Classic Hits

For her upcoming birthday on August 16, Madonna wants get in bed with you — metaphorically and physically.

Madonna is asking her fans to help support the Mercy James Centre, the hospital she built in Malawi four years ago, which is the only pediatric intensive care unit in the entire country. Specifically, she needs more beds in the hospital — 50 of them, to be exact — so she’s asking fans to donate money to purchase those beds.

“I want to ensure that every child that comes into that hospital and has an operation or surgery of any kind has a bed to recuperate in afterwards, and is taken care of,” Madonna explains in an Instagram video.

She adds, “I will name that bed after you and you will forever be, not only in my heart, but in the hearts of all the children of Malawi and their families. Thank you in advance for your generosity, and happy birthday to me!”

You can donate at RaisingMalawi.org. If you’ve got deep pockets, you can donate $5,000 and get a bed named after you.  If you don’t have that kind of money, you can donate $2,500 and share the bed name with one other donor, or $500, to have your name listed with nine other donors.

Even if you can’t afford that, you can give $100 to contribute to a nurse’s salary, or even $25 to pay for a month’s worth of medicine for one child.

Of course, helping the children of Malawi is one of Madonna’s pet causes, because it’s the country where four of her children — David, Mercy, Stella and Estere — were born.

 

 

 

 

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Billy Idol became a grandfather for the first time last year, and the 65-year-old pop-punk singer tells People that the experience has enriched his life.

“It opens you up emotionally,” he says. “Everything is a new experience for her. In a way, I’m reliving those experiences myself.”

Idol’s daughter, Bonnie Broad, gave birth to a daughter of her own in May 2020. Billy says his one-year-old grandkkid, who’s named Poppy Rebel, is already a fan of his music.

“The other day she was bouncing up and down to ‘Rebel Yell,'” he says of his 1983 hit. “But of course, she also loves ‘Baby Shark.'”

The rocker, who just announced that he’ll be releasing a four-song EP next month titled The Roadside, says the downtime he had during the COVID-19 pandemic gave him the chance to spend some quality time with his granddaughter.  He tells People that he’s been teaching the little one how to talk and walk.

“She can say ‘dude,’ ‘duck’ and ‘fish,'” he reports.

Last month, Billy posted an adorable video on his Instagram of Poppy feeding him blueberries.

Idol recently launched a run of 2021 U.S. tour dates that continues tonight with a show in Airway Heights, Washington. The trek winds down with a four-show Las Vegas residency in October.

Meanwhile, the lead single from The Roadside, “Bitter Taste,” is available digitally now.

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The July 28 death of ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill apparently has spurred fans to revisit the Texas trio’s catalog and has driven a number of their recordings back up the Billboard charts.

The band’s 1974 hit “La Grange” lands at the top of Billboard‘s latest Hard Rock Digital Song Sales, with 1,600 units sold during the most recent week-long tracking period, according to MRC Data. The track becomes ZZ Top’s first song to hit #1 on the list. The previous week, shortly after Hill’s passing, “La Grange” reached #2 on the chart.

Three other ZZ Top songs currently are in the top 10 of the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales — 1983’s “Sharp Dressed Man” at #2, 1975’s “Tush” at #5, and 1983’s “Gimme All Your Lovin'” at #6.

“La Grange” also sits at #6 on the general Rock Digital Song Sales tally, while the other aforementioned tunes all are in that chart’s top 20.

Meanwhile, ZZ Top’s 2019 hits compilation Goin’ 50 entered Billboard‘s Hard Rock Albums chart at #5 and the Top Rock Albums tally at #20 after accruing 8,400 album-equivalent units.

Overall, the band’s catalog was streamed 12.7 million times in the U.S. during the most recent tracking period, while notching 8,000 in album sales and 14,000 digital downloads of its songs.

Hill died suddenly at his home in Houston at the age of 72. He had been taking a break from the group’s current tour to seek treatment for a number of medical issues. No cause of death has been announced.

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Led Zeppelin‘s Robert Plant has reteamed with acclaimed country-bluegrass artist Alison Krauss to record a new collaborative album titled Raise the Roof, a follow-up to their Grammy-winning 2007 duets collection, Raising Sand.

Like its predecessor, the 12-track Raise the Roof collection was produced by T Bone Burnett and features mostly of covers songs.

The album includes renditions of tunes by Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, British folk legend Bert Jansch and many others. Raise the Roof also features a new original tune called “High and Lonesome” that Plant co-wrote with Burnett.

One of the tracks, a version of the Randy Weeks song “Can’t Let Go” — which Lucinda Williams previously covered for her 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road — has been released as an advance digital single.

Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo and Robert’s Band of Joy collaborator Buddy Miller contributed to the album, as did a few musicians who also appeared on Raising Sand — drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarist Marc Ribot and bassist Dennis Crouch.

Discussing working with Krauss again on the Raise the Roof material, Plant notes, “You hear something and you go ‘Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!’ It’s a vacation, really — the perfect place to go that you least expected to find.”

Adds Alison, “We wanted it to move. We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”

In support of Raise the Roof, Plant and Krauss are planning to tour together in 2022.

Raising Sand won five Grammys in 2009, including Album of the Year.

Raise the Roof will be released on November 19, and can be pre-ordered now.

Here’s the full track list:

“Quattro (World Drifts In)”
“The Price of Love”
“Go Your Way”
“Trouble with My Lover”
“Searching for My Love”
“Can’t Let Go”
“It Don’t Bother Me”
“You Led Me to the Wrong”
“Last Kind Words Blues”
“High and Lonesome”
“Going Where the Lonely Go”
“Somebody Was Watching Over Me”

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In June, Journey released a new single called “The Way We Used to Be” that will part of the band’s forthcoming studio album, which will be the group’s first collection of new, original songs since 2011’s Eclipse.

Journey guitarist Neal Schon tells ABC Audio that “The Way We Used to Be” began as a musical idea he came up with using a keyboard loop, to which he then added guitar, bass and string sounds before sending it to the band’s longtime keyboardist, Jonathan Cain, for him to fill out with lyrics and melodies.

Schon admits that when he first sent the tune to Cain, he didn’t think it sounded like a Journey song.

“I thought it was more like…a Bad English song or something for John Waite or Rolling Stones with a little harder edge,” Neal explains. “And I’m glad that 90 percent of the people that have heard it love it. Some others are just going, ‘Wow, that doesn’t sound like Journey.’ And I go, ‘Well, it wasn’t meant to be’…but it ended up on our album.”

Speaking about the band’s studio effort, Schon says, “There’s so much great material on this album that we’ve…produced and I’ve been working on for well over a year now with everybody.”

Neal tells ABC Audio that it was “a blessing” for him to get to record a lot of his parts live in the studio with Journey’s new drummer, Narada Michael Walden, who also is producing the album, while the other band members generally laid down there parts remotely.

As for when the new album might be released, Schon reports, “It could come out at the end of this year, or, if it doesn’t, I believe that it will come out sometime after the first [of January].”

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Marlon Wayans says he wanted to give Aretha Franklin‘s first husband and manager Ted White a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T when he channeled him in the new biographical drama, Respect. Unfortunately for the actor, that wasn’t an easy task.

“It was funny because I couldn’t really get anything out of anybody about Ted,” Wayans tells ABC Audio. “They said he was a really nice dresser. They said he was stroppy. They said he was charming, but…that there was a bad guy in there.”

Wayans says before he decided to take his own “creative license” to portray the accomplished songwriter, he first tried to “reach out to Ted” to get his perspective — “but Ted didn’t want to talk.” 

“So, I…based [Ted] on a minute-and-a-half interview I saw with him and Aretha,” Wayans says. “And from there, I started thinking about the psychology of a guy like Ted, because as much of a devil [that] he was, there was something angelic about him. And so I focused in on not him being all good or all bad, but sometimes he couldn’t keep his bad under control.”

To that end, Wayans says he formed a back story for White that helped explain his harsh behavior.

“And I focused on him maybe having… mommy issues and a lack of appreciation for women,” he shares. “And…even pimps and guys like that, they’re not bad people. They’re hurt people.”

Wayans continues, “Damaged people damage people. And so I wanted to protect that little nugget of innocence in him, because I think in order to make a great bad guy — you’ve got to love him and you got to hate them.”

Respect, starring Jennifer Hudson as the Queen of Soul, hits theaters Friday.

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Legendary record executive Walter Yetnikoff, who died on Sunday, would have been 88 on Wednesday, August 11.  As the head of CBS Records from 1975 to 1990, Yetnikoff guided the careers of Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand and Billy Joel, who posted a tribute to the late music-industry bigwig on his website Wednesday.

Billy recorded for Columbia Records, which at the time was owned by CBS. Billy writes, “Walter Yetnikoff was the man who changed everything at Columbia Records…Walter was a street fighter — a man who didn’t shy away from confrontation with other power players when it came to protecting his artist’s interests.”

Billy continues, “I will always be eternally grateful to him for ensuring that my song copyrights and publishing rights were returned to me — intact. I loved him as a dear friend and a mentor, in a business where real friendships don’t exist.”

The Piano Man adds, “I owe much of my good fortune to Walter’s stewardship at the Columbia label. I will miss him and the strong life force that he was.”

In other news, Billy returned to the stage for his first post-pandemic concert at Boston’s Fenway Park last week, and is currently set to perform at Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium this Saturday.

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In the U.S., Norwegian pop group A-ha is best known for their groundbreaking 1985 video and hit song “Take On Me,” but apparently, there’s more to the story — so much more that an entire documentary on the group is on its way.

Variety reports that A-ha: The Movie has just closed a deal for U.S. distribution, following its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.  According to Variety, the documentary examines the “creative clashes, ambitions and stormy relationships” of A-Ha’s three founding members.

“The band really deserves it; they need to be discovered by everybody who thinks they only had one hit,” director Thomas Robsahm tells Variety.

In the U.S., “Take On Me” reached number two, and then A-ha had only one additional top 20 hit: “The Sun Always Shines on TV.”  However, in the U.K., they continued to chart throughout the ’80s and ’90s, and even scored a top 10 in 2006, while in their home country of Norway, they’ve had nine number-one hits. Worldwide, they’ve sold more than 50 million records.

It’s also worth noting that A-ha were tapped to record the title song for the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, which starred Timothy Dalton as 007.  While the tune didn’t chart in the U.S., it was a top-five hit in the U.K.

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Elton John and British pop singer Dua Lipa seem to have become BFFs, so maybe it’s no surprise that they’re now releasing a joint single.

The rock legend appeared on Lipa’s Studio 2054 livestream special in November of 2020, and then she performed at his Oscar party this past April.  Now, the two have teamed up for a song called “Cold Heart,” which will be out on Friday. You can pre-save the track now.

“Cold Heart” isn’t exactly a new song, though: It’s a dance remix created by the Australian dance act Pnau.  It features Dua singing lines from Elton’s 1972 classic “Rocket Man,” and Elton singing lines from his 1990 hit “Sacrifice.”

In a snippet posted online, we hear Elton sing, “Cold, cold heart/ Hard done by you/ Some things look better, baby/ Just passing through,” and then Dua comes in with, “And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time/ ’til touchdown brings me ’round again to find.”

Elton writes on Instagram, “Dua, I adore you, and it has been an incredible experience making this together. I can’t wait for you all to hear it!”

This isn’t the first time Pnau has remixed Elton: Back in 2012, they did an entire album called Good Morning to the Night, where all the songs were made up of samples of Elton’s past hits, mashed up into completely new songs.

It’s not clear if “Cold Heart” is a one-off, or part of a second collection of Elton remixes by Pnau.

I’m so excited to finally be able to tell you that I have a new single with @DUALIPA, ‘Cold Heart (@pnau Remix)’, coming out this Friday – I can’t wait for you all to hear it!

Pre-save link in bio #coldheart pic.twitter.com/kZjNreWzcM

— Elton John (@eltonofficial) August 11, 2021

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Billy Idol will release a new four-track EP titled The Roadside on September 17, and in advance of the record, the veteran pop-punk singer has made available one of the songs, “Bitter Taste,” as a digital single.

The bulk of The Roadside was written, recorded and mixed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It features contributions from Idol’s longtime lead guitarist and songwriter partner, Steve Stevens. The record, which was produced by Butch Walker, is Idol’s first collection of new original songs since his 2014 album Kings & Queens of the Underground.

The Roadside can be pre-ordered now on CD, on vinyl and as a limited-edition blue-vinyl LP, as well as digitally.

“Bitter Taste,” which was co-written by Idol, Stevens and two other collaborators, was inspired by Billy’s 1990 motorcycle accident that left him with a seriously injured leg.

“I think everyone has been feeling more reflective [during the pandemic]. So, it seemed quite logical and natural to write something about my motorcycle accident,” Idol explains about the new song. “Certainly, the motorcycle accident was the catharsis, the wake-up moment. A little bit of me got left on that roadside. But it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in the end; it was a wake-up call. Maybe on that roadside I left behind the irreverent youthful Billy and opened the door for a more attentive father and a more sensitive musician.”

You can watch a dramatic companion music video for “Bitter Taste” at Idol’s official YouTube channel.

Here’s The Roadside EP’s full track list:

Rita Hayworth”
“Bitter Taste”
“U Don’t Have to Kiss Me Like That”
“Baby Put Your Clothes Back On”

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