Music

Soon after releasing "Some Gave All" as part of a multi-platinum album of the same name, Billy Ray Cyrus recorded a performance that lives on today as necessary viewing for Memorial Day.Fans were able to watch the performance during an ABC television special released in February 1993, nine months after Some Gave All achieved unprecedented commercial success. It was the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 for 17 straight weeks, thanks in large part to "Achy Breaky Heart." This military remembrance closes the album and, while never released to radio,...

Lil Baby and Lil Durk have released a joint track, “Voice of the Heroes,” from their upcoming collaborative album The Voice of the Heroes. The pair debuted the song in a music video directed by Daps and shot in the streets of Lil Baby’s hometown of Oakland City. The clip showcases real people living in the Atlanta neighborhood as the rappers toss money off a roof. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The kiDD (@lilbaby) The Voice Of The Heroes will drop June 4th via Quality Control...

June 3 is unofficially Bobbie Gentry Day, as that's the day the singer's most famous character jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge in the smash hit "Ode to Billie Joe." Fifteen years later, Gentry herself would jump to obscurity ... but why?This week's episode of the Secret History of Country Music Podcast explores Gentry's sudden disappearance after the 1982 ACM Awards, and revisits attempts made to reach her in recent years. To understand why she left — or at the very least, to theorize about it — you needs to understand her raising and her reluctance to be a country...

Morrissey has completed his next album, Bonfire of Teenagers, according to a post on the singer’s website. The album was recorded in Los Angeles and will feature 11 tracks, although a release date has not yet been confirmed. “The worst year of my life concludes with the best album of my life,” Morrissey wrote of the release. The post also noted that the singer is currently unsigned and the album is available to the “highest (or lowest) bidder.” Morrissey parted ways with record label BMG last November. The singer revealed...

On May 31, 2013, Cassadee Pope released her song "Wasting All These Tears." The track was her debut country single, but far from her first foray into the music business.Pope was no stranger to music and touring by the time she dropped "Wasting All These Tears": The Florida native had spent the previous few years fronting the high-energy pop-rock band Hey Monday, and then followed that up by winning Season 3 of The Voice. In other words, expectations were high; however, Pope more than rose to the occasion with the tune, which...

The Smashing Pumpkins have announced their first archival release Live in Japan 1992, a limited-edition 2LP set featuring the band’s February 1992 visit to Kawasaki’s Club Citta. The live album, which Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin revealed during their 30th anniversary livestream celebrating Gish, will only available for 24 hours via the Madame Zuzu’s webstore. Autographed copies are already sold out. “Audio is from a board tape and is not available anywhere else,” the band noted of Live in Japan 1992, which will be released 180-gram purple swirl vinyl. “Shipping...

Wynonna Judd first rose to popularity with the music she made with her mother, Naomi Judd, as the Judds. The mother-daughter duo cultivated a large fan following and a massively successful career, releasing five studio albums and landing more than a dozen hits at the top of the country charts.But Judd has also had a long-lasting career as a solo artist. After the Judds disbanded when her mother was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 1991, Judd launched out alone and found immediate success. Since the early '90s, she's notched three platinum albums,...

The more you listen to Mustafa, you begin to realize that the juxtaposition of the gritty street life he depicts and the gentle music he makes shouldn’t be much of a juxtaposition at all. Half of the singer-songwriter’s debut project, When Smoke Rises, has been released as singles, with music videos capturing the brick and concrete exteriors of Toronto’s Regent Park housing project, where he was born and raised. In the video for “Stay Alive,” a searing portrait of his community and his commitment to it, black and brown men...

Twenty-nine years ago today (May 30, 1992), Billy Ray Cyrus sealed his fate as a bona fide country music star. The singer's debut single, "Achy Breaky Heart," from his freshman album, Some Gave All, landed in the No. 1 spot, where it stayed for five weeks.The Marcy Brothers originally recorded "Achy Breaky Heart" in 1991, under the title "Don't Tell My Heart." The Oak Ridge Boys also planned to record the song but changed their minds when lead singer Duane Allen decided he didn't like some of the lyrics.Allen wasn't the...

B.J. Thomas, the vocalist who mixed the stylish sophistication of a pop crooner and the down-home soul of a country singer on songs like the 1969 smash “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” died Saturday in his Arlington, Texas home after a battle with lung cancer. He was 78. A rep for Thomas confirmed the singer’s death. Thomas’ multi-genre success included major hits on the adult contemporary and Christian music charts, the latter of which would earn him five Grammy Awards and two Gospel Music Association Dove awards. But the...

The best weekend of Garth Brooks' life ended on a very, very sad note. Hours after the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in Washington D.C., a man whose song was instrumental in getting him there died.Dewayne Blackwell wrote many hit songs over many decades, including "Mr. Blue" for the Fleetwoods in 1959, and "I'm Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home" by David Frizzell in 1982. He also co-wrote "Friends in Low Places" with Earl Bud Lee. This song would become Brooks' first single from his No Fences album and remain his most...

A week after Twenty One Pilots released their new album Scaled & Icy, the duo virtually performed the LP’s “Shy Away” on Friday’s Tonight Show. Performing from the same pastel-colored set used in their recent publicity photos, Tyler Joseph, Josh Dun and company ran through Scaled & Icy’s first single, giving fans a preview of what it would sound like when the band eventually gets back on the road. Arriving three years after 2018’s Trench, Scaled and Icy was created largely while Joseph and Dun were in Covid-19 lockdown in their respective...

Seventeen years ago today (May 29, 2004) was a life-altering day for Gretchen Wilson: It was on that date that her debut single, "Redneck Woman," claimed the No. 1 spot on the charts and stayed at the top for an impressive five weeks."Redneck Woman" comes from Wilson's freshman album, Here for the Party, which also soared to the top of the charts and sold more than 5 million units. The song -- which says, "I'm a redneck woman / I ain't no high-class broad / I'm just a product of my raising /...

Mereba contends with war on Azeb, the latest EP from the Spillage Village singer whose sound blends R&B, rap, and folk. The battles she describes could be anything: struggles for peace, for resources, for survival. On “News Come,” a standout on the project, she sounds ready to fight for all three. The hopeful anthem is crafted around the leisurely guitars of Mereba and Sam Hoffman, and made even brighter with electric and acoustic cello. Mereba calmly sings about the urgency of freedom, as if its arrival is imminent and she...