Miley Cyrus has been teasing new music all over Los Angeles.
Photos posted by Pop Crave on Friday (December 16th) show posters with the line, "New Year, New Miley" hung around the city. Additionally, NME reports that Cyrus updated her Spotify and Twitter bios to contain the same phrase.
Cyrus released her first live album, Attention: Miley Live earlier this year, which featured two unreleased songs, "Attention" and "You."
Olivia Rodrigo treated fans to one of the first songs she ever wrote on Friday (December 16th). The "drivers license" singer uploaded "The Bels," an original holiday song she wrote at just five years old, to Discord.
On it, she sings: "Red and green is a Christmas queen / Make the holidays special to me / Oh, see the dancing gingerbread dance in your head / Wait, wait, wait for the bells ring there / Now, let me hear it out loud / Santa's coming to town /Ho, ho, ho, ho / Wait for the bells."
She wrote alongside a link to the song, "on the 12th day of livmas, olivia gave to us…. THE FULL VERSION OF THE BELS!!!! happy holidays and thank u for celebrating #12daysoflivmas with us."
The year-end numbers have been tallied and Walker Hayes is holding down the top two spots on Billboard's 2022 Country Digital Songs chart. Beating out every song in the genre, "Fancy Like" was the top-selling song of the year and right behind it was "AA." Cody Johnson is at #3 with his Grammy nominated single, "'Til You Can't." And Morgan Wallen has both #4 and #5 positions.
Some of the other notables include - an older song still proving that it's relevant, Chris Stapleton's 2015 release, "Tennessee Whiskey" in at #8.
There were no female artists in the Top 10, not even as a guest performer, however, Carrie Underwood made the Top 20 at a guest vocal on Jason Aldean's "If I Didn't Love You."
The only female-fronted tracks to make it into the Top 25 were Miranda Lambert and Elle King's "Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)" and Taylor Swift's "All Too Well."
J-Hope of BTS, Duran Duran, and New Edition are set to ring in 2023 with Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest.
J-Hope will take the stage for a medley of songs including a holiday remix of "Butter." Recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Duran Duran will perform a medley of their classics just before midnight. And New Edition will sing a mix of their R&B and pop hits.
The New Year's Eve event from New York City's Times Square, will air live on ABC.
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Lewis Capaldi and former One Direction member, Niall Horan went into the studio and recorded a stirring version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
The clip released online this week is from of the documentary called Niall Horan's Homecoming: The Road to Mullingar With Lewis Capaldi, Up until now, it was only available to view on Amazon Prime.
The two pop stars are seen in a side-by-side video shot in Dublin with a minimalistic setup and no backup instruments. Capaldi is on piano and Horan on acoustic guitar as they take turns singing lead.
Although you can watch the clip, the song isn't yet available to stream, but Capaldi said it will be eventually.
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It's looking as though Pearl Jam will soon resume sessions for their followup album to 2020's Gigaton. Blabbermouth transcribed some of guitarist Stone Gossard's chat with Detroit's WRIF, where he explained, "The plan is that we're gonna do some more recording, and we're gonna try to finish a record here pretty soon. There's songs that are getting close to being done and there's a bunch that aren't. And we're gonna do something here pretty soon."
Gossard shed light on how the band develops their material: "We do it all the different ways. Sometimes we go in and somebody just brings a riff and we just work it up from the very -- 'I've got this and this part,' and everyone just jams on it. Usually that's the best formula for us, where everyone's kind of in the same room. But we all bring in fully realized demos."
He added, "We've got demos for days. Everybody writes in the band, so now it's really just trying to figure out, really, what's something different for us and what's something exciting. And we're working on that. I think we've got a good start on another record that will be hopefully good."
Stone Gossard told us a while back that the band never sets out with a predetermined goal for a new LP: "It's very difficult to set out to do something and achieve it, as opposed to just each song, try to make it as good as you can. We set out more like, we're gonna make a record and we know we're gonna -- everyone's gonna write some songs, and we're gonna try to do the best for each of those songs and then we're gonna see what we've got at the end and figure out how to put 'em together, y'know? It's much less planned than you would imagine."
Pearl Jam will next perform on February 26th in Tempe, Arizona at the Innings Festival at Tempe Beach Park & Arts Park.
Beyonce and Amazon Music has announced Club Renaissance LA. The event is set to take place in Los Angeles this weekend on December 17th and 18th. According to DatGrapeJuice.net, no further details have been revealed, outside of the Renaissance album will be played in Dolby Atmos.
MEGHAN MARKLE REVEALS BEYONCE TEXTED HER AFTER OPRAH INTERVIEW
In other news, in footage from their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, Meghan Markle revealed to Prince Harry that Beyonce sent her a text after their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Meghan said, "I still can't believe she knows who I am."
Beyonce told Meghan that she was "just checking in." Harry said, "Go and call her."
Then Meghan said, "She said she wants me to feel safe and protected. She admires and respects my bravery and vulnerability and thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed." Prince Harry said, "That's well said."
Prior to heading out on the upcoming "Rock Legends Cruise X (10)," Roger Daltrey has booked a one-off solo gig in Clearwater, Florida. The February 11th show at Ruth Eckerd Hall plays two days before Daltrey heads out on the open seas for the "Legends Cruise" with the likes of Deep Purple, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Randy Bachman, Lou Gramm, the Marshall Tucker Band, Night Ranger, the Outlaws, and others. For more info, log on to: https://rocklegendscruise.com/rlc10/
It was 45 years ago tonight (December 16th, 1977) that Saturday Night Fever opened nationally. The film, which turned actor John Travolta into a global superstar, told the story of Tony Manero, a 19-year-old from Brooklyn going nowhere fast, whose only bright spot is as the weekend king of the disco floor. Saturday Night Fever -- which was so successful at the time that it was eventually released in both "R" and "PG" versions -- showcases Manero's troubled and often comical personal life, highlighted by his Friday and Saturday nights dancing at Bay Ridge's 2001 Odyssey disco, which define his and his friends' otherwise empty lives.
The soundtrack album, featuring music by the Bee Gees, Yvonne Elliman, KC & The Sunshine Band, Tavares, MFSB, and the Trammps, went on to become the biggest-selling soundtrack of all time, selling over 15 million copies to date. The album scored four Number One hits: "How Deep Is Your Love," "Stayin' Alive," and "Night Fever," by the Bee Gees, and Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You." All four hits were actually written by the Bee Gees -- Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb.
Out now is the 40th Anniversary "Super Deluxe Edition" box set of the Saturday Night Fever (The Original Movie Soundtrack). The collection includes two CDs featuring the remastered original album, four new remixes by Serban Ghenea, the remastered album on heavyweight 180-gram two-LP vinyl in a gatefold jacket "with faithfully replicated original album art, and a Blu-ray disc with the film's 4K-restored 40th Anniversary Director's Cut and Theatrical Version, plus bonus features."
The box set also includes a 23-page book with newly-written essays by Barry Gibb, Saturday Night Fever music supervisor and soundtrack producer Bill Oakes, director John Badham, and the film's score composer and musician David Shire, "as well as Bee Gees photos and stills from the film, plus an exclusive turntable slipmat, a set of five art prints, and a reproduction of the original Saturday Night Fever movie poster. "
Recently published is Staying Alive: The Disco Inferno Of The Bee Gees. The book, published in time for the film and soundtrack's 40th anniversary, is by author Simon Spence, who is best known stateside for collaborating with Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham on his two memoirs, Stoned and 2Stoned. According to the press release for the tome: "Staying Alive finally lifts that millstone from around their necks by joyfully reappraising and celebrating their iconic disco era. Taking the reader deep into the excesses of the most hedonistic of music scenes, it tells of how three brothers from Manchester transformed themselves into the funkiest white group ever and made the world dance. No longer a guilty pleasure but a national treasure."
Just before his untimely death in 2003, Maurice Gibb said that the success of the soundtrack album was beyond the group's wildest dreams: "Fever was a blessing. I mean, I've spoken to other groups and people in that business that would die to have a Fever in their career, and I look at it as something now as more than just a record now. It was a movement -- it was a whole big thing. Y'know, the records are bigger than we are, y'know, than the music is, but that was such a fun time."
The Bee Gees were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, three years after they entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Shortly before his death in 2012, Robin spoke to us about the group's cultural impact on music: "The fact is that it had an impact on the culture. And there are people who have hit records and people who have impact on the culture. Fever did, there is no doubt about it. People use the words "Stayin Alive" and the expression with everything. And it is, no doubt, indisputably part of the music culture.
Bee Gees drummer Dennis Bryon, who played an integral part in all in all the group's tours and sessions, was on his way to help Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb mix and overdub the Los Angeles Forum concert tapes that became 1977's Here At Last! . . . The Bee Gees Live, when Barry explained that their manager and RSO label head Robert Stigwood needed new music for a new indie film he was producing -- which ended up being Saturday Night Fever: "Barry called me up before I left home to drive to France and he said that ‘Robert's making this film. It's about this guy in New York that loves to dance, so when we finish mixing the live album, we're gonna cut some songs, so bring your drums.' And once the live album was mixed, then we started recording these new songs for this low budget film that wasn't supposed to do anything."
We asked Barry Gibb if the Bee Gees felt hurt or betrayed by the "Disco Sucks" movement: "No, there was no question that it was a little tough for us after (Saturday Night) Fever, but I don't remember anyone complaining at the time (laughs), so, so, y'know, it's all fine for us and we're long over all that stuff and, y'know, for us it's just pop music. It's pop music and you can put any tag you want to on it."
In 2007, a deluxe DVD of Saturday Night Fever was released in honor of the film's 30th anniversary.
Interestingly, the Bee Gees originally recorded their own version of "If I Can't Have You" during the Saturday Night Fever sessions, which they offered to ABBA for them to record. ABBA politely declined, stating that they only recorded their own original material. The Bee Gees' version eventually ended up on their 1979 hits compilation Bee Gees Greatest.
The Bee Gees went on to contribute five songs to the soundtrack for the Fever sequel -- 1983's Stayin' Alive. The Sylvester Stallone-directed film was critically panned, but a box office hit, with the soundtrack album selling over one million copies to date.
Billie Eilish surprised fans at a Los Angeles concert this week when she brought Labrinth out on stage to sing with her.
He performed a couple of songs, but most noted was a duet they did for an upcoming release called, "I've Never Felt So Alone." He also sang one of the songs he composed for the HBO series Euphoria, called "Mount Everest."
Playing in front of her hometown audience, Eilish had 32 songs on her set list, including "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."
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Cardi B is featured on a remix of Rosalia's song, "Despechá." She made the announcement to her fans by posting back and forth with the Grammy winning, Spanish singer on Twitter.
The song has already topped the Latin Airplay charts and the remix will officially be released today (12-16).
Happy Birthday to Rolling Stones co-founder Keith Richards, who turns 79 on Sunday (December 18th)!!! Richards, a man who due to his previous penchant for hard street drugs wasn't expected to see 30 -- let alone 50 -- has often infamously topped numerous "Most Likely To Die Lists" over the years. Today also marks the 39th anniversary for Richards and wife Patti Hansen, who married in 1983 on the guitarist's 40th birthday -- with Mick Jagger serving as best man.
The Stones may be in the home stretch for their long-awaited new album. The band has been at work on the still-unfinished collection for over a decade -- and even recorded their last album, the Granny Award-winning blues collection, Blue And Lonesome, during the all-original, album sessions.
Ron Wood hipped Britain's The Sun on where the Stones are at in the process, revealing that album will feature drumming by the late-drummer Charlie Watts as well as his replacement, longtime Keith Richards collaborator, Steve Jordan: "We are recording the new album now and we are going to L.A. in a few weeks to carry it on and finish it off. Charlie is on some of the tracks and drummer Steve Jordan." Wood also confirmed the Stones would be back on the road in 2023.
Last March, Keith Richards celebrated the 30th anniversary of his second album backed by the X-Pensive Winos with the deluxe release of 1992's Main Offender. The new collection featured a previoulsy-unreleased bonus live disc, Winos Live In London '92.
The X-Pensive Winos featured drummer Steve Jordan, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Charley Drayton, keyboardist Ivan Neville, singer Sarah Dash, and backing vocalists Bernard Fowler and Babi Floyd.
Back in 2019, Keith Richards grabbed headlines by revealing that -- barring the occasional glass of wine or bottle of beer -- he's essentially sober. Richards -- whose primary poison for years was Stoli and Sunkist -- told Rolling Stone: "It's been about a year now. I pulled the plug on it. I got fed up with it. It was time to quit. Just like all the other stuff." When asked if it was an adjustment for him, Richards laughed and said, "You can call it that, yeah. But I don't notice any difference really -- except for I don't drink. I wasn't feeling (right). I've done it. I didn't want that anymore. . . It was interesting to play sober."
Stones guitarist Ron Wood, who's been sober since 2010 explained, "It just wasn't working anymore, y'know? I think the Keith that we used to know and love had this cutoff point where if he had one more, he'd go over the top and he'd be nasty. The cutoff point became shorter and shorter, y'know, and he realized that."
Richards, along with Mick Jagger, has written some of the most enduring and important songs of the rock era, including "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Under My Thumb," "Gimme Shelter," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Ruby Tuesday," "Get Off My Cloud," "Brown Sugar," "Let's Spend The Night Together," "As Tears Go By," "Street Fighting Man," "She's A Rainbow," "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Honky Tonk Women," "Angie," "Paint It, Black," "Tumbling Dice," "Waiting On A Friend," "Miss You," "Emotional Rescue," "Fool To Cry," "Wild Horses" "Sympathy For The Devil," "It's Only Rock N' Roll," "Start Me Up," and literally hundreds of others.
Although many songs that were primarily written by Richards were sung by Jagger, over the years several of Richards' vocal turns have become classics of their own, including "You've Got The Silver," "Happy," "Before They Make Me Run," "All About You," "Little T&A," and "Thru And Thru," which was featured on The Sopranos.
March 2020 saw the six-disc 30th anniversary super deluxe edition of Keith Richards' 1988 solo debut, Talk Is Cheap. Richards' co-producer, drummer, and songwriter collaborator Steve Jordan remastered the 1988 set, which includes six unreleased bonus tracks featuring Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, bassist Bootsy Collins, and legendary Chuck Berry pianist Johnnie Johnson.
Keith Richards chatted at the time with The Sydney Morning Herald and was asked about the particularly toxic vibes between him and Mick Jagger in the mid-1980's that led to the recording of Talk Is Cheap. Richards responded by saying, "You mean how many difficult times? We're brothers, y'know? We fight and that's when people hear about our relationship. The other 99 per cent nobody's interested in, because we get along fine. But when Mick and I do have a disagreement, we really have one (laughs)."
In January 2018, the Stones' 2016 return to their roots, Blue & Lonesome, won the Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. Although it topped the charts in no less than 10 countries, including Britain -- Blue & Lonesome -- the Stones' first studio set in over a decade, fell short Stateside, peaking at Number Four. In addition to England, the album went all the way to Number One on the Australian, Belgian, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Scottish, Swedish, and Swiss album charts.
September 2015 saw the release of Keith Richards' third solo album -- and his first in 22 years -- titled, Crosseyed Heart. Joining him on the set were his X-Pensive Winos bandmates -- guitarist Waddy Watchel, drummer Steve Jordan, the late-Sara Dash, and Ivan Neville -- along with longtime Stones associates Blondie Chaplin and Bernard Fowler. Crosseyed Heart marked the highest charting album of Richards' solo career, hitting Number 11 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The album's lead single, "Trouble," went all the way to Number 20 on the Billboard Adult Alternative chart. Crosseyed Heart, which sailed to Number One in Austria, reached the Top 10 on the Belgium, Danish, Dutch, Italian, New Zealand, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, and UK album charts.
Today is bound to be a bittersweet one for Richards, as it would have also marked Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys' 79th birthday. Keys, who was among Richards' best friends, died on December 2nd, 2014 from cirrhosis of the liver at age 70. Keys, who met the band back in 1964 recorded and toured with the Stones frequently over the past 45 years, playing on such classics as "Brown Sugar," "Bitch," "Can't You Hear me Knocking," "Emotional Rescue," and dozens of others.
In 2014, Richards and daughter Theadora published the children's book, Gus & Me: The Story Of My Granddad And My First Guitar.
Not too long ago, Richards spoke to Australia's Triple M radio's Lee Simon and touched upon his favorite Stones tunes to play live, saying, "I always love to play 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' I still haven't nailed him and every time I say, 'tonight I'm gonna kill that mutha.' He is always the beautiful challenge to play. 'Tumbling Dice' is another one that I just love to play. It is just a sweet thing to play and you are never short of just finding different ways of doing it. As long as the song lives for me I love them all. 'Street Fighting Man' is an incredible thing to play. 'Beast Of Burden,' when it comes down to it I love them all."
He went on to admit that he often has felt as a conduit for the song -- rather than being its composer: "I never really felt like I wrote them or created them. They come to you and you order it up a bit and then you put it on. I feel like a medium when it comes to songwriting as if I'm receiving, I sort it out and then I transmit."
In October 2010, Richards released his critically acclaimed autobiography, called Life -- which has now sold over one million copies.
In 2006 the Stones had to delay a portion of their European tour after Richards fell out of a tree while vacationing in Fiji, which resulted in two operations to relieve and drain the swelling from his brain.
In 2007, Richards, whose drug use is legendary in the rock world, again shocked readers when he told the New Musical Express that, following his father Burt's 2002 death, he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. After the story became front-page headlines, Richards recanted the story and said that he was joking. In his autobiography, Richards changed the story again -- admitting that he snorted a bit of his dad, but failed to mention any cocaine.
Former Stones bassist Bill Wyman maintains that Keith Richards is quite possibly rock's most unique musician: "Well, Keith's like a gypsy, really. A pirate. He lives life like that and he plays like that and he's a great rhythm guitar player, anyway. I think, probably one of the best rhythm guitar players there's been for years. And when he gets going, I mean, it really lifts the band."
Richards laid out the musical blueprint for much of the Stones best work -- including 1972's Exile On Main Street album. He explained that like most of the Stones' classics, the recording and tracklisting for the set came about organically: "We never even intended for it to be a double album until finally we sort of run out of (laughs) songs and finally said, 'Well, there's too much for one album, but there's too much . . . y'know, we can't cut this baby up.' So we decided to go for the double. Sometimes it's the hardest part of making albums that -- 'Okay, what order do the songs come in? And you kind of get used to listening to them like jumbling them up kind of thing and saying, 'Well that works nice off of that.' And you kind of work it like that -- like a jigsaw puzzle."
Mick Jagger feels that Richards ultimately following his lead by starting his own solo career made him a better musician and record producer: "I think the experience with making his own records has made him more disciplined than he would've like to be. (Laughs) He's forced to be!"
A while back, the late, great Charlie Watts explained the deep musical kinship between himself and Keith Richards: "It's very easy playing with Keith. Very easy. Your only critic is yourself, really. He doesn't say, 'Oh that's 'orrible,' and you don't stop playing if whatever. It's like, 'That's how you wanna do it? See what 'appens. I didn't like it, but you liked it.' Y'know?' He's very easy like that, very easy to play with. And if it's good, he's very complimentary about it. Very comfortable to play with."
Ron Wood's relationship with Richards is in many ways more intense than his relationship with Jagger. Wood chronicled the ups and downs of "life with Keith" in his own recent autobiography called Ronnie. Wood was asked to describe the status of their current relationship: "It's just gone through its changes over the years. We're like chameleons, we can adapt to any situation and still remain very close and see the reality of things."
Keith Richards and his late-former lover Anita Pallenberg were a couple for a dozen years, between 1967 and 1979. Together they shared two living children -- Marlon, 51, and daughter Angela, 48. Pallenberg and Richards' third child -- a newborn son, Tara -- died of crib death in 1976. He and Patti Hansen have two children together -- Theadora, 35 and Alexandra, 34.
As anyone who's followed the Stones over the years, despite being known -- and beloved -- for their infamous bad boy ways, as Keith Richards explained, they actually remain one of the most family centric units in all of rock: "Families are — I mean, let's face it; we all come from one. You have a mum and a dad an then you grow up and then suddenly (laughs) you got kids (laughs). Of course family's important. It's a very important thing. I tell you the interesting thing us to actually watch them grow up. It's one of those things you sit back and watch."
We asked Keith Richards, who's spent most of his life on the road, if he's got any solid advice for new bands who are aiming to one day celebrate decades of great work together: "Yeah, get out of the business and just get into the fun of it. It's a matter of the joy of working with other people and being able to turn yourself into one thing. It's a functioning gang, if y'know what I mean -- with no ill intentions (laughs)."
In April 2018, Keith Richards revealed on his official YouTube channel that he and Mick Jagger had just completed about a dozen songs for the Rolling Stones' upcoming studio set. When answering the question posed to his ongoing "Ask Keith" series, Richards spoke about how the Jagger/Richards team ramps up and operates: "The secret is that we neither of us know what we're gonna do until we put ourselves together, and then just see what happens. It's one of those things with the Stones collectively is a, sort of, chemical thing. I can walk in and say, 'I hope Mick's got a song, because I haven't got a (laughs) thing' -- and probably vice versa at times, y'know? But, the fact is when we get together, we come up with something else anyway. So, there's a great week last week. We just went in, I don't know, we did about 10, 12 different things that didn't exist until that moment. And that's a great feeling, y'know, 'cause it's a sort of (a) creative thing, y'know?"
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards shed light on how they decide it's time to ramp up for another string of dates: (Mick Jagger): "It sort of runs in a pretty good cycle." (Keith Richards): "I have to wait for a phone call from Mick, saying, 'I'm getting a but antsy (laughter) -- you wanna go, and should we. . ." (Jagger): "Don't forget, there is. . . You gotta be a bit hard-headed, there is a sort of supply and demand thing here. If no one called up and said, 'We think, y'know, you should go and tour. . .' There's good times and bad times to do tours. (Richards): "In a way, Mick and I get the same feeling just around the same time. It's then -- as Mick was just saying -- y'know, does all the rest of it fall into place, y'know, the business and the supply and demands and all of that. But, basically, we say, 'Well, we're ready -- if the demand's there, we'll supply.'"
The Weeknd has been named the 2022 recipient of the Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award in honor of his commitment to charitable causes. The Canadian organization is known for their generous philanthropy and will donate $50,000 to the charity of his choice.
About that, The Weeknd said, "It's an honor to be recognized along with the legendary Canadian artists who received this award before me."
Over the past several years, The Weeknd has donated more than 8.3 million dollars to a variety of causes. Many in his home country of Canada.
In other news from The Weeknd: On Thursday (12-15) he released "Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)" a song from Avatar: The Way of Water.
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It was 33 years ago today (December 16th, 1989) that Billy Joel's 11th studio album, Storm Front hit Number One, displacing Milli Vanilli's 1989 three-week chart-topper, Girl You Know It's True. The album, which topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for one week, spent 17 weeks in the Top 10. Storm Front marked the "Piano Man's" first album since 1977 not to be produced by the legendary Phil Ramone, with Billy tapping Foreigner leader Mick Jones to sit behind the boards for his final album of the decade. Billy had originally approached Eddie Van Halen to produce the set, but due to Van Halen duties passed on the offer -- but suggested Jones, who had recently helmed the band's 1986 5150 album.
Storm Front, which was the first Billy Joel album since 1976's Turnstiles collection to not feature bassist Doug Stegmeyer -- the inaugural member of the famed Billy Joel Band.
The album's lead single, "We Didn't Start The Fire," hit Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks starting on December 9th, 1989. Storm Front spawned four other singles, "I Go To Extremes," which hit Number Six; "The Downeaster Alexa," which stalled at Number 57 -- but peaked at Number 18 on Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart; "That's Not Her Style," which only got as far as Number 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- but made its way up to a respectable Number 18 on the magazine's Mainstream Rock chart.
The album's final single, "And So It Goes" -- a tune first tracked during the sessions for 1983's An Innocent Man -- squeaked into the Top 40 at Number 37 -- but proved to have real legs on the Adult Contemporary Chart, where it peaked at Number Five. Garth Brooks covered the Storm Front sleeper "Shameless" on his 1991 Ropin' The Wind album and brought the song to Number One on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
Back in the day, Billy Joel revealed that it was a long process to get the Storm Front material up to snuff: "I started writing the album at the beginning of 1988, after I'd been on the road for a year-and-a-half. And I wasn't really happy with what I was comin' up with. But, just the seeds for the ideas weren't there yet. It was too soon for me to start writing and that was a tough time -- I just put it away. I said, 'let's put the pencils, and the pens, and the crayon boxes away, and I'll take 'em out later in the year.' Which was a good idea, because sometimes you have to let the field lie fallow."
Billy Joel was inspired to write 'We Didn't Start The Fire' after a long conversation with Sean Lennon, who believed that current events were spinning out of control for his generation: "'We Didn't Start The Fire' was written without the music -- it was written lyrics first. It was written as a rap song, as a matter of fact. (I) did set it to some music -- although, it's not very musical, that song, it's kind of a drone. We finished the recording of 'We Didn't Start The Fire' just as the incident Tiananmen Square happened in Beijing with the Chinese students. And them, sure enough as the album came out, everything burst wide open in Eastern Europe. What I've done is really chronicle the cold war from the beginning to the end."
Three decades on, we asked the great Mick Jones what stands out about the sessions for 1989's Storm Front: "Billy was looking to toughen up in certain areas. (I was) pushing him quite a lot about the writing. It was sometimes quite intense, but I sort of stood my ground and put my ideas forward, and even if they weren't used, they were accepted by Billy. And I think he had the respect of working with another songwriter. I really do think that we toughened it up a bit -- especially with tracks like 'We Didn't Start The Fire' -- I think he headed into some new ground. We did a pretty rocking album."
Billy Joel performs on December 19th at New York's Madison Square Garden.
It was 57 years ago today (December 16th, 1965), that Peter & Gordon recorded Paul McCartney's song "Woman." Peter Asher and Gordon Waller had been the recipients of several songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney over the previous years, including the 1964 Number One hit, "World Without Love." McCartney was not only dating Peter's sister, actress Jane Asher, at the time, but was actually living in the attic room of the Asher family home.
For McCartney's fourth and final single for the duo, he decided to turn the song into an experiment, and published the song under the pseudonym "Bernard Webb," with neither his nor Lennon's name appearing on the record label. Despite his efforts, word trickled out pretty quickly that McCartney had in fact written the song. What fans didn't know, was that McCartney also drummed on the track, as well.
Beatlefan magazine executive editor Al Sussman recalls why McCartney kept his name off the release: "Because he wanted to see if he could actually have a hit, but not under his name. For one thing at that point, Peter & Gordon were an established act. They had had a number of hits, plus the fact that, again, word trickled out pretty quickly that Paul had written the song.
Peter & Gordon's "Woman" went on to peak at Number 14 the following spring and was the last McCartney songwriting effort for the duo. Later that year they scored their final U.S. Top Ten with "Lady Godiva."
Despite a McCartney home demo of "Woman" supposedly still existing, it has yet to surface on any underground recordings. McCartney returned to the song in January 1969 during the filming of the Beatles' Let It Be movie. Bootleg recordings of McCartney's solo piano performance of the track have been on the collectors' circuit for years and in 2021 the tune popped up in Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back documentary.
In later years Paul McCartney was asked if there were any songs of his that he believed should've gotten more acclaim than they did: "Yeah, plenty. Plenty. There was one I used to like, called 'Woman,' by Peter & Gordon, that I used to like that one, but that didn't do it. There are a couple of others -- but that's the main one."
Although they share the same title, McCartney's "Woman" is an entirely different song to John Lennon's 1980 hit of the same name. It's the only such occurrence in either artist's catalog in which they have both written a song sharing the same title.
Gordon Waller died on July 17th, 2009 at his home in Connecticut from cardiac arrest at the age of 64.
This is Mariah Carey's season, as she once again tops the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." This marks the song's ninth total week atop the Hot 100 and it becomes the first song to have led in four distinct runs on the ranking.
First released on her album Merry Christmas, it hit the top 10 for the first time in 2017. It came back the next year and reached the top five for the first time. And then finally, the holiday favorite hit #1 was in 2019 for 3 weeks, then again for 2 weeks each, for the past 2 years.
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Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute To The Songs Of Paul Simon will air on CBS on December 21st at 9 p.m. ET. Performers set to appear on the special, which will also stream on Paramount+, include old friends Sting and Stevie Wonder, along with Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs, Eric Church, Rhiannon Giddens, the Jonas Brothers, Angélique Kidjo, Ledisi, Little Big Town, Dave Matthews, Brad Paisley, Billy Porter, Take 6, Irma Thomas, Shaggy and Jimmy Cliff, and Trombone Shorty.
The event was taped back on April 6th at L.A.'s Hollywood Pantages Theatre. Elton John, Oprah Winfrey, and Sofia Carson are part of the "star-studded list of presenters and special guests."
The event's producer Ken Ehrlich said in a statement:
I've known Paul for more than 40 years. I first met him when Paul and I did what I think was one of the first HBO music specials, in 1980. Doing it this year really solidified the last time we worked together, which was on the Global Citizen special in Central Park last September, where he closed the show with 'The Sound Of Silence.' I knew we were thinking about doing the next one of these, and it was then it was clear it really needs to be Paul Simon.
During a recent chat on Austin City Limits, Paul Simon spoke about the precarious state of the type of music created by singer-songwriters: "This kind of songwriting, which tells stories, has characters -- that came out of, really the singer-songwriter phenomenon in the '60s into the '70s. And then, as music changed it became more about disco and beat and it turned into punk into boy bands. . . The re-configuration of pop music, 'singer-songwriter' became less relevant, actually. People stopped listening to it. The form of it, the sound of it -- it just didn't sound like, of the moment, and so, it went away. But, I'm still writing out of that form."
Ariana Grande will be returning to the reality show, RuPaul's Drag Race to serve as guest judge on season 15. She was last on the show during season 7.
In a promotional clip released on Wednesday (Dec. 14) Grande is seen on the runway sporting a pearl-covered cone bra and a long pencil skirt while blowing a kiss to the camera.
The show is a cast of 16 queens competing for the title of America's Next Drag Superstar along with a $200,000 cash prize.
Moving from VH-1, the show will now air on MTV beginning January 6.
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The nominees for the Critics Choice Awards were announced on Wednesday (Dec. 14) and Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna are all up for Best Song. All three are competing for Best Original Song in the upcoming Golden Globes as well.
Taylor Swift for "Carolina," a song she wrote for Where The Crawdads Sing. Lady Gaga for her performance of "Hold My Hand" featured in Top Gun: Maverick. And "Lift Me Up" by Rihanna, a song from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The Critics Choice Awards gala will be hosted by Chelsea Handler and airs on The CW network on January 15.
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Although these days Smashing Pumpkins music is regarded as a genre unto itself, Billy Corgan recalled a time when the music world struggled to figure out where his songs fit. During an online chat with Rick Beato, Corgan remembered, "At the time when (Gish) came out in 1991, all the reviews were (saying we sounded) like throwback psych, hippie crap, jam band, Grateful Dead. I think it was so not what people thought music would be that they just grasped at comparisons. I mean, there's reviews that were like, 'They sound like a cross between R.E.M., the Black Crowes, and Jimi Hendrix' -- it didn't even make sense. Like, the DNA splices they would put together to try to describe our music was so off."
He went on to say, "There was also the whole thing of playing solos, which was verboten in alternative circles at the time, you weren't supposed to play solos. And if you even think of Kurt (Cobain) on Nirvana (songs), he would play ironic solos, but they weren't real guitar solos. . . (Soundgarden's) Kim Thayil would play solos, but they weren't solos played by people who were necessarily trying to play like Richie Blackmore. I was trying to play Ritchie Blackmore. My father was a guitar player, so I came from that route of, like, if you're gonna play a solo, you better play a good solo."
Not too long ago, Billy Corgan told us what he believes his music and music of the Pumpkins' generation will be remembered for: "As much as the music of the late-'60s was about a flowering consciousness, the music of the early-'90s was about a flowering of reality, and kind of calling America out for the phony, kinda shiny object that it is. And that's it. We just shattered it to pieces. Nobody knew how to pick up their own pieces, including ourselves, and we're still dealing with that. But there's an arc of energy there between 1989 and 1994 that's unmistakable."
Smashing Pumpkins' next show is set for March 4th at "The World Is A Vampire" festival in Mexico City, Mexico.
Just in time for the holidays, Coldplay has lent their name to a charity. A limited edition of Swiss watches bearing their name and co-designed by the band's Chris Martin are on sale now. It's part of a campaign from the non-profit organization, Love Button Global Movement that helps promote kindness.
A few of the watches that were personally signed by Martin, have been set aside for auction. The others sell for $695.
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45 years after releasing I'm In You -- his followup to 1976's Frampton Comes Alive! -- Peter Frampton admits he still has regrets. Despite both the title track and album both topping out at Number Two, Frampton recalls the entire experience as one bad decision after another.
Frampton looked back at attaining worldwide fame with the classic double live album, telling Guitar World, "All of a sudden I realized that I had a lot of friends that I didn't have before. Everybody had their two cents to put in, especially the people that were rubbing their hands together like this because I suddenly became the hen that laid the golden egg."
He admits that he was stressed out upon hitting the studio to start the I'm In You sessions -- even while Frampton Comes Alive! was still hot on the charts: "I knew that I couldn't follow it. That album took me six years to write; it was a live ‘best of' up until that point. There is a number from Humble Pie -- 'Shine On,' I cherry-picked (the) Wind Of Change, Frampton's Camel, (and) Somethin's Happening (albums). . . That was when I think I started to over-imbibe and wanted to numb myself. The golden hen was now constipated."
Looking back now, Frampton knows what he could've done to at least level the playing field for the followup album: "I should have probably commissioned every great writer there is and sat down and written with all of them. That would have been the only way to have dealt with that situation. I didn't want to make I'm In You. I didn't even want to hand it in. I didn't like it. I knew it wasn't good enough, but everybody was 'rush, rush, rush.' Everybody, one by one, would come to me with their own hidden agenda and say, 'The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be,' and all that stuff. I wanted to wait until I had the best material I could come up with, however long that would have taken. It could have taken a year, it could have taken two years."
All told, he remembers I'm In You as a mistake: "Various things happened. I lost a cassette tape that had a load of ideas on it -- that was devastating to me. I remembered some of them but not all of them. The bulk of my new material that I had up until that point disappeared. It was a painful record to make."
During the I'm In You period, Peter Frampton addressed both his and Fleetwood Mac's massive success a decade into their respective careers: "I think that Fleetwood Mac and myself are probably the two best examples of if you are good and you stick at it long enough, obviously that experience that you're going to gain. . . I mean, I started playing in front of 200 people and now it's 95,000, y'know? But, I think if you do have talent and you've got a good luck line and you stick around that long and you keep at it, In think you're going to make it."
Post Malone is the latest artist to enter YouTube's Billion Views Club for his video of "White Iverson" It's his 4th clip to hit the mark. Just last year, "Sunflower," his duet with Swae Lee did the same and is now closing in on 2 billion views.
Also, The Weeknd's "Save Your Tears" has now reached the billion marker on YouTube. It was his 5th song to do so. The track itself came out in spring of 2020. The remix, featuring Ariana Grande was released a year later and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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It was 53 years ago tonight (December 15th, 1969) that John Lennon and Yoko Ono assembled their legendary Plastic Ono Supergroup for a historic performance at London's Lyceum Ballroom. The event was part of UNICEF's Peace For Christmas concert, which featured a number of other performers including the Hot Chocolate Band, Jimmy Cliff, and the Rascals, among others.
Lennon's backing band featured George Harrison -- marking the final time the pair ever shared a stage together -- Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, bassist Klaus Voormann, Lennon's primary drummer at the time -- and future Yes sticksman Alan White, Billy Preston, Delaney & Bonnie and their backing band -- which included drummer Jim Gordon, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, and bassist Carl Radle -- who the next year would for Derek & The Dominoes with Clapton -- and horn players Jim Price and Bobby Keys who would soon move on to greener pastures as part of the Rolling Stones' touring band.
Lennon led the ensemble through his and Yoko's current single -- "Cold Turkey" which was extended to nearly seven minutes. The band also performed Yoko's B-side "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow) which topped out at over 15 minutes.
The late, great drummer Alan White remembered the evening's performance taking a turn for the bizarre once Keith Moon joined him onstage: "Keith Moon came in very close to the end of the jam. Got on stage and started beatin' -- literally almost trying to break one of my drums on the side -- the 16-inch tom. He was hittin' it and he had that look in his eyes, like he was a crazy man. So, it was just getting really hilarious."
The entire performance was recorded on both four-track soundboard tapes and two-track audience tapes, which was mixed in for ambiance. Although Lennon had wanted to release the performance soon after the show, the tapes were saved for the Live Jam bonus disc of the couple's 1972 double album set Some Time In New York City.
