Dua Lipa, My Chemical Romance, Green Day, Halsey to Headline Firefly Festival

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSlimkid3, Imani and Fatlip of the Pharcyde were never supposed to rap together again. After producing two classic ‘90s hip-hop albums — “Bizarre Ride: The Pharcyde” and “Labcabincalifornia” — the galvanizing West Coast hip-hop group crumbled and went their separate ways.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe family of legendary singer-songwriter Nat King Cole, one of the most important and influential musicians of the 20 th century, has entered into an agreement with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group to manage and expand his legacy to new generations, the company announced today.Details of the transaction were not disclosed, beyond the fact that it “encompasses a broad range of rights from Cole’s legendary career including his recorded music, publishing, television shows, and name and likeness.”In the decades before his 1965 death from lung cancer at the age of just 45, Cole scored more than 150 singles across Billboard’s pop, R&B, and country charts and has sold an estimated 50 million-plus records worldwide. While best known as a crooner, he was a formidable jazz musician as well, and is best known for classics like “The Very Thought of You,” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Unforgettable,” “Nature Boy,” “Stardust,” “When I Fall In Love,” “Mona Lisa,” “L-O-V-E,” and the holiday staple, “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” As the announcement notes, Cole, who was born in Alabama in 1919, was subjected to all the barriers of the Jim Crow era, yet his success played no small role in advancing Black Americans’ presence in entertainment and public perception.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMegan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa are a formidable team, and award-winning video director Dave Meyers plays to their strengths in the clip for the pair’s new tag-team single, “Sweetest Pie.” Working a similar theme to the one from his video for Saweetie and Doja Cat’s “Best Friend” — hapless explorers of a science-fiction world stumble upon female characters with superpowers — this one turns dark quickly, as the explorers decide Megan and Dua are witches, try to burn them at the stake, and then suffer the consequences of their arrogance. Sure, it’s a not-terribly-serious, special-effect-filled music video, but it’s still a satisfying perspective during Women’s History Month.

My Chemical Romance have unveiled the support acts for their upcoming US tour.The band will be supported by numerous acts across the dates including: Badflower, Devil Master, Dilly Dally, GHÖSH, Kimya Dawson, Meg Myers, Midtown, Nothing, Shannon And The Clams, Soul Glo, Surfbort, Taking Back Sunday, The Bouncing Souls, The Homeless Gospel Choir, The Lemon Twigs, Thursday, Turnstile, Waterparks, and Youth Code.You can find exact details of who is playing where on the band’s official website.A post shared by My Chemical Romance (@mychemicalromance)A post shared by My Chemical Romance (@mychemicalromance)The returning group will kick off their reunion tour in the UK and Ireland, with a date at the Eden Project in May followed by gigs in Milton Keynes, Dublin, Warrington, Cardiff and Scotland. The tour will then move onto Europe, before visiting New Zealand and Australia in 2023.Last week, the group added more North American dates to their upcoming 2022 reunion tour.The band had previously confirmed more than 25 dates to take place in the States and Canada this summer and autumn, including festival headline sets at Riot Fest, When We Were Young and more.The reuniting emo band then added more arena shows to their itinerary, including 10 new cities.

Underworld, Years & Years and Jungle set to headline.The festival will take place at Cornbury Park near Charlbury, Oxfordshire between August 4 and August 7. Tickets go on general sale on Monday (March 14) at 10am GMT – you can purchase yours here.Today (March 10) organisers have confirmed that Underworld will top the bill as a UK festival exclusive, having last performed on these shores back in December 2019 (via Setlist.FM).Years & Years and Jungle will also appear as the remaining two headliners.

My Chemical Romance have added more North American dates to their upcoming 2022 reunion tour.The band had previously confirmed more than 25 dates to take place in the States and Canada this summer and autumn, including festival headline sets at Riot Fest, When We Were Young and more.Now, the reuniting emo band have added a further 14 arena shows to their itinerary, including 10 new cities. Tickets for the new shows will go on sale on Friday (March 11) at 12pm local time and will be available to purchase here.My Chemical Romance have also shared a new tour trailer, which opens with a statue smashing among a pile of rubble and is soundtracked by grinding guitars.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editortoday (March 9). He is based in the Republic Records Los Angeles office.Most recently, Beard  spent a decade at APG, where he rose from intern to senior VP of A&R and brought in Charlie Puth, Alex Benjamin and Pink Sweat$; he also has worked closely with David Guetta, Jason Derulo, Pitbull and Flo Rida, in addition to songwriters such as Amy Allen, Sean Douglas, Madison Love, Salem Ilese, and others. He also worked extensively as a DJ in nightclubs across the U.S., on-air for KIIS-FM and at private events.Goldstein said, “Miles has really set the pace for pop music with an unbelievable winning streak of incredible signings throughout the past decade.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMitski, the National and the Roots will headline the Pitchfork Music Festival when it returns to Chicago’s Union Park, running from Friday, July 15 through Sunday, July 17.The Festival kicks off on Friday with The National, who played Pitchfork Music Festival’s first year in 2006, Spiritualized, Parquet Courts, Tierra Whack, Amber Mark, Dawn Richard, Tkay Maidza, Indigo De Souza, Spirit of the Beehive, Spellling, Camp Cope, Wiki, Ethel Cain, and CupcakKe.The festivities continue on Saturday with Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Lucy Dacus, Low, Magdalena Bay, Dry Cleaning, Karate, Iceage, yeule, Arooj Aftab, The Armed, Chubby & the Gang, Hyd, and Jeff Parker & the New Breed. Closing day features The Roots, Toro y Moi, Earl Sweatshirt, Noname, BadBadNotGood, Cate Le Bon, Tirzah, Xenia Rubinos, Erika de Casier, Injury Reserve, Kaina, L’Rain, Sofia Kourtesis, and Pink Siifu.“This year’s lineup is a celebration of the rising indie class, and those who continue to pave the way for innovation,” said Puja Patel, editor in chief of Pitchfork.

My Chemical Romance have become the latest band to cancel their upcoming shows in Russia and Ukraine.Taking to Instagram, the band wrote: “With deep regret, My Chemical Romance is cancelling our Ukraine and Russia shows in June 2022.“We hope to be able to play for the fans there soon,” they added.It comes after Ukraine severed diplomatic ties with Russia and declared martial law after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an attack on the neighbouring nation on February 24.A post shared by My Chemical Romance (@mychemicalromance)Last week, Biffy Clyro and Placebo announced that they’d pulled out of Moscow’s Park Live 2022 in light of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.Yungblud also cancelled his upcoming shows in Russia saying he was “heartbroken” because “I know the vicious and brutal acts of the Russian regime in Ukraine over the past week do not reflect the attitudes and ideals of the beautiful people who I have met in Russia in the past.”Green Day cancelled an upcoming show in Moscow in light of the conflict. Billie Joe Armstrong and co were due to perform at Spartak Stadium in the Russian capital on May 29.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs the Prince estate slowly digs itself out of the legal and procedural morass that ensued after the legendary musician died in 2016 without leaving a will, a standoff between the estate and Morris Day, Prince’s near-lifelong friend and collaborator and frontman of the first Prince-spawned artist, broke into the open last week.At issue is Morris’ use of the name the Time, which an attorney for the estate claims it owns the rights to, citing a 1982 contract between Day and Prince. Day, who says his rights to use the name were never questioned by Prince himself over the many intervening years, blasted the estate on social media last week, and a rep shared the attorney’s letter, which proposes that Day license the name — presumably for a fee.

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 EditorMorris Day, frontman of Prince-spawned funk group the Time for more than 40 years, has laid into his late benefactor’s estate, which he claims have told him he can no longer work under the name Morris Day & the Time.“I’ve given 40 years of my life building up a name and legacy that Prince and I came up with,” he wrote in a social media post. “A name that while he was alive, he had no problem with me using.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorASCAP Experience, the performing rights organizations annual conference for songwriters, composers and creators, returns virtually this month. It kicks off on Tuesday (March 8) with an International Women’s Day panel featuring three of the industry’s leading composers and songwriters.

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.

Khruangbin have been confirmed as the final headliners for the second annual Bigfoot Festival, joining previously announced headliners Happy Mondays and Caribou.The Texan trio will top the bill on one of the evenings between June 17-19 at the craft beer and music festival’s new location, the Claydon Estate in Buckinghamshire.Also joining the final line-up is Maya Jane Coles, Bradley Zero, And So I Watch You From Afar, Pulled Apart By Horses, Bo Ningen, Puppy, Island Of Love and Wych Elm.Self Esteem, Working Men’s Club, Shame, Flamingods, Goat Girl, India Jordan, Katy J Pearson, Joe Goddard and many more acts are also set to play the festival’s second edition.More craft beer brands and food outlets have been added to the festival – see the full line-up and information in the event poster below.Standard adult weekend tickets include camping and are priced at £150 plus a booking fee. Youth weekender tickets (ages 13-17) are available at an early release price of £95, while child tickets are £40 plus a booking fee.

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.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAvril Lavigne, Maren Morris, Alicia Keys and other artists will appear in “iHeartRadio SeeHer Hear Her: Celebrating Women Who Make Music and Culture,” a celebration on the radio network taking place on International Women’s Day on March 8.The event will highlight successful and influential artists in music during a live one-hour special that will stream on iHeartRadio’s YouTube and Facebook pages on March 8 at 8 p.m. ET (available on demand through March 14).iHeartMedia is the largest radio network in the U.S.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGreen Day have canceled their concert scheduled for May 29 at Spartak Stadium in Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the band announced on Sunday.“With heavy hearts, in light of current events we feel it is necessary to cancel our upcoming show in Moscow at Spartak Stadium,” the band said in a statement to Variety. “We are aware that this moment is not about stadium rock shows, it’s much bigger than that.  But we also know that rock and roll is forever and we feel confident there will be a time and a place for us to return in the future.

Aftershock Festival has been revealed, with Foo Fighters, My Chemical Romance and Slipknot among its headliners.The festival is set to expand to four full days this year, taking place from October 6-9 at Discovery Park in Sacramento, California.Joining the aforementioned headliners in topping the bill are KISS, while other acts on the line-up include Bring Me The Horizon, Papa Roach, Judas Priest, Lamb Of God, Evanescence, A Day To Remember and Stone Temple Pilots.See the full line-up and tickets details for Aftershock 2022 below.Your 2022 lineup is HERE!