One week ago, Dan + Shay achieved what very few country artists have done, by selling out the famed Madison Square Garden in New York City. Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney spoke out about the achievement in a touching post on social media, along with photos of the unforgettable night.
“It’s been exactly one week since y’all sold out Madison Square Garden for us. and it has taken every bit of those 7 days to fully process it,” Dan + Shay shared on social media. “[We] spent the last few hours scrolling through these photos and all the emotions are coming right back. We’ve dreamed of this moment since we were little kids, and y’all made it come true for us when we needed it most.”
“Can’t say this enough, but thank you,” they continued. “Thank you for absolutely everything. We’re the luckiest guys in the world and will never take a single second of this for granted.”
The concert was part of their rescheduled The (Arena) Tour, which heads to Wisconsin and Minneapolis this weekend.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the release of British glam-rock legends T. Rex‘s classic album Electric Warrior.
The record was the Marc Bolan-fronted group’s sixth overall and its second after the band shortened its original moniker, Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Electric Warrior spent eight nonconsecutive weeks at #1 on the U.K. albums chart in late 1971 and early ’72, while peaking at #32 on the Billboard 200. It includes the band’s signature song, “Get It On,” which topped the U.K. singles tally, while reaching #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming T. Rex’s only top-40 hit in the U.S.
The album also features “Jeepster,” a #2 U.K. hit, and such other gems as “Mambo Sun,” “Cosmic Dancer” and “Life’s a Gas.”
In the U.S., “Get It On” was retitled “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” to avoid confusion with a then-popular song by the jazz-rock band Chase.
Longtime Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman played piano on “Get It On.” Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of The Turtles and Frank Zappa fame contributed backing vocals to Electric Warrior, while ex-King Crimson multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, who later became a founding member of Foreigner, played saxophone on the record.
Electric Warrior, which was written entirely by Bolan and produced by frequent David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, is considered among the first glam-rock albums, if not the very first.
The record’s influence could be heard in the early-to-mid-1970s music of Bowie, Elton John, The Hollies and The Rolling Stones, and went on to inspire many artists who emerged from the punk and new wave scenes.
Here’s the full track list of Electric Warrior:
“Mambo Sun”
“Cosmic Dancer”
“Jeepster”
“Monolith”
“Lean Woman Blues”
“Get It On”
“Planet Queen”
“Girl”
“The Motivator”
“Life’s a Gas”
“Rip Off”
Red Hot Chili Peppers are returning to the road in 2022.
In a goofy, faux newscast video, the Peppers — Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith and returning guitarist John Frusciante — announce that they’ll launch a global stadium tour in June of next year, with the U.S. leg set to kick off in July.
Neither the exact itinerary or ticket details were revealed, but in the video, you see the names of different cites in the background, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, London, Toronto and Barcelona, Spain.
The tour will mark the first full live Peppers outing since Frusciante rejoined the band at the end of 2019. The band had planned dates for 2020, but, you know, COVID.
Fittingly, the tour announcement arrives on the 30th anniversary of the release of RHCP’s hit 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
Oops…they did it again: made another Britney Spears documentary.
Tonight at 10 p.m. ET, it’s the premiere of Controlling Britney Spears on FX and Hulu, which is somewhat of a sequel to Framing Britney Spears from earlier this year, Variety reports. Director Samantha Stark returns to focus on Britney’s conservatorship.
Variety quotes Stark as saying that after Britney told a judge earlier this year that she hadn’t spoken up about her conservatorship previously because she felt people wouldn’t believe her, it inspired insiders to come forward and back up Britney’s claims with evidence. These insiders describe Britney’s daily life and the kind of surveillance she’s been under over the past 13 years.
Framing Britney Spears reignited the #FreeBritney movement, and on September 29, a court hearing will bring her one step closer to the termination of her conservatorship, which she’s said she’s wanted for years.
Meanwhile, Netflix is airing its Britney conservatorship doc, Britney vs. Spears, on September 28.
As for Britney herself, she took to Instagram to reminisce about the 2001 VMAs, during which she did her famous “I’m a Slave 4 U” dance with a huge snake and other animals. Posting a series of photos of herself from that night with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, she writes, “ I will tell you this…before I went on that night I was feeling kinda out of body with nerves…I mean…I was in a cage with a live tiger!!!!!”
“I will never forget the moment before I went in the cage!!!! Justin [Timberlake] saw I could hardly talk so he held my hand and gave me a 5 minute pep talk which obviously worked!!!”
Goodbye “Hot Girl Summer” and hello Fit Girl Fall, thanks to Megan Thee Stallion‘s new partnership with Nike, where she will act as your personal trainer.
Meg has joined Nike’s Training Club app to help fans whip themselves into shape, and will share her workouts alongside trainer Tara Nicolas across several installments.
The “Savage” rapper took to Instagram to make the announcement and reminisced about the journey she took to find herself, during which she learned to drown out those telling her who she should be. Meg, who dubs herself “Thee Hot Girl Coach” in her promo video, let fans know that finding one’s self is a time-consuming but worthwhile process.
The Grammy winner explained that strangers used to make assumptions based off her height and physique when she was growing up in Houston, Texas, which often led into unwanted suggestions about what sport she should play. Meg revealed she tried basketball, volleyball and track to appease everyone, but “They just weren’t for me. I knew I had to find my passion.”
Her passion, she says, is performing, and she asserted why that, as well as dancing and rapping, should be considered sports.
“Let’s see you run through 12-hour dance rehearsals, train five days a week, then perform in front of 50,000 people squatting 50 percent of the time,” she quipped.
Megan’s main message? “People like to tell us what we can and we can’t do. But we ain’t hearing that. Real Hot Girls know, no one can define us.”
“I am an athlete, and so are you,” she wrote in the caption.
The NTC app is available for iPhone and Android devices.
Released on September 24, 1991, Nevermind brought the grunge and alternative scene to the masses as it became perhaps the definitive rock album of the ’90s.
Coming off the excess and bombast of ’80s hair-metal culture, Nevermind spoke to a generation of disaffected youth with songs of self-hatred and rebellion, set to Kurt Cobain‘s yelping vocals and distorted guitar over Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic thundering drums and bass.
Even after building an underground following with their 1989 debut, Bleach, no one could’ve predicted Nirvana’s meteoric rise with Nevermind. Things began to change with the premiere of lead single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and its high school pep rally-meets-anarchist punk mosh pit video.
While it debuted at a modest 144 on the Billboard 200, Nevermind‘s popularity continued to build and build as more people heard “Teen Spirit” and saw the video. By January 1992, Nevermind had hit number one on the Billboard 200, dethroning the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson.
As Nirvana’s popularity grew, they ushered in the grunge frenzy as bands including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains earned mainstream attention. The scene also inspired its own fashion, signified by flannel shirts, ripped jeans and Cobain’s thick-framed sunglasses.
Cobain himself was deemed an icon and a voice of his generation, a label with which he felt increasingly uncomfortable. His reaction to his sudden superstar status can be heard in the lyrics of Nirvana’s 1993 Nevermind follow-up, In Utero.
Sadly, that would be the last studio album Nirvana would record. Cobain, who struggled with mental-health and substance-abuse issues throughout his life, died by suicide in April 1994.
The legacy of Nirvana and Nevermind, though, has endured — the album is now certified Diamond by the RIAA.
Here’s Nevermind‘s full track list:
“Smells Like Teen Spirit”
“In Bloom”
“Come as You Are”
“Breed”
“Lithium”
“Polly”
“Territorial P***ings”
“Drain You”
“Lounge Act”
“Stay Away”
“On a Plain”
“Something in the Way”
The “Welcome to the Jungle” rockers have premiered a new song called “Hard Skool.” It’s the second fresh tune from GN’R in as many months, following the August release of “Absurd.”
The new track is available now as a digital download and via streaming services.
Like “Absurd,” the origins of “Hard Skool” date back to sessions for Chinese Democracy, the long-fabled GN’R album that finally became a reality in 2008, with frontman Axl Rose as the only original member still in the band.
Chinese Democracy remains the most recent Guns N’ Roses album. “Absurd” and “Hard Skool” mark the band’s first new music since Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined in 2016.
Ever wonder how The Spice Girls got their iconic nicknames? Melanie C, a.k.a. Sporty Spice, revealed the answer in a recent interview with E!’s Daily Pop.
“Originally, when we were forming as a girl band, we were trying to find out a look,” she explained. However, she says they were “uncomfortable” all dressing alike, as was typical for pop bands at the time.
So one day, she and her singing partners, which included Victoria Beckham, Mel B, Geri Halliwell and Emma Bunton, noticed they all had their own distinctive sense of style — Mel C in her sweatpants, Geri in something quirky and Mel B like “a leopard.”
Mel C says they thought, “We kind of look great as this mish-mash, let’s just do it.”
And subsequently, when a London-based magazine gave each Spice Girl a nickname — Baby, Sporty, Ginger, etc. — based on their respective styles, Mel C says they decided to “embrace them and run with it.”
Mel C is a contestant on this season’s Dancing with the Stars and even channeled her Sporty Spice alter ego for the premiere: She and her partner Gleb Savchenko danced to the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the group’s debut album, Spice.
Dancing with the Stars, now in its 30th season, airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
As the lyrics say, they “come from different sides” — of the world, but Coldplay and BTS have managed to blend both of their styles into their upbeat new collaboration, “My Universe.”
The song and its lyric video are out now, with the song’s words in English and Korean displayed in handwritten fonts over a cosmic background.
An official video, directed by Dave Meyers, is “coming very soon.”
“My Universe” is the second single from Coldplay’s upcoming album Music of the Spheres, due out October 15.
As previously reported, on Sunday, September 26, at 8 a.m. ET, a documentary about the song called Inside My Universe will premiere. Later that day, look for the release of an acoustic version of “My Universe,” as well as a “Supernova 7” mix, at 7 p.m. ET.
Both Coldplay and BTS are taking part in the Global Citizen Live 24-hour streaming even that starts on Saturday on ABC News Live and various other platforms.
When Kenny Rogers tried to record “Islands in the Stream” solo, it just didn’t work. But it wasn’t long before he and producer/writer Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees suspected Dolly Parton might be what was missing. She happened to be nearby in Los Angeles, and a country/pop classic was born.
Last year when CMA and ACM Group of the Year Old Dominion traveled to North Carolina to write and record their fourth album, a similar thing happened on a song called “Lonely Side of Town.”
“We weren’t thinking about having a collaboration on it,” lead singer Matthew Ramsey tells ABC Audio. “We had written it, and we’d tracked it, and were just listening to it and thought, like ‘Man it would be cool to have somebody like Gladys Knight on this thing.'”
“It’s this weird mix of like Motown and the Eagles kind of in one song,” he explains, “and we could just hear her on it. And when we said her name, somebody was like, ‘She lives in Asheville… right down the street from us.'”
“So it was just kinda like this moment of ‘This has to be meant to be then,'” Matthew remembers.
From there, it wasn’t long before the 77-year-old “Midnight Train to Georgia” hitmaker arrived.
“We talked to the studio manager and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I’m great friends with them, I’ll call her,'” Matthew recalls in minor disbelief. “And so she called her and Gladys was like, ‘I love those guys. I don’t even need to hear the song. I’ll be a part of it.'”
“So it was amazing,” he laughs.
You can hear Matthew and the soul legend contemplate a trip to the “Lonely Side of Town” when Time, Tequila, & Therapy arrives October 8.
