Search Results for: ash costello

Morrissey has signed with Nashville-based roots label Lost Highway for the U.S. release of his new album, sources told Billboard. “Years of Refusal” will be released on February 17, and will be supported by a U.S. theater tour that kicks off February 28 in Boca Raton, Fla., and runs through April 15 in Albuquerque, N.M. The project marks the follow-up to the former Smiths frontman’s 2006 set “Ringleader of the Tormenters.” It will come out internationally on February 2 via Universal, which bumped the album from a fall 2008 release for unspecified reasons. Lost Highway is an intriguing destination for… Read more »

Gotta hand it to Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz and company: The hardworking, blue-collar Midwestern pop-punkers-with-an-emo-attitude have gotten ever savvier and, dare I say, more mature with their songwriting and song-arranging. Consequently, “Folie a Deux,” (French for “madness shared by two”) may be one of the year’s most surprising albums. A tactfully produced (Neil Avron/Pharell Williams) affair that steers the Chicago-area band more toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing Fall Out Boy’s anthemic brashness, the band’s fifth album represents the zenith of its seven-year career. Some tracks — “I Don’t Care” with its “Spirit in the Sky” guitars and the zippy… Read more »

Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying — out of the four million such goods the Apple site offers. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target’s ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site — or whether Nickelback gets no mention? Apple has jettisoned… Read more »

New York – Radio’s playlist liberation movement hatched in late 2001 at a birthday party in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A radio was blasting when Howard Kroeger, director of operations and programing for CHUM Broadcasting’s Winnipeg stations, arrived at his friend’s 40th-birthday bash. It was a competitor’s classic rock station, and Kroeger used the occasion to conduct an informal focus group among the partygoers, most in their mid- to late 30s. Whenever Boston, the Cars, Meatloaf, Supertramp or some other ’70s staple came on, it got an overwhelming thumbs-up from the Molson-enhanced crowd. But there was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm when… Read more »

Musicians and record companies have spent years in court trying to quash free music file sharing, which they claim has hurt sales and infringed on their copyrights. In the race to shut down free P2P sharing systems, however, 54 top recording acts and their labels are running out of road. According to Billboard.com, The Recording Artists Coalition (RAC), along with The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and other music groups, have signed a brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn an opinion by the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that unauthorized P2P systems, like Kazaa and Morpheus, are… Read more »

New York – In 2001, Martin Amis, Rick Moody and other authors and artists gathered in New York to honor a peer they regarded as a giant of the times. They compared him to Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Arthur Rimbaud. They called him a bard, a shaman and a master of “art as revenge.” That man was Bob Dylan. Had he lived in England, he’d be Sir Bob Dylan, maybe even Lord. Scholarly books have compared him to Dante and Keats; admirers lobby for him to get the Nobel Prize. At a 1997 Kennedy Center ceremony, where fellow honorees… Read more »

Los Angeles – Chicago rapper Kanye West, who survived a near-fatal car crash to record a debut album that ranked among the year’s biggest sellers, led the field of Grammy Award contenders with 10 nominations, organizers said on Tuesday. R&B singers Alicia Keys and Usher picked up eight nominations each, followed by late “Genius of Soul” Ray Charles with seven, and punk rock band Green Day with six. Jazz pianist Norah Jones, country veteran Loretta Lynn, funk musician Prince and engineer Al Schmitt each earned five. “If I get any nominations, I’m good,” West told Reuters after a press conference… Read more »

Washington – Music superstar Elton John will appear in a national TV advertising campaign for the Delphi MyFi satellite radio, the first portable, hand-held unit for listening to XM Satellite Radio, the nation’s leading provider of satellite radio with more than 2.5 million subscribers. The TV spot will premiere the week of November 15, following the November 9 release of Elton’s much-anticipated, critically-acclaimed album “Peachtree Road.” The spot, directed by award-winning music video director and photographer David LaChapelle, features Elton and his new hit single “Answer in the Sky.” “Elton John is one of the most important and beloved artists… Read more »

Works by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and George Harrison are among the major catalog titles slated to be released in the first quarter of 2004. On Feb. 24, Universal Music Enterprises (UME) will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the British Invasion with a multi-disc set on the Hip-O label. UME will also begin a year-long, multi-title campaign feting rock’n’roll’s birth. Rhino delivers “Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath,” an eight-CD set collecting each album issued by the band’s original lineup (plus a bonus DVD) in March. On March 9, Sony catalog division Legacy will honor metal gods Judas Priest… Read more »

Neko Case will release her third solo album Blacklisted, on August 20th. Recorded at Wavelab in Tucson, Arizona, Case cited the title track as representative of the wistful mood of the disc. “I was in Iowa City, Iowa when I wrote it,” Case says of the song. “I was feeling pretty sad, and it was before our show so I went for a walk – Iowa City is a very beautiful town – and I found this old train depot that was closed down. I was just kind of looking around and was overwhelmed by the place, and a lot… Read more »