Music

Shane MacGowan, the singer-songwriter best known as the frontman of Celtic punk band the Pogues who found success with the 1987 song “Fairytale of New York,” died on Thursday. He was 65. MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, announced the news via the musician’s Instagram account on Thursday. MacGowan was diagnosed with encephalitis in 2022, which

Scott “Top Ten” Kempner (pictured at left), founding member of bands The Dictators and The Del Lords, guitarist and songwriter, died Wednesday of complications from early onset dementia. He was 69. Kempner, who died at a nursing home in Connecticut, was born in the Bronx, N.Y. In college, he began playing music with Andy Shernoff

At the time that he had begun recording tracks that would make his sprawling 2022 third album “American Heartbreak,” Zach Bryan had already become a groundswell musician. The Oklahoman struck a chord with his true blue American songs, uploading YouTube videos of himself performing and collecting a fan base — largely devoted to his exposed nerve,

Variety has announced additional honorees for its annual Hitmakers Event on Dec. 2 in Los Angeles. Sabrina Carpenter will receive the Rising Star Award presented by H&M, celebrating her transformative year as a music artist. Sabrina has delivered one anthem after another on stage and in the studio, earning multiple gold and platinum certifications for

The latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast features Aaron Dessner — the man Swifties are indebted to for collaborating on big chunks of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but who more than earned his keep for a quarter-century prior to that as a member of the exalted-in-their-own-right band the National. Dessner’s Grammy-winning group has been one

Around the time that Toosii came up with his viral smash “Favorite Song,” he was largely recording ideas for songs instead of putting pen to paper. But when Rhode Island-based producer Adelso sent him the emotive beat for what would become his biggest hit to date, he knew it called for a more attentive process.

What part of fast in “Fast Car” did anyone not understand? Country superstar Luke Combs’ cover of the 1988 Tracy Chapman classic proved to be as turbocharged as anything acoustically based in this world can be, with unexpected multi-format success: It was No. 1 at adult pop and country for two weeks each; a healthy

Approaches to film scoring have become increasingly eclectic—from jazz and classical to hip-hop and avant-garde—making it more difficult than ever for Academy voters to narrow the field to 15 for Oscar’s shortlist. Variety examines 16 of the possible choices, in alphabetical order: ‘American Fiction‘ – Laura Karpman Cord Jefferson’s movie—about a Black writer who, as

On a cold November Saturday night, hordes of mulleted and mustachioed Brooklynites line up outside Warsaw, the Greenpoint Polish cultural center turned punk club, waiting to see indie rock band Geese. On a wall opposite the box office, a sign warns: “No Moshing.” That rule is broken not 20 minutes into the set, when the

Matt Knudsen says his recent Hollywood memoir isn’t so much a “tell-all” as it is a “tell-some.” Far from revealing a seamy underside of the business, the actor and stand-up has taken the revolutionary stance of relaying stories about friendly celebrities and positive adventures in his new book, “Have I Seen You In Anything?: True

Sabrina Carpenter would be the first to admit that “Emails I Can’t Send,” her fifth and most recent album, was like going back to square one. “I saw it as my first big-girl album, for sure,” the 24-year-old says over the phone from Rio de Janeiro, where she’s about to open for Taylor Swift’s “Eras

SZA is vigorously scrolling.  “I never have topics before I start a song,” she says about her creative process, late one August night, high in the hills of Malibu, while zipping through months of memos and voice notes on her phone. “I just let the beat tell me what to do, and then I start

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. This Grateful Dead fidget cube, which first came out last year, makes for the perfect stocking stuffer for the Deadhead in your life.  The company’s popular fidget toy is a magnetic puzzle cube that

Swifties, rejoice! Taylor Swift has, at last, officially released “From the Vault” track “You’re Losing Me” on streaming services. The pop star made the surprise announcement on Wednesday morning in celebration of being named Spotify’s Global Top Artist of the year. “Um ok this is unreal??” Swift wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I

Spotify has revealed its annual Wrapped campaign for 2023, announcing the top-streamed artists, albums, songs and podcasts in addition to rolling out personalized stats for users on the platform. Taylor Swift leads the pack as Spotify’s most-streamed global artist, unseating Bad Bunny who held the crown for the past three years. Listeners helped Swift surpass

At a time when songwriting and production credits often run for pages, JVKE’s “golden hour” is a distinct outlier. From its piano intro and rap-sung verses to the soaring chorus and strings-adorned outro, the genre-defying track is the handiwork of a genuinely DIY artist and his brother, Zac Lawson. Over the course of four months,

How do you break a British artist with a kaleidoscopic sound that incorporates everything from chiptune to Jersey club beats in the United States? In PinkPantheress’ case, by rolling out a remix of an already viral song featuring a hotly tipped rapper. That’s what happened with “Boy’s a Liar,” the latest in a long list

Riggs Morales, the A&R executive known for his tenures at Atlantic Records and Eminem’s Shady Records, has been tapped as Def Jam‘s new executive VP of A&R. The move was announced Tuesday by CEO Tunji Balogun, to whom Morales will directly report. Based in New York, Morales will bring his experience in hip-hop — this

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” wrote William Shakespeare in one of his sonnets. Well, Bill, you might be enchanted to meet Taylor Swift, who has been busy proving just how long a summer can last: four years and counting, in the case of “Cruel Summer.” The song was released in 2019 but

Elizabeth Chan continues to be the most prolific recording artist in the Christmas music space, and certainly the only singer of any notoriety doing a new release each year, having just released her 13th consecutive holiday album, “Songs From Noelle.” Variety is already on record as calling the singer-songwriter “Christmas’ one-woman Brill Building.” But if

Whether it’s a soundtrack, a score or a song placement, there are countless wrong ways to do music for film and so few ways to make it feel right. There’s very little leeway, which is why it can be so challenging for even the most successful hitmakers to make the transition to film music —

Reports of Maren Morris leaving country music have been greatly exaggerated. “You don’t fight for what you don’t love,” says Morris over Zoom during a chat from her Nashville home, squeezed in while her son Hayes is taking a nap. “I do all of this because I want it to be better for everybody, not

In Olivia Rodrigo’s new song for “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” the 20-year-old singer-songwriter exclaims, “I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere, but you can’t catch me now.” Though the lines of “Can’t Catch Me Now” were written for Lucy Gray Baird — the protagonist of the “Hunger Games” prequel — Rodrigo

After dominating the charts, touring the world and launching her own concert film, Taylor Swift has been named Apple Music‘s Artist of the Year. The platform unveiled its year-end charts ranking 2023’s top songs, top Shazams, and, for the first time, the songs music fans sang along to the most using Apple Music Sing. Swift was the

Nikki Semin Han, a leading figure in the Korean pop music (K-pop) industry, has teamed up with several of his former colleagues from SM Entertainment to launch Titan Content. The U.S.-based company styles itself as “the world’s first premier multinational K-pop powerhouse music company.” With studio facilities in Seoul and Los Angeles, the company aims to

The MAMA Awards, one of the biggest events in the K-pop calendar, has been reshaped to straddle two nights (Nov. 28 and 29) of performances and awards at the Tokyo Dome. With acts including Enhypen, Kep1er, Tomorrow X Together, TVXQ, Ateez, Le Sserafim, Seventeen and Zerobaseone, the show is broadcast live on CJ ENM’s TV

A slate of hot new releases, surprise hits and holiday favorites featuring everyone from Dolly Parton to Drake have shaken things up on the latest Billboard charts. On the Hot 100, Jack Harlow scores his third No. 1 single with “Lovin on Me,” which samples the 1995 R&B track “Whatever.” “Lovin on Me” takes the

Turning points are nothing new for Miley Cyrus, who reinvents herself with nearly every album cycle. But 2023 truly represented a new chapter. She was with a new label — Columbia — and had moved over to Crush Management, where co-founder Jonathan Daniel took the reins on overseeing her career.  During album sessions at Los

Back in February, Pedro Tovar, frontman of Eslabon Armado, posted a short clip of himself grooving to the group’s song “Ella Baila Sola” (“She Dances Alone”) in his car. The teaser included a verse from Peso Pluma — the 24-year-old singer and rapper just beginning his ascent into stardom as an ambassador of música Mexicana’s

Picking his proudest moment from the past year is not easy for Metro Boomin. The super-producer has been on quite a run since releasing his second solo album, “Heroes & Villains,” in December 2022. He did a standout performance at Coachella, helmed the soundtrack for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and made an appearance (as an