Latest news with #album
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
Fleetwood Mac Reaches A New Career Peak With A Decades-Old Classic
Rumours made music history when Fleetwood Mac released the collection back in 1977. The pop-rock effort was heralded as a critical triumph at the time, as well as a commercial juggernaut, and it is now regarded as one of the greatest albums ever. In the decades since it dropped, the project has remained a behemoth — one that has enjoyed a second life once the music industry shifted from pure purchases to streaming platforms. Rumours and its many hit singles began performing well across all consumption metrics, as Americans keep buying the set in addition to listening to it on streaming sites. As the beloved title approaches its half-century birthday, it is still climbing to new highs on the Billboard rankings in the U.S. This week, Rumours appears on half a dozen Billboard charts dedicated to full-lengths and EPs. Its performance is mixed, and it only manages to climb on one of them – but on that roster, the set soars to a new all-time peak. On that one list, Rumours jumps from No. 35 to No. 30 on the Top Streaming Albums ranking, which focuses exclusively on the projects that rack up the most plays on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and others. Fleetwood Mac has only sent one set to the Top Streaming Albums chart, so every time Rumours hits a new peak, the band does as well. The full-length pushes to its never-before-seen high point 34 frames into its time on the tally. Rumours is largely holding steady in the U.S., even as it climbs on the Top Streaming Albums ranking. This frame, it continues to appear on the Billboard 200, Top Rock & Alternative Albums, and Top Rock Albums lists, not budging an inch on any of them. At the same time, it declines — but only slightly — on both the Top Album Sales and Vinyl Albums charts. While Rumours has only spent a few months on the Top Streaming Albums chart, it has racked up years on every other list on which it appears. Fleetwood Mac's collection has spent the most time on the Billboard 200, where it's up to 634 stays. It has already passed more than 400 frames on all of the other rosters.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We want to stop in our prime': Saint Etienne on their final album, turning down Cher's Believe, and why pop is a dying art
In Saint Etienne, it is usually Bob Stanley who suggests the band's tightly defined album concepts. What if you graft folk melodies to dance music? Make vaporwave about early New Labour? While finishing ambient pop album The Night, released in the dark of last winter, Stanley pitched an even starker one for its successor: the end of their band. 'I didn't think I was saying anything uncomfortable or shocking,' says Stanley, affable and understated, in a park near his Bradford home. 'When you've known each other for so long you have a psychic thing anyway. It felt like we would all agree.' I meet Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell in a London bar, separate from Stanley – no falling out, they assure me, simply living as they do across Yorkshire, East Sussex and Oxfordshire is a scheduling nightmare. Wiggs couches his thoughts about Stanley's proposition carefully. 'Once I got used to it, I thought it was a great idea. We've not split up acrimoniously, and have some control over it.' International, out in September, will be the final Saint Etienne album. Bringing together collaborators including Nick Heyward, Xenomania, Erol Alkan and the Chemical Brothers – who appear on the fizzing and life-affirming new single Glad – the album is a strictly-bangers leaving party for one of the most singular bands in British indie. Few albums are likely to contain rave hedonists Confidence Man and severe cult broadcaster Jonathan Meades, who provides text for the album's sleeve. 'I wanted to finish our album journey on a high,' says Cracknell. 'Do something really special and stop in our prime.' Stanley remembers a time in pop when most groups did finish, powering pop's forward motion. He argues that it has slowed, pointing to the decade it took for the hyperpop music on the PC Music record label – which he adored – to reach the mainstream on Charli xcx's Brat last year. That type of underground-to-overground travel 'used to happen all the time, and it would take 18 months', says Stanley. Pop is 'clearly nowhere near as important as it used to be – we might as well be talking about jazz or modern classical, where there's great music but it's not really adding much [to culture]. But music wasn't that important before the 1920s, either.' Like Saint Etienne themselves, 'these things don't last for ever'. What about the current crop of exciting female pop stars? Stanley praises 'the look, the sound, the artwork' of the 'properly great' Charli, Lana Del Rey and Sabrina Carpenter. But he maintains that 'music's just not as central to people's identities' as it was. If that sounds like a controversial position, he has others. 'I hate Glastonbury,' he says. 'Can't stand it. A single setting for all kinds of music feels entirely wrong to me.' Stanley has always been opinionated about music. 'I loved Grease,' remembers Wiggs of his early teens growing up alongside Stanley in Croydon. 'Even then, Bob was telling me it was nothing on the original 50s stuff.' Later, the pair set up fanzines Pop Avalanche and Caff, but the indie music they covered became 'very dreary', Stanley says. 'When house and techno came along it was like, 'Oh, this is it.'' Neither of them were musicians, but radical, sample-heavy singles by UK producers Bomb the Bass and S'Express convinced them they didn't need to be. Though Wiggs later studied for a film music degree, Stanley wears his inability to play an instrument as 'an asset' – if he could play Chopin, he argues, his instincts as a pop fan might have diminished. Composer and orchestrator David Whitaker, who worked on their 1994 album Tiger Bay, saw his potential and offered him piano lessons. 'Lovely bloke,' remembers Stanley, 'but I was like, I really actually think I don't want to learn.' Besides, 'nobody ever asks Pet Shop Boys if they can play the piano'. Learning songwriting on the job meant that their first single was a cover. Only Love Can Break Your Heart was a thrilling landgrab of Neil Young's 1970 original, at once faster and slower with brisk house pianos and languid dub reggae. The pair's plan was to have rotating singers, in that case indie singer Moira Lambert, and down the pub they casually signed to friend Jeff Barrett's new Heavenly Recordings, who released the single in May 1990. Cracknell heard the single and loved it. Born to a showbiz Windsor family (her mother, Julie Samuel, was an Avengers star, her father, Derek Cracknell, Kubrick's recurring first assistant director), teenage Cracknell was galvanised by indie band Felt's shambling melancholy and spent the 1980s 'getting close to a record deal' with various bands. But she had given up, and was enrolled in drama school when Stanley's girlfriend suggested her for a featured vocal. 'I liked that she didn't sing with an American accent,' says Stanley of his first impressions, 'which then was unusual.' But what attracted Cracknell to them? 'They had the 1960s, dance music and melancholy,' she smiles. Stanley and Wiggs asked Cracknell to become the group's sole, permanent singer, and the newly minted trio recorded debut Foxbase Alpha in the Mitcham council house of producer Ian Catt's parents. Using samples from bygone British pop and TV – there were too many legal challenges to US samples at the time – the album was powered by a tension between pop's past and present that would become a very Saint Etienne mix, packed with shout-outs to the city they had just moved to. 'I was always scared of London, growing up in Croydon,' says Stanley, who remembers marvelling over exotic neighbourhood names such as Shacklewell and Haggerston. 'This was when all the districts were very different from each other.' The trio explored London through its Irish pubs and Portuguese cafes, 'pie and mash shops, old London things'. That geography was all over their 1993 masterpiece So Tough, with trip-hop and wide-eyed symphonic pop bathed in bright echo – as if recalling a radio show from last night's dream. They argue that they used success to do what pop fans, rather than what Stanley views as their more tribal indie peers, would prioritise, like releasing a Christmas single or wearing gold lamé suits on the telly. 'We were all quite hedonistic,' Cracknell says of those years, 'but maybe that's why we stayed together? We used to go out to clubs a lot.' This led to remixes by Andrew Weatherall and Autechre. 'We went to watch Bonfire Night fireworks in Highbury with Aphex Twin,' remembers Stanley, after visiting the elusive producer at his flat to commission a remix. Despite inviting a nascent Oasis to support them – Stanley had met Noel Gallagher as a roadie, and they all loved the band's Live Forever demo – they avoided being dubbed Britpop, which Stanley today terms 'nationalistic' and 'the absolute antithesis' of their project. The pounding Eurodance of 1995's He's On the Phone protested against that era's guitars, and became their biggest hit. The producer who mixed the track, Brian Higgins, offered them a demo that they turned down: it became Believe by Cher. 'We'd probably be living in solid gold houses now,' says Stanley. Reinventing for Y2K, they decamped to Berlin with glitchy electronic trio To Rococo Rot, who teased them about indulgences such as changing chords. They dialled down the bleeps and thuds of the city's club scene, resulting in their subtle and slept-on album Sound of Water. Its second single, Heart Failed, bitterly surveyed New Labour Britain and its market-driven urban regeneration: 'Sold the ground to a PLC / Moved the club out to Newbury / Sod the fans and their families.' That flattened culture was explored again in the 2005 documentary Saint Etienne made with film-maker Paul Kelly about east London's desolate Lower Lea Valley before it disappeared to Olympic development. Throughout their career, Stanley is proud that Saint Etienne got 'no bigger or smaller' in the size of venues they played, and cites Bob Dylan and Prince as role models for staying true to oneself. They all credit their decision to swear off long tours as key to longevity. 'How the hell do people do this?' Stanley remembers thinking after even a relatively brisk jaunt. 'That, and we've all got complimentary personalities,' says Wiggs. 'No horrific egos,' agrees Cracknell. More recently, 2021's I've Been Trying to Tell You used the melancholic vaporwave genre to examine late-90s nostalgia (they were disappointed that no one worked out that its track names were all horses that won on the day of Labour's 1997 landslide). By the time of The Night, Stanley was suffering sleepless nights raising a small child while Wiggs and Cracknell were fretting about older children leaving home. The drizzly, downbeat album contained spoken word from Cracknell mourning the 'energy and belief' of their 20s and was provisionally titled Tired Dad. They were 'talking to people of a similar vintage to us, and being honest about it', says Wiggs. Recording International was low on drama – 'because we're English', says Stanley – until final song The Last Time, written as a farewell to each other and their loyal audience. 'I found it very difficult to get through singing it without crying,' says Cracknell, whose confiding and soulful vocals have arguably been Saint Etienne's greatest asset. 'It was the last song we recorded for the album, and the realisation really hit me.' Outside the project that has consumed them for three decades, Wiggs is working on a film soundtrack, Stanley is writing more books (he has already written two doorstopping histories of pop music), and the two will continue their celebrated archival pop compilations for reissue label Ace Records. Cracknell winces that she has 'not thought past the end of 2025', which makes her anxious. Is there a risk their end might not be permanent? 'I don't think there is,' says Stanley, who is looking forward to meeting his bandmates and their families without talking shop. Wiggs and Cracknell's kids are, they tell me proudly, 'like cousins'. Cracknell, an only child, was 'always collecting siblings' – until Saint Etienne. Asked what she is most proud of, it is not their 13 albums or Top of the Pops appearances, but their friendship. 'That we have such a bond between the three of us,' she says, looking out now to the bar's exit. 'And that will never go.' International by Saint Etienne will be released by Heavenly Recordings in September.
Mail & Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Simphiwe Dana reflects on two decades of music
Unknown place: Simphiwe Dana says that the album she is working on could be the final one she writes but that she will carry on performing and collaborating. I have experienced Simphiwe Dana's compelling presence on stage many times. Not to say that was her entire personality — no, Dana is much more. But there are only a few people we meet in life, from close or from a distance, and can instantly tell — they do not walk alone. Their spirit is that of our forefathers. It carries weight and respect. It announces itself quietly, with humility, yet with a magnitude impossible to ignore. Now imagine having those thoughts first thing on a Monday morning. My nerves were jittering so intensely, I forgot to have breakfast. It's not every day that one gets to speak to a voice that has held us through joy, through protest, through heartbreak and healing. At 10am sharp, as agreed with her PR person, I dialled her number. No answer. I stared at the phone. What now? Before I could decide my next move, the phone rang. Dana. 'I am so sorry I missed your call; I was just making breakfast,' she said, her voice as textured and calm as I had remembered it from countless interviews and performances. 'Do you want a few minutes to eat? I also haven't had breakfast yet,' I offered. 'Perfect,' she responded. 'Go make food and a cup of tea or coffee and I will call you back in a few,' she said. I had to pause. Am I about to have a telephonic breakfast with Simphiwe Dana? Surely, I have lived a full life. She called me back in 10 minutes. Coffee on her end. Rooibos on mine. What followed was an encounter with a soul who has been documenting the collective inner life of a nation for over two decades. Dana's debut album Zandisile, released in 2004, earned her instant acclaim and multiple South African Music Awards (Samas). I was so young but I still remember how Ndiredi played on every radio station and on every music show on TV like an anthem. It was a moment — a feeling. Maybe I didn't understand it fully then but I felt it. We all did. Dana has released a string of powerful and genre-defying albums. From One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street (2006), a bold and unapologetic celebration of black consciousness, to Kulture Noir (2010), which won her Best Female Artist and Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the Samas, Dana has always fused the traditional with the contemporary, the spiritual with the political. Her 2014 album Firebrand further cemented her place as a torchbearer of artistic activism, and in 2021, she offered Bamako, an emotionally rich and musically layered project that she partly recorded in Mali. Over 20 years since then. A number so large, even Dana herself marvels at it. 'I am really not good at celebrating myself,' she tells me. 'I always feel quite awkward about it. But this one feels different. I am giving back to a community that has given me so much for two decades. 'The response from them is thankfulness — and actually, I am the one who is thankful.' Dana will be celebrating her career at the Baxter Theatre Concert Hall, in Cape Town, on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June. This reciprocity between her and her listeners is sacred, almost spiritual. There is something in her tone that suggests gratitude but not in the usual platitudinal way. It's embodied. 'Something that is rare in life is that someone can live off doing something that they love. I am one such person. That has been given to me by people who listen to my work.' Reflecting on Zandisile, she tells me: 'When I listen to Zandisile today I think to myself, 'I was so young and wide-eyed.' I feel like I have always been old — and I am not talking about age. 'In many ways, I feel like I have not changed much from that young girl. I am not as naive anymore but the old soul thing has made me remain the same.' That old soul presence — it is something you feel when Dana walks into a room or when her voice travels through speakers and enters you. She is not tethered to the conventional measurement of age. She is measured in spirit. 'Now I am understanding why the likes of Bra Hugh Masekela were so youthful,' she says. 'Because I think he carried the same spirit.' Dana is working on a new album — one she feels might be her final one. 'This could possibly be my last album that I write,' she says. 'It is treating me differently. Not musically, but it is pushing me into an unknown place.' Not a statement of resignation, but of transformation: 'There is nothing to be sad about. I will still be performing and collaborating. There is so much I still could do. 'The thing about writing is that you usually have to take time away — and with me, it happens to be at least three years. It is very taxing on the mind and spirit. I feel like it takes years off my life … Writing is not for the weak.' She says this not with despair, but with an honesty that has long been her signature. Writing, for Dana, is not just creative — it is ritual. It demands from her. Dana's work has always carried a sharp socio-political consciousness. Her lyrics live in the hearts of the people. They ask, they challenge, they comfort, they uplift. 'As artists, we are watchers and observers. I have gone through many phases and I felt every phase that we have gone through as a country. As they say, the personal is the political.' The music is her lens. 'I try to understand why people do the things that they do in power. I try to understand if there is something that they are seeing that I am not seeing and I do that through the music. 'I am listening to the people and probing things that they care about. I literally have my ear on the ground.' She pauses. 'I write about things that bother me. The state of the country right now is something that is always on my mind. Right now, I am trying to understand who we have become and who we will be in the future.' And always, in true Dana fashion, she adds: 'Even when things are dire, there is hope.' Dana's music is often described as spiritual. It is not just because of the sonic choices or the lyrical content. It is because she is a messenger. 'Music is from our ancestors. I am a conduit. And I must honour my gift. I have to be responsible for my gift and take care of that gift by taking care of myself.' Twenty years on, I ask her which songs from her rich discography still move her as much as they've moved us. 'Songs like Nzinga — singing that song live definitely moves me. It's an adaptation of a Jonas Gwangwa song called Flowers of the Nation. I used to hear him perform it live. I would rush out and listen with my hands in the air. For me, that song is church. It is Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.' She also mentions Lakutshon' ilanga, Mayime and Inkwenkwezi. And then I ask what she would tell her younger self — Simphiwe at 24, wide-eyed, dropping Zandisile into the world. 'I would tell her to go to therapy and deal with your childhood trauma. Don't use it as some kind of fact of your story season. Deal with your trauma as soon as possible.' My rooibos has gone cold. I imagine her coffee has, too. But her voice still lingers — clear, intentional, present. Simphiwe Dana is not just a singer. She is a witness. A question. A balm. A voice from the sacred hills. And if this next album is her last, we must receive it not with sorrow but reverence. She is not done. Not by a long stretch.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Music reviewer Grant Smithies
This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Photo: supplied Nineteen long years after their 2006 classic Hello, Are You There? , Auckland quartet Voom finally released a follow-up this month. We'll hear two key tracks from that today, followed by a gorgeous new song from Ladi6 and some trippy cosmic Cuban funk from Dan Tyler and Juan Pablo Torres.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Benny Blanco lifts the lid on ridiculous fight with fiancée Selena Gomez while recording joint album I Said I Love You First: 'She was upset'
Benny Blanco - real name Benjamin Joseph Levin - has gotten candid about the only fight he had with his fiancée Selena Gomez while recording their new joint album. The producer, 37, who recently released the 14-track album I Said I Love You First with the Calm Down hitmaker, appeared on The Project on Wednesday night where he reflected on the record-making process and working with his soon-to-be wife. Benny revealed that it was smooth sailing making an album with mega star Selena, adding that she is 'the best thing' to have ever happened to him. However, he did lift the lid on one small argument the couple had while recording the album - and it was about birds. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. 'She was upset that there were birds outside of the window that were chirping when she recorded and I didn't hear the birds. 'And then whenever I walked in, the birds were not happening,' he laughed. 'So the birds were our only disagreement the entire time.' Despite the couple's small spat, the multi award-wining producer dubbed Selena his 'best friend'. 'They say: "when you know, you know" and I never believed that my whole life - but I actually met my best friend.' 'If we were the only people left on earth, I would be completely fine spending every moment with nobody else in the world except her,' he sweetly said. Benny and Selena confirmed their relationship in December 2023, with the pair getting engaged a year later. 'Forever starts now,' Selena wrote at the time, showing off her sparkling diamond ring. Speaking of the upcoming nuptials, The Only Murders in the Building star admitted she's planning to ditch the classic bride and groom dance at their reception because she's too shy. 'I don't think we're looking at having one of those 'cause they're a little — I feel embarrassed,' she said on an episode of Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware. But while there won't be a traditional first dance, Selena revealed she's making room for a deeply meaningful moment — a special dance with her grandfather. 'He never got a chance to walk my mom down the aisle,' she shared. 'I wanted to give [my grandfather] the opportunity to have that.' Selena and Benny have known each other for over a decade — since 2013, when he first met her mom, Mandy Teefey. He later co-produced two of her hits Kill Em With Kindness and Same Old Love, from her 2015 album Revival. Their new album I Said I Love You First also includes a slew of featured artists such as Gracie Abrams, The Marias, GloRilla, Tainy and J Balvin, with Finneas and Charli XCX also contributing as songwriters.
