Rock Music

On Monday, Drake officially broke the record for most the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 songs in a single year, passing the Beatles’ 1964 record in the process. October’s Very Own owned every single week this October, and hit this achievement two days away from his birthday on the 24th. Drake is the king of the pop world, and all before his 32nd year.

His success is impressive, but living through his record-setting year often feels like we’re surviving an endless Aubreygeddon. With every song and video, released in a constant stream, his undeniable voice and practiced headshot-ready smirk hangs over the industry like a phantom. It won’t always be this, but for now it feels like it will last forever. The bars are occasionally stale, the flows keep getting recycled, the albums suffer from some bloat. Nevertheless, Drake has never been bigger commercially.

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Elvis Presley is among the seven “distinguished individuals” that will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump at a November 16th ceremony.

Yankees great Babe Ruth and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will also posthumously receive the prestigious award, “the Nation's highest civilian honor, which may be awarded by the President to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” the Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement Saturday.

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Independent Chicago rapper Noname kicked off the new year by unveiling her first new song of 2019, “Song 31.” It’s also her first new music since releasing Room 25, named one of Rolling Stone‘s Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2018.
Over winsome, jazz-tipped melodies, the rapper poetically rhymes about the drive and need to make money and its adverse societal effects. “I sell pain for profit, not propaganda/ I know cancer’s origin linked to Santa/ I know Santa’s origins linked to money/ Mass production of cattle/ Slaughtering for the yummy,” she raps, before skillfully tying in the emotional costs paid to the prison system.

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Maroon 5 delivered a surprise-free set with a plethora of career-spanning hits including “This Love,” “Girls Like You,” “Sugar” and “Moves Like Jagger” during the Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show.

The Red Pill Blues band kicked off the show with singer Adam Levine leading a melodic performance of the Songs About Jane singles “Harder To Breathe” and “This Love” flanked by lasers. Levine later picked up steam with “Girls Like You,” backed by a gospel choir and concluded their 13-minute concert by ripping his shirt off mid-gyration during “Moves Like Jagger.”

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Red Hot Chili Peppers will live stream their performance at Egypt’s famed pyramids in Giza. The show will be broadcast via the band’s official as well as on Twitter and Facebook, beginning at 3 p.m. ET on Friday.

“Before each new place my body tingled with excitement, a yearning for a new mystery to unfold, a fascination with a new culture, the possibility of new friends, tasting new food, smelling new tastes, absorbing new rhythms,” Flea said in a statement. “Learning. Learning. Learning. It is happening right now, my heart is abuzz with joy at the prospect of performing in Egypt. I’m so grateful and humbled for the experience.”

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When Robert Fripp looked out from the stage of the Anfiteatro Romano in Pompei during a King Crimson show there in July 2018, he saw something he didn’t expect: women.

“Seeing men sitting next to their wives,” he marveled during a recent press event in London’s West End. “Seeing young men sitting next to their girlfriends. And a lot of old people, mainly male, too. But nevertheless, a lot of them were young, and a lot of them were women. This is astonishing.”

The day after the press conference, at his hotel room a few blocks away, the topic of audience makeup was very much on the guitarist’s mind as he sat down for a wide-ranging interview ahead of an enormous year for the band he’s led on and off for a half-century. King Crimson first rehearsed on January 13th, 1969, in the basement of a London café, just five miles southwest of where Fripp met with Rolling Stone. In honor of that anniversary, they’re reissuing their landmark ’69 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, bringing their entire studio catalog to streaming services and playing more than 50 concerts around the world.

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Afrika Bambaataa, “Planet Rock"

The Verve’s 1997 hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is one of the finest songs of the Britpop era, a classically Nineties expression of world-weary cool with just the right amount of English self-regard. It’s a song that only Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft could have written — except that he didn’t, according to a notorious copyright ruling. Ashcroft’s song famously sampled an orchestral cover of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time,” and a lawsuit from former Stones manager Allen Klein shortly after its release forced him to hand over 100 percent of the royalties from “Bitter Sweet Symphony” to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.



This ruling has always been patently absurd — Jagger and Richards had nothing to do with the dreamy string section that Ashcroft sampled, nor with Ashcroft’s original lyrics and melody — but it’s stood for more than two decades, until now: The BBC reports that the Stones have voluntarily returned the songwriting credits for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” to their rightful owner.

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“I’m feeling pretty good,” Mick Jagger said in his first interview since heart surgery caused him to reschedule the Rolling Stones’ upcoming North American summer tour. On Toronto radio station Q107, Jagger said it’s been business as usual since his operation. “Been rehearsing a lot lately in the last few weeks … This morning [I did] a bit of gym. Nothing crazy. Then I go into rehearsal with the rest of the band.”



In those rehearsals, the band has been trying to come up with some surprises. “We’re trying to pick some ones we haven’t done in recent years, stuff we haven’t done before,” he said. “Most of the time people don’t want too much unusual. People like a little bit unusual. They don’t want 100 percent unusual.” Jagger added that “Memory Motel” is one of the rarities the band rehearsed a few days ago.”

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Explosions in the Sky are celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band with a double set of reissues and a global tour. The Austin group will unveil remastered and repackaged versions of 2000’s How Strange, Innocence and 2005’s The Rescue on August 16th on vinyl and digital via Temporary Residence Limited. Two tracks, “A Song for Our Fathers” and “Day Six,” are now streaming ahead of the release. Both reissues are available for preorder.

The band will also tour in support of the reissues, with U.S. dates taking places this year to be followed by a European trek in 2020. The previously announced U.S. tour kicks off in Mesa, Arizona on September 11th and wraps up in Oklahoma City on October 24th. The European leg launches in Lisbon on February 1st and includes stops in Paris, London, Berlin and Manchester. Tickets for the European dates go on sale Wednesday July 10th.
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