At last night's show in San Francisco, Tegan and Sara offered their "real fans" pay-what-you-can tickets, after hundreds of tickets ended up on secondary platforms, Billboard reported. "We never ask our fans to go to secondary sites, this will likely result in empty seats tonight in the Sydney Goldstein Theater” - the band said, so […]
‘Glory to Hong Kong’ was written by a local musician named Thomas in his mid-20s, a producer known only as K mixed the track after answering Thomas’ online call for extra volunteers. Thomas told the BBC he hoped the song would "unite Hong Kongers and boost public morale". The song began spreading in August, thanks […]
Ariana Grande has seven nods at the global awards show, including bids for best artist, best song, best video, best pop and best live. Just behind with six noms for the 2019 MTV EMAs each are Shawn Mendes, Lil Nas X and Billie Eilish, with J Balvin racking up five and Taylor Swift and Lizzo […]
Growing indie powerhouse Concord has acquired Victory Records, the Chicago-based punk and emo label founded by Tony Brummel in 1989, home to bands like Taking Back Sunday, Bayside, Thursday, Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, etc. Billboard estimates that the Victory company had $4.5 million-$5 million a year in revenue and further estimates that Concord paid somewhere in the range of $27 […]
34 percent of music listeners between 16 and 24 years old use stream ripping apps or services to listen to music illegally, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says in its annual report. The report also noted that 38 percent of the younger demographic had used illegal means of listening in the last month, […]
Young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has responded to death-metal treatment given to her heated speech at the United Nations (watch the video below). "I have moved on from this climate thing," Thunberg jokingly reacted - "From now on I will be doing death metal only!".
Post Malone last week sold another 149,000 equivalent album units of his latest album, 'Hollywood's Bleeding', which earned him a third consecutive week at #1 on Billboard 200 charts. Post Malone's latest is the only project to rule the Billboard 200 for three straight weeks in 2019. A Boogie wit da Hoodie's 'Hoodie SZN' and […]
The Shins frontman James Mercer and superproducer Danger Mouse are back with a new single, 'Good Luck', by their indie-cool project Broken Bells. Listen to it below.
First of all, it's not as closely pretentious as it might sound, the same way Subrosa managed to incorporate violins and stay raw and sincere the way metal is known to do. The Night Watch are a four-piece from Canada, and Brooklyn Vegan says they make "beautiful, instrumental, violin-heavy folk music that fits equally within […]
It includes Chino Moreno (Deftones), Dr. Know (Bad Brains), Mackie Jayson (Cro-Mags), John Medeski, Robert Thomas Jr. (Weather Report), with the head of the band being Chuck Doom, a longtime Moreno collaborator and a former protege of famed jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, Stereogum reports. The rest of the core lineup includes John Medeski (Medeski Martin […]
Samuel T. Herring began rapping at age 14 at freestyle battles, and although we know him now as the frontman of Future Islands, he still keeps his rap fire alive. On top of October, he will release his debut hip-hop album 'Back at the House', signed with his little known alter-ego Hemlock Ernst, Exclaim reports. […]
Industrial group Nurse With Wound included a list of 291 ultra-obscure artists on their debut album in 1970. Now, 40 years later, the label Finders Keepers is collecting and compiling one track by every artist on it (here's the cover). There are some quite obscure, like Ghédalia Tazartès, Japanese performance group Tokyo Kid Brothers, Horrific […]
The 100 Club in London is very well known for its punk rock history, but the 6Ts Rhythm and Soul Society nights are celebrating their 40th anniversary, thus making it the longest-running club night in London and the longest-running northern soul night in the world. Guardian tells the 6Ts' story.
While Melanie Blake was a freelance journalist, a magazine assigned her to write about life on a 1980s reunion tour. "I went on the tour bus. It was absolutely hell," she tells the BBC - "Everybody hated each other. People wouldn't talk to each other, and then they'd be like, 'Hello Wembley!' and they'd sing […]
Beyonce has been blocked in an attempt to trademark her daughter’s name Blue Ivy by wedding planner Wendy Morales, who claims that she was using the name first, People magazine reports. Beyonce’s legal team argue that Blue Ivy, her eldest child with Jay-Z, is a “cultural icon” and a “mini style star”, "daughter of two […]
Haim have mashed up Lil Nas X and Nirvana during their latest appearance in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge - beginning with Lil Nas X’s ‘Panini’, the group then segued into Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’. Listen to it from around the two-hour and 14-minute mark here.
Jimmy Fallon likes doing that, and it mostly works just fine. This time around he had a member of rock's biggest band, one of hip-hop's most influential bands, and a groundbreaking song about psychedelic drugs. It turned out - nice, look for yourself below.
The New York Metropolitan Opera has ended its 51-year relationship with the renowned tenor Plácido Domingo over allegations of sexual harassment by several women. Several other companies had already canceled his concerts, after a total of 20 women have accused the Spanish singer of harassment, inappropriate sexual behaviour and of sometimes using his position in […]
"Identifying with that sense of having been duped for following your dreams in every closed shop window we passed" - Little Scream says about her latest album, 'Speed Queen', and her new song 'Disco Ball' (listen below). She made the album, Stereogum reports, "thinking about struggling as a musician, but having that be the thing that allows […]
Robert Hunter was a poet and musician who wrote many of the Grateful Dead’s lyrics, has released a couple of solo albums in the mid-’70s and co-wrote two songs for Bob Dylan. In the early 1960s, Hunter met and befriended Jerry Garcia, Hunter composed his first lyrics for the Grateful Dead on acid when he […]
Actor and singer David Hasselhoff has released a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s 'Head On'. 'Baywatch' star has enlisted the Cars guitarist Elliot Easton for his revved-up version of the track (listen below), and it comes out this Friday on his forthcoming album 'Open Your Eyes', Pitchfork reports. The record is full of seemingly strange covers - […]
Acclaimed American rapper CupcakKe has announced she's quitting music and has deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts, XXL reports. 22-year old author of songs like 'Cum Cake' and 'Best Dick Sucker', in an Instagram video said she feels like she's corrupting the youth - "When I made those songs I was 16, 17 and I […]
DJ Shadow has a new album 'Out Pathetic Age', coming out in November, and it's starry affair - Nas, Pharoahe Monche, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, De La Soul, Run the Jewels and more are featured, Fact Magazine reports. The album has 23 tracks, it is split into two sections, the first 11 songs are […]
In a surprise announcement, Nick Cave said that the Bad Seeds‘ new album ‘Ghosteen’ will be arriving next week. Answering fan's question on his Red Hand Files blog, Cave said it is a double album, with part 1 comprised of eight songs, and part 2 consisted of two long songs, linked by a spoken word […]
New Nigerian pop-culture movement, mostly music, but not just, is fusing R&B, soul, raps, Afrobeats, and indie-rock. Alté puts creativity, individuality and a sense of rebellion in its core – qualities at odds with Nigeria’s conservative culture, where, in a country dominated by Christian and Muslim values, those who go against the grain are often […]
Radiohead frontman was the latest guest at BBC Radio 4’s 'Desert Island Discs' where he chose eight musical recordings, a book, and a luxury item that he would take with him to a desert island, Consequence of Sound reports. So, he's survival essentials are: Talking Heads’ 'Born Under Punches', Neil Young’s 'After The Goldrush', R.E.M.’s 'Talk […]
The Michael Jackson estate has grown by $1.7 billion since the superstar’s death in 2009. Jackson has left behind $500 million in debt at the time of his passing, and "as of December 31, 2018, the Estate generated gross earnings exceeding 1.7 billion dollars,” Jackson’s estate attorneys informed the courts. The Blast...
"She’s as gloriously weird as ever. Hence her excellent new Madame X tour, a testament to the genius in her madness" - Rolling Stone says about Madonna's new tour. Instead of big shows, she’s performing in intimate venues, starting with 17 nights in Brooklyn, with the show being "messy", which is good, Rolling Stone says […]
A posthumous Leonard Cohen album 'Thanks for the Dance' of previously unreleased music has been announced, NPR reports. It's "an unexpected harvest of new songs, exciting and vital, a continuation of the master’s final work”, the press release said. In big part it is a work of Cohen's son Adam - the father had asked […]
"A reminder that we're not made to do life by ourselves" - Norwegian/Welsh folk-pop duo Firewoodisland says about their newest song 'Hollow Coves' (listen below). PopMatters says their music stands alongside the chamber/indie/folk pop-rock excellence of artists like Bon Iver, Of Monsters and Men, and Passenger. It comes out on band's 2nd album 'Firewoodisland', in 2020.
