Music

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in 1977 London when I popped in to visit the already-legendary dub creator Lee “Scratch” Perry to get his reaction to a new version by the Clash of his song about corruption “Police and Thieves.” I was curious – Joe Strummer’s rasp was so different from the angelic falsetto of the original singer, a policeman from Port Antonio named Junior Murvin. How would Scratch react? I was surprised to find Bob Marley sitting with him; Scratch was staying in an apartment over the studio...

Fans of both Jimmie Allen and high school football can rejoice. The country star's new song, "Big in a Small Town," can be heard as the theme song for the new Netflix series Titletown High, which premiered on Friday (Aug. 27)."I grew up in a small town. Whether it’s football, a dream you have … everything you do in a small town is a big thing," Allen says in a press release, explaining why the song was apt for the show. "Everything is the end of the world, or the start of a...

UPDATE (8/30): Drake has confirmed that his new album, Certified Love Boy, will be released this Friday, September 3rd. The rapper posted what appears to be the album artwork on Instagram with a caption confirming the release date. View this post on Instagram A post shared by champagnepapi (@champagnepapi) ** Drake may have revealed the release date for his long-awaited new album, Certified Lover Boy, on ESPN’s flagship program SportsCenter Friday, August 27th. The show’s normal introduction of sports highlights was noticeably interrupted by some glitchy looking clips and warped vocals, which...

Tim McGraw makes no secret of the fact that he has struggled with alcohol in the past. Now the country superstar is opening up to Esquire about an incident that scared him and forced him to admit his problem to his wife, Faith Hill, whose support "changed my life."McGraw has said that he began drinking in his teenage years, and by the time he had established himself as a leading star in country music, his habit had progressed to where he felt it was a problem. In an article titled...

Organizers of an Olympia, Washington festival believed they booked Jonathan Richman for an August 28th concert, a gig that would have marked his first pandemic-era performance. However, a day before show, organizers learned they instead had been scammed by a person pretending to be the Modern Lovers singer, who was actually unaware of the scheduled performance. According to the Olympian, the ruse wasn’t uncovered until Friday, when Evergreen State College’s KAOS DJ Mark “Markly” Morrison reached out to Richman’s publicist to arrange an interview prior to the show. Both the...

Jason Aldean has been forced to postpone a concert that was originally slated to take place in Alabama on Saturday night (Aug. 28) due to Hurricane Ida, which threatens a storm surge, heavy rain and the possibility of tornadoes.Aldean and his band were set to perform at the Wharf Amphitheatre in Orange Beach, Ala., on Saturday as part of his ongoing Back in the Saddle Tour, which features Dee Jay Silver, Lainey Wilson and Hardy as his special guests. His team turned to social media on Friday (Aug. 27) to...

Near the end of Guided by Voices’ beer-drenched, 60-song-plus set at Columbus, Ohio’s Athenaeum Theatre Saturday night, frontman Robert Pollard mused to the audience: “I was born on the stage. I was squirted out on the stage…” The crowd — a motley crew of locals and super-fans who had crossed the country for the event — roared back, Miller Lite and White Claw soaking all manner of GBV shirts commemorating scores of albums, from 2019’s Zeppelins Over China to 1994 track “Hot Freaks,” off of Bee Thousand. Bob was finally...

Kid Rock's two shows that were slated to take place in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday and Saturday (Aug. 27-28) have been canceled due to COVID-19.The rocker, rapper and sometimes country singer was scheduled to perform at Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth on those nights. He turned to Twitter on Thursday (Aug. 26) to give fans the news of the cancellations, writing, "I am pi--ed. Over half the band has f--king covid (not me), and before u s--t for brains bloggers and media trolls run your mouths, many of...

H.E.R. will make her big-screen debut in the upcoming film adaptation of the Broadway musical version of The Color Purple. The Grammy- and Oscar-winning singer is set to play Squeak — a juke joint waitress/aspiring singer — in the film adaptation produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, the 1985 film’s star and director, the Hollywood Reporter writes. Rae Dawn Chong played the role of Squeak in the Spielberg film, while Krisha Marcano portrayed the character in the original Broadway cast. Based on Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and...

Rising artist Drew Parker can count country star Luke Combs among his close friends. Parker — who co-wrote Jake Owen's hit "Homemade" and is currently promoting a single of his own, "While You're Gone" — co-wrote Combs' song "1, 2 Many," but their friendship dates back well beyond their time as co-writers.Parker and Combs have known each other for about seven years, Parker shared during a recent interview with Taste of Country Nights. He was still living in Georgia at the time — Parker didn't move to Nashville until 2015 — and he'd been booked to open for Combs...

The Rolling Stones remembered Charlie Watts with a video tribute posted on Twitter Friday following the death of their legendary drummer earlier in the week. pic.twitter.com/K6OKExXBED — The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) August 27, 2021 Mick Jagger’s Twitter also shared the two-minute video Saturday, soundtracked by the Rolling Stones’ “If You Can’t Rock Me” and featuring archival footage of Watts onstage, in the studio and on the band’s music video shoots. The video serves a celebration of Watts’ tenure in the Stones. As Watts says in an interview shown during the...

Larry Fleet has always known the power of a song. As he sings in his new song "Stack of Records," "When I couldn't find the words, I'd play some her some Whitley ... When I couldn't find myself, I'd turn on some Otis ..."At his childhood home in White Bluff, Tenn., Fleet's parents had an eclectic record collection: Merle Haggard, the Marshall Tucker Band and more traditional country and southern rock from his dad; Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd and soul music from his mom. It all comes together on Stack of Records,...

Drop a pin almost anywhere in reggaeton history and chances are you’ll land on some version of Nicky Jam, one of the genre’s most enduring elder statesmen and a character who’s been around for nearly every chapter of the genre’s unfolding narrative. You’ll find him during Puerto Rico’s underground perreo days in the early Nineties, a 14-year-old kid with a local EP that he recorded after impressing a customer who’d seen him freestyling at the grocery store where he worked. He’s there in the late Nineties, too, when he teamed...

Pearl Jam have released newly remixed digital-only versions of Ten and No Code to celebrate the albums’ 30th and 25th anniversaries, respectively. Ten and No Code were released exactly five years apart, with the former dropping August 27th, 1991 and the latter arriving August 27th, 1996. The new mixes for both albums — done in Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 — were handled by producer/sound engineer Josh Evans, who began working with Pearl Jam on their 2006 self-titled record and produced their most recent effort, 2020’s Gigaton. “These two albums...