Classic Hits

A new docuseries on soft rock is set to hit Paramount+ in the new year. According to Variety, Sometimes When We Touch: The Reign, Ruin and Resurrection of Soft Rock will debut in the U.S. and Canada on January 3.

The three-part series will feature interviews from a whole host of artists, including Sheryl Crow, The Police’s Stewart Copeland, Run DMC’s Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Richard Marx, Earth, Wind & Fire‘s Verdine White and The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, as well as actual soft rockers like Kenny Loggins, Toni Tennille, Rupert Holmes and Air Supply.

The series will delve into the popularity of the music, some of which has been deemed “yacht rock” in recent years and has gained in popularity. It will focus on such artists as Loggins, Air Supply, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Christopher Cross, the Carpenters, Lionel Richie, Captain & Tennille and more, and will feature new and archival interviews, as well as concert clips. It promises to celebrate “the impact of soft rock while acknowledging the cringey excesses that sometimes led it astray.”

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The holiday season is here and the music charts certainly reflect that, with several classic holiday tunes making the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart this week. 

While Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” tops the list, four other classic tracks land in the Top 10, with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” at two, matching the song’s highest ranking on the chart. Overall, the tune is up 15% in streams to 34.3 million, with a 26.1 million in radio airplay audience. 

Landing just behind Lee is Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” at three, followed by Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” at four. The final holiday tune in the Top 10 is Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” which this week lands at nine. The first time it reached the Top 10 was in 2020, when it peaked at seven.

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Janis Ian is retiring from performing and recording, although she’s not calling it that. The singer has revealed her most recent album, The Light at the End of the Line, which recently earned her a 10th Grammy nomination, is her last album of new songs.

Janis calls her decision not “retiring but rewiring,” noting it’s “a bittersweet moment and a grand one.” She says a virus she caught during what was supposed to be her farewell tour caused scarring on her vocal cord that has left her unable to sing; there is no treatment or cure to fix it.

But Ian insists she isn’t going to stop being creative. She plans to continue to release music, including a duets album she recorded prior to the scarring, which will include Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. She also plans to release live performances, unheard songs and more.

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ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd are teaming up for a new co-headlining tour. The Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour is set to hit 22 North American cities this summer, including Phoenix, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Denver and Saratoga Springs.

The trek kicks off July 21 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and runs through September 17 in Camden, New Jersey. It’s mostly made up of outdoor amphitheaters shows.

Tickets go on sale starting Friday at 10 a.m. local time. Check out the complete list of dates here.

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Things got a little scary at Patti LaBelle’s Christmas concert in Milwaukee Saturday night. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, two songs into the show at the Riverside Theater, security rushed the singer off the stage and evacuated the 2,500-seat venue due to a bomb threat.

“Regarding the bomb threat in the 100 block of W. Wisconsin, all patrons have been safely evacuated,” Milwaukee Police Capt. Warren E. Allen Jr. shared in an email Saturday evening. “Police are clearing the facility at this time. The investigation is fluid and ongoing.” A later statement added, “The building was searched by K9 units. No explosive devices were discovered. There is no threat to the public at this time.”

Video posted to social media shows two security guards interrupting LaBelle as she was chatting with a member of the audience who was celebrating a birthday. She can be heard saying “Wait,” before quickly being escorted off the stage.

So far there has been no comment from LaBelle about the incident.

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Bono isn’t done talking about his biography. The U2 frontman just announced a new set of dates for his Stories of Surrender book tour, which is dubbed “an evening of words, music and some mischief.”

The new dates are also called Bono at the Beacon, since all the dates take place at New York’s Beacon Theater. The leg consists of eight shows starting April 16 and running through May 3.

The shows have Bono recounting stories from his recently released memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and also performing stripped down versions of U2 songs. He’ll be backed by Gemma Doherty on harp, keyboard and vocals, and Kate Ellis and cello, keyboard and vocals, with Jacknife Lee serving as musical director.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. Check out the complete list of dates here.

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Peter Frampton recently finished up the 2022 dates of his farewell tour, after announcing a few years ago that he’ll be retiring from the road due to a degenerative muscle condition.  He sat with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview about his career, in which he discusses his struggles with his ’70s-era fame, and how David Bowie saved his career.

After 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive made him one of the world’s biggest stars, Frampton says that after the follow-up, 1977’s I’m In You, “I could feel it slipping away…I started to lose a lot of audience…I felt like I was in a sinking ship.” As the ’80s arrived, Frampton admits he wasn’t making his best work, and he wasn’t having much commercial success, either. But in 1986, things turned around for him — and he gives the credit to Bowie, his old schoolmate.

“I did a record for Atlantic called Premonition,” he tells Guitar World. “It still wasn’t a great record…but that’s the album David Bowie listened to…he said, ‘Can you come and play some guitar for me?’”

Frampton ended up playing on Bowie’s 1987 album Never Let Me Down, and then joined him on his Glass Spider tour. 

“He could have chosen anybody…but he chose me. I can never thank him enough for that,” admits Frampton. Rather than missing the spotlight, he says being a sideman is his “comfy chair,” explaining, “I’ve always been more comfortable playing guitar, not singing.”

He notes, “David inviting me to do the album and tour changed my credibility; I got my credibility back that I felt I’d lost when I’m In You came out. I’m a musician first and foremost. David gave me back that credibility to continue and bring people back to me.”

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On Friday, Cher tweeted that her heart was breaking for her “beloved friend, sister” Tina Turner, whose son Ronnie passed away at age 62. But on Saturday, Cher found herself mourning a loss: Her beloved mother, Georgia Holt, had passed away at age 96.

“Mom is gone,” the legendary entertainer tweeted.  No details were provided, but back in September, Cher had tweeted that her mother had been in the hospital with pneumonia. 

Holt, a singer, actress and model born Jackie Jean Crouch, had appeared in classic TV shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy, as well as movies like 1950’s A Life of Her Own and 1951’s Father’s Little Dividend.

She was married and divorced a total of six times in her life, including to Cher’s father, John Sarkisian, who she was married to from 1946 to 1947. They remarried in 1965, but divorced in 1966. She was in a relationship from 1976 until her death with Craig Spencer.

A singer since childhood, Holt recorded a country album, Honky Tonk Woman, in 1980. Featuring a duet with Cher, it wasn’t released until 2013. That same year, she was the subject of a Lifetime documentary called Dear Mom, Love Cher.

In addition to Cher, Holt is survived by her other daughter, Georganne LaPiere, and her two grandchildren: Cher’s children Chaz Bono and Elijah Blue Allman.

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More than 50 years after he first wished the world “Feliz Navidad,” José Feliciano has a new holiday song, and you can watch the animated video for it now.

The upbeat song is called “Viva La Navidad (Long Live Christmas),” and you can find it on the Puerto Rican guitarist’s latest album, Love & Christmas. In the clip, an animated version of Feliciano, 77, is shown riding a sleigh across the world and sing along with a band of snowmen. It’s the first original Christmas song Feliciano has written since “Feliz Navidad.”

In addition to the new holiday song, Love & Christmas includes Feliciano’s takes on classics like Jimi Hendrix‘s “Purple Haze,” the Bee Gees‘ “To Love Somebody” and Michael Jackson‘s “Human Nature.”

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AC/DC will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2023, and in honor of the occasion, an officially licensed book on the band is on its way.

AC/DC: 50 Years Of High Voltage Rock ‘N’ Roll will arrive at some point next year from Rufus Publications. Right now there’s only a teaser video for the book, so it’s not clear if it’ll be a band biography, a photo collection or both. The company describes it only as “something very special.”

AC/DC was formed in November 1973 by Malcom and Angus Young, bass player Larry Van Kriedt, singer Dave Evans and drummer Collin Burgess. In 1974, Bon Scott replaced Evans as vocalist and they released their first album, High Voltage. The band’s big U.S. breakthrough didn’t come until 1980’s Back In Black, released with new singer Brian Johnson following Scott’s death, became their all-time best-selling album.

AC/DC’s most recent album, 2020’s Power Up, hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and earned the band three Grammys.

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