Music

The 15-year battle over James Brown’s estate has finally been resolved as the soul legend’s heirs have reached a settlement agreement. Brown died on Christmas Day in 2006. Since then, the singer’s many heirs — children, grandchildren and an ex-wife who was ultimately eliminated as an heir after it was revealed she was still legally married to someone else when she wed Brown in 2001 — have fought over the estate, resulting in a dozen lawsuits and legal bickering that tied up the singer’s publishing rights and desired charitable endeavors....

Fifteen years ago today (July 25, 2006) was an important day for Jake Owen: It was on that date that the Florida native's debut album, Startin' With Me, was released.Startin' With Me, released on RCA Nashville, includes two Top 20 singles: "Yee Haw" and "Something About a Woman." Additionally, the record's title track landed in the Top 10."I was sitting with a couple of buddies talking about some things that we've all done in our lives that we wish we probably could have done together," Owen recalls to Songfacts about the...

Hours after the lighting of the ceremonial torch signaling the start of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Jimmy Fallon and the Roots’ Tariq Trotter performed a song dedicated to this year’s Summer Games on The Tonight Show. “This Olympics” — a parody of Florida Georgia Line and Nelly’s 2020 single “Lil Bit” — finds the host and the rapper partake in many of this year’s Games, from archery and weight lifting to  fencing and rowing. “It’s time to represent your country / No matter where you’re from / Waking up at...

The president of the Nashville branch of the NAACP is speaking out against Morgan Wallen's Good Morning America interview on Friday morning (July 23), saying the country singer's reasoning for using the N-word in a video that surfaced in February is faulty.Nashville NAACP President Sheryl Guinn tells TMZ that she thinks Wallen's interview with Michael Strahan wasn't arranged because he felt sorry for using the word, but because he was sorry for being caught.Wallen told Strahan he'd been partying all weekend with some longtime friends when he used the N-word...

Grandson and Jessie Reyez find themselves in the fight of their lives in the new music video for “Rain,” their collaboration for James Gunn’s upcoming movie The Suicide Squad. The new clip pairs footage from The Suicide Squad with a parallel narrative in which Grandson and Reyez find themselves in a club being roughed up by some very large paramilitary goons. With the actual Suicide Squad indisposed, it’s up to the two musicians to take matters into their own hands, and the clip ends with a big blowout that leaves...

Johnny Cash's late-career comeback reached another peak on July 24, 2003: On that date, 18 years ago today, the music video for his remake of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt," from American IV: The Man Comes Around, received six MTV Video Music Awards nominations.The MTV VMA nods for "Hurt" included a slew of technical nominations (Best Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Editing and Best Cinematography) and two artistic ones: Best Male Video and the prestigious overall Best Video.Cash's "Hurt" clip was filmed at his house and also features scenes from the House...

Alessia Cara acts out a silly noir melodrama in the new music video for her recent single, “Shapeshifter.” The video was directed by Tusk, and in it, Cara plays all the main roles: The jilted wife with the bottomless martini glass, the cheating husband, the clumsy private eye, the gardener and the maid. The clip mainly follows the private eye as he tries to figure out who the husband’s secret lover is, and the mystery ends with a very unexpected and surreal twist, when the investigator catches the husband smooching...

If you have seen Clay Walker onstage anytime since the beginning of his career in 1994, you’ve seen the "Dreaming With My Eyes Open" singer in something very special to him: his cowboy hat — yes, the same one that he's had since the start.In a recent interview, Walker told Taste of Country Nights host Evan that he's still rocking the same hat from back in the day. "I have my traditional black hat that I’ve always worn, and I have the same hat that I wore at my first concert,"...

The Kid Laroi has released a music video for his new track “Not Sober,” featuring Polo G and Stunna Gambino. The song comes off the singer’s new EP, F*uck Love (Over You), which is out now. In the video, directed by Steve Cannon, Polo G and Stunna Gambino join The Kid Laroi on a Los Angeles rooftop and outside an apartment building to offer their verses. F*uck Love (Over You) also includes The Kid Laroi’s recent collaboration with Justin Bieber, “Stay,” which got a music video directed by Colin Tilley. The...

Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood's "If I Didn't Love You," is a midtempo duet full of heartache. Both sides of this former relationship are having trouble moving on — because each still loves the other."If I didn't love you, I'd be good by now / I'd better than barely gettin' by somehow," Aldean and Underwood sing in harmony in the chorus. "Yeah, it would be easy not to miss you / Wonder about who's with you / Turn the want-to off whenever I want to / If I didn't love you."Aldean leads the first verse,...

Ahead of the release of Coldplay’s new album Music of the Spheres, the band has shared the LP’s closing track, the space epic “Coloratura.” Clocking in at 10 minutes and keeping with the album’s interstellar theme, “Coloratura” takes a panoramic, multi-suite voyage into the cosmos, with Chris Martin namechecking celestial bodies like Galileo, Oumuamua, and Betelgeuse along his journey to the stars. “It’s a crazy world, it’s true,” Martin sings in the closing minutes, following a colossal guitar solo that ties the track’s many disparate elements together. “In this crazy...

Ashland Craft's "Your Place or Mine" finds a heartbroken woman drowning her sorrows at a bar — and, hopefully, leaving with "Mr. Lonely across the room." The singer says she's never been much for one-night stands, but she was happy to write about using one to get over an ex.Craft co-wrote "Your Place or Mine" with Lee Starr and Willie Morrison, the latter of whom was actually one of her Uber drivers during one of her first trips to Nashville. Below, the singer shares the story behind the song, and behind her co-writing...

President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen will release a joint book, Renegades: Born in the U.S.A., on October 26th globally via Higher Ground/Penguin Random House. The tome is described as “a collection of candid, intimate, and entertaining conversations,” which began in Spotify’s co-produced podcast of the same name. Published in an oversized, fully-illustrated format, the book will also feature rare and exclusive photographs from the authors’ personal collections and never-before-seen archival material, including Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics and Obama’s annotated speeches. “Over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a...

Jason Aldean is known for giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at his life on social media, but this week, he's using social media to prove he can keep a secret. Well, until Friday, at least.On Wednesday (July 21), the "Dirt Road Anthem" star teased an upcoming duet called "If I Didn't Love You," but didn't reveal who his co-singer is. Instead, there's a question mark, forcing fans to speculate on who might accompany him when the song comes out on Friday (July 23).Fans wasted no time getting to work at guessing who the mystery...