Clive Davis Planning Star-Studded 90th Birthday Party in New York

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s almost become a model in recent years: If a song’s a hit, the copyright-infringement lawsuits follow, and Dua Lipa was clobbered with two of them in four days last week. Her global hit “Levitating,” which has spent 68 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, has drawn two lawsuits from songwriters claiming the song infringes on their compositions, according to multiple media reports.The first was filed March 1 by a Florida reggae group called Artikal Sound System, claiming that Lipa’s song lifts from their relatively obscure 2017 track, “Live Your Life.” That complaint includes little specific detail beyond claiming that the two tracks are so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” In the second, more-detailed legal complaint, filed on March 4 in New York, songwriters L.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorRepublic Records has appointed David Wolter executive vice president of A&R,label  co-president Wendy Goldstein announced today (March 7). He is based in Republic Records’ New York headquarters.Throughout his career,  Wolter has signed or worked closely with artists ranging from Gorillaz to Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers. At Republic, he will oversee upcoming releases for Benee, Greta Van Fleet, Jimmy Fallon and others, in addition to signing new talent.Prior to joining Republic Records, Wolter had been an executive VP of Virgin Records at Capitol Music Group since 2017.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorHipgnosis Song Management has acquired the song catalog of Leonard Cohen, poet, novelist, performer and one of the most influential songwriters of the past 50 years. The Canadian-born artist, who died in 2016 at the age of 82, is an inductee of both the Songwriters Hall Of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.Hipgnosis has acquired rights in all 278 songs and derivatives written by Leonard Cohen, including “Hallelujah,” which has been covered more than 300 times.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOutsider music and outsider art have been bedfellows in just about every sense since the two art forms have existed, and that collaboration is celebrated and explored in the Outsider Art Fair, taking place at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York this weekend.The exhibit — which is celebrating its 30 th year and is billed “the only fair dedicated to showcasing self-taught art, art brut and outsider art from around the world” — features more than 60 international exhibitors, including works from the Michael Stipe Collection as well as an exhibition of psychedelic art curated by Fred Tomaselli called “Field Trip: Psychedelic Solution, 1986 – 1995.”The latter is filled with work from the likes of pioneering underground cartoonist/Zap Comix artist Spain Rodriguez, R Crumb, Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson along with original artwork related to artists like Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield and the Who — there’s even the original drawing that spawned the Grateful Dead’s logo along with the origin story as well as preparatory drawings for the Jerry Garcia solo album “Compliments Of” from 1974 by artist Victor Moscoso.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter what we’ve all been through in the past two years, every concert feels like a miracle, but a Dua Lipa show more than most. On the surface it might be easy to underestimate the heavy emotions associated with her “Future Nostalgia” album, which was famously released on March 27, 2020, just as the horrors of the pandemic were becoming clear: It’s a dance-party album that arrived at seemingly one of the worst possible times in human history for a dance party album, when there were no parties and the only dancing was done on our own.Yet instead of striking a sour note or seeming like a cruel taunt, it was many people’s escape, their comfort food, their crying blanket — a reminder not only of what we couldn’t have, but what we hoped to get back as everyone wondered, without exaggeration, when or if we’d ever be at a concert or on a crowded dancefloor again.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe “chopped and screwed” sound has become such a staple of hip-hop that most fans probably don’t even wonder where the slowed-down, stop-start sonic approach came from — and thus, the late DJ Screw, a.k.a. Houston native Robert Earl Davis Jr., is one of the truly unsung heroes of the genre.During the 1990s, he developed the revolutionary mixing technique from his Houston home, adding new rhythms to instrumental tracks, slowing them down and bringing in local rappers to freestyle over the tracks.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMissy Elliott, Wizkid, Ozuna, Kali Uchis, Anderson .Paak & the Free Nationals, Jhené Aiko and many more will perform at a new festival in New York called LetsGetFr.ee, taking place at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on August 20-21, with a special opening night gala on the 19 th.The festival, which also features Jorja Smith, Yendry, El Alfa, Ferg, Lido Pimienta, Flatbush Zombies, Tems, ​​Bomba Estéreo, Major Lazer Sound System and many more, is presented by Afropunk festival founder Matthew Morgan and longtime partner Jocelyn Cooper in partnership with global creative agency Anomaly.The full lineup appears below.According to the announcement, the festival is “the largest diversity-focused, purpose-driven music experience in the U.S. Its mission is to close the equity gap for Black, Brown, Asian, and other underrepresented people in the entertainment industry, with the aim of achieving a diversified workforce across all levels in the industry by 2030.” The festival pledges that it will only work with brands and companies who commit to long-term systemic change.

Step inside the showbiz celebration of the year and watch as Dame Joan Collins and Percy Gibson mark their 20th wedding anniversary in style with a spectacular star-studded party at Claridge’s.Two decades after we exclusively covered their nuptials at the same hotel, the iconic actress and her beloved husband took us back to where it all started. Now, we're bringing you an incredible, candid look inside the spectacular evening - including an exclusive look at the heartwarming - and hilarious - speeches.

Step inside the showbiz celebration of the year and watch as Dame Joan Collins and Percy Gibson mark their 20th wedding anniversary in style with a spectacular star-studded party at Claridge’s.Two decades after we exclusively covered their nuptials at the same hotel, the iconic actress and her beloved husband took us back to where it all started. Now, we're bringing you an incredible, candid look inside the spectacular evening - including an exclusive look at the heartwarming - and hilarious - speeches.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe transition from bedroom pop to one of New York’s biggest stages is not an easy one — the intimate sound and emotions of the loosely defined style are almost the polar opposite of the big gestures and loud volume it takes to fill a major venue. Yet two of the genre’s most popular (and youngest) artists, Clairo and Arlo Parks, did it with ease Thursday night before an impressively full crowd at New York’s historic, 6,000-capacity Radio City Music Hall.Parks, 21 — who is nominated for two 2022 Grammys — is already a major star in her native England and is the more animated performer of the two, although Thursday’s show represented a big step up from her last area performance (at the 650-capacity Music Hall of Williamsburg in September).

Alex Gonzalez Coming of age is a perennial theme in music, be it Billie Eilish singing about the joys and woes of growing up on “My Future,” or Olivia Rodrigo baring her soul on “Brutal.” For the band Fun., which released its seminal second album “Some Nights” 10 years ago today (Feb. 21), that moment came as its frontman, Nate Ruess, was nearing 30.Joined by multi-instrumentalists Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost, Reuss wanted to create a work that pivoted from the highly arranged sound of their debut album “Aim and Ignite” to more of a pop and hip-hop influence.It’s little wonder since, at the time “Some Nights” was conceived, Fun. had Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and Drake in high rotation.

Fivio Foreign has shared a new video for his track, ‘City Of Gods’, which features guest vocals from Kanye West and Alicia Keys. Watch it below.The black and white video is dedicated to Fivio Foreign’s late friend Tahjay “T Dott” Dobson.The track is set to feature on on Fivio’s debut album ‘B.I.B.L.E’, which is set to arrive on March 25, and will be executive produced by West.An ode to Fivio’s hometown of New York City, Keys interpolates The Chainsmokers’ 2015 track of the same name on its chorus.Both West and Keys feature in the minimalistic new video, which you can watch here.West’s sequel album to 2021’s ‘Donda’ is set to be released on February 22.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorDua Lipa has parted ways with her longtime management firm, Ben Mawson and Ed Millet’s TaP Management, a source close to the situation has confirmed to Variety. However, the source says that contrary to other reports, the singer is not currently taking meetings with other management companies, although presumably she will at some point in the future.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s a fair bet that anyone who clicks on this article does not need a backstory on Woody Guthrie — legendary singer-songwriter, activist, poet, artist, writer of “This Land Is Your Land” and many other standards and the single greatest influence on Bob Dylan and a generation of musicians.But as a stunning, just-opened exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum shows, there was much more to him than his most well-known songs might indicate. Most striking of all, as manuscripts of his writings show, he was an amazingly deft wordsmith who would have made a hell of a rapper — and many of his verses and casual writings show a rustic, ribald sense of humor that is rarely present, or at least rarely obvious, in most of his songs.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorKeith Richards & the X-Pensive Winos, Mavis Staples, Hozier, Warren Haynes, Melissa Etheridge, Allison Russell and more will headline the sixth annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre on March 10.Larkin Poe, Tyler Bryant, David Shaw, Anders Osborne, Celisse, Ivan Neville, Jimmy Vivino, Maggie Rose and Connor Kennedy will also appear on the bill, with Will Lee serving as musical director.The concert is presented by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and will benefit God’s Love We Deliver. It is executive produced by fashion designer John Varvatos, NYC real estate broker and prominent concert producer Greg Williamson and concert/events producer Nicole Rechter.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorChristina Yuna Lee, a senior creative producer at the digital music platform Splice, was murdered over the weekend inside her apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York. She was 35.The suspect, Assamad Nash. who allegedly was seen on security video following Lee into her apartment, has been arrested and charged in connection with Lee’s stabbing death, according to New York 1 and other local reports.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Usher preached togetherness during “tumultuous times” while performing a series of his hits at an exclusive star-studded afterparty following the NFL Honors.The eight-time Grammy winner spoke about the importance of unity during the Chairman’s Party on Thursday night inside SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

Kanye West has a new song out.