Tish Melton and Producer Brandi Carlile Premiere Video for ‘The Chase,’ Discuss the 17-Year-Old Discovery’s Coming Debut EP (EXCLUSIVE)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Hello, beautiful. That’s what some Barbra Streisand fans have been murmuring to their physical editions of “My Name Is Barbra,” her memoir, since it came out one month ago, and over that time has become a nightly bedtime companion (its 970-page length not quite built for bingeing), as well as a sort of objet d’art, and objet d’heft.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s hard to quite think of someone who was as big a veritable child star as Brenda Lee was in the late ’50s and early ’60s a “late bloomer.” Nor can “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” really be considered an underdog song, after its accrual of quintuple-platinum sales over the decades. And yet it’s spent the last several years peaking at No. 2 each December, after spending most of its lifetime not annually charting at all.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Billie Eilish remembers being aware there were some puzzled — or just wary — reactions when a song she and Finneas co-wrote, “What Was I Made For?,” was one of the last tracks announced for the “Barbie” soundtrack. “I remember everybody being like, ‘What the hell? It’s gonna be a fun, cute, girly, pink movie for the summer and we’re all going to be laughing.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Who should be counted as country music’s currently most successful songwriter? You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who could come up with a metric where the end result is not clearly Ashley Gorley, who’s being honored as Songwriter of the Year at Variety‘s annual Hitmakers event. He has been a co-writer on five of the last six Morgan Wallen singles, all of which inevitably topped the country chart — with “Last Night” also going top 5 at pop radio, no small factor in the song spending a near-record 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast features Aaron Dessner — the man Swifties are indebted to for collaborating on big chunks of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but who more than earned his keep for a quarter-century prior to that as a member of the exalted-in-their-own-right band the National. Dessner’s Grammy-winning group has been one of the mainstays of rock ’n roll since the late ’90s.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic What part of fast in “Fast Car” did anyone not understand? Country superstar Luke Combs’ cover of the 1988 Tracy Chapman classic proved to be as turbocharged as anything acoustically based in this world can be, with unexpected multi-format success: It was No. 1 at adult pop and country for two weeks each; a healthy No. 6 at Top 40 radio; No.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” wrote William Shakespeare in one of his sonnets. Well, Bill, you might be enchanted to meet Taylor Swift, who has been busy proving just how long a summer can last: four years and counting, in the case of “Cruel Summer.” The song was released in 2019 but didn’t become a smash until 2023, when by popular acclamation her quasi-oldie was all but officially declared the song of summer.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Elizabeth Chan continues to be the most prolific recording artist in the Christmas music space, and certainly the only singer of any notoriety doing a new release each year, having just released her 13th consecutive holiday album, “Songs From Noelle.” Variety is already on record as calling the singer-songwriter “Christmas’ one-woman Brill Building.” But if a new holiday collection from Chan seems inevitable every fall, there was nothing clockwork-like about this one’s making — since for Chan, unlike Taylor Swift, the number 13 actually seemed unlucky in 2023. The title “Songs From Noelle” refers to Chan’s 6-year-old daughter, who co-sang and even co-wrote a few songs on the album.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Love hurts, and so, if you’re a Gram Parsons fan, does the idea that the world has had to do without him for 50 years, as of September of this year. Imagining how his style might have changed over the subsequent half-century is never-ending, as is conjecturing how he might have simply have brought the world closer to his own fearless hybrid of country and rock, with more years to grow his audience after what amounted to a mere five-year heyday.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic You won’t even have to already love Wilco to find joy in the experience of reading Jeff Tweedy’s new book, “World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music” — although nothing about coming in as a fan will exactly hurt. His tales about how dozens of pieces of (mostly) pop and rock music have hit him in a personal way over the decades is full of anecdotal pleasures that get at more universal truths about how we’re shaped by art… or, alternately, just illustrate a funny story Tweedy neglected to include in his previous books, the music memoir “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)” and the instructional “How to Write One Song.” The book includes his thoughts on youthful favorites he remains unabashed about into his adulthood, like “Smoke on the Water,” “Takin’ Care of Business” and “My Sharona,” adult fare that rewarded more mature readings, like Randy Newman’s “In Germany Before the War,” and songs as disparate as the Replacements’ “God Damn Job,” Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre,” Rosalia’s “Bizcochito” and “You Are My Sunshine.” Variety caught up with Tweedy on the road between stops on Wilco’s fall tour supporting the band’s recent “Cousin” album, following a solo tour in the summer of 2023.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Was there anyone who didn’t have an opinion — and the strong need to express it — when the Beatles‘ “last single,” “Now and Then,” came out earlier this month? The surviving members’ long-aborning completion of a 1970s John Lennon demo profoundly moved millions of fans, and put off some others, but no one in practically any demographic — not boomers or even Gen-Z-ers and millennials — wanted to hold their tongue about it. And that’s the kind of marketing that money and promotion can’t buy.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Mars Williams, a saxophone player known for his work as a member of the Waitresses and later the Psychedelic Furs, died Monday at age 68. His hometown newspaper the Chicago Tribune first confirmed Williams’ passing and reported that the cause of death was ampullary cancer.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When a record comes with a warning label, believe it. That’s the case behind André 3000’s solo album debut, 17 years after the close of the recorded catalog of his Atlanta-based hip hop behemoth, Outkast.

Jacob Collier has teased a new song ‘Witness Me’, which will feature the likes of Stormzy, Shawn Mendes, and Kirk Franklin.The singer previously teased the song on November 10 with Franklin, which he posted to X/Twitter. However, on November 13, Collier unveiled the details of his new collaboration.JC X @kirkfranklin X ?????????? pic.twitter.com/V0P5hKhLEe— Jacob Collier (@jacobcollier) November 10, 2023In an Instagram snippet showing Collier, Stormzy, and Mendes walking out a door, listeners can hear a grand, gospel-inflected track.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Southern California comedy aficionados have experienced some FOMO when it comes to on-and-off L.A. resident Alex Edelman having become the toast of the town in New York theater circles with his one-man show, “Just for Us.” One of the most celebrated younger stars of comedy, Edelman performed parts of what would turn into the theater piece while doing stand-up in L.A., premiered it overseas in 2018, and then had “Just for Us” turn into a hot off-Broadway ticket in 2022 before doing a limited Broadway run this past summer.

have been separated for six years.The “Mamma Mia!” star has been close with Mitchell for years, with Streep even honoring Mitchell during Grammy weekend last year.MusiCares gave Mitchell the Person of the Year award and Streep sent her a loving video message to applaud the accomplishment at the time. “I don’t know how you do what you do, I just know I need it like food,” Streep said in the tribute. “Ever since we were both young girls.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic These weren’t your grandfather’s CMA Awards… or even yours, from, say five years ago. A new generation has been firmly installed, between the big look for Lainey Wilson, who is only on her second major-label album but was named entertainer of the year, and other winners from Luke Combs to Hardy, who were also unknown a decade ago. When Chris Stapleton suddenly nearly seems like the “old guard” after only six years of accruing awards, things have changed.

Angelique Jackson Veeps, the streaming platform founded by Joel and Benji Madden, is expanding its reach to include a comedy vertical featuring new specials from superstars like David Cross, Brad Williams, Katherine Ryan, and Reggie Watts. The Live Nation Entertainment-affiliated company will also be the exclusive streaming home for select sets from SF Sketchfest’s 21st edition in early 2024.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The winners of the 2023 CMA Awards are being announced from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Luke Combs‘ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” won the first two on-air awards, for single of the year and song of the year.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen tied for songwriter of the year of the BMI Country Music Awards, held Tuesday night at BMI’s building in Nashville. To commemorate the tie (which clearly had been communicated to the twin winners in advance), BMI cooked up another surprise: a climactic performance for the evening in which Wallen and Combs sat side by side and borrowed each other’s hits.