Rock
Fender Launches New Player Offset Electric Guitar Models
Fender has announced new additions to its Player line of entry-level electric guitars. The Offset models are designed especially for aspiring guitarists playing “styles that thrive on nonconformity.” The Offset collection features some of Fender’s most bold and eccentric body styles, featuring the Mustang, Mustang 90, Mustang Bass PJ, and Duo-Sonic. Fender fans will recognize these shapes from the guitar company’s stable of iconic designs, but the Offset series brings a new level of accessibility. With their budget price point and smaller, lightweight bodies, the guitars are targeted toward beginner-to-intermediate level guitarists and female players, according to a Fender representative. “Each model delivers the signature Fender sound that has dominated the guitar scene for more than 70 y...
Hayley Williams Can’t Get Enough of This Drumming Grandma Covering Paramore’s ‘Ain’t It Fun’
A viral drumming grandma who’s been rocking for the last 56 years won over Hayley Williams with her superb cover of Paramore‘s 2013 hit “Ain’t It Fun.” According to her Instagram with 198,000 followers, Dorothea Taylor is a private drum instructor, drumline instructor and church organist by day and a rockstar in her own right by night. One fan brought Taylor’s Paramore cover to the lead singer’s attention on Twitter over the weekend, and Williams sure appreciated it. “love her, she’s a bada–,” the singer-songwriter wrote while sharing the video to her five million followers. Taylor has also drummed up her own takes of Slipknot‘s “Psychosocial” and Disturbed‘s “Down With The Sickness.&#...
Roy Orbison’s Newborn Great Granddaughter Already Rocking His Signature Glasses
Roy Orbison’s granddaughter Emily Orbison has welcomed a baby girl, and she’s already paying tribute to her late great grandpa. The family posted the happy news with some adorable photos on the official Roy Orbison Twitter account Sunday afternoon (July 12). “We are proud to announce the birth of our daughter, Ruby Kate. She was born on June 20,2020 at 11:36am. Ruby is Roy Orbison’s first great grandchild. Welcome to the family, Ruby!! We love you more than anything,” the announcement said. In the pictures, baby Emily joins the family tradition of wearing cool dark glasses — and looks pretty cute doing so. Orbison, who passed away in 1988, had started wearing his trademark glasses while on a U.K. tour with the Beatles in 1963. As his sons recounted in their book The ...
Southside Johnny to Play Huge Drive-In Concert in New Jersey
Jersey Hall of Famer Discusses The Historic Show and How COVID-19 Has Affected the Jersey Shore Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes return to the stage Saturday night (July 11) for their biggest concert since the COVID-19 pandemic, performing a drive-in concert at Monmouth Racetrack in Oceanport, N.J., not far from their longtime home on the Jersey Shore. Led by John Lyon, the “Grandfather of the Jersey Shore Sound,” Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes will perform in front of more than 1,000 cars holding up to four passengers each for what is being billed as one of the largest drive-in concerts in the U.S. yet. The concert is presented by the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank and is being built out to include a full stage with four large screens for enhanced viewing an...
Vampire Weekend Drops ‘Live in Florida’ EP: Stream It Now
Vampire Weekend dropped a new live EP today (July 10) titled Live in Florida because the indie rock band misses the Sunshine State as much as fans miss concerts. Live in Florida features six songs from their two tour stops last year at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre and Miami’s James L. Knight Center because Vampire Weekend wanted to “revisit some of our favorite shows from last year and put together a little something based around two beautiful nights in the Sunshine State,” according to the Instagram announcement yesterday (July 9). The EP includes “A-Punk” from its eponymous 2008 debut album, “White Sky” from the 2010 album Contra, and “Sunflower,” “2021” and “How Long?” from the most recen...
This Metal Band Was Determined to Hit The Road During the Pandemic — Here’s Why It All Fell Apart
“Brother, I’m over it. I got songs to write… Time to focus on other things and how to be the best I can be, and finally be able to concentrate on music for a minute.” That resigned email on Thursday morning (July 9) from Wildstreet frontman Eric Jayk was the final nail in the coffin of the 36-year-old singer’s dream of being the first rock band to bust through the COVID-19 lockdown, and put on the safest, hardest-rocking shows possible for his U.S. fans. With 25 gigs in 30 days booked back in February for their Kings of the World Tour, as recently as June 23 the group sent out a press release announcing that they were hitting clubs across the country at a time when nearly every other live act was either postponing dates until 2021, canceling tours outright or moving...
Paul Weller Has Fifth Solo U.K. No. 1 Album With ‘On Sunset’
Paul Weller lands his fifth solo No. 1 on the U.K. album chart with On Sunset (Polydor/Universal). Weller has now had chart-topping albums across five consecutive decades, in three different incarnations: as a solo artist (in 1995, 2002, 2008, 2012 and 2020), in 1982 with The Jam and 1985 with the Style Council. On Sunset has combined units of 24,000, just over 25% of which are on vinyl. The late rapper Pop Smoke debuts at No. 2 with Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon (Republic/Universal), and classical vocalist Katherine Jenkins at No. 3 with Cinema Paradiso (Decca/Universal). Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent (EMI/Universal) holds at No. 4 and Bob Dylan dips 2-5 with the former No. 1 Rough and Rowdy Way...
Ringo Starr Talks Black Lives Matter & Black Influence on Beatles’ Music During Virtual ‘Big Birthday Show’
While Ringo Starr couldn’t celebrate his birthday with his usual party at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, the former Beatle brought the fun online on Tuesday (July 7) to celebrate the big 8-0 safely and socially distanced. Proceeds raised during the show benefited four organizations, including Black Lives Matter Global Network, the David Lynch Foundation, MusiCares and WaterAid. On the Black Lives Matter movement, Starr took some time to note how influential Black music was to creating the Beatles’ sound. “There’s no greater act than any others can make than to stand up and be counted when you see injustice,” he said during the livestream. “I don’t have to tell you that the Beatles’ early set had a lot to do with the i...
Rivers Cuomo Once Tried to Start a Metal Band
In a different life, Rivers Cuomo would have fronted a metal band instead of Weezer. In an interview with Kerrang, the musician discussed his previous group Sixty Wrong Sausages and how he initially intended to create metal music. “I was always in bands growing up, when I was in school and when I first moved to LA,” he said. “In those days I was almost anti-punk: I did not like punk music, or the whole punk aesthetic. My attitude was pretty much exclusively metal: practice your scales, your arpeggios, use a metronome and don’t play sloppy. I was anti-nihilist, really.” “Then I got a job at Tower Records where I met this guy named Pat Finn who was 100 percent punk,” he continued. “He had a shaved head, he’d try to grab your testicles, he’d try to get the bo...
Ryan Adams Sorry for How He ‘Mistreated’ Women: ‘I Will Never Be Off the Hook’
More than a year after The New York Times published a report of alleged sexual misconduct by Ryan Adams, the singer has written a lengthy apology for his past behavior. “There are no words to express how bad I feel about the ways I’ve mistreated people through my life and career,” the singer-songwriter began in his open letter, which he shared with the Daily Mail. “All I can say is that I’m sorry.” “I’ve gotten past the point where I would be apologizing just for the sake of being let off the hook and I know full well that any apology from me probably won’t be accepted by those I’ve hurt,” he continued. “I get that and I also understand that there’s no going back.” Adams went on to acknowledge that he ...
Dave Grohl Reflects on Nirvana Days & Foo Fighters’ Debut Album on Its 25th Anniversary
Dave Grohl joined Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music for a conversation about the time period from his early days in Nirvana through the release of the first Foo Fighters album. The interview airs on Saturday (July 4), exactly 25 years after Foo Fighters’ debut, self-titled album arrived (on July 4, 1995). Grohl admitted that when he joined Nirvana and they became “really huge really quickly,” he was still insecure that he wasn’t quite good enough for the band. “Well I mean I joined Nirvana, I was their fifth drummer, right?” he said. “They’d had a team of drummers before me and some of them were more, I don’t know, more in the band than others. So when I joined the band, I didn’t know Krist and Kurt at all. And when we first met and s...
Kanye West, Ellie Goulding, Pop Smoke and More: What’s Your Favorite New Music Release? Vote!
This week’s new music releases brought fans a variety of new tunes from some of today’s hottest rappers, rock legends, pop songstresses and country stars. Pop Smoke returned with a posthumous album featuring a star-studded track list, Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello brought a politically righteous tune, and Kanye West teamed with Travis Scott for a fiery examination of injustice, and Ty Dolla $ign recruited the best and brightest for his new track. Elsewhere, Ellie Goulding delivered an emotionally intelligent track with the help of Lauv, Chris Young reflected upon the wonder of the commonplace, and Sufjan Stevens prodded at America’s problems in a 12-minute epic. So, with so much to choose from, Billboard wants to know which new music release is your favorit...
