Rolling Stone to Launch Its Own Music Charts in Challenge to Billboard

Rolling Stone

Henry Chu, writing at Variety:

The new “Rolling Stone Charts” will encompass the top 100 singles and the top 200 albums in the U.S.. the singles chart will be updated daily instead of weekly. The lists are also expected to incorporate more information on streaming and offer more transparency about how the rankings are derived. Rolling Stone, which is owned by Penske Media Corp. (which also owns Variety), is hoping that those innovations will help it muscle onto turf that Billboard has ruled for decades.

They start next Monday.

Angels and Airwaves Talk With Alternative Press

Angels and Airwaves

Tom DeLonge of Angels and Airwaves recently sat down with Alternative Press:

What was more inspiring than just music was communicating things about the human race that I thought deserved a lot more attention and depth than I could do with just traditional songs. When I started Angels & Airwaves 14 years ago, I told the world I was interested in Angels not being thought of as a band but as an art project that would take these themes and communicate them on transmedia. We’ll take a subject, put together an album, a movie, books and animation and all these different things depending on what it was.

New Found Glory Talk Cover Album

New Found Glory

New Found Glory talked with Alternative Press about their recent cover album:

Giving props to my man Jordan here. At the end of the original version of “Let It Go,” Idina Menzel sings [imitates hair-metal singer/leg-trapped animal screech] “Let the storm rage oooooooooon!” [Laughing followed by coughing fit.] I can’t even do it! It’s an insanely high note! So Jordan’s tracking vocals, and he gets up to the note, and everyone and Jordan knows that note is about to come. And we ask him, “Are you ready?” and he says [deadpan tone] “No.” [Laughs.] Dude, we know it’s high. Just think about Nothing Gold Can Stay days. Don’t worry about being perfect. Just rip it. Go for it. He’s like, “I don’t knooooow…” We hit “record,” and he hits it in one take. When you hear the record, remember, that’s one take.

The Damned Things Talk “Supergroup” Label

The Damned Things

The Damned Things sat down with Consequence of Sound:

When it started so many years ago, and people were saying that is was a supergroup, I didn’t like that tag. I didn’t like what it implied. I didn’t want to just come together and try to sell it because of these names are in it. I wanted it to be a band. So when we kind of split off and went our own ways, and I realized that we weren’t coming back anytime soon. I was like, “Fck, it was what I didn’t want it to be.” And I realize after that it had become that. And it was exactly what people were framing it out to be. And, fck, I was so mad about it and really hurt that it wasn’t happening again and weren’t doing it again.

YouTube Renews ‘Cobra Kai’

YouTube

YouTube has renewed Cobra Kai for a third season and will be releasing their original shows free, with ad-supported windows, in the future:

YouTube has ordered a third season of Cobra Kai. But before the Karate Kid sequel returns with more episodes, the streaming video platform is hoping to attract a bigger audience for the show.

On Sept. 11, YouTube will make the first two seasons of Cobra Kai available to watch for free with ads. Episodes of season two will be released weekly. Previously, those seasons were only accessible for people who paid $12 per month for subscription service YouTube Premium.

Fat Mike Talks Vegas Backlash

Fat Mike

Dan Ozzi sat down with Fat Mike for a new interview where he addresses the Las Vegas controversy last year:

You guys have been around since the 80s. Do you think your style of comedy can still work now?

Yeah, sure. I don’t know about the U.S. The U.S. is turning into some Puritan-Quaker country where everyone gets offended.

Do you think a band like NOFX could start up now?

I don’t know. The people defending me when I said that, it wasn’t very many people. The only two I can think of were Laura Jane [Grace] and Sick of It All. No one wanted to get on my side. No one wanted to touch us, which was why I wrote on the internet that we got banned in the U.S.

Hayley Williams On Mental Health, Self-Care, And Hair-Dye

Hayley Williams

Hayley Williams talked with Nylon about mental health, self-care, hair dye, and more:

I think that Paramore primed me, for better or worse, it prepared me to let people down all the time. I think Paramore prepped me pretty well to make mistakes in front of people, [and helped me learn that] you’ve gotta put your pride aside.

The thing about companies is that they’re made of human beings. For instance, Brian and I have made a lot of mistakes in terms of formulation that we’ve had to correct. We’ve had to be transparent about those things. Some things you fix and they happen. I’m starting to understand how many mistakes happen in the beauty industry all of the time. We’re constantly improving and trying to correct and make sure that we’re doing the right thing.

Fat Mike Talks With PunkNews

Fat Mike

Fat Mike sat down with PunkNews.org to talk about his recent Cokie the Clown album:

It makes me so happy because, some people hate it or hate me, or whatever, that’s going to happen. The people that like record, it touches them to their core. I was talking to Mikey Erg after the New York show, and Mikey was like, “I’ve listened to this record eight times today. This is maybe the best record I’ve ever heard.” Can you imagine how great that feels? I was talking to Josh of Queens of the Stone Age and he said the same thing, “this is one of the best records that I’ve ever heard.” It so fucking… I spent like a year and a half recording it.

Billie Eilish Tops the Charts

Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish has the number one album in the country this week:

Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? jumps back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, rising 2-1 in its fourth week on the tally and collecting its second total week at No. 1. The effort earned 88,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 25 in the U.S. according to Nielsen Music (up 10%).

Woodstock 50 Has Been Canceled

Festival

Woodstock 50 has been canceled:

Woodstock 50 has been cancelled. Earlier today officials with Dentsu Aegis Network, which is funding the festival, released the following statement to Billboard:

“It’s a dream for agencies to work with iconic brands and to be associated with meaningful movements. We have a strong history of producing experiences that bring people together around common interests and causes which is why we chose to be a part of the Woodstock 50th Anniversary Festival. But despite our tremendous investment of time, effort and commitment, we don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name while also ensuring the health and safety of the artists, partners and attendees.”

‘Avengers: Endgame’ Sets New Records

Marvel

BoxOfficeMojo:

Heading into the weekend it was a foregone conclusion that Avengers: Endgame would deliver the largest opening weekend of all-time, both domestically and globally, but to deliver a three-day domestic gross totaling an estimated $350 million and a global weekend over $1 billion was almost inconceivable. Today that figure has become a reality as Endgame not only delivered an estimated $350 million over the course of its first three days in domestic release, but a massive $1.2 billion at the global box office in just its first five days in release.

Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS?

Twitter

Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler, writing at Motherboard:

In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians.

The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued.