Music

This week, Thomas Rhett claims his 18th #1, as “Country Again” tops the chart. While his last dozen singles have made it to #1, that wasn’t always the case. 

“Minus the sunglasses, I wanted to be Eric Church,” he admits. “I used Eric’s producer. I tried to sing like him… My first two singles… did not do anything at all. My first two number ones… were songs that my dad wrote…”

“I put this song out called ‘Make Me Wanna,’ which was very strange to the radio at that point in time,” he continues. “It was like seventies-disco-meets-country-lyric. I was like, ‘Should I put this song out?’ My manager Virginia said, ‘If you’re okay with this song dying at number 40, then that should be your gut feeling and you should go with it.'”

That, it turns out, made the difference.

“It sat at 40 for like 20 weeks,” TR recalls, “and then all of the sudden, it started to catch. And then it became a hit, and that gave me the confidence to put a song out like ‘Crash and Burn.'”

“And then [it] kind of changed this whole trajectory for me,” he reflects. “I was in this lane, and then all of the sudden, I kind of veered left. And it kind of just gave me this confidence to put out songs that may or may not have worked.”

Ultimately, TR hopes he’s helped country’s next generation.

“I followed my gut on a lot of the releases,” he declares. “And I hope that… made a way for a lot of other artists to be able to put some of these songs out… as well, because people like Eric Church and Brantley Gilbert and Jason Aldean did that for me.”

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Dave Grohl appears on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone, revealing a number of interesting tidbits about the Foo Fighters frontman’s past, present and future.

For one, Grohl shares that he’s playing drums on an upcoming Miley Cyrus song.

“I was going to [producer] Greg Kurstin‘s studio to deliver him a snare drum for his kid,” Grohl recalls. “He’s like, ‘Do you have five minutes? I’m trying to program drums on this new Miley Cyrus song, but I suck. Can you just, like, do a couple takes?’ So I think I’m on a new Miley Cyrus record!”

An appearance on a Miley tune would mark his second collaboration with a major pop star of late — he also drummed on a song off Halsey‘s new album, which was produced by Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Nirvana and Kurt Cobain pop up throughout the interview, given the upcoming 30th anniversary of Nevermind. Speaking about Cobain, Grohl explains how his late band mate inspired the 2011 Foos song “Walk.”

“It kind of comes from the day after Kurt died,” Grohl says. “Waking up that morning and realizing, ‘Oh, s***, he’s not here anymore. I am. Like, I get to wake up and he doesn’t’…That was a big revelation to me.”

As for Foo Fighters, Rolling Stone reports that they have “vague ideas” about the direction of their next record to follow this year’s Medicine at Midnight, though nothing’s been written yet.

“Every album that we’ve made is a response to the one we made before,” Grohl says. “So now there are whispers of making an insane prog-rock record.”

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As previously reported, Taylor Swift thrilled the staff of a bar and a restaurant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, when she unexpectedly dropped in last week. But it turns out she also thrilled the musician who happened to be performing in the bar that night.

Twenty-two-year-old singer Tiernán Heffron, who performs every Friday night at The Tipsy Bird, a cocktail bar in Belfast, says he but couldn’t believe it when Taylor walked in. 

“My heart was beating so fast. I just went for it and I had her up singing and dancing…she was having a blast,” Heffron tells the BBC.

And that’s not all: Heffron shares that Taylor “came up to me in the middle of it with a big smile and said, ‘You’re so good — how can I follow you?'”  When Heffron explained that he works at a school for special needs but has been working on music on the side, she asked to take a selfie with him.

“She tipped me for playing, told me she enjoyed my music and said, ‘You deserve this,'” Heffron gushed.  She also left him with some wise words.

“She said, ‘Right now, you’re putting in your 10,000 hours: This is not your first gig, you’re confident and you’re going to do great,'” Heffron revealed.

Of course, Heffron now has the best publicity of all: A photo of himself with Taylor, plus a personal recommendation from the superstar.

As previously reported, Taylor was in Belfast to support her boyfriend Joe Alwyn, who’s filming a new Hulu TV series there.

 

 

 

 

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A new documentary about Alanis Morissette, Jagged, will air on HBO at a future date after having its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday. But Alanis didn’t attend the event and says she won’t be supporting the film in any way, claiming that it includes “implications and fact that are simply not true.”

So far, the documentary has already made headlines because it features Alanis discussing being sexually assaulted and/or abused by multiple men when she was below the age of consent.

In a statement provided to ABC News, Alanis says she agreed to participate in the movie, but sat for her interview “during a very vulnerable time (while in the midst of my third postpartum depression during lockdown).”

“I was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film,” she continues. “This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell. I sit here now experiencing the full impact of having trusted someone who did not warrant being trusted.”

The Grammy-winning star goes on to say that she won’t be attending any event promoting the movie because she’s on tour, and also because the documentary “includes implications and facts that are simply not true.”

“While there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure — I ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell,” Morissette concludes in her statement.

Alanis doesn’t specify which aspects of the film she finds to be “not true.”

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The audience at the Grand Ole Opry got a special surprise on Monday when Keith Urban‘s wife, actress Nicole Kidman, joined him onstage during the Loretta Lynn’s Friends: Hometown Rising event.

Keith was one of the many performers at the star-studded benefit concert, which aimed to raise money for the many people affected by the devastating flooding in Middle Tennessee in August. Loretta Lynn‘s ranch is in Humphreys County, where there were 20 reported casualties and hundreds of homes destroyed.

After performing hits “Blue Ain’t Your Color” and “Wasted Time,” Keith revealed that he was going to be donating a signed guitar to be auctioned off for the cause — but he wasn’t alone in the effort.  

“This is the Volunteer state. So I want to do my bit and sign this guitar,” he said, beckoning friend and “Out the Cage” collaborator Breland to also sign it.

“I think it needs one more signature. If I could just get my wife to put her autograph on this too,” Keith declared. The Academy Award-winning actress then made her way to the stage to sign the instrument as cheers erupted from the crowd.

“I’ve never been on the stage at the Opry. Wow!” Nicole exclaimed.

Luke Combs, Luke Bryan, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood were among Loretta’s many other famous friends who performed at the event.

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Travis Scott wants to travel from his Astroworld to a utopian world.

The eight-time Grammy nominee hit RIAA triple-Platinum status in 2018 with his latest album, Astroworld. He named his upcoming album Utopia as his personal remedy for a world he says is filled with hostility.

“Medicine, nursing, being a better person, talking, language, communication—you know, a utopian state. That’s what my album is about, ” La Flame tells CR Fashion Book.

“You think utopia is a society where everything is good: health, buildings, architecture—nah. It’s just about proper lines of communication. Because that’s the dystopian s*** We’re in right now,” he continues. “It’s all hate, hate, hate, and all of that is drawn from what? Miscommunication, non-communication, non-understandable communication, ignorance to communication. ‘I don’t like this person.’ Why? Because somebody told me something to not like this person? Because in history I read to not like this person? Why?”

Scott’s daughter with Kylie Jenner, Stormi, turned three years old in February, and on September 7, Kylie announced they are expecting their second child. The “Franchise” rapper says being a father has caused him to change his priorities.

“Now I became a pops, you want to be there to eat food together and turn up for little Stormi,” he comments. “She’s so fire because she goes to sleep now. We try to do a more natural vibe [with parenting], like more self-discipline. Like, OK, you know you got to go to bed at nine, are you going to stay up till eleven or are you going to go to sleep now? And it’s so cool [to hear her say], “I’m going to sleep ya’ll!”

 

 

 

 

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G-Eazy was arrested last week in New York City and charged with assault, ABC News has confirmed.

The rapper and his crew got into the fight with two men inside the Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel in New York’s trendy Meatpacking District nightclub early Friday morning.  A 29-year-old man was hit with a bottle, while a 32-year-old man was punched on the street outside the club.

The two men later reported the assault to police, and G-Eazy was issued a desk appearance ticket yesterday for assault. He will appear in court next month.  This didn’t affect the rapper’s weekend, though: He went on to appear at the MTV VMAs on Sunday night in Brooklyn.

In other G-Eazy news, the video for his collaboration with Carlos Santana and chart-topping songwriter Diane Warren, “She’s On Fire,” just dropped on Tuesday. The song appears on Diane’s debut album Diane Warren: The Cave Sessions and Santana’s upcoming album, Blessings & Miracles.

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