Music

Aaliyah’s eponymous album — her third and final studio LP originally released in July 2001 — has hit streaming services for the first time at midnight on Thursday via Blackground Records 2.0 and Empire. It is also available for download. Following her death the month after her self-titled LP originally dropped, the album rocketed to the top of the charts. Aaliyah and the album’s singles were nominated for Grammys, including Best R&B Album and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for “Rock the Boat” and “More Than a Woman.” Aaliyah‘s arrival...

Dierks Bentley, Dan + Shay and Zac Brown Band will headline a five-hour, 50-performance New Year's Eve party in Nashville this winter. For the first time ever, this annual celebration will air on CBS.New Year's Eve Live! Nashville's Big Bash will also feature Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Brooks & Dunn, Kelsea Ballerini and more. The 7PM show will run directly against ABC's long-running Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve from New York City's Times Square.The free show will take place at Nashville's Bicentennial Mall, but performances will come from...

Alicia Keys and Swae Lee have linked up for sultry new song “Lala.” The two will perform the song for the first time live at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. On the single, the pair trade flirtatious lines. “Skin like whiskey/She’s cold like on the rocks,” Swae Lee sings. “Feelings get lost in the lala,” Keys sings. Keys’ performance this Sunday marks her return to the VMA stage after nine years. She last performed “Girl on Fire” during the 2012 awards show with Nicki Minaj and Gabby...

The 2021 CMA Awards nominees included many of the same artists as last year in the artist categories. In fact, there are just five differences in those five categories, which means several artists got snubbed.This annual CMA Awards Snubs and Surprises list ranks nine "Wow!" responses to Thursday morning's (Sept. 9) nominee announcement. While the venerable television broadcast has never been quick to pivot or celebrate a class of country artist ignored in previous years, this year's nominee lineup looks particularly familiar. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves (see No. 5 below), because for...

An award of $65,000 will be presented to an unproduced musical in honor of Adam Schlesinger, the songwriter and Fountains of Wayne co-founder who died from complications related to Covid-19 last year. The award stems from a merger between the non-profit Building for the Arts and the American Playwriting Foundation, the latter of which is known for the annual Relentless Award presented to an unproduced play in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Both Hoffman’s and Schlesinger’s awards will be named the Relentless, with each prize given to a musical and...

All that's left of what once was is covered in dust in Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood's "If I Didn't Love You" music video.Directed by Shaun Silva and filmed at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the video jumps between Aldean onstage — where Underwood soon joins him to sing — and Aldean in an abandoned home, presumably where he lived with the former flame he's singing about. It's not clear that person is Underwood, but he's found himself there again, remembering her. Things aren't like they were before, however — all of the furniture is covered with sheets, and...

Foo Fighters will reopen beloved 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. on Thursday after the venue was shuttered for 18 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Tickets, which were limited to two per person, went on sale on Wednesday and quickly sold out to the intimate, surprise-announced show. The band also announced via Twitter that those attending must follow the venue’s Covid Safety Precautions. “Note: All attendees of this event must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or have received a negative Covid-19 diagnostic test within 24-hours prior to entry,” they wrote,...

Allie Dunn's debut single, "Tom Petty," pinpoints the moment a relationship a relationship falls apart. It's a song on the radio that starts everything in motion — but there's so much more underneath the surface.""Tom Petty" is a song I hold close to my heart because it was the first song I ever co-wrote in Nashville, and because it tells the story of a once-broken relationship I was in where one slight moment opened a can full of worms called truth," Dunn shares of the song, which is premiering exclusively on...

Eddie Vedder has released new song “Long Way.” It’s the first single from his upcoming solo album, Earthling. The track will come in a limited-edition 7-inch vinyl along with upcoming song “The Haves” and it’s available for preorder via Pearl Jam’s Ten Club. The Pearl Jam frontman collaborated for the first time with producer Andrew Wyatt on the song about star-crossed lovers. “She was his all and everything/But her strength it needed space,” he sings over the lyric video’s mostly black-and-white imagery of a scenic road trip. “Her love was...

Sometimes you don't know how good you've got it — or how things differ around the world — until you leave. Michael Ray's song "Didn’t Know I Was Country" explores that theme through the lens of his hometown of Eustis, Fla."I didn't know I was country / Thank God I am," Ray sings in the chorus, naming off all of the things he grew up learning, observing and enjoying without knowing what he knew wasn't the same as what everyone else did. The idea of the song, the singer shares, came from...

Bennie Pete, co-founder and sousaphone player for the celebrated New Orleans outfit the Hot 8 Brass Band, died from complications from sarcoidosis and Covid-19, Nola.com reports. He was 45. Pete died Monday at New Orleans East Hospital, his wife, Lameka Pete, confirmed. Lameka said her husband fainted at home on August 18th then later tested positive for Covid-19 at the hospital (Lameka and two of the couple’s children also tested positive). Pete had initially been reluctant to get the Covid-19 vaccine due to his underlying health conditions — he was...

Ahead of the release of her Revived Remixed Revisited triple album, which will give new life to some of her greatest hits, Reba McEntire has shared a few of the project's songs — including a "historically unprecedented" remix of her classic song "I'm a Survivor.""It is a historically unprecedented thing for two trans women to have prominent production roles like this on a country music single," Mya Byrne shares. The singer-songwriter, who is trans and queer, plays lap steel on the song, remixed by LeahAnn "Lafemmebear" Mitchell, a Grammy-nominated producer who is also trans. The...

A new Beyoncé song, “Be Alive,” appears at the end of upcoming Venus and Serena Williams biopic King Richard. The movie, which stars Will Smith as the tennis pros’ father, uses “Be Alive” during its closing credits. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reviewed the film at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend, “Be Alive” was written by the singer along with DIXSON specifically for the film. “That means that Beyoncé will perform at the Oscars next year,” the review notes. “There’s no way the academy is snubbing her...

Thirty years ago today, on Sept. 4, 1991, the country music community was in mourning: It was on that date that Dottie West died, from injuries sustained in a car crash. West was 58 years old at the time of her death.In her early 20s, West became friends with several up-and-coming singers and songwriters, including Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard and Patsy Cline, who motivated the aspiring singer to launch her own music career. West rose to fame in the 1960s with hit songs such as "Here Comes...