Music

With the rise of in-person music gatherings taking place this year, the Chicago fest The Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash, announced the headliners for its upcoming three-day event. 

Music superstars Young Thug & Gunna, Playboi Carti and Post Malone will joined by artists including Wiz Khalifa, 2 Chainz and Rico Nasty. Chicago natives G Herbo and Polo G are also set to perform, with other special guests to be announced later.

“Today marks an exciting milestone for Summer Smash as we unveil our biggest music lineup to date,” festival director Berto Solorio said in the announcement, as reported by The Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s been incredible to witness our fest grow into one of the largest annual music events in the country in only four short years.”

Over 60 music artists will be in attendance at Chicago’s Douglass Park. Tickets for the summer festival are currently on sale at TheSummerSmash.com.

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Maren Morris is taking Humble Quest on the road beginning in June, and she’s expecting it to be an emotional experience.

“I feel like I’m going to cry through the entire first show on the tour,” The singer tells Entertainment Weekly. That’s because, with some notable exceptions such as a performance at the Houston Rodeo, the 2022 Humble Quest Tour is Maren’s big return to live music after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The whole touring industry came to a screeching halt, and we were all cut down to size and realized maybe we took some of this for granted,” the singer admits. “And we never will again.”

Kicking off on June 9 in North Carolina and extending through a hometown Nashville arena show in December, the Humble Quest Tour features a lengthy list of Americana-leaning opening acts. Among those are Brent Cobb, Ruston Kelly, Brittney Spencer and Maren’s fellow Highwomen band mate, Natalie Hemby.

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The boys of BTS are a tight-knit group, but their bond might become even more intense after V teased they’re all thinking of getting matching tattoos.

Teen Vogue reports the tattoos would celebrate the Grammy nominees’ long-lasting friendship, which is over a decade old.  While BTS was signed in 2013, they first formed in 2010 when they were in their early to mid-teens.

V was chatting with fans on the Korean messaging app Weverse and began talking about matching tattoos.  Translated from Korean, he explained, “The members and I always talk about getting a friendship tattoo.  We’re going to get a friendship tattoo at some point, please await it.”  He also revealed Suga was first to suggest the idea.

While he didn’t reveal anything about a possible design or theme, he did include a tiger emoji, which could be a reference to their webcomic 7Fates: CHAKHO.  The story is set in Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, which lasted from the late 1300s to late 1800s, and follows seven tiger hunters based on the BTS members, who are bound by fate to track down an elusive tiger.

Fans also pressed V over where the “Butter” singers would get their matching tattoos, and he remarked he will put his “somewhere you can’t see it.”  

Several BTS members already have tattoos, with Jimin adding more to his ink collection all the time, while Jungkook opted to get a sleeve on his right arm.

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After a two year hiatus, the highly anticipated Culture Con is back! ATL is the first stop on the conference’s first-ever multi-city tour and, considering the recently-announced headliners, Black changemakers won’t want to miss it.

Among the stars set to lead conversations throughout the five-day conference are Love and Marriage creator Carlos King, up-and-coming rapper Omeretta The Great, TV personality Kandi Burruss, activist and politician Stacey Abrams and more. 

Conferences in the past featured career-inspiring conversations with speakers such as Tracee Ellis Ross, Michael B. Jordan, Lena Waithe, Billy Porter, Spike Lee and others. 

Culture Con, once referred to by Forbes magazine as “a conference every creative should attend,” was launched in 2017 by The Creative Collective NYC, a minority women-owned business. From May 2-7, young professionals and entrepreneurs can take advantage of workshops, exclusive screenings and parties, and also learn from Black leaders in entertainment, by way of exclusive conversations. 

In 2019, actress Regina King spoke at the conference, opening up about she wished there had been an experience like Culture Con when she was coming up. “Oh, I wish I had this when I was in my early 20s,” she said. “Just to be in a space where everyone looks like me and everyone wants to do something…it’s pretty powerful.”

Actress Kat Graham will host in Atlanta, the conference then heads to Los Angeles from June 16-18 with a final stop in New York from Oct. 3-8.

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Days before the show, the CMT Music Awards is continuing to fill out its bill with more exciting performers and unexpected duet team-ups.

Jason Aldean will take the stage with rocker Bryan Adams. The country singer’s new album, Macon, Georgia, includes a cover of Bryan’s 1983 classic, “Heaven.” The cross-genre collaborations aren’t stopping there: Jimmie Allen and Little Big Town will hit the stage with soul singer Monica.

Thomas Rhett and Riley Green will take the stage together, too; They have a collaboration called “Half of Me” on TR’s latest album. Then there’s Walker Hayes, who’s performing solo at the CMTs.

Additionally, a diverse roster of presenters has just been added to the CMT Awards. Nominees Jimmie Allen, Gabby Barrett, Dustin Lynch, Kacey Musgraves and Jordan Davis will do double duty as presenters during the show. More presenters from the country genre include Martina McBride, LeAnn Rimes and Dylan Scott.

From outside the genre, ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons, actors Rob Corddry, Taylor Lautner, Joel McHale and Dennis Quaid. TV personalities Gayle King, Karamo Brown, Tan France and Antoni Porowski will also present awards.

The 2022 CMT Music Awards will air live from Nashville on CBS on April 11.

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Rammstein has premiered a new song called “Zick Zack,” which will appear on the band’s upcoming album, Zeit.

The track is accompanied by a video that finds the German metallers covered in plastic surgery while stiffly making their way through a Las Vegas-style show. Toward the end, frontman Till Lindemann‘s face starts to literally fall off, which he solves in probably the most gruesome way possible.

“Zick Zack” is available now for digital download. Its video is streaming now on YouTube.

Zeit, the follow-up to Rammstein’s 2019 untitled album, drops April 29. It also includes the previously released title track.

Rammstein will launch their long-awaited North American stadium tour in August. The outing was originally planned for 2020 before it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Getting engaged is romantic, but you know what’s even more romantic?  Getting engaged in Paris.  Avril Lavigne can tell you this from personal experience.

On Thursday, she posted a photo of her boyfriend Mod Sun getting down on one knee in front of her on what looks like a boat cruising down the River Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. In the next series of photos, Avril shows off her heart-shaped diamond ring as Mod Sun grins.

She captioned the photo, “Oui! Je t’aime pour toujours,” which is French for, “Yes! I love you always!”  She also wrote in French that the happy event took place on Sunday, March 27.

On his Instagram, Mod Sun posted photos and video of the moment, and wrote, “The day we met I knew you were the one. Together forever til our days are done. I had a dream where I proposed in Paris. I pulled out a ring + asked you to wear it.  I was on one knee as I looked in your eyes. You’re too beautiful for my words to describe. I grabbed your hand + took one last breath… I said “will you marry me?” + she said ‘yes.'”

Avril and Mod Sun have been dating since around February of 2021. This will be Avril’s third marriage. She was previously married to fellow Canadian musician Sum-41‘s Deryck Whibley from 2006 to 2009, when Avril filed for divorce.

Then, in 2012, after one month of dating, Avril got engaged to another fellow Canadian musician, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. The couple wed in 2013, and Avril announced their split in 2015.

In 2019, Mod Sun, born Derek Ryan Smith, claimed that he had wed and divorced Bella Thorne.

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Vance Joy has announced a new album called In Our Own Sweet Time.

The third studio effort from the “Riptide” artist will arrive on June 10. Explaining the album’s title, Vance says, “I’m always drawn to the idea of timelessness or that shared moment that takes you out of the chaos outside.”

“If the world is crazy, you can retreat somewhere,” he shares. “It’s always hard to think of the right title but I think that sums up the album perfectly.”

In Our Own Sweet Time includes the previously released songs “Missing Piece” and “Don’t Fade.” A third cut, titled “Clarity,” is now out via digital outlets, as well.

Vance will play a series of U.S. concerts in May and June, including sold-out shows in New York City and Nashville.

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Five years ago today — April 7, 2017 –– Harry Styles went solo, releasing “Sign of the Times.”  Now, the song is getting a revival on TikTok, thanks to Bridgerton.

A string arrangement of “Sign of the Times” is used in the hit Netflix series to soundtrack the wedding of Anthony Bridgerton and Edwina Sharma, and fans are here for it.  Many have created TikToks using a snippet of the song — performed and arranged by Steve Horner and produced by Angry Mob Music — in which they dream of using the song on their own wedding day.

One fan wrote in her TikTok caption, “Hey Bridgerton how am I supposed to convince my future husband to walk down the aisle to this?”  Another wrote, “When you wanted to walk down the aisle to a Harry Styles’ song but Bridgerton did it first in 1813.”

Yet another fan wrote, “I may not be engaged yet but, I am certain that I will walk down the aisle to this rendition of Sign of The Times from Bridgerton.”

The fan-favorite string cover came about when Angry Mob Music decided to create an entire album of songs for Bridgerton’s music supervisor, Justin Kamp, to listen to, in hopes he’d select one for use in season two.  One of them was “Sign of the Times.” After tapping Horner to arrange and compose the string version, they presented it to Kamp who loved it, and the rest is history.

When “Sign of the Times” was released, it introduced Harry’s ’70s rock-influenced musical direction. It hit number four in the U.S. and number one in Harry’s native U.K. Harry’s self-titled debut album arrived in May, debuting at #1 in both the U.S. and the U.K.

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Ed Sheeran has pulled ahead of Adele in the race for having the best-selling album of the year in the U.K., with = (Equals) outpacing Adele’s 30.

Album sales tracker Official Charts reports that = sold over 133,000 copies in the country in 2022, compared to 30‘s 94,000 in sales.  Ed was last year’s runner-up in the contest for the U.K.’s best-selling album and was no match for 30‘s powerhouse sales.

Overall, = has sold over 566,000 copies in the country since its October release while 30, which dropped a month later, has amassed total sales of 694,000.

While it’s still too early in the year to tell who will ultimately get to boast having the best-selling album of 2022, the outlet reports The Weeknd‘s newly released Dawn FM is making a strong showing in the charts. Since the album’s January release, it has sold 76,000 copies.

Currently in fourth place in the U.K. is Olivia Rodrigo‘s SOUR.  

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