James Hetfield will make his big-screen acting debut in the upcoming Ted Bundy film Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile, starring Zac Efron as the infamous serial killer. 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2018 From a solo Black Panther to a young Han Solo, Spielberg going retro to Barry Jenkins doing James Baldwin – the films we can’t wait to see this year The Metallica singer will portray Officer Bob Hayward, “a no-nonsense Utah highway patrol veteran who was the...
Tinashe teamed up with Future on her slinky new single, “Faded Love.” The two artists previously collaborated on “How Many Times,” a track from Tinashe’s debut LP, 2014’s Aquarius. On “Faded Love,” Tinashe sets the scene for a one-night stand. “Don’t give me your name,” she croons over producer Stargate’s muted bass and watery synths. “I don’t need your number saved in my phone/ Just follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me home.” Future appears...
Faith No More‘s Mike Patton and master turntablist DJ QBert staged their first-ever collaboration this weekend in San Francisco, where the duo performed a pair of impromptu concerts at the city’s The Chapel venue. Beastie Boys keyboardist Money Mark also appeared during the gigs, which occurred on little notice after the venue’s residency with Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy was postponed due to that singer’s passport issues. “After having to reschedule the first few nights because of a delay in processing of...
Bat for Lashes‘ Natasha Khan explores a surreal, supernatural romance in a new short film called Light Beings. The musician wrote and directed the project, teaming with the Haxan Cloak’s Bobby Krlic to create the atmospheric score. The three-minute film opens with a young woman (The Leftovers‘ Margaret Qualley) riding her bicycle to the beach. Above her, a man (Jamie Strachan) strips to his underwear and jumps from a rock into the water, transforming into a dark figure covered in white...
The rock world has never seen a rash of retirements like this. In the past few weeks, some of rock & roll’s most legendary performers have declared they’re giving up the endless highway. Elton John announced his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, the final curtain for the ultimate showman. Paul Simon set a date for his last gig in London’s Hyde Park. Neil Diamond, already well into his 50th-anniversary tour, immediately cancelled the rest of his shows on doctors’ orders,...
Steve Miller Band and Peter Frampton will unite for a North American summer tour. The lengthy trek, which follows their joint 2017 run, launches June 12th in Evansville, Indiana and concludes with back-to-back dates in Woodinville, Washington on August 25th and 26th. “Music is ethereal – it moves back and forth between the past and the future,” Miller said in a statement about the jaunt. “I’m very excited to announce that 2018 is our 50th anniversary of recording and touring together as...
After spending much of the last half-century on the road with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist, Ozzy Osbourne will embark on a final trek around the globe beginning this spring. He’s dubbed the jaunt the “No More Tours 2” tour – a silly callback to his 1992 retirement tour, which lasted all of three years – but this time he says it’s not meant to be goodbye for good. “I’m not retiring,” the singer told Rolling Stone last...
Mavis Staples offers an alternative to statues commemorating the Confederacy in the poignant new video for “If All I Was Was Black,” the title track off her latest album with Jeff Tweedy. The Zac Manuel-directed clip marks the first video that Staples has personally appeared in in years, and finds the soul legend singing the breezy but potent cut in a diner booth. These shots are paired with striking images of empty statue plinths alongside a sequence in which a...
Bruno Mars extended his massive 24K Magic world tour with a final run of North American shows. The trek, which features his “Finesse” collaborator Cardi B, now wraps with a block of new dates spanning September 7th in Denver, Colorado to a four-night stand in Los Angeles on October 23rd, 24th, 26th and 27th. General public tickets for the new concerts go on sale Friday, February 16th at noon local time via the Live Nation website. Tickets for the previously...
Four notable Korean artists joined together to cover John Lennon‘s “Imagine” as part of the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Pyeongchang. Ha Hyun-woo of the indie rock band Guckkasten, Ahn Ji-young of K-pop duo Bolbbalgan4, Deulgukhwa singer Jeon In-Kwon and solo artist Lee Eun-mi each sang a verse of the classic 1971 single for the opening ceremony, which boasted the theme “Peace in Motion.” The song selection especially resonated given the circumstances of the Winter Olympics, where South Korean...
A biopic about Gucci Mane is in the works as Paramount Pictures and Imagine Entertainment acquired the rights to the Atlanta rapper’s The Autobiography of Gucci Mane. Paramount also retained the life rights to Mane’s story, the Hollywood Reporter writes, as will work with Imagine – the producers behind 8 Mile and the music industry series Empire – to bring the rapper’s memoir to the big screen. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane charts the rapper born Radric Davis’ journey from...
Noah Cyrus released her first new song of 2018, the catchy kiss-off “We Are…” featuring MØ. Cyrus is set to release her debut album NC-17 this year. Similar to a few of her past singles, Cyrus aims towards anthemic reflections on her generation. This single has a bit of a more melancholy twist: “These days we only follow/ These days we’re feeling hollow/ ‘Get paid’ the only motto/ We are fucked,” she sings on the sweeping chorus. Cyrus made her...
Rap music’s journey from the South Bronx to the top of the charts is the focus of Word Is Bond, an upcoming Showtime documentary that examines “the transformative power of lyrics in the world of hip-hop.” The Sacha Jenkins-directed film features interviews with rappers like Nas, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Jadakiss, Tech N9ne, Rapsody and Anderson Paak, who talks about his influences in a new clip from Word Is Bond. “I was one of two black kids at my high...
So much has come to pass in the 15 years since Dashboard Confessional propelled his strummy perpetually wounded boyhood drama to its Gold-record apex. Emo is now the province of Soundcloud rappers, righteous girls, and Drake. Chris Carrabba made his name at the tail-end of the Nineties singing (and shrieking) about winning (and losing) a girl, and now he returns with Crooked Shadows, his first Dashboard Confessional album in more than eight years, with that same romantic fixation holding the...
Kevin Smith, the Bronx DJ and rapper known as Lovebug Starski who is often credited with coining the term “hip-hop,” died Thursday at 57 following a heart attack in Las Vegas. His daughter, Tiffany, confirmed Smith’s death to Rolling Stone. Smith was among a core group of DJ pioneers, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore, who shaped hip-hop’s parameters in the days before recorded rap in the 1970s. Known for peppering his sets with...
Getty Images/Courtesy of SHOWTIME Lili Fini Zanuck’s documentary Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars follows the guitarist as he pursues a single-minded mission to raise the profile of the blues in popular culture. During the Sixties, he moved through bands at a reckless pace in search for the right combination of blues aficionados – he joined, scored major hits and then left and/or dissolved the Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek the Dominos in less...
You can never go home again, especially when home is your college dorm room. On their fourth LP, the studio scientists of MGMT do a great job evoking the fizzy, dizzy New Wave psychedelia of mid-00s hits like “Kids” and “Electric Feel,” songs the duo cooked up while still at school at Wesleyan University. With their mix of poker-faced irony, lightly exotic sonics and neo-hippie whimsy, those songs, from MGMT’s debut LP, 2007’s Oracular Spectacular, helped make indie-pop a brighter...
L7 are thrashing into spring with new tour dates and a raucous single, “I Came Back To Bitch.” Produced by Billy Bush, the menacing track is the second original by the newly-reunited head-bangers after “Dispatch From Mar-a-Lago” was released in September, marking the band’s first original material in 18 years. The coarse production on “I Came Back To Bitch” hearkens back to L7’s similarly raw 1988 debut. Here, Donita Sparks seethes with a pointed rage she couldn’t have possessed thirty...
Dan Auerbach delivers a delightfully wicked rendition of “Stand By My Girl” in a preview clip from his upcoming appearance on Austin City Limits. “Stand By My Girl” appears on Auerbach’s latest solo album, Waiting On a Song, and finds the Black Keys frontman flipping some of the conventions of a traditional rock-and-soul devotional. On ACL, Auerbach partners with his guitarist for some soaring riffs and delivers the song’s cheeky hook – “I’m gonna stand by my girl/ Don’t think I...
Calvin Harris teamed with Canadian musician PartyNextDoor on “Nuh Ready Nuh Ready.” The dancehall-tinged cut is embellished by skipping percussion, light synth plunks and stray horn riffs. The music video is a distorted, surreal creation showing PartyNextDoor super-imposed over shots of London. In an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio, Harris praised the PartyNextDoor’s talents as a singer and songwriter, and spoke about being unable to crack his enigmatic exterior. “I didn’t really figure...