Mark Ronson to Give Master Class on Music Production in ‘BBC Maestro’ Series (EXCLUSIVE)

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorFirst things first: Adele showed up.And in many ways, that was the biggest hurdle Adele had to clear on her way to triumphing at the first of two shows at London’s American Express Presents BST Hyde Park festival.You see, the last time Adele headlined a massive outdoor run in her hometown, in 2017, she canceled the last two shows of her scheduled four-night Wembley Stadium stint after damaging her vocal cords. In fact, this was her first full live show since then.More recently, there was the small matter of her Las Vegas residency, scrapped at the very last minute, leaving many British fans stranded in Sin City.

(BBC2. 9. 30pm)Once upon a time, rock was seen as a young person’s game, but not anymore.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Weeknd’s opening acts for his global stadium tour, which launches in his hometown of Toronto next Friday, will be R&B singer Snoh Aalegra, Canadian electronic artist Kaytranada and top DJ/producer Mike Dean, his team reveals in an exclusive interview with Variety. The full 19 dates, noting which acts are playing in which cities, appear below.The tour’s original opener, Doja Cat, pulled out last month to undergo throat surgery, and although “the phone was ringing” with calls from interested parties, according to Omar Al-joulani — Live Nation’s president of touring and a Toronto native who has worked with the Weeknd since 2014 — the choices reflect the artist’s long practice of having up-and-coming acts open his tours, even one as massive as the stadium show that will work its way across North America (slowly) through Labor Day weekend before moving on to the rest of the world.

BBC has revealed which of the sets at this year’s Glastonbury were the most-viewed on UK TV – see the results below.After two years away, the festival made its return to Worthy Farm last week, with Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar headlining the Pyramid Stage across the course of the weekend.McCartney’s almost three-hour Saturday night (June 25) set, which NME called “history-making” in a five star review, averaged 2.7million viewers on BBC One and peaked at 3.9million, according to Broadcast.While the 80-year-old Beatle’s figures were impressive, the artist with the biggest viewership average was Diana Ross, who performed in the revered legends slot on Sunday (June 26). The Motown icon and disco queen’s 75-minute set garnered an average audience of 3.1million, peaking at 3.8million.In a four-star review of Ross’ performance, NME said she had the “crowd in her hands” throughout the set.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThose with long memories for Kanye lore may recall the artist getting into an aggressive argument with radio host Sway Calloway during an interview on the SiriusXM station Shade 45 back in 2013. While the two were friends and made up by the end of the interview, West did not take well to Sway’s questions about his earlier, initially money-losing attempts to break into the world of fashion.While Sway attempted to identify with the challenges he too had faced in launching a clothing line, the interview degenerated into West creating whatever passed for memes back then by yelling “You ain’t got the answers, man!” while Sway tried to calm him down, saying “Kanye! Chill out, man!” Well, some genius placed a snippet from that legendary interview over the music from Kendrick Lamar’s harrowing song “We Cry Together,” from his recent “Mr.

Naman Ramachandran A star-studded Glastonbury 2022 edition has yielded record breaking audiences for the BBC across its digital platforms.Popular sets from the festival included Pyramid stage headliners Paul McCartney, who revealed surprise guests Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl, and Billie Eilish, as well as performances from Crowded House, Diana Ross, Little Simz, Megan Thee Stallion, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Sam Fender.Content was streamed a record 34.1 million times on streamer BBC iPlayer. This included 23 million live streams, the highest on record for a BBC program brand.

Kate Moss, Stella McCartney, Noel Gallagher, Bruce Springsteen, and Cara Delevingne looked to be having a ball at Glastonbury, and oh to be part of that iconic crew. The legends of fashion and music posed together in a totally star-studded snap after Bruce joined headliner Sir Paul McCartney for an epic performance. Noel, who also performed with his band the High Flying Birds, took a moment to appreciate his fellow musician, giving us an (almost) smile in the incredible snap posted to Stella’s Instagram.

Simon Pegg has spoken of his newfound love at BTS during a backstage interview with NME at Glastonbury 2022. Watch the clip here.Pegg was attending the festival as an ambassador for Greenpeace, and also to enjoy the much-awaited return of the event.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAbsence can make the heart grow fonder, and one of the ironies of the power-pop revival of the mid-1980s was how hard it was to find records by some of its main archetypes, even if those earlier groups had genuine hits: The brace of great early-‘70s albums and singles by Beatles-obsessed bands like Badfinger, Big Star and the Raspberries had been out of print for years and could only be found at specialty shops for exorbitant prices or as random junkshop jackpots.Even more ironically, one of the greatest albums of that ‘80s wave — Redd Kross’ “Neurotica” — suffered the same fate. It was released in 1987 on the short-lived U.S.

Mark Sutherland Glastonbury Festival — the biggest live music event in Europe — gets into full swing today, for the first time since 2019.There will be 200,000 people on site in Somerset, in the west of England, watching thousands of performances across 93 different stages, including headliners Billie Eilish, Sir Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar, and Diana Ross in the highly prized Sunday afternoon ‘legends’ slot.And yet, somehow, Glastonbury is even bigger than those numbers suggest. First held in 1970 – when 1,500 hippies got free milk in exchange for their £1 entrance fee – the festival has developed into a national and international institution, as much a part of the traditional British summer as Wimbledon.

Billie Eilish will make history when she takes to the Pyramid Stage tonight as Glastonbury Festival’s youngest ever solo headliner.The Grammy-winning singer, 20, will perform alongside her brother and co-writer Finneas O’Connell.The US pop star made her Glastonbury debut in 2019 when she performed on the Other Stage and treated crowds to a string of tracks such as Bad Guy and You Should See Me In A Crown. In the weeks leading up to Glastonbury, Eilish has played a string of UK and European tour dates and also hosted a climate event, Overheated, at London’s O2 Arena.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSteve Cooper, CEO of Warner Music Group for the past 11 years, will step down next year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that was confirmed to Variety by a rep for the company.The transition will be a gradual one, the rep emphasized, as the company seeks a suitable successor.Warner is the third-largest major music group, after Universal and Sony, and Cooper has run it with a firm, calm and non-flamboyant hand through the first decade of the streaming era and as it went public for a second time in the early months of the pandemic in 2020. The company earnings were declining at the time of his arrival and he not only reversed that trend but doubled its revenue and embraced new technologies and business opportunities.

British people like British artists to originate from outside London. So say new figures from record label trade group the BPI and the Official Charts Company.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThere’s no question: As challenging as the music industry can be for men, it’s twice as tough for women.That was one of the many takeaways from a panel discussion involving Grammy-winning songwriter Autumn Rowe (Jon Batiste’s “We Are,” Dua Lipa, Ava Max) and top music publishers Jody Gerson (chairman/CEO of Universal Music Publishing), Golnar Khosrowshahi (founder/president of Reservoir) and Carianne Marshall (co-chair/COO of Warner Chappell Music) at a panel discussion during the National Music Publishers Association’s annual meeting on Wednesday.While the four all had different paths to the roles they’re in today, they all faced similar challenges and obstacles, namely sexism, a lack of allies, achieving a work-life balance, and most ominously of all, dangerous situations. Rowe (pictured above, second from left), who said that she worked as a songwriter for 12 years before she got a significant paycheck — a sadly common situation — also said that she has encountered multiple writing sessions that were “unsafe.” When moderator, Danielle Aguirre, NMPA EVP and general counsel, asked if she would feel safer with even just one more woman in the room, Rowe said she would.

Mark Ronson has partnered with the BBC to launch an online course in which he will share some of his production secrets.BBC Maestro is an 18-class virtual course that will show aspiring producers and musicians exactly how Ronson creates a new track, from writing a song to laying down instruments and playing with digital effects.Ronson said that the goal of the course, which will be released in full on July 5, is to show students “everything I do, and then you can apply this to your own process”.In addition to sharing tips about how to craft a song the ‘Uptown Funk’ hitmaker will talk through the process of collaborating with others and deconstruct some of his own records including Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’.Episodes of BBC Maestro will feature Ronson working with rapper Jon Bellion, singer Niya Norwood, engineer/mixer/producer Ricky Damian, and the Frighteners’ Richard Terrana.“Forget about all those things – commercial constraints, who will listen to this,” Ronson says at the end of the trailer for the course. “Just concentrate on making something that you truly find exciting, and that you would listen to.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe late, legendary BBC DJ John Peel had a one-of-a-kind music collection, and the items from it that were auctioned off by Bonhams in London on Tuesday brought in more than $566,000.Surprisingly, the Sex Pistols led the charge, with a test pressing of the group’s controversial debut single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” going for just under $25,000 (£20,400). It had been estimated pre-auction to go for not more than £8000.Other top-priced albums from the collection — which is a music geek’s dream — included an original 1983 demo cassette recorded from the Smiths in 1983 with a handwritten letter from the band (£17,850), an autographed copy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s controversial “Two Virgins” album (£15,300), a copy of Queen’s 1973 sophomore album with a personal letter from Freddie Mercury (£16,575), a copy of U2’s rare 1979 “Three” EP with a note written on it by Bono (£14,025), a copy of the rarest known Rolling Stones album signed by all five bandmembers in 1969 (£11,475), a copy of the Beatles’ white album signed by Lennon and Ono (£10,200) and Nirvana’s 1988 debut single “Love Buzz” (£8,925).

Liam Gallagher, Mark Ronson, members of Queen and more are all set to play at the tribute gig for the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins at London’s Wembley Stadium later this summer.Hawkins, the band’s drummer since 1997, died in Bogotá, Colombia on March 25. He was 50 years old.Last week, Foo Fighters announced that, together with the drummer’s family, the band will celebrate Hawkins’ memory and music at two special gigs in London and Los Angeles.