Music

Sunny War first met her friend Zach while busking on Los Angeles' Venice Beach Boardwalk. They were both around 22 years old, and were both talented street musicians who liked to hang out and drink coffee together on their breaks from performing."He was really, really good," War remembers of her old friend. "He played piano and guitar, and sang. You could always tell that something was a little off, but it was really just in the last couple of years that he really went crazy."Zach -- and the complicated relationship War has with...

BTS made their MTV Unplugged debut on Tuesday, where they performed from Seoul, South Korea. The septet — RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook — delivered a five-song acoustic set that included live premieres of songs from 2020’s Be as well as a cover of a Coldplay hit alongside their own Number One hits. They launched their set in a room where they played arcade games and sang Be track “Telepathy,” which marked the first time the band has performed the upbeat song live. “Blue & Grey” was...

Blake Shelton and his fellow The Voice coaches are bringing the '80s back in a new promo video for the show's upcoming 20th season. The musical quartet — Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, John Legend and Nick Jonas — covered Rick Astley's "Together Forever" and its totally '80s music video in fairly spectacular fashion.Between Shelton's slightly-too-big suit, Legend's George Michael-esque getup, Clarkson's sky-high shoulder pads and Jonas' casual, acid-washed Canadian tuxedo, there's a lot going on in this new music video-meets-show promo. The performance portion of the clip pulls quite a bit directly from Astley's...

In 1981, John Prine and his manager launched their own record label to directly serve Prine’s fans. Forty years later, Oh Boy Records is still in business, carrying on the musical legacy of Prine, who died last year due to Covid-19, and the artists he inspired. Oh Boy Records marks its anniversary in 2021 with a series of new projects, including a centerpiece documentary about the label’s origin and history. Via candid archival footage, Prine himself appears in the trailer for the film, talking about how he came up with...

Macy Martin's single "Stupid" is all about letting go in a relationship -- a carefree, mid tempo-love song -- and now, it's got a colorful music video to match. Press play above to watch; it's premiering exclusively on The Boot.Martin filmed her "Stupid" music video in Nashville in late 2020. The song, she says, is an acknowledgement that everyone acts at least a little out of character when they're in the "honeymoon phase" of a new relationship. "We lose our inhibitions and fall into a fever dream of sorts," she describes.""Stupid" is...

Justin Bieber added an electronic glow to “Lonely,” his stripped-down collaboration with Benny Blanco, during Spotify’s virtual Stream On event. The singer also played his other recent singles “Holy” and “Anyone” for the three-song set, which premiered Monday.  “I want to thank my friends at Spotify for asking me to perform exclusively at Stream On,” Bieber said in a statement. “This event is a first, so I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before with this special version of Lonely. I’m always inspired by creativity, and Spotify Stream On shared...

The last time country fans heard from Chase Bryant, he was apologizing for letting success go to his head. It's now clear that there was much more to the story. The "Little Bit of You" hitmaker is opening up about his attempted suicide, the miracle that saved him and his last three years, in hopes he can save other people's lives.Talking to People, Bryant — who had two Top 10 hits on Red Bow Records in 2014 and 2015 — shares how he drove to a Nashville gas station with a...

Colombian superstar Maluma has announced a United States tour that will tentatively kick off this fall. The arena trek — which is arguably one of the biggest to be announced since the Covid-19 pandemic brought touring to a halt last year — is scheduled to start September 2nd at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California. It will wrap on October 24th at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. In a statement, per Billboard, Maluma said: “I couldn’t be more excited to announce my return to the concert stage. It’s what...

To country music fans, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter are outlaw royalty. To Brianna Harness, they're the great-grandparents who hired a bunch of pretend princesses and threw her a big birthday party when she was a toddler."Growing up, it was pretty normal ... We had our own struggles, our own problems. And with Waylon passing away when I was two, three years old, I don't have too much of a memory of him -- I just have, like, a whole bunch of pictures," says Harness, now in her early 20s....

Green Day dropped their new song “Here Comes the Shock” — the band’s first new music since their 2020 LP Father of All… — as part of the National Hockey League’s Lake Tahoe outdoors game programming Saturday. For the track’s accompanying video, the band teamed with “Punk Rock Aerobics” co-founder Hilken Mancini, who created a two-and-a-half-minute routine filled with air guitars, skanks, and circle-running especially for “Here Comes the Shock.” “We got the numbers/Gonna rumble in the street/We’re screaming bloody murder/We’re gonna take it to the grave,” Billie Joe Armstrong...

Ashley McBryde was far and away the standout performer at the 2021 CRS New Faces of Country Music showcase in Nashville on Friday (Feb. 19). McBryde delivered a top-notch, energetic performance that balanced the journeyman nature of her particular brand of craftsmanship with an indefinable star quality that can't be faked.The 37-year-old singer-songwriter took the stage on the final day of the annual Country Radio Seminar to perform virtually for the gathering of radio executives, record label reps, managers, publicists and journalists who usually congregate in Nashville near the beginning...

A bunch of buddies — including Saturday Night Live host Regé-Jean Page — bond over Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” while shooting pool in an SNL sketch centered on the smash single. In the sketch — likely a scene from a post-Covid pool hall — Page’s character selects Rodrigo’s song on the jukebox, at first confusing his friends, even though they’ve all secretly heard the song already and are too embarrassed to admit they love it. “Sounds like some girl singing in her room over her piano,” Pete Davidson’s character says....

Feb. 21, 2004, was a big day for Toby Keith: It was on that date, 17 years ago today, that his single "American Soldier," from his multi-platinum Shock'n Y'all album, soared to the top of the charts."American Solider," which was the second single from Shock'n Y'all, was Keith's 13th No. 1 tune. But while reaching the peak position on the charts was nothing new for the Oklahoma native, he admits that this particular song was special to him.Dreamworks"It's written for all the times that I get to meet the troops...