Chris Willman-Senior: Last News

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bob “Slim” Dunlap, a guitarist and singer-songwriter best known for his tenure in the alternative band the Replacements during the final years of their original ’80s/’90s run, died Wednesday at age 73. The cause of death, according to a statement from his family, was “complications from his stroke,” which befell him in early 2012, causing severe health complications over the last nearly 13 years.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Leading contenders for the Society of Composers & Lyricists’ 2025 SCL Awards include “Emilia Pérez” composers Clément Ducol and Camille, who picked up three nominations, for their score and for two original songs from the musical drama. Matching that number as an individual was Atticus Ross, whose three nominations are split between his scoring work on “Shōgun” and a song for “Challengers.” The SCL’s nominations in eight film, television and interactive media categories were announced Wednesday morning, with the awards program scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on Feb.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Little Big Town likes to do things in fours, as the ensemble’s vocal-quartet configuration would indicate. So the country-pop group wasn’t about to let its 25th anniversary pass with just one commemoration when four would do: a national tour with their longtime friends in Sugarland; a greatest hits album; a Christmas record; and the quartet’s first two-hour prime-time special, “Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry,” airing tonight on NBC. They couldn’t have picked better ways to celebrate one-fourth of a century together.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic All they want for Christmas is to ride shotgun. Superstar pop divas Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa and Chappell Roan go a-SUV-caroling in “A Very Carpool Karaoke Christmas,” a holiday special that was unwrapped as a surprise release Sunday night on Apple TV+ and Apple Music. The hour-long installment of the Emmy-winning “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” was put up on Apple’s platforms in a surprise release Sunday night at 9 p.m.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic As the French Canadians who attended the final night of Taylor Swift’s epic road show in Vancover might say: Au revoir to all that. The Eras Tour is now one for the history books, after 149 sold-out stadium shows, 10 million tickets sold and $2 billion in face-value sales … aside from spinoffs like a $262 million-grossing theatrical movie.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Following her final night as an opening act on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Gracie Abrams will return to her already-established role as a headliner — this time topping the bill in arenas, with 2025 shows that were announced Monday for North America. In the U.S., Abrams is only revealing a few dates for now, but they’re key ones. On her “Secret of Us Deluxe Tour” — named as such after a deluxe edition of her most recent album — a Madison Square Garden gig is set for July 28, following up her three-night stand at Radio City Music Hall.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic On the heels of news that Taylor Swift‘s just-completed Eras Tour grossed more than $2 billion, now it’s being reported that the superstar handed out $197 million of that haul to tour employees as bonuses on top of their regular salaries, according to People magazine. The $197 million figure indicates that almost 10% of the tour’s overall gross was put back into bonuses for team members.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The final night of Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour Sunday night in Vancouver was marked by no big announcements, no guests, no gimmicks, no frills — unless, of course, you take into account that this was the frilliest tour of all time, and that every night on the 149-concert road show felt as spectacular as any actual grand finale could. That this really was it was almost incalculable, perhaps most of all to Swift, who started by saying “we are about to go on one last grand adventure together” and ended by finally thanking “every one of you for being part of the most thrilling chapter of my entire life to date — my beloved Eras Tour.” Her band had never vamped so long at the end of the closing “Karma” as it did Sunday, as Swift did her best to stretch her arms to include her entire coterie of dancers and singers in a group hug that seemed like it might add several extra minutes to the already three-hour-20-minute show, before going on to hug most of them individually.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic After completing the final night of its 149-date run Sunday night, Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour went into the record books as pop history’s first $2 billion tour, her camp confirms. The official tally for the 21-month run in stadiums is a gross of $2,077,618,725, based on a total sold-out attendance of 10,168,008. That $2 billion number is roughly double the previous figure for a tour gross.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When Billie Eilish chose “Happier Than Ever” as the title of her previous album, you didn’t have to look far past the straight-faced album cover to find levels of irony in that. She didn’t completely put on a happy face for this year’s full-length follow-up, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” either.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In reviewing Laufey‘s August concert with the LA Philharmonic, Variety wrote, “Laufey feels like she was born to play the Hollywood Bowl, with her rapturously received pop/jazz/classical set.” Something else she might have been born for: the big screen. She’s on Imax screens across America this weekend (and some slightly less massive-scale ones as well) with “Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl.” And director Sam Wrench‘s extended use of closeups establishes that she’s as expressive an actress, in her fashion, as she is a singer, guitarist, pianist and cellist.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic As Jelly Roll gets on the phone with Variety to discuss being honored as the Changemaker of the Year, he is preparing to have one of his biggest nights of the year: a late November homecoming show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena that will include a slew of guest stars, capping a year-long headlining arena tour. But the sold-out show is not the only thing on his agenda on this particular day.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Is Laufey a jazz artist, or a bona fide pop star? The qualified answer, with asterisks to spare, is “both.” And that’s part of the fun in discussing everyone’s favorite Icelandic-Asian-American singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist-cellist. Genre discussions can be a drag for artists and fans alike, but they’re suddenly a lot more fun when the overriding question is whether to talk about someone in the same terms as we would an Ella Fitzgerald or push her more toward the Taylor Swift side of the ledger.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Lainey Wilson already had plenty of trophies and accolades before being named Variety’s Storyteller of the Year — like winning the CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year, generally considered country music’s top honor, the very first time she was nominated in 2023. But the story part in the name of the award she’s being given at Variety‘s Hitmakers event really means something to her.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour book is only available from one retailer, Target, but that isn’t keeping it from having a more-than-blockbuster bow. “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book” sold 814,000 copies in just its first two days on sale, according to Circana BookScan, widely regarded as the most reliable tracker of weekly physical book sales. That is the second-highest amount of books sold in a single reporting week since BookScan began tracking sales in 2001.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Victory was sweet — definitely not too sweet — when it came to Hozier staking out a place at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this year. Not everyone would have seen it coming, to say the least. The Irish singer-songwriter had not even had a song crack the top 30 in the decade since his breakout single, “Take Me to Church,” peaked at No.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic On the latest episode of Variety‘s Strictly Business podcast, Daniel Nigro discusses the evolving role of the writer-producer in pop music, and why he sees himself as being more of a de facto “band member” than overseer for artists like Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo. “I come from being in a band,” says Nigro, who is being honored as Producer of the Year at Variety‘s Hitmakers event on Dec. 7.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When Kevin Cahoon got his Tony and Drama Desk nominations in 2023 as a featured actor in Broadway’s “Shucked,” he played a hayseed character whose sexuality might or might not have been known to everyone in his straight-laced, corn-fed community. But in “La Cage aux Folles,” now playing at the Pasadena Playhouse, taking on the lead role of the drag performer Albin, he quite defiantly is who he is — at least until the farcical second act has him comically pretending to be a straight man, then a straight woman, in an attempted act of familial love.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic I scream, you scream, we all scream for Beatlemania… but maybe it’s been a while. “Beatles ’64,” the new Martin Scorsese-produced documentary on Disney+, aims to recapture the shrieks that greeted the Beatles‘ arrival on American shores at the beginning of 1964. Under the direction of David Tedeschi, the film brings back the tears of hysteria that accompanied the band’s every move in the U.S., and generates some fresh tears from some of its contemporary interview subjects, who tell how the band’s advent changed their lives.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour-commemorating hardback book hit stores Friday, just nine days before she performs the show for the final time. And as much as we thought we knew about these concerts from the 21 months of it being dissected, the pop superstar still has some things to reveal about the epic, record-breaking outing in “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book.” The tome went on sale exclusively in Target stores at the crack of dawn on Black Friday. Fans lined up before store doors opened at virtually every U.S.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If you’re lining up for Record Store Day Black Friday 2024, you may be experiencing just a little whiff of Record Store Day Black Friday 2023 deja vu. That’s because last year at this time, if you did a survey of people waiting in the cold to see the exclusive vinyl titles they were most interested in (and we did), the answers were Olivia Rodrigo and Noah Kahan.