To celebrate, the service and pre-service music will be recorded and released by Decca Records on the same day. The Official Album of the Coronation is set to be more than four hours long and will feature all music and spoken word from the global event, including Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s coronation anthem called “Make a Joyful Noise,” plus pieces from artists like Andrea Bocelli, José Carreras, Elina Garanča, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the Sistine Chapel Choir, Lorin Maazel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE and many more.
“This will be a truly historic recording, capturing a glorious range of music from across centuries and continents, reflecting the world-wide interest in our traditions, covering multiple locations in the wonderful acoustic of Westminster Abbey, and involving an unprecedented technical plan to present the entire experience to the world on the day itself. Balance engineer Mike Hatch, I and the team are honoured and excited to be a part of this,” the album’s producer, Anna Barry, said in a press statement.
The Official Album of the Coronation will be available digitally on May 6, before the physical version of the album will be available for purchase in stores starting on May 15.
Members of the British royal family, including Prince William and Prince Harry, will be in attendance at the coronation ceremony, along with friends and family of their majesties. International representatives from 203 countries will also be in attendance, including approximately 100 heads of state. Additionally, 400 young people representing charities chosen by King Charles, Queen Camila and the U.K. Government, “will have the opportunity to watch the Coronation Service and Processions from inside St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey,” according to a news release from Buckingham Palace.
On May 7, a coronation concert at Windsor Castle will feature performances by American Idoljudges Katy Perry and Lionel Richie, as well as Bocelli, Nicole Scherzinger, Tiwa Savage, Paloma Faith, Frey Riding and Sir Bryn Terfel. For more info on how to tune into the King Charles’ coronation, see here.
Grimes is fully aware that her way is not necessarily the path most people would choose. In a conversation with Julia Fox on the model’s Forbidden Fruits Spotify podcast this week, the singer dove into cancel culture and why her unique choices often get her on society’s do-not-call list.
“I think it’s fairly obvious… I’m very easy to cancel and canceled very often,” Grimes said while explaining why the traditional album promotional cycle of release-press-tour-TV/radio appearances just has never worked for her. “I’ve always been exceptionally canceled. People call me a ‘techno-fascist’… I agree a lot of things have been mishandled and we’re in this giant hiccup into a different part of civilization that is extremely unprecedented.”
In this brave new world, Grimes said it’s sometimes unclear where ethical boundaries exist, while fully admitting that she’s said some “dumb stuff” in the past. “I say a lot of dumb stuff… above average I’d say,” Grimes told Fox, who countered, “you say a lot of smart stuff too!”
“I think we need a better discourse… the way I wish people would approach me in better faith — I approach everyone in good faith — if people are being hateful on the internet those people are mad because they want a better world,” Grimes offered.
The conversation, of course, also touched on Grimes’ recent deep dive into AI on what she described as a “data collecting and spy mission” in her new hometown in the Bay Area to find out what’s happening in the space these days. “I’m pretty for it, I would say I’m fairly optimistic, I think there are some potential bad outcomes but I don’t think it’s constructive to even discuss that publicly per se,” she said, noting that too much talk could scare a potentially not super-informed public.
The tech-savvy singer then tried to explain neural nets and machine learning to Fox, lamenting that there are too much scary depictions of AI in the media these days that are freaking people out. “I think right now there is sorta a moral imperative to make more positive AI depictions because it’s literally training on the data. It will see itself on how we are seeing it right now, in many ways, and it’s a concern that is brought up often,” she said.
Grimes also delved into how she sees AI applying to the music industry at a time when she has opened up her music to the general public in an experiment in which she has promised to split profits 50/50 with anyone who uses her voice on an original AI song. “I think the engineers who create the tools that we use are often very under appreciated – all music right now is pretty much a dialogue between the engineers and the artists. We have just been given a plethora of tools that are very unprecedented,” she said of what she sees as the democritization of music.
“Over the last 15 years of music, we’ve seen a lot more regular people, not just people who’ve been christened by the labels,” she said. “You go on TikTok and you see all these kids making stuff in their bedrooms, this is the result of engineering and technology, and this has been a thing that is like really beautiful for our culture.”
The singer touched on her recent split with Columbia Records, noting that they parted on “good terms” after she realized she couldn’t be on a major label because “I can’t function normally… and the normal promo things don’t work for me.”
And, if once again you’re wondering where her long-awaited next album is, Grimes said she’s sitting on a completed LP that, frankly, she’s just “really bored” with at the moment. “It’s like two years old and I’m starting to make new things,” she said.
Doja Cat has a Doja Bat — as in, she just got a tattoo of a bat. In a Thursday (May 4) Instagram post, the rapper debuted some fresh ink: a sprawling portrait of a winged creature’s skeleton covering her entire back.
The bat tat starts at the base of Doja’s neck and extends down to the top of her waist, with its skeletal wings stretching across the musician’s shoulder blades. She showed off the new body art in a series of photos — some taken in the mirror by Doja herself, and some taken by a friend from behind — captioned with a simple bat emoji.
The Grammy winner didn’t share any personal explanations for her new artwork, instead sharing a screenshot of an article highlighting the animal’s symbolism. “Bats often represent death in the sense of letting go of the old, and bringing in the new,” reads the excerpt. “They are symbols of transition, of initiation, and the start of a new beginning.”
Though it most likely takes the cake for Doja’s biggest tattoo to date, the bat ink is far from the “Woman” artist’s first ink. She’s previously had a spider and an antelope skull permanently etched onto her forearms, to name a couple.
Doja’s latest ink appears brand new, as evidenced by her 2023 Met Gala look from just three days prior. The star wore a backless gown to the Monday (May 1) event, which, at the time, revealed a completely blank, bat-less canvas. Her bare back displayed in the jewel-encrusted dress was not the most talked-about element of her look, however. She arrived wearing cat ears and a realistic prosthetic feline nose in tribute to late designer Karl Lagerfeld’s beloved kitty, Choupette.
Godsmack drummer Shannon Larkin mentioned during a January appearance on the 2020’d podcast that frontman Sully Erna had dated Lady Gaga once upon a time. While Erna remained silent on the allegations, he is now confirming the news and shed some insight on his relationship with the pop star in an interview with Revolver published Thursday (May 4).
“Listen, I really don’t have a lot to say on this topic,” Erna told the publication when asked about the band’s song “Under Your Scars” and Gaga being the inspiration. “What I will tell you is that I have an immense amount of respect for her. I was introduced to her through a mutual friend. We clicked and dated for a hot minute, and there was nothing but respect for each other.”
He continued, “There may be a lot of people in the world that think she’s kooky and crazy because she’s so wild with fashion and things like that, but she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s an extremely smart businesswoman. And she’s kind and super talented.”
Erna thinks fondly of the time he spent dating Gaga, concluding his comments by saying, “I’m proud to say that I shared some great moments with her. I was able to meet Elton John through her. She’s an incredibly great person and those are some very fond memories for me. And I’ll leave it there.”
Up next for Godsmack is a co-headlining summer tour across the United States with Staind, in support of the band’s recently release LP, Lighting Up the Sky, its final studio record.
An Inbuilt Fault, out Friday (May 5) on Partisan Records.
THE ORIGIN
You wouldn’t recognize the Westerman of 2016. In the earliest days of his life as a professional artist, Will Westerman sported long, curly hair and played folk music that most often earned him comparisons to Nick Drake. By the time he began getting more notoriety, he had totally transformed. Now in his early thirties, he keeps his hair shorn close and wears sleeker clothes, mirroring the evolution of his music.
In the late ‘10s, he began collaborating with the producer and fellow Londoner Bullion, who helped Westerman achieve a more electronic sheen. His early singles — including the breakthrough 2018 track “Confirmation,” which ignited a flurry of blog hype — had an alien quality, singer-songwriter fare put through a strange, otherworldly filter.
Since “Confirmation,” the path has been as circuitous as Westerman’s exploratory songwriting. His debut album, Your Hero Is Not Dead, was finished and ready for release in 2019, but he alludes to various speed bumps caused by some people who “behaved badly.” Eventually it arrived right in the summer of 2020, with Westerman unable to tour or promote it properly due to the pandemic. Afterwards, he underwent a crisis of faith, wondering whether he wanted to release music anymore. “It took me about a year to get back in the headspace where I thought it was worth making music again,” he admits. “I remembered why all this stuff started in the first place.”
THE SOUND
Part of the power in Westerman’s recent music is the contrast between warped guitars and synth textures, and Westerman himself. He has always had a rich, expressive voice — it can be crystalline, but also not without a smoky huskiness. As a child, Westerman sang in choirs, and recently found solace in revisiting unaccompanied plainsong as a way of reconnecting with the human voice during long stretches of lockdown isolation. It gives him a unique melodic sensibility, where he may wind and surge beyond the lines we usually associate with pop song structures.
Sophomore album An Inbuilt Fault was intended to be serpentine and unpredictable as well. “I wanted it to feel very close, and less sculpted,” Westerman says. “I wanted it to have a breathing quality.” At the time, he was demoing over polyrhythmic loops, experimenting and writing for himself without any expectation of necessarily finishing another album. In addition to the comfort of choral music, he was digging way into krautrock. “It was the sense of freedom, the sound of freeform expression,” he recalls. “It was the music I needed at that time.”
While Westerman’s guitar is still pivotal to his music, An Inbuilt Fault takes the organic/artificial tension of his music to a new extreme, putting his voice to the forefront over a newly percussive backdrop. Abandoning the beats of past recordings, he wanted to embrace playing live in a room with human beings again — once he was finally able to. An Inbuilt Fault ended up being a document of a group of musicians wrestling an elusive sound into being, all tumbling drums and guitars surrounded by all manner of flickering, alluring textures at the songs’ edges.
THE RECORD
With everything on hold, Westerman decided it was time to try a big life change he’d thought about for years — he wanted to move to Athens. Embarking on a “half-baked” plan to live in a van in the Balkans, he started across Europe and stopped to visit his father in rural Italy for a week. Thanks to more COVID lockdowns, he ended up being there for six months.
For all that time, Westerman had very little human interaction aside from seeing his father. He began writing songs again, mostly as a way of keeping himself sane, but eventually saw an album taking shape. When it was time to record, he reached out to Big Thief drummer/producer James Krivchenia — who he’d briefly hit it off with at a show immediately before the pandemic — and with Krivchenia’s touch and ear for percussion, An Inbuilt Fault has that more alive feeling Westerman was looking for.
“I wanted to jump off the cliff creatively,” Westerman says. “I wanted to put myself in an environment that was completely alien to me as a way of trying to grow, to break out of the solipsistic way the music had been forming up until that point.”
That isn’t to say the core ethos of Westerman’s writing was lost in the process. The music unspools and ambles, so it takes longer for these songs to sink into your head, but they don’t leave once they’re there. His melodies are as gorgeous as ever: one of the album’s most simultaneously jarring and transcendent moments is when he slides into the chorus of “Idol:RE-Run,” which happens to wring a hilarious amount of beauty out of the word “motherf–ker.” (“It wakes you up,” he quips.) Meanwhile, “A Lens Turning” uses a dexterous, knotty groove as underpinning for navigating a similarly tangled existential crisis. Closer “Pilot Was A Dancer” has an almost ‘90s alt-rock tone to it, a cathartic burst of guitars as Westerman tells an apocalyptic story about the last human being alive on Earth.
Though Westerman’s songs are inspired by an array of experiences, both his and others, he rarely is autobiographical. At the same time, he acknowledges much of An Inbuilt Fault is traversing relatively dark themes, its title a reflection on our inherent fallibility. At the end of it all, he’s made another striking album that also feels like a hard reset after the ellipsis of 2020. It feels like he’s starting again.
THE FUTURE
Westerman did eventually make it to Athens, and his early days there were wild — things were just reopening, and parties thronged the streets at all hours of the night. One of the singles from An Inbuilt Fault, “CSI: Petralona,” is a rare moment that does derive more directly from Westerman’s actual life, inspired by a “near-death” experience and the kindness of strangers. But since then, it seems he’s settled into his new life in Greece.
“It’s almost the opposite of London,” he muses. “It’s slow-paced. It’s lugubrious chaos. Nothing really works very well but there’s a strange internal logic to it where it does.”
With some distance from London, and from the hubs of the music industry in western Europe and North America, Westerman has found he’s been more clear-headed creatively. He’s come out the other side of questioning his life as a musician revitalized and re-centered. “It remains the same irrespective of whether five people are listening or five thousand,” he says. “The scale is irrelevant in terms of process, and when I remember that it is very helpful. I know I’ll continue to do it now in some capacity, because I know I need to do it.”
To that end, he mentions he’s already close to finishing the recording of another album.
HIS FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR
“I’ve been using this Meris Hedra pedal. It has three pitch shifters but it’s got secondary functions of delay and feedback. I think you can make a whole record with just a voice and this pedal. It would be an interesting thing to do that as a confined exercise. I don’t really understand it. It’s such a deep piece of equipment I don’t know half of it.”
THE ARTIST THAT HE THINKS NEEDS MORE ATTENTION
“There’s loads. There’s an artist called Clara Mann. She’s almost folk revival, slightly maudlin, sadly beautiful minimalistic guitar singer-songwriter. I really enjoyed listening to that yesterday so I’ll go with that now. That’s a difficult question because there’s literally thousands.”
THE THING THAT HE THINKS NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
“I don’t think there is enough protection for artists — in general in the industry, but particularly for younger artists. There’s a disposability culture, where there isn’t really a huge amount of accountability for the way older people in the industry can exploit the good will or naivety of younger people when they’re offering something. It’s not like designing a washing machine. It’s a different sort of thing.
“I think it would be good that, if [and] when people are exploited through their inexperience, there was some kind of culpability for the people who are doing that. Currently there is none. Seemingly there are very few bodies of people you can go to when things go wrong. Generally the people who carry the financial and emotional burden when those things happen are the people least equipped to do it, and that’s an imbalance that is not right.”
THE PIECE OF ADVICE HE BELIEVES EVERY NEW INDIE ARTIST NEEDS TO HEAR
Westerman pauses for a while, and then says simply: “Keep going.”
John Legend isn’t holding back. After Megyn Kelly ripped into the outfit Chrissy Teigen wore for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend, the “All Of Me” singer had some choice words for the polarizing conservative commentator.
Speaking to TMZon Thursday (May 4), Legend theorized that Kelly chose to attack his wife in an attempt to get back into the Republican party’s good graces. “Megyn, she likes attention,” said the 12-time Grammy winner. “She needs it after getting fired from Fox, so she has to do what she can do to get attention.” [Editor’s note: Kelly chose to leave the cable news network in 2017 to join NBC News.]
“She pissed all the conservatives off when she asked Trump a tough question, so now she’s trying to figure out a way to win them back,” Legend added. “She’s desperate.”
Indeed, Kelly has clashed with Trump and his followers ever since she asked the former president point-blank about his track record of calling women “fat pigs” and “slobs” during a Republican debate in 2015. Eight years later, Teigen attends President Biden’s 2023 WHCD in a leggy gown and a few assistants there to help carry her train — and Kelly takes issue.
“I see Chrissy Tiegen’s underpants,” the former Fox News host tweeted Monday (May 1). “And her smug elitism.”
In her SiriusXM show, Kelly also blasted Teigen for having “minions” carry the train of her “nonexistent” dress. But Legend told TMZ of the commentator, “She can just shut up.”
As for whether his wife actually deserves to be called “elitist,” Legend said that Teigen is actually “very kind, very loving, very down to earth.” And as to whether she feel bad for having helpers on hand to make sure her dress didn’t drag on the ground?
“No, why should she?” replied the musician, who agreed that getting help from assistants just comes with the territory of making public appearances as a celebrity.
Two people are facing charges, including murder, in the death of a man on North National Avenue in Springfield earlier this week.
Investigators say they were called to a home in the area at around 2:00 am Wednesday morning.
When they searched the residence, 42-year-old Jimmie Johnson III was found in the backyard with a gunshot wound. He was transported to a local hospital, where he later died of his injuries.
After a short investigation, police were able to identify two suspects, 23-year-old Ronald Curnow and 22-year-old Payne Morse.
Morse, who was arrested on Wednesday, is charged with tampering with evidence and a felon in possession of a firearm.
Curnow, arrested on Thursday, is facing first-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm charges.
Both men are being held in the Greene County Jail.
While most areas will remain hot and dry Saturday, there is an outside chance for a thunderstorm in the afternoon and evening.
The National Weather Service says the better chances for storm development are in Central Missouri from Rolla and Osage Beach up to Sedalia and Jefferson City.
Forecasters say a severe storm could occur in that area.
Peach PRC enjoys a dream debut for her debut EP, the new No. 1 on Australia’s albums survey.
Manic Dream Pixie (Island/Universal) opens at the summit of the ARIA Albums Chart, published Friday, May 5, for her first leader.
The Adelaide, South Australia-raised singer and songwriter first impacted the ARIA Top 50 with her debut single “Josh,” which peaked at No. 38 in 2021. The following year, “Josh” earned her a nomination for an APRA Music Award (most performed pop work) and she was shortlisted for best new artist at the Rolling Stone Australia Awards.
Along the way, she built an audience of 2 million-plus TikTok followers, and accumulated over 130 million combined artist streams.
“To go to No. 1 on the charts with my first ever EP is absolutely unreal and like actually insane,” she says in a statement. “To have such a dedicated, loyal fan base that has really been my community and backbone, truly always leaves my heart bursting and my head spinning. I’m so beyond grateful.”
Currently, Peach PRC is on the road for her nine-date sold-out headline tour of Australia, with shows to come in Perth, Sydney and Brisbane. All gigs are sold-out, according to promoter Secret Sounds.
“Huge congratulations to Peach PRC on this amazing achievement,” comments ARIA CEO, Annabelle Herd. “It’s fantastic to see an Australian artist back at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart and particularly a young female artist who has such a special connection with her fans and audience and who is achieving great success in touring here and overseas, with more to come.”
Nicole Richards, managing direction of Island Records Australia, describes the youngster as “a gifted songwriter with strong artistic vision and an authentic connection to her audience.” Achieving a chart crown with her debut EP “is true testament to her talent and ambition and we are excited to be on this journey with her.”
Thanks to some help from Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens, The National bags a top 10 berth with First Two Pages Of Frankenstein (4AD/Inertia), their ninth studio album. The U.S. alternative rock outfit has a No. 2 best on the ARIA Chart with two albums — Trouble Will Find Me (from 2013) and Sleep Well Beast (2017).
Meanwhile, Jack Harlow’s surprise release Jackman (Warner) just misses out on the top 10. It’s new at No. 11, well down on the No. 2 peak for the U.S. rapper’s 2022 release Come Home The Kids Miss You.
There’s no change at the top of the ARIA Singles Chart, as Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” (Republic/Universal) makes it a full month in charge.
With the U.S. country singer holding the throne for a fourth consecutive week, K-pop girl group Fifty Fifty flap their wings with “The Beginning: Cupid” (Warner) lifting 6-2, for a new high.
The top debut on the latest chart belongs to American Idol album Sam Barber, whose “Straight and Narrow” (Atlantic/Warner) arrives at No. 41.
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