T Bone Burnett Taps Into a River of Love for His First Acoustic Album in Decades: ‘In a Way It Feels Like My First Solo Record, at All’

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.

The highly-anticipated return of Love Island is just weeks away, and one of this year's singletons has already been revealed as a stunning model who is already followed by the likes of Molly-Mae Hague and Davide Sanclimenti on Instagram. Influencer and model Grace Jackson, 25, is reportedly the first girl set to enter the villa this summer in the hopes of finding love.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bev Paul, who oversaw the Sugar Hill Records label as general manager as it became a staple of the modern roots music movement, died April 19 in Durham, North Carolina after a battle with lung cancer. Paul served as Sugar Hill’s GM through the 1990s and, after a brief stint in management, again in the 2000s. The label won more than a dozen Grammys in the bluegrass, country and folk fields, including honors for artists like Nickel Creek, Dolly Parton, Jerry Douglas and Tim O’Brien that recorded for the company under her watch.

EXCLUSIVE: Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) has signed on to star in My One and Only, a psychological thriller from writer-director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) that’s being presented for worldwide sales at Cannes by Film Bridge International.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Ringo’s rotogravure is back, as it were, with a new EP, “Crooked Boy,” that will delight fans who’ve wanted a real rock record that was as steady as his backbeat. Linda Perry wrote and produced all four songs for this, the latest in a series of EPs that Ringo Starr began recording during the pandemic and is keeping on with well into the 2020s. He’s not married to the short-form format, though.

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.

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 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 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.

Alex Salmond’s company fell into the red for the first time after it was formed nine years ago.

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.

Kamasi Washington has enlisted funk icon George Clinton and rapper D Smoke for a new track, ‘Get Lit’.The suave new track is taken from his forthcoming album ‘Fearless Movement’, which will land on Friday (May 3).It follows previous singles ‘Prologue’, ‘Dream State’ (featuring André 3000) and ‘The Garden Path’, which Washington performed for the first time ever in 2022 while making his late-night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.Check out ‘Get Lit’ below:Speaking about his forthcoming seventh album in a press release, Washington has referred to ‘Fearless Movement’ as his dance album. “It’s not literal.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Morgan Wallen and Post Malone have been teasing a joint single, and the two singers premiered the new song, “I Had Some Help,” in a duet performance during Wallen’s headlining set at the Stagecoach festival in California Sunday night. The new song, “I Had Some Help,” is a drinking-buddies anthem and includes the key lyrics “I had some help / It ain’t like I can make this kind of mess all by myself / Don’t act like you ain’t help me pull that bottle off the shelf / Been deep in every weekend, if you couldn’t tell / They say teamwork makes the dream work / Hell, I had some help.” No official announcements have been made about the single, much less a release date.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent In its latest expansive move, independent production house Nevision is opening offices in Barcelona, its first in Europe outside its London-based headquarters. The Barcelona operation is headed by seasoned publisher, author, journalist and producer Tim Parfitt who will work with Nevision founder James Cabourne to develop scripted series in Spanish for both local and global markets, Nevision announced last week in a written statement. First up are three projects, two with scribe-helmer Roger Guäl, who broke out with 2002’s “Smoking Room,” an acerbic take on office politics.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about Challengers.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” has lived up to its blockbuster potential and then some. Billboard reported Sunday that, per data provided by Luminate, the new release racked up 2.61 million album-equivalent units in its first week out — the best one-week figure for any album in nine years. The last album to debut with a higher figure was Adele’s “25,” which bowed with 3.482 million in 2015, a number that is considered unrepeatable with the changes that have occurred in consumption since then.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Beyonce did not show up. Reba did. And it was enough.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It would be hard to imagine a more actually polarizing set — as in, splitting real fans into roughly even, truly diametrically opposed camps — than the headlining show Eric Church delivered to round out the first night of Stagecoach in California. The 70,000 festival attendees will definitely not lack for anything to talk, or argue, about for the rest of the weekend, and the debate will also continue among the many more fans who watched the livestream on Prime Video and Amazon’s Twitch channel.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The tide of Black women in country is a phenomenon that much of the world has suddenly become aware of, thanks to Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and the lesser-known artists being championed through guest slots on the album. Does this mark the true signal change that advocates for diversity in country have long dreamed of? Or is the real progress within the ranks of the music industry that could allow young Black country artists so lacking that the current excitement might be destined to go down as a glorious blip? These were among the topics of a presentation by the Black Music Action Coalition at Live Nation’s Beverly Hills headquarters Wednesday, with Mickey Guyton, songwriter-artist INK (who is a key contributor to “Cowboy Carter”) and academic researcher Dr.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Spotify announced Wednesday that Taylor Swift‘s “The Tortured Poets Department” has become the first album in the app’s history to pick up a billion streams in a single week. And it did that with still a couple of days left to go in the seven-day period in question. The previous high-water mark for most album streams in a week belonged to Swift’s last all-new release, “Midnights,” in October 2022.