Search results for Martin Smith

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Will Smith to debut new music at 2024 BET Awards

Will Smith has been confirmed to perform at the 2024 BET Awards.

The actor’s attendance and performance at the upcoming awards show was confirmed on social media last night (June 24). It will be Smith’s first time attending the awards show since 2005.

Per a report from Variety, the actor will be performing an unreleased original track, though little else is known about his performance. The 2024 BET Awards are due to take place on Sunday, June 30.

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Best know musically for ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’, ‘Men In Black’ and ‘Wild Wild West’, Will Smith has yet to release an album since 2005. His most recent solo release comes in the form of 2017’s ‘Get Lit’, while his most recent output was the 2020 Joyner Lucas cut ‘Will (Remix)’. Smith most recently joined J Balvin onstage at Coachella in April, where he performed ‘Men In Black’.

Earlier this month, singer-songwriter Teddy Swims revealed to NME that he recently recorded a song with his “hero” Will Smith. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with it and can’t confirm anything, but just being with him and learning knowledge and wisdom from someone who’s been through it all was crazy,” he said. “He’s the sweetest guy ever,” the Atlanta-born soul-pop singer-songwriter added.

In a two-star review of Bad Boys: Ride Or Die for NME, James Mottram wrote: “Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are on the beat once more with Bad Boys: Ride or Die – a noisy, unfunny fourth instalment that’s only made endurable by some raucous action scenes.”

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Robert Smith announces listening party to celebrate 30th anniversary of The Cure’s ‘Wish‘

Robert Smith has announced a Twitter listening party for the 30th anniversary of The Cure‘s ninth studio album ‘Wish’.

  • READ MORE: The best things we’ve learned from Tim Burgess’ Twitter ‘listening parties’

The listening party will take place on Friday November 25 at 11pm GMT under the hashtag #WishListeningParty.

Smith will lead the Tweet-along commentary of their classic album backstage following the band’s upcoming show at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome in the Netherlands.

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Released in 1992, the record features singles ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘High’ and ‘A Letter To Elise’. It reached Number One on the UK albums chart, and Number Two on the Billboard 200 in the US.

The Charlatans frontman and host Tim Burgess told NME: “I went to see The Cure in 1984 and it remains one of my favourite ever gigs. I fell in love with ‘Wish’ when it came out and still play it on a regular basis – amazing that it was released 30 years ago.

“To have Robert Smith hosting a Listening Party is a dream come true – to think that he’s doing it in their dressing room, after a show is mind-blowing.”

This summer, The Cure announced a 30th anniversary reissue of ‘Wish’, containing 24 previously-unreleased tracks.

The band kicked off their 2022 world tour in Latvia last month, debuting new tracks ‘Alone’ and ‘Endsong’.

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The tracks were followed by further debuts including ‘And Nothing Is Forever’, ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ and ‘A Fragile Thing’ offering a sense of what to expect from forthcoming new album ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, which Smith said was “almost finished” back in May.

The Cure are currently on their UK and European tour – you can find remaining tour dates below and purchase remaining tickets here.

NOVEMBER 2022
14 – ARKEA ARENA, Bordeaux, France
15 – ZENITH, Nantes, France
17 – FESTHALLE, Frankfurt, Germany
18 – ZENITH, Strasbourg, France
19 – ST JAKOBSHALLE, Basel, Switzerland
21 – HANS-MARTIN-SCHLEYER-HALLE, Stuttggart, Germany
22 – LANXESS ARENA, Cologne, Germany
23 – SPORTPALEIS, Antwerp, Belgium
25 – ZIGGO DOME, Amsterdam, Netherlands
27 – STADE, Lievin, France
28 – ACCOR ARENA, Paris, France

DECEMBER 2022
01 – 3ARENA, Dublin, Ireland
02 – SSE, Belfast, Northern Ireland
04 – OVO HYDRO, Glasgow, Scotland
06 – FIRST DIRECT ARENA, Leeds, England
07 – UTILITA ARENA, Birmingham, England
08 – MOTORPOINT ARENA, Cardiff, Wales
11 – THE SSE ARENA, Wembley, London, England

Speaking about what to expecting from the forthcoming new album, Smith told NME: “Essentially it’s a 12 track album.”

He continued: “It’s there, it’s kind of half-mixed and half-finished. It’s a weird thing. It’s kind of evolved over the last two years. It hasn’t always been a good thing to have been left alone with it. You pick at it, like picking at seams, and everything falls apart.

“It’ll be worth the wait. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done, but then I would say that. I’m not doing an Oasis when I say that, ‘IT’S THE BEST FOOKIN’ ALBUM’. A lot of the songs are difficult to sing, and that’s why it’s taken me a while.”

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Sam Smith announces pair of shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall

Sam Smith has announced a pair of shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall next month, marking their first headline gigs since 2019.

Although the British pop star has appeared at numerous festivals and promotional events since 2019, their last tour concluded in Cape Town in April of that year.

  • READ MORE: Sam Smith – ‘Love Goes’ review: pop balladeer leans even further into heartbreak than before

Smith will perform at the iconic London venue on October 21 and 22, with a setlist featuring some of their biggest hits and previewing material from their forthcoming new album. Fans can gain access to a special ticket pre-sale by pre-ordering the star’s new album directly from their online store before 4pm BST tomorrow (September 21).

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Those who gain access will receive codes at 6pm BST, with the pre-sale opening at 9am BST on Thursday (22). Remaining tickets will then go on general sale at 9am BST on Friday (23). You can find more information and purchase tickets here.

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A post shared by Sam Smith (@samsmith)

A title, release date, tracklist and album cover have yet to be revealed for Smith’s new album, which is expected to be officially announced soon.

Meanwhile, Smith is also set to release their new single ‘Unholy’ – the new album’s lead single – on Thursday. The track was created in collaboration with producers ILYA (Max Martin, Ariana Grande), Blake Slatkin (Lizzo), Cirkut (Nicki Minaj, The Weeknd), Omer Fender (Lil Nas X, The Kid Laroi) and Smith’s long-time collaborator Jimmy Napes.

Pop star Kim Petras will also feature on the new track and the pair began teasing the track on TikTok earlier this summer. In one video posted to the app, Petras lip-synced along to the song, while Smith twerked in the background.

Previously, Smith shared the single ‘Love Me More’ back in April, which they described at the time as “the perfect way to begin this new chapter” of their career. “It’s taken a lifetime to express this type of joy and honesty in my music. I’m so happy to have you all here with me. I hope you love it…” they continued.

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Martin Scorsese’s film about the New York Dolls’ David Johansen will premiere next month

Martin Scorsese’s new documentary film about the New York Dolls’ David Johansen will premiere next month, it’s been announced.

  • READ MORE: “There’s no end in sight”: what we learned from Martin Scorsese’s BBC short film about lockdown

The documentary film, called Personality Crisis: One Night Only, will get its first airing at the New York Film Festival.

The film focusses around a one-of-a-kind 2020 performance by New York Dolls frontman David Johansen.

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“Then and now, David’s music captures the energy and excitement of New York City,” Scorsese said in a statement about the film following its initial announcement.

The New York Dolls onstage in 1974 – CREDIT: Press

“I often see him perform, and over the years I’ve gotten to know the depth of his musical inspirations. After seeing his show… at the Café Carlyle, I knew I had to film it because it was so extraordinary to see the evolution of his life and his musical talent in such an intimate setting. For me, the show captured the true emotional potential of a live musical experience.”

Scorsese has co-directed the feature with David Tedeschi and worked with cinematographer Ellen Kuras (American Utopia) to film the gig, which took place in 2020 at New York City’s Café Carlyle.

As well as the concert, the film will feature archival interviews and more. According to Rolling Stone the new film will cover Johansen’s upbringing on Staten Island, his move to New York’s East Village as a teenager in the late 1960s and his time in the New York Dolls, as well as his work in the 1980s under the alter-ego Buster Poindeter and his time with the band The Harry Smiths.

The Cure’s Robert Smith and Simon Gallup accept Icon Award at The Ivors

The Cure’s Robert Smith and Simon Gallup picked up the Icon Award at tonight’s (May 19) Ivor Novello awards in London.

The frontman and the bassist have been part of the band’s lineup since 1978 and 1979 respectively, helping to turn the band into one of the UK’s most beloved and iconic indie acts.

During the ceremony at Grosvenor House tonight, Smith and Gallup were presented the Icon Award by their long-time agent, Martin Hopewell from Primary Talent. “The best part of half a century ago when I was a young whippersnapper booking agent, I was persuaded to get down to a small hotel in Crawley, of all places, to see a new and even younger band called The Cure, who were playing halfway up the bill of some sort of talent night,” Hopewell reminisced as he introduced the musicians.

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“I wish I could say it was some kind of blinding light, road to Damascus experience but nevertheless… when we met up on the street outside afterwards, I agreed to start helping them get some gigs and that makes one of very few decisions I’ve made in my life that I don’t want to go back in time and give myself a clip around the ear for making.”

Robert Smith Simon Gallup The Cure
The Cure’s Robert Smith and Simon Gallup CREDIT: David Wolff – Patrick/Redferns

Noting that The Cure had gone from playing “the smallest clubs and colleges to the biggest arenas and festivals”, he celebrated their “famously epic live shows and timeless songs that have inspired countless other artists and embedded themselves into the lives of millions of people”.

Hopewell continued to highlight the friendship between Smith and Gallup, while also praising The Cure as a whole for their “unique” artistry. “There’s never been any knee-jerking to changing friends or any pretence to be anything other than what they are,” he said. “It’s possibly because of that honesty that the music they make has continued to make a real connection with an ever-changing audience. Without wanting to break any trade secrets, these two icons happen to be really nice chaps, which also goes for the rest of the band.

“I’ve been a very lucky boy to be involved in Robert and Simon’s story. In fact, it’s been one of the great privileges of my life to work with them for the last four-and-a-half decades. I’m touched, chaps, that you’ve asked me to be here and more than a little bit proud to present you with the PRS For Music Icon Award.”

Collecting the award, Smith thanked the band’s agent, along with the PRS and the Ivors Academy. “It means a lot to the two of us, actually, it’s a real honour,” he added. “Thank you to all the people who’ve helped us over the years and have been involved in turning our songs into real songs. It’s been the best thing you can imagine.”

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Simon Gallup Robert Smith The Cure
The Cure’s Simon Gallup and Robert Smith in 1989 CREDIT: Georges De Keerle/Getty Images

Speaking to NME backstage after their win, Smith said: “It is a strange one. I was thinking about it when we were walking up to collect the award – it felt strange to be leaving the other three at the table. We got an NME Award a couple of years back for Best Festival Headliner. That meant a lot because we don’t often get recognised for that side of what we do live, but this is completely different.

“For me, it’s really lovely that Simon is up there with me. It’s criminal really, because he’s been there all the time.”

Last August, Gallup announced that he had left The Cure, citing feeling “fed up of betrayal” as his reason for leaving. However, in October, he told a fan on social media that he was still a member of the band. The bassist appeared on stage with Smith at the Ivors tonight, although he did not make an acceptance speech.

Meanwhile, The Cure have been working on new material, as Smith confirmed to NME at the BandLab NME Awards 2022 in March. “I’ve been working on two Cure albums and one of them is finished,” the frontman said. “Unfortunately, it’s the second one that’s finished. [On the other] I’ve got to do four vocals, and there are 10 songs on each album. We’re mixing next month on April 1, so I’ve got three weeks left.”

Smith also revealed the title of the new album. “I know what it’s called – it’s called ‘Songs Of A Lost World’. It’s got artwork, it’s got a running order, it’s almost done! They’re so slow because of vinyl, but it might come in September. I’d rather it just came out. I can’t stand the anticipation.”

When asked about the sound of both of the upcoming records, he replied: “Well the first Cure album is relentless doom and gloom. It’s the doomiest thing that we’ve ever done. The second one is upbeat, and my [solo] one won’t be out until next year.

“I have to keep revisiting it. It’s a thing I’ve wanted to do for so many years. I realise I’ve only got one shot at doing it, so I’ve now started to add real instruments and acoustic instruments, whereas this time two years ago it was literally just feedback – but I’ve kind of grown a bit disenchanted with it. I’d listened to it like three times and I think it’s rubbish.”

Smith gave NME an update on the new records backstage at tonight’s Ivor Novello Awards. “We walked on [stage at the Ivors today] to a bit of new music, actually,” he said. “Hopefully no one recorded it!”

The frontman continued to say that the new material would be “worth the wait”. “I think [‘Songs Of A Lost World’ is] the best thing we’ve done, but then I would say that,” he said. “I’m not doing an Oasis when I say that, ‘IT’S THE BEST FOOKIN’ ALBUM’. A lot of the songs are difficult to sing, and that’s why it’s taken me a while.”

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Chvrches say Robert Smith was always their first-choice collaborator, “living or dead”

Chvrches have spoken about their new single collaboration with The Cure‘s Robert Smith, revealing that he was always their top choice among musicians alive or dead.

  • READ MORE: Chvrches – “Are the machines evil, or are we?”

The band, who are this week’s NME cover stars, said that the slim chance their hero would agree to sing on one of their songs was a pinch-me moment in their decade-long career.

Singer Lauren Mayberry recalled to NME that she and bandmate Martin Doherty got drunk on wine one Halloween and received an email from Smith containing his vocal recordings for what would become their collaborative track, ‘How Not To Drown’.

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She described the moment as “the most Cure-lore thing to ever happen”, since it fell on arguably the gothiest day of the year.

chvrches robert smith the cure new single how not to drown
Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry and The Cure’s Robert Smith. CREDIT: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images, Rick Kern/Getty Images

Doherty said that he could have been offered “a collaboration with anyone living or dead – fucking Prince, fucking Beethoven” and he “would still choose Robert Smith”.

“It’s mental!” Mayberry continued of the band’s luck securing a feature by the goth rock icon, also enthusing about her band’s 10-year longevity. “When I have to fill in my job on a form, I think about this. I never thought I would get to do this,” she said.

Doherty, meanwhile, said there are “occasional moments, like the Robert thing” or playing before New Order at Glastonbury in 2016, that “[make you] go: ‘Fucking hell! In 2012, I was so broke, I was ready to give up on being a professional musician’.”

Elsewhere in the interview Mayberry said the lyrics of the collaboration are about “the only time I ever thought about quitting the band”.

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Chvrches’ fourth album, ‘Screen Violence’, arrives on August 27 via Emi (UK)/Glassnote (US).

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Chvrches announce new album ‘Screen Violence’, share ‘How Not To Drown’ with The Cure’s Robert Smith

Chvrches have shared details of their new album ‘Screen Violence’ and released their song collaboration with The Cure‘s Robert Smith, ‘How Not To Drown’.

  • READ MORE: From the archive – Chvrches on the “avalanche of sound” on their new album

The Scottish trio’s fourth record arrives on August 27 via Emi (UK)/Glassnote (US) and is their first since 2018’s ‘Love Is Dead‘. ‘How Not To Drown‘ is the second single taken from the new album following April’s ‘He Said She Said‘.

As per press material, the single with one of the band’s musical heroes explores the concept of staying conscious when you drown. Listen below.

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Chvrches discuss news of the album, which you can pre-order here, and the collaboration with Smith on today’s (June 2) The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music.

‘Screen Violence’ was originally conceived as a name for the band. The new album, which was recorded almost entirely between Glasgow and LA, will delve into screen violence in three main forms – on screen, by screens and through screens – with songs addressing feelings of loneliness, disillusionment and fear, among other emotions.

Singer Lauren Mayberry said in a statement about the record: “I think for me it was helpful to go into the process with the idea that I could write something escapist almost. That felt freeing initially, to have concepts and stories to weave your own feelings and experiences through but in the end, all the lyrics were definitely still personal.”

Bandmate Martin Doherty added: “To me, the screen aspect was a bit more literal. When we were making the record, it was like half of our lives were lived through screens. What began as a concept was now a lifeline.”

Mayberry previously said that the album has “definitely got the Chvrches DNA” but that the songs featured on it couldn’t “slot into any of the first three records”.

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As for Smith, he revealed towards the end of 2020 that he had spent the year working on both The Cure’s new album – set to be their first since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream’ – as well as his own solo album.

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Watch Kelly Clarkson cover Aerosmith’s ‘Dream On’

Kelly Clarkson channelled her inner rock star when she performed Aerosmith‘s ‘Dream On’ as part of the Kellyoke segment on Monday night’s edition of The Kelly Clarkson Show.

The inaugural American Idol winner played with the famous falsetto bridge originally sung by Aerosmith frontman and former American Idol judge Steven Tyler, belting out a sustained high note in place of a repeated melodic bend.

Clarkson smashed the 1973 hit song out of the park, closing to rapturous applause from her in-house audience.

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Watch Clarkson’s rendition below:

It’s not the first time Clarkson has added her touch to a famous song. Last year, the ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ singer made the news for her controversial cover of the Christmas classic ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ with John Legend. She received criticism for altering the song’s lyrics to reflect the #MeToo movement.

Upon the release of Legend and Clarkson’s version, the daughter of original singer Dean Martin, Deena, hit back saying the alterations “absolutely” offended her.

Prior to that, Clarkson’s other cover songs had been well received. She previously reimagined Lizzo‘s ‘Juice’ and has performed an acoustic version of Miley Cyrus‘ hit ‘Wrecking Ball’.

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Clarkson’s last studio albums were ‘Meaning of Life’, released in 2017, and its predecessor, 2015’s ‘Piece By Piece’.

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Martin Scorsese to direct new documentary about New York Dolls’ David Johansen

Martin Scorsese will direct a new documentary about David Johansen, the musician best known as frontman of legendary punk band New York Dolls.

  • Read More: “There’s no end in sight”: what we learned from Martin Scorsese’s new BBC short film about lockdown

Showtime Documentary Films announced today (July 7) that Scorsese will co-direct with Dave Tedeschi, with whom he’s also worked on documentaries such as the Bob Dylan film No Direction Home and The Rolling Stones-focused Shine A Light.

According to Rolling Stone the new film will cover Johansen’s upbringing on Staten Island, his move to New York’s East Village as a teenager in the late 1960s and his time in the New York Dolls, as well as his work in the 1980s under the alter-ego Buster Poindeter and his time with the band The Harry Smiths.

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It will also make use of live footage Scorsese filmed earlier this year, during a performance at Café Carlyle in New York.

“I’ve known David Johansen for decades, and his music has been a touchstone ever since I listened to the Dolls when I was making Mean Streets,” Scorsese said. “Then and now, David’s music captures the energy and excitement of New York City. I often see him perform, and over the years I’ve gotten to know the depth of his musical inspirations.

“After seeing his show last year at the Café Carlyle, I knew I had to film it because it was so extraordinary to see the evolution of his life and his musical talent in such an intimate setting. For me, the show captured the true emotional potential of a live musical experience.”

In May, meanwhile, a short film by Scorsese about the coronavirus lockdown, premiered on BBC Two’s Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard show.

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Tyra Banks & Boyfriend Louis Bélanger-Martin Are "Very Much In Love"

Good for Tyra.

It's been some time since Tyra Banks has been linked to anyone on the romantic front. The top model has been linked to a number of known faces over the years of her career such as Will Smith, Seal, Jonn Singelton and more. Page Six now reports that Tyra's new man, Canadian businessman Louis Bélanger-Martin, are still going strong. 

Tyra Banks & Boyfriend Louis Bélanger-Martin Are "Very Much In Love"
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images 

According to the publication, the duo has been dating for over a year and is said to be "pretty happy." Apparently, when he isn't travelling for work, he's always by Tyra's side and even her friends are all aware of her new love since she was “very quick to introduce him as her man.” The couple was recently spotted at the TCL Chinese Theatre for the premiere of Bad Boys For Life in Hollywood. 

Their first public outing together was in October of last year when they were seen having a romantic date and later after that, they were reported to have moved in together. 

Tyra has one son with her ex, Erik Asla, named York and previously detailed the struggles she underwent with undergoing in vitro fertilization. "I think I'm lucky, you know, I did it for about a year and a half of IVF and some women do it for years and years and years," she said.

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DJ Khaled Reacts To High Praise From Will Smith After Film Cameo


“Bad Boys For Life” came out today.

Over the past few years, DJ Khaled has turned himself into one of the most recognizable faces in music and he has been able to manifest his newfound fame into a plethora of different endeavors. Whether it be music, TV, or shoes, Khaled can be seen doing anything and everything. His latest venture involves something near and dear to his heart. Of course, Khaled is from Miami which has been the backdrop for the Bad Boys movies with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Today, Bad Boys For Life came out and Khaled got to play a pivotal role in it all.

Khaled helped curate the soundtrack for the movie and he even had a small cameo. Recently Smith went out of his way to praise Khaled saying “Fearless and relentless. Khaled is both of those, that type of energy is the energy that cuts through. You can’t be quiet about it you got to lean on it at all times.” 

Khaled seemingly took great joy in those words as he took to his Instagram account and shouted out Smith before urging his fans to check out the film. The infamous record producer also showed off a behind the scenes look from the film and he seems to be quite happy as he’s interrogated by Smith’s character.

Let us know in the comments below if you saw the movie and if so, what did you think?

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Martin Lawrence & Tisha Campbell Have "Nothing But Love" For Each Other Despite Lawsuit

Martin and Tisha are "all good."

In a recent interview with GQ, star of Bad Boys For Life, Martin Lawrence, addressed the rumours about him and his Martin co-star, Tisha Campbell. Martin was wildly popular and aired for five seasons, so when it cane to an abrupt end, fans were confused. At the time, it was rumoured that Tisha, who played Gina, had filed a lawsuit against Martin for sexual harassment in 1997. Martin responded, indicating that, "none of that was true. It was all a lot of bullsh*t... We don't need to talk about something that just didn't happen. So I just decided to walk away from the show. I just decided to end it. People said that I got canceled, but that wasn't the case. I decided to just leave the show." However, he added, "I love Tisha. I’ve seen her then and now, now and then, always with nothing but love. I have nothing but love for her, and I always have."

It looks like the comedian was adamant that the last part of his comments about the whole ordeal was crystal clear to everyone, as he took to Instagram to further express his love for Tisha. Posting a photo of the two of them from back in their Martin days, he wrote, "Regardless of the past or any misrepresentation of it In the press, I have nothin but love for Tisha then and now. We are good and always will be! #teammartymar #yougogirl." The post received plenty of love, including a response from Tisha herself. "YOU GO BOY My fam fo life! ❤️❤️❤️," she commented, indicating that the feelings are mutual between them. Martin is currently starring in the third instalment of the Bad Boys franchise with Will Smith called Bad Boys For Life.

Tisha revealed on The Talk that she was "actually kind of shocked" by Martin's comments in the GQ interview. "I can’t go into much detail about the past because there was a confidentiality agreement, so the gag order says no," she revealed. "I hit him up. He called me within a minute … He was like, 'Don’t read into what it is, there’s a lot of people that’s trying to bring up the past, and trying to make it news today. But, you know T, we’re good. I love you and I love your family.'" Tisha repeats that she isn't "going to go into details" and wants to "respect his privacy" as well as hers. " I will say, by the end of it, it was nothing but laughter and healing," she revealed. "And I got a chance to experience that. And I’m so glad we’re in a good place right now." In the lawsuit, she accused Martin of "repeated and escalating sexual harassment, sexual battery and violent threats." Martin denied the allegations, and they ultimately settled out of court.

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Martin Lawrence Reacts To Kendrick Lamar Walking Out Of Interview Over "Martin"


You better know yours 1990s sitcoms when talking to K-Dot.

Anyone who’s hoping to sit down with Kendrick Lamar better know who Martin Lawrence is or the rapper will cut the interview short. As Martin and Will Smith prepare for the release of Bad Boys for Life this Friday, the two accomplished actors have been actively hitting the press circuit. Typically, the longtime friends are featured in interviews together, but Martin recently hit up The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon solo.

While on the late-night talk show, Martin revisited some memories including his time as a boxer and how he once worked alongside Salt-N-Pepa at Sears. Fallon also picked Martin’s brain about his sitcom days and what it was like having a hit show in the 1990s. It came up in conversation that Kendrick Lamar is a big-time fan of Martin, so much so that he once walked out of an interview because the host didn’t know about the series.

Fallon played the over-seven-years-old clip for the comedian where the host asked K-Dot what he does after he finishes his live shows. “I go and watch Martin,” Kendrick said. The host asked him to repeat himself. “Martin. Watch Martin, and eat Fruity Pebbles.” She then asked him what “Martin” is and he can’t believe she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Martin. Martin! Martin Lawrence,” he said while trying to jog her memory with a slight impersonation. When she said “I’m not aware, but I know Fruity Pebbles,” Kendrick wasn’t having it and just walked out of the interview. Martin couldn’t help but give a hearty laugh before he said, “That’s the end of her career!” Check out the clip below.

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Will Smith Drops Off "Brand New Funk" Performance On "Sway’s Universe"


Will still got it.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have embarked on their Bad Boys For Life press run, meaning that we’ll have several hilarious interviews from the duo over the next week. Smith and Lawrence stopped by Sway’s Universe to promote the new flick, but the host switched things up on The Fresh Prince. Smith was expecting to talk Bad Boys For Life, but Sway slyly brought up his favorite song that Will ever made, “Brand New Funk.”  The 1988 single was a collaboration with DJ Jazzy Jeff and was featured on the multi-platinum album He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper.

First, Sway starts rapping the single himself before Smith hops in and finishes the lyrics. Then, during the commercial break, Smith ends up lip-synching along to the first verse as the track plays in the background. You can see his energy going up as he continues, and it transforms into Smith rapping the entire second verse in his full Fresh Prince persona. Smith looks like he’s channeling the energy of his teenage self as he’s really enjoying the moment. Hopefully, the good moments last for him. Bad Boys For Life is set to hit theaters on January 17. Are you excited about the threequel? 

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Will Smith Met The Notorious B.I.G. For The First Time On The Same Night That He Died

During his CRWN Interview to promote "Bad Boys For Life," Will Smith revealed an interesting Biggie story from the night he was killed.

Bad Boys For Life is gearing up to be one of the biggest blockbuster films of year, and we're only 10 days in! While fans are sure to enjoy the action-packed blockbuster starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, it's what the latter leading man had to say during last night's TIDAL CRWN Talk to promote the film that had many people gasping, particularly fans of late rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

While the entire hour-long convo at the iconic Apollo Theater was amazing overall — trust us, we were there! — it was when the convo got to the subject of Hip-Hop and Biggie that things got interesting. After Martin revealed a cool tale of his time with the "Juicy" emcee on the set of his wildy popular '90s sitcom, Will took things a step further to reveal that he actually met Biggie for the very first time hours before he was slain on March 9, 1997.

Here's what Will Smith said exactly about his short-yet-memorable encounter with BIG:

"I met Biggie the night he died. I met Biggie at the Soul Train Music Awards like 4 and half hours before he died. I met Biggie, we hung out, we took a picture and all of that. I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and he was dead."

— Will Smith

R.I.P forever, Biggie. Watch the full interview right now below by logging into your TIDAL account:

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Vanessa Hudgens Shares "Dope" Photo From "Bad Boys For Life" Set With Will Smith


“Bad Boys For Life” hits theaters soon.

Bad Boys For Life hits theaters January 16th and so far we’ve been treated to endless teasersbehind the scenes clips and takes from the lead stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. “We hadn’t really done anything in [years] so there was a little concern, you know, how will it be with the chemistry?” Will previously stated when discussing their first moments on set. “But literally the first moment on stage, like, that first moment connecting, it was right back.”

Vanessa Hudgens Shares "Dope" Photo From "Bad Boys For Life" Set With Will Smith
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

We’ve learned that some new faces will be joining the franchise and one is none other than Vanessa Hudgens who stars as detective Kelly. Vanessa has come through to share a photo from the movie that sees her, Will Smith and Charles Melton seemingly raiding a home. “Well this is a dope pic lol @badboys #badboysforlife,” she captioned the image. 

“She’s a new part of the ammo team, which is the new squad that gets brought on to work with Will and Martin and they’re just amazing,” Vanessa told ET of her character. “Martin is such a sweetheart. He’s always just so kind and warm and welcoming and like, tender. … So sweet.”

“And then Will is just like a burst of energy,” she added. “Like, he’s full of life. He’s full of love. They were like, sending gifts to my trailer on the weekly and I was like, this is not normal. This is just too sweet.”

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Top 10 New Christian Songs

The melodies of Christian music serve as guiding lights, offering solace and inspiration to weary souls. From the stirring anthems of CeCe Winans to the introspective ballads of Tenielle Neda, each song in this collection embodies the essence of faith and redemption, inviting listeners on a profound journey of spiritual exploration. Join us as we uncover the melodies that resonate with the human spirit, illuminating the enduring love of God and guiding hearts through life’s trials and triumphs.

1. CeCe Winans – “Come Jesus Come”

Cece Winans‘ song “Come Jesus Come” is a poignant appeal for divine intervention and spiritual salvation. The lyrics reflect a deep yearning for Jesus to return and transform the world, addressing personal and collective struggles. Rooted in the Christian anticipation of the Second Coming, the song calls for healing, justice, and the fulfillment of a promise of a world free from suffering. Personal lines such as “Sometimes I fall to my knees and pray” convey a sense of desperation and a need for divine strength, making the song relatable to those seeking comfort in hardship. The repeated plea “Come Jesus come” emphasizes the urgent desire for a divine presence in a troubled world, highlighting a universal longing for peace and redemption.

2. Ellie Holcomb – “All Of My Days”

Award-winning songwriter Ellie Holcomb has unveiled her new project, “All of My Days,” a Psalms-based album created to provide comfort during challenging times. This collection evolved from her “Memory Mondays” series on social media, where she paired scripture with melodies. Holcomb collaborated with her father, producer Brown Bannister, and musician Jac Thompson to craft seven songs inspired by her favorite Psalms. She aims to capture the raw authenticity and emotional depth found in these scriptures. Alongside the album release, Holcomb’s expanded devotional, “Fighting Words: Expanded Limited Edition,” is available, featuring additional devotionals and new artistic elements. Holcomb will celebrate the release with a performance at the Grand Ole Opry. For more information, visit ellieholcomb.com.

3. Sean Curran – “Led Me To You”

Sean Curran, known for his work with Bellarive and Passion, has released a new single, “Led Me To You.” This song diverges from his typical worship style, leaning more towards CCM pop, which might surprise his fans who appreciate his deeply honest and vulnerable worship music. Despite the song’s somewhat generic feel, Curran’s powerful and emotive vocals continue to stand out. Lyrically, “Led Me To You” reflects on life’s trials and how they lead to finding Jesus, though some may find the repetition and writing less impactful than his previous work. Nonetheless, Curran remains a notable artist in the worship music scene, and his future projects are highly anticipated.

4. Martin Smith – “Garment Of Praise”

Martin Smith, the influential former frontman of Delirious?, has unveiled his latest song, “Garment of Praise,” co-written with Brooke Ligertwood. Drawing inspiration from Isaiah 61, the song speaks of an intangible “garment of praise” that replaces despair with joy and salvation. Smith emphasizes the unique, priceless nature of this heavenly gift, which cannot be bought but is essential for daily spiritual renewal. Reflecting on his personal vulnerabilities and the continuous need for divine help, Smith’s new release underscores his enduring impact on modern worship music and his dedication to conveying messages of faith and hope.

5. Tasha Cobbs – “Leonard Do It Anyway”

Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Grammy Award-winning gospel artist, shares her journey of resilience and faith in her book “Do It Anyway,” with a foreword by Sarah Jakes Roberts. In this inspiring guide, Leonard reveals how embracing challenges and committing to God’s plans, even when they seem impossible, has led to her greatest breakthroughs. Through personal stories of pursuing dreams, adoption, and overcoming hardships like infertility and depression, she provides practical advice for maintaining faith and resilience. Leonard encourages readers to dream big, trust God’s guidance, remember His faithfulness, and not let fear deter them from their miracles, offering a powerful message of hope and perseverance.

6. Alexander Pappas – “A Great Awakening”

Esteemed worship leader and songwriter Alexander Pappas has unveiled his first new song in over a year and a half, titled “A Great Awakening.” This marks his debut solo worship track following his time with Young & Free and Hillsong. The song, which can be streamed and viewed with its official lyric video, is described by Pappas as evoking powerful connections to historic spiritual revivals like Azusa Street and the Jesus People Movement. Pappas, a two-time GRAMMY® nominee known for writing anthems such as “Alive” and “Echo” (Elevation Worship), aims for the song to inspire a deep longing for a new move of God.

7. Peg Luke – “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”

Peg Luke, the Grammy and Emmy nominated artist celebrated for her enchanting flute melodies, unveils her latest musical offering with the release of “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” This deeply emotive single reflects Peg’s personal journey and unwavering commitment to her faith, offering listeners a transcendent experience of spirituality and introspection. With its heartfelt lyrics and captivating melodies, the song showcases Peg’s exceptional talent and profound connection with her audience. As she continues to captivate hearts around the globe, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” stands as proof of Peg’s enduring ability to uplift and inspire through her music.

8. Jeremy Rosado – “Nothing”

Jeremy Rosado, a kingdom-based contemporary Christian music minister and gifted songwriter, delivers a heavenly sound titled “Nothing,” marking a divine offering that resonates with believers. Emphasizing the importance of advancing the kingdom of God through spiritual music, Rosado’s song serves as a powerful tool for uplifting souls and warding off negative influences. With its captivating melody and profound message, “Nothing” encourages listeners to prioritize their faith and share their spiritual experiences with others.

9. Rebecca St. James & for KING + COUNTRY – “You Make Everything Beautiful”

Multi-Platinum and four-time GRAMMY Award-winning duo for KING + COUNTRY, comprising brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone, have unveiled their latest project, “The Inspired By Soundtrack” album, in conjunction with their new family biopic film “UNSUNG HERO,” which hit theaters nationwide via LIONSGATE/ for KING + COUNTRY ENTERTAINMENT. Among the tracks featured on the album is “You Make Everything Beautiful,” for which the official music video is now available. This captivating visual piece features their sister, Rebecca St. James, adding another layer of depth to the poignant melody.

10. Tenielle Neda – “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me”

Tenielle Neda‘s “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me” is a profound testament to the unyielding grace and mercy found in Jesus Christ. With each verse, the lyrics beautifully articulate the believer’s reliance on Christ for joy, righteousness, and freedom. Through moments of weakness and rejoicing, the refrain resounds with unwavering hope, affirming that it is through Christ alone that victory is secured. The song’s emotive melody and stirring refrain echo the believer’s journey from darkness to light, from fear to freedom, culminating in a resounding declaration of faith and gratitude.

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Sheffield makes latest bid to host Eurovision 2023

Sheffield has become the latest city to make a bid for next year’s Eurovision.

  • READ MORE: If Sheffield’s Leadmill – the venue that helped break Arctic Monkeys – goes, we all lose something

Earlier this week, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) confirmed that the BBC will be hosting the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in the UK on behalf of this year’s winners, Ukraine.

Organisers revealed last month that they were in talks with the BBC to bring the event to the UK. The winning country of the annual song competition usually hosts the following year’s event and despite Ukraine’s folk-rap entry Kalush Orchestra topping the table, it was announced earlier this month that the EBU would be looking for a different country to stage the event in 2023 due to the ongoing war with Russia.

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In a lengthy statement, EBU explained the reasons why Ukraine couldn’t host the 2023 event. “The EBU fully understands the disappointment that greeted the announcement that the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest cannot be staged in Ukraine, this year’s winning country,” the statement began.

“The decision was guided by the EBU’s responsibility to ensure the conditions are met to guarantee the safety and security of everyone working and participating in the event, the planning of which needs to begin immediately in the host country.”

Now, Sheffield has become the latest in a series of cities to put a bid in to host the contest following on from Newcastle earlier this month. Up to 17 cities in total are reportedly in talks to host the event, including Leeds and Manchester.

Sheffield City Council said it wanted to host the event “in solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people”.

Councillor Martin Smith, from Sheffield City Council’s economic development and skills committee, said the city was “made for hosting Eurovision” (via the BBC).

“We have the infrastructure, the venues, the hospitality and the transport links. We also have one of the strongest creative and cultural sectors in the country,” he added.

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Sheffield has been twinned with the Ukrainian city of Donetsk since 1956. Smith said Sheffield “stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine”.

He added: “We are putting ourselves forward to host Eurovision 2023 to do its people proud. Music runs through our blood and we put on a good show.”

Eurovision
Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra with their Eurovision trophy. CREDIT: Giorgio Perottino/Getty Images

“We’re exceptionally grateful that the BBC has accepted to stage the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK in 2023,” Martin Österdahl, the Eurovision Song Contest’s Executive Supervisor, said in a statement.

“The BBC has taken on hosting duties for other winning countries on four previous occasions. Continuing in this tradition of solidarity, we know that next year’s Contest will showcase the creativity and skill of one of Europe’s most experienced public broadcasters whilst ensuring this year’s winners, Ukraine, are celebrated and represented throughout the event.”

Ukraine, as the winning country of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, will automatically qualify to the 2023 Grand Final.

Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC added: “It is a matter of great regret that our colleagues and friends in Ukraine are not able to host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Being asked to host the largest and most complex music competition in the world is a great privilege.

“The BBC is committed to making the event a true reflection of Ukrainian culture alongside showcasing the diversity of British music and creativity. The BBC will now begin the process to find a Host City to partner with us on delivering one of the most exciting events to come to the UK in 2023.”

The BBC previously hosted Eurovision in London in 1960, 1963, 1968 and 1977, Edinburgh in 1972, Brighton in 1974, Harrogate in 1982 and Birmingham in 1998. The host city will be chosen in the coming months following a bidding process.

In other news, Sheffield venue The Leadmill announced earlier this year that it’s facing threat of closure next year due to its landlord issuing a notice of eviction.

In March, the team behind the iconic venue announced that it would be closing next year due to its landlord issuing a notice of eviction. In the weeks that followed, it launched an official petition opposing the eviction, while stars from Sheffield and further afield have all shown support for the space.

Over the years the venue has played host to a number of artists who have gone on to have huge success, most notably the Arctic Monkeys – who helped raise over £100,000 for the venue to survive COVID closures last year by raffling off one of Alex Turner‘s guitars.

Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker is one of the numerous artists to have shown his support for the venue, sharing a piece of artwork on Instagram that includes the phrase: “You Can’t Buy The Leadmill.” The print is inspired by a teaser campaign that was used to promote Pulp’s 1995 single ‘Common People’.

 

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Julian Cope Friar Tuck

Rocking out in the margins, Julian Cope has been on a roll in recent years. 2020’s Self Civil War was his finest record in 25 years, and 2022’s England Expectorates was almost as good (bonus points for the melodic nail-bomb of “Cunts Can Fuck Off”). Then came last year’s Robin Hood, without Cope’s name on the packaging, and now Friar Tuck, also mysteriously cloaked. It appears, as all his music has since 1997’s Rite 2, on Cope’s own Head Heritage label (a vinyl edition is on its way too, his first since 2017’s Drunken Songs): that means home recordings and low production values on one hand, but direct and fluid expression on the other. Basically, he’s free to do what he wants, with all the good and bad that entails.

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Mostly, on Friar Tuck, that leads to an exhilarating 40 minutes. It doesn’t have the madcap range of 1991’s Peggy Suicide or the following year’s Jehovahkill, records on which Cope explored the rough and ready, first-take ethos he’d discovered on 1989’s Skellington and 1990’s Droolian, but these 12 songs are brimming with a breezy vitality that’s not always been present on Cope’s epic releases over the last couple of decades.

If you’ve heard any of those, you know in part what this record sounds like: distorted wah-wah guitars, DI’d electro-acoustic guitars, drum machines and Mellotrons armed with the very tapes used on Tangerine Dream’s Atem. And yet Friar Tuck also reaches out sonically to synth-string funk on “In Spungent Mansions”, chiming, Smiths-esque melancholy on “1066 & All That” and slow-burning drone-rock on the seven-and-a-half-minute “Me And The Jews”.

The Dogshow Must Go On” is the earworm here, a sub-two-minute garage charmer that moves from a krautrock Stooges groove (reminiscent of 1995’s “Queen/Mother”) to the kind of post-punk Cope pursued on his own solo debut, World Shut Your Mouth, 40 years ago. In stupendous and hilarious Cope-ian fashion it references Crufts, the Gurteen Stones, Jesus Christ and “a new people critical of canine love”, but the overall meaning remains thrillingly slippery: is this a rallying pro-dog message from someone who’s owned miniature schnauzers named Smelvin and Iggy Pup? Or is that missing the point entirely? Cope similarly makes no attempt at accessibility on the closing miniature, “Will Sergeant’s Blues”, where he’s surely taking the piss out of Ian McCulloch’s vocal style, even as he sings about Eeyore selling off Thousand Acre Wood for fracking.

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Elsewhere, Cope’s drift is clearer when he looks back from the vantage point of his late sixties. “I didn’t think I’d get to live this long,” he croons on “Done Myself A Mischief”, “I’ve been so many people/And I’ve been just one.” “In Spungent Mansions” takes a look at his Liverpool punk pal Pete Burns, who he always remained fond of: “Exquisite and otherly/And each one on the dole… And I had scabies…” On the organ-driven motorik of “Four Jehovahs In A Volvo Estate” he zooms into a moment from his childhood, when a friend’s religious family moved away, ruining Cope’s Subbuteo championship. “Now I’m stuck trashing my preteen little brother,” he laments. “I hope Jehovah finds your house and causes degradation…”

Yet what of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck? What about this myth has so intrigued Cope, a man usually interested in the more rock-solid monuments of prehistory? “It’s a secret,” he tells Uncut, and clues are few and far between here. “R In The Hood”, like “Eve’s Volcano (Covered In Sin)” put through a dub echo chamber, talks of “peace” in contradictory terms before concluding “everybody wants a peace of the action”. Inside the booklet there’s a map suggesting Tuck came from the north of Scotland, journeyed to Sherwood Forest and ended up heading to the Crusades via “the Jewish Port of Mara Zion” in Cornwall.

Perhaps Cope identifies with the Merry Men’s anti-authoritarian views, as echoed in a poem, “Flibberty Gibbet On The Jibbet”, in the album’s booklet, where he seems to call for the hanging of Liz Truss (then again, Truss would no doubt agree with Hood’s libertarian drive against taxation). Whatever Cope’s motivations, just head to the poem’s opening lines and luxuriate in his continuing garbled genius: after all, no-one else is going to rhyme “Keir Starmer” with “Martin Bramah”.

Q&A

JULIAN COPE

Three albums in three years… are you on a bit of a creative roll?

No, I’m working at a speed that is very comfortable to me. But I am somewhat reborn, yes. These past 30 years, I’ve felt an obligation to make art that is Useful.

“Four Jehovahs In A Volvo Estate” – is this a recollection from your childhood?

Duncan Gray, poor kid. We’re right in the middle of the season and he has to move to the Orkneys because his knobhead parents believe bullshit. Funnily enough, their Volvo estate had screamed stability until they sodded off.

What has specifically inspired the album, musically?

I just try to replicate sonically the current state of my Melted Plastic Brain. So I like Novelty a lot and I live in a world of Intense Melody. So I like to deliver my vocal messages over a heady brew of crusty Brechtian garage rock – wah-guitars, marching drums and two Mellotron 400s filled with tape frames from Tangerine Dream’s 1973 epic Atem. Proper musical necromancy. Three sounds per frame with handwritten descriptions, too. Even have the rare black cases for all three. On Robin Hood, I alluded to them when I played the “Atem” theme during “An Oral History Of Blowjobs”.

INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK

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Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band Still Barking

Hedonism and angst, heartbreak and rapture, bombast and tenderness – rock music does them all with an often startling brilliance. Humour? Not so much. Randy Newman – possibly the whip-smartest, funniest songwriter who has ever lived – was once asked by this reviewer why rock’n’roll has such an under-developed funny bone. His answer was simple: rock stars take themselves far too seriously and want to be remembered for saving the world rather than playing it for laughs. 

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There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course – Frank Zappa managed to be a serious musician and to inject a caustic wit into the Mothers Of Invention’s early records. Yet no rock’n’roll band has ever set out with quite such an endearingly eccentric, consistent and overarching objective to make us laugh as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Over 17 CDs and three DVDs this extravaganza of countercultural hilarity is the ultimate guide to the Bonzos’ unique mix of highbrow surrealism, lowbrow smut, seaside postcard humour with a psychedelic twist, slapstick, vaudeville and mordant satire, all spiced with a delicious silliness that traces its legacy back to The Goon Show and helped to beget Monty Python’s Flying Circus. As such it represents a vast upscaling on the previously definitive Bonzos collection, the 1992 triple disc set Cornology, which was reissued in 2011 as A Dog’s Life and which compiled the five original Bonzos studio albums plus singles and a sprinkling of rarities.

The full title, We Are Normal But We Are Still Barking, was dreamt up by the band’s guitarist, co-writer and unofficial musical director Neil Innes, who passed away during the seven painstaking years it took to put the project together while masters were tracked down, rare and previously unreleased material was sourced and cleared and a court case that threatened to kibosh the entire enterprise was fought and won. Two other Bonzos, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell and Martin “Sam Spoons” Ash, were also sadly lost in action during the long haul.

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The first half of the box consists of the five original albums remastered, with the first two presented in mono and stereo iterations. Needless to say, it’s all essential stuff, but if you were forced to cram the dog’s bollocks on to a single ‘best of’ disc there are certain landmarks we can probably all agree on. From their 1967 debut Gorilla you would need “Cool Britannia”, Viv Stanshall’s unforgettable Elvis impersonation on “Death Cab For Cutie” and the mind-bendingly wonderful “The Intro And The Outro” (“and looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes – nice!”). From the 1968 follow-up The Doughnut In Grany’s Greenhouse you’d want “Can Blue Men Sing The Whites” and the hysterically ridiculous “My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe” and from 1969’s Tadpoles it would be impossible to live without the hit single “I’m The Urban Spaceman”, produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth. When it comes to 1969’s Keynsham you’d surely take Innes’ “You Done My Brain In”, and from 1972’s posthumous Let’s Make Up And Be Friendly the nine-minute “Rawlinson End” – the first official appearance of Stanshall’s famous Sir Henry character – is a must.

After that, though, we take a deeper dive into a cornucopia of outtakes, demos, rehearsal tapes, BBC sessions and concert recordings plus vintage TV and film footage. Not included in the latter is the magnificently bonkers nightclub performance of “Death Cab For Cutie” from The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, which was the wider world’s first exposure to the Bonzos when the film premiered on BBC 1 on Boxing Day, 1967. Never mind, for the rest of the visual content we get over three DVDs is wonderfully evocative, from an improbable performance of “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” on Blue Peter in early 1966 when the Bonzos were still a trad jazz combo to appearances on ITV’s New Faces in 1967 and on BBC 2’s short-lived Colour Me Pop the following year. Perhaps best of all, though, is the disc compiling the Bonzos’ appearances on the anarchic comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set, which launched the TV careers of future Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

The first episode – on which the group performed the music-hall song “Jollity Farm” – was broadcast on ITV on the same day as Magical Mystery Tour premiered, which meant the Bonzos outdid The Beatles that Christmas by appearing on both main channels. As regulars on the weekly show, they went on to perform such favourites as “The Intro And The Outro”, “Death Cab For Cutie” andthe splendid “Harvey The High School Hermit”, which they never recorded, and which features Stanshall and Roger Ruskin Spear debating the respective merits of using cooking fat or porridge as hair gel.

The outtakes expand on the Bonzos’ love of a preposterous cover, first heard on the “Sound Of Music” piss-take on Gorilla, and include an inscrutable take on Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang” and a ridiculously mannered “Blue Suede Shoes”.

Among the demos are numerous songs that never saw the light of day including “The Boiled Ham Rhumba” (“Cat meat, cat meat in your tin, did you once walk around like me?”), “Boo”, a comedic ghost story with references to Macbeth and Hamlet, and the doo-wop pastiche “The Mr Hyde In Me” (“two gins will set him free”).

The concert material suggests the Bonzos’ spontaneous musical mayhem translated sometimes messily to the live stage – or as Legs Larry Smith proudly puts it, their improvs were “never knowingly over-rehearsed”.

A tendency to swap instruments and throw in gratuitously mad deconstructions of tunes such as “I’m For Ever Blowing Bubbles” and the “Dragnet” theme might have been amusing if you were there; invariably they work less well on playback. On the other hand, it’s impossible not to love a band that when supporting The Who in their post-Woodstock pomp at the Fillmore East in November 1969 dared to follow a riotous version of saxophonist Spear’s “Trouser Press” with an outrageous piss-take of “Pinball Wizard”. The Bonzos were never the sort to worry about upsetting fragile rock star egos.

Almost 60 tracks from 15 BBC Radio One sessions between 1967 and 1969 offer a better representation of their unique ability to do irony with a warm-hearted mix of affection and affectation. Peel loved them, of course, and they kept some of their best japes for his shows, including a side-splitting cover of “The Monster Mash” and the splendiferous “The Craig Torso Show” and its seasonal sequel “The Craig Torso Christmas Show”.

Needless to say, they also sent up Peel mercilessly. “The other day I was collecting shells on the seashore to stick on a coffee table that I’d made into a hamster when suddenly a Tyrannosaurus Rex attacked a woman and pulled her leg off”, Innes deadpans in a perfect imitation of the DJ’s voice by way of introducing the country spoof “I Found The Answer”, yet another song that never made its way on to a studio album.

There was simply nothing quite like the Bonzos and there’s more than enough intro here to keep you smiling all the way to the outro and beyond.

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Paul Heaton My Life In Music

The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now”

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DAVID BOWIE

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The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

RCA, 1972

I shared a room with my middle brother growing up, and this is one of the records that seeped through the walls of my oldest brother’s room into ours. It was just really different – it was on the edge of glam rock, I suppose, but it was also totally by itself. I had no idea what “Suffragette City” was, or “Moonage Daydream”, and Ziggy Stardust sounded like the name of a wrestler. But it was really exciting to watch it have influence over ordinary people. You could see quite hard lads in Sheffield trying to have their hair cut like Bowie and wearing these big stack heels. Some of the songs make no sense at all – I didn’t know what “Lady Stardust” meant and probably still don’t – but his voice is beautiful.

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ARETHA FRANKLIN

Aretha With The Ray Bryant Combo

COLUMBIA, 1961

The first soul record I got was called This Is Soul – there’s a song by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and I worked backwards from each of the artists on there. I think I’ve got about 25 different albums by Aretha, but this was one I found quite late. It’s jazzy but it’s also very gospel-y as well. There are a couple of really nice songs: “Are You Sure”, which I think is from a musical, “Today I Sing The Blues” and “Love Is The Only Thing”… It’s more uptempo than her other early stuff, and I used to like Ray Bryant anyway. It’s just a really nice album to find after you thought you’d secured most of her records.

THE LURKERS

Fulham Fallout

BEGGARS BANQUET, 1978

I was really struggling to decide which punk album to pick. I was thinking the Buzzcocks or The Clash or maybe even Siouxsie & The Banshees, but I went for The Lurkers’ first album . I wanted to be Pete Shelley, but I also wanted to be Howard Wall, the lead singer from The Lurkers. I just loved the album because it felt like it was within my grasp, in terms of musical ability. They were obviously quite an underrated band. They were really good live, but they were unassuming – they didn’t speak much, didn’t say much outrageous, which a lot of people used to go to concerts for then. So it doesn’t surprise me that they went under the radar a little bit.

OWEN GRAY

The Singles Collection 1960-1962

NOT BAD RECORDS, 2014

When punk was happening, I started pinching bluebeat records from upstairs at Beanos in Croydon – I do apologise to Beanos for this! There was one artist called Owen Gray who I absolutely loved. So a few years ago I went out and bought this compilation, which had all four of the singles I’d pinched. It was a weird era for Jamaican music, because it was before ska and reggae and everything that came after that. It’s basically blues, but with a very faint skank on it. The musicianship on those early Jamaican records, especially with the brass, was quite out-there. They weren’t like the jazz musicians of New York – they were a lot more free with the tuning, but the trombone solos were fantastic. It still sounds exciting now.

THE PERSUASIONS

Street Corner Symphony

ISLAND, 1972

Of all the a capella bands, they’re probably the most well-known – one of their songs, “Good Times”, is in an advert that’s on permanently at the moment. My Mum went to see Lou Reed in Sheffield in 1973 with The Persuasions supporting, which is pretty incredible, and she brought this record back with her. I didn’t play it until much later, but obviously The Housemartins went on to sing quite a bit of acapella vocals live, so it became quite an influence. Even before “Caravan Of Love”, we used to do a lot of quasi-religious stuff like “Joy Joy Joy” and “We Shall Not Be Moved”. So Street Corner Symphony really set that up.

SILAS HOGAN

Trouble

EXCELLO, 1971

When I was 17, I was a massive blues fan. I played this a lot when I was learning harmonica, and it’s an absolutely brilliant album. Silas Hogan was only discovered later in life, in his fifties, and you can tell it in the way he plays. It’s electric guitar instead of acoustic, a little bit like Jimmy Reed, that sort of sound. He didn’t play harmonica himself, but the guy who does, Moses Smith, is absolutely fantastic. It’s one of those records that I went out and bought on CD much later, because I needed it in my CD collection as well. I still occasionally play it, which says a lot because I don’t listen to a lot of blues at the moment.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Gospel At Colonus

WARNER BROS, 1984

This was something my Mum recorded off the telly. She knew I was a fan of gospel music, so she sent the video up to me. It was such a good thing to do, because it’s beautiful. It’s the story of Sophocles’ Oedipus At Colonus but it’s got The Blind Boys Of Alabama in it, and the JD Steele Singers – Jevetta Steele’s got an incredible voice – and Morgan Freeman doing the main source of speech. I think you have to watch it before buying the record which may sound daft, but it’s quite a spectacle. It’s one of the last chances to see really powerful performances by Clarence Fountain and people like that. It was a big influence on me making [2012 stage show and album] The 8th.

BILL WITHERS

Making Music

CBS, 1975

It’s not one of his famous ones, but it’s such a great example of his songwriting. “Paint Your Pretty Picture” was the song that me and my wife came out to when we got married, so it has enormous significance for me. I do think Bill Withers is a bit underrated because the modern era cuts it down to a couple of songs, “Lean On Me” and “Lovely Day”. They were great hit records, but there’s so much more to his character than that. There’s a beautiful documentary called where you can see why he’s underrated, because he’s not impressed by his own ability at all. He will not blow his own trumpet, and he’s just a very nice fella. So I was sad when he died.

Paul Heaton’s new album The Mighty Several is released by EMI on October 11; he tours the UK from November 29, see paulheaton.co.uk for the full list of dates

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SEVENTEEN become first K-pop act to headline Lollapalooza Berlin as Jeonghan gives last performance before enlistment

SEVENTEEN became the first K-pop act to headline Lollapalooza Berlin tonight (September 8), with their history-making performance also serving as singer Jeonghan’s last before his mandatory military service.

The 13-member boyband topped the Main Stage South stage today, joining other acts, including Sam Smith, Martin Garrix, Burna Boy, OneRepublic and The Chainsmokers, as the festival’s 2024 headliners.

The group performed with 12 members during the set, with singer Jun previously confirmed not to be participating due to scheduling conflicts with an acting project he is working on in China. They were joined by a live backing band for the occasion.

“It’s an honour I never expected,” singer Joshua told NME of headlining Lollapalooza Berlin ahead of the performance. “I never imagined we’d get to perform at Lolla Berlin, a festival we’ve only seen in the media.”

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He continued by nodding to the group’s first UK performance in June, which saw them become the first K-pop act ever to play at Glastonbury Festival. “Given how performing or meeting fans in Europe seemed almost impossible since the pandemic, playing Glastonbury was already surreal,” Joshua said.

“Now, adding a headlining set at Lolla feels amazing and makes me so proud of SEVENTEEN, the team we are,” he added. “We hope this will be another chance for audiences to see what we’re all about and want to keep performing for more people on a variety of stages moving forward.”

“Recently, most of our performances have taken place in indoor venues, so playing the wide-open outdoor stage at Glastonbury was a rare and exciting experience,” rapper Wonwoo shared of how that headline-grabbing performance was fuelling their set in Germany.

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He continued: “It was a great opportunity to showcase our music and energy in a new setting for a fresh crowd. With that still fresh in my mind, I’ll do my best to bring the same great energy and performance to Lolla Berlin.”

SEVENTEEN’s Lollapalooza Berlin headline set kicked off with their 2023 single ‘Super’ before diving into their back catalogue for the likes of the English-language ‘Darl+ing’ and the 2021 singles ‘Ready To Love’ and ‘Rock With You’. After the latter, singer Seungkwan told the crowd: “We couldn’t believe you guys could follow along to our songs so well, you’re doing amazing. I’m so touched.”

The middle portion of the performance was dedicated to unit performances, beginning with BSS – members Seungkwan, Hoshi and DK – delivering a version of their track ‘Fighting’. The vocal unit of Seungkwan, DK, Jeonghan, Joshua and Woozi and the performance unit of Hoshi, The8 and Dino both revisited their songs from April’s greatest hits album ‘SEVENTEEN Best Album ’17 Is Right Here’’ with ‘Cheers To Youth’ and ‘Spell’, respectively.

The hip-hop unit – comprised of Mingyu, S.Coups, Wonwoo and Vernon – performed ‘Fire’ before SVT Leaders (S.Coups, Hoshi and Woozi) aired their 2022 collaboration ‘Cheers’. As the unit section came to an end, the crowd began to chant SEVENTEEN’s name, with the group responding from the stage with their own chant of “Berlin”.

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“I want to thank Carats [SEVENTEEN’s fanbase name] from all over the world for supporting us,” rapper Mingyu said after rousing renditions of ‘SOS’ and ‘Hot’, referring both to the international make-up of the crowd in front of him and the fans watching online around the globe. “I love you Carats, thank you so much.”

“Thank you for coming. Let’s have fun until the end, thank you,” Jeonghan added, with the audience responding by breaking out in a chant of his name. The performance was his last prior to his enlistment for his mandatory military service, with the group’s label, PLEDIS Entertainment, confirming in August that the singer is set to miss SEVENTEEN’s upcoming world tour. The exact date of his enlistment is yet to be announced.

“Rather than doing something out of the ordinary, I just want to show myself as Jeonghan,” the star shared with NME prior to the headline set. “I’m excited to deliver a captivating performance with the members that will create another great memory for Carats to look back on.”

SEVENTEEN closed out their performance with the aptly titled ‘Headliner’, the English version of their ‘Heng:garæ’ track ‘Together’, ‘God Of Music’ and fan favourite ‘Very Nice’. During the latter, which saw the boyband repeat the refrain multiple times – a tradition known as “never-ending ‘Aju Nice’” – Seungkwan recruited fans on the barrier to help sing one of the song’s most climactic lines. “We’re making such good memories here, all thanks to you, Berlin,” Vernon told the crowd.

[embedded content]

The group will next turn their focus to their 2024 ‘Right Here’ world tour, which kicks off in Goyang, South Korea, on October 12 with two dates at Goyang Stadium. The tour will then visit the US in October and November before heading to Japan.

It is currently unclear if the group will visit Europe for their own headline concerts on this run. “We know how much our fans are waiting for us there,” Seungkwan told NME in June. “I can’t say for sure at this point in time, but we’re definitely talking to the company, and we want to make it happen.”

SEVENTEEN are also expected to make a comeback with their upcoming 12th mini-album later this year. Jun will miss both the ‘Right Here’ world tour and promotional activities around the record as he pursues “acting and other opportunities in China”.

Lollapalooza Berlin, meanwhile, has confirmed its dates for 2025 – the 10th anniversary of the festival’s German edition. It will return on July 12 and 13, 2025, with the line-up to be confirmed in due course.

SEVENTEEN played:

‘Super’
‘Don Quixote’
‘Darl+ing’
‘Ready To Love’
‘Rock With You’
‘Left & Right’
‘Fighting’
‘Cheers To Youth’
‘Spell’
‘Fire’
‘Cheers’
‘Clap’
‘Maestro’
‘SOS’
‘Hot’
‘Headliner’
‘Together (English ver.)’
‘God Of Music’
‘Very Nice’

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Baxter Dury, Lankum, Alabaster DePlume End Of The Road 2024, Day 2

Just like a jazz musician, any great festival like End Of The Road needs to be able to improvise. Sometimes the results can improve upon the original scheduling. When Militarie Gun pull out of their Big Top slot, James Holden steps into the breach with his elemental and uplifting psychedelic rave salvo. And with Mdou Moctar sadly waylaid, a saviour is quickly installed in the form of Alabaster DePlume. He may not bring the noise in quite the same way as Moctar, but his twilight Garden Stage set certainly doesn’t lack intensity.

DePlume reveals that he’s just come off a WhastApp call with a friend in the West Bank, and his whole set is charged with fury and sadness at what is happening in Palestine. Backed by drums, cello and the guitar of Rozi Plain, his music tonight often veers closer towards Godspeed-esque post-rock than jazz, topped by his own beautifully desperate saxophone howls.

It is a little tougher for him, in this context, to offer his usual rousing messages of hope of self-care. But he still manages to thank everyone “for living”, suggesting that coming together at a festival like this is the first step towards banishing fear and division. “If you find yourself unsure, reach towards someone,” he suggests. “You have my permission! Alabaster DePlume sent you!”

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House Of All are also supersubs of a sort, making no secret of the fact that they exist to keep the spirit of The Fall and Mark E Smith alive. Yet this band of prime Fall survivors are much more than a tribute act. Led by the mercurial Martin Bramah and featuring the full complement of Hanleys, their angular baselines and wild declamations are instantly familiar, while still feeling fresh and off-centre. 

Bramah barks enthusiastically about being “the cuckoo in the nest” or how an “awful lot of nonsense talk” sent him over the edge, his mania perfectly offset by thundering double drums. “They sound great, don’t they? What a band.” He’s not wrong, and it’s terrific to see them all enjoying a second life.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

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“You beautiful weirdos, what’s the fucking craic?” yells Lankum’s Ian Lynch, before apologising if his band’s instruments go out of tune, as “they were made in a different aeon”. If we’re honest, the diabolical dirges of Lankum’s ancient machines are a big part of the appeal, and the band have correctly calculated that this is a crowd who will appreciate them at their darkest and doomiest. There is a wild cheer for “Go Dig My Grave”, a song they’d earlier revealed (in an uproarious Uncut Q&A) that the Mercury Prize ceremony had begged them not to perform. Clearly the TV people had missed the moment where the song’s desolate suicidal thrum flips, to become somehow freeing and transcendent.

Lankum finish with “The Turn”, a song they’ve “only played four times before and usually fucked up”. It’s not exactly a singalong – “the hardened lumps of charred old chunks… forsaken and bereft” – but it is utterly stunning, somehow going from four people singing tentative a capella harmonies to the sound of a thousand boulders being rolled directly at your head.

Yet for all this thrilling dissonance, the night does need a showman to wrap things up, and Baxter Dury is happy to oblige. “I don’t think you realise who I am,” he leers to an overflowing Big Top. It’s a fair point, as he cycles through his entire repertoire of ne’er-do-wells with kung-fu-kicking relish. “I’m a salamander… a turgid fucked up little goat.. I’m the sausage man!”

He’s also a slum landlord, a slum tenant, the bloke shouting at his girlfriend outside Spoons, the washed-up geezer pretending not to cry on a park bench: “Do you remember me? Do you? Dooo yaaa?” But Dury has a loved-up raver in him too, and a final “These Are My Friends” is a euphoric celebration. “See you soon, my fuckin’ little bunny rabbits!” he cackles at the end. And off we hop to bed.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

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Uncut October 2024

HAVE A COPY SENT DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR

Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Fontaines DC, Yes, Jack White, John Mayall, Nick Cave, Chris Bell, Thurston Moore, Mercury Rev, Cass McCombs, Lone Justice, David Crosby, Lawrence, Steve Van Zandt, Paul Heaton, Brown Horse and more all feature in Uncut‘s October 2024 issue, in UK shops from August 16 or available to buy online now.

All print copies come with a free Big Star CD featuring 10 tracks of power-pop perfection, rarities and alternate mixes!

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INSIDE THIS MONTH’S UNCUT:

JIMI HENDRIX: In June 1970, the completion of JIMI HENDRIX’s own Electric Lady Studios in downtown New York unleashed a surge of unbridled creativity. Just three months later, he was gone. As a new film and box set explore Hendrix’s final sessions, friends, bandmates and studio staff consider how Electric Lady inspired everyone who entered its softly lit sanctuary. “They were free to create,” engineer Eddie Kramer tells Peter Watts. “I never saw Jimi so happy.”

GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS: After a devastating tornado strike, GILLIAN WELCH and DAVID RAWLINGS have spent four years bringing their beloved Nashville studio back to life. As a new masterpiece arrives, Uncut uncovers a tale of destruction and rebirth – and new songs to match the intensity of their near-loss.

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FONTAINES DC: With their astonishing fourth album Romance, FONTAINES DC leave behind the post-punk cobblestones for apocalyptic sci-fi stadium rock. But as they prepare to take the world by storm, they explain how the Arctic Monkeys, Mickey Rourke and “dissonance” have helped usher in their imperial phase – and how they plan to avoid the pitfalls of success.

CHRIS BELL: CHRIS BELL was McCartney to Alex Chilton’s Lennon: the other #1 songwriter in BIG STAR. But conflict, disappointment and depression threatened to diminish the power-pop visionary’s brilliance and Bell died tragically young, leaving behind only one posthumously released solo album, I Am The Cosmos.

MERCURY REV: From their base in upstate New York, MERCURY REV preside over a unique environment – full of eccentric sculpture parks, vintage recording studios and the spirits of storied musical pioneers – which has nourished their creativity for over 30 years. With a new album, Born Horses, embedded in the rich topography of the region, Jonathan Donahue and Grasshopper guide Uncut around their home turf.

BROWN HORSE: With their ragged harmonies, lap steel laments and fiery jams, valiant young upstarts BROWN HORSE are bringing country rock grit to the Badlands of Norfolk. But how do their Songs: Anglia hold up against the alt.standards that inspired them?

AN AUDIENCE WITH… THURSTON MOORE: The Sonic Youth soothsayer talks free jazz, feminism and Tom Verlaine’s paper-plate poetry.

THE MAKING OF “ROUNDABOUT” BY YES: Interminable touring sows the seeds of a prog rock classic.

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH CASS McCOMBS: The enigmatic singer-songwriter looks back on a restless career.

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH PAUL HEATON: The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now.”

REVIEWED: Nick Cave, Jack White, BASIC, Manu Chao, Willie Watson, Nala Sinephro, The The, Neil Young, Harold Budd and the Cocteau Twins, Kimbo District, Oasis, Black Artist Group, Patti Smith, Anohni and the Johnsons, Steve Van Zandt, Lawrence, The Jesus And Mary Chain and more.

PLUS: Farewell John Mayall, David Crosby by Mike Scott, Lone Justice, Plantoid and… introducing Thee Sacred Souls.

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

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We’re New Here Landless

If traditional music from Dublin seems to be having its moment in the spotlight – most notably as a result of Lankum’s recent critical and commercial success – it’s only because the world is starting to pay attention. Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch have been performing together as Landless for more than a decade, their paths crossing in college, through Dublin’s Sacred Harp traditional singing community and in the clubs that hosted the likes of Lankum and Lisa O’Neill in the early 2010s.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

In 2018, they released their debut album Bleaching Bones, an extraordinary, entirely unaccompanied collection of traditional songs, helmed by False Lankum producer John “Spud” Murphy (you may have heard their stunning version of “The Well Below The Valley” on the recent Uncut covermount CD, The Planet That You’re On). Forthcoming follow-up Lúireach, again produced by Murphy, is no less extraordinary, with its careful use of instruments – pump organ, shruti box, fiddle and banjo from Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada, plus Alex Borwick’s trombone on album opener “The Newry Highwayman” – augmenting the four-part harmonies that remain the heart of the work.

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“We recorded Bleaching Bones in churches and other interesting spaces, so we chose to leave it like that so that you could hear those acoustics,” says contralto singer Meir. “This one was recorded in the studio, and using other instruments gave it the depth those spaces gave the first album.”

“We’ve found ourselves singing in churches a lot over the years, because it really suits the music,” adds Clinton. “And if there’s an organ there, because I’m a pipe organist, it’s hard to resist playing it.” She uses the instrument to haunting effect on “Death And The Lady”, a supernatural 17th century folk song popularised by Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy.

Another evolution in the quartet’s sound comes from the inclusion of more recent commissions alongside more traditional fare. Of these, “Lúireach Bhríde” (“St Brigid’s Breastplate”) stands out: the lyrics, set to music by Clinton, come from a poem by the Donegal poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, which was commissioned for the inaugural RTÉ Folk Awards in 2018 and is dedicated to the children born at the Bon Secours Mother And Baby Home for unmarried mothers at Tuam, Galway “The invitation was to reflect on 100 years since women had gotten the vote in Ireland, and the poem is about Brigid and her various powers of healing, smithcraft and poetry,” says Clinton. “The word lúireach by itself can also mean a protective song, or hymn, so it also worked as a standalone album title.”

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“We’ve all been singing different traditional songs for a long time, and sometimes what we’ll do is bring one of those to Landless and write harmonies for it,” continues Meir. “‘My Lagan Love’ is one of those for me – a really well-known song I’ve been singing since I was a child, that sounds so different with the harmonies added.”

A particular favourite of the band is another song based on a poem, “The Wounded Hussar” by 18th century Scottish poet Thomas Campbell. “It’s what we call a ‘big’ song in traditional music, it has everything you want from a folk song,” says Power. “We first heard it performed by Rita Gallagher, who’s a big influence on us, and it’s one of the first songs I ever heard Maeve sing.”

Having recorded the album in February 2020 – with babies, house moves and the small matter of a global pandemic getting in the way of their original release plans – the band are taking some time to figure out their next steps after signing to world music label Glitterbeat (Gaye Su Akyol, Altın Gün). “Those guys are super cool,” says Lynch, “and we’re really excited to see what might come up outside of Ireland.”

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

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Who was killed in ‘House Of The Dragon’ season two episode one?

The second season of Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon is up and running – but what happened to Jaehaerys and Jaehaera in last night’s big premiere?

The first episode of season two aired on HBO in the US on June 17, with UK viewers able to watch concurrently via Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW.

Last month, a trailer for the second season was released, which built upon the tension that highlighted season one’s end, when Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) conspired to put Alicent’s son Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) on the throne after King Viserys (Paddy Considine) snuffed it.

Viserys had originally designated daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) as his heir – but a death-bed change-of-mind (conveniently only heard by Alicent) changed all that. Cue a Targaryen civil war, otherwise known as the ‘Dance Of The Dragons’ by readers of George R.R. Martin’s source books.

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The trailer sees The Blacks, led by Rhaenyra and Daemon (Matt Smith), plan an invasion of King’s Landing to claim the Iron Throne from the Greens, led by Aegon. Over the course of the intense trailer, we get several glimpses of the bloody and fiery conflict to come, along with a trip to The Wall.

Watch that trailer below:

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The season two reviews have been strong so far, currently sitting on a 91 per cent rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Which child was killed in House Of The Dragon season 2 episode 1 – Jaehaerys or Jaehaera?

In an action-packed episode one, we witness both sides of the royal feud making moves to gain the upper hand. Rhaenyra, in particular, is keen for revenge following Aemond’s (Viserys’ second son with Alicent) murder of her son Lucerys in the season one finale.

Daemon chooses to act on behalf of his wife, commissioning one of Aegon’s royal ratcatchers and another heavy to sneak into the palace at King’s Landing and murder Aemond while he sleeps. Instead, they encounter Aegon’s wife (and younger sister) Helaena in her chambers with their two young children Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, who are sleeping.

Desperate to fulfil Daemon’s instruction, and as the alarm is raised, the two accomplices panic and decide to kill a different male of the Targaryen household. At knifepoint, they demand Helaena reveal which of her children is the boy (they resemble each other so closely). Helaena gives an answer, which the two follow (despite initially deciding she is lying to protect the king’s male heir). Jaehaerys is beheaded in his bed. Helaena escapes with Jaehaera in her arms. The episode ends.

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Despite it being slightly unclear whether Helaena was misleading the attackers as to her children’s identity, NME can confirm it was Jaehaerys who was murdered (and not Jaehaera). There was no double-cross – and Aegon’s only heir is no more. Will he seek retribution in episode two?

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Introducing the latest Ultimate Music Guide: Black Sabbath

Our latest Deluxe, 148-page edition

It is, the internet tells me, shortly after Christmas 1987, and a few friends and I are huddled in a chilly corner of a pub in London’s Soho. We are here for various reasons. For one, we know that they serve pints of bitter even to self-evidently underage customers like us. For another, hard rock lore suggests that this is a spot we might run into Lemmy – surely an encounter to delight all parties equally. The main reason we’re there, though, is to find consolation after grave disappointment. We have failed to phone ahead before travelling from the provinces, and so have only within the last hour learned that the Black Sabbath show at Hammersmith Odeon we hoped to witness this evening has been cancelled. 

As you’ll read in this new 148-page deluxe edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to Black Sabbath, we certainly weren’t the only people to have been wrongfooted by Black Sabbath in the 1980s. In a new interview for the magazine, Tony Iommi launches a new box set which attempts to find some continuity in this era of the band, and explains some of what was going on in an era which was confusingly both post-Ozzy and post-Dio, but also post-Gillan, pre-Dio and pre-Ozzy.

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Tony shares humbling tales of advertising in the local paper for a frontman, of regrouping with known heavy Midlands associates, and of playing in Russia to a crowd of rabid fans, but also to a decorously-seated collection of Soviet-era dignitaries. Much like my teenage Sabbath fan self, Tony Iommi was confident in the material and in what we didn’t then call the Black Sabbath brand. He also believed in his new singer: Tony Martin. “If you have a factory and someone leaves,” Iommi tells Peter Watts, “you don’t close the factory, you hire someone new.”

There’s a lot to unpack in Iommi’s analogy of Sabbath to a factory. But Sabbath certainly was for many years a leading British heavy industry; the awesome swing of the band given a engaging character in the person of Ozzy Osbourne, a soulboy and a Beatles fan transformed into a prince of darkness during a formative Cumbrian tour. Geezer Butler told me a few months ago how impressed he was and remains with Ozzy’s musicianship. As you read Ozzy’s own vivid intro to the magazine, or enjoy his interviews in these pages, you’ll salute that and much more besides. 

He certainly knows what’s what in Black Sabbath. “We’ve been friends, we’ve been enemies, said all sorts of things about each other,” he tells us, “but no-one can come up with them riffs like Tony Iommi. I don’t know how he does it. It’s scary, like “What?” Sometimes he would come in and say, “Ah, I’ve got nothing.” Then he’d be tuning up and this amazing fucking riff would come out. “Well, that sounded like something, Tone…”  

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Enjoy the magazine. You can get it in shops next week, or pre-order here now.

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Framed answer today here’s the solution for May 1

The last couple of years have seen a huge rise in browser-based puzzle games, tasking players with working out a certain kind of answer using limited guesses. Framed is one of the newest, following in the footsteps of Wordle, but offering a slightly different twist. You’ll still need to work out the answer using limited information and only six tries, but it’ll be movies that you’ll be guessing.

You see, Framed focuses on individual frames, or stills, of an ever-changing roster of movies. Some show a fair amount of action at the start, while others will take careful analysis and decent trivia knowledge to crack. With each wrong guess, a new still is revealed, hopefully adding enough extra information and context for you to guess the correct movie title.

With only six guesses at your disposal, you may need a little help guessing today’s Framed answer. To give you a hint, we’ve included some clues that will tease the title of the movie picked as today’s puzzle. If you’ve already failed today’s puzzle, or would just like to know the answer, we’ve detailed that as well.

Framed hint for today

Today’s puzzle is an American psychological film.

  • Released in 1991
  • Directed by Martin Scorsese
  • Stars Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange

Framed answer for today (May 1)

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The answer for Framed today is Cape Fear. This is the answer for May 1 with a brand new puzzle tomorrow. Check back in if you need any help!

How to play Framed

To play Framed you just need to follow these steps, in your browser of choice. Note that any Framed versions you find elsewhere on app stores or other storefronts are likely to be fakes.

  • Go into your browser and visit framed.wtf
  • Take a look at the still for today
  • Make a guess, if it’s correct, you will see the rewards screen
  • If incorrect, you have five more chances, each showing a new still.

Previous Framed answers

Sometimes, when trying to solve the Framed puzzle of the day, it can be extremely advantageous to know previous answers. Here are the answers from the last few days.

  • Kick-Ass
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
  • From Russia With Love
  • Fatal Attraction
  • The Intern
  • Crash
  • Thor
  • Total Recall
  • Collateral Beauty
  • Boyhood
  • Apocalypto
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  • Tucker And Dale vs Evil
  • Wall Street
  • Tag
  • Banshees of Inisherin
  • Before We Go
  • Sleeping Beauty
  • Wonka
  • Hustle
  • The Infiltrator
  • BlackBerry
  • Avengers: Age Of Ultron
  • Toy Story 4
  • War Horse
  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage
  • There’s Something About Mary
  • The Nice Guys
  • Molly’s Game
  • What We Do In The Shadows
  • Iron Man 2
  • The Blair Witch Project
  • Black Adam
  • The Rock
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • The Switch
  • Tron Legacy
  • Wonder Woman
  • Don’t Look Up
  • Killing Them Softly
  • Dead Ringers
  • Alice Through The Looking Glass
  • The Wolverine
  • Bottle Rocket
  • The Dictator
  • J. Edgar
  • Inside Man
  • Oliver!
  • Next Friday
  • Southpaw
  • American Splendor
  • A Man Called Otto
  • The Wicker Man
  • House Of Gucci
  • Chicken Run
  • Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
  • West Side Story
  • The Whale
  • We Need To Talk About Kevin
  • Gandhi
  • The Mask Of Zorro
  • Frenzy
  • Dolemite Is My Name
  • Friday Night Lights
  • The Devil Wears Prada
  • Raising Arizona
  • Burn After Reading
  • True Grit
  • A Serious Man
  • Rear Window
  • The Love Bug
  • Jumper
  • Brooklyn
  • Gran Turismo
  • Source Code
  • Matchstick Men
  • Last Vegas
  • Animal House
  • Jennifer’s Body
  • Heathers
  • Bride Of Frankenstein
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show
  • The Flash
  • Desperado
  • Alice In Wonderland
  • Patton
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie
  • Steve Jobs
  • This Is Spinal Tap
  • Ingrid Goes West
  • Heavenly Creatures
  • Allegiant
  • The King
  • Lethal Weapon
  • Kramer vs Kramer
  • Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
  • Saltburn
  • Escape From New York
  • Yesterday
  • 500 Days Of Summer
  • Air
  • Carlito’s Way
  • Cowboys & Aliens
  • Before Midnight
  • Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
  • Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
  • Birth
  • Magnolia
  • Doctor Sleep
  • The Full Monty
  • Alita: Battle Angel
  • Tenet
  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  • Training Day
  • Unstoppable
  • Wreck-It Ralph
  • Dazed And Confused
  • Sleepy Hollow
  • Spectre
  • No Strings Attached
  • Mean Streets
  • Hail, Caesar!
  • Christopher Robin
  • Scrooged
  • White Christmas
  • Black Christmas
  • The Killing Of A Sacred Deer
  • Battle Of The Sexes
  • Foxcatcher
  • Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
  • Nightmare Alley
  • The Color Of Money
  • Barton Fink
  • ParaNorman
  • Red 2
  • Princess Mononoke
  • Nomadland
  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
  • License To Kill
  • King Richard
  • Jungle Fever
  • Hell Or High Water
  • The Thin Red Line
  • Fallen Angels
  • Million Dollar Baby
  • The Legend Of Tarzan
  • The Maze Runner
  • Trance
  • Maleficent
  • The Fighter
  • Jumanji
  • Monsters vs Aliens
  • Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
  • The Green Hornet
  • Tick, Tick… Boom!
  • Pinocchio
  • Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
  • Pacific Rim
  • Only God Forgives
  • Aeon Flux
  • Mulholland Drive
  • As Tears Go By
  • Black Hawk Down
  • Beautiful Creatures
  • Away We Go
  • The Blues Brothers
  • Barbie
  • Sideways
  • The Descendants
  • Nebraska
  • About Schmidt
  • Election
  • Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
  • Dracula
  • Train To Busan
  • Fury
  • Donnie Brasco
  • Don’t Breathe
  • Panic Room
  • The Fog
  • Eraserhead
  • Arachnophobia
  • The Evil Dead
  • Despicable Me
  • The Boxer
  • Encanto
  • The Lion King (2019)
  • Deepwater Horizon
  • Creature From The Black Lagoon
  • Minority Report
  • Diamonds Are Forever
  • Bridesmaids
  • The Strangers
  • Breakfast At Tiffany’s
  • Promised Land
  • Big Fish
  • The Book Of Eli
  • Cinderella
  • It Chapter Two
  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
  • Bohemian Rhapsody
  • Doctor Strange
  • Dogville
  • Crimson Tide
  • The Accountant
  • Before Sunset
  • Blonde
  • Finding Forrester
  • Beauty And The Beast
  • The Kids Are All Right
  • Constantine
  • Clash Of The Titans
  • I Give It A Year
  • The Expendables 3
  • Blow Out
  • Lilo & Stitch
  • The Sea Beast
  • The Karate Kid
  • Cocaine Bear
  • Office Space
  • The Brothers Grimm
  • Get On Up
  • Shrek 2
  • In the Mood for Love
  • Glengarry Glen Ross
  • Magic Mike
  • Pearl Harbor
  • My Dinner With Andre
  • Spotlight
  • Spider-Man
  • Deliverance
  • A Bug’s Life
  • American Ultra
  • Coming To America
  • Eastern Promises
  • The Favourite
  • Dead Presidents
  • Bad Moms
  • The Prince Of Egypt
  • Empire Of The Sun
  • Don Jon
  • The Help
  • Dallas Buyers Club
  • Coming 2 America
  • Collateral
  • Blazing Saddles
  • Baywatch
  • Jack Reacher
  • The Interview
  • The Impossible
  • Gangs of New York
  • Friday
  • Batman
  • Hustle & Flow
  • Hook
  • This Is England
  • Saturday Night Fever
  • Xanadu
  • Watchmen
  • Mary Poppins
  • Hitman: Agent 47
  • Gattaca
  • The Fugitive
  • Disclosure
  • Anything Else
  • Contagion
  • Begin Again
  • The Age of Adaline
  • A Star Is Born
  • Spaceballs
  • Batman & Robin
  • After Yang
  • Man On The Moon
  • Norma Rae
  • Mr. & Mrs. Smith
  • Enter The Dragon
  • Girl, Interrupted
  • Army Of The Dead
  • Deep Cover
  • Cruella
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Dune
  • Commando
  • Avatar: The Way of Water
  • Blade
  • Atomic Blonde
  • American History X
  • Bad Grandpa
  • Capote
  • Man With A Movie Camera
  • Battleship
  • Driving Miss Daisy
  • Barry Lyndon
  • Clueless
  • Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
  • Bedknobs and Broomsticks
  • Beetlejuice
  • At First Sight
  • Crocodile Dundee
  • The Bling Ring
  • Dumbo
  • Falling Down
  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  • The Lion King
  • Big
  • Army Of Darkness
  • James And The Giant Peach
  • Creed
  • The King’s Man
  • Bad Times at the El Royale
  • The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
  • Aquaman
  • Cloud Atlas
  • Cujo
  • The Godfather Part III
  • Game Night
  • Philadelphia
  • El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
  • Dog Day Afternoon
  • Dial M For Murder
  • Cast Away
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • The Fifth Element
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • The Departed
  • Deadpool 2
  • Red Sparrow
  • Limitless
  • Hacksaw Ridge
  • Battle Royale
  • Big Trouble in Little China
  • A Wrinkle in Time
  • Adaptation
  • Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle
  • Ed Wood
  • The Menu
  • The Green Knight
  • Fences
  • Furious 7
  • Dick Tracy
  • Deep Blue Sea
  • The Village
  • Independence Day
  • Pride
  • Shrek
  • Trainspotting
  • Hellboy
  • First Man
  • Almost Famous
  • Snowpiercer
  • The Great Muppet Caper
  • The Last Samurai
  • Crazy, Stupid, Love
  • Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
  • The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs
  • A Million Ways To Die In The West
  • Looper
  • Miami Vice
  • Inherent Vice
  • Gods of Egypt
  • The Fly
  • Chappie
  • The Big Year
  • Brave
  • Bridge of Spies
  • Anna Karenina
  • Toy Story 2
  • Speed Racer
  • Fifty Shades of Grey
  • Cleopatra
  • Con Air
  • Car Wash
  • A.I. Artificial Intelligence
  • Garden State
  • The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Ben-Hur
  • The Place Beyond The Pines
  • Sound of Metal
  • Before Sunrise
  • Centurion
  • Aloha
  • Elysium
  • Hercules
  • The French Dispatch
  • Free Guy
  • Legally Blonde
  • War of the Worlds
  • Assassin’s Creed
  • Peter Pan
  • Red
  • Queen of Katwe
  • Ready Player One
  • Synecdoche, New York
  • Walk the Line
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
  • Boyz n the Hood
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
  • Out Of Africa
  • The Equalizer
  • Rain Man
  • Ender’s Game
  • The Girl On The Train
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer
  • Attack The Block
  • Everything Everywhere All At Once
  • Riddick
  • Team America: World Police
  • Milk
  • Mars Attacks!
  • World War Z
  • Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
  • The Graduate
  • I, Tonya
  • The Hunt For Red October
  • The Color Purple
  • Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
  • The Wiz
  • Lawrence Of Arabia
  • Apollo 13
  • Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
  • Erin Brockovich
  • Drumline
  • Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
  • The Darjeeling Limited
  • Zero Dark Thirty
  • Glory
  • The Founder
  • A Fish Called Wanda
  • Prometheus
  • Ali
  • Napoleon Dynamite
  • Do The Right Thing
  • The King Of Comedy
  • Edward Scissorhands
  • Under The Skin
  • Man Of Steel
  • 8 Mile
  • Akira
  • You’ve Got Mail
  • Amélie
  • Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
  • GoldenEye
  • Basic Instinct
  • Step Brothers
  • Little Miss Sunshine
  • Sin City
  • Jarhead
  • Fast & Furious 6
  • Lost In Translation
  • Coraline
  • I, Robot
  • Finding Nemo
  • The English Patient
  • Marathon Man
  • Heat
  • The American
  • Forrest Gump
  • Ex Machina
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
  • The Iron Giant
  • The Aviator
  • Flash Gordon
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice
  • In Time
  • Face/Off
  • Cake
  • Alien
  • The Royal Tenenbaums
  • My Neighbour Totoro
  • Due Date
  • Nightcrawler
  • Billy Elliot
  • Vertigo
  • Lady Bird
  • Manchester By The Sea
  • Top Gun
  • 300: Rise Of An Empire
  • Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
  • Home Alone
  • Shazam
  • Babe
  • The Polar Express
  • Elf
  • Die Hard
  • It’s A Wonderful Life
  • Inside Out
  • In Bruges
  • The Purge
  • Argo
  • Mean Girls
  • Batman Returns
  • Side Effects
  • Chicago
  • Dumb And Dumber To
  • Any Given Sunday
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • House of Flying Daggers
  • Black Widow
  • Manhattan
  • The Great Gatsby
  • Bend It Like Beckham
  • Australia
  • Chef
  • About A Boy
  • There Will Be Blood
  • Cars
  • The Da Vinci Code
  • Drive
  • Warcraft
  • Hocus Pocus
  • Pain & Gain
  • Koyaanisqatsi
  • Mamma Mia
  • The Hateful Eight
  • Paul
  • Wayne’s World
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
  • The Shape of Water
  • Quantum Of Solace
  • The Princess Bride
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Cool Hand Luke
  • Ted
  • 21 Jump Street
  • The Sound Of Music
  • Moneyball
  • The Hunger Games
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
  • Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  • Iron Man
  • Men In Black
  • Gravity
  • The Mask
  • Escape From Alcatraz
  • Gladiator
  • Hugo
  • Ghostbusters
  • Halloween 2
  • Frankenstein
  • The Hangover
  • The Muppets
  • Annie
  • Bronson
  • The Amazing Spider-Man
  • A Nightmare On Elm Street
  • Marriage Story
  • The Thing
  • Grease
  • Frozen
  • Amistad
  • Saw
  • Armageddon
  • Memento
  • Anaconda
  • The Incredibles
  • Fast Times At Richmond High
  • Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
  • The World’s End
  • Chariots Of Fire
  • A Few Good Men
  • Perriort Le Fou
  • Zoolander
  • The Tree Of Life
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  • Juno
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • Dunkirk
  • The Matrix
  • School Of Rock
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • Ad Astra
  • American Hustle
  • Tropic Thunder
  • Casino Royale
  • Caddyshack
  • Dredd
  • Fantasia
  • Sicario
  • RoboCop
  • I Am Legend
  • Deadpool
  • Cool Runnings
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Monty Python’s Life Of Brian
  • A Beautiful Mind
  • Titanic
  • Beverly Hills Cop
  • Air Force One
  • King Kong
  • Rocky
  • The Theory of Everything
  • The Gentlemen
  • Now You See Me
  • The Notebook
  • Dead Poets Society
  • Captain Phillips
  • Aladdin
  • When Harry Met Sally
  • The Mummy
  • The Martian
  • Hero
  • The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
  • La La Land
  • Braveheart
  • The Revenant
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit
  • Slumdog Millionaire
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • Mud
  • The Lego Movie
  • Gremlins
  • The King’s Speech
  • Mrs. Doubtfire
  • Moulin Rouge!
  • The Hurt Locker
  • Galaxy Quest
  • Armadeus
  • Free Solo
  • The Goonies
  • Black Swan
  • The Social Network
  • Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
  • Sleepless In Seattle
  • Thor: Ragnarok
  • Arrival
  • Jojo Rabbit
  • Her
  • The Big Short
  • The Breakfast Club
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • Notting Hill
  • We’re The Millers
  • Rango
  • Knives Out
  • Catch Me If You Can
  • The Shining
  • 12 Years a Slave
  • Fruitvale Station
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  • The Dark Knight
  • Whiplash
  • Seven
  • Baby Driver
  • Into the Wild
  • The Cabin In The Woods
  • Color Out of Space
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • Saving Private Ryan
  • Zodiac
  • Back to the Future
  • Minari
  • Uncut Gems
  • Bad Boys II
  • Interstellar
  • Up
  • American Psycho
  • Bad Education
  • Howl’s Moving Castle
  • Inglorious Basterds
  • The Godfather.
  • Apocalypse Now
  • Children of Men
  • Big Hero 6
  • The Proposal
  • Parasite
  • Crazy Rich Asians
  • Soul
  • 28 Days Later
  • About Time
  • Birds of Prey (or Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey)
  • The Lighthouse
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Joker
  • Eyes Wide Shut
  • Bird Box
  • Isle of Dogs
  • Midsommar
  • Goodwill Hunting
  • 10 Cloverfield Lane
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  • Moonlight
  • Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Requiem For a Dream
  • Les Miserables
  • No Country For Old Men
  • 1917
  • The Imitation Game
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters
  • The Godfather Pt II
  • Brokeback Mountain
  • The Truman Show
  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
  • Inception
  • 300
  • Alien Resurrection
  • District 9
  • A Quiet Place
  • Birdman
  • WALL-E
  • Gone Girl
  • BlacKkKlansman
  • Jackie Brown
  • Pineapple Express
  • Hereditary
  • Pan’s Labyrinth
  • A Fist Full of Dollars
  • One Hour Photo
  • Schindler’s List
  • The Exorcist
  • Bladerunner 2049
  • Back to the Future Part II
  • Black Panther
  • Shutter Island
  • O’ Brother Where Art Thou?
  • The Witch
  • Django Unchained
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That’s all you need to know about Framed, and the answer for today. For more puzzle-game goodness, check out our hints for today’s Heardle.

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Here’s who’s starring opposite Tom Holland in ‘Romeo & Juliet’

The Jamie Lloyd Company has announced the full cast for the upcoming West End production of Romeo & Juliet, starring Tom Holland.

The production will run at the Duke Of York’s Theatre from May 11 to August 3, and will be directed by Lloyd. Tickets are already sold out.

Newcomer Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has been confirmed to play Juliet alongside Holland’s Romeo.

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Also starring in the highly anticipated production will be Freema Agyeman (Nurse), Michael Balogun (Friar), Tomiwa Edun (Capulet), Mia Jerome (Montague), Daniel Quinn-Toye (Paris), Ray Sesay (Tybalt), Nima Taleghani (Benvolio), Joshua-Alexander Williams (Mercutio) and Callum Heinrich and Kody Mortimer (Camera Operators).

Amewudah-Rivers previously appeared in two seasons of the BBC series Bad Education and three short films. She has stage experience in productions at the Globe and Lyric Hammersmith among other venues.

Francesca Amewudah-Rivers. Credit: Getty Images

Holland said of the cast announcement: “Beyond excited to announce our cast for Romeo and Juliet. I can’t wait to get started and I know we’ll create something really special together.”

Amewudah-Rivers added: “I’m so grateful to be making my West End debut as Juliet with The Jamie Lloyd Company. It’s a dream to be joining this team of incredible artists with Jamie at the helm. I’m excited to bring a fresh energy to this story alongside Tom, and to welcome new audiences to the theatre.”

Lloyd commented: “I’m very excited to introduce the amazing cast who will be joining the incredible Tom Holland in Romeo & Juliet, including Francesca Amewudah-Rivers — an exceptional young artist.”

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The script, based on the classic play by William Shakespeare, has been edited by Heartstopper actor Nima Taleghani. It will be Lloyd’s first Shakespeare production since his 2014 staging of Richard III at Trafalgar Square, with Martin Freeman leading the performance.

Lloyd is also known for helming many successful versions of traditional plays, including The Seagull with Emilia ClarkDoctor Faustus with Kit Harington and most recently, the musical Sunset Boulevard with Nicole Scherzinger.

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Grammys nominations 2023: Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles score the most nods

The nominations for the 2023 Grammys have been announced with Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles leading the way.

  • READ MORE: Ukraine, Billie Eilish, Louis CK: the biggest talking points from the Grammy Awards 2022

The official Grammys YouTube hosted a livestream today (November 15) for the announcement which you can watch below, with the winners set to be announced at the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony on February 5, 2023.

Beyoncé clocked up the most nominations with nine nods including Record Of The Year and Album Of The Year, closely followed by Lamar with eight nominations.

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Adele picked up seven nominations while Future, Harry Styles, Mary J. Blige and DJ Khaled each scored six nods. Jay-Z, who picked up five nominations, is now tied with Beyoncé for the most nominated artists in Grammy history, having clocked up 88 nods in total.

Notably, the 2023 Grammy Awards will be the first time Beyoncé and Adele will go head-to-head for Record, Album, and Song Of The Year since 2017, when Adele swept all three categories.

Meanwhile, both Wet Leg and Måneskin were both nominated in the Best New Artist category.

See the full list of Grammys 2023 nominations below:

Record Of The Year
ABBA – ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’
Adele – ‘Easy On Me’
Beyoncé – ‘Break My Soul’
Brandi Carlile Featuring Lucius – ‘You And Me On The Rock’
Doja Cat – ‘Woman’
Harry Styles – ‘As It Was’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘The Heart Part 5’
Lizzo – ‘About Damn Time’
Mary J. Blige – ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’
Steve Lacy – ‘Bad Habit’

Album Of The Year
ABBA – ‘Voyage’
Adele – ’30’
Bad Bunny – ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’
Beyoncé – ‘Renaissance’
Brandi Carlile – ‘In These Silent Days’
Coldplay – ‘Music Of The Spheres’
Harry Styles – ‘Harry’s House’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’
Lizzo – ‘Special’
Mary J. Blige – ‘Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe)’

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Song Of The Year
Adele – ‘Easy On Me
Beyoncé – ‘Break My Soul
Bonnie Raitt – ‘Just Like That
DJ Khaled Featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend & Fridayy – ‘God Did’
Gayle – ‘ABCDEFU’
Harry Styles – ‘As It Was’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘The Heart Part 5’
Lizzo – ‘About Damn Time’
Steve Lacy – ‘Bad Habit’
Taylor Swift – ‘All Too Well’

Best New Artist
Anitta
Domi & JD Beck
Latto
Måneskin
Molly Tuttle
Muni Long
Omar Apollo
Samara Joy
Tobe Nwigwe
Wet Leg

Best Pop Solo Performance
Adele – ‘Easy On Me’
Bad Bunny – ‘Moscow Mule’
Doja Cat – ‘Woman’
Harry Styles – ‘As It Was’
Lizzo – ‘About Damn Time’
Steve Lacy – ‘Bad Habit’

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
ABBA – ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’
Camila Cabello Featuring Ed Sheeran – ‘Bam Bam’
Coldplay & BTS – ‘My Universe’
Post Malone & Doja Cat – ‘I Like You (A Happier Song)’
Sam Smith & Kim Petras – ‘Unholy’

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
Diana Ross – ‘Thank You’
Kelly Clarkson – ‘When Christmas Comes Around…’
Michael Bublé – ‘Higher’
Norah Jones – ‘I Dream Of Christmas’
Pentatonix – ‘Evergreen’

Best Pop Vocal Album
ABBA – ‘Voyage’
Adele – ’30’
Coldplay – ‘Music Of The Spheres’
Harry Styles – ‘Harry’s House’
Lizzo – ‘Special’

Best Dance/Electronic Recording
Beyoncé – ‘Break My Soul’
Bonobo – ‘Rosewood’
David Guetta & Bebe Rexha – ‘I’m Good (Blue)’
Diplo & Miguel – ‘Don’t Forget My Love’
Kaytranada Featuring H.E.R. – ‘Intimidated’
Rüfüs Du Sol – ‘On My Knees’

Best Dance/Electronic Music Album
Beyoncé – ‘Renaissance’
Bonobo – ‘Fragments’
Diplo – ‘Diplo’
Odesza – ‘The Last Goodbye’
Rüfüs Du Sol – ‘Surrender’

Best Contemporary Instrumental Album
Brad Mehldau – ‘Jacob’s Ladder’
Domi & JD Beck – ‘Not Tight’
Grant Geissman – ‘Blooz’
Jeff Coffin – ‘Between Dreaming And Joy’
Snarky Puppy – ‘Empire Central’

Best Rock Performance
Beck – ‘Old Man’
The Black Keys – ‘Wild Child’
Brandi Carlile – ‘Broken Horses’
Bryan Adams – ‘So Happy It Hurts’
Idles – ‘Crawl!’
Ozzy Osbourne Featuring Jeff Beck – ‘Patient Number 9’
Turnstile – ‘Holiday’

Best Metal Performance
Ghost – ‘Call Me Little Sunshine’
Megadeth – ‘We’ll Be Back’
Muse – ‘Kill Or Be Killed’
Ozzy Osbourne Featuring Tony Iommi – ‘Degradation Rules’
Turnstile – ‘Blackout’

Best Rock Song
Brandi Carlile – ‘Broken Horses’
Ozzy Osbourne Featuring Jeff Beck – ‘Patient Number 9’
Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Black Summer’
Turnstile – ‘Blackout’
The War On Drugs – ‘Harmonia’s Dream’

Best Rock Album
The Black Keys – ‘Dropout Boogie’
Elvis Costello & The Imposters – ‘The Boy Named If’
Idles – ‘Crawler’
Machine Gun Kelly – ‘Mainstream Sellout’
Ozzy Osbourne – ‘Patient Number 9’
Spoon – ‘Lucifer On The Sofa’

Best Alternative Music Performance
Arctic Monkeys – ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’
Big Thief – ‘Certainty’
Florence And The Machine – ‘King’
Wet Leg – ‘Chaise Longue’
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Featuring Perfume Genius – ‘Spitting Off The Edge Of The World’

Best Alternative Music Album
Arcade Fire – ‘WE’
Big Thief – ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’
Björk – ‘Fossora’
Wet Leg – ‘Wet Leg’
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Cool It Down’

Best R&B Performance
Beyoncé – ‘Virgo’s Groove’
Jazmine Sullivan – ‘Hurt Me So Good’
Lucky Daye – ‘Over’
Mary J. Blige Featuring Anderson .Paak – ‘Here With Me’
Muni Long – ‘Hrs & Hrs’

Best Traditional R&B Performance
Adam Blackstone Featuring Jazmine Sullivan – ’Round Midnight’
Babyface Featuring Ella Mai – ‘Keeps on Fallin’’
Beyoncé – ‘Plastic Off The Sofa’
Mary J. Blige – ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’
Snoh Aalegra – ‘Do 4 Love’

Best R&B Song
Beyoncé – ‘Cuff It’
Jazmine Sullivan – ‘Hurt Me So Good’
Mary J. Blige – ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’
Muni Long – ‘Hrs & Hrs’
PJ Morton – ‘Please Don’t Walk Away’

Best Progressive R&B Album
Cory Henry – ‘Operation Funk’
Moonchild – ‘Starfuit’
Steve Lacy – ‘Gemini Rights’
Tank And The Bangas – ‘Red Balloon’
Terrace Martin – ‘Drones’

Best R&B Album
Chris Brown – ‘Breezy (Deluxe)’
Lucky Daye – ‘Candy Drip’
Mary J. Blige – ‘Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe)’
PJ Morton – ‘Watch The Sun’
Robert Glasper – ‘Black Radio III’

Best Rap Performance
DJ Khaled Featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend & Fridayy – ‘God Did’
Doja Cat – ‘Vegas’
Gunna & Future Featuring Young Thug – ‘Pushin P’
Hitkidd & Glorilla – ‘F.N.F. (Let’s Go)’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘The Heart Part 5’

Best Melodic Rap Performance
DJ Khaled Featuring Future & SZA – ‘Beautiful’
Future Featuring Drake & Tems – ‘Wait For U’
Jack Harlow – ‘First Class’
Kendrick Lamar Featuring Blxst & Amanda Reifer – ‘Die Hard’
Latto – ‘Big Energy (Live)’

Best Rap Song
DJ Khaled Featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend & Fridayy – ‘God Did’
Future Featuring Drake & Tems – ‘Wait For U’
Gunna & Future Featuring Young Thug – ‘Pushin P’
Jack Harlow Featuring Drake – ‘Churchill Downs’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘The Heart Part 5’

Best Rap Album
DJ Khaled – ‘God Did’
Future – ‘I Never Liked You’
Jack Harlow – ‘Come Home The Kids Miss You’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’
Pusha T – ‘It’s Almost Dry’

Best Country Solo Performance
Kelsea Ballerini – ‘Heartfirst’
Maren Morris – ‘Circles Around This Town’
Miranda Lambert – ‘In His Arms’
Willie Nelson – ‘Live Forever’
Zach Bryan – ‘Something In The Orange’

Best Country Duo/Group Performance
Brothers Osborne – ‘Midnight Rider’s Prayer’
Carly Pearce & Ashley McBryde – ‘Never Wanted To Be That Girl’
Ingrid Andress & Sam Hunt – ‘Wishful Drinking’
Luke Combs & Miranda Lambert – ‘Outrunnin’ Your Memory’
Reba McEntire & Dolly Parton – ‘Does He Love You (Revisited)’
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – ‘Going Where The Lonely Go’

Best Country Song
Cody Johnson – ‘’Til You Can’t’
Luke Combs – ‘Doin’ This’
Maren Morris – ‘Circles Around This Town’
Miranda Lambert – ‘If I Was a Cowboy’
Taylor Swift – ‘I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)’
Willie Nelson – ‘I’ll Love You Till the Day I Die’

Best Country Album
Ashley McBryde – ‘Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville’
Luke Combs – ‘Growin’ Up’
Maren Morris – ‘Humble Quest’
Miranda Lambert – ‘Palomino’
Willie Nelson – ‘A Beautiful Time’

Best New Age, Ambient, Or Chant Album
Cheryl B. Engelhardt – ‘The Passenger’
Madi Das, Dave Stringer & Bhakti Without Borders – ‘Mantra Americana’
Mystic Mirror – ‘White Sun’
Paul Avgerinos – ‘Joy’
Will Ackerman – ‘Positano Songs’

Best Improvised Jazz Solo
Ambrose Akinmusire – ‘Rounds (Live)’
Gerald Albright – ‘Keep Holding On’
John Beasley – ‘Cherokee/Koko’
Marcus Baylor – ‘Call Of The Drum’
Melissa Aldana – ‘Falling’
Wayne Shorter & Leo Genovese – ‘Endangered Species’

Best Jazz Vocal Album
The Baylor Project – ‘The Evening: Live At Apparatus’
Carmen Lundy – ‘Fade To Black’
Cécile McLorin Salvant – ‘Ghost Song’
The Manhattan Transfer & The WDR Funkhausorchester – ‘Fifty’
Samara Joy – ‘Linger Awhile’

Best Jazz Instrumental Album
Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride & Brian Blade – ‘LongGone’
Peter Erskine Trio – ‘Live In Italy’
Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, Nicholas Payton & Matthew Stevens – ‘New Standards, Vol. 1′
Wayne Shorter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Leo Genovese & Esperanza Spalding – L’ive At The Detroit Jazz Festival’
Yellowjackets – ‘Parallel Motion’

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album
John Beasley, Magnus Lindgren & SWR Big Band – ‘Bird Lives’
Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly Of Shadows – ‘Architecture Of Storms’
Ron Carter & The Jazzaar Festival Big Band Directed by Christian Jacob – ‘Remembering Bob Freedman’
Steve Gadd, Eddie Gomez, Ronnie Cuber & WDR Big Band Conducted by Michael Abene – ‘Center Stage’
Steven Feifke, Bijon Watson & Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra – ‘Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra’

Best Latin Jazz Album
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra Featuring The Congra Patria Son Jarocho Collective – ‘Fandango At The Wall in New York’
Arturo Sandoval – ‘Rhythm & Soul’
Danilo Pérez Featuring The Global Messengers – ‘Crisálida’
Flora Purim – ‘If You Will’
Miguel Zenón – ‘Música de las Américas’

Best Gospel Performance/Song
Doe – ‘When I Pray’
Erica Campbell – ‘Positive
Maverick City Music & Kirk Franklin – ‘Kingdom’
PJ Morton Featuring Zacardi Cortez, Gene Moore, Samoht, Tim Rogers & Darrel Walls – ‘The Better Benediction’
Tye Tribbett – ‘Get Up’

Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song
Chris Tomlin – ‘Holy Forever’
Crowder & Dante Bowe Featuring Maverick City Music – ‘God Really Loves Us (Radio Version)’
Doe – ‘So Good’
For King & Country & Hillary Scott – ‘For God Is With Us’
Maverick City Music & Kirk Franklin – ‘Fear Is Not My Future’
Phil Wickham – ‘Hymn Of Heaven (Radio Version)’

Best Gospel Album
Doe – ‘Clarity’
Maranda Curtis – ‘Die To Live’
Maverick City Music & Kirk Franklin – ‘Kingdom Book One (Deluxe)’
Ricky Dillard – ‘Breakthrough: The Exodus (Live)’
Tye Tribbett – ‘All Things New’

Best Contemporary Christian Music Album
Anne Wilson – ‘My Jesus’
Chris Tomlin – ‘Always’
Elevation Worship – ‘Lion’
Maverick City Music – ‘Breathe’
TobyMac – ‘Life After Death’

Best Roots Gospel Album
Gaither Vocal Band – ‘Let’s Just Praise The Lord’
Karen Peck & New River – ‘2:22’
Keith & Kristyn Getty – ‘Confessio – Irish American Roots’
Tennessee State University – ‘The Urban Hymnal’
Willie Nelson – ‘The Willie Nelson Family’

Best Latin Pop Album
Camilo – ‘De Adentro Pa Afuera’
Christina Aguilera – ‘Aguilera’
Fonseca – ‘Viajante’
Rubén Blades & Boca Livre – ‘Pasieros’
Sebastián Yatra – ‘Dharma +’

Best Música Urbana Album
Bad Bunny – ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’
Daddy Yankee – ‘Legendaddy’
Farruko – ‘La 167’
Maluma – ‘The Love & Sex Tape’
Rauw Alejandro – ‘Trap Cake, Vol. 2’

Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album
Cimafunk – ‘El Alimento’
Fito Paez – ‘Los Años Salvajes’
Gaby Moreno – ‘Alegoría’
Jorge Drexler – ‘Tinta y Tiempo’
Mon Laferte – ‘1940 Carmen’
Rosalía – ‘Motomami’

Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano)
Chiquis – ‘Abeja Reina’
Christian Nodal – ‘EP #1 Forajido’
Marco Antonio Solís – ‘Qué Ganas de Verte (Deluxe)’
Natalia Lafourcade – ‘Un Canto por México – El Musical’
Los Tigres del Norte – ‘La Reunión (Deluxe)’

Best Tropical Latin Album
Carlos Vives – ‘Cumbiana II’
Marc Anthony – ‘Pa’lla Voy’
La Santa Cecilia – ‘Quiero Verte Feliz’
Spanish Harlem Orchestra – ‘Imágenes Latinas’
Tito Nieves – ‘Legendario’

Best American Roots Performance
Aaron Neville & The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – ‘Stompin’ Ground’
Aoife O’Donovan & Allison Russell – ‘Prodigal Daughter’
Bill Anderson Featuring Dolly Parton – ‘Someday It’ll All Make Sense (Bluegrass Version)’
Fantastic Negrito – ‘Oh Betty’
Madison Cunningham – ‘Life According To Raechel’

Best Americana Performance
Asleep At the Wheel Featuring Lyle Lovett – ‘There You Go Again’
Blind Boys Of Alabama Featuring Black Violin – ‘The Message’
Bonnie Raitt – ‘Made Up Mind’
Brandi Carlile Featuring Lucius – ‘You And Me On The Rock’
Eric Alexandrakis – ‘Silver Moon [A Tribute to Michael Nesmith]’

Best American Roots Song
Anaïs Mitchell – ‘Bright Star’
Aoife O’Donovan & Allison Russell – ‘Prodigal Daughter’
Bonnie Raitt – ‘Just Like That’
Brandi Carlile Featuring Lucius – ‘You And Me On The Rock’
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – ‘High And Lonesome’
Sheryl Crow – ‘Forever’

Best Americana Album
Bonnie Raitt – ‘Just Like That…’
Brandi Carlile – ‘In These Silent Days’
Dr. John – ‘Things Happen That Way’
Keb’ Mo’ – ‘Good To Be…’
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – ‘Raise The Roof’

Best Bluegrass Album
The Del McCoury Band – ‘Almost Proud’
The Infamous Stringdusters – ‘Toward The Fray’
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – ‘Crooked Tree’
Peter Rowan – ‘Calling You From My Mountain’
Yonder Mountain String Band – ‘Get Yourself Outside’

Best Traditional Blues Album
Buddy Guy – ‘The Blues Don’t Lie’
Charlie Musselwhite – ‘Mississippi Son’
Gov’t Mule – ‘Heavy Load Blues’
John Mayall – ‘The Sun Is Shining Down’
Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder – ‘Get On Board’

Best Contemporary Blues Album
Ben Harper – ‘Bloodline Maintenance’
Edgar Winter – ‘Brother Johnny’
Eric Gales – ‘Crown’
North Mississippi Allstars – ‘Set Sail’
Shemekia Copeland – ‘Done Come Too Far’

Best Folk Album
Aoife O’Donovan – ‘Age Of Apathy’
Janis Ian – ‘The Light At The End Of The Line’
Judy Collins – ‘Spellbound’
Madison Cunningham – ‘Revealer’
Punch Brothers – ‘Hell On Church Street’

Best Regional Roots Music Album
Halau Hula Keali’i o Nalani – ‘Halau Hula Keali’i o Nalani (Live At The Getty Center)’
Natalie Ai Kamauu – ‘Natalie Noelani’
Nathan & The Zydeco Cha-Chas – ‘Lucky Man’
Ranky Tanky – ‘Live At The 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’
Sean Ardoin & Kreole Rock And Soul Featuring The Golden Band From Tigerland – ‘Full Circle’

Best Reggae Album
Kabaka Pyramid – ‘The Kalling’
Koffee – ‘Gifted’
Protoje – ‘Third Time’s The Charm’
Sean Paul – ‘Scorcha’
Shaggy – ‘Com Fly Wid Mi’

Best Global Music Performance
Arooj Aftab & Anoushka Shankar – ‘Udhero Na’
Burna Boy – ‘Last Last’
Matt B & Eddy Kenzo – ‘Gimme Love’
Rocky Dawuni Featuring Blvk H3ro – ‘Neva Bow Down’
Wouter Kellerman, Zakes Bantwini & Nomcebo Zikode – ‘Bayethe’

Best Global Music Album
Angélique Kidjo & Ibrahim Maalouf – ‘Queen Of Sheba’
Anoushka Shankar, Metropole Orkest & Jules Buckley Featuring Manu Delago – ‘Between Us… (Live)’
Berklee Indian Ensemble – ‘Shuruaat’
Burna Boy – ‘Love, Damini’
Masa Takumi – ‘Sakura’

Best Children’s Music Album
Alphabet Rockers – ‘The Movement’
Divinity Roxx – ‘Ready Set Go!’
Justin Roberts – ‘Space Cadet’
Lucky Diaz And The Family Jam Band – ‘Los Fabulosos’
Wendy And DB – ‘Into The Little Blue House’

Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording
Jamie Foxx – Act Like You Got Some Sense
Lin-Manuel Miranda – Aristotle And Dante Dive Into The Waters Of The World
Mel Brooks – All About Me!: My Remarkable Life In Show Business
Questlove – Music Is History
Viola Davis – Finding Me

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
Amanda Gorman – Call Us What We Carry: Poems
Amir Sulaiman – You Will Be Someone’s Ancestor. Act Accordingly.
Ethelbert Miller – Black Men Are Precious
J. Ivy – The Poet Who Sat by the Door
Malcolm-Jamal Warner – Hiding In Plain View

Best Comedy Album
Dave Chappelle – ‘The Closer’
Jim Gaffigan – ‘Comedy Monster’
Louis C.K. – ‘Sorry’
Patton Oswalt – ‘We All Scream’
Randy Rainbow – ‘A Little Brains, A Little Talent’

Best Musical Theatre Album
Original Broadway Cast – ‘A Strange Loop’
New Broadway Cast – ‘Caroline, Or Change’
‘Into the Woods’ 2022 Broadway Cast – ‘Into the Woods (2022 Broadway Cast Recording)’
Original Broadway Cast – ‘MJ The Musical’
‘Mr. Saturday Night’ Original Cast – ‘Mr. Saturday Night’
Original Broadway Cast – ‘Six: Live On Opening Night’

Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media
Various Artists – Elvis
Various Artists – Encanto
Various Artists – Stranger Things: Soundtrack From The Netflix Series, Season 4
Lorne Balfe, Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga & Hans Zimmer – Top Gun: Maverick
Various Artists – West Side Story

Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media (Includes Film and Television)
Germaine Franco – Encanto
Hans Zimmer – No Time To Die
Jonny Greenwood – The Power Of The Dog
Michael Giacchino – The Batman
Nicholas Britell – Succession: Season 3

Best Score Soundtrack For Video Games And Other Interactive Media
Austin Wintory – Aliens: Fireteam Elite
Bear McCreary – Call Of Duty: Vanguard
Christopher Tin – Old World
Richard Jacques – Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy
Stephanie Economou – Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn Of Ragnarök

Best Song Written For Visual Media
Beyoncé – ‘Be Alive
Carolina Gaitán – La Gaita, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz & Encanto – Cast – ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’
Jessy Wilson Featuring Angélique Kidjo – ‘Keep Rising (The Woman King)’
Lady Gaga – ‘Hold My Hand’
Taylor Swift – ‘Carolina’
4*Town, Jordan Fisher, Finneas O’Connell, Josh Levi, Topher Ngo & Grayson Villanueva – ‘Nobody Like U’

Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella
Armand Hutton Featuring Terrell Hunt & Just 6 – ‘As Days Go By (An Arrangement of the Family Matters Theme Song)’
Danny Elfman – ‘Main Titles’
Kings Return – ‘How Deep Is Your Love’
Magnus Lindgren, John Beasley & The SWR Big Band Featuring Martin Auer -‘Scrapple From The Apple’
Remy Le Boeuf – ‘Minnesota, WI’

Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals
Becca Stevens & Attacca Quartet – ‘2 + 2 = 5 (Arr. Nathan Schram)’
Cécile McLorin Salvant – ‘Optimistic Voices / No Love Dying’
Christine McVie – ‘Songbird (Orchestral Version)’
Jacob Collier Featuring Lizzy McAlpine & John Mayer – ‘Never Gonna Be Alone’
Louis Cole – ‘Let It Happen’

Best Recording Package
Fann – ‘Telos’
Soporus – ‘Divers’
Spiritualized – ‘Everything Was Beautiful’
Tamsui-Kavalan Chinese Orchestra – ‘Beginningless Beginning’
Underoath – ‘Voyeurist’

Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package
Black Pumas – ‘Black Pumas (Collector’s Edition Box Set)’
Danny Elfman – ‘Big Mess’
The Grateful Dead – ‘In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83’
They Might Be Giants – ‘Book’
Various Artists – ‘Artists Inspired By Music: Interscope Reimagined’

Best Album Notes
Andy Irvine & Paul Brady – ‘Andy Irvine / Paul Brady’
Astor Piazzolla – ‘The American Clavé Recordings’
Doc Watson – ‘Life’s Work: A Retrospective’
Harry Partch – ‘Harry Partch, 1942’
Wilco – ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)’

Best Historical Album
Blondie – ‘Against the Odds: 1974 – 1982’
Doc Watson – ‘Life’s Work: A Retrospective’
Freestyle Fellowship – ‘To Whom It May Concern…’
Glenn Gould – ‘The Goldberg Variations: The Complete Unreleased 1981 Studio Sessions’
Wilco – ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)’

Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical
Amy Allen
Laura Veltz
Nija Charles
The-Dream
Tobias Jesso Jr.

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
Baynk – ‘Adolescence’
Father John Misty – ‘Chloë And The Next 20th Century’
Harry Styles – ‘Harry’s House’
Robert Glasper – ‘Black Radio III’
Wet Leg – ‘Wet Leg’

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
Boi-1da
Dahi
Dan Auerbach
Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II
Jack Antonoff

Best Remixed Recording
Beyoncé – ‘Break My Soul (Terry Hunter Remix)’
Ellie Goulding – ‘Easy Lover (Four Tet Remix)’
The Knocks & Dragonette – ‘Slow Song (Paul Woolford Remix)’
Lizzo – ‘About Damn Time (Purple Disco Machine Remix)’
Wet Leg – ‘Too Late Now (Soulwax Remix)’

Best Immersive Audio Album
Anita Brevik, Nidarosdomens Jentekor & Trondheimsolistene – Tuvayhun – ‘Beatitudes For A Wounded World’
The Chainsmokers – ‘Memories…Do Not Open’
Christina Aguilera – ‘Aguilera’
Jane Ira Bloom – ‘Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1’
Stewart Copeland & Ricky Kej – ‘Divine Tides’

Best Orchestral Performance
Berlin Philharmonic & John Williams – ‘John Williams: The Berlin Concert’
Los Angeles Philharmonic & Gustavo Dudamel – ‘Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 7-9’
New York Youth Symphony – ‘Works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman’
Various Artists – Sila: ‘The Breath Of The World’
Wild Up & Christopher Rountree – ‘Stay On It’

Best Opera Recording
Boston Modern Orchestra Project & Odyssey Opera Chorus – ‘Anthony Davis: X: The Life And Times Of Malcolm X’
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & The Metropolitan Opera Chorus – ‘Blanchard: Fire Shut Up In My Bones’
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & The Metropolitan Opera Chorus – ‘Eurydice’

Best Music Video
Adele – ‘Easy On Me’
BTS – ‘Yet To Come’
Doja Cat – ‘Woman’
Harry Styles – ‘As It Was’
Kendrick Lamar – ‘The Heart Part 5’
Taylor Swift – ‘All Too Well: The Short Film’

Best Music Film
Adele – Adele One Night Only
Billie Eilish – Billie Eilish Live At The O2
Justin Bieber – Our World
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – A Band A Brotherhood A Barn
Rosalía – Motomami (Rosalía TikTok Live Performance)
Various Artists – Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story

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Listen to Calvin Harris’ funky new single ‘Stay With Me’ featuring Justin Timberlake, Halsey and Pharrell

Calvin Harris has shared his new single ‘Stay With Me’ featuring Justin Timberlake, Halsey and Pharrell Williams.

  • READ MORE: Calvin Harris live at Glastonbury 2022: Fans amplify the hit-fuelled Arcadia set

The funky disco track was teased by the superstar DJ last week and is set to feature on ‘Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2’, his first album in five years.

The song, which you can listen to below, sees all three guest artists swapping vocals with Halsey picking up a section where she sings: “I’ve been waiting for you all year/ Come play, make a mess right here/ Do whatever, I like it weird/ Okay, let ’em disappear/ Say whatever you want to hear/ Just stay.”

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‘Stay With Me’ comes a couple of weeks on from ‘New Money’ featuring 21 Savage. Meanwhile, that track followed ‘Potion’ (feat. Dua Lipa and Young Thug), which was released in May.

‘Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2’, which is the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1‘, is set to drop on August 2 and will also feature Stefflon Don, Pusha T, Lil Durk, Offset, Coi Leray, Busta Rhymes, Donae’o, Latto, Swae Lee, Snoop Dogg, Chlöe, Shenseea, Tinashe, Normani, 6LACK and Jorja Smith.

Meanwhile, Harris is set to appear at this year’s Creamfields North 2022 alongside David Guetta, Fatboy Slim and CamelPhat over the August Bank Holiday weekend (August 25-28) in Daresbury, Cheshire.

Other names on the bill include Fatboy Slim, Martin Garrix, Bicep, Carl Cox and Becky Hill.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the festival. The 2021 edition of Creamfields saw performances from The Chemical Brothers, Chase And Status and Tiesto.

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Meanwhile, Harris also recently performed at Glastonbury 2022. In her three-star review, NME‘s Erica Campbell noted that the crowd carried much of the energy, no thanks to Harris’ tunes “playing at such a low decibel they barely make it to fans who aren’t standing directly under [Arcadia’s] blaze”.

“Still, this is Glastonbury,” she continued, “and although there’s talk of the sound being ‘shite’, the high energy on the farm is palpable, and Harris’ audience is more than happy to amplify their singing and dancing to make up for any gaps in the volume.”

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Chvrches considering full album shows to celebrate 10 years together

Chvrches have said that they have ideas about marking their decade as a band as well as how to celebrate 10 years of their 2013 debut, ‘The Bones Of What You Believe‘.

  • READ MORE: Chvrches at Mad Cool 2022 on karaoke bangers, Robert Smith and a decade together

The Scottish trio were speaking to NME backstage at this year’s Mad Cool in Madrid, Spain. Chvrches played the first day of the festival yesterday (July 7) and in the NME video interview talked about their anniversary, working with The Cure‘s Robert Smith and more.

When asked if fans can expect more music from the band soon following the release of their fourth record, ‘Screen Violence‘, last August, lead singer Lauren Mayberry said: “Not at present! We’re touring a bunch and doing mostly that for the rest of the year, and then who knows? I think we’ll figure that out as we get to it.

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“It’s weird, I thought you were going to say ‘10 years’ because everyone keeps talking about how it’s 10 years since the band started and next year will be 10 years since the first record, which feels kind of mental. It’s a nice time to take stock of things and figure out where we want to go.”

Chvrches at Mad Cool 2022. Credit: Andy Ford for NME
Chvrches at Mad Cool 2022. Credit: Andy Ford for NME

Asked if they have any plans in place to mark their decade milestone, Mayberry said: “We talk about it in the pub. We haven’t put anything into action yet.”

Synth player and singer Martin Doherty added: “Someone needs to ask us to do stuff, like for promoters to say, ‘Do you want to come and play this album?’ I’ll say yes as long as people don’t think that’s us out to pasture!

“I hate it when bands are like, ‘Oh, we can only play this old album now because we’re no longer relevant.’ I don’t want to fall into that trap.”

Mayberry added: “You could do it as part of regular touring but with specific shows for that. We just need to figure it out.”

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Meanwhile, Chvrches recently teamed up with handmade FX pedals company Old Blood Noise to release an effects pedal.

The ‘Screen Violence’ pedal is inspired by the band’s acclaimed 2021 album of the same name, and was released in May.

The FX pedal features a one-knob effect that expresses itself as modulation, delay and reverb and according to a statement “blends inspiration from decades past and present to create a new stereo effect.”

The first 200 pedals purchased come with a signed card of authenticity (buy here).

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Jack Harlow, Lizzo, Chance The Rapper and more to perform at 2022 BET Awards

Jack Harlow, Lizzo and Chance The Rapper are among those set to perform at this year’s BET Awards ceremony, with the event’s full roster – sporting 27 performers and 25 presenters – being finalised yesterday (June 24).

  • READ MORE: The BET Awards 2021: the big talking points, from Cardi B’s bump to a poignant DMX tribute

10 of those performers will appear as part of a tribute to Sean “Diddy” Combs, who will receive this year’s BET Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to Combs himself, the special performance will feature Mary J. Blige, Nas, Lil’ Kim, Busta Rhymes, Jodeci and more.

A total of 15 artists will perform songs on the ceremony’s mainstage, including 11-time BET Award winner Lil Wayne, five-time winner Kirk Franklin (whose performance will be a joint effort with Maverick City Music), and one-time winners Givēon and Roddy Ricch. Latto, Joey Bada$$, Babyface and Fireboy DML are also featured, with the line-up rounded out by Chlöe, Doechii, Ella Mai and Muni Long.

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GoGo Morrow and OGI will perform on the BET Amplified Stage, which highlights up-and-coming artists.

Meanwhile, the roster of presents includes a litany of Black icons in modern pop-culture, such as Daniel Kaluuya, Idris Elba, Janelle Monáe, Keke Palmer, Ray J and Ne-Yo. Taraji P. Henson will host the show – which airs live on BET at 8pm ET tomorrow (June 26) – for the second year in a row.

The event be simulcast on eight additional stations in the US – BET Her, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Pop, TV Land and VH1 – and internationally on BET Africa, BET France and BET Pluto (for the UK and Brazil). UK viewers will also be able to tune in on My5 and Sky On-Demand.

Doja Cat leads the nominations for the 2022 BET Awards, earning nods for six trophies. She’s tailed by Ari Lennox and Drake, who have four nominations each, while 11 artists – including performers Chlöe and Mary J. Blige – have three nominations each. The other nine to rack up a trio nods are Baby Keem, Silk Sonic, Future, Kanye West, H.E.R, Jazmine Sullivan, Kendrick Lamar, Tems and Lil Baby. See the full list of nominees here.

The mainstage performers at the 2022 BET Awards are:

Babyface
Chance The Rapper
Chlöe
Doechii
Ella Mai
Fireboy DML
Givēon
Jack Harlow
Joey Bada$$
Maverick City Music / Kirk Franklin
Latto
Lil Wayne
Lizzo
Muni Long
Roddy Ricch

The performers for Sean “Diddy” Combs tribute’ are:

Mary J. Blige
Sean “Diddy” Combs
Jodeci
Nas
Lil’ Kim
Busta Rhymes
The Lox
Bryson Tiller
Faith Evans
The Maverick City Choir

The performers for the BET Amplified Stage are:

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GoGo Morrow
OGI

The hosts and presenters are:

Big Freedia
Bleu
Carl Anthony Payne II
Crystal Hayslett
Daniel Kaluuya
Ebony Obsidian
Eva Marcille
Idris Elba
Irv Gotti
Janelle Monáe
Keke Palmer
KJ Smith
Luke James
Marsai Martin
Mignon
Nene Leakes
Ne-Yo
Novi Brown
Ray J
Sanaa Lathan
Serayah
Tamar Braxton
Terrence J
Tisha Campbell
Will Packer

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A$AP Rocky announced as another headliner of Poland’s Open’er Festival 2022

A$AP Rocky has been booked to headline Poland’s Open’er Festival 2022, joining the previously announced top-billers The Killers.

  • READ MORE: 20 festivals to look forward to in 2022

The rapper joins dozens of acts already announced for the festival held at Gdynia-Kosakowo airport from June 29 until July 2.

Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, Imagine Dragons, Twenty One Pilots, Playboi Carti, Martin Garrix, The Chemical Brothers, Måneskin, Megan Thee Stallion, Glass Animals, Gunna, Clairo, Tove Lo, Little Simz, Jessie Ware, Royal Blood, Years And Years, The Smile and Michael Kiwanuka are all playing the festival.

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A$AP Rocky is the second headliner of the festival’s first night on the Wednesday (June 29) on the Orange Main Stage. Imagine Dragons also headline the first night.

The Killers previously headlined the 2020 edition of the Polish festival and will close out this year’s festival on July 2.

A$AP Rocky
A$AP Rocky. CREDIT: Press

Open’er Festival is operating in solidarity with Ukraine and says it “will be a place of support for Ukrainians facing the barbaric Russian aggression of their country”.

A special initiative “Wspierajmy Ukrainę na koncertach / Support Ukraine at concerts” will take place during the festival to help the actions of Polish Center For International Aid. Find more information here.

Four-day tickets are priced at €150 (£126), while four-day tickets with camping cost €175 (£147). Two-day tickets cost €105 (£88), but with camping are priced at €125 (£105). One-day tickets cost €75 (£63).

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Some tickets remain on sale while the promotional tickets stock lasts. Find any available ones here.

In other news, A$AP Rocky recently weighed in on the row between Chris Rock and Will Smith at this year’s Oscars ceremony, where after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith being bald, Smith walked up to the stage and slapped Rock.

The rapper said: “I think it’s unfortunate that he emasculated another Black man in front of all them people like that.”

? and the Mysterians 96 Tears/Action

On April 2, 1968, Rudy ‘?’ Martinez was one of three men picked up by Michigan state police in a lay-by near the Zilwaukee Bridge, not far from his home town of Saginaw, the trio arrested for possession of “several tubes of glue and brown bags containing glue”. In the wrong place at the wrong time with very much the wrong drugs, the perma-shaded
? And The Mysterians singer thus found himself about as far from the psychedelic action as he could have been, an improbable local success story recast as something of a laughing stock.

  • ORDER NOW: Queen is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut

Naive, sci-fi crazy, Mexican-American youngsters from a blue-collar backwater two hours’ drive from Detroit, ? And The Mysterians contrived to record the second-biggest-selling US single of 1966 (outsold only by The Mamas & The Papas’ “California Dreamin’”) in a basic studio in Bay City, Michigan. A wounded rant with a killer keyboard sound, “96 Tears” sold a million, but the two albums the band released – now back on vinyl after a long spell in legal limbo – went largely unnoticed, with mismanagement, racism and more goings-on elsewhere helping to seal the band’s fate as a one-hit wonder. As ? whoops presciently on the debut album’s “Ten O’Clock”: “You miss your train, now your name’s erased”.

However, for lovers of garage rock – the genre post-rationalised into existence following Lenny Kaye’s 1972 compilation of overlooked small-time 7” singles, Nuggets? And The Mysterians’ underachievement remains heroic. These crystal-clear new versions of
96 Tears (1966) and Action (1967) show a band impervious to the psychedelic winds of change, persisting in playing lascivious, Brit-style R&B at teenage velocity, in blissful ignorance of anything The Beatles, The Rolling Stones – or indeed anyone else – had done since 1965.

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Once a covers band, ? And The Mysterians hit on a neat gimmick when ? renounced his birth name, but seemed fated to go nowhere, their first attempts at recording vanishing after the studio owner was murdered in Detroit. They got a second chance, with “96 Tears” going viral after receiving a limited release on the tiny Pa-Go-Go label, becoming a hit in Saginaw, then Flint, then Detroit, before a deal with the Cameo-Parkway label helped propel it to the national No 1 spot in October 1966.

With future Casablanca disco mogul Neil Bogart whipping them on, the Mysterians recorded two albums in the space of six months, guitarist Bobby Balderrama and 15-year-old Vox Continental wizard Frankie Rodriguez providing tunes for their hyperactive frontman to adorn with campy yelps and rather less subtle come-ons. Quite how
no-one at the relatively strait-laced Cameo-Parkway noticed him muttering “girl, you masturbate me” on Action’s fuzztoned calling card “Girl (You Fascinate Me)” is anyone’s guess.

If they were young and a little unsubtle, ? And The Mysterians were not the musical lightweights some latter-day fans would perhaps like them to be. Frankie Gonzalez’s sly drop of a passage of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” into “I Need Somebody” – the opening track from the debut album – is evidence of a band that knew their history. Fellow Saginaw keyboard king Stevie Wonder slipped a bit of the same tune (on harmonica) into his 1963 No 1 “Fingertips”.

The instrumental “Set Aside” and “Midnight Hour” show that the Mysterians had jazz and blues chops too, but if they aspire to the alpha-male thud of the Spencer Davis Group’s “Keep On Running” on “Don’t Break This Heart Of Mine”, ?’s Prince-pitched vocals subtly queer their pitch. He comes on like a repentant Little Richard on a take of “Stormy Monday” – the only cover on 96 Tears – and plays the wounded innocent superbly on the featherweight “Why Me”, a wet lettuce approximation of Love’s “My Little Red Book”.

Producer Bogart perhaps recognised this appealing androgyny in ? when he forced the soppy “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby” (previously recorded by “A Lover’s Concerto” hitmakers The Toys) on to the band for Action. The hackneyed attempt to graft the keyboard line from “96 Tears” on to this potential comeback hit sounded clueless to the teenaged Balderrama (see interview), but ?’s slightly mocking delivery suggests he may be in on a joke somewhere.

Toughened up by an intense bout of touring, the Mysterians essay the streetwalking cheetah bit rather more convincingly on Action. Groovy, laidback and nasty, “Smokes” does the Muddy Waters “I’m A Man” bit as ? scowls: “I don’t care if you’re blue or red/I’ll take you any time anywhere in the night”. The fade-out to the hard-edged “It’s Not Easy” is similarly lusty, the singer promising: “I got kisses and I can hug you and I can… I said I can…” Meanwhile, the jaunty “Don’t Hold It Against Me” is a gaslighter’s excuse for infidelity on the lines of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”, ? sorry/not sorry as he keens “you were gone and she was there”.

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If the Mysterians can pass as leathery road warriors, ?’s hard-man act continues to mask a more delicious ambiguity. In the intro to “Girl (You Captivate Me)”, he has a strange premonition of Patti Smith as he intones, “Dark alleys and streetlights I’d walk a lonely sleepless night/The shadows were all I had until you came into my life”, a knowing wink – perhaps – to a love that might have been wary of speaking its name in Saginaw. Elsewhere, he delights in tossing off romantic cheese like “Just Like A Rose” and high-kicks his way through the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” while the “la la la”s of his own “I’ll Be Back” show that he may have missed his true calling as a Ronette.

However, as a commercial proposition, ? And The Mysterians were not about to be anyone’s baby. Even at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the colour of their skin probably closed doors for them, and ?’s eccentricity perhaps did not help (he was liable to tell interviewers that he was from Mars, and had been walking the earth since the time of the dinosaurs).

Cameo-Parkway kept vainly chasing another hit, the band putting out further doomed singles plus would-be novelty hits as the Fun Sons and the Semi-Colons? for the label, which went bust in September 1967. Beatles lawyer Allen Klein picked up ? And The Mysterians’ back catalogue in the subsequent fire sale, but his ABKCO label blocked any large-scale reissues until relatively recently. Meanwhile, the band barely survived into the 1970s; Capitol put out a one-off single, “Make You Mine”, in 1968, but a third album – recorded for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label – remains unreleased.

“96 Tears” fared pretty well without them, though. Recorded by Aretha Franklin, Eddie & The Hot Rods and Suicide among others, it provided minor hits for Big Maybelle, The Stranglers and Thelma Houston, as well as the “I’ve got 96 tears in 96 eyes” hook for The Cramps’ ’50s slasher “Human Fly”. ? And The Mysterians’ two LPs don’t quite live up to that improbable hit, but they at least highlight the subtle musical smarts and off-stage drama integral to a story where the sweet smell of success gives way to the disorienting fog of solvents. Read between the lines and you’ve got a novel.

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Listen to The Lathums soaring new single, ‘Sad Face Baby’

The Lathums have today (April 15) shared a soaring new single called ‘Sad Face Baby’ – check it out below.

  • READ MORE: The Lathums live in Manchester: the latest landmark in an incredible year

Performed for the first time last summer, the track is the first new music release for the band this year and features the work of their new producer, Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Bombay Bicycle Club).

Reflecting on ‘Sad Face Baby’ and the last two years of the band, frontman Alex Moore said: “The Lathums has been a world of opportunity for us, but things still get to you.

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“We have had to come to understand each other more and the ways the world works around us. Naivety and innocence have been lost and ‘Sad Face Baby’ is the sharper edge of what we can do as a band.”

The band are about to begin a short headline spring tour ahead of a long run of dates that will see them support The Killers on their European arena tour, as well as performing at festivals including TRNSMT, Neighbourhood, Reading and Leeds and Boardmasters.

Check out the dates of their tour below and buy tickets here.

APRIL
23 – Galway, Ireland, Roisin Dubh

24 – Limerick, Ireland, Dolans
25 – Dublin, Ireland, The Academy
27 – Belfast, Limelight 1
30 – Liverpool, Sound City

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Reviewing their debut album, NME said: “While the initial rise of The Lathums has already drawn comparisons with the Arctic Monkeys, this record is very much steeped in the jangly sound of The Smiths and The Housemartins: jaunty guitars and anthems with swelling festival crowds in mind.

“…Yet while The Lathums may crib from their working class heroes, they don’t solely rely on them. Defiant standout track ‘Fight On’ – which has become a staple anthem in their live set – shows the strength of Moore’s own ability to write a tune. The element of personal loss that runs through the heartbreaking ‘I’ll Never Forget The Time I Spent With You’ and ska-spitting ‘I See Your Ghost’ shows Moore has his own trauma to tell, even if he is doing so reluctantly.”

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Watch Joni Mitchell sing in public for the first time since 2013

Joni Mitchell has delivered her first public performance in nine years, taking to the stage at MusiCares’ 2022 Person of the Year benefit gala.

Mitchell was bestowed with this year’s titular honour on Friday night (April 1), following in the footsteps of previous recipients Aerosmith (who were celebrated with the title in 2020) and Dolly Parton (in 2019).

Mitchell was not announced to be performing at the event, but joined the likes of Beck, Brandi Carlile, Cyndi Lauper, Stephen Stills, Jon Batiste and more to sing her 1970 classics ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and ‘The Circle Game’.

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It marked her first time singing in public since June 2013, when she performed two short, impromptu sets at events being held in her honour, where she was initially booked to recite poetry. Prior to those, her last performance took place in 2002, with Mitchell having retired from touring altogether in 2000.

Watch Mitchell singing ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ at the MusiCares gala below:

At other points during the event, which took place at the Marquee Ballroom in Las Vegas, Mitchell was honoured with a sprawling roster of tributes.

Among them were a cover of ‘The Jungle Line’ (from Mitchell’s 1975 album ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’) performed by Beck, St. Vincent’s rendition of ‘Court And Spark’ (from the 1974 album of the same name) and a take on ‘River’ (from 1971’s ‘Blue’) by John Legend.

Other covers performed included Mickey Guyton’s rendition of ‘For Free’, Herbie Hancock and Terrace Martin’s take on ‘Hejira’, a performance of ‘Help Me’ by Dave Grohl’s 15-year-old daughter Violet, Billy Porter’s spin on ‘Both Sides Now’, and ‘Woodstock’ by Carlile and Stills. Carlile also served as one of the night’s artistic directors, alongside Batiste.

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“When I heard that Joni was named Person of the Year, I knew I wanted to be involved in a meaningful way,” Batiste said in his opening speech. “Brandi and I worked with the producers to paint a beautiful picture of poetry and music through Joni’s eyes.”

Mitchell has largely kept out of the public eye since 2015, when she suffered a brain aneurysm that left her temporarily unable to walk or talk. She’s been making more appearances lately, though: the iconic singer-songwriter gave a speech at last year’s Kennedy Center Honors, where she received a lifetime achievement award, and presented Carlile’s performance at the 2022 Grammys last night (April 3).

Mitchell herself won the Grammy for Best Historical Album, taking out the award for her five-disc boxset ‘Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963–1967)’. The effort compiles rarities from the years preceding the release of Mitchell’s debut album, 1968’s ‘Song To A Seagull’, including various live bootlegs, radio sessions, jams and demo tapes.

In January, Mitchell declared her support for Neil Young’s battle against Spotify, removing her discography from the streaming platform in protest of it platforming misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last month, she gave her stamp of approval to the title of Harry Styles‘ recently-announced third solo album, ‘Harry’s House’. Mitchell included a song called ‘Harry’s House/Centerpiece’ on her 1975 album ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’. Shortly after Styles announced the album on Twitter, she retweeted his post, writing that she “love[s] the title”.

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Here are all the winners from the Grammys 2022  rolling list

The Grammys 2022 takes place tonight (April 3) in Las Vegas, with performances from the likes of Silk Sonic, BTS, Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo and more lined up.

The main bulk of the awards will be handed out at the pre-telecast ceremony, which will be broadcast on the Grammys website and YouTube channel.

Then, at 8pm EST (1am BST), the main ceremony will air and hand out the biggest trophies of the night, including Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year and Best New Artist.

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Going into the event, Jon Batiste leads the nominations with 11 nods, while Justin Bieber follows on eight. Doja Cat, Rodrigo, and Billie Eilish all have seven nominations each.

Jon Batiste
Jon Batiste CREDIT: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

A tribute to Foo Fighters’ drummer Taylor Hawkins will also be staged following the iconic musician’s death last week (March 25). Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform at the ceremony, but have since pulled out, as well as cancelling their planned touring schedule.

The full list of nominees for the Grammys 2022 is below – winners will be highlighted in bold as they are announced.

Record of the Year

ABBA – ‘I Still Have Faith In You’
Jon Batiste – ‘Freedom’
Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga – ‘I Get A Kick Out of You’
Justin Bieber, Daniel Cesar, Giveon – ‘Peaches’
Brandi Carlile – ‘Right on Time’
Doja Cat, SZA – ‘Kiss Me More’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Lil Nas X – ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Drivers License’
Silk Sonic – ‘Leave The Door Open’

Album of the Year

Jon Batiste – ‘We Are’
Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga – ‘Love For Sale’
Justin Bieber – ‘Justice (Triple Chucks Deluxe)’
Doja Cat – ‘Planet Her (Deluxe)’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Sour’
Lil Nas X – ‘Montero’
H.E.R. – ‘Back Of My Mind’
Kanye West – ‘Donda’
Taylor Swift – ‘Evermore’

Song of the Year

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Ed Sheeran – ‘Bad Habits’
Alicia Keys, Brandi Carlile – ‘A Beautiful Noise’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Drivers License’
H.E.R. – ‘Fight For You’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Doja Cat, SZA – ‘Kiss Me More’
Silk Sonic – ‘Leave The Door Open’
Lil Nas X – ‘Montero (Call Me by Your Name)’
Justin Bieber, Daniel Cesar, Giveon – ‘Peaches’
Brandi Carlile – ‘Right On Time’

Best New Artist

Arooj Aftab
Jimmie Allen
Baby Keem
Finneas
Glass Animals
Japanese Breakfast
The Kid Laroi
Arlo Parks
Olivia Rodrigo
Saweetie

Best Pop Solo Performance

Justin Bieber – ‘Anyone’
Brandi Carlile – ‘Right On Time’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Ariana Grande – ‘Positions’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Drivers License’

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga – ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You’
Justin Bieber & Benny Blanco – ‘Lonely’
BTS – ‘Butter’
Coldplay – ‘Higher Power’
Doja Cat Featuring SZA – ‘Kiss Me More’

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga – ‘Love For Sale’
Norah Jones – ’Til We Meet Again (Live)’
Tori Kelly – ‘A Tori Kelly Christmas’
Ledisi – ‘Ledisi Sings Nina’
Willie Nelson – ‘That’s Life’
Dolly Parton – ‘A Holly Dolly Christmas’

Best Pop Vocal Album

Justin Bieber – ‘Justice (Triple Chucks Deluxe)’
Doja Cat – ‘Planet Her (Deluxe)’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Ariana Grande – ‘Positions’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Sour’

Best Rock Performance

AC/DC – ‘Shot In The Dark’
Black Pumas – ‘Know You Better (Live From Capitol Studio A)’
Chris Cornell – ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’
Deftones – ‘Ohms’
Foo Fighters – ‘Making A Fire’

Best Metal Performance

Deftones – ‘Genesis’
Dream Theater – ‘The Alien’
Gojira – ‘Amazonia’
Mastodon – ‘Pushing The Tides’
Rob Zombie – ‘The Triumph Of King Freak (A Crypt Of Preservation And Superstition)’

Olivia Rodrigo. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for MRC
Olivia Rodrigo. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for MRC

Best Rock Song

Rivers Cuomo, Ashley Gorley, Ben Johnson & Ilsey Juber – ‘All My Favourite Songs’ (Weezer)
Caleb Followill, Jared Followill, Matthew Followill & Nathan Followill – ‘The Bandit’ (Kings Of Leon)
Wolfgang Van Halen – ‘Distance’ (Mammoth WVH)
Paul McCartney – ‘Find My Way’
Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Rami Jaffee, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett & Pat Smear – ‘Waiting On A War’ (Foo Fighters)

Best Rock Album

AC/DC – ‘Power Up’
Black Pumas – ‘Capitol Cuts – Live From Studio A’
Chris Cornell – ‘No One Sings Like You Anymore Vol. 1’
Foo Fighters – ‘Medicine At Midnight’
Paul McCartney – ‘McCartney III’

Best Dance/Electronic Recording

Afrojack & David Guetta – ‘Hero’
Ólafur Arnalds, Bonobo – ‘Loom’
James Blake – ‘Before’
Bonobo, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – ‘Heartbreak’
Caribou – ‘You Can Do It’
Rüfüs du Sol – ‘Alive’ – winner
Tiësto – ‘The Business’

Best Dance/Electronic Music Album

Black Coffee – Subconsciously’ – winner
ILLENIUM – ‘Fallen Numbers’
Major Lazer – ‘Music Is The Weapon (Reloaded)’
Marshmello – ‘Shockwave’
Sylvan Esso – ‘Free Love’
Ten City – ‘Judgement’

Best Alternative Music Album

Fleet Foxes – ‘Shore’
Halsey – ‘If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power’
Japanese Breakfast – ‘Jubilee’
Arlo Parks – ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’
St. Vincent – ‘Daddy’s Home’

Best R&B Performance

Snoh Aalegra – ‘Lost You’
Justin Bieber, Daniel Cesar, Giveon – ‘Peaches’
H.E.R. – ‘Damage’
Silk Sonic – ‘Leave the Door Open’
Jazmine Sullivan – ‘Pick Up Your Feelings’

Best Progressive R&B Album

Eric Bellinger – ‘New Light’
Cory Henry – ‘Something To Say’
Hiatus Kaiyote – ‘Mood Valiant’
Lucky Daye – ‘Table For Two’
Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder & Kamasi Washington – ‘Dinner Party: Dessert’
Masego – ‘Studying Abroad: Extended Stay’

Best Traditional R&B Performance

Jon Batiste – ‘I Need You’
BJ The Chicago Kid, PJ Morton & Kenyon Dixon Featuring Charlie Bereal – ‘Bring It On Home To Me’
Leon Bridges Featuring Robert Glasper – ‘Born Again’
H.E.R. – ‘Fight For You’
Lucky Daye Featuring Yebba – ‘How Much Can A Heart Take’

Best R&B Song

Anthony Clemons Jr., Jeff Gitelman, H.E.R., Carl McCormick & Tiara Thomas – ‘Damage’ (H.E.R.)
Jacob Collier, Carter Lang, Carlos Munoz, Solána Rowe & Christopher Ruelas – ‘Good Days’ (SZA)
Giveon Evans, Maneesh, Sevn Thomas & Varren Wade – ‘Heartbreak Anniversary’ (Giveon)
Denisia “Blue June” Andrews, Audra Mae Butts, Kyle Coleman, Brittany “Chi” Coney, Michael Holmes & Jazmine Sullivan – ‘Pick Up Your Feelings’ (Jazmine Sullivan)

Best R&B Album

Snoh Aalegra – ‘Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies’
Jon Batiste – ‘We Are’
Leon Bridges – ‘Gold-Diggers Sound’
H.E.R. – ‘Back Of My Mind’
Jazmine Sullivan – ‘Heaux Tales’

Justin Bieber performs at the Beverly Hilton
Justin Bieber performs at the Beverly Hilton on New Year’s Eve 2020. CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images

Best Traditional R&B Performance

Jon Batiste – ‘I Need You’
BJ the Chicago Kid, PJ Morton, Kenyon Dixon, Charlie Bereal – ‘Bring It On Home’
Leon Bridges, Robert Glasper – ‘Born Again’
H.E.R. – ‘Fight for You’
Lucky Dave, Yebba – ‘How Much Can A Heart Take’

Best Rap Performance

Baby Keem, Kendrick Lamar – ‘Family Ties’
Cardi B – ‘Up’
J. Cole, 21 Savage & Morray – ​​’My Life’
Drake, Future, Young Thug – ‘Way Too Sexy’
Megan Thee Stallion – ‘Thot Shit’

Best Rap Album

J. Cole – ‘The Off-Season’
Drake – ‘Certified Lover Boy’
Nas – ‘King’s Disease 2’
Tyler, the Creator – ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’
Kanye West – ‘Donda’

Best Melodic Rap Performance

J. Cole, Lil Baby – ‘Pride Is The Devil’
Doja Cat – ‘Need to Know’
Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow – ‘Industry Baby’
Tyler, the Creator Featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Ty Dolla $ign – ‘WusYaName’
Kanye West, The Weekend, Lil Baby – ‘Hurricane’

Best Rap Song

DMX, Jay-Z, Nas – ‘Bath Salts’
Saweetie, Doja Cat – ‘Best Friend’
Baby Keem, Kendrick Lamar – ‘Family Ties’
Kanye West, Jay-Z – ‘Jail’
J. Cole, 21 Savage & Morray – ‘​​My Life’

Best Latin Pop or Urban Album

Pablo Alborán – ‘Vértigo’
Paula Arenas – ‘Mis Amores’
Ricardo Arjona – ‘Hecho A La Antigua’
Camilo – ‘Mis Manos’
Alex Cuba – ‘Mendó’
Selena Gomez – ‘Revelación’

Best American Roots Performance

Jon Batiste – ‘Cry’ – winner
Billy Strings – ‘Love and Regret’
The Blind Boys of Alabama and Bela Fleck – ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free’
Brandy Clark Featuring Brandi Carlile – ‘Same Devil’
Allison Russell – ‘Nightflyer’

Best American Roots Song

Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – ‘Avalon’
Valerie June Featuring Carla Thomas – ‘Call Me A Fool’
Jon Batiste – ‘Cry’ – winner
Yola – ‘Diamond Studded Shoes’
Allison Russell – ‘Nightflyer’

Best Americana Album

Jackson Browne – ‘Downhill From Everywhere’
John Hiatt with the Jerry Douglas Band – ‘Leftover Feelings’
Los Lobos – ‘Native Sons’ – winner
Allison Russell – ‘Outside Child’
Yola – ‘Stand for Myself’

Best Bluegrass Album

Billy Strings – ‘Renewal’
Béla Fleck – ‘My Bluegrass Heart’ – winner
The Infamous Stringdusters – ‘A Tribute To Bill Monroe’
Sturgill Simpson – ‘Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 (Butcher Shoppe Sessions)’
Rhonda Vincent – ‘Music Is What I See’

Best Traditional Blues Album

Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite – ‘100 Years of Blues’
Blues Traveler – ‘Traveler’s Blues’
Cedric Burnside – ‘I Be Trying’ – winner
Guy Davis – ‘Be Ready When I Call You’
Kim Watson – ‘Take Me Back’

Doja Cat
Doja Cat performing at Lollapalooza Brasil on March 25, 2022. Credit: Mauricio Santana/Getty Images.

Best Contemporary Blues Album

The Black Keys Featuring Eric Deaton and Kenny Brown – ‘Delta Kream’
Joe Bonamassa – ‘Royal Tea’
Shemekia Copeland – ‘Uncivil War’
Steve Cropper – ‘Fire It Up’
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram – ‘662’ – winner

Best Folk Album

Mary Chapin Carpenter – ‘One Night Lonely (Live)’
Tyler Childers – ‘Long Violent History’
Madison Cunningham – ‘Wednesday (Extended Edition)’
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi – ‘They’re Calling Me Home’ – winner
Sarah Jarosz – ‘Blue Heron Suite’

Best Regional Roots Music Album

Sean Ardoin and Kreole Rock and Soul – ‘Live In New Orleans!’
Big Chief Monk Boudreaux – ‘Bloodstains and Teardrops’
Chia Wa – ‘My People’
Corey Ledet Zydaco – ‘Corey Ledet Zydaco’
Kalani Pe’a – ‘Kau Ka Pe’a’ – winner

Best Reggae Album

Etana – ‘Pamoja’
Gramps Morgan – ‘Positive Vibration’
Sean Paul – ‘Live N Livin’
Jesse Royal – Royal Soja – ‘Beauty In the Silence’ – winner
Spice – ’10’

Best Global Music Album

Rocky Dawuni – ‘Voice of Bunbon Vol. 1.’
Daniel Ho & Friends – ‘East West Players Presents: Daniel Ho & Friends Live In Concert’
Angélique Kidjo – ‘Mother Nature’ – winner
Femi Kuti, Made Kuti – ‘Legacy +’
Wizkid – ‘Made in Lagos: Deluxe Edition’

Best New Age Album

Will Ackerman, Jeff Oster, Tom Eaton – ‘Brothers’
Stewart Copeland, Ricky Kej – ‘Divine Tides’ – winner
Wouter Kellerman, David Arkenstone – ‘Pangaea’
Opium Moon – ‘Night + Day’
Laura Sullivan – ‘Pieces of Forever’

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

The Marías – ‘Cinema’
Yebba – ‘Dawn’
Low – ‘Hey What’
Tony Bennet, Lady Gaga – ‘Love For Sale’
Pino Palladino, Blake Mills – ‘Notes With Attachments’

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical

Jack Antonoff
Rogét Chahayed
Mike Elizondo
Hit-Boy
Ricky Reed

Best Remixed Recording

Soul II Soul – ‘Back to Life (Booka T Kings of Soul Satta Dub)’
Papa Roach – ‘Born for Greatness (Cymek Remix)’
K. D. Lang – ‘Constant Craving (Fashionably Late Remix)’
Zedd, Griff – ‘Inside Out (3Scape Drm Remix)’
Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande – ‘Met Him Last Night (Dave Audé Remix)’
Deftones – ‘Passenger (Mike Shinoda Remix)’
PVA – ‘Talks (Mura Masa Remix)’

Best Immersive Audio Album (63rd Grammy)

Stemmeklang – ‘Bolstad: Tomba Sonora’
Booka Shade – ‘Dear Future Self (Dolby Atmos Mixes)’
Tove Ramio-Ystad, Cantus – ‘Fryd’
Alain Mallet – ‘Mutt Slang II: A Wake of Sorrows Engulfed in Rage’
Jim R. Keene, the United States Army Field Band – ‘Soundtrack of the American Soldier’ – winner

Billie Eilish pauses concert to help fan
Billie Eilish. Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Best Immersive Audio Album

Alicia Keys – ‘Alicia’
Patricia Barber – ‘Clique’
Harry Styles – ‘Fine Line’
Steven Wilson – ‘The Future Bites’
Anne Karin Sundal-Ask, Det Norske Jentekor – ‘Stille Grender’

Best Engineered Album, Classical

Sérgio Assad, Clarice Assad, Third Coast Percussion – ‘Archetypes’
Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax – ‘Beethoven Cello Sonatas: Hope Amid Tears’
Manfred Honeck, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra – ‘Beethoven Symphony No. 9’
Chanticleer – ‘Chanticleer Sings Christmas’
Gustavo Dudamel, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Luke McEndarfer, Robert Istad, Grant Gershon, Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, National Children’s Chorus, Pacific Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic – ‘Mahler: Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand’

Best Contemporary Instrumental Album

Randy Brecker, Eric Marienthal – ‘Double Dealin’’
Rachel Eckroth – ‘The Garden’
Taylor Eigsti – ‘Tree Falls’
Steve Gadd Band – ‘At Blue Note Tokyo’
Mark Lettieri – ‘Deep: The Baritone Sessions, Vol. 2’

Best Country Solo Performance

Luke Combs – ‘Forever After All’
Mickey Guyton – ‘Remember Her Name’
Jason Isbell – ‘All I Do Is Drive’
Kacey Musgraves – ‘Camera Roll’
Chris Stapleton – ‘You Should Probably Leave’ – winner

Best Country Duo/Group Performance

Jason Aldean & Carrie Underwood – ‘If I Didn’t Love You’
Brothers Osborne – ‘Younger Me’ – winner
Dan + Shay – ‘Glad You Exist’
Ryan Hurd & Maren Morris – ‘Chasing After You’
Elle King & Miranda Lambert – ‘Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)’

Best Country Song

Jessie Jo Dillon, Maren Morris, Jimmy Robbins & Laura Veltz – ‘Better Than We Found It’ (Maren Morris)
Ian Fitchuk, Kacey Musgraves & Daniel Tashian – ‘Camera Roll’ (Kacey Musgraves)
Dave Cobb, J.T. Cure, Derek Mixon & Chris Stapleton – ‘Cold’ (Chris Stapleton) – winner
Zach Crowell, Ashley Gorley & Thomas Rhett – ‘Country Again’ (Thomas Rhett)
Cameron Bartolini, Walker Hayes, Josh Jenkins & Shane Stevens – ‘Fancy Like’ (Walker Hayes)
Mickey Guyton, Blake Hubbard, Jarrod Ingram & Parker Welling – ‘Remember Her Name’ (Mickey Guyton)

Best Country Album

Brothers Osborne – ‘Skeletons’
Mickey Guyton – ‘Remember Her Name’
Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall & Jack Ingram – ‘The Marfa Tapes’
Sturgill Simpson – ‘The Ballad Of Dood & Juanita’
Chris Stapleton – ‘Starting Over’

Best Improvised Jazz Solo

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah – ‘Sackodougou’
Kenny Barron – ‘Kick Those Feet’
Jon Batiste – ‘Bigger Than Us’
Terence Blanchard – ‘Absence’
Chick Corea ‘Humpty Dumpty (Set 2)’ – winner

Best Jazz Vocal Album

The Baylor Project – ‘Generations’
Kurt Elling & Charlie Hunter – ‘SuperBlue’
Nnenna Freelon – ‘Time Traveller’
Gretchen Parlato – ‘Flor’
Esperanza Spalding – ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’

Best Jazz Instrumental Album

Jon Batiste – ‘Jazz Selections: Music From And Inspired By Soul’
Terence Blanchard Featuring The E Collective And The Turtle Island Quartet – ‘Absence’
Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette & Gonzalo Rubalcaba – ‘Skyline’ – winner
Chick Corea, John Patitucci & Dave Weckl – ‘Akoustic Band LIVE’
Pat Metheny – ‘Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV)’

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album

The Count Basie Orchestra Directed By Scotty Barnhart – ‘Live At Birdland!’
Jazzmeia Horn And Her Noble Force – ‘Dear Love’
Christian McBride Big Band – ‘For Jimmy, Wes And Oliver’ – winner
Sun Ra Arkestra – ‘Swirling’
Yellowjackets + WDR Big Band – ‘Jackets XL’

j cole rwanda basketball africa
J Cole (Picture: Jeff Hahne/Getty Images)

Best Latin Jazz Album

Eliane Elias With Chick Corea and Chucho Valdés – ‘Mirror Mirror’ – winner
Carlos Henriquez – ‘The South Bronx Story’
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra – ‘Virtual Birdland’
Dafnis Prieto Sextet – ‘Transparency’
Miguel Zenón & Luis Perdomo – ‘El Arte Del Bolero’

Best Gospel Performance/Song

Dante Bowe Featuring Steffany Gretzinger & Chandler Moore; Dante Bowe, Tywan Mack, Jeff Schneeweis & Mitch Wong – ‘Voice Of God’
Dante Bowe; Dante Bowe & Ben Schofield – ‘Joyful’
Anthony Brown & Group Therapy; Anthony Brown & Darryl Woodson – ‘Help’
CeCe Winans – ‘Never Lost’
Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music; Dante Bowe, Chris Brown, Steven Furtick, Tiffany Hudson, Brandon Lake & Chandler Moore – ‘Wait On You’

Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song

Kirk Franklin & Lil Baby; Kirk Franklin, Dominique Jones, Cynthia Nunn & Justin Smith – ‘We Win’
H.E.R. & Tauren Wells; Josiah Bassey, Dernst Emile & H.E.R. – ‘Hold Us Together (Hope Mix)’
Chandler Moore & KJ Scriven; Jonathan Jay, Nathan Jess & Chandler Moore – ‘Man Of Your Word’
CeCe Winans; Dwan Hill, Kyle Lee, CeCe Winans & Mitch Wong – ‘Believe For It’
Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music Featuring Chandler Moore & Naomi Raine; Chris Brown, Steven Furtick, Chandler Moore & Naomi Raine – ‘Jireh’

Best Gospel Album

Jekalyn Carr – ‘Changing Your Story’
Tasha Cobbs Leonard – ‘Royalty: Live At The Ryman’
Maverick City Music – ‘Jubilee: Juneteenth Edition’
Jonathan McReynolds & Mali Music – ‘Jonny X Mali: Live In LA’
CeCe Winans – ‘Believe For It’

Best Contemporary Christian Music Album

Natalie Grant – ‘No Stranger’
Israel & New Breed – ‘Feels Like Home Vol. 2’
Kari Jobe – ‘The Blessing (Live)’
Tauren Wells – ‘Citizen Of Heaven (Live)’
Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music – ‘Old Church Basement’

Best Roots Gospel Album

Harry Connick, Jr. – ‘Alone With My Faith’
Gaither Vocal Band – ‘That’s Gospel, Brother’
Ernie Haase & Signature Sound – ‘Keeping On’
The Isaacs – ‘Songs For The Times’
Carrie Underwood – ‘My Savior’

Best Música Urbana Album

Rauw Alejandro – ‘Afrodisíaco’
Bad Bunny – ‘El Último Tour Del Mundo’
J Balvin – ‘Jose’
KAROL G – ‘KG0516’
Kali Uchis – ‘Sin Miedo (Del Amor Y Otros Demonios) 8’

Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album

Bomba Estéreo – ‘Deja’
Diamante Eléctrico – ‘Mira Lo Que Me Hiciste Hacer (Deluxe Edition)’
Juanes – ‘Origen’
Nathy Peluso – ‘Calambre’
C. Tangana – ‘El Madrileño’
Zoé – ‘Sonidos De Karmática Resonancia’

Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano)

Aida Cuevas – ‘Antología De La Musica Ranchera, Vol. 2’
Vicente Fernández – ‘A Bis 80’s’
Mon Laferte – ‘Seis’
Natalia Lafourcade – ‘Un Canto Por México, Vol. II’
Christian Nodal – ‘Ayayay! (Súper Deluxe)’

Best Tropical Latin Album

Rubén Blades y Roberto Delgado & Orquesta – ‘Salswing!’
El Gran Combo De Puerto Rico – ‘En Cuarentena’
Aymée Nuviola – ‘Sin Salsa No Hay Paraíso’
Gilberto Santa Rosa – ‘Colegas’
Tony Succar – ‘Live In Peru’

bts festa 2020 group concept photo hybe big hit music
BTS. Credit: HYBE

Best Global Music Performance

Arooj Aftab – ‘Mohabbat’ – winner
Angelique Kidjo & Burna Boy – ‘Do Yourself’
Femi Kuti – ‘Pà Pá Pà’
Yo-Yo Ma & Angelique Kidjo – ‘Blewu’
WizKid Featuring Tems – ‘Essence’

Best Children’s Music Album

123 Andrés – ‘Actívate’
1 Tribe Collective – ‘All One Tribe’
Pierce Freelon – ‘Black To The Future’
Falu – ‘A Colorful World’
Lucky Diaz And The Family Jam Band – ‘Crayon Kids’

Best Spoken Word Album

LeVar Burton – ‘Aftermath’
Don Cheadle – ‘Carry On: Reflections For A New Generation From John Lewis’
J. Ivy – ‘Catching Dreams: Live At Fort Knox Chicago’
Dave Chappelle & Amir Sulaiman – ‘8:46’
Barack Obama – ‘A Promised Land’

Best Comedy Album

Lavell Crawford – ‘The Comedy Vaccine’
Chelsea Handler – ‘Evolution’
Louis C.K. – ‘Sincerely Louis CK’
Lewis Black – ‘Thanks For Risking Your Life’
Nate Bargatze – ‘The Greatest Average American’
Kevin Hart – ‘Zero F***s Given’

Best Musical Theater Album

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Nick Lloyd Webber & Greg Wells, producers; Andrew Lloyd Webber & David Zippel, composers/lyricists – ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella’ (Original Album Cast)
Burt Bacharach, Michael Croiter, Ben Hartman & Steven Sater, producers; Burt Bacharach, composer; Steven Sater – ‘Burt Bacharach and Steven Sater’s Some Lovers’ (World Premiere Cast)
Simon Hale, Conor McPherson & Dean Sharenow, producers (Bob Dylan, composer & lyricist) – ‘Girl From The North Country’ (Original Broadway Cast)
Cameron Mackintosh, Lee McCutcheon & Stephen Metcalfe, producers (Claude-Michel Schönberg, composer; Alain Boublil, John Caird, Herbert Kretzmer, Jean-Marc Natel & Trevor Nunn, lyricists) – ‘Les Misérables: The Staged Concert (The Sensational 2020 Live Recording)’
Daniel C. Levine, Michael J Moritz Jr, Bryan Perri & Stephen Schwartz, producers (Stephen Schwartz, composer & lyricist) – ‘Stephen Schwartz’s Snapshots’ (World Premiere Cast)
Emily Bear, producer; Abigail Barlow & Emily Bear, composers/lyricists – ‘The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical’ – winner

Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media

Various Artists – ‘Cruella’
Various Artists – ‘Dear Evan Hansen’
Various Artists – ‘In The Heights’
Various Artists – ‘One Night In Miami…’
Various Artists – ‘Schmigadoon! Episode 1’
Jennifer Hudson – ‘Respect’
Andra Day – ‘The United States Vs. Billie Holiday’ – winner

Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media

Kris Bowers – ‘Bridgerton’
Hans Zimmer – ‘Dune’
Ludwig Göransson – ‘The Mandalorian: Season 2 – Vol. 2 (Chapters 13-16)’
Carlos Rafael Rivera – ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ – winner
Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – ‘Soul’ – winner

Best Song Written For Visual Media

Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez, songwriters (Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez Featuring Kathryn Hahn, Eric Bradley, Greg Whipple, Jasper Randall & Gerald White) – ‘Agatha All Along [From WandaVision: Episode 7]’
Bo Burnham, songwriter (Bo Burnham) – ‘All Eyes On Me [From Inside]’ – winner
Alecia Moore, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, songwriters (P!nk) – ‘All I Know So Far [From P!NK: All I Know So Far]’
Dernst Emile II, H.E.R. & Tiara Thomas, songwriters (H.E.R.) – ‘Fight For You [From Judas And The Black Messiah]’
Jamie Hartman, Jennifer Hudson & Carole King, songwriters (Jennifer Hudson) – ‘Here I Am (Singing My Way Home) [From Respect]’
Sam Ashworth & Leslie Odom, Jr., songwriters (Leslie Odom, Jr.) – ‘Speak Now [From One Night In Miami…]’

Best Instrumental Composition

Brandee Younger – ‘Beautiful Is Black’
Tom Nazziola – ‘Cat And Mouse’
Vince Mendoza & Czech National Symphony Orchestra Featuring Antonio Sánchez & Derrick Hodge – ‘Concerto For Orchestra: Finale’
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble – ‘Dreaming In Lions: Dreaming In Lions’
Lyle Mays – ‘Eberhard’ – winner

Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella

Bill O’Connell, arranger (Richard Baratta) – ‘Chopsticks’
Robin Smith, arranger (HAUSER, London Symphony Orchestra & Robin Smith) – ‘For The Love Of A Princess (From “Braveheart”)’
Emile Mosseri, arranger (Emile Mosseri) – ‘Infinite Love’
Charlie Rosen & Jake Silverman, arrangers (The 8-Bit Big Band Featuring Button Masher) – ‘Meta Knight’s Revenge (From “Kirby Superstar”)’ – winner
Gabriela Quintero & Rodrigo Sanchez, arrangers (Rodrigo y Gabriela) – ‘The Struggle Within’

Silk Sonic
Silk Sonic. CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals

Ólafur Arnalds, arranger (Ólafur Arnalds & Josin) – ‘The Bottom Line’
Tehillah Alphonso, arranger (Tonality & Alexander Lloyd Blake) – ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’
Jacob Collier – ‘The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)’
Cody Fry – ‘Eleanor Rigby’
Vince Mendoza, arranger (Vince Mendoza, Czech National Symphony Orchestra & Julia Bullock) – ‘To The Edge Of Longing (Edit Version)’ – winner

Best Recording Package

Sarah Dodds & Shauna Dodds, art directors (Reckless Kelly) – ‘American Jackpot / American Girls’
Nick Cave & Tom Hingston, art directors (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis) – ‘Carnage’
Li Jheng Han & Yu, Wei, art directors (2nd Generation Falangao Singing Group & The Chairman Crossover Big Band) – ‘Pakelang’
Dayle Doyle, art director (Matt Berninger) – ‘Serpentine Prison’
Xiao Qing Yang, art director (Soul Of Ears) – ‘Zeta’

Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package

Darren Evans, Dhani Harrison & Olivia Harrison, art directors (George Harrison) – ‘All Things Must Pass: 50th Anniversary Edition’
Lordess Foudre & Christopher Leckie, art directors (Soccer Mommy) – ‘Color Theory’
Simon Moore, art director (Steven Wilson) – ‘The Future Bites (Limited Edition Box Set)’
Dan Calderwood & Jon King, art directors (Gang Of Four) – ’77-81’
Ramón Coronado & Marshall Rake, art directors (Mac Miller) – ‘Swimming In Circles’

Best Album Notes

Ann-Katrin Zimmermann, album notes writer (Sunwook Kim) – ‘Beethoven: The Last Three Sonatas’
Ricky Riccardi, album notes writer (Louis Armstrong) – ‘The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia And RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966’
Kevin Howes, album notes writer (Willie Dunn) – ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’
David Giovannoni, Richard Martin & Stephan Puille, album notes writers (Various Artists) – ‘Etching The Voice: Emile Berliner And The First Commercial Gramophone Discs, 1889-1895’
Robert Marovich, album notes writer (Various Artists) – ‘The King Of Gospel Music: The Life And Music Of Reverend James Cleveland’

Best Historical Album

Robert Russ, compilation producer; Nancy Conforti, Andreas K. Meyer & Jennifer Nulsen, mastering engineers (Marian Anderson) – ‘Beyond The Music: Her Complete RCA Victor Recordings’
Meagan Hennessey & Richard Martin, compilation producers; Richard Martin, mastering engineer (Various Artists) – ‘Etching The Voice: Emile Berliner And The First Commercial Gramophone Discs, 1889-1895’
April Ledbetter, Steven Lance Ledbetter & Jonathan Ward, compilation producers; Michael Graves, mastering engineer (Various Artists) – ‘Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World’s Music’
Patrick Milligan & Joni Mitchell, compilation producers; Bernie Grundman, mastering engineer (Joni Mitchell) – ‘Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967)’
Trevor Guy, Michael Howe & Kirk Johnson, compilation producers; Bernie Grundman, mastering engineer (Prince) – ‘Sign O’ The Times (Super Deluxe Edition)’

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

Josh Conway, Marvin Figueroa, Josh Gudwin, Neal H Pogue & Ethan Shumaker, engineers; Joe LaPorta, mastering engineer (The Marías) – ‘Cinema’
Thomas Brenneck, Zach Brown, Elton “L10MixedIt” Chueng, Riccardo Damian, Tom Elmhirst, Jens Jungkurth, Todd Monfalcone, John Rooney & Smino, engineers; Randy Merrill, mastering engineer (Yebba) – ‘Dawn’
BJ Burton, engineer; BJ Burton, mastering engineer (Low) – ‘Hey What’
Dae Bennett, Josh Coleman & Billy Cumella, engineers; Greg Calbi & Steve Fallone, mastering engineers (Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga) – ‘Love For Sale’
Joseph Lorge & Blake Mills, engineers; Greg Koller, mastering engineer (Pino Palladino & Blake Mills) – ‘Notes With Attachments’

Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical

Jack Antonoff
Rogét Chahayed
Mike Elizondo
Hit-Boy
Ricky Reed

Best Remixed Recording

Booker T, remixer (Soul II Soul) – ‘Back To Life (Booker T Kings Of Soul Satta Dub)’
Spencer Bastin, remixer (Papa Roach) – ‘Born For Greatness (Cymek Remix)’
Tracy Young, remixer (K.D. Lang) – ‘Constant Craving (Fashionably Late Remix)’
3SCAPE DRM, remixer (Zedd & Griff) – ‘Inside Out (3SCAPE DRM Remix)’
Dave Audé, remixer (Demi Lovato & Ariana Grande) – ‘Met Him Last Night (Dave Audé Remix)’
Mike Shinoda, remixer (Deftones) – ‘Passenger (Mike Shinoda Remix)’
Alexander Crossan, remixer (PVA) – ‘Talks (Mura Masa Remix)’

Best Immersive Audio Album

George Massenburg & Eric Schilling, immersive mix engineers; Michael Romanowski, immersive mastering engineer; Ann Mincieli, immersive producer (Alicia Keys) – ‘Alicia’
Jim Anderson & Ulrike Schwarz, immersive mix engineers; Bob Ludwig, immersive mastering engineer; Jim Anderson, immersive producer (Patricia Barber) – ‘Clique’
Greg Penny, immersive mix engineer; Greg Penny, immersive mastering engineer; Greg Penny, immersive producer (Harry Styles) – ‘Fine Line’
Jake Fields & Steven Wilson, immersive mix engineers; Bob Ludwig, immersive mastering engineer; Steven Wilson, immersive producer (Steven Wilson) – ‘The Future Bites’
Morten Lindberg, immersive mix engineer; Morten Lindberg, immersive mastering engineer; Morten Lindberg, immersive producer (Anne Karin Sundal-Ask & Det Norske Jentekor) – ‘Stille Grender’

Producer Of The Year, Classical

Blanton Alspaugh
Steven Epstein
David Frost
Elaine Martone
Judith Sherman

Lady Gaga House Of Gucci
Lady Gaga at the premiere for ‘House Of Gucci’. CREDIT: Stefania D’Alessandro/WireImage

Best Orchestral Performance

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor (Nashville Symphony Orchestra) – ‘Adams: My Father Knew Charles Ives; Harmonielehre’
Manfred Honeck, conductor (Mendelssohn Choir Of Pittsburgh & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) – ‘Beethoven: Symphony No. 9’
Nico Muhly, conductor (San Francisco Symphony) – ‘Muhly: Throughline’
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor (Philadelphia Orchestra) – ‘Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3’
Thomas Dausgaard, conductor (Seattle Symphony Orchestra) – ‘Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra; Scriabin: The Poem Of Ecstasy’

Best Opera Recording

Susanna Mälkki, conductor; Mika Kares & Szilvia Vörös; Robert Suff, producer (Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra) – ‘Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle’
Karen Kamensek, conductor; J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Zachary James & Dísella Lárusdóttir; David Frost, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus) – ‘Glass: Akhnaten’
Simon Rattle, conductor; Sophia Burgos, Lucy Crowe, Gerald Finley, Peter Hoare, Anna Lapkovskaja, Paulina Malefane, Jan Martinik & Hanno Müller-Brachmann; Andrew Cornall, producer (London Symphony Orchestra; London Symphony Chorus & LSO Discovery Voices) – ‘Janáček: Cunning Little Vixen’
Corrado Rovaris, conductor; Johnathan McCullough; James Darrah & John Toia, producers (The Opera Philadelphia Orchestra) – ‘Little: Soldier Songs’
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Karen Cargill, Isabel Leonard, Karita Mattila, Erin Morley & Adrianne Pieczonka; David Frost, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus) – ‘Poulenc: Dialogues Des Carmélites’

Best Choral Performance

Matthew Guard, conductor (Jonas Budris, Carrie Cheron, Fiona Gillespie, Nathan Hodgson, Helen Karloski, Enrico Lagasca, Megan Roth, Alissa Ruth Suver & Dana Whiteside; Skylark Vocal Ensemble) – ‘It’s A Long Way’
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Grant Gershon, Robert Istad, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz & Luke McEndarfer, chorus masters (Leah Crocetto, Mihoko Fujimura, Ryan McKinny, Erin Morley, Tamara Mumford, Simon O’Neill, Morris Robinson & Tamara Wilson; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, National Children’s Chorus & Pacific Chorale) – ‘Mahler: Symphony No. 8, ‘Symphony Of A Thousand’’
Donald Nally, conductor (International Contemporary Ensemble & Quicksilver; The Crossing) – ‘Rising w/The Crossing’
Kaspars Putniņš, conductor; Heli Jürgenson, chorus master (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir) – ‘Schnittke: Choir Concerto; Three Sacred Hymns; Pärt: Seven Magnificat-Antiphons’
Benedict Sheehan, conductor (Michael Hawes, Timothy Parsons & Jason Thoms; The Saint Tikhon Choir) – ‘Sheehan: Liturgy Of Saint John Chrysostom’
Craig Hella Johnson, conductor (Estelí Gomez; Austin Guitar Quartet, Douglas Harvey, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet & Texas Guitar Quartet; Conspirare) – ‘The Singing Guitar’

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance

JACK Quartet – ‘Adams, John Luther: Lines Made By Walking’
Sandbox Percussion – ‘Akiho: Seven Pillars’
Sérgio Assad, Clarice Assad & Third Coast Percussion – ‘Archetypes’
Yo-Yo Ma & Emanuel Ax – ‘Beethoven: Cello Sonatas – Hope Amid Tears’
Imani Winds – ‘Bruits’

Best Classical Instrumental Solo

Jennifer Koh – ‘Alone Together’
Simone Dinnerstein – ‘An American Mosaic’
Augustin Hadelich – ‘Bach: Sonatas & Partitas’
Gil Shaham; Eric Jacobsen, conductor (The Knights) – ‘Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos’
Mak Grgić – ‘Mak Bach’
Curtis Stewart – ‘Of Power’

Best Classical Solo Vocal Album

Laura Strickling; Joy Schreier, pianist – ‘Confessions’
Will Liverman; Paul Sánchez, pianist – ‘Dreams Of A New Day – Songs By Black Composers’
Sangeeta Kaur & Hila Plitmann (Virginie D’Avezac De Castera, Lili Haydn, Wouter Kellerman, Nadeem Majdalany, Eru Matsumoto & Emilio D. Miler) – ‘Mythologies’
Joyce DiDonato; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, pianist – ‘Schubert: Winterreise’
Jamie Barton; Jake Heggie, pianist (Matt Haimovitz) – ‘Unexpected Shadows’

Best Classical Compendium

AGAVE & Reginald L. Mobley; Geoffrey Silver, producer – ‘American Originals – A New World, A New Canon’
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Jack Vad, producer – ‘Berg: Violin Concerto; Seven Early Songs & Three Pieces For Orchestra’
Timo Andres & Ian Rosenbaum; Mike Tierney, producer – ‘Cerrone: The Arching Path’
Chick Corea; Chick Corea & Birnie Kirsh, producers – ‘Plays’
Amy Andersson, conductor; Amy Andersson, Mark Mattson & Lolita Ritmanis, producers – ‘Women Warriors – The Voices Of Change’

Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Andy Akiho, composer (Sandbox Percussion) – ‘Akiho: Seven Pillars’
Louis Andriessen, composer (Esa-Pekka Salonen, Nora Fischer & Los Angeles Philharmonic) – ‘Andriessen: The Only One’
Clarice Assad, Sérgio Assad, Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin & David Skidmore, composers (Sérgio Assad, Clarice Assad & Third Coast Percussion) – ‘Assad, Clarice & Sérgio, Connors, Dillon, Martin & Skidmore: Archetypes’
Jon Batiste, composer (Jon Batiste) – ‘Batiste: Movement 11’
Caroline Shaw, composer (Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish & Sō Percussion) – ‘Shaw: Narrow Sea’

Best Music Video

AC/DC – ‘Short In The Dark’
Jon Batiste – ‘Freedom’
Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga – ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You’
Justin Bieber Featuring Daniel Caesar & Giveon – ‘Peaches’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Lil Nas X – ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Good 4 U’

Best Music Film

Bo Burnham – ‘Inside’
David Byrne – ‘David Byrne’s American Utopia’
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles’
Jimi Hendrix – ‘Music, Money, Madness…Jimi Hendrix In Maui’
Various Artists – ‘Summer Of Soul’

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Chic, Manic Street Preachers and more join Concert For Ukraine line-up

A forthcoming fundraising event Concert For Ukraine has added more huge names to its line-up.

  • READ MORE: Ukrainian artists on the Russian crisis: “Now is the time to push for change”

Nile Rodgers and Chic, Manic Street Preachers, Tom Odell, Becky Hill and The Kingdom Choir have all been freshly announced for the show, which takes place next Tuesday (March 29) at Resorts World Arena Birmingham.

Announced last week, the two-hour benefit show will air live on ITV in aid of the Disasters Emergency Committee‘s (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. Tickets go on sale today (March 22) at midday – you can find them here.

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Also announced today are hosts Martin Kemp, Emma Bunton and Marvin Humes, while acts already confirmed for the show are Camila Cabello, Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sandé, Gregory Porter and Snow Patrol.

Rodgers said ahead of the show: “In times of trouble you can always count on great musical artists to come together to help bring focus on what really matters. At this moment in time nothing is more important than showing the people affected by conflict in Ukraine that we stand with them, that we are family.

“I’m therefore delighted to be joining Ed Sheeran, Camilla Cabello and all the wonderful artists coming together to make this a success. As we say in our song ‘Everybody Dance’, ‘Music never lets you down.’ ”

Arcade Fire, Patti Smith and Franz Ferdinand have performed at Ukraine fundraiser shows recently, while London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire has announced that it will host ‘A Night For Ukraine’ this week.

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Elsewhere, The Cure launched a new charity band t-shirt as Massive Attack confirmed plans to sell off special artwork to help victims of the Ukraine invasion.

You can donate here to the Red Cross to help those impacted by the conflict, or via a number of other ways through Choose Love.

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Check out CHVRCHES’ new 2022 North American tour dates

CHVRCHES have announced details of a huge new North American tour for 2022 – check out the new list of dates below.

The Scottish trio are fresh off a three-song performance at this week’s (March 2) BandLab NME Awards 2022 in London, where they performed with The Cure‘s Robert Smith.

  • READ MORE: CHVRCHES & Robert Smith at the BandLab NME Awards 2022: a world-first meeting of minds

After a UK tour that begins next week (March 10), the band will head to the US and Mexico from the end of April, playing a host of shows that take them up until the end of June. The new headline dates begin in late May.

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See the band’s full list of tour dates below.

MARCH 2022
10 – Dundee, Fat Sam’s
12 – Glasgow, SWG3 Poetry Club
14 – Edinburgh, O2 Academy
15 – Newcastle, City Hall
16 – London, Brixton Academy
18 – Birmingham, O2 Academy
19 – Manchester, Academy

APRIL 2022
29 – Atlanta, Shaky Knees Festival

MAY 2022
13 – Mexico City, Tecate Emblema
18 – Monterrey, Showcenter
21 – Guadalajara, Corona Capital
27 – Napa, BottleRock Festival
30 – Tampa, Jannus
31 – Miami, Revolution Live

JUNE 2022
1 – Orlando, House of Blues
2 – Raleigh, The Ritz
4 – Charlotte, The Fillmore
5 – Washington, DC, 9:30 Club
9 – Buffalo, Artpark
10 – Grand Rapids, 20 Monroe Live
11 – Indianapolis, WonderRoad Music Festival
13 – Madison, The Sylvee
15 – Omaha, The Admiral
16 – Kansas City, Uptown Theater
18 – Manchester, Bonnaroo Festival

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CHVRCHES
Chvrches and Robert Smith performing at the BandLab NME Awards 2022 (Picture: Andy Ford / NME)

During their set at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, the band performed their track ‘Asking For A Friend’ from 2021 album ‘Screen Violence’ and then teamed up with Smith for a world exclusive live premiere of ‘How Not To Drown’. To cap the set off, they joined Smith in covering Cure classic ‘Just Like Heaven’.

After the performance, the band’s Martin Doherty described the experience to NME as “really, really scary,” adding: “Honestly, I’ve never practiced four notes so much in my life.”

Reviewing the set, NME wrote: “Following widespread disruption to regular touring and recording, tonight isn’t just the first time that Smith and have performed live together – it’s actually their first time meeting in person, full stop.

“Realised on stage, with all creative minds present and correct, it’s completely magical (Drag Race star Bimini certain seems to think so, they’re headbanging away) and spirals right up to the roof with a squalling, Robert Smith guitar solo special.”

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Bimini teases “very unexpected” upcoming collaboration with a “big deal” artist

Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK star Bimini has teased a set of “exciting new collaborations” to come while appearing at the BandLab NME Awards 2022.

Bimini was speaking to NME on the red carpet at last night’s (March 2) ceremony at the O2 Academy Brixton in London, where they presented the Best TV Series supported by 19 Crimes award to Mae Martin’s Feel Good.

  • READ MORE: BandLab NME Awards 2022 – full list of winners

The star, who released debut single ‘God Save This Queen’ last summer, spoke of future projects, saying: “I’ve been working on lots of new music, [with] some really exciting collabs coming up.

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“I’m really excited for this summer, so hopefully will be dropping some new music very, very soon. I’m excited for everyone to hear it. Get ready!”

Pressed on the identity of the new collaboration, Bimini declined to name them specifically but teased: “I’ll tell you that it’s very unexpected and they are a big deal.”

Bimini presented the Best TV Series award alongside Adam Lambert later in the night, telling him: “You look so good, you make me wanna overthrow the government.”

Bimini Bon Boulash and Adam Lambert presenting at the BandLab NME Awards 2022
Bimini Bon Boulash and Adam Lambert presenting at the BandLab NME Awards 2022. Credit: Andy Ford

Held at the O2 Academy Brixton, the BandLab NME Awards was co-hosted by Daisy May Cooper and Lady Leshurr. The evening kicked off with a performance from Sam Fender and was followed by Griff and Sigrid’s joint performance of their NME Award-winning collaboration ‘Head On Fire’.

CHVRCHES and Robert Smith of The Cure also performed their song ‘How Not To Drown’, while BERWYN and Rina Sawayama also took to the stage. The night was closed with a five-song set by Bring Me The Horizon.

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Check back for the latest news, interviews, winners and more from the BandLab NME Awards 2022.

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Here are all the winners at the BandLab NME Awards 2022

Here’s the full list of winners at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, updated as all the action goes down at O2 Academy Brixton this evening (March 2).

  • READ MORE: Keep up with everything BandLab NME Awards 2022

After a year of silence due to the pandemic, the wildest night in music returns, sponsored by leading social music creation platform BandLab and hosted by Daisy May Cooper and Lady Leshurr.

Sam Fender, Little Simz, Wet Leg, Wolf Alice, Billie Eilish, Rina Sawayama and CHVRCHES are among the artists leading the nominations with several nods each. Meanwhile, Lana Del Rey, Self Esteem, Ghetts, BTS, Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde, Bring Me The Horizon, IDLES and Megan The Stallion are up for some of the biggest awards tonight.

FKA Twigs will be crowned Godlike Genius, while Neneh Cherry will be honoured with the Icon Award. Halsey will collect the Innovation Award, Jack Antonoff the Songwriter Award and Griff the NME Radar Award. Liam Gallagher has also clinched Music Moment Of The Year with his free concert for NHS workers.

The winners of the two fan-voted categories at the BandLab NME Awards 2022 have also been announced: Tomorrow X Together were crowned Hero Of The Year while Jacob Rees-Mogg is our Villain Of The Year.

Follow the BandLab NME Awards 2022, from the red carpet to fiery performances and acceptance speeches, via NME’s coverage here – and keep checking this story for more winners as they roll in.

The winners at the BandLab NME Awards 2022 are:

INNOVATION AWARD
Halsey

SONGWRITER AWARD
Jack Antonoff

GODLIKE GENIUS
FKA Twigs

ICON AWARD
Neneh Cherry

NME RADAR AWARD
Griff

MUSIC MOMENT OF THE YEAR
Liam Gallagher’s Free Concert for NHS Workers

BEST ALBUM IN THE WORLD
Genesis Owusu – ‘Smiling With No Teeth’
Ghetts – ‘Conflict Of Interest’
Halsey – ‘If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power’
Lana Del Rey – ‘Blue Banisters’
Little Simz – ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’
Sam Fender – ‘Seventeen Going Under’ – WINNER
Self Esteem – ‘Prioritise Pleasure’
Subsonic Eye – ‘Nature Of Things’
Tyler, The Creator – ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’
Wolf Alice – ‘Blue Weekend’

BEST ALBUM BY A UK ARTIST
Ghetts – ‘Conflict Of Interest’
Little Simz – ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’
Sam Fender – ‘Seventeen Going Under’ – WINNER
Self Esteem – ‘Prioritise Pleasure’
Wolf Alice – ‘Blue Weekend’

BEST SONG IN THE WORLD
BTS – ‘Butter’
Charli XCX – ‘Good Ones’
CHVRCHES & Robert Smith – ‘How Not To Drown’
Lorde – ‘Solar Power’ – WINNER
Olivia Rodrigo – ‘Good 4 U’
PinkPantheress – ‘Just For Me’
Sam Fender – ‘Seventeen Going Under’
The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber – ‘Stay’
Warren Hue – ‘Omomo Punk’
Wet Leg – ‘Chaise Longue’

BEST SONG BY A UK ARTIST
Charli XCX – ‘Good Ones’
CHVRCHES & Robert Smith – ‘How Not To Drown’ – WINNER
PinkPantheress – ‘Just For Me’
Sam Fender – ‘Seventeen Going Under’
Wet Leg – ‘Chaise Longue’

BEST LIVE ACT: SUPPORTED BY GROLSCH
Bleachers
Bring Me The Horizon
IDLES
Little Simz
Megan Thee Stallion
Rina Sawayama – WINNER
Self Esteem
Tomorrow x Together
Wizkid
Yungblud

BEST FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD
All Points East
Austin City Limits
Fuji Rock
Exit Festival
Green Man
Life Is Beautiful – WINNER
Reading & Leeds
Riot Fest
TRNSMT
Wireless

BEST FESTIVAL IN THE UK: SUPPORTED BY WHITE CLAW
All Points East
Green Man
Reading & Leeds – WINNER
TRNSMT
Wireless

BEST SMALL FESTIVAL
End Of The Road
Live At Leeds
Lost Village
Mighty Hoopla
Wide Awake – WINNER

BEST FESTIVAL HEADLINER
Billie Eilish
Liam Gallagher
Megan Thee Stallion
Wolf Alice – WINNER
Tyler, The Creator

BEST BAND IN THE WORLD
Amyl & The Sniffers
Ben&Ben
Bring Me The Horizon
CHVRCHES
Fontaines DC – WINNER
Glass Animals
HAIM
Måneskin
Nova Twins
Wolf Alice

BEST BAND FROM THE UK: SUPPORTED BY PIZZA EXPRESS
Bring Me The Horizon – WINNER
CHVRCHES
Glass Animals
Nova Twins
Wolf Alice

BEST SOLO ACT IN THE WORLD
Arlo Parks
Billie Eilish
Burna Boy – WINNER
Dave
Little Simz
Pyra
Rina Sawayama
Sam Fender
Tkay Maidza
The Weeknd

BEST SOLO ACT FROM THE UK
Arlo Parks
Dave
Little Simz – WINNER
Rina Sawayama
Sam Fender

BEST NEW ACT IN THE WORLD: SUPPORTED BY CANO WATER
Bad Boy Chiller Crew
BERWYN
Bree Runway
Inhaler
King Stingray
Olivia Rodrigo – WINNER
Shye
Tems
Wet Leg
Yard Act

BEST NEW ACT FROM THE UK: SUPPORTED BY MUSIC VENUE TRUST
Bad Boy Chiller Crew
BERWYN – WINNER
Bree Runway
Wet Leg
Yard Act

BEST MIXTAPE
Berwyn – ‘Tape 2/Fomalhaut’
Central Cee – ‘Wild West’
FKA twigs – ‘Caprisongs’
Holly Humberstone – ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ – WINNER
PinkPantheress – ‘To hell with it’

BEST COLLABORATION
Baby Keem x Kendrick Lamar – ‘Family Ties’
Coldplay x BTS – ‘My Universe’
FKA Twigs x The Weeknd – ‘Tears In The Club’
Griff x Sigrid – ‘Head On Fire’ – WINNER
Rina Sawayama x Elton John – ‘Chosen Family’

BEST PRODUCER: SUPPORTED BY BANDLAB
Arca
Fred again..
India Jordan
Nia Archives – WINNER
Travis Barker

BEST FILM
Last Night In Soho – WINNER
Licorice Pizza
Promising Young Woman
Sound Of Metal
The Harder They Fall

BEST TV SERIES: SUPPORTED BY 19CRIMES
It’s A Sin
Feel Good – WINNER
Sex Education
Stath Lets Flats
We Are Lady Parts

BEST FILM ACTOR
Alana Haim – WINNER
Benedict Cumberbatch
Jonathan Majors
Riz Ahmed
Thomasin McKenzie

BEST TV ACTOR
Aisling Bea – WINNER
Mae Martin
Ncuti Gatwa
Olly Alexander
Zendaya

BEST REISSUE
Nirvana – ‘Nevermind’
OutKast – ‘ATLiens’
Radiohead – ‘Kid Amnesiae’
Taylor Swift – ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ – WINNER
The Beatles – ‘Let It Be’

BEST MUSIC FILM
Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power
Oasis Knebworth 1996
Summer Of Soul
The Sparks Brothers – WINNER

BEST MUSIC VIDEO
Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’
Foals – ‘Wake Me Up’ – WINNER
Lil Nas X – ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’
Taylor Swift – ‘All Too Well – The Short Film’
Wet Leg – ‘Chaise Longue’

BEST MUSIC BOOK
Bobby Gillespie – Tenement Kid – WINNER
Dave Grohl – The Storyteller: Tales Of Life And Music
Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) – Crying In H Mart
Paul McCartney – The Lyrics
Questlove – Music Is History

BEST PODCAST
Disgraceland
Grounded With Louis Theroux
Songs To Live By
Table Manners – WINNER
Wheel Of Misfortune

GAME OF THE YEAR
Deathloop
Halo Infinite
Hitman 3
Metroid Dread – WINNER
Unpacking

INDIE GAME OF THE YEAR
Cruelty Squad
Overboard!
The Artful Escape
The Forgotten City
Unpacking – WINNER

BEST GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO
Arkane Studios
Black Matter
Double Fine – WINNER
IO Interactive
Xbox Game Studios

BEST ONGOING GAME
Apex Legends
Escape From Tarkov
Final Fantasy XIV – WINNER
Fortnite
Genshin Impact

BEST AUDIO IN A VIDEO GAME
Deathloop
Forza Horizon 5 – WINNER
Guardians Of The Galaxy
The Artful Escape
Psychonauts 2

HERO OF THE YEAR
Tomorrow x Together

VILLAIN OF THE YEAR
Jacob Rees-Mogg

BEST ALBUM BY AN AUSTRALIAN ARTIST
Alice Skye, ‘I Feel Better But I Don’t Feel Good’
Amyl & The Sniffers, ‘Comfort To Me’
Baker Boy, ‘Gela’
Genesis Owusu, ‘Smiling With No Teeth’ – WINNER
Ngaiire, ‘3’

BEST SONG BY AN AUSTRALIAN ARTIST
Gang Of Youths, ‘The Man Himself’
Miiesha, ‘Damaged’
King Stingray, ‘Get Me Out’
The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber, ‘Stay’ – WINNER
Tkay Maidza & Baby Tate, ‘Kim’

BEST BAND FROM AUSTRALIA
Amyl & The Sniffers – WINNER
The Goon Sax
Hiatus Kaiyote
King Stingray
Middle Kids

BEST SOLO ACT FROM AUSTRALIA
Baker Boy
Genesis Owusu
Jaguar Jonze
The Kid LAROI
Tkay Maidza – WINNER

BEST NEW ACT FROM AUSTRALIA
Budjerah
King Stingray – WINNER
Ruby Fields
Sycco
Youngn Lipz

BEST ALBUM BY AN ASIAN ARTIST
BAP., ‘Momo’s Mysterious Skin’
Ben&Ben, ‘Pebble House, Vol. 1: Kuwaderno’
No Good, ‘Punk Gong’
Subsonic Eye, ‘Nature Of Things’ – WINNER
Zild, ‘Huminga’

BEST SONG BY AN ASIAN ARTIST
FORCEPARKBOIS, ‘Lotus’
Grrrl Gang, ‘Honey Baby’
Pyra, Ramengvrl & Yayoi Daimon, ‘Yellow Fever’
Warren Hue, ‘Omomo Punk’ – WINNER

BEST BAND FROM ASIA
Ben&Ben – WINNER
Lomba Sihir
No Good
Senyawa
Subsonic Eye

BEST SOLO ACT FROM ASIA
Pamungkas
Pyra – WINNER
Reese Lansangan
Zild

BEST NEW ACT FROM ASIA
Alec Orachi
Ena Mori
Shye – WINNER
The Filters
Warren Hue

post image

Check out the full list of Record Store Day 2022 releases

Hundreds of exclusive releases have been revealed for Record Store Day 2022, including records from the likes of Blur, Taylor Swift, Elvis, Bring Me The Horizon, Pinkpanthress, Sam Fender, Blondie and many more. Check out the full list below.

Returning for the 15th time on April 23, RSD will see hundreds of vinyl, CD and cassette releases sold exclusively through independent record shops – with over 260 stores from every corner of the UK and thousands around the world taking part in the celebrations.

This comes after the Entertainment Retailers Association’s recent report that showed that vinyl sales in the UK are at their highest level in over 30 years, growing a further 23 per cent year on year in 2021.

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Mina Koroma, store manager at Liverpool’s Jacaranda Records, said: “We can’t wait to see Record Store Day back in full force at Jacaranda Records. Our community of musicians, DJs and record fans thrives on getting together to share ideas and experiences.

“RSD is always a great chance to do that, especially at such a challenging time for shops like ours. We’re excited for scenes all over the UK to keep growing their collections and adding to their fond memories of times spent at record stores.”

Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift. CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant

Last month, Taylor Swift was announced as the first global amabassador of Record store Day 2022.

“I’m very proud to be this year’s Ambassador for Record Store Day. The places where we go to browse and explore and discover music new and old have always been sacred to me,” the singer explained. “Record stores are so important because they help to perpetuate and foster music-loving as a passion. They create settings for live events. They employ people who adore music thoroughly and purely.”

Swift went on to acknowledge the “rough few years” that independent record shops have faced as a result of the COVID pandemic, adding: “We need to support these small businesses more now than ever to make sure they can stay alive, stay eccentric, and stay individual.”

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The full list of Record Store Day 2021 releases is:

50 Foot Wave
Power + Light
Fire Records
LP

50 Foot Wave
Bath White
Fire Records
LP

A Place To Bury Strangers
Keep Slipping Away 2022
BMG
LP

A. R. Kane
Americana
Luaka Bop
2xLP

Academic, The
Community Spirit
Capitol
12″

Ace Of Base
All That She Wants
Demon Records
LP

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO
Absolutely Freak Out! (Zap Your Mind)
staticresonance
2xLP

Ade
It’s Just Wind
Mexican Summer
LP

Alan Vega
Jukebox Babe b/w Speedway
Sacred Bones Records
7″

Albert Ayler
Revelations
Elemental Music
5xLP

Alice In Chains
We Die Young
Sony CMG
12″

Alpha & Omega
Tree Of Life – Volume 1
Mania Dub
LP

Alpha & Omega
Tree Of Life – Volume 2
Mania Dub
LP

Altered Images
The Return of The Teenage Popstar
Cooking Vinyl
12″

America
Rarities
Rhino
LP

Amy Michelle
is that all there is?
Method Records
12″

Andy Crofts & Le SuperHomard
Forevermore
Colorama
7″

Angelo Badalamenti
Blue Velvet – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Deluxe Edition)
Concord / UMG
2xLP

Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers
In My Prime
Tidal Waves Music
2xLP

Art Pepper
Meets The Rhythm Section (MONO)
Concord / UMG
LP

Ashby
Looks Like You’ve Already Won
Marina Records
LP

ASIA
XXX
BMG
LP

Associates
Covers
BMG
LP

Azymuth
Light As A Feather (Picture Disc)
Far Out Recordings
LP

Bring Me The Horizon are among the artists to announce a special release for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Bring Me The Horizon are among the artists to announce a special release for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

Bad Company
Live 1979
Rhino
2xLP

Barbara Mason
The Lost 80s Sessions
South Street
LP

Bardo Pond
Bufo Alvarius
Fire Records
2xLP

Be Bop Deluxe
Live! In the Air Age – The Hammersmith Odeon Concert 1977
ESOTERIC RECORDINGS
3xLP

Belinda Carlisle
The Heaven On Earth Tour
Demon Records
2xLP

Bell Biv Devoe
Poison
Get On Down
LP

Bernard Butler
People Move On: The B-Sides, 1998 + 2021
Demon Records
2xLP

Beth Orton
Central Reservation
Sony CMG
2xLP

Beth Orton
Trailer Park
Sony CMG
2xLP

Betty Harris
The Lost Queen Of New Orleans Soul
Soul Jazz Records
2LP

Biff Bang Pow!
Songs For The Sad Eyed Girl
Glass Modern
LP

Bill Evans
Inner Spirit: The 1979 Concert at the Teatro General San Martín, Buenos Aires
Resonance Records
2xLP

Bill Evans
Morning Glory: The 1973 Concert at the Teatro Gran Rex, Buenos Aires
Resonance Records
2xLP

Billy Bragg
Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Birds, The
The Birds Ride Again
Flood Gallery
7″

Bleeding Hearts, The
Riches to Rags
Bar/None Records
LP

Blondie
Sunday Girl EP
UMC/Capitol
2 x 7″

Blur
“Bustin’ + Dronin’ ”
Parlophone
2×12″

Bobbi Humphrey
Baby Don’t You Know
Uno Melodic
12″

Bobby Hamilton Quintet Unlimited
Dream Queen
Now-Again Records
LP

Brian Bennett
Voyage (A Journey into Discoid Funk) (Limited Blue with Black Swirl Vinyl Edition)
Real Gone Music
LP

Brian Tyler
The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift – Original Score
Concord / UMG
2xLP

Bring Me The Horizon
2004 – 2013 – The Best Of
BMG
2xLP

Bruno Nicolai
La Dama Rossa Uccide Sette Volte (The Red Queen Kills Seven Times)
Decca/CAM Sugar
12″

Buena Vista Social Club
Ahora Me Da Pena
World Circuit
EP

Burning Hell, The
Nigel The Gannet
NineXNine
7″

Calvin Keys
Full Court Press
Tidal Waves Music
LP

Camera Obscura
Making Money (4AD B-Sides and Rarities)
4AD
LP

Carina Round
Carina Round – The Disconnection (Deluxe)
Do Yourself In
2xLP

Carlton Melton
Out To Sea (Sailed on Edition)
Agitated
2xLP

Ceyleib People, The
Tanyet
Jackpot Records
LP

Charles Mingus
The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s
Resonance Records
3xLP

Charlie Mitchell
After Hours / Love Don’t Come Easy
Janus
7″

Chet Baker
Live In Paris – The Radio France Recordings 1983-1984
Elemental Music
3xLP

Chicago
Chicago at Carnegie Hall, April 10, 1971
Rhino
3xLP

Childish Gambino
Kauai
Glassnote
LP

Chrissi
Back In The Day
Island/Listen Generously
10″

Christy Moore
Ride On
Rhino
LP

Coldharbourstores
Coldharbourstores REMIXED
Enraptured Records
LP

Collective Soul
Disciplined Breakdown
Concord / UMG
LP

Commander Venus
The Uneventful Vacation
Concord / UMG
LP

Coolio
It Takes a Thief
Tommy Boy Music
2xLP

Corinne Bailey Rae
The Sea
UMC/EMI
LP

Joseph Cotton
Zoom Zoom Shaka Tacka
Room In The Sky
LP

Cranberries, The
Remembering Dolores
UMC/Island
2xLP

Crass
Big A Little A / You’re Already Dead
One Little Independent Records
12″

The Cure
Pornography
UMC/Polydor
Picture Disc

Cypress Hill
How I Could Just Kill A Man
Sony CMG
10″

Dalis Car
The Waking Hour
Beggars Banquet
LP

Damned, The
Strawberries
BMG
LP

Dan Jones
OST Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie
Wave Theory Records
LP

Dan Jones
OST Shadow of the Vampire
Wave Theory Records
LP

Dana Gillespie
Foolish Seasons
UMC/Decca
LP

Darlene Love
The Many Sides of Love—The Complete Reprise Recordings Plus!
Real Gone Music
LP

Dave Allen
DNA
Diggers Factory
LP

Dave Allen
The DNA of DMA
Themsay
12″

Dave Davies
Kinked
Green Amp Records / Red River Entertainment
LP

David Bowie
Brilliant Adventure
Parlophone
EP

David Bowie
Brilliant Adventure
Parlophone
CD

David Bowie
Toy E.P.
Parlophone
EP

David Bowie
Toy E.P.
Parlophone
CD

David J with Tim Newman
Analogue Excavations & Dream Interpretations Volume 1
Glass Modern
LP

David J with Tim Newman
Analogue Excavations & Dream Interpretations Volume 2
Glass Modern
LP

Kevin Davy & The Inn House Crew
Golden Brown (22 Medley)
Room In The Sky
7″

Deacon Blue
Raintown (35th anniversary)
Sony CMG
LP

Dead Famous People
Lost Person’s Area
Fire Archive
LP

Deadmau5
Vexillology
Play Records
2LP

Deadmau5
Full Circle
Play Records
2LP

Deep Heat
Do It Again / She’s A Junkie (Who’s The Blame)
Cu-Wu
7″

Def Leppard
High n Dry
UMC/Mercury
Picture Disc

Del Shannon
Rock On
Demon Records
LP

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio
Live In Loveland!
Colemine Records
2xLP

Dermot Kennedy
Doves + Ravens
Island
LP

Dillinger Escape Plan
Dissociation
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Dio
Double Dose Of Donington – ’83 & ’87
Niji/BMG
LP

Dire Straits
40th Anniversary – Love Over Gold (half speed).
UMC/Mercury
LP

Disciples, The
Imperial Dub – Volume 1
Mania Dub
LP

Disciples, The
Imperial Dub – Volume 2
Mania Dub
LP

DJ Cam
Diggin
Attytude Records
12″

DJ Fresh
Gold Dust
BBK
12″

Doctor Who
Dead Air
Demon Records
2xLP

Donna Summer
Donna Summer
Driven By The Music
LP

Doors, The
L.A. Woman Sessions
Rhino
4xLP

Dudu Lima & João Bosco
O Ronco Da Cuíca / Incompatibilidade De Gênios
Far Out Recordings
12″

Durand Jones & The Indications
Power to The People
Colemine Records
7″

Dusty Springfield
See All Her Faces 50th Anniversary
UMC/Mercury
2LP

Elvis is among the artists to have a special release announced for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Elvis is among the artists to have a special release announced for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

E. Lundquist
Multiple Images
KingUnderground
LP

Echo & The Bunnymen
B-Sides & Live (2001 – 2005)
Demon Records
2xLP

Elaine Mai
Home (Vinyl Edition)
Eva Magical Music Sounds
LP

Electrified A.G.B.
Fly Away / Fly Away – Inst
Dome City
12″

Electronic
Remix Mini album
Rhino
LP

Elton John
The Complete Thom Bell Sessions
UMC/Mercury
LP

Elvis Presley
Blondes, Brunes & Rousses (It Happened At The World’s Fair)
LMLR
LP

Elvis Presley
Les Disques En Or D’Elvis (Elvis’ Golden Record)
LMLR
3xLP

Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Trilogy
BMG
LP

Engineers, The
Folly
Music On Vinyl
10″

Ennio Morricone
Una pistola per Ringo / Il ritorno di Ringo OST
BTF
LP

Ennio Morricone
Trio Infernale
Rustblade
LP

Ennio Morricone/Chet Baker
I know I Will Lose You
Moochin’ About
10″

Ennio Morricone
Sans Mobile Apparent
Wewantsounds
LP

Erasure
Ne:Ep
Mute
12″

Erika de Casier
The Sensational Remixes
4AD
LP

Esther Marrow
Sister Woman
Concord / UMG
LP

Eunice Collins
At The Hotel
Mod-Art
7″

Everlast
Whitey Ford Sings the Blues
Tommy Boy Music
2xLP

Everly Brothers
Hey Doll Baby
Rhino
LP

Everything But The Girl
Night And Day (40th Anniversary Edition)
CHERRY RED RECORDS
EP

Farm, The
Groovy Train
BMG
12″

Fatboy Slim
Praise You / Right Here Right Now Remixes
BMG / Skint
LP

Field Music
Plumb
Memphis Industries
LP

Fir-Ya
Crying In Iran / Keep On Tryin’
Star-Glow
7″

Flame N’ King & The Bold Ones
Ain’t Nobody Jivein’ (Get Up Get Down) /Ho Happy Days
N.Y.C.S.
7″

Flash & The Dynamics
The New York Sound
Concord / UMG
LP

Fragma
Toca
Front Of House Recordings
LP

Frankie and the Witch Fingers
Frankie and the Witch Fingers
Greenway Records
LP

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Altered Reels
UMC
LP

Freddie Hubbard
Music Is Here – Live At Maison de la Radio (ORTF), Paris 1973
Wewantsounds
2xLP

Frightened Rabbit
A Frightened Rabbit EP
Atlantic
12″

Frightened Rabbit
State Hospital
Atlantic
12″

Fun Boy Three
The Best of
Chrysalis Records
LP

Future
DS2
Sony CMG
LP

Future Sound of London, The
Rituals
FSOL Digital
LP

Future Utopia
12 Questions After Dark
70Hz Recordings
LP

Fuzzy Haskins
Radio Active
Tidal Waves Music
LP

Elvis is among the artists to have a special release announced for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
BRITs Critics Choice winner Holly Humberstone is taking part in Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

G.B.H.
City Baby Attacked By Rats
BMG
LP

Gabriels
Bloodlines EP
Parlophone

Gerard Way
Hesitant Alien
Warner Records
LP

Giant Giant Sand (Giant Sand)
Tucson (Deluxe edition)
Fire Archive
3xLP

Ginger Wildheart
Potatoes & You
Round Records
CD

Glass Animals
I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)
Polydor
12″

Go West
Bangs & Crashes
Chrysalis Records
2xLP

Go! Team, The
Proof of Youth
Memphis Industries
LP

Gojira
Live at Brixton
Rhino
2xLP

Golden Smog
On Golden Smog
Rhino
LP

Gong
In the 70’s
LMLR
2xLP

Gorgon City
Olympia – Remixes
EMI
12″

Graham Parker
Five Old Souls (Live)
100% Records
LP

Grand Wizard Theodore, The Fantastic Romantic 5
Can I Get A Soul Clap ‘Fresh Out Of The Pack
Soul-O-Wax Inc
7″

Grateful Dead
Wembley Empire Pool, London, England 4/8/72 (Live)
Rhino
5xLP

Grouch, The
Show You The World
The Grouch Music
2xLP

Groundhogs, The
Hogwash
Fire Records
2xLP

Guitar Ray
You’re Gonna Wreck My Life / I Am Never Gonna Break His Rules Again
Shagg
7″

Gun Club, The
Live At The Hacienda ’83
LMLR
LP

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are among the artists to have a special release announced for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are among the artists to have a special release announced for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

Halestorm
Back From The Dead
Atlantic
7″

Handsome Boy Modeling School
So…How’s Your Girl?
Tommy Boy Music
2xLP

Happy Mondays
Uncle Dysfunktional (2020 Mix)
London Records
12″

Harry Stone
Debut EP (Title TBC)
Capitol
12″

Heartbreakers
the L.A.M.F demo sessions
Jungle Records
LP

Hefner
Maida Vale
Where Its At Is Where You Are
LP

High Contrast
True Colours
Highly Contrasting
12″

Holly Humberstone
The Walls Are Way Too Thin
Polydor
12″

Home Boy And The C.O.L.
Home Boy And The C.O.L.
Tidal Waves Music
LP

Howard McGhee Quintet, The
Title Music From The Connection
Ikon
LP

Human League, The
The League Unlimited Orchestra
UMC
LP

Human League, The
Don’t You Want Me (Purple Disco Machine Extended Remix)
Positiva / EMI
12″

Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Ten More Turnips From The Tip
BMG
LP

Iggy Pop
Berlin 91
LMLR
2xLP

III Most Wanted
Calm Down
The Fever
7″

Ike & Tina Turner
The Soul Of Tina Turner
South Street
LP

Inn House Crew, The
Luanda
Room In The Sky
7″

Jacka, The
Tear Gas
The Artist Records
2xLP

Pixies are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Pixies are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

James Blake
Covers
Polydor/Republic US
12″

Jamie Jones
Don’t You Remember The Future
Crosstown Rebels
2×12″

Jasmine Minks, The
The Jasmine Minks
Glass Modern
LP

Jazz Sabbath
Vol. 2
Blacklake
LP+DVD

Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation
12″

JennyLee
Heart Tax
Jenny’s Recordings
LP

Jessie Ware
Devotion (The Gold Edition) – 10th anniversary
UMC/Island
2xLP

Jesus Jones
Scratched – Unreleased Rare Tracks & Remixes
Demon Records
2xLP

Jimmy James & The Vagabonds / Sonya Spence
This Heart Of Mine/Let Love Flow On
Deptford Northern Soul Club Records
7″

Jo Dog and Paul Black’s Sonic Boom
Everyone Rains On My Parade
Black City Records
LP

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Acoustics
Sony CMG
LP

John Murry
The Graceless Age
Rubyworks
LP

John Williams
The Cowboys – Original Soundtrack
Concord / UMG
2xLP

John Williams
Lost In Space: Title Themes from the Hit TV Series
Spacelab9
LP

Johnny Marr
Spirit Power & Soul (Vince Clarke Remix)
BMG
12″

Jon Hopkins
Contact Note
Just Music
LP

Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers
Modern Lovers 88
Concord / UMG
LP

Joni Mitchell
Blue 50: Demos, Outtakes And Live Tracks From Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 2
Rhino
LP

Jonny Trunk
The A Z Of British Record Shop Bags
TRUNK
BOOK

Joss Stone
LP1
Surfdog Records Inc.
12″

Joyce with Mauricio Maestro
Feminina
Far Out Recordings
12″

Jungle Brothers, The
Jimbrowski / On The Run
Warlock
7″

Karen Dalton
Shuckin’ Sugar
Delmore Recording Society, INC
LP

Kate Havnevik
Melankton
Continentica Records
2xLP

Kathryn Williams
Introduction
One Little Independent Records
LP

Katy J Pearson
Waiting For The Day
Heavenly Recordings
LP

Keane
Keane
Island
10”

Keith Richards
Talk Is Cheap/Live At The Palladium – Double Cassette
Mindless Records
Double Cassette

Kenny Lynch
Half The Day’s Gone and We Haven’t Earne’d a Penny [Album]
Satril
LP

Kevin Rowland
My Beauty
CHERRY RED RECORDS
12”

Kinks, The
Waterloo Sunset
BMG
12″

Kirk Hammett
Portals
Blackened Recordings
12″ EP & CD

Kraan
Psychedelic Man
36 Music
LP

The Rolling Stones are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
The Rolling Stones are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

L’Impératrice
Vanille Fraise
Microqlima
12″

La Femme
Paradigmes : Suppléments
Disque Pointu
LP

La Luz
La Luz – Instrumentals
Hardly Art
LP

Lady Blackbird
Did Somebody Make A Fool Outta You/It’s Not That Easy
Foundation Music
7″

Las Vegas Connection
Running Back To You / Can’t Nobody Love Me Like You Do
Hep’ Me
7″

Laura Nyro
Trees Of The Ages: Laura Nyro Live In Japan
Omnivore
LP

Les Baxter
Que Mango
Vinyl Exotica
LP

Lester Tipton/ Edward Hamilton
This Won’t Change/Baby Don’t You Weep
Deptford Northern Soul Club Records
7″

Levellers, The
Zeitgeist (Picture Disc)
On The Fiddle
LP

Lida Husik
Fly Stereophonic
Tongue Master
LP

Linda Hoover
I Mean To Shine
Omnivore
LP

Lou Reed
I’m So Free: 1971 RCA Demos
Sony CMG
LP

Lou Reed and Kris Kristofferson
The Bottom Line Archive Series: In Their Own Words: With Vin Scelsa (3LP)
THE BOTTOM LINE RECORD COMPANY
3xLP

Luciano Luciani Y Sus Mulatos
Mulata Vamos A La Salsa
Vampisoul
LP

Luke Haines, Peter Buck and Jacknife Lee
Wild Companion (The Beat Poetry For Survivalists Dubs)
CHERRY RED RECORDS
12″

Lumineers, The
Brightside (acoustic)
Decca
12″

Maccabees
Colour It In
UMC
LP

Madness
Baggy Trousers
BMG
12″

Madonna
Who’s That Girl / Causing a Commotion 35th Anniversary
Rhino
12″

Mal-One
It’s All Punk Dub
Punk Art
LP

Mansun
Attack Of The Grey Lantern
Kscope
LP

Marco Beltrami
Mimic – Original Soundtrack
Concord / UMG
LP

Maria McKee
Peddlin’ Dreams
AFAR
LP

Mariah Carey
#1’s
Sony CMG
LP

Marta Acuna
Dance Dance Dance
P&P
7″

Mary Lou Lord
She’d Be A Diamond
Fire Records
2xLP

Max Roach
We Insist!
Candid/Exceleration
2xLP

Meier, Dieter/The Young Gods
Schüüfele / Did You Miss Me (Dub Spencer & Trance Hill Remixes)
Echo Beach
7″

Melanie C
Northern Star
UMC/EMI
2xLP

Metronomy
Posse EP Volume 1
Because Music
12”

Michael Chapman
The Man Who Hated Mornings
Mooncrest
LP

Mike Oldfield
Tubular Bells II
Rhino
LP

Mikey Dread
The Gun / Jah Jah Style
Music On Vinyl
10″

Miles Davis
Live In Montreal, July 7, 1983
Sony CMG
2xLP

Moons, The
Stand With Me
Colorama
7″

Morcheeba
Blackest Blue The Remixes
Fly Agaric Records
12″

Motorhead
The Lost Tapes Vol.2
BMG
2xLP

Muffs, The
New Improved Kim Shattuck Demos
Omnivore
LP

mxmtoon
true colors (from Life is Strange)
mxmtoon
LP

NEIKED x Mae Muller x Polo G
Better Days
Capitol
12″

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Live Seeds
BMG / Mute
2xLP

Nick Lowe
Wireless World (Transparent Green with Black Sweirl Vinyl)
Yep Roc Records
LP

Nick Mono
The Sun Won’t Stay After Summer
Parlophone
7″

Nico
Camera Obscura
Beggars Banquet
LP

Night Beats
Valentine Sessions
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Nightingales, The
Hysterics
Call of the Void
2xLP

Nirvana (1965)
Secrets
Madfish
LP

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Magic Secrets 2022
Sour Mash Records
7″

Nova Cheq & Samurai Breaks
HOOVERSOUND PRESENTS: Nova Cheq & Samurai Breaks
HOOVERSOUND RECORDINGS
12″

Offspring, The
Greatest Hits
Round Hill
LP

Opeth
My Arms Your Hearse
Candlelight Records
LP

OST John Barry
The Tamarind Seed
Silva Screen
2xLP

OST John Carpenter
Escape From New York (main Theme)
Silva Screen
7″

OST Mark Isham
The Hitcher
Silva Screen
LP

OST Ronald Binge
Sailing By (Theme from BBC Radio 4 Shipping forecast)
Vinyl Exotica
7″

Otto Kentrol
No Mistakes
Modern Harmonic
2xLP

Paradise Lost
Gothic live at Roadburn 2016
Paradise Lost
12″

Patti Smith
Curated by Record Store Day
Sony CMG
LP

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The
The Original Lost Elektra Sessions
Run Out Groove
3xLP

Paul McCartney
Women and Wives
EMI
12″

Pearl Jam
Live On Two Legs
Sony CMG
2xLP

Pearls Before Swine
The Exaltation of Tom Rapp
Earth Recordings
LP

Pete Townshend’s Deep End
Album title : Face The Face
Mercury Studios
LP

Peter Gabriel
Live Blood
Real World
LP

Peter Tosh
Complete Captured Live
Rhino
2xLP

Phil Lynott
The Philip Lynott Album
UMC/Mercury
LP

PinkPantheress
To Hell With It
Parlophone
12″

Pixies
Live From Coachella 2004
Demon Records
2xLP

Poliça
Give You The Ghost
Memphis Industries
LP

Pretty Reckless
Going To Hell
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Primal Scream
Shine Like Stars (Weatherall mix)
Sony CMG
12″

Prince
The Gold Experience Deluxe
Sony CMG
2xLP

Prince Lincoln Thompson The & Royal Rasses
Humanity
Burning Sounds
LP

Proclaimers, The
Sunshine on Leith (2011 Remaster)
Rhino
2xLP

Prodigy, The
The Day Is My Enemy Remix Album
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Super Furry Animals are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Super Furry Animals are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

Ramones
The Sire LPs 1981-1989
Rhino
7xLP

Rationals, The
The Rationals
Prudential Music Group
LP

Ray Charles
Genius Loves Company (RSD Edition)
Tangerine/Exceleration
LP

Rebecca Vasmant
Dance Yourself Free EP
Tru Thoughts
12″

Reigning Sound
Memphis In June
Merge Records
LP

Rentals, The
The Midnight Socirty
Death Waltz Recording Co.
LP

Replacements, The
Unsuitable for Airplay: The Lost KFAI Concert
Rhino
2xLP

Residents, The
WARNING: UNINC (TITLE TBC) 1971-1972 Live and Unincorporated
NEW RALPH
2xLP

Rex Orange County
Apricot Princess 5 Year Anniversary Edition
Rex Orange County
2xLP

Rick Astley
Whenever You Need Somebody
BMG
LP

Rizzle Kicks
Stereo Typical
UMC/Island
LP

Rob
Rob (Funky Way)
Mr Bongo
LP

Robert Lester Folsom
Music and Dreams
Anthology
LP

Roddy Woomble
Architecture In LA / Atlantic Photography
A Modern Way
7″

Rolling Stones, The
More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies)
UMC/ABKCO
2xLP

Ron Sexsmith
Long Player Late Bloomer
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Rory Gallagher
San Diego ’74
UMC
2xLP

Ryan Hamilton
1221
Wicked Cool Records
12”

Sam Fender
Alright/The Kitchen (Live)
Polydor
7″

Sam Smith
Nirvana
Capitol
12″

Sampa The Great
Birds And The BEE9
Big Dada
LP

Sandie Shaw
Hand In Glove (w/The Smiths)
UMC
12″

Sandro Brugnolini
L’uomo da gli occhiali a specchio
BTF
LP

Sandy Denny
The Early Home Recordings
Earth Recordings
2xLP

Sandy Denny
Gold Dust Live At The Royalty
UMC/Island
LP

Santana
Splendiferous Santana
Sony CMG
LP

Sara Keys
Struck By Lightning
Atlantic
12″

Satan’s Pilgrims
Live At Jackpot Records
Jackpot Records
LP

Scott Walker
Boy Child
UMC
2xLP

Sea Girls
DNA
Polydor
7″

Sepultura
Revolusongs
BMG
LP

Shankar Family & Friends
I Am Missing You b/w Lust
Dark Horse Records
LP

Sheena Easton
The Definitive 12” Singles 1983-1987
CHERRY POP
2xLP

Shocking Blue
At Home – The Singles
Music On Vinyl
10″

Simon Fowler & Oscar Harrison
Live On The River Boat
Demon Records
2xLP

Simple Minds
5X5 Live
Demon Records
3xLP

Skunk Anansie
An Acoustic Skunk Anansie – Live in London
100% Records
12”

Sky’s The Limit
Don’t Be Afraid / Don’t Be Afraid – Inst
J.M.J
7″

Slade
Ballzy
BMG
LP

Slash
Live ! 4 (feat. Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators) (Live at Studios 60)
BMG
2xLP

Sleep Token
Sundowning
Spinefarm Records
LP

Soul Jazz Records Presents
Studio One Classics
Soul Jazz Records
2LP

Soul Jazz Records Presents
100% Dynamite
Soul Jazz Records
2LP

Sound, The
Counting The Days
Demon Records
2xLP

St. Vincent
The Nowhere Inn
Loma Vista Recordings
LP

Steve Earle
Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother / Night Rider’s Lament
New West
7″

Steve Hackett
The Tokyo Tapes
ESOTERIC ANTENNA
3xLP

Stevie Nicks
Bella Donna (Deluxe Edition) (2LP)
Rhino
2xLP

Stezo
To The Max / It’s My Turn
Sleeping Bag
7″

Stiff Little Fingers
BBC Live In Concert
Rhino
2xLP

Stone Broken
Ain’t Always Easy
Spinefarm Records
LP

Streets, The
ORIGINAL PIRATE MATERIAL BOXSET
LOCKED ON
LP

Suede
Sci Fi Lullabies
Demon Records
3xLP

Sugababes
Anniversary Remixes
London Records
12″

Sun Ra Arkestra
Babylon
In + Out Records
2xLP

Sun’s Signature
Sun’s Signature
Partisan Records
12″

Super Furry Animals
Rings Around The World, B-Sides
BMG
LP

Superchunk
Incidental Music 1991 – 1995
Merge Records
2xLP

Supergrass
Moving
BMG / Echo
12″

Suzanne Vega
Close Up
Cooking Vinyl
LP

Suzi Quatro
Suzi Quatro [Deluxe Edition]
Chrysalis Records
2xLP

Sweet
Platinum Rare VOL 2
Prudential Music Group
2xLP

T. Rex
The Slider
Demon Records
LP

Soul Jazz Records Presents
PUNK 45: I’m A Mess! D-I-Y Or Die! Art, Trash & Neon – Punk 45s In The UK 1977-78
Soul Jazz Records
2LP

Taylor Swift is among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
Taylor Swift is among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

Tangerine Dream
Alpha Centauri
ESOTERIC RECORDINGS
LP

Tangerine Dream
Live At Reims Cinema Opera (September 23rd, 1975)
LMLR
2xLP

Taylor Swift
the lakes
EMI
7″

Teenage Waitress
You Ain’t Got It Bad
Colorama
7″

Tegan & Sara
Still Jealous
Warner Records
12″

Terry Edwards And The Scapegoats
My Wife Doesn’t Understand Me
Sartorial Records
2xLP

Tesseract
Polaris
Kscope
LP

Thomas Dolby
Hyperactive
BMG
12″

Trevor Lucas
Overlander
Earth Recordings
LP

Tuff Crew
My Part of Town / Mountains World
Warlock
7″

Tyler Bates
OST Watchmen
Warner Records
3xLP

U2
A Celebration’
UMC/Island
12″

Ultravox!
Live at The Rainbow 1977
UMC/Island
LP

Undertones, The
The Love Parade
BMG
12″

UT
Griller
Out
LP

Van McCoy
The Hustle
Tommy Boy Music
12″

Various Artists
Franco Nero
17 North Parade
7″

Various Artists
De-Lite Soul
BMG / De-Lite
LP

Various Artists
PARALLAX VIEW PRINT SET
Cinema Paradiso
LP

Various Artists
Big Night – Original Soundtrack
Concord / UMG
LP

Various Artists
Go Ahead Punk…Make My Day
Concord / UMG
LP

Various Artists
Jazz Dispensary: Super Skunk
Concord / UMG
LP

Various Artists
The Wanderer – a tribute to Jackie Leven
Cooking Vinyl
2xLP

Various Artists
The Best Of Chi-Sound Records 1976-1984
Demon Records
2xLP

Various Artists
Breakin’: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Get On Down
LP

Various Artists
Greensleeves Ganja Anthems
Greensleeves Records
LP

Various Artists
Earthbeat
Jumpin’ & Pumpin’
2xLP

Various Artists
Brazil 45 Vol.3 Curated By Kenny Dope
Mr Bongo
Boxset

Various Artists
Salutations
RVNG INT
LP

Various Artists
It’s A Rough Old Road To Travel – The Existential Psychodrama In Country Music (Volume II)
The Iron Mountain Analogue Research Facility.
LP

Various Artists
Hilbillies in Hell 13
The Iron Mountain Analogue Research Facility.
LP

Various Artists
Soul Power ’68
Trojan Records
LP

Various Artists
Love Is All I Bring
Trojan Records
2xLP

Verticle Lines
Beach Boy/Beach Boy – Inst
Tuff City
12″

Viktor Vaughn
Vaudeville Villain
Get On Down
2xLP

Vince Guaraldi Trio
Baseball Theme
Concord / UMG
7″

Virgin Prunes
Pagan Lovesong (40th Anniversary Edition)
BMG
LP

The Who are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. Credit: Press
The Who are among the acts with releases for Record Store Day 2022. CREDIT: Press

Walkmen, The
Lisbon – 10th Anniversary Edition
BELLA UNION
2xLP

Wallows
Singles Collection 2017 – 2020
Atlantic
LP

Warrior Soul
Odds & Ends
Prudential Music Group
12″

Weyes Blood
The Innocents
Mexican Summer
LP

Weyes Blood
A Certain Kind b/w Everybody’s Talkin’
Mexican Summer
7″

Who, The
Its Hard – 40th Anniversary Edition
UMC/Polydor
2xLP

Whole Darn Family, The
Seven Minutes of Funk/Ain’t Nothing But Something to Do
Tommy Boy Music
12″

Wild Willy Barrett
Alien Talk (that’s what it’s all about)
stuffNmuck
LP

Wildhearts, The
ADHD Rock
Graphite
10”

WIll and The People
WIll and The People
Smol Records
LP

Willie Nelson
Live at the Texas Opryhouse, 1974
Rhino
2xLP

Willie Tee
First Taste of Hurt /I’m Having so Much Fun
Gatur
7″

Willie Tee
Concentrate/Get Up
Gatur
7″

Winston Reedy, Joseph Cotton, Vin Gordon , Ansel
Boom Shacka Lacka
Room In The Sky
7″

Wipers
Over The Edge (Anniversary Edition)
Jackpot Records
2xLP

Wire
Not About To Die
Pinkflag
LP

Wye Oak
If Children
Merge Records
LP

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The Ronettes icon Ronnie Spector has died

Ronnie Spector, the leader of The Ronettes, has died at the age of 78, her family has confirmed in a statement.

The ‘60s girl group icon died earlier today (January 12) “after a brief battle with cancer”, the statement – which was posted to her official website – read.

“She was with family and in the arms of her husband, Jonathan,” Spector’s family wrote. “Ronnie lived her life with a twinkle in her eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked sense of humour and a smile on her face.  She was filled with love and gratitude. Her joyful sound, playful nature and magical presence will live on in all who knew, heard or saw her.

“In lieu of flowers, Ronnie requested that donations be made to your local women’s shelter or to the American Indian College Fund. A celebration of Ronnie’s life and music will be announced in the future. The family respectfully asks for privacy at this time.”

Ronnie Spector
Ronnie Spector CREDIT: Getty Images

Spector formed a group, originally known as The Darling Sisters, alongside her sister Estelle Bennett and cousin Nedra Talley in New York in 1957. They released a handful of singles with Colpix under the moniker Ronnie And The Relatives from 1961 and later changed their name to The Ronettes after signing with Phil Spector’s Philles Records in 1963.

Their first release on Philles Records was the iconic track ‘Be My Baby’, which scored them their first Top 10 single on the Billboard Top 100 in 1963, peaking at Number Two. They followed it up with ‘Baby, I Love You’, while they also appeared on the label’s compilation album ‘A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector’.

The group only released one studio album in their career – 1964’s ‘Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica’. They continued to release singles sporadically until they broke up in 1967, following a tour supporting The Beatles.

Spector decided to reform the group in 1974 after divorcing her husband, replacing Bennett and Talley with Chip Fields and Denise Edwards. They released one single – 1974’s ‘I Wish I Never Saw The Sun Shine’ – before the outfit folded once again.

The singer went on to launch her own solo career, releasing four solo albums between 1980 and 2016, plus three EPs. Prior to making full-length records, she also put out seven singles, including 1964’s ‘So Young’ and 1976’s ‘Paradise’. On her 2006 solo record ‘Last Of The Rock Stars’ she collaborated with the likes of Patti Smith, The Raconteurs, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner and more, while in 2017, she shared a new track called ‘Love Power’ under the name Ronnie Spector And The Ronettes.

With The Ronettes, Spector has been inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1999 for ‘Be My Baby’, the Vocal Group Hall Of Fame in 2004 and the People’s Hall Of Rock And Roll Legends in 2010.

The Ronettes 1964
Ronnie Spector (centre) with The Ronettes in 1964 CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

In 2007, they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame by The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. At the event, Spector and Talley performed ‘Baby, I Love You’, ‘Walking In The Rain’ and ‘Be My Baby’.

Spector documented her life in the 1990 memoir Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts And Madness, Or, My Life As A Fabulous Ronette. The book is set to be adapted into a film, with Zendaya confirmed to play Spector.

Tributes have begun to pour in since news broke of Spector’s death. The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson wrote: “I just heard the news about Ronnie Spector and I don’t know what to say. I loved her voice so much and she was a very special person and a dear friend. This just breaks my heart. Ronnie’s music and spirit will live forever. Love & Mercy, Brian.”

“Absolutely gutted to hear this news,” Garbage’s Shirley Manson tweeted. “Dear beautiful, talented , fierce Ronnie. I will love you eternally. But then again you knew that.”

Stevie Van Zandt added: “RIP Ronnie Spector. It was an honor to Produce her and encourage her to get back on stage where she remained for the next 45 years. Her record with the E Street Band helped sustain us at a very precarious time (thanks to Steve Popovich). Condolences to her husband and family.”

See more tributes to Ronnie Spector below.

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Grouper Shade

“The Columbia river mouth is a chaotic and beautiful place,” Liz Harris, aka Grouper, reflects, discussing the relationship between the elements and her music, and thinking about where she currently lives, in Astoria, Oregon. “It is a doorway to the ocean, always in radical flux. The tide, the wind, the current, the rain. We get maritime weather here that does not hit the rest of the coast. Storms calm/reassure me.” This observation may surprise longtime listeners to Grouper, who often find a beatific radiance in Harris’s blurred, dissolving songs. But it speaks to the way oppositions oscillate in Grouper’s music, something particularly noticeable on her latest album, Shade.

  • ORDER NOW: David Bowie is on the cover of the December 2021 issue of Uncut

Ever since Harris started releasing her own music, with the Grouper and Way Their Crept albums from 2005, she’s been on a creative quest, nudging her songs, which sit somewhere between folk, psychedelic pop and shoegaze, into yet more mysterious territory. There’s no definable narrative here – Grouper’s music isn’t getting clearer or more abstract. Rather, Harris seems to be in a state of becoming, reflecting that “radical flux” of the river mouth she so loves. The songs can be gorgeously melodic, as with some of 2008’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, or they can be deeply choral and disorienting, like the long pieces on the 2019 double album she released under the pseudonym Nivhek.

One thing that resonates through Harris’s music, though, is a strong sense of time and place, even if that place can be hard definitively to locate. The songs on Shade span 13 years, the first from back in 2008; they also span locales, having been recorded, variously, in Harris’s old hometown of Portland; while on a residency at her brother’s home in Mount Tamalpais, near San Francisco; and in Astoria, where she also runs an art gallery (Harris herself is a visual artist) and sails boats. A patient creator and listener, Harris waited for the songs that make up Shade to come together: “For years I rearranged different drafts,” she recalls. “No deadline though, other projects coming and going, all feeding off one another.”

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Shade opens with Followed The Ocean – a layer of empty hiss slowly ushers in an overloaded wave of mulched guitar as Harris sings out a choral lament, her voice strident across the sea as she both summons and resists the force of the noise that surrounds her. Immediately we get a sense of her modus operandi: a welcoming abstraction; song suspended in midair; something hushed and reverent, yet expansive and pelagic. Much of the rest of Shade, though, trades in intimacy if not quite immediacy, Harris accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, strummed on Unclean Mind, picked methodically on Ode To The Blue – a cat’s cradle of shining, glinting guitar tones, much like the insistent, paced patterns of her visual art, which also evoke, somehow, the quiet intensity of artists like Agnes Martin and Yvonne Audette.

From there, Shade seems to internalise; Harris’s voice on Pale Interior and The Way Her Hair Feels is ruminative, murmured – on the latter song, she halts several times, seeming to correct her playing and performance, though there’s also something very right about the way Harris delivers the song. It comes after the ritualistic drone-mantra of Disordered Minds, a mutant hymnal, writhing in the wind, lost deep in a subway underpass. Elsewhere, as with Promise and Basement Mix, the songs are so hushed, spending time with them feels like listening in, one’s attention almost invasive.

Shade, then, is an album of differing intensities, of gentle revelations. Its varying recording quality reflects the length of time it took to assume its final shape – Shade changes spaces as often as moods. Musing on this, Harris says that this variety “ended up reflecting the wide swathe of time that passed. That translation of time passing feels like a form of honesty.” It doesn’t feel low fidelity, though. Much like the artists that share
a similar mood and fragility with Harris – artists like Roy Montgomery, Demarnia Lloyd, Maxine Funke, Alastair Galbraith, Kendra SmithHarris makes the most of the means available to her and allows her songs to land the way they need to land. And with the gorgeous closer Kelso (Blue Sky), you can hear her transform yet again, away from the grief and solitude at the album’s core, a song that, as Harris says, “brought it back to emotional weather and landscape of the present”.

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UK government accused of more “spin and misinformation” and no progress over Brexit touring mess

Figures from the live music industry have hit back at the UK government for another “non-announcement” of “spin and misinformation”, while arguing that little-to-no progress is being made to solve the Brexit touring fiasco.

  • READ MORE: “It’s going to be devastating” – here’s how Brexit will screw over British touring artists

Criticism continues after the government jeopardised the future of touring for UK artists when the Brexit deal secured with the EU failed to negotiate visa-free travel and Europe-wide work permits for musicians and crew.

Problems remain 10 months on when it comes to new rules and red tape, creating huge costs to future live music tours of the continent for both musicians and crew – which could create a glass ceiling that prevents rising and developing talent from being able to afford to do so.

New Brexit rules have also seen a “massive” amount of jobs and taxable income lost to the EU due to it making touring “nigh-on impossible” for road crew. Cabotage rules currently mean that trucks travelling from the UK are only allowed to make one stop in an EU state before having just seven days to make a maximum of two more before returning home.

Back in August, the government ‘announced’ that “short term” visa-free travel without work permits will be allowed for musicians and performers in 19 European countries, while talks are ongoing with the remaining nations. This led to a huge backlash from the industry, who accused the government of “spin and meaningless posturing” given that these rules were already in place pre-Brexit, while no real negotiations had been made to solve the major issues. All of this is compounded by today’s report that one in three jobs in music were lost during the pandemic.

There is now more anger following another announcement, with the government claiming victory over 20 EU states after adding Romania to the list.

“DCMS had promised to clarify everything after all the spin of last time, and now they’ve just decided to come out with yet more spin,” Ian Smith of the #CarryOnTouring campaign and ukeartswork told NME. “This time, all they’ve done is change it from 19 to 20 countries after I told them that Romania had an allowance.

“It does not at all address the fact that nothing whatsoever has been done proactively in terms of creating any dialogue for bilateral agreements. They’ve merely repeated again what is true for all third country nationals across the world. It is not specific to the UK or UK creatives. These are the rules that have applied for years to all third country nationals. Confusion remains over rules for road crew. They haven’t lifted a finger in terms of anything in this so called ‘announcement’.”

Brexit tour summit
Musicians protesting against Brexit in 2019 (Picture: Richard Baker/Getty Images)

Calling on the government to “actually engage” to create meaningful solutions for creatives and support staff, Smith accused them of only presenting partial truths and leaving artists and their staff with a confusing and dangerous situation.

“What the government fails to mention when they talk about ‘visa-free touring’ is that in some countries, such as the Czech Republic, it’s only seven days in any one year that you’re allowed to work free. It’s 14 days in Sweden, 30 days in Poland, six out of 13 weeks in Benelux,” he said.

“They also don’t mention that in Belgium there are three different authorities, each giving different work permit allowances. They don’t mention that in Germany and France they’re up to 90 days in any one year, they don’t mention that in each and every country where there is visa and permit-free touring you have to report to the local authority if you are working there.”

Smith continued: “By excluding that information they fall back on to the old excuse of, ‘Well, we’re not here to give information for other governments’. They’re putting people at risk of going overseas and being fined. In France, all customs infractions are criminal offences – not civil. The HMRC and government are giving out partial information and being diplomatic with the truth about what’s happening on the ground with duplicate lists instead of Carnets which only work for the UK border.”

The XX perform live during a concert at the Astra Club on January 22, 2010 in Berlin, Germany.(Photo by Jakubaszek/Getty Images)
The XX perform live during a concert at the Astra Club on January 22, 2010 in Berlin, Germany.(Picture: Jakubaszek/Getty Images)

Ultimately, Smith said that nothing in the Brexit touring situation has changed since the industry was landed with a “no deal” back in January, and that the government continue to only relay what figures from the live music scene have been telling them all along. He argued that more bilateral talks, better information and a transitional fund were needed to help artists and their crew tour in Europe, as well as working to help with transport costs and moving merchandise between countries.

“The only benefit is that it’s given us all the chance to work out what we can’t do,” Smith added. “The government have managed to do something that has never been done before – which is manage to ally managers, labels, artists, crew and people from across our industry to really talk to each other.

“That’s never really happened before. In that sense, we are all united and totally committed to finding solutions to the terrible situation that we’re all in.”

Radiohead performs live during a concert at the Kindl Buehne Wuhlheide on September 29, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Jakubaszek/Redferns via Getty Images)
Radiohead performs live during a concert at the Kindl Buehne Wuhlheide on September 29, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Jakubaszek/Redferns via Getty Images)

This summer saw the launch of the #LetTheMusicMove campaign, with the likes of Wolf Alice, IDLES, Poppy Ajudha and Radiohead among the 200 artists calling upon the UK government to urgently take action to resolve the ‘No Deal’ that has landed upon British music. The campaign was headed by the Featured Artists Coalition, whose CEO David Martin told NME that the government’s latest release was “another exercise is obfuscation”.

“Having admitted that the previous announcement regarding EU touring was misleading, it’s now clear that there is a sustained campaign underway to spin the messaging that is being distributed to the music industry,” said Martin. “This won’t work.

“Government’s time would be better spent working on solutions to help us, rather than perpetuating the problems we continue to face by publishing incomplete and inaccurate information.”

Yannis Philippakis from Foals performs at L' Olympia on February 3, 2016 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Wolff - Patrick/Redferns)
Yannis Philippakis from Foals performs at L’ Olympia on February 3, 2016 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Wolff – Patrick/Redferns)

One artist who has been left angry and baffled by the government’s actions is Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis, who told NME: “I just don’t understand what they’ve been playing at.

“I think our government should have done so much more to try to protect and foster the future of music and culture in the UK,” he said. “It’s one of the most important facets of Britain, is our tradition in the arts. Whether you’re in a punk band, a theatre troupe or a ballet, we’ve all just been screwed.

“It just shows the disdain that the Conservatives have for the arts. Nothing matters for them except tax cuts and corruption – which weirdly in the UK is called ‘cronyism’. Let’s just call it what it is – it’s rampant, rife corruption. I feel pretty livid about the situation.”

Regarding the previous announcement around visa-free touring, Yannis said: “There are loads of stings in that tail and they’ve just put out a spin PR release. It’s still really problematic. If you’re a young band that’s starting out and trying to make your way, who’s got the ability to be dealing with that on a logistical or financial level? It’s a poisoned chalice, and they’ve presented it like a glass of champagne.”

He added: “I’m hoping that there’s still work to be done that can improve the situation and this isn’t the brute truth forever, but it still doesn’t change how inept and uncaring our own politicians have been.”

Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys performing at Melkweg (The Max), Amsterdam in 2006 (Picture: Rob Verhorst/Redferns)

Responding to the latest backlash to their announcement, a DCMS government spokesperson admitted that “specific requirements for many Member States are not always clearly identifiable” and that they were working to add further information and clarity to their website as they “continue to engage extensively with the sector to help them in understanding the rules and develop their own guidance”.

“We want our creative professionals to tour abroad easily,” a government spokesperson told NME. “We have worked at pace and spoken to every EU Member State about the importance of touring, and 20 EU Member States have confirmed they offer visa and work permit free routes for performers and other creative professionals. This includes most of the biggest touring markets, including France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

“We are now working with the remaining countries to encourage them to match the UK’s generous arrangements, which allow creative professionals to tour here easily.”

Earlier this month, a number of figures from the music industry spoke to NME about how new visa rules, as well as prohibitive costs and admin rules, meant that many UK artists could no longer afford to tour in Spain – cutting off one of the biggest markets for UK talent.

Rising post-punk bands Squid and Black Country, New Road are among those to have recently pulled out of Spanish shows “without any hint of rescheduling their respective tours” – as promoters Primavera Sound noted.

Discussions remain ongoing for visa touring provisions with Spain, Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus.

Amid months of inaction, the government has often been accused of treating the £6billion music sector like “an afterthought” in Brexit negotiations, compared to the £1.2billion fishing industry.

A recent poll found that the majority of UK voters wanted the government to be doing more to solve the post-Brexit touring fiasco for musicians and crew, after over 280,000 people signed a petition calling for visa-free touring through the EU to be established for artists and crew.

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The Lathums score UK Number One album with ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’

The Lathums have scored the UK’s Number One album with their debut album ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’, beating Drake and more to achieve the accolade.

The Wigan indie band released their first full-length last week (September 24), and were reported to be battling Drake for the top spot according to the midweek chart update.

  • READ MORE: The Lathums: indie hedonism from Wigan’s working class heroes

It has now been confirmed today (October 1) that the band have hit the top of the charts, beating Public Service Broadcasting, whose new album ‘Bright Magic’ charts at Number Two.

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Speaking of the honour, Lathums frontman Alex Moore told Official Charts: “We’re four friends from Wigan who just love making music and are at Number 1 with our debut album, it’ll take a while for this one to sink in. It proves what’s possible for young, British artists with a pure-at-heart ambition to reach people with songs like ours, making friends every step along the way and finding that dreams can come true.

“‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’ is about seeing the good in things, holding on and coming through difficult times with a smile at the end. Today our smiles couldn’t be any wider. Thank you.”

Elsewhere on this week’s Official Albums Chart, last week’s chart topper from Drake, ‘Certified Lover Boy’, drops to Number Three, while another new entry in the Top Ten comes from Natalie Imbruglia, whose album ‘Firebird’ charts at Number Ten.

Reviewing The Lathums’ ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’, NME wrote: “While the initial rise of The Lathums has already drawn comparisons with the Arctic Monkeys, this record is very much steeped in the jangly sound of The Smiths and The Housemartins: jaunty guitars and anthems with swelling festival crowds in mind.”

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Damon Albarn confirms Gorillaz collaboration with Bad Bunny

Damon Albarn has revealed that he has collaborated with Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny for a forthcoming Gorillaz project.

  • READ MORE: Gorillaz – ‘Meanwhile’ EP review: a joyous celebration of Notting Hill Carnival

As reported by Remezcla, Albarn told Warp in an interview that he and Bad Bunny – real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – linked up while the two were both in Jamaica.

“What I love about Gorillaz is that I can bring [in] anyone I want, you know?” he said. “I was in Jamaica recently and recorded a Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny, that’s something exciting for next year.”

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Albarn also revealed that the collaboration will serve as the lead single to Gorillaz’ forthcoming project, which he says is inspired by Latin America.

“Bad Bunny is the first single. It is the first song I have made from this new project,” Albarn said.

“I still don’t know when it will come out, or how we are going to launch it, but we finished it and it is… yes, more or less a reggaeton song. It’s Bad Bunny meets Gorillaz.”

Bad Bunny enjoyed a prolific 2020, dropping a total of three albums – ‘YHLQMDLG’ in February and ‘El Último Tour Del Mundo’ in December, as well as compilation album ‘Las Que No Iban A Salir’ in May.

Albarn is set to drop his new solo album ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’ this November. He’ll be performing cuts from the album with a live band and a string quarter later this month (September 20) at London’s Globe Theatre, with the show being live-streamed around the world.

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In October last year, Gorillaz dropped their seventh album ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’ featuring collaborations with Slowthai, St. Vincent, Elton John, The Cure’s Robert Smith and more.

Last month, the virtual band backed that up with the surprise release of new EP ‘Meanwhile’, sporting three tracks with an appearance from AJ Tracey.

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Listen to Bastille’s new “love letter to escapism”, ‘Thelma + Louise’

Bastille have shared a new track called ‘Thelma + Louise’ – you can listen to it below.

  • READ MORE: What Bastille learned from making revelatory tour doc ‘ReOrchestrated’

The song was premiered by Yungblud as the Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1’s ‘Future Sounds’ show tonight (August 18).

Frontman Dan Smith explained that he penned “the bones of” the new single over Zoom during lockdown along with two other tracks, with all three set to appear on Bastille’s next album.

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He went on to speak of the inspiration from the “classic” 1991 film of the same name. “It’s this iconic feminist film about freedom, escapism, independence and escaping the worries and problems of life,” Smith said.

“I wanted to write a love letter to that film – a love letter to feminism, escapism and throwing off the shackles of a life that you may be frustrated by.”

“I wrote the tune with a guy called Rami Yacoub, who’s a Swedish [producer/musician] based in the States,” explained Smith, adding that his “history of songwriting is insane”.

“He went from [Britney Spears‘] ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, which he wrote with Max Martin, right through to working with people like yourself [Yungblud] and me. But also he did Lady Gaga‘s last album.”

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Smith begins the song by singing of “skipping town down to Mexico“, leaving his normal life behind. “Days like these you wanna gеt away/ Close our eyes, prеtend we’re miles away/ Hear the sound of my heart exploding“, its chorus goes.

An official performance of the track, ‘Live from Future Inc. HQ’, has also landed on YouTube – tune in above.

Bastille released the single ‘Distorted Light Beam’ in June, which was followed by the “twisted” ‘Give Me The Future’ last month. Details of the band’s next full-length effort are yet to emerge.

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Chvrches share euphoric new song ‘Good Girls’ and announce UK tour for 2022

Chvrches have shared a new single called ‘Good Girls’ and with it details of a UK tour for next March.

  • READ MORE: Chvrches – “Are the machines evil, or are we?”

The Scottish trio, fronted by Lauren Mayberry, premiered the song as Hottest Record on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 show today (July 12). Mayberry explained in a statement that the track takes aim at “misogynistic ideals”.

“The opening line (killing your idols is a chore) was something I wrote after listening to some friends arguing about the present day implications of loving certain problematic male artists – I was struck by the lengths that people would go to in order to excuse their heroes and how that was so juxtaposed to my own experiences in the world,” Mayberry said.

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“Women have to constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space. We’re told that Bad Things don’t happen to Good Girls. That if you curate yourself to fit the ideal – keep yourself small and safe and acceptable – you will be alright, and it’s just not fucking true.”

Mayberry’s message is set to euphoric synth-pop that bears all the hallmarks of a Chvrches classic – listen below.

The single is the third cut from the band’s forthcoming album, ‘Screen Violence‘, which drops on August 27 via EMI Records (UK) and Glassnote (US). It follows on from last month’s ‘How Not To Drown‘ featuring Robert Smith of The Cure and April’s lead single ‘He Said She Said‘.

Alongside the release of their new track, Chvrches have also today announced details of their 2022 UK tour. Tickets go on sale here at 9:30am BST on July 23.

Chvrches 2022 UK tour dates

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MARCH
14 – Edinburgh, Corn Exchange
15 – Newcastle, O2 City Hall
16 – London, O2 Academy Brixton
18 – Birmingham, O2 Academy
19 – Manchester, O2 Apollo

Elsewhere, the band recently told NME in their Big Read cover interview that the process of writing their upcoming fourth album was grounding during the coronavirus pandemic.

Bandmember Martin Doherty described the writing and recording process as “stabilising” in an otherwise uncertain year. “Making this record was really good for finding something to centre you when it felt like the whole world was on fire,” he said.

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2021 BET Awards Winners: See The Full List

The 2021 BET Awards opened last night (June 27) under the theme “Year of the Black Woman” in front of a live, vaccinated audience at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Empire star Taraji P. Henson served as the ceremony’s host, giving encouragement and upliftment for all Black women.

“Look at us. Look around the room. Look at this power. The grace, the class, the edges — we are everything, honey. Celebrating Black women isn’t a fad or a trend. It’s a forever mood,” Henson said. “And there is more than enough room for all of us to thrive. ‘Cause can’t nobody be me like me, and can’t nobody be you like you.”

This year’s ceremony featured the largest number of performances in the show’s history. Lil Baby and Kirk Franklin kicked things  off with “We Win.” Cardi B shook the world announcing her pregnancy with Offset after her collaborations with Migos’s “Straightenin” and “Type Shit.” H.E.R. descended from the heavens playing the drums and an electric guitar while performing “We Made It.” Lil Nas X ended his fiery, iconic performance of “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” by kissing with one of his backup dancers. He also served looks with two gender-fluid outfits at the red carpet: a Rococo-inspired gown with side panniers and historical prints and a ‘70s flare suit with floral embroidery.

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Chvrches on the “stabilising” power of writing a new album when “the whole world was on fire”

Chvrches have spoken about the grounding experience of writing their fourth album ‘Screen Violence’ during the coronavirus pandemic.

  • READ MORE: Chvrches on the cover of NME – “Are the machines evil, or are we?”

The Scottish trio spoke to NME for this week’s Big Read cover story interview, in which bandmember Martin Doherty described the writing and recording process as “stabilising” in an otherwise uncertain year.

“Making this record was really good for finding something to centre you when it felt like the whole world was on fire,” said Doherty. He, along with frontwoman Lauren Mayberry and fellow multi-instrumentalist Iain Cook, made the record largely virtually, since they were stuck living miles apart during various lockdowns.

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Additionally, per the album’s exploration of the intersection of human beings and technology, frontwoman Lauren Mayberry said her previous negative association with screens (the singer has been notably trolled online over the years) has shifted during the pandemic.

“It was horrible to have to only see people on screens – I’ve not seen my mum in 3D since Christmas 2019,” she said. “But I think, if anything, it made me more grateful because if this didn’t exist I couldn’t talk to you; we couldn’t have made this record and we couldn’t have spoken to any of our friends and family. It makes you think – are the machines evil, or are we?”

She also spoke of getting close to wanting to “pack” things in after the band’s third album ‘Love Is Dead‘.

NME Cover 2021 Chvrches

Elsewhere in the interview Mayberry addressed the online abuse she’s suffered since the band’s breakout in 2013 – particularly with regards to her sex and fashion choices.

As detailed in the cover feature, Mayberry started to tone-down her love of bright make-up and ’80s-style dressing, which she employed ahead of the release of the band’s 2013 debut album ‘The Bones Of What You Believe’.

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Afterwards, she decided to “make myself small enough” because then “I’ll be allowed; that will be satisfactory” in a bid to avoid negative perceptions and comments online.

But in the last few years, as NME‘s Rhian Day writes, “she has re-embraced her love of expressing her creativity in her aesthetic, as evidenced in the swathes of glitter that appeared on her face and the range of fun outfits she wore during the band’s last tour”.

Mayberry said: “We all love the ’80s, Cyndi Lauper and even artists like PJ Harvey use aesthetics as part of their creativity – surely that makes you more of an artist?

She added: “Why is it incredible when David Bowie does it but when a female frontperson does it, it’s because they’re trying to sell records?”

Chvrches shared their collaboration with The Cure’s Robert Smith, ‘How Not To Drown’ earlier this week, which features on the new album.

‘Screen Violence’ is released on August 29.

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Bob Dylan Rough And Rowdy Ways

As part of our celebrations to mark Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday, here, in full, is Richard Williams’ definitive review of Dylan’s most recent studio album, Rough And Rowdy Ways…

In his 2016 Nobel Prize lecture – which he did not deliver in person but eventually published as a recording, with piano accompaniment, and a short book – Bob Dylan began with a memory of how seeing Buddy Holly in person and being given a Lead Belly record changed his life. But then he went on to talk about the books he read in school that had made the deepest and most enduring impact on him: Moby-Dick, All Quiet On The Western Front and The Odyssey. He closed his speech with Robert Fitzgerald’s 1961 translation of Homer’s opening invocation: “Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story.”

This was four years after Dylan had released Tempest, his last album of original material, and while he was in the middle of recording 50-odd songs from what is now generally referred to as the American songbook: the show tunes of Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and so on. Released between 2015 and 2017 as Shadows In The Night, Fallen Angels and the three-disc Triplicate, they received a mixed reception, many turning up their noses at what appeared to be a misguided project, and certainly an overextended one. In the first place, why would Dylan attempt to perform pieces already rendered definitively by others (e.g. Frank Sinatra) when the earliest and most influential phase of his own career had amounted an organized assault on the values represented by those songs, with their moon-and-June lyrics and their neat 32-bar AABA structures?

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Gradually it became apparent that Dylan might have been up to something all along, just as he had been when he recorded the Basement Tapes in the ’60s and a couple of solo albums of blues and folk songs, Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong, in the early ’90s, using them as co-ordinates with which to realign his musical SatNav. You can’t take liberties with Tin Pan Alley songs like “Stormy Weather” or “My One and Only Love”. You sing their finely wrought chromatic melodies as well as you possibly can, while allowing the lyrics to speak clearly; otherwise, don’t bother. And that is what, despite the effects of time on his vocal range, he did. So anyone who saw his concerts during this period – at the Albert Hall in October 2015, for instance – had to be struck by the way his attitude to his own songs had changed.

Listeners were no longer invited to spend the first minute of a song teasing out the clues to “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “She Belongs To Me”. This seemed a good thing. The technical exercise involved in phrasing the lines of the standard tunes – the sort of challenge for which Sinatra swam underwater in order to improve his breath control – must have appealed to Dylan, whose gift for shaping the cadence and internal rhythms of long lines, even when completely ignoring the melody, has always been just about his most unfairly overlooked expressive talent.

What is also perhaps underappreciated is the appeal of his speaking voice. The 101 programmes of his Theme Time Radio Hour series showed us (and perhaps him) what a wonderfully expressive reader he can be. It became hard to imagine a book of any sort that wouldn’t be improved by Dylan recording its audio edition. And that, too, has a very practical application to his new collection, in which his lyrics are spoken as much as they are sung.

As the three albums of standards made their appearance, it was also clear that his regular band of musicians were achieving a new synthesis, something much subtler than before. The new sound was softer, gentler, more fluid, carefully adapted to provide a cushion for Dylan’s ageing voice. His decision to do without the cabaret cushioning of a piano was crucial to its success. Instead there were strings of several kinds: violin, double bass, acoustic guitar, steel guitar, all blending into a flow that owed less to Nelson Riddle than to Western Swing and the Hot Club de France. It may have lacked turbulence but was never devoid of an inner energy and direction.

What he was also doing, or so it seems now, was waiting for inspiration. In the Nobel lecture, his discussion of The Odyssey is particularly animated. Homer’s poem is, he says, “a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war. He’s on that long journey home, and it’s filled with traps and pitfalls.” After describing some of them, he continues: “It’s a hard road to travel… some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back. And you’ve had close calls as well. You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. And you’ve also felt that ill wind, the wind that blows you no good. And that’s still not all of it.”

Maybe The Odyssey was pushing itself to the forefront of Dylan’s mind just as he began to consider the possibility of writing and recording a new album of original songs. Perhaps, in the interim, he had also read Emily Wilson’s radical new translation, in which the opening lines are rendered: “Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost…”

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The evidence is there, if you want to look for it, that the myths and legends of the ancient world – and of Homer in particular – formed a significant part of the library of material consulted by Dylan while he was assembling the 10 new songs making up Rough And Rowdy Ways. There’s a song called “Mother Of Muses”, for a start: the title refers to Mnemosyne, the daughter of Uranus, the god of the sky, and Gaia, the mother of the earth. Mnemosyne slept nine nights in a row with Zeus in order to give birth to the nine muses, among them Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. “I’m falling in love with Calliope,” Dylan sings. “She doesn’t belong to anyone, why not give her to me?”

Mnemosyne’s name, derived from the Ancient Greek word for “memory” or “remembrance”, was also given to one of the five rivers of the underworld. The dead drank from Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, in order to erase all remembrance of past lives before being reincarnated. To drink instead from Mnemosyne, the river of memory, was to be granted the opposite and achieve omniscience.

Perhaps only the omniscient have a licence to put together songs in the way Dylan does, creating mosaics from fragments of the past and investing the result with fresh meaning through force of personality and poetic vision. Joni Mitchell, for one, has been dismissive of his reliance on adapting other people’s work in what kinder judges call “the folk process”, but when the result is as powerful as Rough And Rowdy Ways, the method seems more like a kind of justifiable artistic alchemy.

All of it comes together in an album named after a Jimmie Rodgers song (“My Rough And Rowdy Ways”, 1929) and containing song titles lifted from Walt Whitman (“I Contain Multitudes”), William Burroughs (“Black Rider”) and Shakespeare (“Murder Most Foul”), as well as a song (“False Prophets”) borrowing its entire template from Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s “If Lovin’ Is Believin’”, a 1954 B-side. Unlike T. S. Eliot, Dylan doesn’t provide footnotes. Spotting his allusions and joining them up is part of the fun. You’re entitled to punch the air if you recognise the line “Red Cadillac and a black moustache” as the title of a song by the rockabilly artist Warren Smith, which Dylan recorded for a Sun Records tribute album called Good Rockin’ Tonight in 2002. That’s up to you. But he doesn’t hide his references. A song built on the elements of Jimmy Reed’s style – a blues shuffle, its verses punctuated by single high harmonica notes, ending with a direct quote (“Can’t you hear me callin’ from down in Virginia”) –is titled “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”.

That’s one of the tracks exploiting a roadhouse 1950s R&B style familiar, in particular, from Together Through Life, the predecessor of Tempest. It’s a style in which his musicians are steeped. Other songs exploit the lyric qualities of steel guitar and bowed double bass to create something different and more distinctive, a fluid and sympathetic accompaniment to Dylan’s current mode of vocal delivery, which veers from near-recitation to near-singing.

I Contain Multitudes”, the opener, typifies the second approach. It slides in, free from tempo for its opening verses, slipping into a Django Reinhardt groove and out again a couple of times, but with everything moving at the deliberate pace set by his voice. As with all but one of the songs, the lyric is built on sequential couplets, every verse in this case ending with a line preceding a repetition of title: “I fuss with my hair and I fight blood feuds,” “I paint landscapes and I paint nudes,” “I play Beethoven’s sonata, Chopin’s preludes…” There are mentions of William Blake (namechecking “Songs of Experience”) and Edgar Allan Poe (“Tell Tale Heart”), and a truly bizarre set of juxtapositions: “I’m just like Anne Frank, I’m like Indiana Jones / And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.” And still he can pluck your heartstrings: “Red Cadillac and a black moustache / Rings on my fingers that sparkle and flash / Tell me what’s next, what shall we do? / Half of my soul belongs to you.” Who could resist?

The tone is harsher and the voice more of a growl on “False Prophet”, a slow-rocking Elmore James groove with a valve-driven sound, harking back to the sort of calculated distortion Daniel Lanois brought to the production of Time Out of Mind in 1997: bruised, abraded, patinated, but now less self-consciously so. And more great piled-up couplets: “I’m the enemy of treason, the enemy of strife / I’m the enemy of the unlived, meaningless life / I ain’t no false prophet, I just know what I know / I go where only the lonely can go.” Whoever plays the bottleneck guitar does a fine job, particularly on the fade.

With “My Own Version Of You” we’re back in an strange reverie as reverbed guitars, pattering brushes and a stealthy swooping steel accompany a long recitative studded with cartoon absurdism – “I’ll take the Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando / Mix it up in a tank and get a robot commando / If I do it up right and get the head on straight / I’ll be saved by the creature that I create” – and artful phrasing. Listen as he delivers “I want to bring someone to life, turn back the years / Do it with laughter and do it with tears”, compressing the first line and expanding the second to match it, adding a mock-suspenseful pause before the final word — he’s knows you’ve already guessed it, as you will guess the outcome of many of these couplets, although that’s not for the worse since they convey the naturalness of speech.

I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself To You” may be the most cumbersome title of his career, but the track also one of his loveliest creations. A Neapolitan mandolin and a half-hidden marimba conjure the image of a lone figure sitting in a waterside café on a warm evening, while male voices hum a four-note melody behind him: “I’m sitting on the terrace, lost in the stars / Listening to the sound of the sad guitars / I’ve been thinking it all over, and I’ve thought it all through / I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you.” There doesn’t seem to be any irony at work here. Maybe these are the lovers from “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”, 40 years on, still entangled in complex emotions and on the brink of a reunion. A simple, graceful guitar solo prefaces the final verse: “I’ve travelled from the mountain to the sea / I hope that the gods go easy with me / I knew you’d say yes, I’m sayin’ it too / I’ve made up my mind to give myself to you.”

The subdued mood is dialed down a further notch for “Black Rider”: simple acoustic guitar and mandolin, just marking the chords, sometimes almost disappearing behind dream-like lyrics that sound as though they’re being written on water. Murmured to a rival or maybe to an alter ego, they contain perhaps the most surprising single word in Dylan’s entire recording career: “Black rider, black rider, hold it right there / The size of your cock will get you nowhere / I’ll suffer in silence, I’ll not make a sound / Maybe I’ll take the high moral ground…” The song drifts along until it just vanishes completely, like a pebble in a pond.

Goodbye Jimmy Reed” does exactly what it says on the tin. A sluggish 12-bar shuffle, patterned on Reed’s “Honest I Do” or “Baby What You Want Me To Do”, with slapping drums, several rhythm guitars probably played by guys with names like Lefty and Earl, a strong lead, a walking bass, and a striking opener: “They threw everything at me, everything in the book / I had nothing to fight with but a butcher’s hook.” It ends on a squeezed high note from the mouth-harp as the endless boogie fades on down the road.

The unamplified delicacy returns with “Mother Of Muses”, a hymn-like song making stately progress against a bowed double bass, a muffled bass drum and a finger-picked gut-string guitar. As well as Mnemosyne – “Take me to the river, release your charms / Let me lay down a while in your sweet loving arms / Wake me, shake me, free me from sin / Make me invisible, like the wind” — Dylan addresses a host of spirits, somewhat surprisingly including World War Two generals Georgy Zhukov and George S. Patton, “who cleared a path for Presley to sing / Who guard the path for Martin Luther King / Who did what they did and then went on their way / Man, I could tell their stories all day.”

Crossing The Rubicon” seems like a settling of old scores and debts: a slow, plodding, pared-back sermon from the primitive church of the blues, evoking John Lee Hooker as his most darkly simmering: “I can feel the bones beneath my skin, and they’re trembling with age / I’ll make your wife a widow, she’ll never see old age.” Someone, anyway, is going to get cut with a crooked knife.

For “Key West”, which at nine and a half minutes is the album’s second longest track, the atmosphere switches back to the gentle acoustic drift, with an accordion prominent in the sultry, drowsy mix. A story that begins in McKenley Hollow – a hiking trail in the Catskills, part of the Big Indian Wilderness, a half-hour drive from Woodstock – moves down to Key West, on the southern tip of Florida, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Atlantic ocean and, as the song notes, Harry S. Truman established a southern White House. Hibiscus and bougainvillea are in bloom, a pirate radio station is sending inspiration from Luxembourg or possibly Budapest, and the singer is guarding against the threat of “bleeding heart disease” while musing on how he ended up here: “I was born on the wrong side of the railroad track / Like Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac / Like Louis and Jimi and Buddy and all of the rest / Well, it might not be the thing to do / But I’m sticking with you through and through / Down in the flatlands, down in Key West.” The pirate radio signal comes and goes, unlike anything resembling winter weather. “Key West is fine and fair,” he sings. “If you’ve lost your mind, you’ll find it there.”

And so we come to the bomb that dropped on the morning of March 27 this year. “Murder Most Foul”, at almost 17 minutes, is his longest recorded song, an epic conclusion to the album in the manner of “Desolation Row”, “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” and “Highlands”, except that this one is rooted in an specific event at a precise and pivotal moment in contemporary history. Described in a jigsaw of detail (the triple underpass, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll, Oswald and Ruby, Parkland Hospital, Love Field), the murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 takes its place amid a flood of references to films and songs and books, from Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night and Dorothy B. Hughes’s Ride the Pink Horse to all the records the singer implores the radio DJ Wolfman Jack to play: “Wake Up, Little Susie”, “Lucille”, “Memphis in June”, Slim Harpo’s “Scratch My Back”, “Blue Skies”, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker and “‘Love Me Or Leave Me’ ” by the great Bud Powell” (which doesn’t actually exist).

On an album whose most ambitious songs are marked by the ebb and flow of slow and slow-medium tempos, on this one any sense of strict metre is abolished altogether. Piano, bowed bass, a viola (maybe a violin as well), drums and possibly a harmonium follow the chord changes together but play out of time, taking their rhythmic cues from the recitative, creating slowly rolling waves of sound that billow and recede. In a sense it’s closer to John Coltrane’s masterpiece “Alabama”, a tempo-less elegy for the four black schoolgirls murdered by white supremacists in a church bombing two months before the Kennedy assassination, than to anything Dylan has tried before in all his decades-long exploration of folk music, rockabilly, county or R&B. He can still surprise us, this complicated man.

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An Audience With J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr

To celebrate the release of Dinosaur Jr’s supersonic new album Sweep It Into Space, here’s an Audience With J Mascis from the September 2014 issue of Uncut (Take 208). Kevin Shields, Mark Arm and TV Smith pose the questions as we discover how Mascis almost joined Nirvana but stood in with GG Allin instead: “Fine in theory, but when he’s actually shitting onstage beside you, it’s not fun!”

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“Portugal aren’t coming back from that,” exclaims J Mascis with unexpected enthusiasm. Presently, the notoriously reticent Mascis is sitting in a hotel bar in London watching Germany beat Portugal in the World Cup on a giant television screen. His surprising outburst, he explains, is because he has a vested interest in the outcome of this particular game: Mascis’ wife is German. She is currently in Berlin with their son where, it transpires, they are watching the match on a big screen, in the church where his brother-in-law is a minister.

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Meanwhile, Mascis is in the UK to promote his latest solo album, Tied To A Star. Despite his woolly appearance – faded black Cactus T-shirt, trucker cap and purple-rimmed glasses, grey hair, beard – Mascis is on sharp form as he answers your questions on subjects ranging from his favourite guitar riffs to the existence of some deep Dinosaur Jr rarities and exactly what happened when Kurt Cobain asked him to join Nirvana…

Hi, J. You’ve got a reputation for being difficult in interviews, do you think some people misunderstand your sense of humour?
Kevin Shields

I’ve learned from being interviewed and dealing with people that I talk slower than a lot of people. If a person’s really wired and ADD, and I don’t answer fast enough, they write me off as an asshole in that second where I’m not answering them. Then, that’s it. How long have I known Kevin? Since we first came to England. We opened for Primal Scream and then played at ULU. I think he was there. Someone told me to buy My Bloody Valentine, and the “You Made Me Realise” EP had just come out. We’ve seen each other pretty much every time I’ve come to England. Coming to Europe back then was great for us. They’d give us food and somewhere to stay and people actually liked us. We were pretty hated where we lived in Western Massachusetts.

Is it true you turned down Kurt Cobain’s invitation to join Nirvana?
Stan Maloney, New York

Yeah, Kurt asked me to join. I was with Thurston Moore at this Nirvana show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. I was talking with Kurt, and he said, “You should join my band.” I think he was kind of sick of the guitar player at the time, Jason [Everman]. I was like, “Oh, yeah.” That was kind of it. You know, I wanted to go to college in Seattle and I didn’t get in. So I could have been there before all them. Imagine how different history would have been. I had gone to a semester in Amhurst. I hated college so I didn’t do too well. When I applied to Seattle, they weren’t too impressed. What was I studying? Nothing. You can do that in America. I took a lot of Hitler-inspired classes. I had a teacher who was an SS officer and another who was a Jew who escaped. They were both in the same history department, which was weird.

What do you remember about your earliest gigs in Boston?
Sheryl Dillon, Cardiff

When we started, we were too loud and we had no fans. That’s a bad combination when you’re trying to play shows in these bars and the bartender can’t hear the people trying to buy drinks. “Who are these guys?” So we’d get banned from all the clubs around there. In Boston the soundman threw a bottle at us. We were playing with Salem 66 or something. In Boston, in [Mascis’ early-’80s hardcore punk band] Deep Wound, people liked us in the hardcore scene but the hardcore scene did not like Dino when we started. But what are you gonna do? I guess the first time we went to New York, which was three hours away, that’s when we first met Sonic Youth and found some people who actually liked us. It was our home away from home. We’d spend a lot of time in New York.

J, even your acoustic guitar sounds loud. How do you do it? I’ve been trying to persuade sound technicians to make mine louder for years…
TV Smith, The Adverts

Travel with your own soundman, I guess. It’s a battle, if you don’t have your own soundman, to try and communicate what you’re trying to do to some other guy. I think TV Smith could make it happen. Yeah, I’m a total fan of British punk. What are the differences between British and American punk? The production was much better in England. I guess most US punk bands never recorded in real studios. English punk seemed better for some years, until probably ’81 when hardcore happened. It all came together perfectly at that age. I could relate to Minor Threat. They had more suburban problems, like me. You know, being pissed for no reason. “Oh, my parents are OK, I’m not starving, nothing is apparently wrong, but I’m still depressed and pissed off at everything. I have no reason to be.” You get jealous of people with real problems.

I’m a massive fan of the first three Dinosaur Jr albums. Are there any unreleased studio recordings from this era (“Center Of The Universe”, for example), and if so, what are the chances of them being released?
Bennett Sandhu

No, across the board. “Centre Of The Universe” was an early Lou [Barlow] song. It didn’t appear on any album, he didn’t want to play it. It could have been on our first album, but he decided he hated it immediately. There might be some practice tape of the song, but not that I have. I guess we could always re-record it now.

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What was it about GG Allin that made you think, ‘I want to be in a band with that guy?’
Mark Arm, Mudhoney

Yeah… that’s a weird one. Gerard Cosloy, who went on to Matador fame, went to college in my town and became my band [Deep Wound]’s manager, for a minute, then we broke up. He said he’d put out the Dinosaur record when we formed, so we already knew we could make a record. But he was putting together this GG Allin band, and he asked me to be in it. I was excited, until the reality set in. I often thought it was kind of like how Kurt Cobain must have felt about Courtney Love. It’s like this punk idea that seems cool ’til you’re doing it. You like GG Allin in theory, but then when he’s actually shitting onstage and you’re standing there, it’s not fun and you think, ‘Wow, this is a bad scene.’

How many guitars do you own, J?
Craig Parsons, Hemel Hempstead

Quite a few. Under 100, but more than 50. That’s a good answer. Where do I keep them all? They’re pretty much everywhere. I like to try to get every conceivable rock guitar sound you could possibly need. The Wipers sound, the Keith Richards sound, the Fast Eddie sound. I’m just trying to cover all the bases. They all sound slightly different. Some for recording and some for playing. You hope some guitars have different songs in them you can just get out by playing them. That’s one crazy justification for buying them. It’s harder to justify to my wife, of course. The oldest guitar I’ve got is a Martin from the 1930s.

Question: Master Of Reality or Vol. 4? (Paranoid is not an answer.)
Jonathan Poneman, Sub Pop

Vol. 4, definitely. This is Sabbath, who I just saw for the first time. In fact, Jonathan helped me get in to the show. They played in Berlin. Tony Iommi has now gone to the top of my guitar list, Top 5 guitarists I’ve ever seen. I love Sabbath, I was maybe 12 years old when I first heard them, but I never considered Tony to be as good a guitarist as he evidently is. I was blown away when I saw him do “Supernaut” from Vol. 4. I always thought that solo was impossible to play. I’ve seen people try, but no-one can do it. Then to see Tony play it live, that was awesome. Do I think Bill Ward should be back in the band? The new guy kicked them in the ass a bit, gave them some energy, but he’s not so good it takes away from Bill. He’s ballpark.

Which of your album sleeves do you like the most – and why?
Peter Fors, Stockholm

Green Mind is a good one. It’s a cool photo. It seems to resonate. This ’70s icon of the kid. It’s got that over-the-edge look of teenage rebellion. Why do I like green and purple so much? They’re my favourite colours. I have some purple clothing, but it’s very hard to get for men. I’ve designed some purple trainers (below). They came with a 7” cover of Mazzy Star, “Fade Into You”. Will that ever get a proper release? Yeah, I think it’ll appear on this record, like a B-side maybe. I played it live first time the other day. It was pretty good. I’ll probably play it on this tour. It went on for a while. A lot of noodling. But if it’s good, let it noodle.

If you could only play one riff for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Patrick Proctor, Manchester

Maybe “City Slang” by Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. Is that a riff? Sorta. What makes a good riff? It’s memorable, you want to sing it and play it. What’s a favourite riff of mine? I like “Sludgefest” and “Out There”. “Out There” being more of what you’d consider a riff. It seems a bit complicated for me to play and sing, so I’m impressed. It seems a bit over my ability.

What are your memories of the 1992 Rollercoaster tour?
Debbie Williams, London

It was fun. I remember I was surprised that The Jesus And Mary Chain were even more socially retarded than I was. We didn’t speak until maybe the last show. They’d hide in the dressing room. That was impressive somehow. I was already friends with My Bloody Valentine, so we’d hang out. Blur were the most sociable, the Mary Chain the worst, then us, then MBV. Did we drink a lot at that time? I don’t think I was drinking. It was a cool tour. I’d never really heard Blur before, but obviously they became huge. Last time I was here, I saw the guitarist in Wagamama right over the road.

Hello J! Do you remember filming the “Freak Scene” video in my back garden in Manchester?
John Robb, The Membranes/Goldblade

Yes, I do. It was pretty exciting. We shaved our soundman’s head for the video. Dancing around in weird costumes with all the papier mâché stuff he had lying around his house. Our label edited out everything like that from the video and just had us playing in the garden. I was furious. The real version only came out when we re-released the LP. How did we end up in John’s garden? It’s Manchester, that’s what happened in those days.

How did you end up reforming the classic earlier lineup of Dinosaur Jr in 2005?
Matt Barlow, via email

We finally got the reissues to come out and got them away from SST, so we put it on Merge and my then-manager thought we could do something to promote it. I was the hard one to convince. Lou and Murph were on board but it took a bit of Lou mellowing out after being so angry with me for so long. I’d see him, and he’d still be angry. Then at some point he mellowed and it opened the door for apologies… we saw each other in the intervening years. I’d gone to Sebadoh shows when he was in town, but he’d never go to any show that I’d do. Was I on the guestlist? I’d never pay, so I must have got in somehow. Things are doing all right. It has its ups and downs, but it’s not as extreme.

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My Bloody Valentine: “We were like the Partridge Family on acid”

With the news that My Bloody Valentine have released their catalogue across streaming services for the first time, it seemed like a good opportunity to dust down our cover story from Uncut’s March 2018 issue. Here, then, is the band’s full, epic tale – told by Kevin Shields, Colm Ó Cíosóig, Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher, original singer Dave Conway and a host of friends and collaborators.

PERFECT SOUND FOREVER
A landmark of songwriting and sonic adventure, Loveless by MY BLOODY VALENTINE didn’t come cheap. As the band’s members explain, this was a recording plagued by poverty, illness and a commitment to “plough through hell”. From Amsterdam, via squats, LSD and chinchillas, this is also the story of the enduring genius of the band’s visionary songwriter KEVIN SHIELDS. “I still can’t really figure out what it is he does,” says PAUL WELLER. “But I know something: only he can do it.”

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To the residents of South Kensington, the sound comes from everywhere and nowhere. For an hour, a strange and unaccountable low frequency rumble rattles windowpanes and shakes paintings off their hooks. This is summer, 1989 and My Bloody Valentine are busy conducting a sonic experiment.

At this time, the band has taken up residence in a 16-track studio tucked into the side of a large warehouse space. As befitting one London’s most affluent boroughs, this space also had an art gallery attached to it. “We dragged the amps out to make it as loud as possible,” recalls Kevin Shields, the band’s chief architect. “It was just me and Colm [Ó Cíosóig, drums]. He was on bass and I retuned all the strings so they were all really low and floppy. We just created this huge, grumbling noise. The room was shaking and the lights were flickering. It put us into an altered state of consciousness. The second we stopped, we heard a noise outside. Apparently, the owner had been banging on the doors for about 40 minutes. The gallery didn’t have any soundproofing. He’d heard this crazy noise on the other side of the borough. By the time he got to the studio, the whole building was vibrating. The doors were locked so he couldn’t get in. He was furious, but he couldn’t stay angry with us because he thought we were crazy. You see, Colm and me were laughing like a pair of 5 year-olds. We felt like we were on the strongest drug in the world. That’s when we realized, ‘There’s something in this. What would happen if other people got to feel this, too?’”

As far as it goes, it is possible to pinpoint Shields and Ó Cíosóig’s wilful seismic disturbances as a transformative moment in My Bloody Valentine’s history. The band had always been preoccupied with what to say and how loud to say it: even during their earliest days, on the fringes of Dublin’s post-punk scene, when they drew from The Cramps’ gothic-psychedelic edge and the avant garde musical philosophies of Einstürzende Neubauten. But the wild, heavy drones they conjured that day in West London introduced new perspectives and focus to Loveless, the album they began recording a few months later. “As a piece of work, Loveless is a whole universe in itself,” says Colm Ó Cíosóig. “Every time I listen to it, I hear different things in it. It’s like listening to wildlife or whales or something. It has its own space and time.”

Since it was first released in 1991, Loveless continues to exert a mighty pull on Shields and his accomplices. This month, he finally unveils a new analog edition of the album – along with its predecessor, Isn’t Anything – that has taken him two arduous years to complete. “I got the best I could get,” he says. ”But it’s not over yet. There’ll be a double album version of Loveless eventually…”

“Kevin is always open to going anywhere, but he thinks in very abstract ways,” admits Debbie Googe, the band’s bassist. “He isn’t a very linear person – he doesn’t go from A – B. He goes from A – K to somewhere in the middle. He meanders around things.”

Abstract? Meandering? Certainly, the My Bloody Valentine story can be both of those things – we shall discover colourful digressions involving a haunted tape room, a colony of chinchillas and inner journeys into uncharted hypnagogic states. But critically, the My Bloody Valentine story is also about the fierce connection between four people, even during trying times. “It’s an incredible, fortunate meeting of people,” says singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher. “We all love each other so much that we just stay together, no matter what. We’ve got this thing nobody else has; it’s really special. Each of us knows that. Even now.”

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“I don’t look for extreme life, I don’t,” explains Shields. “But for some weird reason extremes happen all the time, good things and bad things.”

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Even at the start, My Bloody Valentine’s story was informed by a degree of chaos. Arriving from Queens, New York in Cabinteely, Co. Dublin, Kevin Shields discovered punk rock began shortly after his 14th birthday: “The first song I ever played on a guitar was Buzzcocks’ ‘Harmony In My Head’.”. At school, a fellow student in Shields’ Kung Fu class happened to be getting a band together: he already had the attention of Colm Ó Cíosóig, an enthusiastic drummer with no immediate expertise. “The first rehearsals Colm and I did, he didn’t even know about a beat,” recalls Shields. “He was just hitting his drums randomly, and I didn’t know about tuning.”

United in the first instance from the desire to play Motörhead’s “Bomber”, Shields and Ó Cíosóig’s earliest bands rose and fell in line with their personnel. One early accomplice was Liam Ó Maonlaí, later of Hothouse Flowers. Shields found himself asked to leave one group after he discovered a phaser pedal – “I was so fascinated by the sound, I didn’t want to turn it off. I enjoyed moving past the point of reason.”

A union of like minds, the work Shields and Ó Cíosóig began together was made for people not catered for by the mainstream. “We were pushing boundaries,” says Ó Cíosóig. “We had a Tascam four-track portastudio and a synthesizer. We’d make tapes with weird noises and drones and then improvise over them.”

An advertisement placed in a local record shop drew the attention of David Conway, who became their singer in summer, 1983. “He was crazy, a bit like Lux Interior,” says Ó Cíosóig. “It was great to have a wild man upfront, it made the gigs a bit more fun.”

The band – not yet called My Bloody Valentine – played their first gig on August 18 at a small Dublin venue, the Ivy Rooms. The name arrived a short while later, suggested by Conway in the bar of Dublin’s North Star Hotel. Gigs and line-up changes followed; but alas, “we weren’t popular in Ireland,” relates Shields. Taking advice from Virgin Prunes’ frontman Gavin Friday, they moved to the Netherlands. “In Holland, you get paid by the government for gigs, even if there’s no one there,” says Ó Cíosóig. “It was like a union fee, I guess. We sent a demo tape. We got one gig and decided to emigrate.”

Without a regular bass player, they were joined on a Casio keyboard by Conway’s girlfriend Tina Durkin. “When it worked, it was good,” says Ó Cíosóig. “Those early Casios had this cool, organy sound like a Farfisa, which gave the songs a distorted groove.”

“In Amsterdam, we stayed in a dive called The Last Water Hole,” remembers Shields. “It was pretty rough; it was run by bikers. There were no sheets on the bed, just a cover on the mattress. Everyone slept in their clothes.” A sympathetic promoter offered them the run of his house in the countryside near Gouda. Aside from a commendably well-stocked record collection, the band discovered the house also contained a modest cannabis factory in the attic.

“We were pretty broke so were started smoking weed instead of tobacco,” says Ó Cíosóig. “I got used to carrying a big tobacco pouch full of weed around with me. One day, I walked into a police station in Amsterdam with a huge bag of weed in my pocket without even realizing it was there. We tried to get work. Kevin managed to get a job herding cows for a couple of months.”

A move to Berlin in winter 1984 facilitated an introduction to a dynamic local promoter, Dimitri Hegemann. Under his patronage, they record a mini-album – This Is Your Bloody Valentine. “The studio was so cheap that the engineer who was doing the mixing for us had to do a live gig that night, so he had to leave at 6pm,” says Ó Cíosóig. “It took an afternoon to mix the record. One of the tracks was mixed in 10 minutes. We just put the faders up. ‘Done! Next track.’”

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Debbie Googe came to My Bloody Valentine by a circuitous route. Originally from Yeovil, she had been involved in Somerset’s anarcho-punk scene in the late Seventies, where her band Bikini Mutants self-released a cassette on local label, All The Mad Men. In the mid-Eighties, she was in London, working at the Rio cinema in Dalston. Her then-partner, Annie Lloyd, was based in Berlin, where she fronted Hegemann’s band, Leningrad Sandwich. When My Bloody Valentine decided to relocate to London, Lloyd recommended Goodge as a potential bassist. “They were so sweet and innocent,” she laughs. “Colm took ages to decipher. We used to practice in the squats where Kevin and Colm lived. They were pretty smelly, as you can imagine with three boys in a very small room and no open windows.”

As it transpired, the London squat scene proved critical to the band’s growth. “We lived a very free life,” confirms Shields. “I liked it that way. It was very positive. Most of our gigs were squat gigs, too. Some of the squats in London, they’d literally take out the first floor to make it more like a venue. We played in a squatted church in Bath once. It was like Mad Max. Kids running around with ripped clothes and hair black with dirt. It was the hardcore end of the convoy people, basically. They really didn’t like us. I have a tape of that gig somewhere. It’s very funny. You can hear us playing, then they got us to stop and you can hear a guy with a real hippie voice saying, ‘Hey, man. We told you to stop. It’s too loud.’ That was late ’85.”

The picture that emerges of My Bloody Valentine during this period is one of guileless aspiration. The music – evident in songs like “The Devil Made Me Do It”, “Tiger In My Tank” and “The Love Gang” – was reaching for an aesthetic ideal not yet completely formulated. “They needed to get something down that was more in spirit of what they were like when they played on stage – which was astonishing,” recalls Joe Foster, who produced the band’s 1986 EP, The New Record By My Bloody Valentine. “There was total chaos going on.”

“They were great,” says Bilinda Butcher. “I was a bit of a fan. They were a bit different. They all had bowl haircuts. Dave was quite impressive as a frontman. Then my boyfriend at the time said they were looking for a backing vocalist and I went along for an audition. I remember Kevin was hitting pedals and amps, chucking things around. His glasses were stuck together with a plaster. I knew the words to some of the songs; I think that did it for Kevin. For Deb, I sang Dolly Parton’s ‘Bargain Store’ a capella.”

In fact, Butcher was walking into a more fluid situation than she might have imagined. The band was growing restless with their direction; then, shortly after a tour in 1987, Conway decided to leave. Shields was now unsure how best to manage this situation. Take on lead vocals himself? Or was a more radical approach necessary?

As Shields sees it, the arrival of Googe and Butcher – while two years apart – necessitated a change not just in the band’s personal dynamic but also their sound. The music the quartet first made together – a single, “Strawberry Wine” and a mini-album Ecstasy, both in 1987 – was, they all agree, necessarily transitional. Stylistically, the songs shared a number of attributes with the jangly independent music of the mid-Eighties.

“It was the first time I’d ever written lyrics and sung them,” recalls Shields. “I remember coming home from Waterloo in the morning going, ‘I’m a songwriter!’ In ‘87 early ‘88, we very, very, very quickly decided that we didn’t like them. Then we were going to drop the name. We just wanted to erase the whole history.”

“You can hear where we’re going in songs like ‘Clair’ or ‘Please Lose Yourself In Me’,” says Ó Cíosóig. “But we wanted to rock out more. We were very inspired by the American scene – Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü. Then Kevin got a great new guitar, discovered the tremolo arm and the reverse reverb effect. That gave him a whole new place to play in. A whole new sonic world.”

“I used reverse reverb all over the Ecstasy and ‘Strawberry Wine’ records to no great consequence, because I was using it the way it was meant to be used,” explains Shields. “Then in ’88, I discovered that it was extremely sensitive to velocity and how high you hit the string. You could make huge waves of sound by hitting it softer or harder. At the same time, my friend Bill Carey from Something Pretty Beautiful lent me his Fender Jazzmaster. It had a tremolo arm. I played it on ‘Thorn’. The second I did that, something jumped inside me. It allowed me to play in a way where I don’t have to think about what I was doing, I just feel it.”

Change came, and not a moment too soon. My Bloody Valentine showcased these exciting new developments in late 1988 via two EPs, released a few months apart on Creation Records, “You Made Me Realise” and “Feed Me With Your Kiss”.

“To me, the biggest shift was ‘You Made Me Realise’,” says Googe. “I remember when we were mixing it, Kevin said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘It sounds like Jefferson Airplane.’ He said, ‘Fuck that!’ and started pushing things.”

“When we were doing ‘Feed Me With Your Kiss’, I made the bass so heavy it popped the speaker off the wall,” admits Shields. “Instinctively, the engineer put his foot out to stop it hitting the ground and it broke his foot.”

“By the time we got to Isn’t Anything, it wasn’t just the sound that had changed,” continues Googe. “It was something about the way the songs were falling rhythmically. It sounded different. It felt like a different thing entirely.”

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Foel Studios, Wales, summer, 1988. My Bloody Valentine take up residence to record their debut album, Isn’t Anything.

“It was quite a spooky place,” remembers Bilinda Butcher. “The studio was in a converted barn. Kevin used to fall asleep there a lot and wake up completely freaked out. The guy who owned it, Dave Anderson, had been in Amon Düül. He had some weird stories of stuff that had gone on there. There was a time where something peculiar happened and the tape went into a strange shape on the tape machine, like a pyramid.”

Sessions were dictated by Shields habit of sleeping long into the day and working through the night. “When it came to doing all the vocals, Kevin only had about two hours sleep a night,” remembers Ó Cíosóig. “That’s where the weird, broken lyrics come from – this dream state of the language itself being twisted around and placed in a different space.”

Paranormal activity? Fugue states? There would be more of those to come. But for now, despite such otherworldly conditions, the music of Isn’t Anything was surprisingly gritty. “It was purposefully raw,” acknowledges Shields. “We didn’t add compression or reverb to the vocals. We kept to single takes. The idea was, it’s just us doing what we do – without trying to be something that we’re not.”

“People weren’t prepared for Isn’t Anything,” says Jeff Barrett, who was then working as a publicist for Creation Records. “I went up and down the country with the Valentines. I remember a gig at Nottingham Trent Poly where they were phenomenal. It didn’t feel necessarily year zero, it didn’t feel like scorched earth, but I knew it was going to be a big record. It put a fire up everybody’s arse. There was some good British noise bands. You could go see Godflesh or Jackdaw With Crowbar. Loop were doing their thing. But there was something different about this. The Velvets weren’t the reference point. It was contemporary.”

While Isn’t Anything was an exciting artistic breakthrough for My Bloody Valentine, over the next year the band found the pressure mounting. Shields recounts two failed attempts to record follow-up EPs during early 1988. Domestically, meanwhile, his relationship with Butcher was also beginning to unravel.

“At that point, things were breaking down between us, I think,” she says. “We were living in this house together and we’d see each other – but be in different spheres. Loveless is called Loveless not just because of our relationship breaking down, but because the whole process of making Loveless was difficult.”

Shields’ best work – then, as now – comes to him during the hypnagogic state when the brain transitions between wakefulness and sleep. Butcher recalls him writing songs at night on the sofa in the flat in Brixton, often nodding off with a guitar on his lap. During an American tour to support Isn’t Anything, a fan gave Shields a cassette of The Beach Boys Today! and Pet Sounds. “I fell asleep to it all the time,” he says. “It became part of my life. Maybe because of it, I developed a certain ideas about production.” Inspiration came from other sources too: from his home on Brixton’s Tulse Hill Estate, Shields was exposed to a vibrant mix of gospel, reggae, ragga and – crucially – hip hop. These various factors began to coalesce, towards the end of 1989, into a follow-up to Isn’t Anything. The making of Loveless has been the subject of much conjecture and myth making over the last 27 years. Joe Foster, then an ally at Creation Records, attempts a definitive take on what went down between September 1989 and January 1991. “There are all kind of stories. Some of them make it look like Kevin was an Orson Welles-like genius. Others make it look like he’s a stoner, just useless. Neither of those things were true.”

What Foster leans towards is a kind of third way, where Shields’ creative vision for Loveless was effectively frustrated by bad luck, administrative ineptitude and the band’s own slow, meticulous working practices. The experiments Shields and Ó Cíosóig conducted in South Kensington during June and July, 1989 initiated a shift in Shields’ attitude to the possibilities of sound. Among the songs they worked up was an embryonic version of “Soon”, which would later lead off the band’s Glider EP. In September, the band decamped to Elephant studios in Wapping, south London, for an eight-week period where, Shields claims, “we put down about 20 songs.”

Their relationship with Alan McGee’s Creation label, however, was faltering. “They were penniless, they couldn’t afford £1,000 to do the next Felt record,” says Shields. “They knew we were slow and decided there was no point putting us in an expensive studio. They found these good deals, but that meant the studio wasn’t looked after properly or it was run by weird people. At Elephant, we worked at lot at night and the studio owner was always hanging around. He told us he was hiding out as MI5 were after him. The tapes were confiscated three or four times, because Creation didn’t have the money to pay the bill. That characterised Loveless. Then Colm got really ill.”

“I was going to be evicted from my squat,” says Ó Cíosóig. “I didn’t have a new place. Creation couldn’t even afford £300 deposit for a flat. I’d go to the studio and then as soon as I left, I’d walk the streets looking at places to squat. This was November, it was cold, and I’m out walking the streets. All that got to me. I had this nervous breakdown. I was able to function mentally, but my brain to arm muscle control mechanism stopped working. I managed to get it together for a couple of songs – two songs on the record have live drums. ‘Only Shallow’ and ‘Come In Alone’.”

“It was like a fucking meltdown,” recalls Shields. “So then we got the idea that we would program the bass drum parts and he would just play the hi hat and the snare.”

“The initial process of doing drums was very lengthy,” says Debbie Googe. “You would turn up every day and not really do anything because Kevin and Colm were tuning a drum. You lock into that. It becomes what you do. A lot of time goes by. We were all perilously close to losing our sanity at a certain point. For me, I guess, my sense of self-worth got a little low at times. I wasn’t doing an awful lot.”

“It felt like ploughing through mud,” says Butcher. “Kevin was going through such a lot. I would swan in and out when I was doing my thing, whereas he was there all the time, dealing with everybody, with Alan McGee and the engineers.”

Even now Shields shudders as he recalls the perceived intransigence he encountered first hand in recording studios. “When we recorded ‘Glider’, I remember the guys at the studio saying, ‘You guys are out of your mind, what you’re doing.’ At another studio, one of the engineers wanted to run a pizza place, the other one wanted to move into advertising.”

“Kevin had a vision, we could all see it,” adds Ó Cíosóig. “We needed a proper studio from the get go that didn’t break down, where there were no faulty channels and no crap going on. We were firing engineers all the time. We didn’t do things normally. They’d be freaking out. ‘That frequency, 4hertz, is distorting! You can’t do that!’ ‘We don’t give a shit about your fucking 4khtz! It sounds good. So what?’ They couldn’t get the weirdness of the record, the warpiness. It didn’t help when you had somebody sitting in the corner looking at you like a freak.”

“I used to really love watching Kevin creating his various sound booths in various places – his little blanket tents,” remembers Goodge. “He would construct these things out of foam and blankets and God knows, these crazy little shanty towns inside the actual studios.”

Aside from Ó Cíosóig’s work earlier on, Shields recorded much of the album alone. Butcher recorded her vocals late in the process, at London’s Protocol and Britannia Row studios between May and June, 1991. “Kevin would give me a guide vocal and I’d make up lyrics for it,” says Butcher. “He might not be singing real words, but it would sound like something to me so I would write down what I thought he had sung.”

In February, 1991, the Tremolo EP brought into woozy focus Shields’ gifts for crushing sonic power and delicate vulnerability. One track, “To Here Knows When”, appeared on Loveless, when the album was finally released in November. “I always thought Loveless was a really great pop record,” says Googe. “Kevin has got a really strong sense of melody that people don’t always pick up on. People talk about how he reinvented guitar – which is true – but actually the reason it works and why people remember it is because you do go away whistling these little hooks.”

“How many studios did we work in?” says Shields. “25, I think. It nearly sank us, to be honest, but it didn’t quite. It was just a lot of bad luck. Some people, they would get into a situation like that and then stop to regroup. That’s the smart way to do it. Otherwise you use too much energy and it slows you down. Don’t just plough through hell.”

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Had it ended there, Loveless alone would have granted My Bloody Valentine an unshakeable place in rock history. But the protracted process that led to its follow-up proved the band unable, in this instance, to play the cards they had been dealt. “I don’t know what the hell happened,” reflects Bilinda Butcher. “I look back and think, ‘God.’ I mean, that was really mad.”

The plan, everyone now agrees, seemed sensible at the time. In 1992, My Bloody Valentine signed with Island Records. Shields bought a house in Streatham and began building a recording studio at the property. “We did it really fast,” says Shields. “We got the house in January ‘93, paid for it in March, we had the studio finished in June. Then the desk died.”

“We didn’t understand all the technical aspects of wiring a studio,” admits Ó Cíosóig. “Problems with electricity, tones, frequencies. It took months to try and figure that out; engineers were scratching their heads.”

A second desk proved to be equally problematic. Meanwhile, Island proved unwilling to help the band recoup their outlay. Shields estimates they lost a year. There were other considerations, too. “The house was full of madness,” admits Googe. “We smoked way too much weed. It was like the Partridge Family on acid. It was quite a mad scene. And then there were the chinchillas. I think Kevin bought one as a present for Bill. They thought it might be lonely, so they got another one. Then, like rodents do, they bred. At its peak, I think there were 13 or 14 chinchillas and they had the whole of the upstairs floor.”

“I don’t know what kind of pressure Kevin must have been under to follow up Loveless,” admits Butcher. “But a lot of songs got written there and eventually things were recorded there. That was a spooky place too, I have to say. There were some weird things going on around the tape machine. Both Colm and I saw this apparition like a hooded monk hanging out round where the tape machine room was. Kevin saw all sorts of stuff there. He was going on a voyage of I-don’t-know-what while he lived there.”

“I started getting into serious mind meditation shit after we finished the [1991] tour,” explains Shields. “I read a book by Terence McKenna about using psychedelics as a way to explore the mind. I started experimenting on myself. I’d close my eyes and visualize a cow, for some reason. Then I realised I couldn’t just see the cow, but pass around it. It was solid. That led on to an infinite amount of experiences. I really looked forward to having my own time when everyone went to bed. I’d sit there, close my eyes and trip out. In a very short space of time, I was flying around this solar system: my imagination.”

Shields admits that the music made during this period was essentially “lot of ideas… we were trying not to write songs in a normal fashion. We were listening to a lot of drum’n’bass. We were experimenting with vibrations – how when something’s really distorted it shakes as well and that creates a rhythm. But we lost momentum. We were all right to make a record in our heads, and we were excited by the studio – but somehow it went a bit sideways.”

“There was work done,” adds Googe. “But we were dysfunctional, ridiculously slow. Every day, Colm would get up and say, ‘Today’s the day we’re going to make the record!’ Then Colm left. I really missed him! We were always up first and we’d sit and have our coffee together in the morning. Then I left. I’d driven over to Island to deliver a tape of the Wire song we recorded [“Map Ref. 41°N 93°W”]. It was a Friday evening and as I was driving back to the house, I thought, ‘For my own sanity, I can’t go back.’ So I went back to my flat and phoned Kevin. That was late 1997, I think.”

“I moved back into my council flat in Brixton,” says Butcher. “But I wasn’t leaving, I was there waiting, anytime, to do whatever we needed. But after we all left the house, I think Kevin felt a bit abandoned.”

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One regular visitor to Kevin Shields’ Streatham home during 1998 was Primal Scream guitarist, Andrew Innes. In his home studio, Shields was working on mixes for Primal Scream’s new album, XTRMNTR. “At the time, Kevin wasn’t living a 24 hour day,” recalls Innes. “He’d get up at 6 o’clock at night and then work all night. But he’d work through the next day and go to bed at a different time.”

Shields’ involvement with Primal Scream lasted from 1998 – 2005, where his talents were felt both in the studio and the live arena. “In the studio, he’d say, ‘What do you want me to do?’ We had these little phrases, descriptions of what particular sound we wanted. ‘Can you get that one where you’re cutting down the trees?’ He’d hit the pedals and it would sound like a chainsaw. Live, there were certain tracks on XTRMNTR that were aggressive; we’d hold him back and hold him back and then give him the nod, ‘Kev, hit that button.’ He’d take it to the next level of intensity and pain. There’d be some little kids down the front and they’d be smiling and by the time Kev had played three songs, you could see they were thinking, ‘This isn’t actually very funny.’ It was brilliant.”

Brian Reitzell, meanwhile, speculates that Shields was financially “trapped in Primal Scream. It’s not such a bad trap but still a trap.” As drummer for Air, Reitzell had met Shields on tour in Japan in 2001. A few years later, he approached Shields in an altogether different guise: as the soundtrack producer for Sofia Coppola’s new film, Lost In Translation. Reitzell remembers making three, week-long trans-Atlantic trips to Shields’ studio in Camden between November 2002 and March 2003. Reitzell describes a familiar pattern for these sessions: “We had a different engineer each time because Kevin would burn them out. We would show up at the studio and the engineer had to be there at eight o’clock, but we wouldn’t roll in until 11 at night and then we’d work through until nine or 10 in the morning.”

Along with insight into the recording process, Reitzell also also offers a tantalizing glimpse of material that didn’t make the final cut. He outlines trips to a Camden shop selling instruments from around the world and an attempt to “put an e-bow on one of these weird Asian stringed instruments” that was ultimately ditched. “Kevin and I also did a cue with Martin Duffy on electric piano and Duncan McKay playing layers of trumpet – both from Primal Scream. It was full on Miles Davis / Gil Evans trip. I loved it, but it didn’t make the film.” They also recorded “three proper songs” – although only one, “City Girl”, appeared in the film when it was opened in September 2003.

Critically, Reitzell says that the success of the Lost In Translation soundtrack allowed him greater financial latitude on his next film with Coppola, Marie Antoinette, for which he “grossly overpaid” Shields to do two remixes, facilitating his economic independence.

It is possible to view Shields work with Primal Scream and Brian Reitzell as a process of rehabilitation after the Valentines’ split in 1997. In the immediate aftermath, Shields undertook remix work – for artists ranging from the Pastels to Placebo, Mogwai and Yo La Tengo. He also quietly continued to work on the band’s long-gestating fourth album. “I would bump into Kevin here in Camden on his way to the studio, doing the album,” says Googe. For Shields, though, a turning point came in 2005, when Patti Smith invited him to participate in The Coral Sea project at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. “I never really used the tremolo arm after the last recordings I made in 1997,” says Shields. “I can’t add that way of playing on as an effect for people, so I developed a whole different approach with Primal Scream. When Patti asked me to play Meltdown, I got my tunings from the My Bloody Valentine days and a bunch of guitars and we improvised. Patti really inspired me to start playing guitar again like I used to.”

Paul Weller witnessed first hand the rejuvenated Shields when the two collaborated together on a track, “7&3 Is The Striker’s Name”. “When he came down to here to the studio, be had a big bag of effects and pedals,” he tells Uncut. “They were all buzzing and cracking, almost on the point of explosion. I watched Kevin during that session and I still can’t really figure out what it is he does. But I know something: only he can do it.”

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For the other members of My Bloody Valentine during their extended hiatus, time passed in different ways. Colm Ó Cíosóig began playing with Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval. Debbie Googe “floundered for a while; I’d been ‘Deb in My Bloody Valentine’ for years and I didn’t know who I was” before she formed Snow Pony with her then-partner, Katharine Gifford. Bilinda Butcher, meanwhile, opted out of music to raise a family. “But I never gave up faith that it was going to happen again,” she says. The band are all individually keen to stress that they never actually fell out with one another – “They’d had enough of me, but they didn’t hate me or anything,” laughs Shields. In 2006, they received an offer of $300,000 to play the Coachella festival; “it put the idea into our head,” says Shields. In 2007, they decided to make a go of it, booking five nights at London’s Roundhouse. Coachella, meanwhile, upped their offer to a million dollars – but, according to Shields, ”it was too early, we’d literally just got it together in time to do those Roundhouse gigs, so even for a million dollars we couldn’t do Coachella.”

“The first day of practice, it was like I’d gone to the toilet and come back in,” remembers Goodge. “There’s a lot of shared history and familiarity that comes in to play in those situations. But we’d had eight, 10 years away from each other. We chose to come back.”

On June 13, 2008, My Bloody Valentine performed in public for the first time in 16 years during two live rehearsals at the ICA. An extensive world tour was announced, to run through the summer and autumn months. And in the middle of all this sudden, unexpected activity Shields mentioned that the band’s long-gestating third album was at last near completion.

Finally, after 20-odd years of prevarication, false alarms, teases and disappointments, m b v was released through the band’s website on February 2, 2013. Ó Cíosóig describes the album as “closing up a chapter. A lot of the music was from back in the time, the house, pre-implosion. There were some great songs there.” Shields reveals that he began writing the oldest track on the album, “New You”, in April, 1994 “the night after I heard Kurt Cobain killed himself.” Another song, “Only Tomorrow”, was only slightly younger – dating from around 1996. “I went back into the studio and recorded some drums over the drum loops to give it a bit of character,” says Ó Cíosóig. “Give it a bit of push and pull.”

“The m b v record has a theme, for want of a better word,” says Shields. “It’s about change and death and what was happening in the world, as I saw it in the late Nineties. Nostalgia is part of that. Funnily enough, it all made even more sense in 2012.”

Six years later, and Shields seems confident that a fourth album will appear soon. Early forays in the studio began in Ireland over summer 2017. “Kevin was working on drums with Colm,” says Goodge, identifying an all-too familiar pattern in My Bloody Valentine’s recording processes. There was lull, meanwhile, as Shields concentrated on the new vinyl editions of Isn’t Anything and Loveless and a collaboration with Brian Eno, called “Only Once Away My Son”.

“I know he’s got some stuff pretty much nearly ready for me,” says Butcher. “I’m really looking forward to it. It feels really exciting. Kevin’s working on songs in the way he always does. He’s always got millions of songs going round his head.”

“I’m keeping things clear in case I’m needed for Valentines stuff from April,” says Googe. “Certainly, from June on I think we’ll playing live. Between June and August, stuff will happen.”

“Everything’s going really well,” adds Ó Cíosóig. “I’ve been recording with Kevin recently He’s got his studio, I’ve been helping out. The trip. It’s now or never, I guess.”

“In the last few months,” says Kevin Shields, “when things have got quite tense with the remasters, I’ve pulled back from it. I really want to make this new record and I don’t want to get burnt out. You see, I don’t feel like I’m finished. I will be exploring things until I’m dead. I feel like if I don’t do this myself, no one else is going to do it.”

My Bloody Valentine’s catalogue, from Isn’t Anything onwards, is now streaming; new physical album editions are available on May 21 and can be pre-ordered now

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“We all expressed a desire to do something different…”

DAVID CONWAY, the band’s original singer, recalls his time in My Bloody Valentine

“Summer 1983 in Dublin — I had just finished with a band I’d been in for a little under a year. One day, I was in an old independent record shop called Freebird. I noticed a handwritten advertisement placed on a notice board from a band looking for a vocalist. I called the number and spoke to a guy called Mark Ross who was at that time playing bass with Kevin and Colm. We arranged to meet up outside Sallynoggin church in County Dublin. My first impression when I saw Kevin and Colm — accompanied by Mark — was that they looked reassuringly normal.

“Back at the Kevin’s family home in Cabinteely, Kevin and Colm had taken advantage of the fact that the Shields family were away on holiday to set up a drum kit and a couple of amps in the front room. They played a few pieces for me and I was hooked. At this point Kevin’s guitar style was mostly dominated by heavy chords and riffing filtered through layers of distortion, chorus and analogue delay effects — a big, scary wall-of-sound, I think you could say. Colm’s drumming style was already in evidence: a really driving, atavistic attack. In a way they struck me as outsiders — as far as the prevailing Dublin music scene was concerned; an attitude that expressed itself in what I could see as a genuine commitment to do something different.

“Initially, in the first few months or so, the songs tended to mostly emerge from the basic rehearsal process. Kevin and Colm — and, while he was still us, Mark — would come up with the music and I would put the vocals to it. At this stage — between July 1983 and April 1984 — we were also composing backing tapes on a four-track Tascam 244 portastudio, which we incorporated into our live gigs. Though Kevin took responsibility for the lion’s share of this, we all usually contributed something. In fact, this general approach to song-writing — eventually ditching the backing tapes — lasted through a few line-up changes including the writing and recording of This is Your Bloody Valentine in West Berlin in December 1984.

“After we re-located to London and Deb Goodge joined, the approach to song-writing changed. I think we agreed that it was important to write real songs. While I came up with the words — which I would run by Kevin and Colm to see what we all felt did or did not work — most of the melodic lines incorporated into the vocals derived from Kevin’s ideas, since he was creating music with very specific melodic/harmonic/rhythmic relationships in mind. The first really tangible results of this approach appeared on The New Record By My Bloody Valentine.

“There were two major reasons why I left the band. From late 1986, I began to develop rather severe gastric ailments that became increasingly debilitating to the extent that playing gigs — and even rehearsing — started to become extremely difficult. Aside from that, I had begun to feel that — after recording the Sunny Sundae Smile EP — I had less and less to contribute to the band in terms of the direction we seemed to be pursuing. The split itself was amicable.

“The last time I saw MBV would have been at the Brixton Academy when they did the Rollercoaster tour with the Jesus and Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr and Blur. As for what I thought of the band they became, I suppose it didn’t take me by surprise quite as much as it might have done with many other people. When I first heard ‘You Made Me Realise’, it took me back to when I first met Kevin and Colm and we had all expressed the desire to do something different. To me that record — and the band MBV became — finally validated that promise.”

Visit www.radicalrobotbooks.com for more information on Dave Conway’s current activities

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Justin Bieber shares surprise EP ‘Freedom’

Justin Bieber has surprised fans by sharing a new EP, ‘Freedom’, on Easter Sunday (April 4).

The EP appeared on streaming services around 10pm GMT. It features six new songs, with all bar one boasting appearances from guest artists.

‘Freedom’ includes the title track (feat. BEAM), ‘All She Wrote (feat. Brandon Love and Chandler Moore)’, ‘We’re In This Together’, ‘Where You Go I Follow (feat. Pink Sweats, Chandler Moore and Judah Smith)’, ‘Where Do I Fit In (feat. Tori Kelly, Chandler Moore and Judah Smith)’ and ‘Afraid to Say (feat. Lauren Walters)’.

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Only two of the aforementioned artists are also credited with a feature on Bieber’s recently released sixth album, ‘Justice’. BEAM appears on the LP’s ‘Love You Different’, while Tori Kelly features on ‘Name’.

For all other artists, ‘Freedom’ marks their first time appearing as a featured artist on one of Bieber’s tracks.

Shortly after its release, Bieber took to social media to announce ‘Freedom’ had arrived.

“Freedom on all platforms,” he wrote.

It appears that Bieber had always intended to drop the record on the Easter weekend, with lyrics including references to “Good Friday fish” and “Easter Sunday bun and cheese”.

Listen to the EP in full below:

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‘Justice’ dropped in March and was met with critical and popular acclaim. NME gave ‘Justice’ a four-star review, writing “Last year’s ‘Changes’ saw the singer take a wrong turn, but here he’s back at his best, tapping into his personal experiences – with powerful results”.

  • READ MORE: Justin Bieber – ‘Justice’ review: pop star finds his purpose again

“With bangers, ballads and heartfelt moments, the hopeless romantic with a penchant for self-reflection and tackling world issues is back,” the review read.

Following the album’s release, Bieber was met with criticism for sampling speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King on the tracks ‘MLK Interlude’ and ‘2 Much’.

The singer-songwriter responded swiftly, explaining that he wasn’t “taught about Black history” during his Canadian upbringing.

“It was just not a part of our education system,” Bieber said [via Billboard]. “I think for me, coming from Canada and being uneducated and making insensitive jokes when I was a kid and being insensitive and being honestly just a part of the problem because I just didn’t know better. For me to have this platform to just share this raw moment of Martin Luther King Jr. in a time where he knew he was going to die for what he was standing up for.”

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MTV to reboot classic docuseries ‘Behind The Music’

Behind the Music is set to return on Paramount+, courtesy of MTV.

The music documentary series, which first ran from 1997 to 2014, will release several new episodes with “artist interviews, a creative refresh and reimagined visual style”.

  • READ MORE: Netflix’s ‘Song Exploder’: what we’ve learned from the hit podcast turned miniseries

Paramount+ will host new and existing episodes of the hit series later this year, on a specific release date yet to be confirmed.

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A number of guests have also been announced, and so far include Jennifer Lopez, LL Cool J, Ricky Martin and Huey Lewis, with more participants still to be announced.

The show focuses on one specific musician or musical group, mapping their career to date across their successes and problems.

So far, Behind the Music has focused on Aerosmith, 50 Cent, Beck, George Michael, Lil Wayne, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, Stevie Nicks, John Lennon and more.

Elsewhere on Paramount+, the forthcoming streaming platform is reportedly in negotiations to air a reboot of Frasier.

Frasier ran for 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004. Grammer starred as the titular character alongside Jane Leeves, David Hyde Pierce, Peri Gilpin and John Mahoney.

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Grammer had said the reboot was “ready to go” in 2019, eyeing a mid-2020 release date. There is no confirmed release date for the new project yet.

“The first principle is that it is a different story, basically,” the actor had also said of the comeback in February 2019. “The same group of characters, but in a different setting. Something has changed in their lives.”

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Nick Cave & Warren Ellis Carnage

Cometh the hour, cometh the man – and if there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about carnage it’s Nick Cave. Some of this he’s historically created himself. Some has been cruelly thrust upon him. But whatever the situation, this is someone who doesn’t shy away from what’s happening; who plays the cards as they fall. Now, locked down like the rest of us (maybe not quite like the rest of us – he makes a couple of mentions of a balcony where he vaults into the imagination and back while reading and notating Flannery O’Connor), he presents something like his own lockdown album.

As anyone who has seen his quote-unquote livestream from Alexandra Palace will tell you, however, there are ways of maintaining normality in lockdown (running, working, “booking a slot”) and then there’s Nick Cave’s way of doing them: interior monologue, swoosh of mane, lingering shot of journal containing “the work”. So it is, in a way, here.

Undoubtedly there are a set of circumstances where this might simply have been Cave and Ellis in some version of a garage, banging out a record. There are hints of it on the great “Old Time”, which finds the duo as the doctoral thesis version of Alan Vega and Martin Rev, on a Lynchian road trip, complete with dive-bombing synths and things with horns in the bushes. In his Red Hand Files, Cave has mentioned his disappointment at the postponement of touring plans and how he misses the “recklessness” of The Bad Seeds, and here “Albuquerque” wistfully evokes stasis, while “Carnage” itself suggests if we’re going anywhere anytime soon, it will be a journey in our imagination.

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In the meantime, Cave and Ellis employ their own recklessness. The album appears as if it is going to begin in a familiar ballad mode before the mix sucks the piano and violin down into the depths of some sophisticated techno club. Opener “Hand Of God” becomes an extraordinary Bond theme of the mind. It’s Grinderman does Portishead, and Cave is swimming in the deepest part of creativity’s river, at the mercy of its current: “Let the river cast its spell on me…” As the chorus builds to include more voices, it’s tempting to think that this might be some kind of video-conferenced contrivance, families and neighbours lending their voices to a lo-fi project.

As ever, though, there’s slightly more going on behind the scenes. This might not be a Bad Seeds album (although drummer Thomas Wydler is on there), but nor is it one of Cave and Ellis’s minimal excursions into the film soundtrack wilderness. Recorded between late November 2020 and January 2021, there’s a proper team on board here. The two highly accomplished multi-instrumentalists themselves, of course. Then there’s a five-piece choir and a string section.

The world provides the rest. Compared with the highly structured Ghosteen (a double album meditation on grief and spirituality, complete with intermission), Carnage is a more concise though no less ordered record. Much as the Bad Seeds’ songs now push into oceanic drift, Cave’s narratives move between worlds fictional and not, the horrific and the consoling. In “White Elephant” he references the Black Lives Matter protests, specifically the Bristol ones, and builds a cumulative image of a boiling world hatred, a suspicious and violent conservatism: “I’ll shoot you in the fucking face/If you think of coming around here”. It’s a piece so toxic that at the end it needs its own hymn of hope to try to heal it in the last few minutes. You’ll find this somewhere between Primal Scream’s “Movin’ On Up” and “All You Need Is Love”, beaming a positive message to the world.

In the beautifully arranged “Lavender Fields”, meanwhile, Cave ponders his own blessed, lavender-tinged place in the creative world (sidebar: some believe Christ to have been anointed with lavender oil), where he now finds himself travelling a “singular road” and doing so “appallingly alone”. Once he was “running with my friends/All of them busy with their pens”. Now (is he perhaps thinking of his ’80s contemporaries Mark E Smith and Shane MacGowan?) he finds himself in a field of one – as others have fallen away, or behind, while he continues the journey. At the end of the song, the “hymn” lyrics are repurposed in a calming Spiritualized-like coda. “Shattered Ground” is terrifying: imagining the singer literally in pieces, atomised at the end of a relationship, while “Balcony Man” finds the singer flirting with sanity but ultimately consoled by the beauty of the morning and the world.

If nothing else, there is a particular type of business that has thrived in these times – pivoting to online, “making lemonade” from the vile ingredients the world has lately been served. Nick Cave is far too human and empathetic a musician to respond by using them as a pretext for a change of gear into pure experimentation. Instead, he has met them honourably with a great record on its own terms: recognisably himself, aspiring to rise above, much like the rest of us, doing the best he can.

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The Clash in New York: “De Niro took us out clubbing”

The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, with no delivery charges for the UK – features an astonishing oral history of The Clash’s 17-date residency at Bond International Casino in New York, during which they caused riots in Times Square, went clubbing with Robert De Niro and kicked off a “punky hip-hop thing” with the city’s newest underground scene. Here’s a little taster:

DON LETTS (DJ/filmmaker): They were like four sticks of dynamite on stage. It was a beautiful thing to see these guys in sync. Off stage there was some friction here and there – a clash of identities, because they were very different people – but on stage it was like the whole Magnificent Seven thing. You do the fucking job. You draw fast, shoot straight and don’t hit the bystanders.

CHRIS SALEWICZ (NME journalist): I hadn’t seen The Clash for some time and I was stunned by their energy on stage. They were really firing, I’d never seen them as good or as powerful. I was there for about nine shows and the whole thing was just steaming. It was all part of how they just took New York. You’d turn on the TV and there’d be Joe and Paul, like some kind of royalty.

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JOE ELY (singer-songwriter and guest artist): The sheer power of those shows blew everybody away. Of course the songs were good, but they were showing no mercy. That got around town, which only made the mayhem bigger and louder than it already was. Then there was the social scene that always goes with music events like that. Afterwards everyone would hang out at the Gramercy Park Hotel or another one down on 8th Street. Or the Chelsea Hotel, which was Joe’s favourite because it had so much history.

CHRIS SALEWICZ: There was a bar across the road from Bond’s called Tin Pan Alley, which had been used for one of the scenes in Raging Bull. That became Clash Central for three weeks. Joe and Kosmo [Vinyl, The Clash’s right-hand man] would hang out there. It was run by a lesbian bankrobber, which all added to the weirdness. At one point I remember meeting Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, who both thought the whole Bond’s thing was fantastic. That’s how The Clash’s appearance in The King Of Comedy came about. One night, Mick threw a birthday party for [girlfriend] Ellen Foley at Interferon. I remember looking over at Joe and Mick and they just seemed like blood brothers, really tight. They were really enjoying themselves in New York.

DON LETTS: There was a club called Negril that we all used to go to, where Kosmo used to DJ. That’s where we met Rick Rubin, The Beastie Boys, Russell Simmons and Afrika Bambaataa.

PEARL HARBOUR (DJ/singer): The Beastie Boys would be drinking backstage and smoking. They were so young then, just funny guys who were all bowled over by The Clash. John Lydon was a good friend of Paul’s at that time, so he was with us a lot. We’d go to lots of different bars, drinking cocktails we’d never heard of, like Brandy Alexanders – chocolate milkshake with brandy.

PENNIE SMITH (photographer): Everybody popped in all the time, it was mayhem being around The Clash. I remember Scorsese having an oxygen cylinder sitting on the settee. I think he was asthmatic. I took a picture of De Niro talking to Strummer. He was just as much a fan of Joe’s as the other way round. It was a sort of parallel universe.

PEARL HARBOUR: De Niro and Scorsese came out with us a couple of times. Scorsese took us to a really posh Indian restaurant with [then-wife] Isabella Rossellini. When we were all sitting down for dinner, Joe said to Isabella: “Does everybody tell you that you look just like Ingrid Berman?” She said, “Yeah, that’s my mother.” Joe got so embarrassed, because he didn’t know. That was sweet. She and Scorsese thought it was cute. De Niro took us out clubbing one night and also gave us free tickets for a boxing match. He had these fancy $100 seats. I think he just wanted to show us a good time. He became a friend after that. He and Christopher Walken came to visit us in London not long after. We took them out with Joe and Kosmo and all got drunk at Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues. That all happened because of New York.

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You can the full story of The Clash’s 1981 Bond Casino shows in the March 2021 issue of Uncut, out now with Leonard Cohen on the cover – buy a copy here!

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Bearded Theory announces Placebo to headline as festival moves to September

Bearded Theory festival has confirmed Placebo as its first headliner of its 2021 event, which has also been postponed to September.

  • READ MORE: Restarting live music in 2021: Gig and festival bosses on what to expect

The Derbyshire festival has been moved from May 27-30, 2021 to September 9-12, 2021 in the hope that live events will have resumed in the UK by then. The Catton Hall event is one of hundreds of festivals waiting for positive news in the containment of – and the vaccination against – COVID-19 so that mass gatherings can return.

Placebo are the first headliners to be announced. Bearded Theory festival organisers say a majority of the 2020 lineup has been secured for this year: “we have a shed load of other acts to confirm including the vast majority of the scheduled 2020 line up which went down so well,” a note on its website reads.

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Brian Molko
Brian Molko of Placebo performs on stage at Big Day Out on 28th January 2001 in Melbourne, Australia. CREDIT: Martin Philbey/Redferns

As efestivals writes, due to the event now taking place during school term, the festival will bring forward the headliners’ closing time on the Sunday night to ensure attendees can watch the set while also allowing for travel time home.

Tickets for the festival are on sale and are priced as follows: adult (£130), children aged 12-16 (£60), children aged 8-11 (£35), children aged 0-7 (free but need ticket).
Car parking is priced at £13.50, and campervans/caravans at £39.95. All tickets include camping and Thursday entry (there are no tickets available on the gate).

Primal Scream, Patti Smith and The Flaming Lips were among the acts confirmed for last year’s cancelled event. It’s not known at this stage if these acts will play the 2021 edition.

Placebo, meanwhile, recently donated one of frontman Brian Molko’s guitars to raise funds for live crew struggling without work during the pandemic.

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The band’s last album was 2013’s ‘Loud Like Love‘.

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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Joni Mitchell

BUY A COPY OF THE JONI MITCHELL: DELUXE UMG BY CLICKING HERE

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is a 2019 film by Martin Scorcese about Bob Dylan’s 1975-6 tour of small auditoriums which served to confound expectations, no doubt to the delight of its ostensible subject, Bob Dylan. Rather than the kind of faithful music documentary in which the director had previously specialised, the movie became a sporadically-amusing shaggy dog story in which Dylan insists he was directed throughout the tour by the mysterious “Van Dorp”.

When this wry and self-mythologising mood all gets a bit more interesting, though, it’s when Dylan is observed checking out other artists. There’s a great scene when Dylan watches Patti Smith and a stripped-down band punch through the curtain from poetry to electrifying rock ‘n’ roll. Most surprising though, is what occurs at a low-key post-show hoot session at the home of Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. Roger McGuinn’s there. Dylan’s there, of course, in another surprising hat.

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Centre stage, though, is Joni Mitchell. What she’s about to play, McGuinn tells us for the benefit of the tape, was written for the tour, although from our vantage point in history, we immediately recognise it as “Coyote”, the opening song on Mitchell’s sumptuous, drifting album Hejira, released in 1976.

There, the song is widescreen and graceful, and it’s tempting to think that its effortless forward momentum derives to some degree from its place in the album’s dramatic sound picture, piloted by Mitchell and the pulse of fretless bass. Here we are, though, self-evidently in Gordon Lightfoot’s dining room (with McGuinn and Dylan trying to keep up on acoustic guitars), and the song is doing much the same – moving with speed and precision through a calm and self-defined space.

It’s a scene which shows some of Mitchell’s key attributes, not least her ability to put herself at the centre of things and assume artistic control. Hers has been a career which has helped define what might be possible as a singer-songwriter: a development from folk music to the utterly original self-expression of her early records, through jazz, orchestrations and beyond.

In this Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Joni Mitchell, alongside in-depth reviews of all her albums, you’ll read insightful interviews and meticulous reportage on her story. It’s in UK shops on Thursday (December 10) or you can buy a copy online now by clicking here. Enjoy!

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Watch Peter Hook & The Light perform his Gorillaz collaboration ‘Aries’

Peter Hook & The Light have performed a new version of ‘Aries’, Hook’s recent collaboration with Gorillaz — you can watch their take on the song below.

The original version of the track, which also features Georgia, recently featured on Gorillaz’s album ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’.

  • Read more: The best Gorillaz collaborations, from Vince Staples to De La Soul (and Shaun Ryder, of course)

Getting together remotely with his band — David Potts (vocals/guitar), Jack Bates (bass), Paul Kehoe (drums) and Martin Rebelski (keys) — for the performance, Hook has now released his take on ‘Aries’ on YouTube, which you can see below.

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As well as Hook and Georgia, ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’ also features the likes of Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent and ScHoolboy Q.

Damon Albarn spoke recently about the possibility of a future ‘Song Machine’ collaboration between Gorillaz and Tame Impala, while also hinting that his cartoon band may link up with Sir Paul McCartney as well.

Hook, meanwhile, recently guested on the first episode of Transmissions: The Definitive Story, a new podcast about Joy Division and New Order.

During his guest appearance, the bassist spoke about his memories of meeting Joy Division’s late frontman Ian Curtis for the first time.

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“He was unique and he stuck out, shall we say,” Hook said, before recalling a visit to Curtis’ house at the time in Stretford.

“Ian showed me his PA and said: ‘Hey, have you heard this new Iggy Pop album? It’s just come out this week.’ I’d never heard Iggy Pop before. He played ‘China Girl’ off that album and I thought it’s great, and fell in love with it straight away and I thought… this is the guy.”

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2020 MTV EMA Winners: See The Full List

By not being centrally located in a single city, the 2020 MTV EMA were able to spread the party out all over the world. From Budapest, David Guetta and Raye brought a night-sky, laser-filled rendition of "Let's Love," while Maluma steamed up London with a neon-purple medley of "Djadja" and "Hawái."

The winners list, too, saw artists from across the globe honored and celebrated as the show aired on Sunday (November 8). Heading into the ceremony, Lady Gaga led the nominations by earning six in total, while BTS and Justin Bieber weren't far behind with five each. During the show, BTS took home four in total — Best Song, Best Group, Biggest Fans, and Best Virtual Live. Gaga walked away with Best Artist and Best US Act, while Bieber won for his star turn in DJ Khaled and Drake's "Popstar" video.

But amid those nods was also a celebration for the night's hosts, Little Mix, who ended up nabbing Best Pop, as well as Best UK & Ireland Act, all in addition to performing new single "Sweet Melody." They thanked their Mixers on Twitter with a quick note: "You all did that!!!"

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Watch Foo Fighters perform a stripped-down version of ‘Times Like These’ for virtual Joe Biden benefit gig

Foo Fighters headlined a virtual benefit concert to help support Joe Biden’s ongoing presidential campaign last night (October 25).

As part of the performance Dave Grohl and keyboardist Rami Jaffee performed an emotional stripped back version of the band’s classic hit ‘Times Like These’. You can watch the performance below at the one hour and 55 minute mark.

The ‘I Will Vote’ benefit concert saw the Foos playing alongside artists including Dave Matthews, P!NK, John Legend, Cher, Ciara, A$AP Ferg, Jennifer Hudson and Jon Bon Jovi.

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Special guests at the event also included Joe and Jill Biden, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Billy Porter, the cast of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, Armie Hammer, Margaret Chao, and Amy Schumer.

The benefit gig came less than two weeks before America goes to the polls to vote for their next president on November 3, with Biden hoping to prevent US President Donald Trump winning a second term.

In a post on Twitter ahead of the gig, Foo Fighters wrote: “Music has the power to change the world. So does voting.”

Earlier this year, Grohl joined forces with Dua Lipa, Coldplay‘s Chris Martin, Bastille, Ellie Goulding, Sam Fender, Royal Blood and many more in their homes to cover ‘Times Like These’ for Comic Relief and Children In Need.

The BBC Radio 1 cover was masterminded by Producer Fraser T Smith, who said at the time: “It’s humbling to have been asked to produce this amazing single, taking the Foo Fighters’ classic, ‘Times Like These’, with the Radio 1 Live Lounge team and the incredible collective of artists who have come together to record whilst in isolation.

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“Our vision was to create a stay at home version using phones, pots, pans and acoustic guitars that would honour the brilliance and honesty of the artists and song, rather than the trickery of an expensive recording studio. We tried to make this single in a totally different way artistically, relevant to today. The lyrics particularly resonate with us all at this challenging time, and I sincerely hope that money raised can help the plight of the unified battle against COVID-19 around the world.”

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Gary Numan reveals “he doesn’t listen to music” in new interview

Gary Numan has revealed that he doesn’t listen to music for pleasure, admitting that he can’t help but pick it apart when listening.

  • Read More: Gary Numan – What Rock’N’Roll Has Taught Me

In a new interview with The Observer, Newman said listening to music can feel “a bit like working” so he avoids it.

Newman said: “I don’t listen to music at all. Not for pleasure. It’s impossible to listen without picking it apart, so it’s a bit like working.

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“Also, I’ve got three children, four dogs and a very noisy wife, so if I do find a quiet moment I treasure it.”

Gary Numan

Recently, Numan joined The Mission’s Wayne Hussey, members of The Cure, Depeche Mode and The Smiths to cover the band’s 1988 single ‘Tower Of Strength’ to raise funds for COVID relief.

The project was also joined by Martin Gore, Lol Tolhurst, Andy Rourke, Midge Ure, Gary Numan, Budgie of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins.

The group dubbed the project “ReMission International” and retitled the track ‘TOS2020’. Sales of the single will be donated to charities chosen by each contributing artist. A digital release emerged on August 28 and 12” vinyl and CD editions were released on October 2.

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“When COVID-19 hit I started receiving messages asking ‘why don’t you re-issue Tower Of Strength for the front line workers?’,” Hussey said of the project in a statement.

“The song had apparently been adopted as an anthem by some NHS workers, and it got me thinking that I would like to contribute something to the greater cause at this unprecedented time and the only thing I could really contribute is music.”

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Lady Gaga Leads 2020 MTV EMA Nominations — BTS And Justin Bieber Aren’t Far Behind

Chromatica season is still raging.

Lady Gaga's sixth studio album dropped in May, but its dance-ready grooves made it a key album to get through the summer, as we saw on full display at the VMAs.

And now, Gaga's reign continues: She's the most-nominated artist at the 2020 MTV EMA, racking up seven nods, including Best Video, Best Artist, Best Pop, Best Song, and more. Gaga is followed closely behind by both BTS and Justin Bieber, who each grabbed five noms.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CF_5iBnKRA3/

This year's EMA finds the show in its 27th year, and the show adds three new categories for 2020: Best Latin, Video for Good, and Best Virtual Live. The two-hour ceremony will air globally on MTV in 180 countries and territories on Sunday, November 8, 2020. Fan voting is now open at mtvema.com and will last until November 2 at 11:59pm CET.

Find the full list of 2020 MTV EMA nominees below.

Best Video

Billie Eilish – everything i wanted

Cardi B – WAP ft Megan Thee Stallion

DJ Khaled – POPSTAR ft Drake starring Justin Bieber

Karol G – Tusa ft Nicki Minaj

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande – Rain On Me

Taylor Swift – The Man

The Weeknd – Blinding Lights

Best Artist

Dua Lipa

Harry Styles

Justin Bieber

Lady Gaga

Miley Cyrus

The Weeknd

Best Song

BTS – Dynamite

DaBaby – Rockstar ft Roddy Ricch

Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande – Rain On Me

Roddy Ricch – The Box

The Weeknd – Blinding Lights

Best Collaboration

BLACKPINK, Selena Gomez – Ice Cream

Cardi B – WAP ft Megan Thee Stallion

DaBaby – Rockstar ft. Roddy Ricch

Justin Bieber – Intentions ft Quavo

Karol G – Tusa ft Nicki Minaj

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande – Rain On Me

Sam Smith, Demi Lovato – I’m Ready

Best Pop

BTS

Dua Lipa

Harry Styles

Justin Bieber

Katy Perry

Lady Gaga

Little Mix

Best Group

5 Seconds of Summer

BLACKPINK

BTS

Chloe x Halle

CNCO

Little Mix

Best New

BENEE

DaBaby

Doja Cat

Jack Harlow

Roddy Ricch

YUNGBLUD

Biggest Fans

Ariana Grande

BLACKPINK

BTS

Justin Bieber

Lady Gaga

Taylor Swift

Best Latin

Anuel AA

Bad Bunny

J Balvin

Karol G

Maluma

Ozuna

Best Rock

Coldplay

Green Day

Liam Gallagher

Pearl Jam

Tame Impala

The Killers

Best Hip Hop

Cardi B

DaBaby

Drake

Eminem

Megan Thee Stallion

Roddy Ricch

Travis Scott

Best Electronic

Calvin Harris

David Guetta

Kygo

Marshmello

Martin Garrix

The Chainsmokers

Best Alternative

blackbear

FKA twigs

Hayley Williams

Machine Gun Kelly

The 1975

twenty one pilots

Video for Good

Anderson .Paak – Lockdown

David Guetta & Sia – Let’s love

Demi Lovato - I Love Me

H.E.R. – I Can’t Breathe

Jorja Smith – By Any Means

Lil Baby – The Bigger Picture

Best Push

AJ Mitchell

Ashnikko

BENEE

Brockhampton

Conan Gray

Doja Cat

Georgia

Jack Harlow

Lil Tecca

Tate McRae

Wallows

YUNGBLUD

Best Virtual Live

BTS – Bang Bang Con: The Live

J Balvin – Behind The Colores Live Experience

Katy Perry @ Tomorrow Land – Around The World

Little Mix – UNCancelled

Maluma – Papi Juancho Live

Post Malone - Nirvana Tribute

The 2020 MTV EMA airs globally on MTV in 180 countries and territories on Sunday, November 8, 2020. Find more info at mtvema.com.

Manchester legend Denise Johnson’s debut album to be posthumously released

A posthumous album from the late Denise Johnson is set to be released next month.

The much-loved Manchester singer, who provided vocals on Primal Scream‘s ‘Screamadelica’, died in July at the age of 56.

  • Read More: A Certain Ratio’s Martin Moscrop remembers Denise Johnson: “Her voice should comfort in these times”

Johnson had been preparing to release her debut solo album, ‘Where Does It Go’, which will now arrive on October 2 via ADASSA.

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The collection will contain acoustic covers of The Smiths‘ ‘Well I Wonder’, 10cc‘s ‘I’m Not In Love’ and ‘True Faith’ by past collaborators New Order as well as two original tracks: ‘Nothing You Can Do’ and ‘Steal Me Easy’.

Serving as the record’s lead single, ‘Steal Me Easy’ was co-written by Johnson alongside French guitarist Fabien Lefrançois.

Denise Johnson on stage with A Certain Ratio. CREDIT: Pete Smith

According to a press release, ‘Where Does It Go’ was “recorded completely live and features no studio tricks or computer wizardry” at Hope Mill Recording Studios in Ancoats, with the exception of ‘Steal Me Easy’. It was produced by Johnson and engineered by Manchester-based guitarist Thomas ‘Twem’ Twemlow.

“Denise got back in touch a few years after we’d first worked together, asking if I’d play acoustic guitar for her,” Twemlow explained. “We set about doing our own version of her favourite songs from various Manchester acts.

“One of the first she asked me to play around with was True Faith: my first thought was, ‘How the hell can I make an electronic track work on acoustic?” But, to be honest, when you’ve got someone like Denise singing, you can make anything work!”

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Following the release of ‘Where Does It Go’, the album will be featured on Tim Burgess’ Twitter Listening Party series on October 5. Fans can follow the online event from 9pm.

You can pre-order/pre-save the album here and see its full tracklist below.

True Faith (New Order)
I’m Not In Love (10CC)
Nothing You Can Do (Denise Johnson)
Evangeline (Cherry Ghost)
Sunshine After The Rain (Ellie Greenwich)
Well I Wonder (The Smiths)
Steal Me Easy (Denise Johnson / Fabien Lefrançois)

Johnson’s other credits include contributions to Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner’s supergroup Electronic, a number of collaborations with A Certain Ratio, and work on releases with I Am Kloot among many others.

 

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Prince’s iconic ‘angel cloud’ guitar fetches over £450,000 at auction

A guitar used by Prince on his ‘Purple Rain’ tour has fetched over £450,000 ($563,000) at auction on Friday (June 19).

  • Read more: 20 things you didn’t know about ‘Purple Rain’

The custom electric blue instrument was one of four ‘cloud’ guitars used between 1984 and 1985 in support of the ‘When Doves Cry’ hitmaker’s seminal sixth studio album.

It was also used throughout the ‘Parade’ tour in 1986, the ‘Sign o’ The Times’ tour in 1987, and was the primary guitar Prince used throughout the ‘Lovesexy’ tour between 1988 and 1989.

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The guitar was thought to be lost when it disappeared in the ’90s until it was found last year. The owner was given it by Prince but was not aware of its exact history.

A description on Julien’s Auctions site read: “The guitar, currently painted an electric blue finish, has been refinished a number of times, but began white. The guitar has also been painted and used by Prince as peach, light blue, and yellow. The guitar neck is cracked from between the 6th and 7th frets up to the headstock.

“From 1984 until the time that Andy Beech began making Cloud guitars for Prince in 1993, this was Prince’s primary performance Cloud guitar. Guitar is accompanied by a custom purple Calzone case with stenciled labeling identifying this as ‘C1’ and listing the address for Paisley Park.”

Julien’s arranged for a CAT scan of the guitar to test its authenticity.

Prince
Prince’s ‘cloud’ guitar. CREDIT: Julien’s Auctions

Martin Nolan of Julien’s told Fox News: “The owners of the other three Cloud guitars won’t be selling soon so this opportunity may never come up again.”

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As for the whereabouts of the other three ‘cloud’ guitars, one was handed out as a prize in a competition, one is privately owned and the other sits in Smithsonian Museum in New York.

Prince’s guitar is one of the highlights of Julien’s Auctions ‘Music Icons’ auction, which is taking place across yesterday and today (June 20).

On the second day of the auction, Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E, which he used for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance, is being sold.

Meanwhile, Prince‘s estate have shared a powerful and timely statement from the late star on racial intolerance.

The new quote was shared to mark what would’ve been Prince’s 62nd birthday (June 7) and the ongoing series of Black Lives Matter protests across the globe.

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HNHH TIDAL Wave: Meek Mill & Run The Jewels Wake Us Up

This week's TIDAL Wave playlist update includes new music from Run The Jewels, Meek Mill, Flatbush Zombies, Conway, Sleepy Hallow, Leon Bridges, and more.

Not much new music was released in the last week as singles and albums were pushed back out of respect for the protestors risking their lives to combat anti-Black racism in the middle of a pandemic. Still, a number of people have been looking for music to entertain them during this historic time. We saw some artists release new protest anthems in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and others drop their regularly-planned programming. Our staff gathered up our personal favorites from the last several weeks for the new update of the TIDAL Wave playlist.

We start off with a stretch of music that will wake you right up, including Meek Mill's new single "Otherside of America" and select sounds from Run The Jewels, Flatbush Zombies, and Freddie Gibbs. This week's update is filled with RTJ4 tracks, also complemented by a number of selections from FBZ's new album now, more than ever

Elsewhere on the tracklist, there are offerings from Gunna, Lil Durk, Sleepy Hallow, Conway, Joell Ortiz and KXNG Crooked, Leon Bridges, Lil Yachty, and more.

Listen to the playlist below and check out our individual picks. Be sure to also sign up for your free trial at TIDAL here.


Alex Zidel (Editorial)

Gunna - DOLLAZ ON MY HEAD (feat. Young Thug)
Lil Durk - 3 Headed Goat (feat. Lil Baby & Polo G)
RMR - I'M NOT OVER YOU
Lil Yachty - Whew' Chile
SAINt JHN - Roses Remix (feat. Future)

Alex Cole (Editorial)

Sleepy Hallow - Don't Panic (feat. Sheff G)
Sleepy Hallow - 6am In NY
Run The Jewels - JU$T (feat. Pharrell Williams & Zack de la Rocha)
Run The Jewels - never look back
Flatbush Zombies - herb

Lynn S (Editorial)

Leon Bridges - Sweeter (feat. Terrace Martin)
DJ Drewski - Water (feat. DreamDoll, Rubi Rose, & Molly Brazy)
Flatbush Zombies - herb
Flatbush Zombies - iamlegend
Flatbush Zombies - dirty elevator music

Cole Blake (Editorial)

Armand Hammer - Frida (feat. Quelle Chris & Fielded)
Armand Hammer - Ramesses II (feat. Earl Sweatshirt, Fielded & Moor Mother)
Armand Hammer - Bitter Cassava (feat. Pink Siifu)
Run The Jewels - JU$T (feat. Pharrell Williams & Zack De La Rocha)
Run The Jewels - never look back

Mitch Findlay (Editorial)

Run The Jewels - holy calamafuck
Run The Jewels - out of sight (feat. 2 Chainz)
Run The Jewels - pulling the pin (feat. Mavis Staples & Josh Homme)
Flatbush Zombies - dirty elevator music
Conway - Front Lines

Paul Pirotta (Sales)

Meek Mill - Otherside Of America
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - 1985
Joell Ortiz & KXNG Crooked - Memorial Day

Mike Rapp (Sales)

Run The Jewels - out of sight (feat. 2 Chainz)
Meek Mill - Otherside Of America
Run The Jewels - JU$T (feat. Pharrell Williams & Zack de la Rocha)

Aron A (Editorial)

Jorja Smith - Rose Rouge
Apollo Brown & Che Noir - '94
Yaya Bey - sida A/ juu rant

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HNHH TIDAL Wave: Future Takes Command With "High Off Life"

This week's TIDAL Wave playlist update includes new music from Future, Polo G, Lil Keed, Gunna, Joyner Lucas, slowthai, and more.

With each new week, we've been blessed to receive some incredible new musical contributions. It seems like the quarantine was beneficial to most artists, giving them enough free time at home to complete projects that were on the backburner. 

Out of absolutely nowhere, Future announced that his new album, High Off Life, would be out and last week, he delivered. With over twenty new songs and tons of replay value so far, the project has earned a number of selections on this week's update of the staff-curated TIDAL Wave playlist. In fact, I would go so far as to say he completely dominated this week.

Each staff member at HotNewHipHop shares a different music taste. Some of us rock with a more lyrical style of rap while others vibe heavier with production-based trap songs. It seems as though, no matter your preference, Future was a hit at our (presently unoccupied) headquarters. We've included several tracks from the new album, including "Solitaires" with Travis Scott, "Trillionaire" with Youngboy Never Broke Again, "Ridin Strikers," "Trapped In The Sun," and more on the playlist this week.

Elsewhere on the list, we've got the new singles from Lil Keed, Gunna, Gunplay (with Rick Ross), Chloe x Halle, and more. 

Take a look at our picks below and be sure to sign up for your free 30-day trial for TIDAL here.


Alex Zidel (Editorial)

Future - All Bad (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)
Future - Trillionaire (feat. Youngboy Never Broke Again)
Future - Ridin Strikers
Lil Keed - Wavy
Lil Durk - 3 Headed Goat (feat. Lil Baby & Polo G)

Paul Pirotta (Sales)

Gunplay - PYREX POPPIN (feat. Rick Ross)
Future - Harlem Shake (feat. Young Thug)
Gunna - WUNNA

Cole Blake (Editorial)

Future - Harlem Shake (feat. Young Thug)
Future - All Bad (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)
Future - Solitaires (feat. Travis Scott)
slowthai & Kenny Beats - MAGIC

Erika Marie (Editorial)

Future - Solitaires (feat. Travis Scott)
Joyner Lucas & Will Smith - Will (Remix)
REASON & ScHoolboy Q - Pop Shit

Lynn S (Editorial)

Zhu & Tinashe - ONLY
Chloe x Halle - Do It
Terrace Martin & Ric Wilson - Move Like This
Terrace Martin & Ric Wilson - Beyond Me (feat. Kiela Adira)

Aron A (Editorial)

Future - Posted With Demons
Future - Touch The Sky
slowthai - BB (BODYBAG)
Asuquomo - Yahweh
Pressa - 96 Freestyle

Mike Rapp (Sales)

Mozzy - Body Count (feat. King Von & G Herbo)
REASON & ScHoolboy Q - Pop Shit

Rose Lilah (Editorial)

Gunna - WUNNA
Future - Trapped In The Sun
Sheff G - Moody
Polo G - Martin & Gina

Mitch Findlay (Editorial)

Future - Ridin Strikers
Big Ghost Ltd. & Conway - Icon
REASON & ScHoolboy Q - Pop Shit
IDK & YungManny - 495 (feat. Rico Nasty, Big Flock, Big JAM, & Weensey) 

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DJ Khaled Wants To Star In Mark Wahlberg’s Next Film


DJ Khaled told his good buddy, Mark Wahlberg, that he’s “available anytime” to star in his next film.

DJ Khaled and Mark Wahlberg have been good friends for awhile now, and it looks like they may become co-stars sometime soon, as well. On Wednesday (May 20th), Khaled posted some screenshots of he and his Bostonian buddy on FaceTime, indicating that they were discussing the possibility of working together in the near future. According to Khaled, the actor wants to recruit him for his next big screen project.

“Bless up @markwahlberg,” Khaled wrote on the Instagram post, which also featured a screenshot of Mark FaceTiming with Khaled’s wife, Nicole Tuck, and his eldest son, Asahd. “@markwahlberg was checking on my availability for the next big film,” he continued. “Also checking in wit my famliy thank u. At this moment mark was telling his team KHALED said he’s available anytime for us. Luv always @markwahlberg bless up !”

DJ Khaled Wants To Star In Mark Wahlberg's Next FilmKevork Djansezian/Getty Images

 

Although it’s unclear when Mark would even be able to star in another film project, considering most productions have been put on pause indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, we’d definitely be interested in seeing he and Khaled on screen together. While he’s primarily known for his music, Khaled has in fact dabbled in the acting game here and there. Most recently, he appeared in the third instalment of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s Bad Boys franchise early this year, titled Bad Boys for Lifefor which he also served as the curator of the soundtrack. As for Mark, he recently produced and starred in the Netflix film, Spenser Confidentialalongside another music star, Post Malone, in his debut acting role.

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Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time


We count down the top 30 best posse cuts.

If there’s one format that never fails to elicit excitement, it’s the posse cut. With roots deriving from hip-hop’s inherently competitive elements, a trial-by-fire tradition associated with regionalist pride among other factors, the posse cut often finds emcees in an unspoken quest to emerge with the standout verse — much to the benefit of the song as a cohesive whole.

Alliances are built and strengthened; the old adage of strength in numbers holds true in the booth. Unfortunately, the posse cut has come to feel like a dwindling art. Where it once seemed to be one of the game’s preferred structures, an all-but-guaranteed album highlight, newer artists have tended to steer away from the beloved tradition. That’s not to say they have disappeared entirely, but it’s become a far cry from the glory days in which hip-hop’s best lyricists would unite on sprawling, multiple-verse, sometimes even six-minute-long epics.

In honor of the posse cut, we have compiled a list of the thirty best hip-hop hs to offer. As to what technically qualifies a posse cut, it should be noted that crews have been by and large excluded from the mix — lest the list turn into a rundown of Wu-Tang Clan’s greatest hits. Should a crew be present on a track having opened the door for a fellow emcee or two, however, that’s another story. Should you call yourself a hip-hop-head, it’s likely you’ve heard a few of these already. Maybe even all of them.

Should that be the case, be sure to hit the comments with your thoughts on the ranking – including any snubs you might feel were overlooked. Obviously, placing thirty classics in numerical order is not exactly a cut-and-dry process, and many of the selections below are, to be perfectly honest, interchangeable from their allotted spots. How far can one timeless anthem really differ from another? Perhaps it’s best to not overthink this one, and simply bask in a celebration of some of the greatest collaborative hip-hop songs of all time.

– Mitch Findlay


30.  Dreamville, J.I.D, Mez, Buddy, Jace, Reese LAFLARE, Ski Mask the Slump God, Smokepurpp & Guapdad 4000 – Costa Rica

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

While healthy competition can drive a posse cut to heightened levels of excellence, so too can the simple purity of camaraderie. Especially when substances are involved. The Revenge Of The Dreamers 3 sessions were legendary in that regard, bringing emcees of all walks of life into the studio for a two-weeks-long creative haven, culminating in no shortage of new music and friendships forged along the way. In many says, the bombastic “Costa Rica” feels like the heart of the Dreamers sessions, a gathering of like-minded emcees feeding off one another’s energy during an extensive night of recording.

Hearing the stories of “Costa Rica’s” creation is akin to hearing a longtime journeyman reflect on a particularly epic night. Those electric feelings bleed into the song itself, with each emcee simply happy to be there — nobody is vying for top billing, with the brief verses all possessing an endearing sort of spontaneity. There’s something undoubtedly pure about hearing the entire room echo Ski Mask The Slump God’s raucous cries of “going on a date with an AK!” A relatively new addition to the list, but one that captured a distinct moment in time, one that will likely follow each participant for the rest of their lives. 

– Mitch


29. Trae Tha Truth, T.I., Dave East, Tee Grizzley, Royce Da 5’9″, Curren$y, Snoop Dogg, Fabolous, Rick Ross, Chamillionaire, G Eazy, Styles P, E-40, DRAM, Gary Clark, Jr. & Mark Morrison – I’m On 3.0

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

There are posse cuts, and then there are songs that boast more featured artists than most albums. It’s difficult to get more than 10 MCs to deliver dope verses that feel both fresh and different enough from one another, while ensuring that the track as a whole doesn’t drag on for so long that listeners start to check their watch. This balance is key, and that’s exactly what Trae Tha Truth and his assembly of artists successfully achieve on “I’m On 3.0.” Serving as the third installment of Trae’s “I’m On” series, this most recent incarnation takes what Trae and his previous collaborators did on both prior renditions and builds on it. While Mark Morrison’s vocals remained on the chorus, now accompanied by Gary Clark Jr. and D.R.A.M., Trae traded in the eight rappers from “2.0,” and recruited a whopping 12 replacements. Although a bold move, it ultimately paid off.

While some posse cuts require the song itself to somehow work around all the different contributing rappers’ individual styles in order to create a cohesive sound, in this case, the burden seems to lie on the artists themselves to ensure that their particular flow and lyrical flair fits the overall vibe of the track. Although there are certainly some undeniable standouts amongst this group, Chamillionaire’s verse has been widely regarded as the major highlight, the track serving as a platform on which the underappreciated MC was finally able to really show off his chops. In the case of this cut, the expression “third time’s the charm” certainly rings true.

– Lynn


28. Sway & King Tech, Eminem, RZA, Xzibit, KRS-One, Tech N9ne, Chino XL, Pharoahe Monch, Kool G Rap, Jayo Felony, DJ Revolution – 1999 Wake Up Show Freestyle

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

As the new millennium was dawning on a generation of hip-hop fans, Sway and King Tech were using their position to assemble an absolutely insane collective. Capturing the raw energy of a cipher and channeling it onto a golden-era instrumental, the “1999” edition of the “Wake Up Show” freestyle kicked off with Bobby Digital on a mission, representing for the Wu-Tang movement and bringing a legendary pedigree from the jump. On that note, there’s plenty of notable wordsmiths on deck; Eminem landed his first collaboration with Xzibit and Tech N9ne, Chino XL proved why he stands among the underground’s most respected lyricists, and KRS-One imbued the track with the presence of a true “master of ceremonies.” 

– Mitch


27. Chris Brown, Kanye West, T.I., Fabolous, Rick Ross & Andre 3000 – Deuces (Remix)

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Chris Brown has had his fair share of ups and downs. 2010 was essentially a peak “down” time in Brown’s long career, as a year prior, he left Rihanna with bruises on her face following an argument with her that escalated to physical blows. Thus, by the time 2010 rolled around, Chris Brown was essentially working his way back into our good graces, one song at a time. 

It was around this same time that the singer ended up collaborating with Tyga for their joint mixtape, Fan of a Fan. “Deuces” served as a single off it, also featuring R&B singer Kevin McCall. It’s the sort of catchy, easy beat that you can still bop your head to right now, which is exactly the type of record we needed from Breezy back then– something we didn’t have to analyze too closely but would be easily enjoyed by masses. 

As the song grew legs on the internet, Chris Brown recruited a ton of star power for the massive remix– which just goes to show the span of his reach and his clout, even amid domestic violence allegations. It doesn’t hurt to have Kanye West, T.I., Drake, Andre 300, Fabolous and Rick Ross in your corner when you’re in the process of a career comeback. Each artist drops off their personalized dose of female relationship fodder and what spurs them to leave a particular relationship, for a total of eight verses on this epic remix. Andre 3000 blesses us with the final farewell, in philosophical manner: “And here I am, all heavy with the words where / Somebody that’s a nerd, likely fast forward / But, shit, they asked for it / It’s hard to throw up them deuces / ‘Cause when you know it’s juicy / You start to sound like / Confucius when makin’ up excuses / Chase the Cabooses until the track gone / I gotta find me a new locomotive, stop makin’ sad songs.”

– Rose


26. Lil Kim, Left Eye, Da Brat, Angie Martinez, Missy Elliott – Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix) 

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

With so many classic posse cuts being testosterone-heavy affairs, you know the ladies had to come through and represent. “Not Tonight’s” official remix arrived in 1997 as part of the Nothing To Lose soundtrack, earning its “Ladies Night” moniker with appearances from Left Eye (RIP), Da Brat, Angie Martinez, and Missy Elliott. A pivotal moment for females in hip-hop, the accompanying clip was lined with legendary artists like Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, T-Boz, Xscape, and many more.

Oozing with a charismatic swagger, each rapper attacks the groove with their own distinctive flow: Angie with the newcomer’s wide-eyed energy, Brat with the aggression, Kim with the Junior M.A.F.I.A sauce, Left Eye with the playful sensuality, and Missy coming through as the exclamation point — “you ain’t gon’ use me to just be singin’ hooks.” 

– Mitch


25. DJ Khaled, Akon, T.I., Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Birdman, Fat Joe – We Takin Over

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

“We Takin Over” had the ultimate formula for a certified hit. The track, led by posse-cut-conductor-extraordinaire, DJ Khaled, boasts verses from five major hip-hop heavyweightsLil Wayne, T.I., Rick Ross, Birdman, and Fat Joesome in their prime, others proving with ease that they’ve still got it. Their verses were also punctuated by Akon’s signature high-pitched vocals delivering a criminally catchy hook on the chorus. Combine all of these elements with some stellar production from Danja, and you’re guaranteed to come out with a banger.

While practically every MC on this world-domination anthem manages to hold their own, there’s one clear star. As was often the case on a Weezy-featured posse cut in those days, Wayne blows everyone else out of the water, sliding in at the very end to close out the show only to upstage his preceding partners. His unhinged, bloodthirsty delivery paired with Danja’s looming production has the track ending on a high, followed only by one final declaration of the title from Akon. Based on the sheer number of remixes alone that this cut birthed, it’s clear that “We Takin Over” left an impression not just on fans, but on other artists, as well. Though certainly a product and reflection of it’s time sonically, it still manages to hold up all these years later.

– Lynn


24. The Game, Jim Jones, Snoop Dogg, Nas, T.I., Fat Joe, Lil’ Wayne, N.O.R.E., Jadakiss, Styles P, Fabolous, Juelz Santana, Rick Ross, Twista, Kurupt, Daz Dillinger, WC, E-40, Bun B, Chamillionaire, Slim Thug, Young Dro, The Clipse, Ja Rule – One Blood Remix

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Junior Reid’s 1989 single “One Blood” has been flipped on countless occasions but perhaps, the most popular use of the sample is in The Game’s single, “One Blood.” Reid’s original single represents unifying the human race, regardless of race, class, or religion, in the face of division. The Game carried the theme in the megamix that brought together rappers from every coast in an attempt to unify gang bangers. Twenty-five rappers were included on the track such as Jim Jones, NORE, Nas, T.I., Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Jadakiss, Clipse, Styles P, and more, though some of the verse may have been reused from the regional remixes The Game also released. 

Running for nearly twelve minutes in length, the star power alone would be worth its placement on this list but its impact on the streets is forever as the game unified Crips and Bloods from the East and the West on one track. 

– Aron


23. Tech N9ne, Busta Rhymes, Yelawolf, Twista, Twisted Insane, D-Loc, U$O, JL B.Hood & Ceza – Worldwide Choppers

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Fast rap isn’t for everyone. In fact, it has recently become synonymous with “corny,” a go-to move for rappers hoping to mask a lack of sauce with sheer technical prowess. Yet countless artists have proven that double-time delivery can be undisputably badass, including some of Tech N9ne’s handpicked “Worldwide Choppers.” Not only does this posse-cut feature nine contributing rappers from across the globe, it does so while operating under a strict conceit: all parties must gun for that god-forsaken Guinness World Record.

Arguably the quickest of the bunch, Tech sets the tone for fellow hyperspeed rappers Twista and Busta Rhymes to absolutely wreak havoc, with both parties sliding several interesting flow-schemes into their verses. Between Twista’s “stig-a-ma-tism” scheme and Bus-a-Bus’ “Get ’em, hit ’em and finish ’em” scheme, we’re looking at a masterclass in verbal dexterity. 

– Mitch


22. Jay-Z, Twista, Killer Mike, Big Boi – Poppin Tags

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

When hip-hop fans think of posse cuts, they think of all-time great rappers, multiple dope verses, and production that will keep your head nodding along throughout the entire song. Jay-Z’s “Poppin Tags” off of The Blueprint 2 is absolutely one of those posse cuts that ticks off every single box and then some. 

First off, let’s start with the soulful production by none other than Kanye West. By 2002, Kanye was an established producer and “Poppin Tags” was yet another highlight on his growing resume. As for the verses, those are what make this song truly stand out. Jay-Z begins the track with a fast yet steady flow that features bars about, as the title suggests, spending a lot of money. From there, Twista comes into the picture with blisteringly fast bars that create a nice contrast between him and Jay-Z’s skill sets.

The entire track is six minutes long and in the latter half, we get some southern influence with verses from Georgia natives, Killer Mike and Big Boi. Both of these MCs bring their signature flows and sounds to the track which helps spice things up a bit. Depending on where you live, one could argue Big Boi and Killer Mike actually outshine Twista and Jay-Z although that’s a debate we’re sure the commenters would love to engage in.

– Alex Cole


21. Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T & 2 Chainz – Mercy

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Kanye West’s GOOD Fridays series recalls a simpler time in rap, when the market was less crowded and free download links were still the norm. Ye really shook things up with the series, drawing in more and more eyes every Friday when he came through with some sort of fire, GOOD Music cut, often featuring a crew of artists. “Mercy” was among them, and would go on to make the final tracklist of the underwhelming Cruel Summer compilation album. Nonetheless don’t let that take away from the strength of the collaboration which features a pre-controversial (well, pre-Trump) Kanye West, Sean Don, Pusha T and GOOD Music-affiliated 2 Chainz. 

The beat is one of the most iconic aspects of this record, with its dancehall sample and alternating keys kicking off the record. There’s really nothing else to say except that it was, and remains, a banger that will still get a party lit in a matter of seconds. 

– Rose


20. T.I, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, M.I.A – Swagga Like Us 

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Where posse cuts of the nineties seemed to thrive off the spirit of lyrical competition, those creeping closer to modern times appeared more concerned with sheer spectacle. Despite enlisting three heavy-hitting lyricists for the occasion, T.I’s “Swagga Like Us” was hardly concerned with administering death-by-a-thousand-bars. The musical equivalent to a Basquiat hanging in one’s foyer, the Grammy-Award winning Paper Trail single was so confident in its mere existence that all it needed to do was show up.

That’s not to say the four emcees didn’t come correct, with the Troubleman asserting himself as the defining verse, but it’s clear they approached this one with the energy of a pickup game. A championship pickup game, to be sure. Impossible to ignore on the basis of sheer talent, “Swagga Like Us” remains a defining cultural moment, the ultimate flex on wax. 

– Mitch


19. Noreaga, Big Pun, Nature, Cam’Ron, Jadakiss, Styles P – Banned From T.V.

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

What is it about Jadakiss that seems to gravitate toward the posse cut format? Once again, Mr. Raspy slides onto this list as a key contributor to Noreaga’s absolutely stacked “Banned From TV.” On that note, fellow Ruff Ryder Swizz Beatz made New York history the day he wrapped this particular beat up — little did he know he’d be providing the soundtrack for a gathering of the the titans, including an appearance from the late Big Pun, the quitely scene-stealing Nature, and a classic back and forth from Kiss and Pinero.

Though many have come to know NORE as a lovable and perpetually inebriated storyteller on Drink Champs, long before that he was an integral member of the New York hip-hop landscape; one who commanded enough respect to bring such a  ridiculous lineup to the table in the first place. And the results speak for itself, with “Banned From TV” encapsulating everything a classic posse cut is all about. Leave the best verse debates for the philosophers.

– Mitch


18. Dr. Dre, Kurupt, RBX, Lady Of Rage, Snoop Dogg – Stranded On Death Row

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Dr. Dre has been at the center of many epic collaborations, and narrowing down one in particular was no easy feat. For the longest time, 2001’s extensive west coast anthem “Some L.A. N***az” had all but secured the position — that is until “Stranded On Death Row” started to spread back into the picture, a relic of one of hip-hop’s darkest and dopest eras. Featuring contributions from Kurupt, RBX, The Lady of Rage, and a young Snoop Dogg, the Dr. Dre-produced banger features hard-hitting verses from all involved.

Kurupt spazzes out the gate, his tongue-twisted style and references to Jean Claude Van Damme instant reminders of simpler times. Yet it may very well be the Lady of Rage who leaves the deepest impression, he sneering cadence and violent vows solidifying her as the most feared inmate on the doomed cellblock. “I plead guilty on all counts, let the ball bounce where it may, it’s just another clip into my AK,” she raps. “Buck ’em down with my underground tactics. Facts and stacks of clips on my mattress.”

– Mitch


17. Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Eminem – Forever

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

You can’t talk about modern-day rap posse cuts without mentioning “Forever,” the 2009 single from Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem. When it was originally released as part of the More Than A Game soundtrack, the song was tremendously impactful. You’ve got to believe that if these four rappers linked up another time one decade later, the critical reception would be even wilder. And that’s saying a lot, considering “Forever” has gone 6x platinum since its release.

Each artist featured on the track is given ample time to shine through on “Forever.” Drake starts things off before Kanye West slides over the second verse. Lil Wayne takes over for the third verse before things close out with a remarkable appearance from Eminem. Drake, Kanye, Weezy, and Em are all iconic in their own right and they will each sit high on rap’s totem pole when this is all said and done. Drake sang that he wanted this to last his entire life and, eleven years later, he’s arrived at that stage. We may never see another star-studded posse cut like this.

– Alex Zidel


16. Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, John Legend, Lloyd Banks, Ryan – Christian Dior Denim Flow

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

“Christian Dior Denim Flow” counts another entry in the GOOD Fridays series helmed by Kanye West. It’s another example of the type of insane artist-gathered collaborations Ye was putting out at this time, alongside beats that were often “big” for lack of a better words– beats that were luxurious, over-the-top, lofty– perhaps recalling My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in the sense that they were highly arranged and layered, but a bit less refined.

“Christian Dior Denim Flow,” similar to “Mercy” also contains production that at one point breaks down, leading the way for Lloyd Banks’ raspy verse. Kid Cudi delivered the melodic hook with assistance from John Legend, but he also closes out the song with a verse– that was another hallmark of these GOOD Fridays collaborations, they were often songs spanning over 5 to 6 minutes in length– especially long if you consider these days’ 1-2 minute records. Yet this just ensured that every single artist featured on these posse cuts would have their own time to shine, ultimately making each one so exciting. 

– Rose


15. Bone Crusher, Cam’Ron, Jadakiss, Busta Rhymes – Never Scared Takeover Remix

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

For those who came of age during the early millennium, Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared” likely holds a special place in your heart. Though the original lineup of Killer Mike and T.I. made for a strong baseline, Bone Crusher’s New York ambitions secured three of the East Coast’s most capable lyricists in the midst of their primes. With the hard-knocking and uniquely Southern instrumental from Avery Johnson and Jermaine Dupri intact, Cam, Jada, and Busta made themselves at home, seemingly moving to one-up each other with each new verse.

Narrowing down a clear standout might come down to personal preference, but there’s something about Jadakiss’ steely demeanor that makes his presence on the “Takeover Remix” uniquely formidable. “I ain’t neva scared, I got big hammers everywhere,” his flow methodical. “In places where you need yo passport at, I’m heavy there.” 

– Mitch


14. Fat Joe, Big Pun, Nas, Jadakiss, Raekwon – John Blaze

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

On the basis of reputation alone, “John Blaze” promises to be an onslaught of bars from a handful of dominant East Coast emcees. Many of whom would feel right at home in a top-ten lyricist conversation. As such, there’s an unspoken sense of healthy competition permeating the padded track — though Big Pun would swiftly go on to live up to his well-earned moniker of dream-shatterer.

While recognized by purists as elite, the effortless nature with which Pun would absolutely run laps around legendary emcees often goes unappreciated by the game at large. “The same n***a who known to blow out your brain mineral, I reign subliminal inside your visual,” he spits, his dexterity insane. “Try to supply your physical with my spiritual side of this lyrical / I’ll appear in your dreams, like Freddy do, no kidding you / Even if I stuttered, I would still sh-sh-shit on you.” Listen, there is no universe that would position me to speak ill of Nas, Jadakiss, Raekwon, and Fat Joe — but “John Blaze” really does feel like Big Pun’s showcase. 

– Mitch


13. Obie Trice, Lloyd Banks, Eminem, 50 Cent – We All Die One Day

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Obie Trice was looking to make a big first impression with his debut project, Cheers, all the way back in 2003. When you’re backed by an artist like Eminem, there is always going to be pressure to deliver and that’s exactly what he did. Perhaps the biggest highlight on his debut effort is the posse cut “We All Die One Day” which features the likes of Eminem, 50 Cent, and Lloyd Banks.

This extremely gritty banger stands out thanks to some gritty production by Em – among other reasons – who also provides the longest and most technical verse of the song. The track starts with a smooth chorus from Lloyd Banks that eventually transitions to a visceral and violent verse from Obie Trice who is very open about shooting and killing those who get in his way. In the ensuing verse, Lloyd Banks flexes his money and accomplishments while letting people know that he still has an edge to him despite making it out of the hood. Following Em’s verse, 50 Cent helps wrap the song into a neatly tied bow as he provides some violent bars that run parallel to Obie Trice’s first verse.

As far as blood pumping posse cuts go, “We All Die One Day” is certainly up there.

– Alex Cole


12. B.G ft Big Tymers & The Hot Boys – Bling Bling

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Say what you will about the mastermind behind it, but Birdman’s Cash Money dynasty has endured as one of hip-hop’s most legendary movements of all time. Featuring the talents of B.G, Juvenile, Turk, Lil Wayne, Mannie Fresh, and Baby himself, the New Orleans-based label helped forge a sound that continues to influence hip-hop as we know it today.

“Bling Bling,” originally released as the lead single on B.G.’s 1999 album Chopper City In The Ghetto, brought the entirety of Cash Money into the fold for a stacked celebration of lavish living. Driven by an iconic beat from Fresh, who also holds it down with a swaggy verse, “Bling Bling” encapsulates the collective’s sound at its most effective — playful, confident, and formidable if pressed. “N***s wear shades just to stand on side of me,” raps B.G., closing things out with a highlight verse. “Hoes say take that chain off boy ya blindin’ me.”

– Mitch


11. Ruff Ryders, Jadakiss, Snoop Dogg, Scarface, Yung Wun & Jadakiss – WW III

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Regionalism is one of the most important tenets in hip-hop stylistic analysis. Throughout the years, different cities and states have developed distinctive sonic qualities, many of which are held dear by the artists who claim a given locale. On Ruff Ryder’s introductory banger “WW III,” location played an integral role. Bringing together the likes of Jadakiss, Snoop Dogg, Scarface, and Yung Wun, each rapper opened their verse by representing for the cause.

The conceit imbued “WW III” with a sense of gravitas, only enhanced by the bombastic — and instantly iconic– Swizz Beatz production. In one corner stands Snoop Dogg, representing the “west coast.” In another stands Yung Wun, triumphantly screaming “ATL Shawty!” Across is the imposing figure of Scarface, holding it down on behalf of the entire “muthafucking South.” And for the East Coast is none other than Jadakiss, who closes the anthem out with a nail in the coffin.

– Mitch


10. Danny Brown, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt – Really Doe

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

On paper, “Really Doe” stands among the most stacked gatherings of lyricists on this list. In reality, it was never meant to appear as such. When Danny Brown originally conceived the song, it was meant to be a duet between himself and Ab-Soul. Upon hearing the instrumental, Kendrick Lamar deted from the intended plan to contribute elsewhere on Atrocity Exhibition and made himself at home.

Last but not least came Earl Sweatshirt, whom Danny bestowed the coveted position of the final verse, an honor reserved for the most valuable player. Few can dispute that the former Odd Future poet absolutely bodied the track, lines like “I’m the type of ni**a it ain’t never been an honor to judge” deftly showcasing his clever mind at work. Throw in a creepy instrumental from Detroit legend Black Milk and you’re looking at the perfect posse cut for witching hour reflections. 

– Mitch


09. Puff Daddy, The Lox, Notorious B.I.G, & Lil Kim – All About The Benjamins Remix

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

With all this talk about a Verzuz battle between P. Diddy and Dr. Dre, many have been fondly reminiscing about the Bad Boy era. After all, such was the time when the Notorious B.I.G. was alive and well, bodying tracks at every opportunity. The classic remix to Diddy and The Lox’s “All About The Benjamins” is no exception, with Biggie and Lil Kim sliding through to represent for the Junior M.A.F.I.A. movement.

From the moment Diddy sets it off with a laid-back yet assertive opening verse, his flow seeped in the signature style of his label, “”All About The Benjamins” never lets up. Aside from boasting hard hitting salvos from a youthful Jadakiss and Sheek Louch, it’s the new additions that leave the deepest imprint. “German Ruger for yo’ ass, bitch, deep throat it,” raps Lil Kim. “Know you wanna feel the womb ’cause it’s platinum-coated / take your pick, got a firearm you shoulda toted.” You’d be hard-pressed to find a hip-hop head incapable of vibing to this timeless cut.

– Mitch


08. LL Cool J, Method Man, Redman, Canibus, DMX, & Master P – 4, 3, 2, 1 

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

Many hip-hop historians have come to remember “4,3,2,1” as the song on which LL Cool J and Canibus dissed each other in their respective verses. A darkly comedic turn of events to be sure, as the whole beef essentially kicked off after LL misinterpreted one of Canibus’ lines and decided to clap back accordingly. It’s hard to resist the scandalous allure of such a narrative (especially since it led to some great diss tracks from both parties), but we mustn’t forget one key factor.

This song assembled some of the best lyricists of the late nineties and engaged them in competitive sparring over Erick Sermon’s production. Given the pedigree of talent involved, it’s hard to deem a clear winner. Yet there’s something unmatchable about DMX’s menacing cautionary tale, which reveals the consequences of crossing his path at sundown. If you’re unfamiliar with the fact that LL Cool J was a murderous rhymer in his prime, look no further than “4,3,2,1.”

– Mitch


07. DMX, Jay-Z, Jadakiss, Styles P, Sheek Louch – Blackout

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

It doesn’t get more New York than DMX’s epic Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood gathering “Blackout.” Another instance of healthy yet borderline competitive sportsmanship, the Swizz Beatz produced classic finds DMX, Jadakiss, Styles P, Sheek Louch, and the Jigga Man sliding through to lay down verse after verse. In true posse-cut fashion, the chorus is forsaken in favor of straight bars and listeners are all the better for it.

Especially when it comes time for Jay-Z’s supremely confident verse. “The beeper done changed, you dead bitch, the Reaper done came,” he raps, his mafioso roots coming through strong. “I suggest ni***s stop speakin my name, cause trust me, y’all can still feel the heat in the rain.” A welcome collision of worlds between the Ruff Ryders and the R.O.C, “Blackout” is the perfect encapsulation of a structure we simply don’t see anymore. And yet, at the time of its release, music like this was still doing numbers. 

– Mitch


06. A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson, Big K.R.I.T – “1Train”

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

At the time of its release in 2013, all six rappers present on “1Train” were stars in their own right. Speaking with Complex, Rocky explained that he wanted to create a posse cut evocative of early nineties hip-hop, employing an array of his contemporaries boasting a variety of distinctive styles. Tethering the disparate time periods is Hit-Boy, who laces a symphony at once rugged and distinguished. There are honed flows and outlandish quotables, be it Danny Brown’s “worst enemy’s penis” bar or the imaginative Action Bronson implementing a “Chilean Horse” into his imagery.

It’s almost impossible to discern the standout performer, as each rapper comes together like some deadly coalition, but Big K.R.I.T’s murderous bars certainly conclude matters on an emphatic note. Despite its relative youth, it’s fair to deem “1Train” one of the most impactful tracks of the past ten years.

– Mitch


05. Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, & Nate Dogg – Bitch Please 2 

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

The Up In Smoke Tour remains one of hip-hop’s defining tours, with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Ice Cube, Nate Dogg, Eminem, and countless Aftermath affiliates embarking on a weed-fueled odyssey. In some ways, Marshall Mathers LP’s fifteenth track “Bitch Please II” encapsulates the spirit of Up In Smoke. Marking a milestone for Slim Shady, who secured his first collaboration with Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg, the eerie sequel emerged as a highlight on its unexpected home album.

Between Dre’s braggadocio, Snoop’s laid-back swagger, Xzibit’s imposing aggression, and Em’s scathing wit, there’s somehow enough common ground to make for a cohesive vibe. With stellar verses from each performer — including one hell of a chorus from Nate Dogg– it’s Eminem’s climactic “fuck you” that resonates the deepest. Although, X to the Z does make a compelling case, especially when he whips into his “ashes to ashes” rhyme scheme.

– Mitch


04. Bone Thugs & The Notorious B.I.G. – Notorious Thugs

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

The East Coast met the smokey Midwest on Biggie Smalls’ second studio album Life After Death when the Brooklyn legend linked up with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony for “Notorious Thugs.” 

Gangsta rap was at its height while hip-hop suffered the loss of both Biggie and Tupac in a matter of months of each other. The hypnotizing piano keys, twangy guitar, and the choral harmonies of Bone Thugs turned into a haunting gospel of romanticized inner-city turmoil with violence and paranoia riddling each rapper’s verse. What might be most notable about the track, though, is that it became a further testament that Biggie had mastered the art of flow. Before even signing a deal, Biggie Smalls was highly revered for his technical prowess and viscous flow but “Notorious Thugs” took it to a new level. Without compromising his skillset, he leaned deeper into the double-time, melodic flow that Bone Thugs introduced to the game with a defining verse in his catalog.

– Aron


03. Three 6 Mafia ft UGK & Project Pat – Sippin’ On Some Syrup

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

To say Three 6 Mafia were ahead of their time is an understatement. To this day, many of their lyrical and sonic trends — from celebrations of hedonism to the dark southern banger — have become embedded within the very fabric of the contemporary soundscape. Nowhere is that more effectively encapsulated than on “Sippin On Some Syrup,” a posse cut extraordinaire that brought the Underground Kings and Project Pat into the fold for a rollicking good time.

The track, which arrived on the 2000 album When The Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1, featured a dangerously smooth instrumental produced by the two-headed monster Juicy J and DJ Paul. The perfect backdrop for an influx of excellent verses, with the late Pimp C, DJ Paul, Juicy J, and Bun B holding it down. With each mind married to the singular concept of giving into inebriation, it’s difficult to single out a standout verse — though it’s hard not to credit Pimp C for bringing the legendary term “simp” into the mainstream vernacular. 

– Mitch


02. International Player’s Anthem (I Choose You)

 Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

UGK’s biggest commercial record is also considered one of hip-hop’s finest collaborations, and a certified classic. Pimp C and Bun B teamed up with fellow hip-hop duo OutKast in 2007 for this ode to marriage, from the perspective of a player who may or may not have changed his ways. It’s equally important in UGK’s catalog, as the last single the duo put out before Pimp C’s passing.

The music video for the collaboration made the record even more exciting: it’s a full-out hip-hop wedding with Andre 3k playing the role of the lucky man, and other artists acting as invited guests to partake in the big day. 

It’s hard not to simply drop in Andre’s full verse here and call it a day. Apparently, Pimp C didn’t even like Andre’s verse when he first heard it (!!), taking issue with the fact that Andre had opted to remove the drums for his opening verse. Still, the song comes together in epic fashion. As soon as Andre’s verse ends, the drums pick up alongside Pimp C’s nasally verse. Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You” fills the record with soul and funk, thanks to the horn arrangement and vocal sample. It’s a record that marries soul with hip-hop with funk. In spite of this, it’s the type of record that doesn’t sound dated, the type of record someone could ostensibly drop today and we would consider it to be just as fire as it was over 10 years ago.

– Rose


01. Bone Thugs & 2Pac – Thug Luv

Top 30 Best Posse Cuts Of All Time

There aren’t any other groups in hip-hop that have the bragging rights that Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have. A Midwest group signed to Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records, they remain the only hip-hop group to ever work with Biggie and Tupac while the legendary rappers were still alive. Even for a group with five members, collaborations with artists like Big, Pac, Eazy-E, and more had Bone Thugs bringing their influential sound across the coasts. 

“We doin’ this shit from Cleveland to L.A,” 2Pac screams at the top of his collab with BTNH on “Thug Luv.” Riddled with sound effects of gunshots, Pac and Bone Thugs bring the world into a warzone. Between Pleads to the Lord for forgiveness, Pac and Bone Thugs’ united Thug across America for an anthem specifically geared for the streets. Though the only collaboration between the two entities, they hoisted Thug Life for the world to see. 

– Aron

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“The Invisible Man” Set To Knock "Sonic" Out Of First Place At Box Office


The horror film genre gets a much-needed win.

After several hard fails at the box office for the horror movie genre (Dr. Sleep, The Grudge, The Turning, Black Christmas for example), scary movies are back on top. Deadline reports that Elizabeth Moss’ The Invisible Man raked in a solid $26 million on its opening weekend at 3,610 North American locations. Blumhouse can notch another win in their horror film notebook. The production company is responsible for Get Out, the new Halloween, The Purge, Insidious, Paranormal Activity, and many more. The Invisible Man is a remake of the 1933 film of the same name. The film’s budget was only $7 million, meaning the studio is swimming in profit already. This remake follows Moss, who is haunted by an ex-boyfriend that everyone assumes is dead. 

Sonic the Hedgehog, which has been in the top position for the past two weeks, will finish second to The Invisible Man with roughly $15 million this weekend. Call of the Wild, starring Harrison Ford, looks to lock down third place with $13 million. Sony’s Bad Boys For Life, which debuted last month, is set to hit the $400 million mark this weekend. A fourth film is currently in the works. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence delivered the best film in the franchise and look rejuvenated for a round four.

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2020 NAACP Image Awards: Blue Ivy Carter, Beyonce & Lizzo Among Top Winners

See the top winners from the NAACP Image Awards

Saturday night, the 51st annual NAACP Image Awards got underway as the organization continued its tradition in honoring exceptional entertainers, artists, and creators of color over the past year. This time around top honors went to the likes of Rihanna, whose philanthropic work earned her the lauded President's Award, Lizzo, who took home the top-seeded Entertainer Of The Year award, and even Blue Ivy Carter, who earned her first award for Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration, sharing the win with her mother, Beyoncé, Saint JHN, and Wizkid.

Elsewhere actress and producer Marsai Martin had a fruitful night as the 15-year-old wunderkind scored wins for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture for her Little major motion debut in addition to Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Performance by a Youth for her role in Black-ish.

2020 NAACP Image Awards: Blue Ivy Carter, Beyonce & Lizzo Among Top Winners

Robin L Marshall/Getty Images

Catch the full List of NAACP Image Award winners below:

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
Angela Bassett
Billy Porter
Lizzo: WINNER
Regina King
Tyler Perry

MOTION PICTURE CATEGORIES

Outstanding Motion Picture
“Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
“Harriet” (Focus Features)
“Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures): WINNER
“Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
“Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture
Chadwick Boseman – “21 Bridges” (STX Films)
Daniel Kaluuya – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
Eddie Murphy – “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
Michael B. Jordan – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures): WINNER
Winston Duke – “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture
Alfre Woodard – “Clemency” (Neon)
Cynthia Erivo – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
Jodie Turner-Smith – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
Lupita Nyong’o – “Us” (Universal Pictures): WINNER
Naomie Harris – “Black and Blue” (Screen Gems/Sony Pictures)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
Jamie Foxx – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures): WINNER

Leslie Odom, Jr. – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
Sterling K. Brown – “Waves” (A24)
Tituss Burgess – “Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix)
Wesley Snipes – “Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
Janelle Monáe – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
Jennifer Lopez – “Hustlers” (STX Films)
Marsai Martin – “Little” (Universal Pictures): WINNER
Octa Spencer – “Luce” (Neon)

Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in Motion Picture
Cynthia Erivo – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
Jodie Turner-Smith – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
Marsai Martin – “Little” (Universal Pictures): WINNER
Rob Morgan – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Shahadi Wright Joseph – “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture
“Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
“Harriet” (Focus Features)
“Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures): WINNER
“Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
“Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Independent Motion Picture
“Clemency” (Neon)
“Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix): WINNER
“Luce” (Neon)
“Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” (Netflix)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Television or Film)
Alfre Woodard – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios)
Donald Glover – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios)
James Earl Jones – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios): WINNER
Lupita Nyong’o – “Serengeti” (Discovery Channel)
Sterling K. Brown – “Frozen II” (Walt Disney Studios)

TELEVISION CATEGORIES

Outstanding Comedy Series
“Ballers” (HBO)
“black-ish” (ABC): WINNER
“Dear White People” (Netflix)
“grown-ish” (Freeform)
“The Neighborhood” (CBS)

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
Anthony Anderson – “black-ish” (ABC): WINNER

Cedric The Entertainer – “The Neighborhood” (CBS)
Don Cheadle – “Black Monday” (Showtime)
Dwayne Johnson – “Ballers” (HBO)
Tracy Morgan – “The Last O.G.” (TBS)

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Logan Browning – “Dear White People” (Netflix)
Jill Scott – “First Wives Club” (BET+)
Tiffany Haddish – “The Last O.G.” (TBS)
Tracee Ellis Ross – “black-ish ” (ABC): WINNER
Yara Shahidi – “grown-ish” (Freeform)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Andre Braugher – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC)
Deon Cole – “black-ish” (ABC): WINNER
Laurence Fishburne – “black-ish” (ABC)
Terry Crews – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC)
Tituss Burgess – “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Halle Bailey – “grown-ish” (Freeform)
Loretta Devine – “Family Reunion” (Netflix)
Marsai Martin – “black-ish” (ABC): WINNER
Regina Hall – “Black Monday” (Showtime)
Tichina Arnold – “The Neighborhood” (CBS)

Outstanding Drama Series
“Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
“Greenleaf” (OWN): WINNER
“Queen Sugar” (OWN)
“The Chi” (Showtime)
“Watchmen” (HBO)

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series
Billy Porter – “Pose” (FX Networks)
Forest Whitaker – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
Kofi Siriboe – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
Omari Hardwick – “Power” (Starz): WINNER
Sterling K. Brown – “This Is Us” (NBC)

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series
Angela Bassett – “9-1-1” (FOX): WINNER

Regina King – “Watchmen” (HBO)
Rutina Wesley – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
Simone Missick – “All Rise” (CBS)
Viola Davis – “How to Get Away with Murder” (ABC)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Delroy Lindo – “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
Giancarlo Esposito – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
Harold Perrineau – “Claws” (TNT): WINNER
Nigél Thatch – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
Wendell Pierce – “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” (Prime Video)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
C.C.H. Pounder – “NCIS: New Orleans” (CBS)
Lynn Whitfield – “Greenleaf” (OWN): WINNER
Lyric Ross – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Susan Kelechi Watson – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Tina Lifford – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)

Outstanding Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special
“American Son” (Netflix)
“Being Mary Jane” (BET Networks)
“Native Son” (HBO)
“True Detective” (HBO)
“When They See Us” (Netflix): WINNER

Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special
Caleel Harris – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Ethan Henry Herisse – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Idris Elba – “Luther” (BBC America)
Jharrel Jerome – “When They See Us” (Netflix): WINNER
Mahershala Ali – “True Detective” (HBO)

Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special
Aunjanue Ellis – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Gabrielle Union – “Being Mary Jane” (BET Networks)
Kerry Washington – “American Son” (Netflix)
Niecy Nash – “When They See Us” (Netflix): WINNER
Octa Spencer – “Truth Be Told” (Apple TV Plus)

Outstanding News/Information (Series or Special)
“Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” (PBS)
“Surviving R. Kelly” (Lifetime)
“The Breakfast Club” (Re)
“The Story of God with Morgan Freeman” (National Geographic)
“Unsung” (TV One): WINNER

Outstanding Talk Series
“Red Table Talk” (Facebook Watch): WINNER

“The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
“The Real” (Syndicated)
“The Shop: Uninterrupted” (HBO)
“The Tamron Hall Show” (Syndicated)

Outstanding Reality Program/Reality Competition Series/Game Show
“Iyanla: Fix My Life” (OWN)
“Lip Sync Battle” (Paramount Network)
“Rhythm + Flow” (Netflix): WINNER
“Sunday Best” (BET Networks)
“The Voice” (NBC)

Outstanding Variety (Series or Special)
“2019 Black Girls Rock!” (BET Networks)
“Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones” (Netflix)
“Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” (Netflix): WINNER
“Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
“Wanda Sykes: Not Normal” (Netflix)

Outstanding Children’s Program
“Doc McStuffins” (Disney Junior)
“Family Reunion” (Netflix): WINNER
“Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History” (Netflix)
“Marvel’s Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest” (Disney XD)
“Motown Magic” (Netflix)

Outstanding Performance by a Youth (Series, Special, Television Movie or Limited-Series)
Caleel Harris – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Lonnie Chavis – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Lyric Ross – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Marsai Martin – “black-ish” (ABC): WINNER
Miles Brown – “black-ish” (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Talk or News/Information (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble
Angela Rye – “Young Gifted and Broke: A BET Town Hall” (BET Networks)
Jada Pinkett Smith – “Red Table Talk” (Facebook Watch): WINNER
Lester Holt – “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” (NBC)
Trevor Noah – “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Meghan McCain, Abby Huntsman, Ana Navarro – “The View” (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Reality/Reality Competition, Game Show or Variety (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble
Iyanla Vanzant – “Iyanla: Fix My Life” (OWN)
LL Cool J – “Lip Sync Battle” (Paramount Network)
Regina Hall – “2019 BET Awards” (BET Networks)
Steve Harvey – “Celebrity Family Feud” (ABC): WINNER
Wayne Brady – “Let’s Make A Deal” (CBS)

Outstanding Guest Performance in a Comedy or Drama Series
Blair Underwood – “Dear White People” (Netflix)
David Alan Grier – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
Kelly Rowland – “American Soul” (BET Networks): WINNER
MAJOR. – “STAR” (FOX)
Sanaa Lathan – “The Affair” (Showtime)

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORIES

Outstanding Documentary (Film)
“Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool” (Eagle Rock Entertainment)
“The Black Godfather” (Netflix)
“The Apollo” (HBO)
“Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” (Magnolia Pictures): WINNER
“True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality” (HBO)

Outstanding Documentary (Television – Series or Special)
“Free Meek” (Prime Video)
“Hitsville: The Making of Motown” (Showtime): WINNER
“Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” (Netflix)
“Martin: The Legacy of A King” (BET Networks)
“ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke” (Netflix)

WRITING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series
Cord Jefferson – “The Good Place” – Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy (NBC): WINNER

Gloria Calderon Kellett, Mike Royce – “One Day at a Time” – Ghosts (Netflix)
Jason Kim – “Barry” – Past=Present x Future Over Yesterday (HBO)
Karen Gist, Peter Saji – “Mixed-ish” – Let Your Hair Down (ABC)
Trevor Noah – “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” – Steve King’s Comments Meet Trevor Noah: Racism Detective (Comedy Central)

Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series
Ava DuVernay, Michael Starrbury – “When They See Us” – Part Four (Netflix)
Damon Lindelof, Cord Jefferson – “Watchmen” – The Extraordinary Being (HBO)
Nichelle Tramble Spellman – “Truth Be Told” – Monster (Apple TV+): WINNER
Nkechi Okoro Carroll – “All American” – Hussle & Motivate (The CW)
Pat Charles – “Black Lightning” – The Book of Secrets: Chapter One: Prodigal Son (The CW)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Television)
Cas Sigers-Beedles – “Twas the Chaos Before Christmas” (BET)
Melissa Bustamante – “A Christmas Winter Song” (Lifetime)
Patrik-Ian Polk – “Being Mary Jane” (BET Networks)
Suzan-Lori Parks – “Native Son” (HBO): WINNER
Yvette Nicole Brown – “Always a Bridesmaid” (BET Networks) 51st NAACP Image Awards’ Nominees Announcement Release

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Film)
Chinonye Chukwu – “Clemency” (Neon)
Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Doug Atchison – “Brian Banks” (Bleeker Street and ShivHans)
Jordan Peele – “Us” (Universal Pictures): WINNER
Kasi Lemmons, Gregory Allen Howard – “Harriet” (Focus Features)

 

DIRECTING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series
Anya Adams – “GLOW” – Outward Bound (Netflix): WINNER

Justin Tipping – “Black Monday” -7042 (Showtime)
Ken Whittingham – “Atypical” – Road Rage Paige (Netflix)
Randall Winston – “Grace and Frankie” – The Pharmacy (Netflix)
Shaka King – “Shrill” – Pool (Hulu)

Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series
Ava DuVernay – “When They See Us” – Part Four (Netflix)
Carl H. Seaton, Jr. – “Snowfall” – Hedgehogs (FX Networks)
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson – “Power” – Forgot About Dre (STARZ): WINNER
Debbie Allen – “Grey’s Anatomy” – Silent All These Years (ABC)
Jet Wilkinson – “The Chi” – The Scorpion and the Frog (Showtime)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Television)
Codie Elaine Oliver – “Black Love” (OWN)
Janice Cooke – “I Am Sombody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story (Lifetime)
Kenny Leon – “American Son” (Netflix)
Rashid Johnson – “Native Son (HBO): WINNER
Russ Parr – “The Bobby Debarge Story” (TV One)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Film)
Chiwetel Ejiofor – “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” (Netflix): WINNER

Jordan Peele – “Us” (Universal Pictures)
Kasi Lemmons – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
Mati Diop – “Atlantics” (Les Films du Bal Presente en Co-Production avec Cinekap et Frakas Productions en Co-Production avec Arte France Cinema et Canal+ International for Netflix)
Reginald Hudlin – “The Black Godfather” (Netflix)

 

RECORDING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Album
“Cuz I Love You” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“Homecoming: The Live Album” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER
“I Used To Know H.E.R.” – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
“Sketchbook” – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
“Worthy” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding New Artist
Ari Lennox (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
Lil Nas X (Columbia Records): WINNER
Lucky Daye (Keep Cool/RCA Records)
Mahalia (Burkmar/Warner Music UK)
Mykal Kilgore (Affective Music)

Outstanding Male Artist
Bruno Mars (Atlantic Records): WINNER

Khalid (RCA Records)
Lil Nas X (Columbia Records)
MAJOR. (BOE Music Group/EMPIRE)
PJ Morton (Morton Records)

Outstanding Female Artist
Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER

Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
H.E.R. (RCA Records)
India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Song – Traditional
“Enough” – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
“Jerome” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“Spirit” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER
“Stand Up” – Cynthia Erivo (Back Lot Music)
“Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding Song – Contemporary
“Before I Let Go” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER

“Hard Place” – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
“Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)
“Motivation” – Normani (Keep Cool/RCA Records)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration
“Brown Skin Girl” – Blue Ivy, Saint Jhn, Beyoncé & Wizkid (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER

“No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
“Say So” – PJ Morton feat. JoJo (Morton Records/EMPIRE)
“Shea Butter Baby” – Ari Lennox feat. J. Cole (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
“Show Me Love” – Alicia Keys feat. Miguel (RCA Records)

Outstanding Jazz Album
“Carib” – David Sanchez (Ropeadope)
“Center of The Heart” – Najee (Shanachie)
“Love & Liberation” – Jazzmeia Horn (Concord Jazz): WINNER
“SoulMate” – Nathan Mitchell (Enm Music Group)
“The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron” – Vanessa Rubin (Vanessa Rubin)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Song (Traditional or Contemporary)
“I Made It Out” – John P. Kee feat. Zacardi Cortez (Kee Music Group/Entertainment One)
“Laughter” – Bebe Winans feat. Korean Soul (Regimen Records)
“Love Theory” – Kirk Franklin (Fo Yo Soul Records/RCA Records): WINNER
“Not Yet” – Donnie McClurkin (Camdon Music/RCA Inspiration)
“Victory” – The Clark Sisters (Karew Records/Motown Gospel/Capitol CMG)

Outstanding Music Video/Visual Album
“Hard Place” – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
“Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records): WINNER
“No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
“Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
“Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)

Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation Album
“Harriet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” – Terence Blanchard (Back Lot Music)
“Queen & Slim The Soundtrack” – Various Artists (Motown Records)
“The Lion King: The Gift” – Beyoncé w/Various Artists (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records): WINNER
“The Lion King Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” – Various Artists (Walt Disney Records)
“Us (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” – Michael Abels (Back Lot Music)

 

LITERATURE CATEGORIES

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction
“New Daughters of Africa” – Margaret Busby (HarperCollins Publishers)
“Out of Darkness, Shining Light” – Petina Gappah (Simon and Schuster)
“Red at the Bone” – Jacqueline Woodson (Riverhead Books PRH)
“The Revisioners” – Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Counter Point Press): WINNER
“The Water Dancer” – Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World)

Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction
“Breathe: A Letter to My Sons” – Dr. Imani Perry (Beacon Press)
“Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow” – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Penguin Press)
“The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations” – Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf): WINNER
“The Yellow House” – Sarah M. Broom (Grove Atlantic)
“What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays” – Damon Young (HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author
“American Spy” – Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)
“I Am Dance: Words and Images of the Black Dancer” – Hal Banfield (Author), Javier Vasquez (Illustrator), (Literary Revolutionary): WINNER
“More Than Pretty: Doing The Soul Work To Uncover Your True Beauty ” – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
“Such A Fun Age” – Kiley Reid (Penguin Publishing Group)
“The Farm” – Joanne Ramos (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Autobiography
“Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System” – Cyntoia Brown-Long (Atria Books)
“Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward” – Valerie Jarrett (Viking Press)
“More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)” – Elaine Welteroth (Viking Press): WINNER
“My Name Is Prince” – Randee St. Nicholas (HarperCollins Publishers)
“The Beautiful Ones” – Prince (Author), Dan Piepenbring (Edited by), (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional
“Inspire Your Home: Easy, Affordable Ideas to Make Every Room Glamorous” – Farah Merhi (Tiller Press)
“Letters to the Finishers (who struggle to finish)” – Candace E. Wilkins (New Season Books)
“More Than Pretty: Doing the Soul Work that Uncovers Your True Beauty” – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
“Vegetables Unleashed” – José Andres (HarperCollins Publishers)
“Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, And Opportunity For Black Women In America” – Karen Arrington (Author), Joanna Price (Illustrator), Sheryl Taylor (Forward) (Mango Publishing): WINNER

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry
“A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland” – DaMaris B. Hill (Bloomsbury Publishing)
“Felon: Poems” – Reginald Dwayne Betts (W.W. Norton Company): WINNER
“Honeyfish” – Lauren K. Alleyne (New Issues Poetry and Prose)
“Mistress” – Chet’la Sebree (New Issue Poetry and Prose)
“The Tradition” – Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children
“A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation” – Barry Wittenstein (Author), Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator), (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House Publishing Inc)
“Hair Love” – Matthew A. Cherry (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Kokila)
“Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment” – Parker Curry (Author), Jessica Curry (Author), Brittany Jackson (Illustrator), (Aladdin Books)
“Ruby Finds a Worry” – Tom Percival (Bloomsbury Publishing)
“Sulwe” – Lupita Nyong’o (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Simon & Schuster, BFYR): WINNER

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens
“Around Harvard Square” – C.J. Farley (Akashic Books): WINNER

“Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl’s Brave Fight to Walk” – Meredith Davis (Author), Rebeka Uwitonze (Author), (Scholastic Inc.)
“Hot Comb” – Ebony Flowers (Author), Ebony Flowers (Illustrator), (Drawn and Quarterly)
“I’m Not Dying with You Tonight” – Gilly Segal (Author), Kimberly Jones (Author), (Sourcebooks Fire)
“The Forgotten Girl” – India Hill Brown (Scholastic Inc.)

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Box Office: "Bad Boys For Life" Survives A Slow Weekend At The Movies


The weekend was full of flops.

The box office suffered from an abysmal turnout this weekend; the worst it’s seen in 15 years according to Comscore. 

Likely a result of lining up with the Super Bowl, both Rhythm Section, and Gretel and Hansel suffered poor box office figures out of the gate. According to VarietyRhythem Section only secured $2.8 million, while Gretal and Hansel earned $6 million.

Rhythm Section, despite negative critical consensus, has a strong cast that includes Blake Lively, Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown. The plot follows Lively, who is on a revenge mission against those responsible for the death of her family. 

Gretal and Hansel is a reimagined take on the iconic Brothers Grimm tale, Hansel and Gretal. The IMDb plot synopsis reads, “A long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.” Reviews are not much stronger here than Rhythm Section. The film has a 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Bad Boys for Life, on the other hand, has stayed strong. The Will Smith and Martin Lawrence-led action-comedy pulled in another $17.6 million in its third weekend of release. This brings the film’s total earnings to $148 million.

For more on the box office results from this weekend, head to Variety.

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DJ Khaled Anticipates An Oscar Win Since Linking With Michael Bay For New Project


DJ Khaled’s got more on the way.

We think it’s fair to say that DJ Khaled has kicked off the new decade in a major way. The “Wild Thoughts” producer welcomed his second child, won his first Grammy, debuted his acting chops in Bad Boys 3 and paid a visit to Drake‘s Toronto mansion (that inspired his next home) for a secret project.

DJ Khaled Anticipates An Oscar Win Since Linking With Michael Bay For New Project
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Khaled isn’t even close to being done since he’s shared on Instagram that he’s got another project on the way that’s not a record. The mega-producer posted a clip to Instagram that sees him in a different kind of studio with director Michael Bay, clearly cookin’ something up. The lengthy caption details Khaled’s accomplishments so far and how grateful he is for his success. “Just got my GRAMMY now I’m in studio wit @michaelbay and we not making a record today we making a movie ? I WANT A OSCAR !!!!!!! BE PATIENT ILL GET ONE!” he wrote.

“My last 2 weeks has been so amazing! I was in the bad boys for life movie ? acting wit @willsmith @martinlawrence wow ! now I’m working wit @michaelbay wow. Than I’ve been blessed to have a healthy baby boy ! I’m a father of 2 boys ! Wow ! Then went to go see @champagnepapi on a top secert mission wow! and then I WON A GRAMMY! Wow! #WETHEBEST GOD IS THE GREATEST!”

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Box Office: "Bad Boys For Life" Stays Ahead, "The Turning" Flops Horrifically


There were highs and lows to this weekend’s box office.

Bad Boys for Life is still thriving in its second weekend at the box office, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The film led Friday’s chart with $8.9 million, meaning it is projected to end the weekend with upwards $30 million or more. If correct, the film should easily clear $100 million domestically by the end of the weekend. The Will Smith and Martin Lawerence-led film secured $59 million during opening weekend.

Sam Mendes’ 1917 should also pass $100 million by the weekend’s end. The promising best picture contender is expected to finish with another $14 million. The film took home the top prize at PGA Awards and is nominated for a handful of Oscars including Best Picture. The film was directed to appear as if it was shot in one long take.

Finn Wolfhard’s The Turning is looking like a complete flop. The film has been given an F rating on Cinemascore and has a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Wolfhard is best known for his work as Mike on Netflix’s Stranger Things. Mackenzie Davis and the brilliant Brooklynn Prince also star.

The Gentlemen, starring Matthews McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong and Colin Farrell, also debuts this weekend and is projected to finish with $10 million.

Check out more information on the box office at The Hollywood Reporter.

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The Essential Guide To "Morbius" Backstory, Enemies, and MCU Connections


Familiarize yourself with a look at the upcoming movie adaptation of “Morbius The Living Vampire” and where the Jared Leto film fits into the broader Sony/MCU canon.

The trailer for Sony’s Morbius should’ve been anticipated. Whether Martin Scorcese likes it or not, comic book movies are now an ingrained part of the cinematic world and the latest new property to come down the pipeline takes things into previously uncharted territory. Two years removed from their last attempt to expand their roster with the Tom Hardy-starring Venom, Sony is primed to return with another character that’s walked a very fine line between hero and villain.

Set to be unveiled this summer, Morbius’ forthcoming release will be Jared Leto’s second attempt at portraying a cherished comic book character. After his tattooed and toned interpretation of The Joker was met with a mixed response from fans and the studio itself, the actor/Thirty Seconds To Mars frontman has signed on to portray the infamous living vampire. Helmed by Swedish director Daniel Espinosa—famed as Child 44 and purported Venom prequel LIFE— its brief teaser trailer has left many entry-level Marvel fans wondering where this mysterious character ties into the world they’ve come to know.  

Created by former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Morbius’ origins date all the way back to 1971 in The Amazing Spiderman #101-102. Originally, the character was modelled after actor Jack Palance and hailed from Greece. Like other famed Marvel alter egos such as Donald Blake (Thor), Reed Richards and Otto Octavius, Morbius comes from a medical background as a world-renowned, PHD-sporting biologist that set out to find a cure for his rare blood condition. Brought about by combining electroshock therapy with the DNA of vampire bats, a make-or-break experiment went awry and resulted in him killing his lab assistant on the spot. Imbued with many of the powers and afflictions that are synonymous with the mythical beings, an important distinction is that Michael is a “pseudo” or “living” vampire and as such, his bite turns his victims into these same hybrid creatures. 

The Essential Guide To "Morbius" Backstory, Enemies, and MCU Connections

 Tullio M. Puglia/Getty Images

After hopping on a ship to America and feasting on the blood of the entire crew, Morbius arrives in New York and finds himself entangled in a battle with not only Spider-Man, but Dr. Curt Connors’ The Lizard. Taking place shortly after Spidey had grown four extra arms, the arc is eventually resolved when one encounter sees the friendly neighborhood wallcrawler extracting a blood sample from the vampire and ridding himself of his new mutation.  Since then, Morbius has became a trusty staple of the comic book universe, flitting between both sides of the hero-villain divide and getting into skirmishes with everyone from The X-Men and Ghost Rider. The subject of his own 32 issue run from 1992-1995, he even sank his fangs into Blade back in 1999. Enlisted by Dr. Strange as a member of The Midnight Sons in order to wage war against the demonic Lilith, Morbius also had a hand in the comic book edition of Civil War, tasked with getting the aforementioned vampire hunter’s signature for the “superhero registration act” by S .H.I.E.L.D.

Although most Morbius-oriented storylines have played out across inked panels, Leto isn’t the first man to take on the role. The living vampire has been briefly brought to life in animated and live-action productions. Previously depicted in a deleted ending to Wesley Snipes’ Blade, this fleeting 1-minute scene—which can be seen on YouTube—was intended to set the “living vampire” up as the sequel’s central antagonist before the studio opted in favour of Jared Nomak and Damaskinos. Older viewers may also recall the character through his brief spell on the heralded Spiderman: The Animated Series. Rendered in a more Transylvanian vampire tradition, viewers witnessed his origin story take shape as a result of a bat interfering with a science experiment, leading the new and improved Morbius on a relentless hunt for “plasma” — not to mention in hot pursuit of Spidey’s love interest Felicia Hardy. While that was watered down for younger audiences, the new movie is not yet classified but the success of previous R-rated Sony outings such as Deadpool and Logan could lead them down a suitably gritter path.

The Essential Guide To "Morbius" Backstory, Enemies, and MCU Connections

Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Beyond altering his early years from living under the tyranny of an abusive mother to a horrific spell at boarding school, some of Morbius’ powers mapped out in the trailer are consistent with what we’ve seen in the comics. After a brief glimpse of the transformation that he describes as “not exactly legal,”  Leto cites increased strength, speed and the use of echolocation as well as the burden that comes with his newfound gifts— “an overpowering urge to consume blood.”

We also see Adria Arjorna in the role of Martine Bancroft, a fellow biochemist and, in the source material at least, Michael’s fiancé. On top of that, the film marks the first appearance of Tyrese as Simon Stroud. A CIA operative turned S.H.I.E.LD Agent within the comic books, the kinetic armor around his forearm would suggest that he could be acting on behalf of the shadowy organization from the outset. From there, the Fur Elise soundtracked teaser gives us a glimpse of Matt Smith. The third Doctor Who alumni to enter the MCU behind David Tennant (Jessica Jones) and Christopher Eccleston (Thor: The Dark World), he’ll be playing the role of Loxias Crown, otherwise known as Hunger. According to Marvel, Crown “benefits from experiments conducted on the Living Vampire Morbius and becomes the Vampiric Being known as Hunger, whose bloodlust may outweigh his unwilling maker.”

Although unconfirmed, Morbius’ previous storylines mean that these invasive tests could be conducted by comic book villain Doctor Paine, a sadistic physician that nurses a morbid fascination with Morbius and even held him captive to see what’d occur if he was deprived of blood. Intriguing as this all is on its own, the combination of a title card that stipulates “In association with Marvel” and a few subtle hints to the wider MCU has amplified the chatter surrounding the film. Towards the trailer’s final moments, fans were taken aback by the sight of Michael Keaton reprising his role as Adrian Toomes, otherwise identified as the shunted salvager-turned-malevolent Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Aside from inadvertently giving us the chance to see Batman and The Joker share the screen in a Marvel production, the appearance of the Chitauri-tech-powered villain implies that Morbius could have broader implications for the Sony universe/MCU relationship.

Beyond wild theorising from the fandom, an opportunity for further blurring of the lines between the studios was actually mentioned by Marvel’s cinematic mastermind Kevin Fiege himself. Amid his adulation over the deal they’d struck to keep Tom Holland’s web-slinger in the MCU stable, the acclaimed film producer suggested that the iconic character that would be crucial in fostering a gateway between the two on-screen worlds: “Spider-Man is a powerful icon and hero whose story crosses all ages and audiences around the globe. He also happens to be the only hero with the superpower to cross cinematic universes, so as Sony continues to develop their own Spidey-verse you never know what surprises the future might hold.”

As if that wasn’t enough, we also get a fully-fledged Spider-Man Easter egg in the form of a mural on a wall that’s been underscored with the words “murderer.” An allusion to the post-credits scene g of Spider Man: Far From Home in which Mysterio incriminates Peter Parker from beyond the grave, the inclusion of these two characters and the rumored appearance of JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson raises the question of whether this film will have a far more robust grounding in the MCU than Venom had. Although the likeness of Spider-Man bears a greater resemblance to Tobey Maguire’s time as the crimefighter than Tom Holland’s Tony Stark-crafted suit, Feige’s comments take on even greater significance when you consider that Mahershala Ali’s Blade reboot is in the works for MCU’s Phase 5.  Whether it comes in a subtle visual nod or reference in the dialogue, don’t be surprised to feel the presence of the sword-wielding half-vampire and long-time adversary of Morbius within the movie.

Months away from its scheduled release, it’s hard to predict whether this film will be a runaway success for Sony or another misstep in the vein of recent efforts such as X-Men’s Dark Phoenix. However, what’s clear is that its possible connections to the MCU and the insertion of a more macabre element to the comic book movie canon will have cinemagoers flocking to see Morbius in droves.

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"Bad Boys For Life" Wins Box Office Battle Over "1917" & "Dolittle"


Bad Boys ruled the box office.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reunited for a long-awaited third installment in the Bad Boys franchise this weekend and helped the film pull in $59 million in earnings, according to Variety.

With expectations set between $38 million to $45 million, it was an undeniably successful weekend for Bad Boys For Life. Overseas, the latest installment in the franchise earned $37.3 million, bringing its total to just under $100 million.

The film is also seeing critical success with a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and a 97% rating from fans.

After battling through production woes and a series of delays, Dolittle is off to a disappointing start. While the $22 million it earned isn’t terrible, it pales in comparison to the production costs that near $180 million. Adding in international earnings, the global box office figures for Dolittle land at $50 million.

As for critical reception, Dolittle sits at an abysmal 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Fans rate the film much higher at 76%.

In its second weekend of wide release, 1917, recorded another $22.1 million in earnings as well as a handful of Oscar nominations and the top prize at the PGA Awards. In particular, the film is being praised for its unique direction by Sam Mendes, who created the film to appear as if it was filmed in one shot.

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"Bad Boys 4" Is Reportedly Already In The Works


Now that’s what we like to hear!

For those preparing to see Bad Boys For Life, the third sequel in the Bad Boys franchise that officially hits theaters today, it’s looking like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are already in talks to return for yet another film if these recents reports that we’re hearing are true.

Will Smith alluded to the possibility of a fourth film during the CRWN Talk that we were fortunate to have attended last week, telling TIDAL’s Elliott Wilson that if fans liked BBFL that Bad Boys 4 was definitely possible. Well, according to an exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter, writer Chris Bremner has been recruited to pen the new script. Bremmer, who also worked on the Bad Boys For Life screenplay, is expected to be joined by producer Jerry Bruckheimer as they’ll be also working on National Treasure 3. Sequel season, FTW!

Are you excited to see Bad Boys For Life? Would you be down for a Bad Boys 4? Watch the trailer for the new film below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments:

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Seth Rogen Reveals He Helped Rewrite "Bad Boys II" To Add More Comedy

Seth Rogen's BEEN making us laugh.

A lot of people may argue that Bad Boys II is better than the first film in the franchise. One of the leading stars Will Smith recently detailed how director Michael Bay purposely wanted the first movie to be more serious and directed him to "just stand there and be hard" as opposed to making comedic faces to Martin Lawrence's character's reactions. 

Seth Rogen Reveals He Helped Rewrite "Bad Boys II" To Add More Comedy
Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The second film has a lot more jokes and clever punchlines and a lot of people were today-years-old when they found out that the Superbad actor Seth Rogen had something to do with that. The revelation was made on Twitter when one user made it clear that he thinks the second movie is way better, prompting Seth to reply: "I helped rewrite bad boys 2."

He added in another tweet: "Judd was rewriting it and me and Evan were broke so he gave us a bit of money to help. I don’t remember much but we all definitely wrote the joke where they don’t know the words to the song, and where Martin shoots the machine gun in the car by accident. And probably many more..."

So there you have it, Seth contributed to your laughs in the second film. Only time will tell how funny the third film is

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Should Lil Wayne Retire After "Funeral?"


Is now the optimum time for Lil Wayne to say goodbye?

Dating back to his tenure as a “Hot Boy,” Dwayne Carter went from Cash Money’s resident prodigy in 1996 to claiming to be the “Best Rapper Alive” within a dizzying ten-year period. From there, he resuscitated the genre at a time where many believed it to be DOA and even dramatized those life-preserving maneuvers on “Dr. Carter.” Undeterred, even as his own label seemed hellbent on derailing him. Closing in on his 25th year in the game, Tunechi aims to deliver a new project album Funeral this February. And if a September 2019 interview with Vibe is to be believed, he’s approaching the art form he’s long since perfected with a renewed zeal.

“It’s different now,” he explained. “I can’t wait to get in the studio now every night, just to see what I can come up with. [Before] it was just me going to the studio and saying, let me kill ten more songs and then I’m going to go home or do whatever I was doing. Now, it’s let me see what I come up with. Self-discovery, rebirth – call it whatever you want to call it but it feels awesome, I swear to God.” Creating with a clear-cut sense of purpose, Weezy F’s unwavering focus adds fuel to speculation over whether or not this album could serve as the perfect opportunity for the NOLA veteran’s fond farewell.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that Funeral has a symbolic meaning based on the title alone. But when you take both the stop-start nature of his past five years and the contradictory reports of impending retirement, it becomes not only a plausible but a potentially wise course of action. For Weezy, retirement is a subject on which he’s voiced some strong, albeit oxymoronic, feelings. Beginning a decade deep into his career, Wayne attempted to reconcile with the concept of eventually riding off into the sunset during a skit on 2006’s Dedication 2. In that era, he believed little would be gained from quitting when he’s always going to need a vehicle to express himself. “You retire out when you die out straight up, cause you never retire out what you do,” he explained. “Meaning, if you put so much into– if what you do is your life, like mine. You know what I mean like, my career is my life.”

Should Lil Wayne Retire After "Funeral?"

Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images

Incapable of fathoming a world without hip-hop, this stands at odds with a 2011 interview with GQ in which he formally flipped the hourglass towards his 35th year.“I have been doing this for eighteen years,” he reflects. “That’s reason number one. I have accomplished all that I have set out to accomplish and more. Also, I have a label, and I’ve only put out two artists [Drake and Nicki Minaj]. I have a lot more work to do, and it’d be selfish to not focus on being the boss and focus on their projects.” Supplemented by wishing to spend more time with his kids, Weezy would double down on these sweeping claims during an appearance on Katie Couric’s talk show, claiming that “I know I’ll be ready to retire at thirty-five because I am so ready to retire now!”

As the prospect of The Carter V began to circulate in 2014, Wayne believed that the album, in its original incarnation, would represent his last standalone project (though he’d still pitch in when required by his labelmates). Pledging to “leave gracefully” on Twitter in 2016  amid the ensuing war with Cash Money, the constraints he was under made it possible that would Wayne end his career on an embittered note. Actively attacking his label, the eventual release of C5 was cathartic for both artist and his loyal fans. As such, the elation that he felt might have contributed to Weezy rescinding those previous remarks to Billboard in 2018, as he claimed, “I do think about retirement. I think about how I don’t think I ever will.”

Granted a new wave of enthusiasm at 37, it raises the question of whether his thoughts of bowing out were a by-product of the internal friction with Birdman. Now, he’s back to the heady days of “mixtape Wayne” where metaphors and exquisite wordplay rolled off the tongue at high volume. But no matter who you are, the law of diminishing returns is important to be mindful of. Among the elite-level wordsmiths that operate without pen or pad since he purged everything he’d written on “10,000 Bars”, Weezy’s skills have remained indisputable. Dropping 77 songs and two projects in 2018 alone, Wayne has always kept his nose to the grindstone and how this sets him apart is something he’s been cognizant of since The Carter 3. “I used to tell Cortez [Bryant, manager], ‘my work ethic is going to sell me,'” he told Rolling Stone in 2009. “Nobody ain’t doing what I’ve done. People will have to recognize that.”

Should Lil Wayne Retire After "Funeral?"

Christopher Polk/Getty Images

This has remained true to this day. Compounded by years of anticipation, The Carter V skyrocketed to the top of the charts upon arrival, racking up first-week sales of 480,000. Yet artistically, the record wasn’t without its sticking points. Which, aside from its oppressive length, centralized around the feeling that both he and audience had been there and done that. Save for a few moments of self-reflection on “Famous” or “Let It All Work Out” and the plaintive narration from his mother Jacinda, C5 is overrun with punchlines or puerile bars that fall on the wrong side of familiarity. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, it seems that the forthcoming Funeral will be a fork in the road for Wayne’s career. Either he sticks to his guns and potentially teeters towards stagnancy, or he overhauls his style and potentially faces the wrath of critics and fans. 

Infamously slaughtered for his attempt at reinvention on the rock-indebted Rebirth, any fretfulness he’d feel about switching up would be understandable. But that doesn’t make it any less of a necessity. As he’s proved at irregular intervals of his career, Weezy heading into a more demure, less youthfully brazen direction a la latter-day Jay-Z, could yield greatness. Case in point, his verse on Solange’s “Mad” from 2016’s A Seat At The Table. Not only rappelling him into the view of snobbier audiences that had likely expelled him from consideration years earlier, but the introspective look at his previous attempt at suicide also demonstrated an aptitude for soul-baring lyricism:

“Are you mad ’cause the judge ain’t give me more time?
And when I attempted suicide, I didn’t die
I remember how mad I was on that day
Man, you gotta let it go before it get up in the way”

Should Lil Wayne Retire After "Funeral?"

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Similar to the Hurricane Katrina-inspired “Tie My Hands,” his feature on Nas & Damien Marley’s “My Generation Will Make The Change” or the touching ode to his father that is “Everything” from 2000’s Lights Out, Wayne has always been capable of appealing to the heart. Yet beyond emulating the change in tact that his own GOAT pick pulled off on 4:44, Weezy should perhaps consider a line uttered during Hov’s own retirement phase: “they say they never really miss you till you’re dead or you gone, so on that note I’m leaving after this song.”

These lines from The Black Album’s “December 4th” allude to something that’s been inapplicable to Weezy’s career. Between mixtapes, EPs, compilation projects, a collaborative album, his own solo studio album discography and his time with The Hot Boys, Dwayne Carter has released a grand total of 41 bodies of work. As a result, Wayne has been an omnipresence and aside from 1998 and 2001, has released something every single year that he’s been an artist. Therefore, there’s every chance that these prolific levels of productivity haven’t given us a chance to properly digest the scope of his influence.

Alongside 2 Chainz’ remarks that he wouldn’t be here “if it wasn’t for Wayne,” 2013 saw ASAP Rocky rally against what he saw as a culture of negligence towards Tunechi’s contributions. “Are we forgetting that Wayne made everybody switch their flow up and start using the E’s and R’s, and “I’m ir-regul-ar, seg-ular”? he told Complex. “Are we forgetting that Wayne changed hip-hop, too? Are we forgetting that he made all these motherfuckers want to have tattoos? Are we forgetting that? It wasn’t Wiz, it was Wayne… This is a guy who went from being the youngest underdog in his crew to saving his company, and saving his “Daddy.” I’m not a fucking Lil Wayne dickrider, I’m just speaking facts.”

Should Lil Wayne Retire After "Funeral?"

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Although Wayne has retained this status as a top-tier MC, there is something to Rocky’s suggestion that his tangible impact on the game has been overlooked on account of his continued presence. Consequently, this state of affairs takes us all the way back to his comments on Dedication 2. Ever the deep thinker, Wayne unknowingly foretold his own future on the skit and made the case as to why Funeral could be an appropriate time for him to call it a career: “Y’all gonna remember that that was a rapper. But hopefully, I’ll go down known for something different. Not different, but known for something else also, you know what I mean.”

Both gifted and afflicted with one of hip-hop’s greatest drives, Wayne’s influence— whether that be style or the careers of Young Money artists—often falls to the wayside as the hip-hop consumer focuses on what’s coming down the pipeline from “The Martian” himself. And by the looks of things, this can’t be righted while he’s still an active participant. With the world’s collective attention still in the palm of his hand, there’s a lot to be said for Funeral acting as Wayne’s offramp to the same high road that The Game and Fat Joe have recently claimed to be travelling on. Having given us more music than many record labels have ever produced, Lil Wayne deciding to draw a line under his career while at the top may be bittersweet, but no one would feel short-changed.

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Critics’ Choice Awards: See Who Came Out On Top

See the night's top winners.

Sunday night, the 25th annual Critics Choice awards were staged in Santa Monica as host Taye Diggs emceed a ceremony meant to honor the best in film and television this past year as decided by the Critics' Choice Association.

The night's biggest honor went to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the film was named best picture while Joaquin Pheonix doubled up with a win as best actor for his Joker role, a reprise of his win at the Golden Globes last week. Other notable wins include the tie for Best Director, won by Bong Joon Ho and Sam Mendes for Parasite and 1917, respectively. Among nominees, The Irishman led with 14 total nominations. On the television side, When They See Us earned six nods. Once again, Netflix found itself at the forefront of nominations, clocking in at 61 and beating out HBO's 33 nominations and outlasting Amazon's tally of 14.

Eddie Murphy enjoyed this year's Lifetime Achievement Award while Kristen Bell was given the #SeeHer Award. 

See the full list of winners below.

BEST PICTURE

1917
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (WINNER)
Parasite
Uncut Gems

BEST ACTOR

Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Robert De Niro, The Irishman
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Eddie Murphy, Dolemite Is My Name
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker (WINNER)
Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

BEST ACTRESS

Awkwafina, The Farewell
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Lupita Nyong'o, Us
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Renée Zellweger, Judy (WINNER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (WINNER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Laura Dern, Marriage Story (WINNER)
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Florence Pugh, Little Women
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS

Julia Butters, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit (WINNER)
Noah Jupe, Honey Boy
Thomasin McKenzie, Jojo Rabbit
Shahadi Wright Joseph, Us
Archie Yates, Jojo Rabbit

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE

Bombshell
The Irishman (WINNER)
Knives Out
Little Women
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Parasite

BEST DIRECTOR

Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Bong Joon Ho, Parasite (WINNER - TIE)
Sam Mendes, 1917 (WINNER - TIE)
Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, Uncut Gems
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Farewell -- Lulu Wang
Knives Out -- Rian Johnson
Marriage Story -- Noah Baumbach
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Quentin Tarantino (WINNER)
Parasite -- Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood -- Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue
The Irishman -- Steven Zaillian
Joker -- Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
Jojo Rabbit -- Taika Waititi
Little Women -- Greta Gerwig (WINNER)
The Two Popes -- Anthony McCarten

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Ford v Ferrari -- Phedon Papamichael
The Irishman -- Rodrigo Prieto
Joker -- Lawrence Sher
The Lighthouse -- Jarin Blaschke
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Robert Richardson
1917 -- Roger Deaki (WINNER)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Downton Abbey -- Donal Woods, Gina Cromwell
The Irishman -- Bob Shaw, Regina Graves
Joker -- Mark Friedberg, Kris Moran
Little Women -- Jess Gonchor, Claire Kaufman
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh (WINNER)
Parasite -- Lee Ha Jun
1917 -- Dennis Gassner, Lee Sandales

BEST EDITING

The Irishman -- Thelma Schoonmaker
Ford v Ferrari -- Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Fred Raskin
Parasite -- Yang Jinmo
Uncut Gems -- Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie
1917 -- Lee Smith (WINNER)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Dolemite Is My Name -- Ruth E. Carter (WINNER)
Downton Abbey -- Anna Robbins
The Irishman -- Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson
Little Women -- Jacqueline Durran
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Arianne Phillips
Rocketman -- Julian Day

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP

Bombshell (WINNER)
Dolemite Is My Name
The Irishman
Joker
Judy
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Rocketman

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

1917
Ad Astra
The Aeronauts
Avengers: Endgame (WINNER)
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
The Lion King

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Abominable
Frozen II
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Missing Link
Toy Story 4 (WINNER)

BEST ACTION MOVIE

1917
Avengers: Endgame (WINNER)
Ford v Ferrari
John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum
Spider-Man: Far From Home

BEST COMEDY

Booksmart
Dolemite Is My Name (WINNER)
The Farewell
Jojo Rabbit
Knives Out

BEST SCI-FI OR HORROR MOVIE

Ad Astra
Avengers: Endgame
Midsommar
Us (WINNER)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Atlantics
Les Misérables
Pain and Glory
Parasite (WINNER)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

BEST SONG

"Glasgow (No Place Like Home)" -- Wild Rose (WINNER - TIE)
"(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" -- Rocketman (WINNER - TIE)
"I'm Standing With You" -- Breakthrough
"Into the Unknown" -- Frozen II
"Speechless" -- Aladdin
"Spirit" -- The Lion King
"Stand Up" -- Harriet

BEST SCORE

Michael Abels -- Us
Alexandre Desplat -- Little Women
Hildur Guðnadóttir -- Joker (WINNER)
Randy Newman -- Marriage Story
Thomas Newman -- 1917
Robbie Robertson -- The Irishman

TELEVISION

BEST DRAMA SERIES

The Crown
David Makes Man
Game of Thrones
The Good Fight
Pose
Succession (WINNER)
This Is Us
Watchmen

BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Sterling K. Brown,This Is Us
Mike Colter, Evil
Paul Giamatti, Billions
Kit Harington, Game of Thrones
Freddie Highmore, The Good Doctor
Tobias Menzies, The Crown
Billy Porter, Pose
Jeremy Strong, Succession (WINNER)

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Christine Baranski, The Good Fight
Oli Colman,The Crown
Jodie Comer, Killing Eve
Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies
Regina King, Watchmen (WINNER)
Mj Rodriguez, Pose
Sarah Snook, Succession
Zendaya, Euphoria

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Asante Blackk, This Is Us
Billy Crudup, The Morning Show (WINNER)
Asia Kate Dillon, Billions
Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones
Justin Hartley, This Is Us
Delroy Lindo, The Good Fight
Tim Blake Nelson, Watchmen

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Helena Bonham Carter, The Crown
Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones
Laura Dern, Big Little Lies
Audra McDonald, The Good Fight
Jean Smart, Watchmen (WINNER)
Meryl Streep, Big Little Lies

BEST COMEDY SERIES

Barry
Fleabag (WINNER)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Mom
One Day at a Time
PEN15
Schitt's Creek

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Ted Danson, The Good Place
Walton Goggins, The Unicorn
Bill Hader, Barry (WINNER)
Eugene Levy, Schitt's Creek
Paul Rudd, Living with Yourself
Bashir Salahuddin, Sherman's Showcase
Ramy Youssef, Ramy

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Christina Applegate, Dead to Me
Alison Brie, GLOW
Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Kirsten Dunst, On Becoming a God in Central Florida
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Catherine O'Hara, Schitt's Creek
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag (WINNER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Anthony Carrigan, Barry
William Jackson Harper, The Good Place
Daniel Levy, Schitt's Creek
Nico Santos, Superstore
Andrew Scott, Fleabag (WINNER)
Henry Winkler, Barry

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Alex Borstein, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (WINNER)
D'Arcy Carden, The Good Place
Sian Clifford, Fleabag
Betty Gilpin, GLOW
Rita Moreno, One Day at a Time
Annie Murphy, Schitt's Creek
Molly Shannon, The Other Two

BEST LIMITED SERIES

Catch-22
Chernobyl
Fosse/Verdon
The Loudest Voice
Unbelievable
When They See Us (WINNER)
Years and Years

BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Brexit
Deadwood: The Movie
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (WINNER)
Guava Island
Native Son
Patsy & Loretta

BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Christopher Abbott, Catch-22
Mahershala Ali, True Detective
Russell Crowe, The Loudest Voice
Jared Harris, Chernobyl
Jharrel Jerome, When They See Us (WINNER)
Sam Rockwell, Fosse/Verdon
Noah Wyle, The Red Line

BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Kaitlyn Dever, Unbelievable
Anne Hathaway, Modern Love
Megan Hilty, Patsy & Loretta
Joey King, The Act
Jessie Mueller, Patsy & Loretta
Merritt Wever, Unbelievable
Michelle Williams, Fosse/Verdo (WINNER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Asante Blackk, When They See Us
George Clooney, Catch-22
John Leguizamo, When They See Us
Dev Patel, Modern Love
Jesse Plemons, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
Stellan Skarsgård, Chernobyl (WINNER)
Russell Tovey, Years and Years

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Patricia Arquette, The Act
Marsha Stephanie Blake, When They See Us
Toni Collette, Unbelievable (WINNER)
Niecy Nash, When They See Us
Margaret Qualley, Fosse/Verdon
Emma Thompson, Years and Years
Emily Watson, Chernobyl (HBO)

BEST ANIMATED SERIES

Big Mouth
BoJack Horseman (WINNER)
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
The Simpsons
Undone

BEST TALK SHOW

Desus & Mero
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
The Kelly Clarkson Show
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
The Late Late Show with James Corden
Late Night with Seth Meyers (WINNER)

BEST COMEDY SPECIAL

Amy Schumer: Growing
Jenny Slate: Stage Fright
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear's All in the Family and The Jeffersons (WINNER)
Ramy Youssef: Feelings
Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby
Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia
Wanda Sykes: Not Normal (Netflix)
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2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards Nominees Include Marshmello, Diplo, The Chainsmokers & More

The iHeartRadio Music Awards are gearing up for the 2020 event — and the nominees are in!


Our eyes immediately jump to the dance categories. This year, Dance Artist of the Year nominees include radio-friendly acts Diplo, Kygo, Loud Luxury, Marshmello and The Chainsmokers.

Dance Song of the Year includes: “Body” – Loud Luxury featuring brando, “Close To Me” – Ellie Goulding, Diplo featuring Swae Lee, “Here With Me” – Marshmello featuring Chvrches, “Higher Love” – Kygo & Whitney Houston, and “So Close” – NOTD, Felix Jaehn & Captain Cutsv featuring Georgia Ku.

Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift lead the female nominees with seven nods each. Both are up for Female Artist of the Year. Shawn Mendes also scores seven nominations, including Male Artist of the Year. DrakeLizzo, Post Malone, Lil Nas X, Halsey, Khalid and more are mentioned multiple times.

For its seventh year running, the iHeartRadio Music Awards take place March 29, 2020 at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The broadcast will air live on FOX starting at 8 pm — and simulcast iHeartRadio stations across the country.

Check out the full list of categories and nominees below.

2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards Nominees

SONG OF THE YEAR
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sucker” – Jonas Brothers
“Truth Hurts” – Lizzo

FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Ariana Grande
Billie Eilish
Halsey
Lizzo
Taylor Swift

MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Ed Sheeran
Khalid
Luke Combs
Post Malone
Shawn Mendes

BEST DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR
Dan + Shay
Imagine Dragons
Jonas Brothers
Maroon 5
Panic! At The Disco

BEST COLLABORATION
“Dancing With A Stranger” – Sam Smith & Normani
“Eastside” – Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid
“I Don’t Care” – Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sunflower” – Post Malone & Swae Lee

BEST NEW POP ARTIST
Ava Max
FLETCHER
Lewis Capaldi
Lil Nas X
Lizzo

ALTERNATIVE ROCK SONG OF THE YEAR
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Doin’ Time” – Lana Del Rey
“Ready To Let Go” – Cage The Elephant
“The Hype” – twenty one pilots
“Trampoline” – SHAED

ALTERNATIVE ROCK ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Billie Eilish
Cage The Elephant
Imagine Dragons
Panic! At The Disco
twenty one pilots

BEST NEW ROCK/ALTERNATIVE ROCK ARTIST
Dirty Honey
Dominic Fike
Matt Maeson
SHAED
The Glorious Sons

ROCK SONG OF THE YEAR
“Blue On Black” – Five Finger Death Punch
“Ghost” – Badflower
“Lo/Hi” – The Black Keys
“Monsters” – Shinedown
“S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” – The Glorious Sons

ROCK ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Disturbed
Five Finger Death Punch
Godsmack
Greta Van Fleet
Shinedown

COUNTRY SONG OF THE YEAR
“Beautiful Crazy” – Luke Combs
“GIRL” – Maren Morris
“God’s Country” – Blake Shelton
“The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home” – Justin Moore
“Whiskey Glasses” – Morgan Wallen

COUNTRY ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Carrie Underwood
Dan + Shay
Luke Bryan
Luke Combs
Thomas Rhett

BEST NEW COUNTRY ARTIST
Jimmie Allen
Matt Stell
Morgan Wallen
Riley Green
Runaway June

DANCE SONG OF THE YEAR
“Body” – Loud Luxury featuring brando
“Close To Me” – Ellie Goulding, Diplo featuring Swae Lee
“Here With Me” – Marshmello featuring Chvrches
“Higher Love” – Kygo & Whitney Houston
“So Close” – NOTD, Felix Jaehn & Captain Cutsv featuring Georgia Ku

DANCE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Diplo
Kygo
Loud Luxury
Marshmello
The Chainsmokers

HIP-HOP SONG OF THE YEAR
“Going Bad” – Meek Mill featuring Drake
“Money In The Grave” – Drake featuring Rick Ross
“Money” – Cardi B
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X
“Suge” – DaBaby

HIP-HOP ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Cardi B
Drake
Lil Baby
Meek Mill
Travis Scott

BEST NEW HIP-HOP ARTIST
City Girls
DaBaby
Lil Nas X
Lizzo
Megan Thee Stallion

R&B SONG OF THE YEAR
“Before I Let Go (Homecoming Live Album)” – Beyoncé
“Girls Need Love (Remix)” – Summer Walker & Drake
“No Guidance” – Chris Brown featuring Drake
“Shot Clock” – Ella Mai
“Talk” – Khalid

R&B ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Chris Brown
Ella Mai
H.E.R.
Khalid
Summer Walker

BEST NEW R&B ARTIST
Ari Lennox
LightSkinKeisha
Nicole Bus
Summer Walker
The Bonfyre

LATIN POP/URBAN SONG OF THE YEAR
“Calma” – Pedro Capó & Alicia Keys featuring Farruko
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry featuring Snow
“MIA” – Bad Bunny featuring Drake
“QUE PRETENDES” – J Balvin & Bad Bunny
“Taki Taki” – DJ Snake featuring Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B

LATIN POP/URBAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Bad Bunny
Daddy Yankee
J Balvin
Maluma
Ozuna

BEST NEW LATIN POP/URBAN ARTIST
Camilo
Guaynaa
Lunay
Rosalía
Sech

REGIONAL MEXICAN SONG OF THE YEAR
“¿Por Qué Cambiaste De Opinión” – Calibre 50
“A Través Del Vaso” – Banda Los Sebastianes
“Con Todo Incluido” – La Adictiva Banda San José De Mesillas
“Encantadora” – El Fantasma
“Nada Nuevo” – Christian Nodal

REGIONAL MEXICAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizárraga
Calibre 50
Christian Nodal
El Fantasma
La Arrolladora Banda El Limón

BEST NEW REGIONAL MEXICAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Banda Los Sebastianes
El Fantasma
Fuerza Regida
Kanales
Lenin Ramírez

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
Andrew Watt
Benny Blanco
Finneas
Louis Bell
Max Martin

SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR
Ashley Gorley
Finneas
Frank Dukes
Louis Bell
Savan Kotecha

BEST LYRICS *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“10,000 Hours” – Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber
“7 rings” – Ariana Grande
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Beautiful People” – Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid
“Hot Girl Summer” – Megan Thee Stallion featuring Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign
“Juice” – Lizzo
“Lose You To Love Me” – Selena Gomez
“Nightmare” – Halsey
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Someone You Loved” – Lewis Capaldi
“The Bones” – Maren Morris
“You Need to Calm Down” – Taylor Swift

BEST COVER SONG *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Led Zeppelin – “Black Dog” – Miley Cyrus cover
Ariana Grande – “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” – Lana Del Rey cover
Phil Collins – “Can’t Stop Loving You” – Taylor Swift cover
Sam Smith & Normani – “Dancing With A Stranger” – 5SOS cover
Elvin Bishop – “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” – Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes, Caylee Hammack cover
The Rembrandts – “I’ll Be There For You” – Meghan Trainor cover
Taylor Swift – “Lover” – Keith Urban cover
Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved” – Camila Cabello cover
Jonas Brothers – “Sucker” – Halsey cover
Post Malone – “Sunflower” – Vampire Weekend cover

BEST FAN ARMY *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Agnation – Agnez Mo
Arianators – Ariana Grande
Beliebers – Justin Bieber
BTSArmy – BTS
Camilizers – Camila Cabello
Harries – Harry Styles
Limelights – Why Don’t We
Louies – Louis Tomlinson
MendesArmy – Shawn Mendes
Niallers – Niall Horan
Selenators – Selena Gomez
Swifties – Taylor Swift

BEST MUSIC VIDEO *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“7 rings” – Ariana Grande
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Boy With Luv” – BTS featuring Halsey
“Con Altura” – Rosalía, J Balvin featuring El Guincho
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee & Snow
“Dancing With A Stranger” – Sam Smith & Normani
“I Don’t Care” – Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber
“Kill This Love” – BLACKPINK
“ME!” – Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sucker” – Jonas Brothers

SOCIAL STAR AWARD *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Asher Angel
Cody Orlove
Danielle Cohn
DeStorm Power
King Bach
Montana Tucker
Niki and Gabi
Piper Rockelle
Scotty Sire
Stephanie Poetri
The Moy Boys
Zoe Laverne

BEST REMIX *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish (with Justin Bieber)
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee, Katy Perry featuring Snow
“Good As Hell” – Lizzo featuring Ariana Grande
“Higher Love” – Kygo & Whitney Houston
“Lover” – Taylor Swift featuring Shawn Mendes
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus

 

Photo Rukes.com

 

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"Bad Boys For Life" CRWN Interview: 10 Things We Learned


TIDAL’s CCO Elliott Wilson hosted a sit-down with Will Smith & Martin Lawrence for their first U.S. stop in promotion for “Bad Boys For Life.”

Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are back, y’all! 

Columbia Pictures’ highly-anticipated trilogy in the hit Bad Boys series premieres next week, and to get fans excited TIDAL decided to host an intimate conversation in Harlem at the iconic Apollo Theater with the two stars of Bad Boys For Life, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. As it ended up being the first stop on the press tour here in America, you already know they had a lot to share with the fans who’ve made this dynamic trilogy such an iconic series ever since it debut almost a quarter century ago. HNHH was in the building to get an earful of all the gems they were willing to reveal about Bad Boys 3, and we got all that and tons more. 

"Bad Boys For Life" CRWN Interview: 10 Things We Learned

Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images

Keep scrolling to check out 10 prominent highlights from Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s talk with TIDAL, hosted by seasoned music journalist Elliott Wilson, which includes behind the scenes tales, little known facts about the first two films, how DJ Khaled plays into all of this and if in fact there will be a Bad Boys 4


Fans Are Excited To See Bad Boys For Life — Like, A Lot!

The entire Apollo Theater was packed — there was literally standing room only. It proved that even after 17 years since the last sequel premiered back in 2003, there’s still a very high demand for people to see Will and Martin back in action together on the big screen.

A Good Portion Of Bad Boys and Bad Boys 2 Was Improv

Two key examples that were brought up were scenes from Bad Boys 2: the “date interrogation” and the one where Martin’s character, Marcus Burnett, is tripping off ecstasy. Both actors joked about the guy who plays Reggie in that scene being so genuinely scared that he never acted in another role again. We checked the IMDb page for the actor, Dennis Greene, and they were right — absolutely nothing!

"Bad Boys For Life" CRWN Interview: 10 Things We Learned

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

SPOILER ALERT: The Movie Begins With A “Shock” And A “Break-Up”

While no big spoilers were given away during the sit-down, Will and Martin did allude to a “big shocker” at the beginning that might make you tear up, as well as a “breakup” scene between the two partners that will test their friendship. Sounds like big drama!

Prince Had A Club In Miami That Martin & Will Partied At During The First Bad Boys Film

Both guys say it lived up to its name, with Martin even saying that he’d “have to kill you” if he shared memories from partying at the Miami hotspot.

SPOILER ALERT: The Opening Scene In Bad Boys For Life Reveals That Marcus Becomes A Grandfather

In one of the few scenes they actually showed to the crown on big screens set up throughout the Apollo Theater, we see the guys embracing on a high speed chase only to end up at a hospital to witness the birth of Marcus Burnett’s (played by Martin Lawrence) grandchild. It’s pretty charming to say the least.

DJ Khaled Has A Role In The Film As “Manny The Butcher”

Will said that Khaled was so excited to be a part of the film that he showed up “4 weeks before his scene” just to hang out on the set.

Bad Boys Was Originally Given To Martin Lawrence First, Who Was Then Tasked With Finding His Own Co-Star

Martin says his sister was the one who suggested Will. They eventually had dinner to see if the chemistry was there, and within five minutes Martin says knew he had met his match. Will confirmed this and said the chemistry had to be on point like the first two films in order to even make the third one. He concluded that “friendship” is the key to Bad Boys 3, even quoting the series’ classic slogan,We ride together, we die together — Bad Boys for life!”

Dealing with Michael Bay on the first two Bad Boys films was tough for both Martin & Will

The tension was real on set. Both guys confirmed that Bay just simply didn’t have “people skills”  and they each had to learn how to work with him. Will tells a hilarious story about almost attacking Michael Bay on the set of Bad Boys 2, with Martin having to literally hold him back by the waist.

Hip-Hop Was A Huge Influence For The Bad Boys Series And The Personal Careers For Both Lead Actors

With Will Smith being a rapper first, and Martin embracing Hip-Hop dating back to the House Party films, both men credit rap culture to being one of the key components to even bring them to a film series like Bad Boys. Martin brought up The Notorious B.I.G. as an example, saying that during that now-classic episode of Martin where Biggie makes a guest appearance that they spoke extensively about his relationship with Faith Evans. Will went a step further and added that he actually met Biggie for the first time on the night he died.

Bad Boys 4 Is 100% Possible

Without giving any official confirmation, Will Smith said that if people liked Bad Boys 3 that he would definitely be up for Bad Boys 4. Fingers crossed! 

Be sure to catch Martin Lawrence and Will Smith return for Bad Boys For Life when it hits theaters next Friday (January 17).

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2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards Nominations: The Full List


The nominations for the 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards are in and they’re stacked with the talent.

The 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards are almost upon us and the nominations are full of pop-culture icons in the making. With record-breaking moments coming from the likes of artists like Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish, Cardi B, and the award show reaching its seventh consecutive year in production, iHeart isn’t going to skip out on the opportunity to give the hottest musicians of the past year their flowers. 

Artists like Travis Scott, Cardi B, Drake, and more will be battling it out for Hip-Hop Artist of the Year while Lizzo, Lil Nas X, and Fletcher will be going head-to-head for the Best New Pop Artist honors of the year. DaBaby, Megan Thee Stallion, City Girls, and more have received nomination honors for Best New Hip-Hop Artist of the Year.  Post Malone, KhalidEd Sheeran have been granted the honor of being nominated for Best Male Artist of the Year while Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and others will duke it out for the women’s Artist of the Year honors. 

The 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards hosted at the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall in Los Angeles, CA will be taking place on Sunday, March 29, 2020, at 5 P.M. PST. Check out the full list of nominations for the 2020 iHeartRadio Music Awards below. 

SONG OF THE YEAR
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sucker” – Jonas Brothers
“Truth Hurts” – Lizzo

FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Ariana Grande
Billie Eilish
Halsey
Lizzo
Taylor Swift

MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Ed Sheeran
Khalid
Luke Combs
Post Malone
Shawn Mendes

BEST DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR
Dan + Shay
Imagine Dragons
Jonas Brothers
Maroon 5
Panic! At The Disco

BEST COLLABORATION
“Dancing With A Stranger” – Sam Smith & Normani
“Eastside” – Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid
“I Don’t Care” – Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sunflower” – Post Malone & Swae Lee

BEST NEW POP ARTIST
Ava Max
FLETCHER
Lewis Capaldi
Lil Nas X
Lizzo

ALTERNATIVE ROCK SONG OF THE YEAR
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Doin’ Time” – Lana Del Rey
“Ready To Let Go” – Cage The Elephant
“The Hype” – twenty one pilots
“Trampoline” – SHAED

ALTERNATIVE ROCK ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Billie Eilish
Cage The Elephant
Imagine Dragons
Panic! At The Disco
twenty one pilots

BEST NEW ROCK/ALTERNATIVE ROCK ARTIST
Dirty Honey
Dominic Fike
Matt Maeson
SHAED
The Glorious Sons

ROCK SONG OF THE YEAR
“Blue On Black” – Five Finger Death Punch
“Ghost” – Badflower
“Lo/Hi” – The Black Keys
“Monsters” – Shinedown
“S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” – The Glorious Sons

ROCK ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Disturbed
Five Finger Death Punch
Godsmack
Greta Van Fleet
Shinedown

COUNTRY SONG OF THE YEAR
“Beautiful Crazy” – Luke Combs
“GIRL” – Maren Morris
“God’s Country” – Blake Shelton
“The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home” – Justin Moore
“Whiskey Glasses” – Morgan Wallen

COUNTRY ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Carrie Underwood
Dan + Shay
Luke Bryan
Luke Combs
Thomas Rhett

BEST NEW COUNTRY ARTIST
Jimmie Allen
Matt Stell
Morgan Wallen
Riley Green
Runaway June

DANCE SONG OF THE YEAR
“Body” – Loud Luxury featuring brando
“Close To Me” – Ellie Goulding, Diplo featuring Swae Lee
“Here With Me” – Marshmello featuring Chvrches
“Higher Love” – Kygo & Whitney Houston
“So Close” – NOTD, Felix Jaehn & Captain Cutsv featuring Georgia Ku

DANCE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Diplo
Kygo
Loud Luxury
Marshmello
The Chainsmokers

HIP-HOP SONG OF THE YEAR
“Going Bad” – Meek Mill featuring Drake
“Money In The Grave” – Drake featuring Rick Ross
“Money” – Cardi B
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X
“Suge” – DaBaby

HIP-HOP ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Cardi B
Drake
Lil Baby
Meek Mill
Travis Scott

BEST NEW HIP-HOP ARTIST
City Girls
DaBaby
Lil Nas X
Lizzo
Megan Thee Stallion

R&B SONG OF THE YEAR
“Before I Let Go (Homecoming Live Album)” – Beyoncé
“Girls Need Love (Remix)” – Summer Walker & Drake
“No Guidance” – Chris Brown featuring Drake
“Shot Clock” – Ella Mai
“Talk” – Khalid

R&B ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Chris Brown
Ella Mai
H.E.R.
Khalid
Summer Walker

BEST NEW R&B ARTIST
Ari Lennox
LightSkinKeisha
Nicole Bus
Summer Walker
The Bonfyre

LATIN POP/URBAN SONG OF THE YEAR
“Calma” – Pedro Capó & Alicia Keys featuring Farruko
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry featuring Snow
“MIA” – Bad Bunny featuring Drake
“QUE PRETENDES” – J Balvin & Bad Bunny
“Taki Taki” – DJ Snake featuring Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B

LATIN POP/URBAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Bad Bunny
Daddy Yankee
J Balvin
Maluma
Ozuna

BEST NEW LATIN POP/URBAN ARTIST
Camilo
Guaynaa
Lunay
Rosalía
Sech

REGIONAL MEXICAN SONG OF THE YEAR
“¿Por Qué Cambiaste De Opinión” – Calibre 50
“A Través Del Vaso” – Banda Los Sebastianes
“Con Todo Incluido” – La Adictiva Banda San José De Mesillas
“Encantadora” – El Fantasma
“Nada Nuevo” – Christian Nodal

REGIONAL MEXICAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizárraga
Calibre 50
Christian Nodal
El Fantasma
La Arrolladora Banda El Limón

BEST NEW REGIONAL MEXICAN ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Banda Los Sebastianes
El Fantasma
Fuerza Regida
Kanales
Lenin Ramírez

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
Andrew Watt
Benny Blanco
Finneas
Louis Bell
Max Martin

SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR
Ashley Gorley
Finneas
Frank Dukes
Louis Bell
Savan Kotecha

BEST LYRICS *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“10,000 Hours” – Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber
“7 rings” – Ariana Grande
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Beautiful People” – Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid
“Hot Girl Summer” – Megan Thee Stallion featuring Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign
“Juice” – Lizzo
“Lose You To Love Me” – Selena Gomez
“Nightmare” – Halsey
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Someone You Loved” – Lewis Capaldi
“The Bones” – Maren Morris
“You Need to Calm Down” – Taylor Swift

BEST COVER SONG *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Led Zeppelin – “Black Dog” – Miley Cyrus cover
Ariana Grande – “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” – Lana Del Rey cover
Phil Collins – “Can’t Stop Loving You” – Taylor Swift cover
Sam Smith & Normani – “Dancing With A Stranger” – 5SOS cover
Elvin Bishop – “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” – Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes, Caylee Hammack cover
The Rembrandts – “I’ll Be There For You” – Meghan Trainor cover
Taylor Swift – “Lover” – Keith Urban cover
Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved” – Camila Cabello cover
Jonas Brothers – “Sucker” – Halsey cover
Post Malone – “Sunflower” – Vampire Weekend cover

BEST FAN ARMY *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Agnation – Agnez Mo
Arianators – Ariana Grande
Beliebers – Justin Bieber
BTSArmy – BTS
Camilizers – Camila Cabello
Harries – Harry Styles
Limelights – Why Don’t We
Louies – Louis Tomlinson
MendesArmy – Shawn Mendes
Niallers – Niall Horan
Selenators – Selena Gomez
Swifties – Taylor Swift

BEST MUSIC VIDEO *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“7 rings” – Ariana Grande
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish
“Boy With Luv” – BTS featuring Halsey
“Con Altura” – Rosalía, J Balvin featuring El Guincho
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee & Snow
“Dancing With A Stranger” – Sam Smith & Normani
“I Don’t Care” – Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber
“Kill This Love” – BLACKPINK
“ME!” – Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
“Señorita” – Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
“Sucker” – Jonas Brothers

SOCIAL STAR AWARD *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
Asher Angel
Cody Orlove
Danielle Cohn
DeStorm Power
King Bach
Montana Tucker
Niki and Gabi
Piper Rockelle
Scotty Sire
Stephanie Poetri
The Moy Boys
Zoe Laverne

BEST REMIX *SOCIALLY VOTED CATEGORY
“bad guy” – Billie Eilish (with Justin Bieber)
“Con Calma” – Daddy Yankee, Katy Perry featuring Snow
“Good As Hell” – Lizzo featuring Ariana Grande
“Higher Love” – Kygo & Whitney Houston
“Lover” – Taylor Swift featuring Shawn Mendes
“Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus

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DJ Khaled Announces "Bad Boys For Life" Soundtrack With Meek Mill, Quavo, & More


DJ Khaled is releasing the soundtrack to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s film on his We The Best label.

Whenever Florida superstar DJ Khaled attaches his name to a musical project, you know the liner notes will be filled with the names of tons of his star connections. If you follow the mega-producer on social media, you know very well that he holds one of the most impressive networks out of the entire business. On any given day, we can observe him going on jet ski adventures with Diddy, Meek Mill, Bryson Tiller, Jay-Z, and many others. The man is socially wealthy, relying on his network to continue impressing the masses with projects that are filled to the brim with talent. This morning, Khaled officially announced that the upcoming soundtrack to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s film Bad Boys For Life would be released under his We The Best imprint. In doing so, he revealed the featured guests for the first time and they’re pretty crazy.

Already, we knew that J Balvin and the Black Eyed Peas would be included on the list but the rest of the artists being advertised have us salivating and waiting (im)patiently for the final product. Sharing a teaser clip on social media, DJ Khaled revealed a few extra additions to the BBFL OST, naming the following as soundtrack stars: Meek Mill, Rick Ross, City Girls, Jaden Smith, Quavo, Lil Jon, Rich The Kid, Bryson Tiller, Daddy Yankee, and more.

It appears as though the movie will feature a healthy mix of hip-hop vibes and Latin flare. The body of work will be available on January 17. Are you looking forward to it?