Katy Perry and the Black Eyed Peas are set to headline Rock the Vote’s first event of its Democracy Summer campaign for 2020: a two-hour virtual concert taking place on Thursday, June 18th beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET, on democracysummer.org and Democracy Summer’s Facebook and YouTube pages. Co-hosted by Logan …
Read More »The Grammys' New Rules Confirm Anyone Can Be a 'Best New Artist'
In 2017, when Chance the Rapper walked triumphantly onto the stage at the Grammys to accept his award as that year’s Best New Artist, he was wearing a tab baseball cap emblazoned with the number “3” — a reference to how many full-length projects he’d released. Last year, Lizzo was …
Read More »Drake Returns to Number One on Artists 500 Chart
Drake is back on top of the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart for the week of May 29th through June 4th. Last week, Gunna took Number One, but Toronto’s very own bounced back this week with 123.7 million total song streams. That tally was bolstered primarily by Drake’s latest single, …
Read More »The Last Word: Judas Priest's Rob Halford on the Joys of Leather and 40 Years of 'Breaking the Law'
“There was a time when ‘heavy metal’ was a dirty word,” Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford says. “But we have always said that we fly the flag of British heavy metal. It’s something that we’re extremely proud of. We take it seriously.” For nearly half a century, Halford has been …
Read More »Sweet Bassist Steve Priest Dead at 72
Steve Priest, founding bassist and singer for “Ballroom Blitz” glam rock band Sweet, died Thursday at the age of 72. Priest’s family confirmed his death on social media Thursday. No cause of death was revealed, but guitarist Andy Scott — the last surviving member of the band’s classic lineup — …
Read More »New Protest Anthems: Songs of the Uprising for George Floyd
In the wake of George Floyd‘s killing by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25th, streaming numbers for protest songs have soared. Vintage tracks like N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” that specifically call out police violence serve as a reminder that our current national crisis is nothing new. As Black Lives …
Read More »Eagles' Don Henley Calls on Congress to Bolster Online Copyright Laws
The Eagles‘ Don Henley urged Congress to strengthen anti-piracy rules online while testifying virtually before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. The hearing was held to mull possible changes to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Henley spoke specifically on the need to update the DMCA’s …
Read More »Inside the 'Oops!… I Did It Again' Video, 20 Years Later
Nigel Dick had already directed videos for Guns N’ Roses, Oasis, and many others by the time he met Britney Spears in 1998, but even the “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” clips couldn’t come close to matching the culture-shaking impact of “…Baby One More Time.” Dick …
Read More »Rock's Greatest Sidewoman on What Springsteen Taught Her, Why Billy Joel Is the Perfect Boss
In 1989, Crystal Taliefero got a call from someone she knew from her days touring as a percussionist and backup singer in John Mellencamp‘s band. He wanted to know if she was available for a recording session in New York and a possible tour with another artist. “I said, ‘Sure. …
Read More »Gabriel Garzón-Montano Returns With 'Someone'
Gabriel Garzón-Montano revels in a slow-drip of funk on “Someone,” his first new song in more than three years. The singer whiplashes between confident-ish statements — “Now you got yourself a man/I been busy making other plans” — and blunt expressions of loss and confusion: “I needed you/ I don’t …
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