Neil Young performs on the Pyramid stage during day four of Glastonbury festival 2025 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 28, 2025 in Glastonbury, England. Samir Hussein/WireImage
Neil Young played his song “Long Walk Home” for the first time in 36 years during his concert in Wantagh, New York, on Saturday.
“Long Walk Home” was originally recorded for Young’s 1987 album Life with Crazy Horse, and he last performed it in 1989. In breaking it out again nearly four decades later, Young slightly updated the lyrics during Saturday’s performance, changing “From Vietnam to old Beirut” to “From Canada to old Ukraine.”
Young is currently on tour with his band Chrome Hearts. During a show in Toronto on Aug. 17, he played his song “This Note’s for You” for the first time since 1997.
The Chrome Hearts tour continues Monday in Bethel, New York.
Even though football fan Riley Green will be on the road during many of this season’s big games, he’s well equipped to keep up with his favorite teams, thanks to his home away from home.
“I’ve got a new bus and it’s got TVs like everywhere,” he says. “There’s TVs in the bathroom. There’s like two TVs above my bed, so I think I’ll be able to watch a lot of college football this year.”
“[It’s] definitely a way to pass time when you’re on the road, when you’re wishing you could potentially be at some of these ballgames. It’ll be good to be able to watch them on the road,” he adds.
On Monday night Riley plays Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre with Drake White, Mike Ryan and Preston Cooper.
Cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’/Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings
It was 50 years ago — Aug. 25, 1975 — that Bruce Springsteen released his third studio album, Born to Run, which was a massive hit. But it turns out, it was a make-or-break album for the New Jersey rocker.
After the commercial failure of his first two albums, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Bruce was in danger of being dropped from his label, Columbia Records, if he didn’t come up with a hit.
Peter Ames Carlin, author of the recently released book Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run, tells ABC Audio it was a “do or die” moment for Springsteen and his career.
“Bruce has got his back to the wall. It’s like now or never, basically,” he says. “You could see how he would fear that he was just gonna end up being the New Jersey bar band musician he had been up to that point.”
That needed hit turned out to be the album’s title track. But it took a lot of work for it to get where Springsteen wanted it to be, with the rocker spending almost six months perfecting it.
“It’s like everything they could think might work, they threw at the wall and eventually winnowed it down to the song that we know now,” says Carlin. “Which is, 50 years later, it’s as overwhelming as it was when it came out.”
Born to Run wound up being everything Springsteen needed it to be. The album peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 and helped Springsteen reach mainstream audiences, with songs like the title track, “Thunder Road” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” Ithas since been certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA and was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2015.
Gloria Estefan performs on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ in August 2025 (ABC/Paula Lobo)
2025 marks Gloria Estefan‘s 50th year in the music business and the 40th anniversary of “Conga,” her breakthrough hit with Miami Sound Machine.But she’s not slowing down: She has a new album, Raíces; an upcoming movie, Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie; and a stage musical set to open next year. “It just converged all in this 50th year — it wasn’t planned this way,” she tells ABC Audio.
In fact, Gloria says she’s loving her life these days.”There’s just a kind of peace that comes with this decade and the fact that my kids are grown; I can enjoy my grandson,” she says. “And even though I’m busy as all hell, I’m only doing things that I really wanna do and when I wanna do them.”
Gloria performed “Conga” Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America; she told ABC Audio the idea for the song came when she and Miami Sound Machine were performing in the Netherlands.
“We ran out of material in English, so … we played this medley of old Cuban congas that we used to do at the end of our gigs — weddings, bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras — and they went crazy for them,” she recalls. “I tell my drummer, ‘Hey, we need to write an original song that talks about what this rhythm is.'”
According to Gloria, “Conga” became the first song to be a hit on four different Billboard charts: Latin, pop, dance and R&B. “It’s part of my essence now for sure,” she says. “That’s probably the most recognizable song worldwide.”
Back then Latin music hasn’t considered pop music like it is today, but Gloria’s hits were instrumental in making it mainstream. Her 1987 hit “Rhythm is Gonna Get You” is now in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry for being “a song that changed the cultural fabric of the nation.”
“I never had in my brain that wall, thinking, ‘Oh no this can’t happen,'” she says. “If the door closes, you find a window, like they say. And we found a lot of windows.”
Ice-T attends the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” 25th anniversary celebration at Edge at Hudson Yards on January 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage)
Ice-T lost his friends Coolio and Michael K.Williams to drug overdoses in the span of a year, forcing him to have a reality check about drug use. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he said their deaths made him realize how dangerous drugs can be.
“I don’t do drugs, but I never expected it,” he said. “When it hit Coolio and it hit Mike, that was the nail in the coffin. That’s when you go, ‘Yo, this s*** is real.’ You know what I’m saying? It’s real.”
Williams died in September 2021 after consuming fentanyl-laced heroin. Coolio passed away in September 2022 due to the effects of fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.
Ice-T further discusses drugs, more specifically fentanyl, in the trailer for the Fame and Fentanyl documentary, premiering Monday on A&E.
“Everyone knows someone who has fallen victim to fentanyl,” he says in the doc, for which he serves as host and executive producer. “These are the stories that everyone needs to hear.”
Brent Hinds of Mastodon performs live on stage during Rock am Ring at Nuerburgring on June 4, 2022 in Nuerburg, Germany. Didier Messens/Redferns
Mastodon paid tribute to their former guitarist Brent Hinds during their first show following his death on Aug. 20.
At the end of the band’s show Friday at the Alaska State Fair, drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor told the crowd that he and his bandmates had “lost somebody very special to us.”
“Brent Hinds, 25 years with us as our guitar player, one of the most creative, beautiful people that we’ve ever come across in this world, tragically left us,” Dailor said. “Very, very unfortunate. We loved him so, so, so very much.”
Hinds was a founding member of Mastodon, and played with the unchanging lineup of Dailor, guitarist Bill Kelliher and bassist Troy Sanders for the band’s entire run until March 2025, when they announced they’d “mutually decided to part ways.” However, in the months following his departure, Hinds made several comments criticizing his former bandmates.
“We had the ups and downs of a 25-year relationship,” Dailor said Friday. “It’s not always perfect, it’s not always amazing, but we were brothers to the end. And we really loved each other and we made a lot — a lot — of very beautiful music together.”
“We’re just at a loss for words,” he continued. “We’re absolutely devastated and crushed to lose him and to be able to never have him back again, but you guys made it O.K. for us to come on stage and do this tonight.”
Following the concert, Mastodon posted a statement on Facebook reading, “Alaska, thanks for showing up and lifting our spirits, you were exactly what we needed yesterday.”
The album that changed Sabrina Carpenter‘s life turned 1 on Saturday, and she took to Instagram to celebrate the milestone.
Short n’ Sweet — which earned Sabrina her first Grammys and first number-one hit, gave us the phrases “Make me Juno” and “That’s that me, espresso,” and even inspired a Saturday Night Live skit — was released on Aug. 23, 2024.
On Instagram, Sabrina wrote, “Pausing from [Man’s Best Friend] to say happy one year of Short n’ Sweet. one year of kiss marks, camaraderie, and being so f****** horny.”
“Camaraderie” is a lyric from her single “Bed Chem,” while the other phrase is from her song “Juno.”
“This album is one of my most prized possessions and brought me closer to myself as well as so many beautiful people and places,” Sabrina continued. “Thank you for still listening every single day x thank you for coming to the shows and singing till your lungs give out, thank you for loving these songs and every damn lyric as much as i do!”
She concluded, “Thank you to all my friends i got to make every song with, every video with, create the live shows with. One of the most fun years I’ve had in my whole life. I’ll never take it for granted!!! Love you all infinitely. SNS for life.”
On her Instagram Story, she also gave some love to the deluxe version of Short n’ Sweet, which was released in February 2025. “Though she is not a year old, let us still remember ~her~,” Sabrina wrote on her Story. The deluxe included the single “Busy Woman.”
Meanwhile, on Aug. 29, Sabrina will release a brand-new video for the song “Tears,” from her upcoming album Man’s Best Friend, out that same day.
Lady Gaga performs during The MAYHEM Ball Tour, July 2025 (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)
“I’m home, New York City!” That’s what Lady Gaga yelled from the stage Friday night as she brought her Mayhem Ball tour to Madison Square Garden for the first of six hometown shows.
While the set was essentially the same as the previous shows on the tour, Gaga did prepare “something special” for her New York crowd. After performing “Die With a Smile” solo on the piano, the fans gave her a prolonged ovation, and she became emotional, wiping tears from her eyes.
“I know that it’s me standing up here, but you’re all standing in here with me … I feel so honored to be here tonight at Madison Square Garden,” she said. “I’m sure you can tell if you listen to the music that I am from here. Everything about my artistry, I think, was born in this town.”
“I’m sure that all of my albums could not have been made without New York, but I am sure this album would not have been made without New York,” she noted. She then launched into the Born This Way track “Hair” for the first time since 2017.
At the very end of the show, she threw in another Born This Way deep cut, the New York-centric “Heavy Metal Lover,” which she hadn’t played since 2013.
The rest of the concert was a series of dazzling set pieces that blended nearly every cut from Mayhem with classics including “Paparazzi,” “Poker Face” and “LoveGame.” They were grouped loosely by theme into four acts that told the story of Gaga struggling with her masked alter ego, “The Mistress of Mayhem,” to find balance amid the chaos.
She recreated the choreography from “Abracadabra,” rode in a boat for “Shallow,” sang “Bloody Mary” atop a dress that was several stories high, lit up a veil that stretched the entire length of the stage with rainbow colors, danced with a giant skull and sang in a massive sandbox.
The adoring crowd — sporting more corsets and fishnets than a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening — gave Mother Monster deafening applause, but never louder than for the Artpop song of the same name.
Rainbow Kitten Surprise has shared a new song called “100 Summers,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, bones.
“This record is the raw unfiltered sound of Rainbow Kitten Surprise doing what we love to do,” says frontwoman Ela Melo. “This is more raw than just about anything I’ve ever written, so, yeah, I sat there and cried with it for a second.”
“You know when you’re able to talk about hard s*** because you’ve already had to deal with it, and so now the healing of it is what’s coming up,” she continues. “You’re trying to make sense of what happened to you, and why, and ultimately, hopefully, forgive yourself and forgive whoever. So I think ‘100 Summers’ is doing that.”
You can watch the video for “100 Summers” on YouTube.
Bones, the follow-up to 2024’s Love Hate Music Box, drops Sept. 26.
RKS’ North American tour continues Sept. 1 in Vancouver.
‘Creature in the Black Night’ album artwork. Spinefarm
Dayseeker has released a new song called “Shapeshift,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, Creature in the Black Night.
“This song is about the anxiety I live with on a daily basis,” says vocalist Rory Rodriguez. “An open letter to myself about how it shifts and molds me into a different version of me.”
Creature in the Black Night is due out Oct. 24. It also includes the single “Pale Moonlight,” which currently sits in the top 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.
Dayseeker is currently on tour with Ice Nine Kills. They’ll hit the road with In This Moment in September.
