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STYX Is Almost Done Recording New Album: ‘We’ll Be Ready To Mix Before You Know It,’ Says TOMMY SHAW
STYX guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw spoke to the “Ted Nugent Spirit Campfire” show about the progress of the writing and recording sessions for the follow-up to “The Mission”. Released in June 2017, that disc marked STYX‘s first new LP in 14 years. It was recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, co-produced and co-written with Will Evankovich, a longtime collaborator of Shaw‘s in the SHAW/BLADES band and who also plays with THE GUESS WHO. “We’ve got all the drums, we’ve got all the basses [recorded],” Shaw said. “I think I’ve done all my guitars. I’ve done most of my vocals. We were writing and writing and writing. I got to the end of it. I had this other song. I was just burnt out. I was, like, ‘I can...
Nilüfer Yanya Debuts New Song “Day 7” During NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert: Watch
Nilüfer Yanya landed on both our Top 50 Songs and Top 50 Albums of 2019 lists thanks to her incredible debut album, Miss Universe. Today, she’s made her return to the spotlight with a new song, “Day 7”, which she premiered a performance for NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series. This is technically Yanya’s second entry in the Tiny Desk catalog. Last year, the English artist visited the NPR headquarters to play a full-band Tiny Desk set featuring three tracks from Miss Universe. For this new edition, which was recorded at a studio in Cornwall, England, she turned in a solo performances of three other songs from that record: “Heat Rises”, “Paralysed”, and “Heavyweight Champion of the Year”. In between the familiar tracks, she unveiled “Day 7”. Like her previously released material, “Day...
German Scientists Are Throwing a Concert “Experiment” to Test How COVID-19 Spreads
The coronavirus pandemic has essentially frozen the live music industry until a vaccine becomes widely available. It’s easy to understand why considering science has proven that the virus spreads faster in indoor environments and shows have long been a breeding ground for excessive spit, snot, and germs. Now, some German scientists have decided to throw a concert “experiment” to test just how rapidly COVID-19 spreads in a live music environment… and you could be their lucky volunteer! The project is called Restart-19 and it’s currently scheduled for August 22nd at the Leipzig Concert Hall, a seated venue that’s previously hosted shows by Bob Dylan and Britney Spears. The “experiment” will see 4,200 healthy people attend a live concert by Tim Bendzko, a popular German singer, reports Brookl...
Snoop Dogg and DMX to Go Head-to-Head in Verzuz Battle Tonight
Snoop Dogg and DMX, two of hip-hop’s biggest heavyweights, will go head-to-head in a Verzuz battle on Wednesday. It’s scheduled to go down tonight at at 8:00 p.m. ET via Verzuz’s Instagram. For the uninitiated, Verzuz is an Instagram TV show of sorts that pits two producers, rappers, or songwriters side-by-side to revisit their career highs and lows, with the ultimate goal of determining who has the best catalog. As Vulture writer Craig Jenkins notes, each battle consists of 20 rounds, sees contestants play a hit and then hear a rebuttal, and revolves around rules that come together “on the fly.” Past battles have featured Nelly vs. Ludacris, Timbaland vs. Swizz Beatz, and Teddy Riley vs. Babyface, among others. It’s a dog eat dog world, and tonight, one pup will come out on top....
J. Cole Drops Two New Songs “The Climb Back” and “Lion King on Ice”: Stream
J. Cole, photo by Ben Kaye J. Cole is back with new music. The North Carolina rapper has just released a pair of singles, “The Climb Back” and “Lion King on Ice”, both of which can be streamed below. “The Climb Back” was produced solely by J. Cole, whereas “Lion King on Ice” features additional production credits from jetsonmade and T-Minus. Apparently both songs are from The Fall Off, the long-hinted-at follow-up album to 2018’s KOD, which means yes, the album is actually real. But according to J. Cole, there’s no set release date scheduled. “Taking my time, still finishing,” he wrote on Instagram. Editors’ Picks Just last month, J. Cole dropped a surprise single called “Snow on tha Bluff” after marching in the streets with protestors. On the track, he appeared to take aim at Chicag...
Bloodshot Records Staffers Claim Co-Owner Botched Royalty Payments, Warn of Potential Sale
“Nothing is more important to me than making sure all accounting is entirely accurate,” co-founder Nan Warshaw responded in a statement to Billboard. In March 2019, Bloodshot Records co-founder Nan Warshaw announced her resignation from the Chicago-based independent country label after Bloodshot artist Lydia Loveless accused Warshaw’s partner of sexual misconduct. The plan was for co-founder Rob Miller to buy Warshaw’s 50% share in the company. But more than a year later, artists and staff members at Bloodshot, home to acts like Jason Hawk Harris and ROOKIE, say the label’s issues are far from resolved. On Monday, the entire non-ownership Bloodshot staff sent a letter to every artist on the roster, warning them that because Miller could not pay fair ...
Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: ‘We Employ a Lot of People … I Paid 10,000 People Last Year’
Steven Severin, co-owner of Neumos in Seattle, says indie clubs contribute $35 billion to the music industry and that needs to be recognized with government funding during the crisis. As co-owner of Seattle’s popular independent venue Neumos in Capitol Hill, Steven Severin has been a staple in the Seattle music industry for more than 20 years. Roughly 10 years ago, he helped create the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association to bring together the area’s live event insiders, and for the past 16 years has helped run Neumos with its sister club Barboza and the accompanying Runaway bar. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we will be speaking with Severin every two weeks to chronicle his experience throughou...
Lizzo Is a Green-Haired Goddess in Starry New Photo
Lizzo‘s badass energy always has us green with envy–and now she has the hair to match our mood. The star took to Instagram on Tuesday (July 21) to share a golden hour photo wearing nothing but glittery gold stars, paired with green hair and matching green eyeshadow. “When they say ‘ima star’ this is what they mean..” she captioned the post, tagging her creative director Quinn Whitney Wilson. The “Good as Hell” singer followed up with another moment from the shoot, a video of the (literal) star posing in the sunlight as a voiceover is heard proclaiming, “Yeah, we Black and we fine / We do this all the time.” See it here. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins wi...
Annie Ross, Grammy-Winning Jazz Singer, Dies at 89
Annie Ross, the dexterous jazz singer and leading practitioner of the art of “vocalese” heard on her signature song, “Twisted,” has died. She was 89. Ross died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan of complications from emphysema and heart disease, her former manager, Jim Coleman, told The Washington Post. Ross performed with fellow vocalists Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks in the acclaimed jazz trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross from 1957 to 1962. They made dozens of instrumental classics their own and recorded several albums, starting with 1957’s Sing a Song of Basie, which employed overdubs to multiply their voices. In 1952, Ross and vocalist King Pleasure had teamed on an album for Prestige that included “Twisted,” her treatment of saxophonist Wardel...
Dave Franco to Play Vanilla Ice in New Biopic
Dave Franco is set to play Vanilla Ice in a biopic about the “Ice Ice Baby” rapper. In a wide-ranging interview with Insider, Franco elaborated on the news of his casting and how he sees the film playing out. “We have been in development for a while but we are inching closer and closer to preproduction,” Franco said of the film, the news of which was quietly revealed last year. He compared the project favorably to The Disaster Artist, the 2017 movie about filmmaker Tommy Wiseau that starred Franco and his brother James. (Wiseau directed and starred in the 2003 cult classic The Room. In The Disaster Artist, James Franco portrayed Wiseau while Dave played co-star Greg Sestero, who wrote a book of the same name about his experience working on the movie.) “With that movie, ...
Mamamoo’s Hwasa Just Made Harry Styles’s Song Of The Summer Even Hotter
Though British singer Harry Styles released his ecstatic single “Watermelon Sugar” back in November 2019, the delicious slice of pop escapism has since become 2020’s song of the summer, thanks in part to the fruit-filled music video “dedicated to touching” that he dropped in May. Now, Hwasa, of the K-pop foursome Mamamoo, is putting her own sultry spin on Styles’s hit. Hwasa’s cover of “Watermelon Sugar,” which released the day of the singer’s birthday on Wednesday (July 22), doesn’t stray far from the Style’s original melody, the K-pop idol captures and builds on the track’s windows-down, wind-in-your-hair vibes of the track with her sweltering, moody vocals and a cozy music video f...
Jamie Lynn Spears Defends Sister Britney: ‘She Is A Strong, Badass, Unstoppable Woman’
It’s been a disturbing few days for Kanye West on social media. After a series of tweet-rants where he alleged that his wife, Kim Kardashian West, and her mother, Kris Jenner, had conspired to commit him and that he’d been trying to obtain a divorce, Kardashian West, today (July 22) stressed, “Those that understand mental illness or even compulsive behavior know that the family is powerless unless the member is a minor,” in a detailed Twitter thread of her own. Earlier this week, as Kanye’s words began to proliferate Twitter — words that, as Kardashian West noted, “[sometimes] do not align with his intentions” — fellow celebs like Questlove and Halsey were quick to remind folks that mental illness is real, and in Halsey’s words, “person...
