Image Credit: Tim Roney/Getty Images
If iPhones weren’t everywhere I turned, I’d think it’s actually 1995.
First, all five Backstreet Boys reunite, then Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, and New Kids on the Block go on tour. Before I can turn around, LL Cool J is rapping at the Grammy’s, and now I hear that it isn’t completely crazy to think Oscar-nominated Mark Wahlberg could once again send around some “Good Vibrations” as the Grammy-nominated Marky Mark.
READ FULL STORY »
Adam Rose/FOX
This Thursday, Fox’s Glee hits yet another milestone with the cast performing their 500th(!) song, “Shout” from the classic 1978 comedy Animal House.
The episode, titled “Girls (And Boys) on Film” and airing at a special 9:30pm time, finds New Directions assigned to perform their favorite songs from movies, including “Footloose” from Footloose and “Unchained Melody” from Ghost. For you Gleeks who can’t wait, EW is exclusively premiering ”Shout.” Listen to rollicking track below: READ FULL STORY »
Two women plus Third Man equals some sweet music: Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard has teamed up with Ruby Amanfu (a.k.a. Jack White’s better half on “Love Interruption”) to cover Memphis Minnie’s classic “When My Man Comes Home” for White’s Third Man records, and you can hear it exclusively here.
The duet was recorded as part of Third Man’s “Blue Series”, which includes past alumni from Beck and Tom Jones to rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson and the Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes. It’s one of two songs the pair made together — the other one being a cover of “I Wonder” by Rodriguez, the subject of the recent Oscar-nabbing doc Searching for Sugar Man — and they’ll both be released as a vinyl single on March 12.
Take a listen to Howard and Amanfu’s Memphis Minnie cover below:
Image Credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images
In a new interview in Rolling Stone this week, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong opens up about his addiction to alcohol and prescription medication—and the series of incidents that put him in rehab seven months ago.
If you recall, Armstrong ran into some undisclosed health issues while playing shows in Europe, and a week later had an angry meltdown on stage during the iHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas. According to Armstrong, all those incidents snowballed into what ended up being his break point. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Simon Emmett; RUKES
The Scottish producer-wunderkind Calvin Harris is set to release his Ellie Goulding collab “I Need Your Love” as the next single from his breakthrough album 18 Months; you can check out a remix by rising London dubstepper Jacob Plant exclusively here.
When Harris isn’t trapped inside a neon matrix at the VMAs, he’s working pretty much nonstop at the business of being an international superstar, producing, and touring (he still has a handful of spring dates coming up Stateside).
And he recently took home a Grammy for Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” and his own Florence Welch-featuring single is nearing platinum status, so it stands to reason that this Goulding number will be whomp-whomping soon through a subwoofer near you.
Check out the official Jacob Plant remix of Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding’s “I Need Your Love” below:
Image Credit: Floria Sigismondi
David Bowie is full of surprises. A few weeks ago, he announced that his first new album in 10 years was imminent. Though The Next Day wasn’t due to hit stores until Tuesday, March 12, the album is currently streaming on iTunes in its entirety.
The official EW review of David Bowie’s The Next Day is below, and a version of it will be appearing in the magazine on newsstands next Friday, March 8.
David Bowie
The Next Day
ROCK (Iso/Columbia)
Early in his career, David Bowie realized that reinvention came naturally to him, and soon the spirit of change became his prime persona. Through all of his alternate guises — space alien, drugged-out cartoon, machine-obsessed private detective, guy who just discovered the Pixies — he’s maintained a spectacularly consistent inconsistency, and while not all of it has worked, at least we always knew that another character was following right behind.
For the last decade, however, his chief guise has been Invisible Man. Following turn-of-the-last-century releases Heathen and Reality (which found him reuniting with classic-era producer Tony Visconti), he suddenly disappeared, cutting short a tour, ignoring music, and making only occasional appearances amidst rumors of failing health so persistent that the Flaming Lips recorded a song called “Is David Bowie Dying?” In the meantime, pop stars like Lady Gaga and Beyoncé got rich crafting their own evil twins and countless bands co-opted Bowie’s fashionable bohemian androgyny. READ FULL STORY »
You don’t know it yet, but you very well might find yourself yelling “Mon the Biff!” a lot in the months to come.
That’s the phrase fans of the Scottish alt-rockers Biffy Clyro are prone to shout during the band’s live shows. And after hearing their unplugged version of “The Rain,” available exclusively below, you’ll see why.
The group — singer Simon Neil and brothers James and Ben Johnston — are perhaps best known Stateside for opening several Foo Fighters tour dates, but they’re stadium-sized stars in the U.K.; their latest album album Opposites, their sixth, recently debuted at No. 1 there in its opening week. (The album is set to his the U.S. on March 12; you can preorder it on iTunes here.)
And if you can’t see them at their headlining gigs at the massive Reading and Leeds festivals in England this year, you will be able to catch them at Coachella this April; the group will also begin supporting the British mega-rockers Muse on a North American tour starting that same month.
All of which is to say, get used to Biffy Clyro. Take a listen to their acoustic version of “The Rain” below:
Looking to delve deeper into this year’s crop of on-everybodies’-mixtapes bands? Atlas Genius is an excellent starting point (and not just because they’re so close to the beginning of the alphabet.)
For the second entry in our new monthly Let the Buzz Begin! video series, Australian sibling act Atlas Genius dropped by EW HQ to say hello and give us a special acoustic performance of their breakthrough single “Trojans.”
The band, fresh off the release of their debut album When It Was Now, are currently embarking on a jaunt through North America, including their first-ever stop at SXSW this spring.
Check out EW’s conversation with brothers Michael and Keith Jeffery (pictured above), and an unplugged performance of their single “Trojans” in the videos below:
Image Credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
This morning, we received a one-sentence e-mail stating the current status of one of the members of a seminal ’90s alt-rock band.
The message, in its entirety: “Stone Temple Pilots have announced they have officially terminated Scott Weiland.”
Naturally, that immediately conjured images of the T-100 taking out Weiland in a blaze of liquid-metal glory. (Or as one EW music staffer commented on the brevity of the statement, “This reads like a Hunger Games cannon going off.” Yes, we work at a general entertainment magazine.)
In the meantime, Weiland has become the David Lee Roth of grunge, minus the split kicks. Despite the fact that he’s currently on a solo tour playing STP’s first two albums in their entirety, he has insisted for months that the band was not breaking up. Rumors did circulate about the end of Weiland’s latest tenure, but the singer told Rolling Stone that it was all hearsay.
“STP has not broken up,” Weiland told the magazine in December. “I haven’t quit. I haven’t been fired. We’re talking right now about when we want to tour next. No one has ever fired anybody in STP.”
Weiland has always been the band’s most important and central member, though his presence, notably, has been problematic throughout the course of the group’s history. READ FULL STORY »
The boys from fun. have established themselves as a great contemporary video band. Having already introduced narratives involving Civil War reenactments and drinking with dudes from MTV, there was clearly only one thread left: the story of a sad suitcase.
Such is the story of the new video for “Why Am I The One,” a sweet, melancholy ballad from fun.’s hugely successful album Some Nights. Watch as the dudes dress in fancy suits and look wistful while their precious cargo gets tossed all over creation, lost in a poker game, and strapped to the back of a motorcycle. For a music video about a valise that sort of looks like it has a face, it’s surprisingly compelling.
Give it a spin below. READ FULL STORY »
