Latest news with #TuckerPillsbury
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Conan Gray Kisses Role Model at Governors Ball During ‘Sally, When the Wine Runs Out'
Conan Gray brought an extra dose of diva to his role as Sally during Role Model's set at Governors Ball on Friday. As per tradition, Role Model brought a special guest to dance with him on stage during his hit 'Sally When the Wine Runs Out.' Except for this show, rather than pulling a fan from the audience as he has throughout his tour, the musician, born Tucker Pillsbury, surprised the crowd with an appearance from Gray. But while Gray was a surprise for fans, Role Model was also greeted with quite the shock when Gray ran out on stage and kissed him. More from Rolling Stone Conan Gray Teases New Album With 'This Song' - and Sets Fall Tour The Best Governors Ball 2025 Ticket Deals That Feel Like Hozier's Yell Conan Gray Announces New Album 'Wishbone' 'Where's my Sally tonight?' Role Model asked as Gray ran out to join him, running straight up to the singer and kissing him on the lips. Gray continued running around, dancing on the stage as the crowd went wild. Role Model, meanwhile, was too stunned to speak. 'Oh my god,' the singer said while laughing before jumping back in to sing the chorus. 'Aw, shit, here we go again, I'm falling headfirst/Ankles hit the two-step, Sally makes my head hurt/Heard through the grapevine, she can be a diva/Cold like Minnesota, hotter than a fever,' the audience screamed out while they danced around the stage. Gray is the latest famous friend to play Sally during one of Role Model's sets. Reneé Rapp took on the role during a stop on his tour earlier this year, and Bowen Yang played his diva during his performance on The Tonight Show. Role Model's performance at Governors Ball helped kick off the festival on Friday, while Gray is set to play during the festival's second day on Saturday. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
CBC
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Role Model's life changed when Mac Miller discovered his EP
Tucker Pillsbury, better known as Role Model, has quickly become one of this year's breakout stars with a hit album and a sold-out solo tour. This summer, he'll be joining Gracie Abrams in arenas across North America. He sits down with Tom Power to tell us how homesickness inspired his latest album, Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye), and how turning to Americana music helped him get back in touch with himself. WATCH | Role Model's full interview with Tom Power:
Los Angeles Times
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Role Model returns to his songwriting roots and writes most sincere record yet
Role Model answered the phone while pacing around a Holiday Inn Express gym. The 27-year-old singer explained that he was trying to get a workout in before his Tampa, Fla., show later that night. Born Tucker Pillsbury, the in-demand musician was about two-thirds of the way through his tour's North American leg. While talking about his sophomore album, 'Kansas Anymore,' Pillsbury suddenly lost his train of thought and, through his phone's camera, a panicked smile takes over his typically sarcastic composure. 'Oh my God. There are fans outside the window,' said the singer, who had a hoodie draped over his shoulders, barely covering his torso of patchwork tattoos. 'This is the worst place I'd ever want to be seen.' For the remainder of the Zoom call, he avoids the gym's windows and steers clear of the fans prowling the hotel's perimeter. Since the release of his album last summer, the Maine-raised singer has settled into a new pocket of fame — with TikTok virality and obsessed fans around each corner. Almost every night, fans line up for hours to see Pillsbury strum his guitar, sing his breakup songs and hope to be that night's 'Sally,' a tradition where he brings a fan (or famous friend) onstage to dance with him during 'Sally, When the Wine Runs Out.' The No Place Like tour kicked off in November and it's now nearing its tail end, with only a handful of American dates left. But before closing the curtain, he is bringing his brokenhearted acoustics and cowboy hat to L.A.'s Wiltern for two sold-out shows on Tuesday and Wednesday. In an effort to keep the tour 'exciting,' Pillsbury released 'Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye),' last month. It's an extended version of his folk-driven album with four brand-new tracks. He continues to mourn a previous relationship (with internet tastemaker Emma Chamberlain), yearns for his East Coast hometown and guides listeners through his stages of grief. Originally, he thought he struck the right ending with the bittersweet ballad 'Something, Somehow, Someday,' on the record's standard release. But with the opportunity to make a deluxe and heighten his newfound country flair, the singer realized he had a slightly more final farewell in him. He landed on 'The Longest Goodbye,' the revised final track, where Pillsbury still leaves the heartbreak album open-ended — singing, 'I don't think I love you anymore / But I don't think I'll ever be so sure,' as his last words. 'If I were to go therapy mode on myself, I think I just don't like firm endings in life, like hard nos or hard yeses. I don't like the black and white of certain things. Goodbyes are very hard for me and I think happy endings aren't always realistic. It's better to leave things open-ended,' said Pillsbury. 'I don't know, I'm weird. I like movies where they all die at the end.' He begins to detail his tour regimen and mourns the lack of outside time on show days — being outdoors reminds him most of home. Heard in the warm, Americana twangs that complete 'Kansas Anymore,' these sounds are an ode to his upbringing in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He longs for its cobblestone streets, the town's red brick buildings and its surrounding pockets of nature. 'I will say I miss Maine every single day. I mean, especially being in Tampa,' says Pillsbury, as he looks out the window, describing a grim, rainy day in Florida. 'Maine is just like one of those places that has a sound. When you look at it, it's an easy place to score as if it's like a movie.' When Pillsbury first started working on his second album, following his 2022 full-length debut 'Rx,' he wasn't sure which sonic direction he'd head in. 'Rx' was a pop-ridden menagerie of sensationalized sexual lyrics and lovestruck melodies. His previous EPs ('Arizona in the Summer,' 'oh, how perfect' and 'our little angel') teeter the line of melancholic bedroom pop and moody rap. So, for his second album, he continued to test the waters with different influences like '80s synth-pop and electronic music. But nothing was sticking. 'It's hard to write to weird electronic s—. I can't do it. I tried and when listening you didn't believe any of it,' said Pillsbury. 'Then I just started playing acoustic guitar in my living room and trying to write songs like I used to, back in the day. It felt a lot more comfortable, believable and raw.' As he sat on his couch, strumming a newly learned instrument and figuring out what he wanted to say, he was transported to being a college student at Pittsburgh's Point Park University. In 2017, Pillsbury released his first EP, 'Arizona in the Summer,' a four-track project he recorded on the floor of his bedroom closet. 'Stolen Car,' a dejected pop track off that EP, is originally what caught the attention of late rapper Mac Miller, who first aided Pillsbury in landing a record deal and jump-starting his career. 'It's a full circle moment for me. I didn't fully know what I was doing [on 'Arizona in the Summer,'] and I think some of the best music can come from that,' said Pillsbury. 'With 'Kansas Anymore,' I was able to start these songs in my living room on a guitar, not fully understanding how to play guitar very well. I just was like, let me try and do the bare minimum in my living room and get ideas out — that worked better.' When he first got signed to Interscope in 2018, the singer was thrown into several recording sessions where songwriters would ask him, 'What's on your mind?' or 'How are you doing?' as a way to open up. He says it takes him a lot of time to warm up to people and being vulnerable like this in the studio was a challenge for his first few projects. Nonetheless, he created earworms like the horn-powered 'hello!' and the hypnotic 'forever&more,' which individually have around 50 million Spotify streams. 'I just remember walking out of the room and crying in the bathroom. It just f—ed with my head a lot. It just made me question why I couldn't be [writing music] by myself,' said Pillsbury. 'Why was I being set up with songwriters in the first place, especially when I got signed off of songs that I wrote myself? It's a confusing thing that happens and it can definitely f— with your head. I think it does for a lot of artists, which is why I just wanted to go secret mode on this album.' By going 'secret mode,' he says that he was able to create one of his most sincere and mature records to date. He's done making tunes like 'Masturbation Song' off 'Rx' — what he describes as a track 'about pleasuring myself and trying to make it into a cute love ballad.' He's moved onto a more sobering look into how he deals with heartbreak and homesickness. From the soft guitar strum of 'Frances,' a track where he tries to figure out where he went wrong, to the self-deprecating upbeat 'Scumbag' and 'Something, Somehow, Someday' where he croons about still believing they're 'meant to be,' a majority of this album paints a painstakingly clear picture of a breakup. But Pillsbury promises the feeling doesn't translate to his live shows. He says he's good at separating the trauma of what he was going through when writing the song from his stage performance — where all he can think about is trying not to forget his lyrics. 'When I'm looking at people in the crowd, I'm not thinking about my past. I'm not trying to relive that on stage in front of people. I just don't want to see a bunch of people crying. I'd rather lift people up,' said Pillsbury. 'So I try to do things with a smile to kind of lighten the mood. It's probably why I'm joking in between every song. Comedic relief.'
