Chris Willman-Senior: Last News

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bob Dylan was announced earlier this year as having written separate appreciations of more than 60 different songs for his forthcoming book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” Now, the names of all 66 songs he wrote about have been revealed, thanks to the dissemination of a table-of-contents page for the highly anticipated book, which comes out in early November via Simon & Schuster. (Read the full list below.) Not surprisingly, classic songs written and/or recorded by Americans greats like Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Townes Van Zandt will come up for consideration. Less expectedly, Dylan will detour to analyze songs like Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman,” the Fugs’ “CIA Man” and Rosemary Clooney’s “Come On-a My House.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Country superstar Jason Aldean and his wife Brittany Aldean have become increasingly outspoken as conservative activists, without too much commentary or pushback from more centrist or liberal-leaning country stars. But when Brittany Aldean posted what many viewed as a transphobic joke to her Instagram account, Cassadee Pope and then Maren Morris jumped in defend the LGBTQ+ community — which then led to a war of words with another conservative Nashville celebrity, Candace Owens. The exchanges got contentious enough that Morris said, presumably addressing Brittany Aldean: “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.” Responded Brittany: “Karen Morris, thanks for calling me Barbie,” sealed with a kiss emoji.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Nashville Film Festival announced the full lineup Friday for a fall gathering of filmgoers in Music City that will begin with the Brandi Carlile-produced documentary “The Return of Tanya Tucker” as the gala opening on Sept. 29 and end with director Sacha Jenkins’ “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” for closing night on Oct. 5. The 53rd annual edition of the festival will take place both in-person and virtually, with a selection of more than 150 films that includes 38 full-length features, about 30 of which will be world, North American or U.S. premieres. Although the virtual component continues to be strong for the festival, its leaders note that of the 150 or so films in the festival, more than 50 will screen for audiences in Nashville venues, starting with the Tanya Tucker doc, which will be seen in the historic main auditorium of the city’s beloved Belcourt Theater, one of the original homes of the Grand Ole Opry. Other locations include the Franklin Theater in the nearby city of that name, and the TPAC Andrew Johnson Theater in downtown Nashville.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stepping into Muse frontman Matt Bellamy’s Los Angeles studio is immediately surreal, on a couple of different fronts. For one thing, there’s the fact that it’s in an unmarked former storefront on a heavily trafficked urban street, so on the other side of the one-way glass, pedestrians are constantly passing by, unaware that they’re about two yards away from a rock star coming up with new songs to potentially join “Madness” or ”Uprising” guy as new KROQ-driven earworms in their heads. But apart from the street scene outside practically brushing up against his console, there’s something else about the place… “I don’t know if you remember the TV show ‘Twin Peaks,’” Bellamy inquires. As a matter of fact, yes. “Do you remember the Red Room? We’re sitting in it, basically,” he says, and sure enough, here in the front room of his studio, there is the black-and-white zig-zag flooring, the wrap-around red drapes, the minimalist lamp, the vaguely retro sitting chair…. Bellamy is a student of fantastical pop culture, so it makes sense that he’s surrounded by a Lynchian throwback space — even if the rock arias he creates here passionately reach for the sky, rather than feeling like they’re stuck in an interdimensional waiting room.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The suspense over which album by the Beatles might be next in line to get a remix and bonus-filled boxed-set treatment is over: It’s officially “Revolver.” Apple Corps and Universal Music have confirmed that a deluxe celebration of the 1966 release — which, like the Beatle boxes that have preceded it, will include a Giles Martin remix — is in the pipeline for this fall. An official announcement of the project is not expected to come until some time in September, at which point details about the deluxe package’s contents and a release date will be forthcoming.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Remember how aggrieved people got when Adele beat Beyoncé for album of the year at the Grammys in 2017? People, like for instance, Adele, who said that “the artist of my life is Beyoncé” and “the ‘Lemonade’ album was just so monumental… A piece of me died inside. I felt like it was her time to win. What the fuck does she have to do to win album of the year?” The victor navigated the space between pride and embarrassment in the moment of her acceptance speeches and backstage press conferences as best she could. It’s not a position she’d likely be especially eager to find herself in again. Yet she well could, with the front-runners for the top 2023 Grammys essentially boiling down to… Beyoncé and Adele. And, yes, plenty of third-party candidates to be named at a later date. But for all practical intents and purposes, a little over five months out from the February 2023 telecast date, it is looking like déjà vu all over again, with a list of truly serious contenders for the top prize that runs the gamut from A to B.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Not long after announcing that the label had signed a computer-generated rapper dubbed FN Meka, Capitol Music Group announced that it is severing ties with the project. The move Tuesday came after Capitol came under fire from activists pointing out that the music perpetuated Black tropes and included the repeated use of the N-word but was actually the work of a non-Black creative team. “CMG has severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately,” the label group said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. “We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it. We thank those who have reached out to us with constructive feedback in the past couple of days — your input was invaluable as we came to the decision to end our association with the project.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There hasn’t been any shortage of musicians getting involved in the growing NFT (non-fungible token) arena. But Muse’s “Will of the People” album, coming out this Friday, still looks to be a first of sorts, as far as adding a fairly straightforward, reasonably priced NFT edition of the release, day-and-date with the standard CD, vinyl and digital download editions of the release. In the U.K., Muse’s NFT version of the album has even been judged as “chart-compliant.” So how will the “Will of the People” sales in the NFT format count toward the band’s chart totals? Well, in the U.S., they won’t. America’s chart arbiters, Luminate and Billboard, are not as ready as their European counterparts to add NFTs into the cocktail of sales and streaming that add up to unit figures, so whatever number might be sold in the U.S. won’t be part of Muse’s opening number, domestically.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticRock and Roll Hall of Fame member Jerry Allison, who played to screaming crowds as a teenager as a member of the seminal 1950s rock band Buddy Holly and the Crickets and co-wrote some of their biggest hits, died Monday at age 82.Allison’s writing contributions included co-penning “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” He said he also co-wrote “Not Fade Away” with Holly but went uncredited, due to the producer allegedly switching his own name in instead.Allison’s death was announced on the official Buddy Holly Facebook page. “Our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Jerry ‘JI’ Allison, drummer in the Crickets, one of Buddy’s very closest friends, and the inspiration to drummers for decades since, who passed away today at the age of 82,” the notice read.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticSince becoming the toast of the Coachella Festival in April performing his first rock concerts in decades, Danny Elfman has been a little cagey about some of the questions fans had on their minds about future live plans — namely: Might he take that show on the road, or at least repeat it in some fashion? And would there be any  “Nightmare Before Christmas” shows in L.A. again this year?Answers to both those questions came — in conjoined fashion — when Elfman announced Monday that he will be doing two shows at the Hollywood Bowl this fall … on Halloween weekend, when “Nightmare” gigs would traditionally go down, if they were going to. That can probably be counted as a win for everyone, as the Oct.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticOn the second evening of his two-night-stand at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Father John Misty sang “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” early on in the show, as he does nearly every night on his current tour, and then confessed that, on the previous night, he’d blown a significant portion of the lyrics. At a loss to explain that uncharacteristic lapse, he attributed it to that particular song choice maybe being so on the nose that thinking about it kind of threw him a little.If he were a more woo-woo kind of person, maybe he’d have attributed it to the assembly of local spirits messing with him, for daring to be so meta as to finally play a gig on the hallowed-grounds-turned-entertainment-venue he named a song after.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe term “residency” wasn’t always associated with big-bucks Las Vegas bookings designed for pop stars to make a lot of money while staying parked in one place. And in Los Angeles, it’s still not: That’s thanks to Largo, a smallish theater (and formerly an even smaller nightclub) that rotates famous and semi-famous musicians and comedians through its lineup again and again, with the idea that, if you return after a month or four, you’ll usually see a different show.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn the annals of popular music, has there ever been a more successful confluence of two existing solo brands than Robert Plant and Alison Krauss? Pretty much as a rule, duos start out in that configuration, then crash in clashes of egos; they’re not things that begin 20, 30, 40 years into respective careers. The long-lost fad of CSNY-style supergroups is one thing, but superduos never really became a thing at all, at least in that same joining-of-the-titans sense.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticPanic! at the Disco’s “Viva Las Vengeance” will never get filed in the comedy section, but shuffling through its 12 tracks, your instinct may be to chuckle and laugh, and then laugh some more. It’s a natural, admiring reaction to how Brendon Urie has brazenly fashioned the album as almost a parlor game of Spot the Classic-Rock Callback.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe musical subgenre of “beach country” is getting a comedic take with a new scripted podcast, “The Ballad of Uncle Drank,” coming from Audio Up with a parodic song score co-written largely by Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley and Audio Up CEO-founder “Jingle” Jared Gutstadt. The eight-part series will premiere Aug.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic“Back to the Drive-In” is filmmaker April Wright’s second documentary about drive-ins, following 2013’s “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie,” but she’s not milking a good thing with a rehash of the definitive first film. Rather than again explore the overall rise and fall and semi-rise of the phenomenon, in this terrific sequel, she’s looking at the big picture (drive-in screens are huge, in case you haven’t been) but also the smaller one, painting a series of portraits of 11 different ozoners across the U.S.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn recent times Todd Rundgren has just wanted to hang on the phone all day — or at least call people intermittently, over a period of a few years — asking well-regarded friends in music or even famous strangers and ask them to take part in a musical experiment. The results of this reaching-out, long spoken-of but only officially announced today, arrive in the form of “Space Force,” which has the legendary artist-producer teaming up for collabs with Sparks, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Neil Finn, the Lemon Twigs, the Roots, Rick Nielsen and more.The lead track, “Puzzle,” with Adrian Belew, premieres today (see below).

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticBilly Joe Shaver, one of the figureheads of the “outlaw country” movement that came out of Texas and flourished in the 1970s, is the subject of a forthcoming tribute album that sees some of the top names in country and Americana saluting the late legend, including Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert, George Strait, Nathaniel Rateliff, Rodney Crowell and Margo Price. The project, “Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver,” comes out on New West Nov.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticShe’s the one that they still want — the millions of Olivia Newton-John fans who were prompted by news of her death to revisit her hits on streaming services.On-demand audio and video streams for Newton-John’s music amounted to 11,267,494 for the week ending Aug. 11, Luminate Data tells Variety. How big an uptick was that? It marked a 614% increase from the prior week, which ended Aug.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticNo one has to wait till December for a holiday squabble. Mariah Carey’s attempt to register the term “Queen of Christmas” as a trademark only she can use is meeting fierce resistance from two singers who have also been associated with that term over the years, Darlene Love and Elizabeth Chan.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticSinger-songwriter Joseph Arthur has filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Times, saying the newspaper’s use of the term “anti-vax” in a headline a year ago was defamatory, because the artist has strongly crusaded against COVID shots but has not expressed a position opposing all kinds of vaccines.Arthur is represented in the suit by Steven S. Biss.