH,” released by publisher Insight Editions, profiles 30 legendary drummers, who reveal the nitty-gritty stories behind their most memorable on-stage performances, along with

November 29, 2018 6:30AM PT Joel Taylor is an Australian-born, L.A.-based singer-songwriter who is also a hell of a piano player. It turns out that not just the ivories but also the music business are both in his blood: His grandfather learned to play boogie-woogie piano from Jerry Lee Lewis, performing with Col Joye &

Vince Gill, Don Henley, Kacey Musgraves, Willie Nelson, Linda Perry, and Mavis Staples have joined the 2019 MusiCares Person of the Year tribute concert honoring Dolly Parton, the Recording Academy announced Thursday. Previously announced performers for the show, which takes place in Los Angeles on Feb. 8 during Grammy Week, include Leon Bridges, Lauren Daigle, Norah Jones, Shawn Mendes, Pink, Mark Ronson and Chris Stapleton; Parton herself will close

November 28, 2018 1:48PM PT Veteran artist manager Pete Galli, who discovered and worked with the Bravery, the Airborne Toxic Event and In the Valley Below, has brought his company and those acts to Red Light Management. He will be based in the company’s Culver City, Calif. office. Galli was one of the first three

When one disco’s doors close, another disco’s doors open. That seemed to be the message from a dual alert from the producers of “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” which simultaneously announced a Dec. 30 closing notice for the show on Broadway and the Sept. 30, 2019 beginning of a national tour. When the Des McAnuff-directed

Attorneys for Bobby Brown and the estate of Bobbi Kristina Brown have filed suit in a New York court over the documentary “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” alleging that Showtime, the BBC and several other defendants violated their rights by improperly using footage from the production of the 2005 reality series “Being Bobby Brown.” Brown’s

Among the many people Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line have to thank for the success of “Meant to Be” is Charlie Puth. Not because he had anything to do with the track, but because it was his having to bow out at the last minute on a co-writing session with the Florida Georgia Line

November 28, 2018 10:15AM PT Call him Drake the dominator. The superstar rapper claimed four of the top 30 most popular songs in a 2018 year-to-date chart created for Variety by BuzzAngle Music, measuring multiple forms of consumption, including audio streams and song sales, to derive a project unit tally. No. 1 on the BuzzAngle

As much as competitors might want to credit something otherworldly for Drake’s all-out dominance in 2018, it wasn’t so much a higher spirit at work as the well-oiled machine that is Aubrey Graham Inc. “God’s Plan,” the top song of the year with a consumption total of 5.5 million, started with a leaked snippet that

It wasn’t so long ago that 23-year-old British-Kosovan singer Dua Lipa, whose songs have been streamed more than 2.7 billion times on Spotify alone, was a starry-eyed fan. “I went to see Katy Perry’s California Dreams tour in London” in 2011, she recalls. “I queued up for, like, half the day so I could get close

Republic Records has promoted Simon Katz to Vice President of A&R and Staff Producer, EVP Rob Stevenson announced today. Since joining the label as Senior Director of A&R and Staff Producer in 2015,  Katz has signed and developed the artists Dagny, Two Feet, Mondo Cozmo, and more. He also conceived and oversaw the construction of the 6,000-square-foot Republic Records Studios in Los Angeles,

November 27, 2018 5:58PM PT Six days after veteran music executive Angelica Cob-Baehler passed away after a long battle with cancer, Katy Perry paid tribute to her in a long and heartfelt Instagram post, calling her “one of my biggest champions and realest friends.” The two met when Cob-Baehler was a VP at Columbia Records