Damon Albarn likes sending mixed messages. Take what’s going on with his now 20-year-old, dub-pop-hop cartoon act, Gorillaz. Before the start of Gorillaz’s arena-sized “The Now Now Tour” — which had its U.S. debut at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Thursday (Oct. 11) — Albarn announced everything from a new Gorillaz album for 2019, to
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After an abrupt and chaotic end to Day 1 of the Desert Daze festival that had Tame Impala’s headlining set cut off just three songs in, organizers have announced that the second and third days will proceed, as thunderstorms move out of southern California. Nerves were already on edge among some fest-goers on Friday even
October 13, 2018 1:24AM PT The Aubrey & the Three Migos Tour plays for seven nights in Los Angeles. Drake kicked off the first of a series of Los Angeles shows at the Staples Center tonight (Oct. 12) and among those in the crowd was none other than Adele. Writing on Twitter, the Grammy-winning singer cheered
Beyonce and Tiffany Haddish have moved on from the headlines that the “Girls Trip” star stirred up when she revealed earlier this year that she saw an unnamed actress bite the singer at a private party. Variety caught up with Haddish on Thursday night at the City of Hope gala in Los Angeles, where Beyonce performed in honor
October 12, 2018 2:56PM PT One of the top agents in country music, Rob Beckham, is out as co-head of the WME Nashville office, Variety has confirmed. No official announcements have been made, and sources confirming the split gave no reason for the exit. Beckham’s past or current clients have included Chris Young, Rascal Flatts, Brett
The new boxed set from David Bowie, “Loving the Alien (1983 – 1988),” encompasses an era that brought out some of the chameleonic artist’s best-loved work — starting right off with the massive “Let’s Dance” album — and also some of his least loved. In the latter case, we’re talking about Bowie’s own lack of
It should come as no surprise that 85-year-old Yoko Ono, who through the years has carefully guarded the legacy of John Lennon in whatever new releases or products she has authorized, oversaw the production and creative direction of “Imagine: The Ultimate Collection.” In a recent interview with Variety, Elliott Mintz said, “The whole box set was Yoko’s
October 12, 2018 6:00AM PT The clip for “1999” features close to 20 pop culture references from the turn of the millennium. [embedded content] Charli XCX and Troye Sivan want to party like it’s 1999 and do so in spectacular fashion with a new video that celebrates ’90s pop culture. In the clip for the
For reasons both understandable and not, Paul Weller is a prominent member of what we’ll call the Cliff Richard Club: Artists who are revered career superstars in Britain but cult artists in the U.S. While the default explanation that his music is “too British” is valid in some ways, Weller — a 40-plus-year soulful rock
If you’re headed to the Fleetwood Mac tour that began just over a week ago, “don’t stop” thinking about the bad vibes that exist between the four long-standing members on stage and exiled Lindsey Buckingham. That may be the effect, anyway, if not the actual intent of the lawsuit that the banished singer/guitarist filed against
Netflix unveiled its first unscripted music show today. “Westside,” which premieres globally on Nov. 9, is a genre-defining eight-episode series that follows the lives, loves and assorted struggles of nine aspiring artists (including former “American Idol” finalist Pia Toscano) as they pursue ever-elusive success in the modern-day music industry. Eschewing the standard competition-style format, this
October 11, 2018 2:52PM PT The rocker is suffering from a hand injury. Ozzy Osbourne has canceled the rest of the North American leg of his “No More Tours 2” tour due to an infection in his right hand, Rolling Stone reports. Two California dates were previously postponed so the singer could undergo surgery to
Somewhere along the way — well, actually, we can pinpoint the time: about 10 years ago — Elvis Costello went from being rock’s most prolific great recording artist to its least prolific. (No, we’re not counting Steve Perry in this.) That’s how we reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable numbers, one of them being that “Look Now”
October 11, 2018 11:40AM PT The festival from hell has resulted in its organizer going to jail. The 2017 Fyre Festival in the Bahamas was the ultimate example of everything that could go wrong with a music event actually going much, much worse — and now Billy McFarland, its promoter, has been sentenced to six
Loretta. Dolly. Tammy. Reba. Faith. Shania. The Chicks. When we think of the all-time greats of country music, or the genre’s biggest sellers, gender parity isn’t a question; if anything, history has been on more of a first-name basis with the women than the men. But female performers are an even rarer commodity than fiddles on
Hulu has given a straight-to-series order to a scripted drama that will explore the rise of the Wu-Tang Clan, Variety has learned. “Wu-Tang: An American Saga,” which has received a 10-episode order, is inspired by “The Wu-Tang Manual” and “Tao of Wu”, and based on the true story of the Wu-Tang Clan. Set in early ’90s
October 11, 2018 10:00AM PT As CMT turns over the “Artists of the Year” microphone to female singers, Variety recognizes the women who are stars behind the scenes. The 2018 CMT “Artists of the Year” event, which airs live from Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center on Oct. 17, will be a celebration of the influence and
Retro-soul crooner and songwriter Leon Bridges has a lot to consider this month. The 29-year old Texan recently wrapped the first leg of a U.S tour in support of his sophomore album “Good Thing,” has a nice role in a major motion picture (Damien Chazelle’s “First Man” opening Friday, Oct. 12), a new music video for his
Artist and producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has signed a new four-year overall deal with Starz. Under the agreement, Jackson will continue to develop new scripted and unscripted projects exclusively for the premium service through his G-Unit Film & Television, Inc. banner. The deal represents a significant increase to Starz’s investment in Jackson, executive producer
Frank Sinatra spent a lot of time pining for the one that got away on “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely,” the 1958 album that many consider the finest of his career. And, legendarily, the recording sessions for the collection included the song that got away — the classic “Lush Life,” which Sinatra took
As women in music production, engineering and songwriting increasingly look to each other to collaborate, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is jumping in with its first ever “She Is the Music” song camp. Scheduled for October 17 to 19 at producer Ron Fair’s Faircraft Studio in Nashville, the performance rights organization recruited Mary J.
October 11, 2018 3:16AM PT Oscar-nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld will front this year’s MTV EMAs. Steinfeld, who also has a successful music career, will also perform at the show, which this year will take place in Bilbao, Spain. Viacom’s MTV announced its 2018 host with a sketch on Facebook (see below). Steinfeld scooped the “Best
In one of the more controversial moves in an already controversy-filled 2018 for the Grammy Awards, Post Malone, one of the breakthrough artists of the year, will not be a Best New Artist nominee at the next awards, according to two sources and media reports. Many Grammy categories, including Best New Artist, are determined by
Lady Gaga calls attention to a “mental health emergency” in her latest op-ed, co-written with Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the World Health Organization. In honor of World Mental Health Day, Gaga and Adhanom are working together to draw attention to misconceptions about mental health with an opinion piece written for The Guardian published Wednesday. Lady Gaga has already opened
Australian DJ sister-duo NERVO and songstress Madison Beer are slated to be the first guests on this year’s “Office Hours,” a speaker series put on by UCLA’s Music Industry Committee. Kicking off the series as the school year’s first performer on October 15 will be 19-year-old Beer, who began her career on YouTube at the
The American Music Awards hit a new all-time low in the Nielsen ratings on Tuesday night. ABC aired only the AMAs on Tuesday, with the three hour show drawing a 1.8 rating in adults 18-49 and 6.5 million viewers. That is down 25% in the key demo and approximately 29% in total viewers compared to
Apart from a lot of photos and four of the greatest albums in the entire rock and roll canon, the Velvet Underground did not leave much behind. Posters, snippets of video, lots of concert recordings (only one of them professionally made), and the slack-jawed memories of those lucky enough to see the band live, many
There was no shortage of heat on stage last night at the American Music Awards: From the burning car backdrop of Twenty One Pilots’ performance to the flames that leapt into the air behind Post Malone, the blazing candles encircling Carrie Underwood and the spinning fireworks blazing above Cardi B, not to mention performances by
As pop-culture reboots continue to reach new thresholds of frenzy, it was only a matter of time before the trend seeped into music videos. How refreshing, then, that LA-based musician Dexter Tortoriello was quick to flip the trend on its ear for a series of short films to promote his latest project as Houses, the
M. William Krasilovsky, the co-author of the book “This Business of Music,” died on Oct. 7 of congestive heart failure in Ashland, Oregon. He was 92. An expert on matters of copyright, Krasilovsky wrote “This Business of Music” with Sidney Shemel, a music attorney working with United Artists, as a legal reference for musicians in the