Noted cover band Weezer made a new video - their cover of Norvergan synth-poppers A-Ha and their smash hit 'Take On Me'. Rivers Cuomo was into hair-metal in the time of A-Ha's hit, and it's Finn Wolfhard, star of 'Stranger Things', who plays him as a teen-metalhead. Very nice. Watch the original video and the Weezer […]
LA Times makes an interesting point on Childish Gambino and his non-appearance at the Grammys: "Less than an hour into the telecast, Google pulled the biggest troll of the Grammys so far. The ad for a new phone sported an animated Glover in a seemingly silly dance-off with a digital avatar of himself... The ad […]
Kacey Musgraves won album of the year with 'Golden Hour', Dua Lipa won best new artist, Cardi B made history as the first solo female to win best rap album. Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' became the first rap-based song to win record and song of the year (CNN). Drake, who rarely attends awards shows, […]
Her music’s intimacy feels so organically abstract, it is as if the songs are distilled directly from her subconscious. While Pratt’s toolbox remains minimal she weaves these means more intricately than ever, with a firm and confident hand - Pitchfork. Hear the first single, 'This Time Around', here.
Stereogum has a nice review of Lords of Chaos, a new documentary about highly controversial Norvegian black-metal band Mayhem: "If you were looking for an experienced director who was qualified to bring a black metal biopic to life, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with a better resumé than 'Lords Of Chaos' director Jonas Åkerlund. Not only […]
Guardian renews and old phenomenon, which actually occurs regularly for decades now, this time the cause is - streaming services: "Chart-toppers used to focus on long-players. Now, in the streaming era, they can release tracks whenever they like – and many, including Ariana Grande, have decided to do just that"
After NME's Samantha Maine shared the story of how she incorporated her favourite band in her homework, other music fans began sharing their stories. A funny read...
Indian movie director Zoya Akhtar made a movie 'Gully Boy', Bollywood’s first hip-hop film, starring two of Bollywood’s biggest actors: Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. Gully Boy is a fictionalised account of the burgeoning hip-hop scene in Mumbai. Gully, or “gutter”, rap is a musical sub-genre made by the younger people who live in the […]
Forty years ago, Michael Jackson and George Harrison, gave an interview to BBC Radio 1, discussing that week's new releases well as the stories behind their own songs. A rare recording has been found and restored, and a low quality recording can be heard here. A restored version will be published on BBC. Jackson discusses […]
Rapper 21 Savage is being held by US official due to an expired visa, which Jay-Z calls "an absolute travesty" and has hired a lawyer to help his fight against deportation. Atlanta-based rapper 21 Savage, a British citizen, has moved to America as a child, and now has three children who are US citizens. BBC...
Marvin Gaye planned to follow his 1971 blockbuster 'What’s Going On' with another socially conscious record titled 'You’re the Man', but, upon the release of its political-leaning titular single, Gaye scrapped the entire project, later contending that his political views ran in direct opposition to that of then-Motown CEO Berry Gordy. Motown is now releasing the lost […]
John Paul Jones, bassist and keyboardist of legendary Led Zeppelin, and Thurston Moore of noise rock icons Sonic Youth are set to perform together at a fundraising event on March 28th at the 100 Club in London. It’s a benefit concert to raise funds for community radio station Resonance FM. The duo will be joined by improvisational jazz […]
Guardian picks out 50 excellent new tracks from across the musical spectrum - r'n'b, rock'n'roll, punk, reggae, indie-rock...
Consequence of Sound: "All told, the 2019 Super Bowl Halftime Show was as much of a clusterfuck as one might expect: an overblown production with no real direction or actual sense of purpose. Maroon "coffee shop pop music" 5 proved once more why they are music’s equivalent to a Nilla Wafer, Travis Scott played 'Sicko […]
Johnny Longstaff was a 17-year-old boy from the north of England who “didn’t even know what sex was” and who “couldn’t find Spain on a map” but became determined to defy the wishes of his own government and fight for democracy in a foreign land - almost a hundred years after he was born folk […]
In "Does Rock 'N' Roll Kill Braincells?!", NME quizes an artist on their own career to see how much they can remember – and find out if the booze, loud music and/or tour sweeties has knocked the knowledge out of them. This week they talk do The Brian Jonestown Massacre maverick Anton Newcombe. NME...
A poll conducted on more than 1,000 British children aged seven to 17 about their music habits found that 97% of them had listened to music in the previous week – but 67% had also engaged in “some form of music-making activity”. It’s a huge rise from 39% in 2006. Music-making is present especially among […]
It's a collaboration with the Polish National Radio Simpony Orchestra, a rendition of Henryk Gorecki's 'Symphony No. 3'. Conducted by Krysztof Penderecki, it took place in 2014 at the National Opera Grand Theater in Warsaw. Audio and film from the performance is out March 29. Watch a trailer for the performance on YouTube, and check […]
Beyonce and JAY-Z have offered fans who adopt at least a partially vegan diet the chance to win gig tickets for life. A post on Beyonce's Instagram page urging fans to click on a link to the project's website and enter the competition. They can do so by pledging to give up meat on at […]
London police announced they had secured a sentence of nine months in prison for rappers Skengdo and AM, suspended for two years, for breaching a gang injunction issued in August last year. What did they do? Performed their song 'Attempted 1.0' at a London concert in early December. According to Index on Censorship the case […]
You want to have a major, upscale festival in the Exuma Cays? It wasn't just "on the boundaries of the impossible", as they advertised. It's impossible, I told them. It was clear they had no clue what they were doing. Worse: they had no idea where they were. With the right expectations, Fyre Festival could […]
Future's latest LP, 'The Wizrd', was sold in 126,000 copies in first-week sales in USA, landing the album in the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. It's his sixth best-sales album - previously, the Atlanta rhymer's 'DS2', 'What A Time To Be Alive' (with Drake), 'Evol', 'FUTURE', and 'HNDRXX' topped the chart, in three and a half years. All Hip Hop...
Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga sang ‘Shallow’, the hit song from the 'A Star Is Born' soundtrack, to an unsuspecting audience for Gaga’s 'Enigma' Residency show in Las Vegas. Watch it on Instagram. NME...
Acclaimed and prolific French composer Michel Legrand, who won Academy Awards for his work in The Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of '42 and Yentl, died Saturday in Paris. He was 86. He collaborated with giants of the industry -- Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra. Variety...
Two agencies representing supermodels Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber and Emily Ratajkowski might soon be forced to reveal details about the payments they received from convicted fraudster Billy McFarland for the failed 2017 Fyre Festival. A subpoena is also expected for model and influencer Kendall Jenner as part of a broad effort to understand what happened to $11.3 million paid out by McFarland in the weeks and months leading […]
Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers have a new band together called Better Oblivion Community Center. Their self-titled album with 10 song is out now, and all of the album’s packaging is about a mysterious and satirical wellness retreat. They debuted their new single 'Dylan Thomas' on Colbert (here). Backing band members include Yeah Yeah Yeahs […]
Weezer surprise released a covers album 'The Teal Album' full of straightforward covers of pop hits, mainly from the ’80s, but there are a few outliers, such as TLC's 'No Scrubs' or Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid'. One of the tracks, 'Africa' — and possibly the entire album — is a direct response to the Twitter user @weezerafrica, a.k.a. […]
Nile Rodgers is offering 600 free tickets to furloughed workers and their families or friends for his upcoming concert at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland later this week on Jan. 26. KISS announced that they would be giving free meals to TSA employees at their Rock & Brews Restaurant. Numerous orchestras are handing out free tickets […]
Edwin Birdsong—an experimental jazz, funk, and disco keyboardist known for his work in the 1970s—has died. Edwin Birdsong’s 1979 song 'Cola Bottle Baby' was prominently sampled in Daft Punk 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger', as well as in Kanye West's 'Stronger'. Both De La Soul's 'Me Myself and I' and Gang Starr's 'Skills' sampled Birdsongs 'Rapper […]
Bassiani is one of the greatest nightclubs in the world. Find your way through a pitch-black maze of underground stairs and corridors, and you’ll arrive at a 21st-century techno mecca, and a potent symbol of political rupture in post-Soviet Georgia. In just a few years, Bassiani has become a catalyst for progressive politics in a […]
