ACM, CMA and GRAMMY-winning band Little Big Town is releasing their latest song “All Summer” from their forthcoming 10th studio album. The song is the follow-up to their most recent single “Hell Yeah” which has amassed more than 10 million streams since its April release.
Written by Karen Fairchild, Sara Buxton, Madi Diaz, Ashley Ray, Savana Santos and Alyssa Vanderheym, “All Summer” is a bonafide, summer ready anthem.
Little Big Town continues to bring their exceptional live shows to fans worldwide this summer – they recently wrapped up The Bandwagon Tour with Miranda Lambert and joined The Eagles on all dates of their European stadium tour this summer. This fall, Little Big Town will join Wynonna Judd on select dates of The Judds: The Final Tour.
GRAMMY, ACM, CMA, AMA and Emmy Award-winning group, Little Big Town – consisting of members Karen Fairchild, Phillip Sweet, Kimberly Schlapman, and Jimi Westbrook – first entered the music scene over 20 years ago with hit songs “Boondocks,” “Bring It On Home,” “Good As Gone” and the GRAMMY-nominated “Little White Church.” The band’s breakthrough albums Tornado and Pain Killer produced multiple #1 singles, including “Pontoon,” “Tornado,” and “Day Drinking,” as well as the history-making, best-selling country single of the year (2015) “Girl Crush.” 2017’s The Breaker debuted at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts and Top 10 (No. 4) on the Billboard 200 to critical acclaim. The album features their GRAMMY-winning, multi-week #1 single, “Better Man,” as well as the 2019 GRAMMY-nominated, “When Someone Stops Loving You.” The band’s self-produced ninth studio album Nightfall was released January 2020 and hit the top of the Billboard Country Charts. The record included critically-acclaimed and GRAMMY-nominated “The Daughters,” “Over Drinking” and “Wine, Beer, Whiskey”- the latter of which has reached more than 160 million global streams. In April 2022, they released their new single “Hell Yeah,” which has amassed more than 10 million streams to date. Little Big Town has earned more than 45 award show nominations and has taken home nearly 20 awards, including multiple GRAMMY, AMA, People’s Choice, CMA and ACM Awards, in addition to an Emmy award.
GRAMMY Award nominated, multi-platinum-selling band Goo Goo Dolls have announced their brand new thirteenth studio LP Chaos in Bloom, arriving August 12th, 2022 via Warner Records. Marking the first album of their career to be produced by frontman John Rzeznik, the record finds the band at the top of their game and continuing to constantly evolve just as they have for nearly four decades together. Consisting of 10 tracks, Chaos in Bloom is an album of biting sarcasm, stadium-ready choruses, and the type of spear-sharp songwriting that’s led them to becoming one of the most influential alternative rock groups of all time.
While Chaos in Bloom isn’t necessarily an album borne out by the pandemic, many of the tracks reflect on all of the things in daily life that became amplified while everyone was isolated from one another and sequestered at home. “Chaos in Bloom reminded us how special this whole thing is and to cherish the relationships that we have together,” says Rzeznik about the album. “Where we’ve been, and where we’re going.” Oscillating from personal reflections on the state of the world to societal commentaries, the songs on the album grapple with observations about our dystopian modernity while searching for optimism and pushing for a more empathetic world. “I’ve been trying to have a relationship with the bigger picture,” adds bassist and songwriter Robby Takac, “and refining happiness and what it means from that perspective.”
To record the album, Rzeznik and Takac retreated to Dreamland Studios just outside Woodstock, New York during the pandemic. An environment as remote as it is rich with historic rock music roots, the location proved to be the perfect setting for clearing the noise and creating such a record, which carries a true live quality that the band captured by blending vintage instruments and gear with new-age recording processes and techniques.
Alongside the announcement today, the band has shared the first taste of the album “Yeah, I Like You.” As the intro track featured on Chaos in Bloom, the song ignites the record with a rousing acoustic guitar line that hits like a gut punch, with lyrics that effortlessly critique our celebrity culture, and the people who work so hard to look so disaffected while masking insecurities with false self-assuredness. “In a world that is just drowning in social media and internet stars, many of whom are certainly talented, but many confirm that in 2022 you can be famous for doing nothing,” says Rzeznik. “Celebrity in this age has a very quick burn. It was hard not to be consumed by it during the pandemic.”
For the first time since 2019, the band will embark on a sprawling nationwide tour this summer. Set to kick off on July 15, 2022 at Ford Idaho Center Amphitheater in Nampa, ID, the nationwide tour will see the band performing songs from Chaos in Bloom for the first time ever along with other tracks from their complete discography at iconic outdoor venues spanning North America, including Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, and Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, NY. Blue October will provide support for the entire run, and more information & tickets can be found via the band’s website HERE. Goo Goo Dolls will be partnering with the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation for the tour, a nonprofit founded in 2002 by Ali and Joe Torre to provide healing and education services to youth who have been traumatized by exposure to violence including domestic violence, child abuse, teen dating abuse, and sexual assault to help break the cycle of violence.
Formed by Rzeznik and Takac in Buffalo, NY during 1986, Goo Goo Dolls have quietly broken records, contributed a string of staples to the American songbook, connected to millions of fans, and indelibly impacted popular music for three-plus decades. Beyond selling 15 million records worldwide, the group has garnered four GRAMMT Award nominations and nearly a dozen platinum & gold singles combined, and seized a page in the history books by achieving 16 number one and Top 10 hits. As a result, they hold the all-time radio record for “Most Top 10 Singles.”
Thus far, A Boy Named Goo [1995] has gone double-platinum, Dizzy Up The Girl five-times-platinum, and Gutterflower [2002] and Let Love In [2006] both went gold as Something for the Rest of Us [2010] and Magnetic [2013] bowed in the Top 10 of the Billboard Top 200. Their music continues to reach new audiences around the world and rack up platinum & gold statuses – including the recently platinum-certified “Slide”, “Black Balloon” and “Better Days” – and has been covered by everyone from Taylor Swift to Phoebe Bridgers and Maggie Rogers.
Among a string of hits, “Iris” clutched #1 on the Hot 100 for 18 straight weeks and would be named “#1 Top 40 Song of the Last 20 Years.” On the heels of going viral on TikTok, the track recently achieved seven-times-platinum status and re-entered the Billboard charts, yet again proving the timelessness of Goo Goo Dolls’ illustrious catalog.
CHAOS IN BLOOM TRACK-LISTING
Yeah, I Like You
War
Save Me From Myself
Let The Sun
Loving Life
Going Crazy
Day After Day
Past Mistakes
You Are The Answer
Superstar
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, R.E.M.’s debut EP CHRONIC TOWN will be released for the first time ever as a standalone CD with extensive liner notes by the original producer Mitch Easter (Let’s Active). It will be released in three different formats: CD, Picture Disc, and Cassette on August 19, 2022 and can be preordered here.
Featuring such adored classics in the band’s repertoire as “Gardening At Night”, “Wolves, Lower” and “1,000,000,” the five song EP, as Rolling Stone noted, “served notice that R.E.M. was an outfit to watch.” As a debut release, R.E.M.’s Chronic Town was an anomaly… a record that didn’t quite fit into the constraints of what was played on the radio. So instead of trying to fit into a genre, R.E.M. helped create their own: College Rock. The follow-up to their breakthrough single “Radio Free Europe” which was released in 1981, Chronic Town served as the entry point to what would become one of Alternative Rock’s biggest bands. “One might fancifully say that Chronic Town was the sound of an expedition, ready for anything, setting forth,” says Easter fondly about the EP. “If R.E.M. ‘Radio Free Europe’ single was a signpost, the Chronic Town EP was the atlas.”
Introducing their arpeggiated guitar playing, cryptic and often indecipherable lyrics, and radiant choruses that would soon emerge as signatures of the classic R.E.M. sound, Chronic Town is the sound of a restless band, chock full of ideas, operating on a post-collegiate budget. Charmingly ragged and refreshingly immediate, it established the band indelibly upon impact. “Wolves, Lower” opens the EP with Michael Stipe’s trademark impressionistic and idiosyncratic lyrics, while Mike Mills’ rubbery bass lines and Peter Buck’s jangly Rickenbacker keeps Bill Berry’s unpredictable drumming in check. It’s this combination that would not only fuel the band for subsequent decades but make them equally as dependable as songsmiths. Serving as a template for ’80s college jangle pop, “Gardening At Night” forged a style that combined heartily strummed rhythm guitars with a meandering bass line that proved to be a solid blueprint for college bands to come.
Critically hailed both upon release and in retrospect, Chronic Town heralded “a great band planting their flag in the ground, an historic landmark that portended great things that actually came” (Stereogum). The Stranger praised “everything about the EP, from its gnomic, blue-tinted cover art, to its restlessly discursive music, to the fact that the two sides both had their own titles (‘Chronic Town’ and ‘Poster Torn’), was not only good on its own merits, but an excellent influence in favor of obscurantism and understatement.” Chronic Town’s impact and influence on the future of alternative music is uncontested and described by Magnet Magazine as “essentially a template for the entire indie-rock movement.”
R.E.M. – CHRONIC TOWN
Wolves, Lower
Gardening At Night
Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars)
1,000,000
Stumble
Rock and Roll Beauty™are pleased to announce the release of their Def Leppard limited-edition beauty collection. Def Leppard helped define a true era in rock and roll, selling more than 110 million records worldwide. In celebration of their legacy, this product line reflects the days of anthemic guitars, soaring vocals, and stadium rock sound.
With its shimmery pinks and metallic shades such as Rocket Blue, this 19-piece collection is highly pigmented and designed to give you a rock-star look! It’s available exclusively in Ulta Beauty stores nationwide, www.ulta.com and www.rockandrollbeauty.com.
Through a unique collaboration with Def Leppard, the licensing agent Epic Rights, and the designers at Rock and Roll Beauty, comes this distinctive and nostalgic collection. From the one-of-a-kind iconic triangular artistry palette, with its 14 vibrant shades, to the Union Jack debossed peachy blushes, each product in the line was designed to reflect the rock and roll era that truly was a groundbreaking musical phenomena.
With more than 110 million albums sold worldwide and two prestigious Diamond Awards in the U.S., 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame® inductees Def Leppard – Joe Elliott (vocals), Phil Collen (guitar), Rick Savage (bass), Vivian Campbell (guitar) and Rick Allen (drums) — continue to be one of the most important forces in rock music. Over the course of their career the band has produced a series of classic ground-breaking albums that set the bar for generations of music fans and artists alike. The group’s spectacular live shows and arsenal of hits have become synonymous with their name, leading Def Leppard to be heralded as the world’s greatest live rock band. Def Leppard’s influential career includes numerous hit singles and ground-breaking multi-platinum albums—including two of the best-selling albums of all time, Pyromania and Hysteria, capturing the group’s legendary tracks, bringing together classic Leppard hits such as “Rock of Ages,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Foolin.” For the first time, in January 2018 Def Leppard debuted their full recording catalog worldwide via streaming and download platforms. As they did with the original release of their records, Def Leppard dominated the worldwide charts again, which found their albums charting in the iTunes Top 10 in more than 30 countries, including Hysteria at #3 in the US, and #5 in the UK. Def Leppard also had the #1, #2 and #3 records on the US catalog albums chart. The band have gone on to amass a staggering 5.5 billion streams since 2018, reaching a younger 18-44 demographic that now represents 58% of their fanbase. Additionally, the band have garnered an impressive 15 million followers across their social media platforms. In May 2022, Def Leppard released their twelfth studio album Diamond Star Halos. The album debuted at #1 on the Apple and Amazon Music charts. The album also scored a Top 10 debut on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart, marking the band’s eighth Top 10 album of their career, and also making them one of just three groups with a newly charting top 10 title on the Billboard 200 albums chart in each decade since the ’80s. Diamond Star Halos additionally garnered a #1 debut on Billboard’s Hard Rock chart. Following the close of their historic 2018 co-headline stadium and arena run in North America, Def Leppard sold a staggering 1,000,000 tickets and the tour grossed over $100,000,000.00, a massive feat in today’s touring world. Def Leppard will top that number yet again with another sold out North American stadium run in 2022 with Motley Crue. As always, the group keep pushing the boundaries with their electrifying live shows.
In 1964, Harper Lee talked with WQXR host Roy Newquist for an interview in New York. For the first time, that interview is now available to listen to online. The interview is the only known recording of Lee discussing “To Kill a Mockingbird,” among other topics, and one of the last interviews she would ever give.
Musician Luca Stricagnoli gets into the hip hop groove with his cover of Dr. Dre and Eminem’s “Forgot About Dre” on a meld of an instrument – the Ganjo.
He says, “One more experiment where I convert a hip hop song into a guitar arrangement. Well, actually this time it’s an arrangement for Ganjo (Guitar-Banjo), which still has 6 strings by the way. Dr. Dre is one of the most influential artists in the hip-hop scene, and in “Forgot About Dre” he collaborated with Eminem himself. Of course, the result could only be a really cool song, which gave me quite some motivation in a particular period of my life. I know rap songs can sound quite strange when performed on a Ganjo, but what can I say…I had so much fun doing this!”
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Chicago’s acclaimed award-winning DIY artist Sarantos channels his signature upbeat songwriting style to tell a melancholic story about pushing through life’s physical and mental pain with the evocative new single, “Looking UP At The World.”
Sarantos’s latest emotional single, “Looking UP At The World,” conveys the crippling feeling of being helpless as everyone else moves on in life. As Sarantos says, “being on the floor because that’s the only position that doesn’t hurt, and there I feel alone and like the world is passing me by.”
The song’s inspiration came about as Sarantos captures the story of a character who’s a workaholic and is embattled with disease. The crippling nature of physical and emotional pain, particularly in the wake of COVID, is fully explored in Sarantos’s latest musical effort. “Being in pain is like drowning because you’re so desperate to grab onto anyone or anything. You won’t even care if you take them down with you.”
An eclectic musical foundation sets the tone for juxtaposed lyrics that showcase the depth of perspective commonly found in Sarantos’s songwriting style. In contrast to the major key in which the music is written, Sarantos doesn’t shy away from exposing himself to reach and connect with listeners worldwide.
“Every yellow brick’s going down the wrong road
I’m upset the world threw me away
No one looks down at me
They don’t know how much I’m missing
Looking UP at the world.”
Adopting a DIY method to music creation, Sarantos has been the hardest working self-sustainable artist on the scene. With two songs up for GRAMMY considerations in 2017 to the litany of international music and entertainment awards, Sarantos is a self-managed force of sonic nature. His music has graced radio stations and charted across many markets in Europe and the U.S, all without the backing of a studio or record label.
Sarantos is a renaissance artist with songwriting and producer credits on top of his work as an author of poetry and literature that accompanies the extensive collection of music he’s released.
Armed with an enormous social media presence and thousands of written songs under his belt, Sarantos has been demonstrating a work ethic like no other. He continues his mission to spread honesty and compassion with his art with no signs of stopping.
Sarantos draws on his own experiences to connect to his listeners genuinely through the universal language of music to make the world a better place.
The best brass music is full of sass, funky rhythms, and snappy melodies and Canada’s Heavyweights Brass Band has all that, and more! Down and deeply in the groove with their new sax- and soul-powered new single, “Fake It” is available from Slammin Media, and distributed worldwide by Believe.
The latest single release from the Toronto-based brass band draws inspiration from drummer Gregory C. Coleman and his famous “Amen Break” solo first performed in 1969. Coleman originated it in the recording for funk and soul band The Winston Brothers’ b-side track, “Amen Brother.” It’s a rhythm pattern that is an enduring favourite in funk, hip-hop, and drum and bass music.
“The song ‘Fake It’ originates from the phrase ‘Fake It Til You Make It,’” says Paul Metcalfe, one of HBB’s founding members. “It’s a popular phrase amongst the band as we often get thrown into new situations that take learning on the job.
“We’re always in the process of finding better ideas in the midst of recording or even performance.”
Funky and soulful with snappy horn parts reminiscent of James Brown and Maceo Parker, “Fake It” is the first original composition from The Heavyweights’ newest member, trombonist RJ Satchithananthan. Paul Metcalfe on Tenor Saxophone, John Pittman on Trumpet, Tom Richards on Sousaphone, and Lowell Whitty on drums round out the full five.
“They say ‘model the masters’ and we brought that home on this jazz-funk track.”
Two years of pandemic slow down hadn’t completely stalled HBB musically. They released their fourth full-length album, Stir Crazy, in November 2021, and spent two hot summers busking outdoors in Toronto’s west end. Then, as the music scene began to stir and wake up again, so did the group’s creative drive, leading to renewed energy, fresh collaborations, and what they refer to as The Marigold Sessions. A collaboration with a new friend and videographer, Nick Appleton, at Toronto’s Marigold Label Studios produced a trio of live performance videos and recordings that includes “Fake It.” The group also gave their takes on Duke Ellington’s sultry “Creole Love Call” and the fiery, hard-grooving “Get Along,” written by HBB trumpet player John Pittman.
The Heavyweights Brass Band has been a New Orleans-inspired, Canadian brass institution bringing audiences from clubs to theatres to their feet with their exciting mash-up of original songs and unexpected covers. Their music has made it into film, commercials, radio, and television, and they’ve recorded and performed with some of the greats — including legendary percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Joe Lastie of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall fame.
Through extensive touring, the band has had the opportunity to share the stage with the likes of Trombone Shorty, The Roots, and The Soul Rebels among many others.
When is The Heavyweights Brass Band next gonna blow into town? Alongside the new release, the virtuoso instrumental quintet has been gearing up to hit the road again, and they’re all set to brassify your June, July, and beyond with their 2022 Canadian Summer Tour; the first 16 dates have rolled out into early July, with more to be announced soon!
