Lynyrd Skynyrd is set to play several dates on the 2025 Rock the Country touring festival, which will be headlined by Kid Rock and Nickelback.
Skynyrd is confirmed for five festival dates: April 5 in Livingston, Louisiana; April 26 in Knoxville, Tennessee; May 3 in Poplar Bluff, Montana; May 31 in York, Pennsylvania; and June 14 in Hastings, Michigan.
Depending on the day, the bill will also feature artists including 3 Doors Down, Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr., Staind‘s Aaron Lewis and Lee Greenwood.
Tickets go on sale Friday, and presales are open now. For more info, visit RocktheCountry.com.
Next up, Lynyrd Skynyrd is set to play the Rock N’ Support hurricane relief concert in Palmetto, Florida, on Nov. 15, with special guest Marcus King. A complete list of Skynyrd dates can be found at lynyrdskynyrd.com.
Roger Daltrey has confirmed that The Who will be back on the road next year.
The Belfast Telegraph reports that the rocker told the PA news agency that The Who has “a couple of things planned for next year.”
Daltrey just announced a new 2025 solo tour of the U.K., but shared, “The Who aren’t finished yet, I feel that I’m singing possibly better than I have for years.”
“Our music is very, very different than most rock music, we should keep doing it,” he adds.
When it comes to touring with The Who again, Daltrey says that he “can’t go through the motions,” noting, “I have to be totally committed, and then if the money comes, that’s great.”
He describes the band’s last tour with an orchestra as “the pinnacle” and says fans can expect something different with the next one.
“The only place we can go now is back to the beginning, when we’re raw, small and raw, and bring back the jamming, because we used to do a lot of that,” he says. “Maybe we should do a bit more of, let’s give them what we feel like giving them, and dig in and maybe we’ll find something else.”
He adds, “It maybe needs to get a bit more dangerous.”
Valerie Terranova/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation
Bruce Springsteen took a break from his Canadian tour to travel to New York and perform at the 18th annual Stand Up For Heroes benefit Monday night at David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
According to setlist.fm, The Boss played a four-song acoustic set that included “The Power of Prayer,” “Land of Hope and Dreams,” “Dancing in the Dark” and “Long Walk Home.”
Fan-shot video posted online shows that he called “Long Walk Home” “a small prayer for our country.” During his post-election show in Toronto on Nov. 6, he called the tune “a fighting prayer for my country.”
In addition, as he’s done in the past at Stand Up For Heroes, Bruce treated the audience to a few dirty jokes. According to Rolling Stone, they included jokes about a woman who takes her husband to a strip club where everyone knows him, and a guy who’s surprised to find his girlfriend pregnant.
Stand Up For Heroes, with a lineup that also included Norah Jones and DJ Questlove, along with comedians Jim Gaffigan, Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Normand,raised over $29 million for the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which supports our nation’s veterans, service members and their families.
Springsteen is set to return to Canada on Wednesday with a show in Winnipeg. The Canadian leg of the tour wraps Nov. 22 in Vancouver.
Forty years ago today, the world was touched for the very first time by Madonna‘s landmark sophomore album, Like a Virgin. While her self-titled 1983 debut did well, Like a Virgin was the album that made her a superstar and cemented her reputation — still intact today — as a pop provocateur.
The album’s controversial title track was released at the beginning of November, but the world got its first introduction to the tune, and the album, at the very first MTV Video Music Awards in September of 1984. Wearing a wedding gown and a “BOY TOY” belt, Madonna sang the song while rolling around on stage, scandalizing viewers and making such moments standard for future VMAs.
“The plan was for her to do ‘Holiday,'” recalls Chic‘s Nile Rodgers , who produced the Like a Virgin album. “And she changed it up on ’em and said, ‘No, I wanna do ‘Like a Virgin.’ So … the world was hearing ‘Like a Virgin’ for the first time, and really getting an idea of how innovative Madonna is.”
After “Like a Virgin” hit #1, “Material Girl,” with its iconic Marilyn Monroe-inspired video, was next, reaching #2; “Dress You Up” and “Angel” followed. Madonna supported the album with her hugely successful debut tour.
Like a Virgin topped the chart and became the first album by a woman to sell over five million copies in the U.S. It’s since sold more than 21 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 2023, it was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
While Nile Rodgers also produced David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, Duran Duran, INXS, Sam Smith and countless others, he told ABC Audio, “The biggest-selling record of my life is Like a Virgin. That’s the biggest album I’ve ever produced.”
Bryan Adams, Steve Winwood and The Doobie Brothers are among the contenders for the 2025 class of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The organization just announced the artists in the running for induction next year, with Adams, Winwood and Doobie Brothers members Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons and Michael McDonald getting nominated in the performing songwriters category.
Others nominated in that category include The Beach Boys’ Mike Love, Boy George, David Gates of Bread, George Clinton, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Janet Jackson, Eminem, Tommy James and Dr. Dre, Easy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella of Public Enemy.
In the non-performing category, the nominees include the folks who wrote or co-wrote hits like Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Pat Benatar‘s “Love Is A Battlefield,” The Foundations‘“Build Me Up Buttercup,” The Four Tops‘ “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got),” The Commodores‘ “Nightshift” and Whitney Houston‘s “How Will I Know.”
Some of the people nominated this year have been in the running for the Hall of Fame in the past, including Adams, Winwood, The Doobie Brothers and Clinton.
Nominees become eligible 20 years after their first “significant commercial release of a song.” Voting will run through Dec. 22, and the inductees will be celebrated at a gala event in New York City next year.
For a guy who’s 73, Sting looks pretty good. But he says if he ever stops looking good, he’ll stop performing onstage.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Sting says his fitness regimen includes yoga, swimming, working out and walking, but admits that 55% of the reason he does it is vanity — the other 45% is discipline.
“I don’t look at pictures of myself. But you need enough professional vanity to go onstage in the first place,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to go on if I was overweight or wearing spandex. If that happens to me, I’m not going onstage. So the vanity is somewhat essential, and it’s not particularly harmful.”
“I’m not spending hours of the day looking in the mirror or getting made up … or wearing a wig or a corset,” he adds.
While Sting isn’t getting any younger, his music is finding new, younger audiences, because so many artists continue to sample it. Last year, Pink and Marshmello reworked his song “Fields of Gold” into the song “Dreaming,” for example.
“[W]hen somebody wants to interpolate or whatever it’s called, I never object because I always learn something about the song that I hadn’t known or anticipated. And I get paid, so why not?” he says. “It keeps them current.”
Sting also denies that the allegations against disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs have somehow “tainted” the way he thinks of his most famous song, “Every Breath You Take.” Combs famously sampled that song in his #1 hit “I’ll Be Missing You.”
“I mean, I don’t know what went on [with Diddy],” he says. “But it doesn’t taint the song at all for me. It’s still my song.”
A piano used to record “Layla,” by Eric Clapton‘s band Derek and the Dominos, is one of the many items going up for auction as part of a collection from the legendary Hit Factory recording studio in New York.
Items that will be available come from the personal archives of Danielle Germano, daughter of the recording studio’s founder, Ed Germano.
The 1960s Baldwin studio piano up for auction was purchased by the Hit Factory from Miami’s Criteria Studios in the 1990s. It was used not only on “Layla,” but also during the recording of the AllmanBrothers Band album Eat a Peach andLynyrd Skynyrd’s Street Survivors. It was also played by several big-name artists, including Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.
Also being auctioned off is an original file from Germano’s belongings described as the “final session” of John Lennon’s 1980 album, Double Fantasy, the final album he recorded before his death. There are also hundreds of record awards, from such artists as Lennon, Clapton, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.
The auction is being handled by Eaton & Brennan and will run online from Nov. 13 to Dec. 4.
Jerry Garcia has been gone for almost 30 years, but thanks to AI, Grateful Dead fans can now enjoy the experience of the late rocker reading to them.
According toBillboard, Garcia’s estate has teamed with AI company ElevenLabs for an AI-generated version of Garcia’s voice, which will read audiobooks, poetry, articles and more through the Iconic Listening Experience on the ElevenReader app.
A company spokesperson tells Billboard they worked “in close collaboration with the Jerry Garcia estate to ensure that the reproduction of Garcia’s voice was as authentic and true to his legacy as possible.”
In addition to use on the app, the Jerry Garcia Foundation has plans to use the AI-generated voice in future projects.
“My father was a pioneering artist, who embraced innovative audio and visual technologies,” Jerry’s daughter Keelin Garcia, who’s the co-founder and VP of the Jerry Garcia Foundation, shares. “Now, as technological landscapes continue to expand, ElevenLabs AI Audio technology will offer fans the first opportunity to hear and stream a replica of my father’s voice reading their favorite books and other written content.”
Garcia is one of several celebrities whose voice has been recreated by ElevenLabs using AI. Others include Judy Garland, James Dean and Sir Laurence Olivier.
Quincy Jones was laid to rest in an “intimate ceremony [that] included Mr. Jones’ seven children, his brother, two sisters, and immediate family members,” The Associated Press reports.
Details about where the ceremony was held were not revealed, but the family says they remain “enormously grateful for the outpouring of condolences and tributes from his friends and fans from around the world.”
Details for a more public memorial celebration will be announced soon. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to the Jazz Foundation of America.
Jones, producer of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album and more, died Nov. 3 with his family by his side. He was 91.
U2 is celebrating the 20th anniversary of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb with the Nov. 29 release of the shadow album How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb. And while that may be exciting, U2 fans are anxiously awaiting word on a new album — and in a new interview with Rolling Stone, guitarist The Edge gave them a little update.
Edge says he created a lot of tracks and song ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now they have to narrow things down.
“So we’re starting to go through some of those, and we’ve got an awful lot of material to wade through to see what it is,” he said. “And I guess we’re at that great honeymoon period of a lot of experimentation, and looking at all kinds of possible themes musically.”
While in the past Bono has said the next album would be a rock record, Edge clarifies, “I think the guitar will be a big part of the next record, but I don’t think it’s going to be a heavy rock album. I think it’s going to be a very different kind of use of the guitar, not a straight-up rock thing.”
He added, “We’ve always tried to find ways to use the guitar that has never been heard before, and it seems that that’s an important part of what gets us excited.”
Edge also shared a health update about drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who had to sit out their Las Vegas residency after having surgery, revealing they’ve already done one session with him and “we’re having a great time.”
“So yeah, obviously we don’t want to be over-doing it, but yes, it’s going great and he’s in great form,” he said. “It’s lovely to spend time with him in the studio in a creative environment.”
