In her first-ever video, posted Monday, the singer lip syncs to U.K. rapper Dave‘s “Screwface Capital” and its line “My outstanding payments swift like Taylor.” As she does, we see her modeling her various album aesthetics — from folklore to evermore to her Fearless reissue — ending with a look from her upcoming Red reissue.
“Lots going on at the moment: Red (my version) vinyl is up for presale on my site and oh I’m on tiktok now let the games begin,” Taylor captioned it.
Just an hour after posting, the video had racked up over 500,000 views and counting.
As Aerosmith prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the band has announced a new wide-ranging partnership with Universal Music Group that, for the first time, brings together the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers’ entire recording catalog on one label home.
The global deal also will include upcoming music projects, merchandise items and new audio-visual content, including films, television programs, online presentations and more.
In addition, the partnership also will make available material from the vaults of Aerosmith’s Vindaloo studio, as well as from the personal archives of the band’s five members — frontman Steven Tyler, guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer. The band mates also will participate in curating collections of their music, photos, video content, artwork, memorabilia and more.
Forthcoming releases will include previously unseen and unheard rarities from throughout Aerosmith’s long career.
“It’s been a long road but I’m extremely happy and proud to say on behalf of Aerosmith we have been able to bring our 50 years of music under one roof by partnering with UMG,” Perry says in a statement. “This will allow us to bring our music to our fans in ways we never were able to before. It’s something we’ve dreamed about happening for a long time…It’s an incredible way to celebrate 50 years and the many more years to come.”
Adds UMG chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge, “On the band’s 50th anniversary, Aerosmith continues to influence the course of music not only through their iconic catalog but also through film, television and video games and their inimitable style…We look forward to building upon their incredible legacy and ensuring their music continues to inspire fans around the world.”
Corey Taylor‘s wife Alicia has shared an update on her husband’s health after he announced last week that he’d tested positive for COVID-19.
In a tweet posted Sunday evening, Alicia wrote, “Corey is doing well and thanks everyone for the sweet thoughts and messages.”
“Ready to get him home as soon as it’s safe, so I can take care of him!” she added. “He (very luckily) hasn’t lost his sense of taste or smell so I send him stupid amounts of snacks, hydration powders, and yummy desserts.”
Corey revealed the news of his diagnosis last Friday, a day after he concluded a U.S. tour in support of his 2020 debut solo album, CMFT.
“I woke up today and tested positive, and I’m very, very sick,” Taylor said while announcing his scheduled appearance at last weekend’s Michigan pop culture convention Astronomicon would be canceled. He added that he’s vaccinated, and that he “should be OK.”
Wanted to give you guys an update:
Corey is doing well and thanks everyone for the sweet thoughts and messages. 🥰
Ready to get him home as soon as it’s safe, so I can take care of him! 🖤
Brian Travers, founding saxophone player for the popular U.K. reggae band UB40, died Sunday at the age of 62.
The band announced Travers’ death in a message that reads, “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our comrade, brother, founding UB40 member and musical legend, Brian David Travers. Brian passed away…with his family by his side, after a long and heroic battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with Brian’s wife Lesley, his daughter Lisa and son Jamie.”
The BBC reports that Travers underwent an operation in 2019 to remove two brain tumors, and had an additional operation last year.
In addition to playing sax, Brian contributed to the arrangement of UB40’s tunes and wrote lyrics for some of the band’s original songs.
UB40 has been hugely successful in the U.K., scoring 39 top-40 hits on the country’s singles chart. The band also has scored several major hits in the U.S., including their chart-topping covers of Neil Diamond‘s “Red Red Wine” and Elvis Presley‘s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and their popular take on Sonny & Cher‘s “I Got You Babe” — a duet with The Pretenders‘ Chrissie Hynde.
Travers’ death comes just a couple of months after the band’s lead singer, Duncan Campbell, announced he was retiring from the group for health reasons. Campbell’s decision to retire came after he suffered a seizure in June, following a stroke in 2020. Duncan joined UB40 in 2008 after his brother, Ali, the group’s original lead singer, quit the band.
Last month, UB40 announced that Birmingham, U.K., reggae singer Matt Doyle as its new frontman.
Billie Eilish‘s Happier Than Ever has pulled a hat trick by topping the Billboard 200 for a third straight week.
The album, released July 30, remained the top album in the country after moving an additional 60,000 units in its third week of release. This is only the second album this year to spend its first three weeks atop the chart, second to Morgan Wallen‘s Dangerous: The Double Album.
In addition, Happier Than Ever tied with Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which spent three non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 in 2019.
Eilish’s fans streamed her new album49.6 million times over the past week and purchased 23,000 physical copies. The number of purchases also makes Happier Than Ever the current best-selling album in the U.S.
Eilish’s Happier Than Ever has produced eight Billboard Hot 100 top-40 singles: “Therefore I Am,” “My Future,” “Your Power,” “Lost Cause,” “NDA,” “Oxytocin,” “Getting Older” and the album’s title track. At the moment, “Your Power” and “Happier Than Ever” are the highest-ranking album singles, with both peaking at number 6.
Saturday’s “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert” was cut short thanks to Hurricane Henri.
The event, which was held in Central Park and put on by Live Nation and industry icon Clive Davis, came to a halt just after the halfway mark when lightening struck within a 10-mile radius, Varietyreports.
According to the outlet, the good times came to an end for 60,0000 attendees at the two-hour-and-37-minute mark, in the midst of Barry Manilow belting out “I Can’t Smile Without You.” An announcer interrupted the performance saying, “Attention. Please pay close attention to the following safety measures. Due to approaching severe weather, all persons should move quickly and calmly to the nearest exits and proceed to your vehicles and protected areas.”
Performers and concertgoers both waited out the weather in hopes the show would go on, with talks that perhaps the event could continue even without an audience and strictly as broadcast. However, after about three hours and no signs of the weather letting up, it was announced that it was a wrap.
“We Love NYC” was scheduled to be a five-hour event that would treat attendees to performances from stars representing an array of genres. Among those who hit the stage before things went awry were Jennifer Hudson, Andrea Bocelli, Earth Wind & Fire, LL Cool J, Kane Brown, Journey, Santana, Jon Batiste and Polo G.
Meanwhile, acts including Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Maluma, Patti Smith and the Killers were stunted.
This week, Justin Moore‘s on track to earn his tenth career #1, as “We Didn’t Have Much” makes a place for itself at the top of the country airplay chart.
But it wasn’t that long ago — 2009, to be exact — when the Arkansas native was struggling to find his first success. At that point, he’d put out one single — which peaked at #38 — and he knew he needed a hit to hang on to his record deal.
“Obviously ‘Back That Thing Up’ didn’t do very well,” Justin recalls, “and then the label wanted to go with ‘Small Town USA,’ and I liked the song because of what it meant to me.”
“But I thought, ‘I don’t know if it’s commercial enough. I don’t know if enough people can relate to it.’ Fortunately, I was wrong,” he chuckles.
Even though “Small Town USA” would become the first in a string of number ones, it wasn’t necessarily easy, taking nearly a year for it to reach the pinnacle.
“It was a tough record,” Justin admits. “It was a 50-plus-week record and we lost the bullet, golly, two or three times. I remember being out at the ACMs that first or second year I went, and we were working that song. And I remember having really difficult conversations with the label, like, ‘we don’t know’ kind of deal.”
“And finally we turned the corner and it obviously was a huge record for us,” he continues. “So that one was very important because without that — it sounds obvious — I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Two years later, Justin would grab his second #1 with his career-defining smash “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away.”
“We Didn’t Have Much” is the lead single from Justin’s Straight Outta the Country collection.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for ABA; Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney
David Lee Roth has offered a very pointed response to insulting comments that Gene Simmons made about him in a recent interview with Rolling Stone regarding why the founding Van Halen frontman wasn’t serving as KISS‘ opening act on the 2021 U.S. leg of the band’s farewell tour.
On his Instagram account on Friday, Roth posted a photo — 18 times — featuring the caption “Roth to Simmons” that shows a young boy wearing sunglasses while giving the middle finger and sticking out his tongue. He also posted the same photo once on his official website and his Facebook and Twitter pages.
As previously reported, Simmons confirmed to Rolling Stone that Roth — who opened the initial 2020 dates on KISS’ End of the Road tour before the trek was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic — was no longer the band’s support act for the newly launched tour leg. While he didn’t give a specific reason, Gene drew some negative comparisons between Dave’s career and that of the late Elvis Presley.
After describing Roth during his heyday as “the ultimate frontman,” Simmons went on tell the magazine, “I don’t know what happened to him…something. And you get modern-day Dave. I prefer to remember Elvis Presley in his prime. Sneering lips, back in Memphis, you know, doing all that. I don’t want to think of bloated naked Elvis on the bathroom floor.”
The current opening act for KISS in 2021 is rock-portrait painter David Garibaldi.
In other KISS news, the band postponed its show scheduled this past Sunday for the Xfinity Center in Hartford, Connecticut, because of Hurricane Henri. The concert will be rescheduled soon. Fans with tickets are being asked to hold on to them.
L to R: Phil and Don Everly in 1983; D. Morrison/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Don Everly, half of the influential and pioneering early rock ‘n’ roll duo The Everly Brothers, died Saturday at his home in Nashville, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was 84.
A spokesman for the Everly family confirmed Don’s passing to the newspaper, but did not disclose a cause of death.
A statement from the Everlys reads in part, “Don lived by what he felt in his heart. Don expressed his appreciation for the ability to live his dreams…with his soulmate and wife, Adela, and sharing the music that made him an Everly Brother.”
Together with his brother Phil, two years his junior, Don scored a string of major hits in the late ’50s and early ’60s, including such classics as “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Cathy’s Clown” and “Bird Dog.” The brothers’ tight harmonies and melodic tunes influenced many other famous artists, including The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys and The Hollies.
While many of The Everly Brothers’ biggest singles were written by the husband-and-wife team of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, Don also wrote a number of the duo’s hits, including “Cathy’s Clown,” “(Till) I Kissed You” and “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad).”
The Everlys had their last top-40 single in 1967 with “Bowling Green.” Then in 1973, Don had an acrimonious split with Phil and the brothers reportedly didn’t speak to each other for a decade. They reunited in 1983 and had a minor hit the following year with the Paul McCartney-penned tune “On the Wings of a Nightingale.”
In 2003, the brothers toured as the special guests of Simon & Garfunkel. They played their last show together in 2005 in Ipswich, U.K. Phil died at age 74 in January 2014 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In addition to Adela, Don is survived by his mother, Margaret; his son, Edan; daughters Venetia, Stacy and Erin; and many grandchildren. His daughter Erin was married to Axl Rose from 1990 to 1991.
The track, which is available now for digital download, is set to appear on the musician’s upcoming debut album A Real Good Person in a Real Bad Place, due out September 24.
“‘Imaginary Friends’ is a personal anthem that draws from a well of escapism,” Des says. “For me this song brings up all the darkest parts of myself — the journey of the last few years — and deals with all that darkness in one sort of manic exhale.”
A Real Good Person in a Real Bad Place also includes the previously released song “MMC.” It does not, however, feature Des’ breakout single “This Is Our Life,” the title track off his 2020 EP.
Des Rocs will launch his first-ever headlining tour September 28 in Detroit.
