We now know which five artists will be named the 2021 CMT Artists of the Year. Chris Stapleton, Gabby Barrett, Kane Brown, Kelsea Ballerini and Luke Combs will all be honored at a special ceremony that will be held at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center on Wednesday, October 13.
“We are honored to recognize these five incredible artists who have entertained and inspired millions through their music this past year,” says CMT executive Margaret Comeaux. “We look forward to returning to the Schermerhorn with a live show as we celebrate the accomplishments of Chris, Kane, Kelsea, Gabby and Luke.”
After last year’s event celebrated the sacrifices of those working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s 90-minute special promises both performances and collaborations, as well congratulatory moments from several other celebrities.
More information, including collaborations, special guests and additional honorees, as well as performers and presenters, will be announced in the near future.
Alicia Keys is celebrating her 20th anniversary as a recording artist with a YouTube Originals docuseries.
The 15-time Grammy winner released a trailer for Noted: Alicia Keys The Untold Stories, on Wednesday, in which she talks about the joy and the pain of her life as a singer, mother, and wife.
“When I’m making music, I’m exposing all of my secrets, and I’m very uncomfortable being exposed — but I guess not so much anymore,” she says in the opening of the clip. “I am just inspired to be completely uninhibited in all my glory and greatness…We’re not holding back!”
In an emotional segment with her mother, Terria Joseph, Alicia reveals the pain of her father leaving them when she was two years old.
“As a kid, when someone doesn’t show up for you, it hurts,” the 40-year-old entertainer commented. “I didn’t want to be hurt anymore.”
Looking at Joseph, she continued, “You have always been my mother and my father, and I know its hard.”
The trailer features highlights from Keys’ entire life, including concert performances, recording sessions, and a look back at her wedding 11 years ago to husband Swizz Beatz.
“On this journey that I’m on, as an artist, as a mother, as a wife, I’m always fighting not to sacrifice any part of myself for success,” Alicia declares.
All four episodes of Noted: Alicia Keys The Untold Stories will premiere for free September 30 on Keys’ YouTube Channel.
Monday night, the “Girl on Fire” singer hosted an after-party for the Met Gala at Cipriani in New York City. Attendees included Queen Latifah, Michael Jordan, Lil Nas X, Leonardo DiCaprio, Zoe Kravitz, Channing Tatum, Serena and Venus Williams, Regina King, Lupita Nyong’o and Ciara, plus many more.
Sheryl Crow is receiving a special honor later this month in her home state.
The singer will be presented with the 2021 Missouri Roots Songbook honor on the final night of the Roots N Blues festival in Columbia, Missouri, on September 26. Sheryl is headlining that night of the three-day festival, which takes place in Stephens Lake Park.
The honor celebrates Sheryl’s musical and humanitarian accomplishments. She’ll be the first living recipient of the Missouri Roots Songbook honor and the first woman to receive it. Previous honorees were Chuck Berry in 2018 and ragtime composer John “Blind” Boone in 2019.
Tickets for the Roots N Blues festival are available now.
Dave Mustaine apparently has some thoughts on wearing masks.
During Megadeth‘s concert Wednesday in Camden, New Jersey, Mustaine introduced the closing song “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due” by remarking how good it felt to be back playing for a crowd.
“Look around, you guys…look how wonderful this is,” Mustaine said. “We’re all here together…We’re not freaking out, and we’re not yelling at people, ‘Wear your f***ing mask.'”
In fan-shot footage of the show, which is streaming now on YouTube, you can hear members of the crowd respond in applause and cheers while someone yells “F*** Joe Biden!” and “USA! USA!”
Mustaine then added, “It starts with this kind of a sensation that we’ve built right now, when you feel together, when you feel like [there’s] strength in numbers. We feel like we are invincible. People will not be able to stop us.”
He continued, “Right now, what’s going on is tyranny. This is called tyranny. Look it up when you get home. And tyranny isn’t only in government. Tyranny right now is in the schools and tyranny is in the medical business.”
In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, especially given this summer’s rise of the Delta variant, the CDC currently advises “universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.” The CDC also recommends public indoor mask wearing for non-vaccinated individuals, and for vaccinated individuals in an “area of substantial or high transmission.”
An expanded, 50th anniversary version of Zombies frontman Colin Blunstone‘s 1971 debut solo album, One Year, will be released November 5.
The reissue, which will be available on CD, as a two-LP vinyl set, digitally and via streaming, features the original 10-track album, plus a 14-song bonus album dubbed That Same Year.
Blunstone recorded One Year over a 12-month period following the breakup of The Zombies and their post-demise success with the single “Time of the Season.” Colin’s Zombies band mates Rod Argent and Chris White co-produced One Year, and co-wrote three of the album’s songs, while Blunstone penned four tracks.
The album also includes covers of tunes by Tim Hardin, ex-Manfred Mann singer Mike d’Abo and longtime Wings member Denny Laine.
His version of Laine’s “Say You Don’t Mind” from the album became a top-20 hit in the U.K. in ’72.
The bonus album, That Same Year, features recordings that Blunstone was preparing for possible consideration for One Year, nine of which are previously unheard.
One of the tracks, a stripped down tune called “I Won’t Let You Down” that features Argent on piano, has been released as an advance digital single.
The reissue, which you can pre-order now, features new liner notes penned by Colin, and rare photos from that time period.
Blunstone will celebrate the One Year reissue’s release with two special concerts, scheduled for November 2 in Los Angeles and November 8 in New York City. At the shows, Colin will perform the entire album live for the first time ever, accompanied by a 20-piece musical ensemble led by composer Joe Wong, and also featuring Roger Waters touring drummer Joey Waronker, Helium‘s Mary Timony and a chamber orchestra.
Here’s the One Year track list:
“She Loves The Way They Love Her”
“Misty Roses”
“Smokey Day”
“Caroline Goodbye”
“Though You Are Far Away”
“Mary Won’t You Warm My Bed”
“Her Song”
“I Can’t Live Without You”
“Let Me Come Closer to You”
“Say You Don’t Mind”
And here’s the That Same Year track list:
“Are You Ready”
“I’ve Always Had You”
“Sing Your Own Song”
“Caroline Goodbye”
“I’d Like to Get to Know You Better”
“Though You Are Far Away”
“Too Much Too Soon Last Night”
“I Wonder If You Know What You’ve Begun”
“I Won’t Let You Down”
“You Gave Me a Reason”
“I’m Coming Home”
“I Really Do Love You”
“Let Me Come Closer”
“You Really Were a Surprise”
The Black Keys have announced a reissue of the band’s 2011 album El Camino in honor of its 10th anniversary.
The super-deluxe edition will be released as a five-LP and four-CD package, as well as via digital outlets, on November 5. The track list includes the original El Camino remastered, a full, previously unreleased live recording from a 2012 concert in Portland, Maine, as well as a sessions with BBC Radio 1 and from the Los Angeles Electro-Vox studio.
Physical editions of the super deluxe will also include a photo book, poster and lithograph, along with a “new car scent” air freshener.
If that’s a little rich for your blood, you can also get the three-LP, less-super but still deluxe reissue, also due out November 5. That edition just includes the remastered audio and the live Portland recordings.
Following 2010’s commercial breakthrough, Brothers, El Camino cemented The Black Keys’ transformation from beloved alternative band to arena-headlining rock stars. The album spawned the singles “Lonely Boy,” “Gold on the Ceiling” and “Little Back Submarines,” and has been certified double-Platinum by the RIAA.
In this installment of the Oprah and Gayle roadtrip series, Katy meets them at a children’s store called Chicken Little in Santa Barbara, CA, where she helps Gayle shop for her daughter, who’s about to have a baby.
Katy herself became a new mom last year to Daisy Dove, and she tells Oprah and Gayle, “It’s everything I was looking for. I climbed all the mountains and then I found the view.”
While shopping for baby things, Katy shows the two women how to swaddle a baby and how to use a collapsible stroller. She also recommends her favorite products and weighs in on what Gayle’s future grandson will call her. For the record, Gayle wants to be called Gaia instead of grandma, but Oprah thinks it’s “pretentious.”
When Carly Pearce had the idea to tell her truth in the song, “29,” she had no idea that it would become the launching pad for her next album. Carly wrote the song with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, even though at the time she wasn’t sure if anyone would ever hear it.
“I remember when that song was written, being almost fearful that there was no way anybody would ever let me put that song out,” Carly says in an interview held at the Grammy Museum. “And I remember when people first heard it, even some of my band members, when I first played it for them, there was kind of like [a gasp].”
It’s the opening line of the chorus, which calls 29 as the age that she got married and divorced, that became the pivotal moment of the song.
“There’s kind of like that pause,” Pearce says. “All these things that were my reality of owning my story. And I feel like I’m the most proud of that song because that song opened my heart wide open to create the rest.”
Rod Stewart will release The Tears of Hercules — his 31st studio album and his first new record in three years — on November 12.
The 12-track collection features nine new original songs and three covers, including renditions of Johnny Cash‘s “These Are My People” and Soul Brothers Six‘s “Some Kind of Wonderful.”
In advance of the new album, Stewart has released the lead track, a country-pop gem titled “One More Time,” as a digital single, and has premiered a companion music video on his official YouTube channel.
Stewart co-wrote “One More Time” and a few other songs on The Tears of Hercules with keyboardist-songwriter Kevin Savigar, who also was Rod’s main collaborator on his three most recent previous albums. Stewart co-produced all four albums with Savigar.
Among the other standout tracks on The Tears of Hercules is “Touchline,” a song about how Rod’s father inspired his love of soccer, a passion Stewart’s passed on to his own sons.
The album also includes song titled “Born to Boogie (A Tribute to Mark Bolan),” a tune Stewart co-wrote with his touring guitarist, Emerson Swinford, as an homage to T. Rex‘s late frontman.
In the liner notes for The Tears of Hercules, Rod writes, “I’ve never said this before about any previous efforts, but I believe this is by far my best album in many a year.”
The Tears of Hercules can be pre-ordered now on CD, as a vinyl LP and in digital formats.
On the performance front, Stewart’s next concert will take place on October 2 in Sparks, Nevada, and he’ll then kick off a new series of Las Vegas residency dates at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on October 6.
Here’s The Tears of Hercules‘ full track list:
“One More Time”
“Gabriella”
“All My Days”
“Some Kind of Wonderful”
“Born to Boogie (A Tribute to Mark Bolan)”
“Kookooaramabama”
“I Can’t Imagine”
“The Tears of Hercules”
“Hold On”
“Precious Memories”
“These Are My People”
“Touchline”
The singer, who’s gearing up to release his new album = [Equals] on October on 29, teased something major on Instagram Thursday.
“Announcing something 8am tomorrow U.K. time that is basically the start of the next 3 years of my life, excited to be back at it,” he wrote, along with a new photo of him sitting in a flower field in an orange sweater. “Look out for the announcement tomorrow.”
Could it be a tour announcement, perhaps?
If he does head back out on the road, it’ll be the first tour where he’ll actually be able to see his fans from the stage. In a Q&A with fans on his Instagram Story, Ed revealed that he had laser surgery to correct his vision.
“I saw a crowd for the first time the other day,” he said. “I never wore contact lenses on stage or glasses on stage so I never really saw my crowd properly. So with people holding up these signs, I couldn’t read them!”
