Ringo Starr on Working With Linda Perry for His Rocking New EP, Enlisting T Bone Burnett for a Country Follow-Up, and How He Feels About ‘Let It Be’

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There are subwoofers embedded in the seats of Las Vegas’ Sphere, which is part of the reason why Mickey Hart‘s nightly extended percussion segment, titled simply “Drums,” is one of the clear highlights of Dead & Company’s current 30-show residency at the venue. But that’s not the only great use Hart has been making of low-end frequencies that people can experience when they come in for a show by the Grateful Dead offshoot.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Zach Bryan is delivering “Pink Skies” now, but a red-letter day for fans is coming, with his “The Great American Bar Scene” album being described as imminent. Bryan has released albums with little or no advance warning before, like the live album he put out on Christmas Day, a year and a half ago. He’s making it sound as if this one might have a spontaneous release date as well, even as he revealed the album’s title on Friday morning while he was unveiling “Pink Skies,” the album’s bittersweet first single.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Feeling angry about Apple’s ranking of the 100 best albums of all time, are you? Good. (From their point of view.) That’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel, given a list that aspires less toward any semblance of an informed or authoritative voice than a seeming sense of randomness that can only be explained away as rage bait.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When people think of country superstar Miranda Lambert, one of the things that first comes to mind is pyro — not because she has that huge a penchant for setting things off on stage (though it happens), but because of lyrical connotations going back to her first platinum single, “Kerosene.” When it comes to her own career, though, things have consistently gone too well to ever need to go into burn-it-all-down mode. As she’s subtle changed approach from album to album and single to single, Lambert has been all about controlled burns.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic DJ Cassidy had already announced the four hip-hop icons who will join him each night for a “Pass the Mic Live!” residency coming up at Las Vegas’ Planet Hollywood this summer. Now he’s revealing eight additional stars of equally significant stature who will join the engagement for just one or two nights each: Public Enemy, Akon, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Jermaine Dupri, Da Brat, Too $hort and Warren G. These eight are adding their names to a lineup already held down by Cassidy and the quartet of previously named rap legends who are with him for the entire run — Ja Rule, Fat Joe, Slick Rick and Doug E.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Memo to anyone who “isn’t really into the Dead” but has been cajoled by a friend or loved one into attending an upcoming Dead & Company concert, as a plus-one: Your chances of enjoying the show just went up by approximately 10,000%. Let’s not stop there, though.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic What a great season for music this is, if you’re someone who has an old-fashioned thing for albums that really feel like albums. And it’s not because of any wave of old-timers ganging up with each other to show off their concept-record chops.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Is Reba McEntire running a little behind Bob Hope, as an awards-show-hosting perennial… or actually a little bit ahead? It depends how you count. Because this year marks her 17th year hosting the Academy of Country Music Awards, aka the ACMs, and Hope did the Oscars 19 times, so she’s still two years from matching his record, if we compare these gigs. However, McEntire has also hosted a rival program, the CMA Awards, five times over the years.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic With a performance-heavy show in the offing, the Academy of Country Music Awards got three awards out of the way two nights early Tuesday evening, giving out the awards in three separate categories the show has delineated for best new artists to Megan Moroney, Nate Smith and the duo Tigerlily. Perhaps the least surprising honoree the ACM Awards will have this year is the winner for new female artist of the year: Moroney. It’s fair to say that her four competitors didn’t stand a chance.

Ringo Starr has revealed that The Beatles wouldn’t have made as many records had it not been for “workaholic” Paul McCartney.The drummer of the legendary band sat down with journalist Dan Rather for a new interview on AXS TV. Starr opened up about how The Beatles didn’t get along and how without Macca, they wouldn’t have made nearly as many records as they did.“No no, we didn’t get along.

Joan Crawford, the legendary Oscar-winning actress who appeared in over 80 films during a remarkable 45-year Hollywood career, died on this day in history, May 10, 1977. Born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1904, in San Antonio, Texas, Crawford reportedly grew up with little means, and was raised by her mother and stepfather in Oklahoma before relocating to Kansas City, Missouri. Amid the jazz-age flapper movement, she was in search of a dance career until she was discovered while performing in a New York chorus line in 1925 by MGM, according to Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg is having a bit of a “hail the conquering hero” moment that very few people would have expected him to be having this far into the 21st century, least of all himself. Although he has had many successes in film and in the theater over the last 60 years or so, he remains most famous as the director of the Beatles documentary “Let It Be” — and that 1970 film remains most famous as something that has been kept locked in the vault since it got a brief VHS and laserdisc release in the early 1980s.

Fontaines D.C. gave their recent single ‘Starbuster’ its live debut on US TV last night (May 7) – watch the video below.The Dublin band appeared as the musical guests on yesterday’s episode of the NBC chat show The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Tyler Childers and Sierra Ferrell lead the nominations for the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards, both picking up nods in each of the three categories in which they were eligible — album of the year, song of the year and artist of the year. Longtime favorite Childers is up for “Rustin’ In The Rain” for album and “In Your Love” for song. Ferrell, who has risen quickly through the ranks to become an Americana queen, is nominated for “Trail of Flowers” for best album and “American Dreaming” for top song.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “There’s a river of love that runs through all times,” the singer-producer T Bone Burnett sang in a signature song of his back in the 1980s. But that’s not a river he’s necessarily always been riding.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” registered 439,000 album-equivalent units to return as the No. 1 album in the U.S. in its second week out, according to data from Luminate first reported in Billboard.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The smell of success is… well, you know what it is: too sweet. Hozier has never been about chasing the hit, but he’s got one regardless, as the Irish singer-songwriter’s “Unheard” EP quickly generated the first No. 1 Hot 100 single of his career, in the form of “Too Sweet,” a wry ballad about mismatched lovers.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Maggie Rogers is headlining arenas for the first time this fall, but she didn’t want it to feel like moving into bigger spaces for her concerts would mean a more impersonal experience. So for 11 shows that just went on sale in late April, she went out and personally manned the box office on opening day to help sell tickets for those big shows.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic One of the buzziest — or should that be tipsiest? — performances at this past weekend’s Stagecoach came from an artist who wasn’t even listed on the poster art. Late-breaking sensation Shaboozey was squeezed into the festival as a performer in the Bud Light Backyard tent, where there was other squeezing going on as Sunday’s festivalgoers stood in line to get a glimpse of the artist whose “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has proven to be a straight-out-of-the-box smash among both country and hip-hop fans. Shaboozey isn’t coming to stardom himself in any kind of overnight way; the 28-year-old, Virginia-born singer-rapper put out his first single 10 years ago, and he’s about to release his third major-label album.

Joy Behar thinks Barbra Streisand did nothing wrong!