On his most recent solo tour, Pete Doherty has been playing The Smiths‘ “Panic” and “How Soon is Now?” with the band’s drummer Mike Joyce backing him up. Doherty, who is the front man of the bands The Libertines and Babyshambles, was touring in support of his upcoming solo album, Felt Better Alive. Joyce had been joining the tour on certain dates as an “extra special guest” at gigs in the UK and in Europe. The album is out May 14th. Continue reading »
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
2013 is a good time to be Ian Brown. He and his Stone Roses bandmates are currently are doing shows in Dubai, Indonesia, and the land Down Under. They’re headlining the Coachella festival this spring, with a documentary and a possible studio album to follow. The Internet is abuzz with rumors that the Flaming Lips are planning to cover the Roses’ immortal debut album in its entirety. All in all, there can’t be many better ways to celebrate turning fifty. Continue reading »
Next Sunday, the Simon Cowell-helmed UK television singing competition The X Factor (based largely on American Idol, itself a spinoff of his British series Pop Idol, on which Cowell also judged) will crown the winner of its seventh go-around. As tradition has held since the show’s second season, the victor’s debut single will drop the following day so as to compete to be the “Christmas number one,” (the top spot on the UK singles chart for the sales-heavy week prior to the holiday), a feat accomplished by four of the last five champs, much to the chagrin of the show’s detractors. Last year, however, a grassroots Facebook campaign known as Rage Against the X Factor lobbied over 500,000 supporters to pay to download “Killing in the Name,” the explicit 1992 debut single by Rage Against the Machine, and the title held off the debut of X Factor winner Joe McElderry (a cover of Miley Cyrus‘ “The Climb”) to become the first download-only Christmas number one in chart history. Continue reading »