Slipknot has announced the inaugural Knotfest Finland.
The festival will take place August 12-13, 2022, in the Nordic country’s city of Turku. So far, the lineup includes Nightwish, Bring Me the Horizon and Arch Enemy, along with the Knot themselves.
Slipknot will be bringing Knotfest all around the world in 2022, including to Japan, Chile and Brazil. They’re also holding two U.S. Knotfests this year, taking place in their home state of Iowa September 25 and Los Angeles November 5.
The Rolling Stones No Filter 2021 photo, taken prior to Watts’ death/Credit: J. Rose
As previously reported, The Rolling Stones on Monday night played a private event at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA hosted by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, which was the group’s first gig without their late drummer, Charlie Watts, who died on August 24. Now, Mick Jagger has posted on Instagram a video of the emotional dedication he made to Watts from the stage at the event.
Jagger can be seen telling the crowd, “It’s a bit of a poignant night for us, ’cause this is our first tour in 59 years that we’ve done without our lovely Charlie Watts.”
As the crowd cheers, Mick continues. “And we all miss Charlie so much, we miss him as a band and we miss him as friends on and off the stage, and we got so many memories of Charlie and I’m sure some of you that seen us before have got memories of Charlie as well.”
“I hope you will remember him like we do, so we’d like to dedicate this show to Charlie,” Jagger adds to cheers. “So we’re gonna do it for Charlie!” Jagger then picks up a glass and raises it in a toast, handing the microphone to Ronnie Wood, who adds, “Charlie, we’re praying for you, man, and playing for you!”
“What will we do now?” Mick muses. “Now I’m all emotional.”
The band went on to play a 15-song set with veteran drummer Steve Jordan behind the kit. The Stones’ No Filter 2021 tour officially kicks off this weekend.
With the release of Final (Vol. 1) on Friday, Enrique Iglesias is winding down the album-making part of his career.
In a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, he says he’s “sticking to” his decision to stop making albums.
“Back in 2015-16, I was shooting a video and it just crossed my mind, my next album should be my final album,” Enrique says. “Granted, there’s volume one and volume two, because I have a record contract, to be honest…But I feel I’m in this chapter of my life and making an album, it’s a grueling process for me.”
The 46-year-old says he’s still going to write songs, but they just won’t be released in the format of an album.
Enrique is set to kick off his joint tour with Ricky Martin on September 25 in Las Vegas. He tells Zane you probably won’t see him do a Vegas residency any time soon, though.
“Because I don’t like performing in the same city every single night, at least right now,” he explains. “And I’ve been asked to do Vegas for the past five, six, seven, eight years, and I’ve always said no.”
“I like to travel,” Enrique adds. “…No matter how many times I’ve been to that same city, there’s always something different. I love that. There’s always something different with the fans, and I like meeting different fans.”
Mudvayne will no longer perform at this weekend’s Louder than Life festival due to frontman Chad Gray testing positive for COVID-19.
“After taking every precaution to follow CDC Covid protocols during rehearsals and recent performance Chad Gray and a few staff members have unfortunately tested positive for Covid-19,” the band writes in an Instagram post.
“The safety of our organization, fans and festival partners must come first,” the statement continues. “We are left no choice but to cancel our performance at Louder than Life this weekend.”
The decision to cancel must’ve been especially painful for Mudvayne, who reunited this year after being on hiatus for over a decade. The band just played their first show since 2009 at the Inkcarceration festival earlier in September.
Mudvayne still plans to play the Aftershock festival in October and Welcome to Rockville in November. They’re also on the lineup for the 2022 Voragos destination festival.
Geddy Lee made good use of his time in quarantine: He wrote a memoir that’ll be out next year.
The Rush bassist/vocalist writes on Instagram that during the year and a half he spent in lockdown due to COVID-19 — “the longest time I’d spent in Toronto since I was nineteen,” he notes — he passed the time by teaching his grandson how to play baseball, taking care of his dogs, and watching TV mysteries with his wife. “Oh, and another thing,” he adds. “I began to write. Words, that is.”
Lee explains that writing was his way of dealing with the death of his band mate Neil Peart, who passed away January 7, 2020. According to Lee, Daniel Richler, with whom he collaborated on his Big Beautiful Book of Bass, “saw how I was struggling in the aftermath of Neil’s passing, and tried coaxing me out of my blues with some funny tales from his youth, daring me to share my own in return.”
“So I did — reluctantly at first, but then remembering, oh yeah, I like wrestling with words…and soon my baby-step stories were becoming grownup chapters,” Lee continues. He found himself, he says, “scouring my memory banks,” his “diaries and piles of photo albums,” and “piecing together a mystery of a different kind.”
Lee sent his work to Richler, who, he says, “cleaned up some of the grammar and removed a lot of the swearing.” The result, Lee says, is a “presentable, epic-length account of my life on and off the stage…my childhood, my family, the story of my parents’ survival, my travels and all sorts of nonsense I’ve spent too much time obsessing over.”
Lee’s now putting the finishing touches on the book, which will be published by HarperCollins in the fall of 2022.
Mickey Guyton says creating her upcoming debut album, Remember Her Name, was therapeutic.
The project features songs like the affirming “Love My Hair” and empowering “Black Like Me” and “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” that detail the racism and misogyny she’s experienced.
“A lot of these songs were just kind of therapy for me. I never wrote these thinking that they were ever going to be heard,” she explains to The New York Times.
Mickey balances the heavy subject matters with an ode to “Rosé” and a new rendition of her 2015 debut single, “Better Than You Left Me,” continuing her mission of creating inclusive music.
“There’s so much on this record that is so positive, that is so inclusive. It took them hearing ‘Black Like Me’ and ‘What Are You Gonna Tell Her?’ to be like, ‘Oh.’ I’ve been here all along.’ I’m still writing positive, inclusive songs. You guys just never heard them,” she continues. “There is only one me. I’ve never happened before.”
Remember Her Name will be released on Friday. Mickey will make the TV rounds with performances on the TODAY show’s Summer Concert Series on Friday, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, and ABC’s The View on Tuesday.
If you love Billie Eilish and light sabers, listen up. The “bad guy” singer is making her Beat Saberdebut today.
Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game that tasks players to wield blades that resemble lightsabers to cut through different blocks that are perfectly timed with the music’s beats. The game is available on Oculus Quest 2 and Rift Platforms.
The Billie Eilish music pack includes 10 songs, from the albums Happier Than Ever and WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
Here is the complete track list, which can be purchased as a set for $12.99. Songs may be purchased individually for $1.99 each.
“all the good girls go to hell”
“bad guy”
“bellyache”
“bury a friend”
“Happier Than Ever”
“I Didn’t Change My Number”
“NDA”
“Oxytocin “
“Therefore I Am”
“you should see me in a crown”
Beat Saber also includes music from Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, Green Day and Panic! at the Disco.
Previously unseen footage of the late Chris Cornell is featured in a new video released to celebrate his daughter Toni‘s 17th birthday.
The video, which was posted to Cornell’s Instagram, shows the father-daughter pair playing music together over the years, including a particularly moving clip of Chris strumming “You Are My Sunshine” on an acoustic guitar while an infant Toni hangs on its neck.
Vicky Cornell, Chris’ widow and Toni’s mother, also posted a video of her own, set to her daughter’s version of the Prince-written, Sinead O’Conner-performed classic “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Last year, the Cornell family released No One Sings Like You Anymore, a compilation of covers Chris had recorded before his death in 2017. It marks his final, fully completed studio album.
Harry Styles has picked up one of the U.K.’s most prestigious songwriting awards.
The singer won his first ever Ivor Novello Award Tuesday for the song “Adore You,” from his 2019 album Fine Line. The song was awarded the “PRS for Music Most Performed Work of 2020” prize. PRS for Music is a British music copyright collective.
Harry shares the award with his co-writers Amy Allen, Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon.
Bon Jovi‘s Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora were also honored at the London ceremony, taking home the Special International Award. The songwriting honor came in recognition of the global anthems the two musicians crafted, including “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora may no longer be band mates, but the songs they wrote together will live forever. That’s why the U.K.’s prestigious Ivor Novello Awards have honored both of them this year.
Jon and Richie were jointly honored with the Special International Award at the ceremony, held Tuesday in London, though only Sambora showed up to accept. The songwriting honor came in recognition of the global anthems the two musicians crafted, including “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
At the ceremony, Sambora spoke with Sky News.about the importance of songwriting. “Everybody needs a great song so they can go out and play live to the people and entertain and do that; you need a great song, something that touches somebody in the heart,” he said. “You know, ‘Livin’ on a Prayer,’ part of that song is something that happened to me — my Uncle Sal got laid off at the docks, my dad was laid off — so there’s a time period of authenticity of a story.”
“And I think that’s what we’re here to celebrate, all the girls and guys and men and women that try real hard with a lot of courage,” Sambora added. “Because songwriting is harder than it looks.”
Other winners at the ceremony included Tears for Fears duo Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. They were honored with the Outstanding Song Collection award for their catalog of hits, including “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” and “Shout.”
