Music

Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis made an unannounced appearance at the Above Ground charity concert Monday night in Los Angeles.

Kiedis joined the event’s two organizers — Jane’s Addiction‘s Dave Navarro and Billy Idol guitarist Billy Morrison — for a rendition of the Lou Reed classic “Walk on the Wild Side.” The performance also marked a reunion for Kiedis and Navarro, the latter of whom played guitar in the Peppers for five years in the ’90s.

“Been a very long time since I performed with my brother Anthony!” Navarro wrote in an Instagram post following the show. “What a magical night. Thank you so much for coming out and supporting [Above Ground] my friend!”

The Above Ground concert, which Navarro and Morrison previously held in 2018 and 2019, raises money for MusiCares, which provides health and human services to musicians in need.

Other performers this year included Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor, The Offspring‘s Dexter Holland, Perry and Etty Lau Farrell, and Sugar Ray‘s Mark McGrath. Billy Idol and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins were also on the initial lineup, but dropped out before the show.

 

 

 

 

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Jack Antonoff had a busy year — so much so, in fact, that he had to recap his second half of 2021 in an all-new interview with Billboard. 

After sharing the Album of the Year Grammy with Taylor Swift at the beginning of 2021, the Bleachers frontman and producer has been nominated for two more Grammys: Album of the Year for Taylor’s Evermore and Producer of the Year. He said the nominations make him feel a “deep pride.”

Jack discussed Taylor’s 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” which he co-produced. The track, from Red (Taylor’s Version), hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, setting a record for the lengthiest chart-topper ever.

“When I was working on that song, I was thinking to myself, ‘This is a great honor. Love this song. I was not involved in the original. I know how important this song is to her and her people. I am going to go about this with the most integrity and care humanly possible,'” Antonoff tells Billboard.

He added, “To see that go [to] number one is just a further confirmation of what needs to be dismantled in your head, which is, ‘Don’t ever f***ing think about what some herb is telling you is the thing that’s going to work right now, because if someone’s telling you that, they’re already too late.'”

Jack also praised Taylor’s artistry, telling Billboard, “Nobody does it like her. And at the core of all of this, all of these things are only interesting because of the brilliance of the songs. I think it just it restores my faith in that, more than anything.”

Find out if Jack and Taylor win a Grammy at the 64th annual Grammy Awards on January 31 on CBS.

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Gucci Mane is remembering his late close friend and frequent collaborator Young Dolph with a new tribute song and video.

The Trap God posted the song, titled “Long Live Dolph,” on Instagram and commented, “I did this one for you @youngdolph Love you Bro!” 

“RIP to Dolph, long, long live the legend / From Memphis to the six, they felt you in the bricks / The day you died, it broke my heart, a day I won’t forget,” Gucci raps. He adds, “Every day I pray and thank the Lord that I’m still alive/When it comes to legends, Dolph forever in my top five.”

The video features footage from Dolph’s memorial on December 15, as well as images of the two rappers together

Gucci teamed with Dolph on two mixtapes: 2013’s East Atlanta Memphis and 2015’s Felix Brothers, which also included Peewee Longway. They also recorded several singles, including “Bling Blaww Blur” in 2016.

Fans and community members gathered to pay tribute to the slain rapper at a public memorial at the FedExForum arena in Memphis, Tennessee last week, one month after his death.

The rapper, born Adolph Robert Thornton Jr., was shot and killed in Memphis on November 17 while visiting Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies, a bakery in South Memphis that he’d been known to frequent. He was 36.

In addition to Gucci, stars like 2 Chainz, Monica and T.I. offered tributes at the memorial; there was also a message from jailed rapper C-Murder.

Dolph is also being remembered with a street named after him in his Castalia Heights neighborhood of Memphis.

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Ed Sheeran joined TikTok a year ago and expressed on Tuesday that he may be dealing with buyer’s remorse.

Unlike his buddy Taylor Swift, who was able to launch several trends with her zany videos, the “Shivers” singer didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes when trying to entice aspiring singers to join him on a collaboration.

“A year ago I joined TikTok to create a trend for my new song ‘Afterglow.’ It went so well,” Ed explains, using a robotic narrator voice. “So many talented duets.”

Instead of a chorus of voices singing along as he strummed his guitar and sang harmony, Ed was accompanied by badly played instruments and loud household objects, like sewing machines and bullet blenders.  Each individual amped up their volume to the max so they could completely drown out Ed. 

For the instruments, one man is shown beating a guitar with a stick while another person toots his tuba like a foghorn.  There’s even one trumpeter who jokingly misses the assignment by playing “Jingle Bells” instead of the 2020 hit.

“Join TikTok they said, go viral they said,” Ed sarcastically captioned the video, which caused his friends and followers to react using strings of crying laughing emojis.  

Others praised the Grammy winner for knowing how to take a joke, while still others declared which “duet” was their favorite.  At the moment, the man squeaking his bald head in the shower appears to be the winner, with the “Jingle Bells” trumpeter in a close second.

 

 

 

 

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It’s a family affair as Beyoncé and her children, Blue Ivy, 9, and four-year-old twins Sir and Rumi, sing the theme song for the new Facebook Watch show Talks with Mama Tina, hosted by Queen Bey’s mother, Tina Lawson.

“Mama, mama/ Whatever it is we can talk about it mama, mama/ Tell me how you feel we can talk about it,” Beyoncé sings over a smooth, jazzy instrumental. “Simple conversations with no limitations/ Come and have a talk with mama Tina.”

“I’m so excited to announce the launch of my new @wetheculture @Facebookwatch show Talks with Mama Tina where I’ve invited some of my favorite people over to my home and have a talk with me,” Ms. Lawson commented as she debuted the trailer on Instagram. “I loved filming this show and sitting down with so many amazing people because we got to have such honest heartfelt conversations and I got to make them my famous GUMBO!”

Kevin Hart, Chloe x Halle, Kelly Rowland, Ciara, John David Washington and his mother, Pauletta Washington, Storm Reid, Marsai Martin, Zendaya and Tiffany Haddish appear in the trailer for the show, which premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.

Subsequent episodes of Talks with Mama Tina will air on Lawson’s Facebook page at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, December 23, and Friday, December 24, followed by shows on Monday, December 27, Tuesday, December 28, and Wednesday, December 29, with a special finale in the new year.

 

 

 

 

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Adele swept away all the competition for the best-selling album of the year, and now has dominated another category — vinyl.  30 is officially the top-selling vinyl record of the year.

30 has dominated not only the Billboard 200 chart for the past four weeks, it also claimed the top spot on the Vinyl Albums chart at the same time.  Just last week, another 41,000 vinyl copies were sold, boosting 30‘s overall record sales to 234,000.  

That number was enough to dethrone Taylor Swift’s evermore, which previously claimed the title of best-selling vinyl record after selling 232,000 copies over the past year.

In all, Adele’s 30 sold 1.21 million albums — either digital, vinyl and in CD form — since its November 19 release.  Last week, fans snatched up an additional 146,000 copies, allowing 30 to become the first album in over a year to top the Billboard 200 for four straight weeks.

The last album to enjoy that honor was Taylor’s folklore, which spent its first five weeks at number one.

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A judge has ruled in favor of Drake and dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against him by a woman who was allegedly arrested for breaking into his home.

Megan Collins filed the lawsuit in the summer and claimed that the Champagne Papi defamed her and invaded her privacy by divulging private information on Instagram. She demanded to be paid $4 billion. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge dismissed the case, writing that Drake’s posts could not be linked to Collins, Billboard reports.

In referring to Drake by his birth name, Aubrey Graham, Judge Virginia Keeny wrote, “Plaintiff Collins has not demonstrated any of defendant Graham’s statements were about plaintiff Collins or that he used her identity, name, or likeness in his Instagram posts or endorsements. Even if plaintiff Collins could establish the statements were about her, she has failed to establish that such statements were of a private fact that is offensive and objectionable to the reasonable person.”

The Certified Lover Boy’s attorneys say that Collins was arrested in 2017 for trespassing and breaking into Drake’s LA home. They also denied her accusations, calling her lawsuit a “frivolous case” based on “delusional figments of her imagination.”

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New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert has revealed he spent the last two weeks in the hospital due to a cancerous tumor.

In an Instagram post, Gilbert relates his harrowing journey, which began on December 5 when his wife Lisa found him “unresponsive in bed.”

“I’d been waking up drenched in sweat the last few days and we thought I was sick,” Gilbert shares. “Not being able to wake me, she called 911 and performed CPR and mouth to mouth. Apparently I was doing something called ‘agonal breathing’ and was minutes from death.”

Gilbert was then taken to the emergency room, and was diagnosed with a rare tumor called a pheochromocytoma. While usually benign, Gilbert’s pheochromocytoma turned out to be malignant, and required surgery.

The procedure took place on December 13, and successfully removed the tumor while leaving Gilbert with an “insanely big” scar. After a few days of recovery, Gilbert returned home on December 19.

“I’m home with my wife and baby and so thankful to be alive!” Gilbert writes.

 

 

 

 

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Mariah Carey has much to celebrate after her 1994 holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” returned to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this week, making it the first song in history to top that chart in three separate years. 

To mark the song’s continued dominance, Mariah’s twins Monroe and Moroccan woke their mom with a special surprise.

“The kids just woke me up with confetti,” Mariah announced in a voice note that she shared to Twitter on Monday. She also revealed that her boyfriend, Brian Tanaka, “Brought in two mimosas — one for him, one for me. We’re celebrating!”

Mariah also posted on Twitter a photo of card Monroe got her that says, “Congrats, Mama, #1 for the billionth year!…best mama ever, Billboard Hot 100 #1.”

Mariah shared that she will never get “bored of this news” and marveled, “To have another Billboard Hot 100 [number one] with a song that means so much to me — I can’t even, I can’t!  I literally don’t know what to say and I’m just so thankful.”

She also hinted that she has to do a lot of cleanup after her kids joined in the festivities and cracked, “It’s just, like, very, very, very festive in here, confetti all over the floor.”

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” wasn’t eligible to enter the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994 because it wasn’t commercially available as a single. That rule eventually changed, and now, every year since 2012, the song has returned to the chart. For the past three years — 2019, 2020 and 2021 — it’s reached number one.

“Can’t even know what to say” but in a voice note! The most amazing news to wake up to!!! 🎄🥳❄️💖 I love you!!!! 🦋🦋🦋🦋🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑 #AllIWantForChristmasIsYou pic.twitter.com/6vcQBRxPL5

— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) December 20, 2021

My baby girl ❤️ pic.twitter.com/ArdO7jk7b0

— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) December 20, 2021

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