Rolling Stone reports that Clifford's hair caught the flames of their pyrotechnics during their second night playing the venue while the band played their hit song, "She Looks So Perfect." A fan caught the incident on video and posted it to Twitter.
It shows a pyro misfire that seems to hit Clifford right in the head, followed by a plume of smoke. Drummer Ashton Irwin came out to tell the crowd the show would end early, saying, "Michael has hurt himself so we will not be continuing the show right now. Just want to say thank you so much for coming. He is OK. You guys have been the best crowd we could ask for tonight. Thank you so much."
Clifford posted a bandaged photo of himself to Instagram with a note to let his fans know he is okay and thank them for worrying. Watch video of the accident and see the online posts here.
Despite the injuries, YG (real name: Keenon Jackson) was able to get himself into a his car and have a friend drive him to a nearby hospital. Police were called to the scene and found shell casings and blood, but reportedly found the rapper to be "very uncooperative" when asked about the shooting.
No arrests have been made in the incident, and there is no word on the condition of YG. YG has a well-documented history with the police. Read more here.
"On June 12, 2015 at approximately 7:45 pm, the Beverly Hills Police Department received numerous calls reporting a possible DUI driver in the area of Canon Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard. BHPD units stopped the vehicle at Beverly Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard. The driver and sole occupant was identified by his California driver license as John Phillip Stamos and by his own statement.
"Due to a possible medical condition, Mr. Stamos was transported to a local area hospital by the Beverly Hills Fire Department for observation. Subsequent investigation at the hospital determined that he was driving under the influence and placed under arrest." Read more here.
"[I'm working] on it slowly, to make it an art project [and] deliver the innovation that I know I can and that I've consistently done since 808s [& Heartbreak] and [My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy]," West said.
In addition to straight creative reasons, a new album from West might not be in the cards right away because, as he says, he plans to take a break completely for his family.
"I really wanna go away, like I been doing a lot of features, right now I just want to take some time to focus on my album, my next collection and North's birthday," West said. "Just focus on my family and then be able to recharge and reenergize and bring something of value." Read more here.
NME confirms that Ronson taped a pre-recorded segment for Alan Carr's Chatty Man TV that aired this past week and revealed the collaboration that never came to be.
"A few people have said no. I am not going to say names� Drake. He was very polite about it," Ronson said. No shade intended though, clarifies Ronson. He told the chat show host he gets turned down "a lot." Read more here.
Mashable was on the CMT red carpet and asked the country artists walking through to try their hand at rapping The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. They had the lyrics on hand for some, but Underwood didn't even need to glance at the sheet as her performance was spot-on word for word.
Hunter Hayes, on the other hand had some trouble. He, however, proved he has some beat boxing skills but won't abandon his guitar anytime soon. "I'm trying really hard," he told Mashable. "I'm gonna go play a guitar now."
Sara Evans, Florida Georgia Line, Mickey Guyton, Parmalee, Frankie Ballard and Luke Bryan also showed off their rap skills while Bryan confessed to having had a shot of whiskey right after he slurred some of the words. The video begs the question, which artist will be the first to add the song to their summer tour set? Watch it here.
From the start director/writer Amy Heckerling and casting director Carrie Frazier wanted Silverstone, who they (respectively) spotted in the Aerosmith videos and the film The Crush. But Fox, the studio bankrolling things at the time, only thought she was "okay" after her screen test and asked Heckerling to see more actresses.
"I saw Alicia Witt, the redheaded [actress]," Heckerling recalled. "And who else? Tiffani Thiessen. The one that--she was in that show and she cut her hair and everybody was mad? Keri Russell, yes."
If imagining Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell or Felicity as Cher blows your mind, then you will totally get what Frazier thought when she was pitched Jolie for the role.
"It was the first time I'd seen Angelina Jolie�," Frazier said. "But she was too knowing for what was needed for Clueless. Angelina never came in [to audition] for the project. I was just looking at her tape. I remember an agent pitching her, and I'm going, 'No, no, no, this is exactly the opposite of what I need for this.' Later on, when I started heading up the casting department for HBO, and I got the script for Gia, I said, 'I've got the girl.' That was Angelina."
Frazier hooked Heckerling up with a meeting with Reese Witherspoon and the directer called her "amazing" after seeing her in "some movie where she had a southern accent." Read more here.
"I was nice, I was cool with people, I liked talking to people, I didn't kiss ass to the people who worked there and the manager," explained Tyler. "I think she found that intimidating.
"This lady named Cindy, this new manager, she hated on me. And she fired me and I hope she's watching because I still hate her," Tyler said with a grimaced expression.
He then pointed directly into the camera and growled, "I hate you so much, I hate you Cindy." Kimmel asked of his former manager is aware of his success. "I hope. I hope. Her firing me was the greatest moment of my life."
After being warned this his firing was only minutes away, Tyler phoned his mother who thought she might sue Starbucks until she figured out that they did nothing wrong. "I had about four minutes left to do so I manned up and said alright, I'll get fired, and I ate like three cheese danishes."
Kimmel laughed and congratulated Tyler for doing exactly what he would have done. In the clip, Tyler also talks about his worst work experience, FedEx, quitting after just a week and four days. Watch it here.
For her part, Kylie's tabloid exploits have seemed murky, and not entirely on her terms: icky scandal has circulated around her alleged relationship with Tyga, who, at 25, seems to have admitted to criminal behavior in publicly dating the under-age Jenner.
Now, it seems as if Jenner is trying to take back control of her own image. Back in March, rumors spread about a Kylie Jenner single spread like wildfire--it was to feature Tyga, and supposedly Iggy Azalea also.
Now, it looks like those rumors are becoming reality. According to US Weekly, Jenner has been working on an album produced by Tyga, with creative consultancy from her brother-in-law, Kanye West. Read more here.
It was a rather timid approach for a girl who grew up singing in the church choir and says at just nine years old she knew she wanted to be a singer after going to a Texas Rangers baseball game.
"I'll never forget it. We were all the way up in the nosebleed section and the announcer said, 'Please rise as 10-year-old LeAnn Rimes sings the national anthem,'" she says. "Before she even opened her mouth, the fact that she was 10 caught my attention. She sounded like a grown woman and that's when I knew I wanted to be a singer."
While Guyton knew her ultimate goal was to be a country singer, it took a while for her to get to Nashville. When she finally met manager Gary Borman, who works with Keith Urban and Alison Krauss, she was still in California working two jobs--one in the hosiery department of Nordstrom which inspired her song "Pretty Little Mustang"--and perhaps a little run down from her crazy hours.
"I sang some songs for him and he said they sucked in the nicest possible way," she laughs. "But he believed in me and was willing to work with me."
Guyton kept working on her songwriting and in 2011 her hard work paid off, Borman had gotten her an audition with Mike Dungan, the chairman of UMG Nashville. Luckily, this time, she didn't suck and Borman offered her a record deal. Six months later, she quit her two jobs in California and moved to Nashville, where she still lives. "Once I got that opportunity I did not look back," she says.
It's now four years later and Guyton is on the road with Brad Paisley, playing for the biggest audiences she's ever seen. "First of all, Brad Paisley is an amazing human," she gushes when asked about the summer tour. "To see how he treats his crew that works for him and how happy his crew seems is a testament to the person that he is. He is just so kind."
Every night, Guyton takes the stage with Paisley to sing "Whiskey Lullaby," something she says is "insane." More insane may be the fact that it was actually Paisley's idea to play the song, which originally featured Alison Krauss, after she introduced herself to him at the ACM Awards in April.
"As I'm sitting and talking to him, he looks over at me and goes, 'I'm thinking 'Whiskey Lullaby' every night. How do you feel about that?' I'm like, 'Um. Yeah! I'll never be able to sing it as good as Alison [Krauss] but I will absolutely love to sing that song with you.'"
Guyton says she has always loved the song, but to nail Krauss' inflection she studied it for months. "It's so perfect how it was sung," she says of Krauss' version. While she stays true to the original, Guyton also manages to make it her own with her distinct pop country spin on the vocals. Read more here.
'It's in a folder that I've named 'my baby'," he says, and his smile briefly overwhelms his face. He gathered Grand Romantic together from various sources: Many of the songs were theoretically intended for the next album by his band fun., including 'Harsh Light," which fun. performed on The Tonight Show last year. At Electric Lady, he sings the first single from the record 'Nothing Without Love." Ruess doesn't particularly need the microphone; his voice saturates a room.
I saw him do this once, three years ago, when fun. were just about to release Some Nights. Ruess, Jack Antonoff, and Andrew Dost performed three songs from the record, unamplified, from a pit in the center of a bar in the Lower East Side. Ruess' voice is bright and depthless, like a concentrated beam of light, but also conversational and crowded with syllables. He grew up singing in punk bands, where one's voice is only as capable as the amount of information packed into it. Ruess has often been compared to Freddie Mercury, and like him, his voice can endure impressive aerial flights. It can also be compellingly processed by Autotune into ribbony vowels, as it was on fun.'s 'Stars," Ruess' digressive tribute to Kanye West's 'Runaway."
Where the arrangements on Some Nights could be dense, there's a more holistic approach to the Grand Romantic's sound design. Ruess' taste in arrangements tends toward the prismatic; even on something as restrained as his duet with Beck, 'What This World is Coming To," the guitars sound silvery and embossed, as if standing in relief against Jeff Bhasker's cottony percussion. 'Great Big Storm" is total technicolor Ruess, drums and strings vectoring through the track in extremely focused blooms, like animated sculpture. The songs swing through moods and sounds--desire, heartbreak, inebriation, hip-hop, Elton John, ELO. If it's remotely coherent it's because of Ruess' unifying voice, but also his lyrics, which express a characteristic intimacy and vulnerability he's cultivated for his entire career.
Ruess was raised in Arizona, where at age 19 he started a band with his friend Sam Means called The Format. Elektra signed them, and their first album, 2003's Interventions and Lullabies was an indie rock record executed with the precision and insulation of chamber music. Then Elektra folded and The Format were briefly absorbed into Atlantic Records, who dropped them after hearing the demos for their second record, Dog Problems.
Dog Problems is a gorgeous, compressed mosaic of a record, one that telegraphs Ruess' direction with fun. and certain songs on Grand Romantic. It draws the Beach Boys, Electric Light Orchestra, and Weezer into a rich continuum, and through these harmonic lenses Ruess sketches the end of a relationship and the end of a recording contract.
And so The Format broke up in 2008, and Ruess formed fun. with Antonoff and Dost. Their first album, Aim & Ignite, largely advances the power pop aesthetic of Dog Problems, and like that record it was arranged by power pop forefather Robert Joseph Manning, Jr of Jellyfish., and produced by Steven McDonald of Redd Kross. Its closing track, 'Take Your Time (Coming Home)," absorbs the pulse and gallop of Paul Simon's Graceland, and over this Ruess sings, 'I'm through with causing a scene," which deliberately resembles the chorus of The Format's 'First Single" ('So let's cause a scene/ clap our hands and stomp our feet" ). Read more here.
It was a day out of Joe Nichols' songbook, meaning it was "Sunny and 75″-- perfect weather for a chat outside. Guitarist Zach Brown (no relation any members of the Zac Brown Band) was quick to say it was his favorite interview setting yet.
After the quartet finished their lunch at Bryant Park Grill, we found a spot far enough from the distraction of a pounding jackhammer on the south side of the park. It just so happened that we stumbled upon five green lawn chairs already set up in a circle for the interview.
With a backdrop of skyscrapers and people eating lunch on the great lawn in front of us, they settled into their chairs and shared their back story as a band, the impact Southern rock has had on them, and the songs that fill their debut album Southernality, which hits today (June 9). They even taught me a few 'Southernisms' along the way. (Let's just say that if anyone ever says they'd "like to skin your hide," you'll want to get out of there pronto.)
A Thousand Horses are no strangers to the Nashville music scene, as they've been living in Music City for a decade now. But their roots go further back. Singer Michael Hobby and guitarist Bill Satcher first met and became fast friends in middle school in South Carolina. Satcher's cousin, bassist Graham Deloach, would visit during the summers and jam with the guys. After they moved to Nashville, guitarist Zach Brown met the trio in 2010, and they locked in their Southern-influenced rock/country sound.
"We were just waiting to get the last horse in," Deloach jokes. "We were looking for that fourth horseman. The four horsemen of the apocalypse."
Brown chimes in: "I was out there just grazing on my own for a while," to which all four guys laugh heartily.
Southernality combines each member's influences, which range from country to classic rock and Southern rock, something they all say they grew up listening to. There's a number of tracks about drinking: cold-beer songs, shot-of-whiskey songs and their next single, "(This Ain't No) Drunk Dial."
"Do we have a Pina Colada song?" Brown asks with a smile. Deloach says they'll work on one for the next record, after which Hobby suggests, "We gotta get down to the islands and get some inspiration."
So is there a drink that describes their debut album?
"It's a boilermaker," Deloach says matter-of-factly. And it makes perfect sense. Why not have a beer and a shot of whiskey while listening to Southernality?
While A Thousand Horses have been playing many of the songs off their debut album for the past five years, it is their debut single "Smoke" that put the band on the map. The single recently went to No. 1 on country radio, and they note it was the last song they wrote for the album. The idea started with the title, and the guys said the comparison of smoking to love in a woman is what they played off of. Hobby finished it the day before the band hit the studio to record their album with producer Dave Cobb.
"It was very fresh," Deloach says of the recording of "Smoke" the very first day in the studio. "We went in and kicked it off with that song."
As sure as they were that the song had to make the cut on the record, they didn't think it would be the first single. While they knew it was a special song for them, and even after hitting No. 1, they said they still want people to listen to the entire album Southernality as a complete body of work.
"What I love about the album is that each song has its own moment," Satcher explains with a slight Southern drawl. "Yet I feel like we have been able to draw a straight line out of it. Southernality. There's something about our Southern personality [that] came out in every single song naturally. There's breakup songs, makeup songs, ballads, party songs, feel-good songs and rockers. It has a lot of great movement to it." Read more here.
Now, Kanye himself has taken control of the mic, blessing the podium with his interpretation of a NBA post-game wrap-up. Last night, while the Warriors were cruising to an easy victory over the Cavaliers, Kanye walked into the post-game area while it was being set up and spoke from the mic. He played the part of the tired athlete gamely answering banal questions:
"I'm extremely exhausted, you know, by the floor," he said, with a grin on his face. "This next game we gotta go harder," he added. Someone in the background pipes up, "That's Riley!" Watch the full video here.
"Lock and Key" is a really meaningful song for us because it really epitomizes the band's ability to collaborate and work towards something that turns out better than anyone could have expected.
Robbie started working on the song, (music and lyrics) to a basic guitar strum pattern. It wasn't really ever the plan for it to be more than a simple, melody driven song. One day Aaron came over to hang out and heard what Robbie was working on and said, "why don't we try out something like this." And plunked out on the synth/sampler what is now the really awesome drum beat and baseline you hear in the song. Stu and Brandon of course contributed as well, and it's turned into a song everyone loves as much as we do, which of course is all we could ask for.
The culmination of the project came through the creation of the music video, which features Brandon in a robot suit. It was kind of a funny idea at first, but turned out really well and has even won some awards.
Overall, we feel like writing "Lock and Key" went perfectly from concept to final product. The band thrives on working together like we did on this track, and we'll continue to produce quality music as a team.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself as you watch the video here and learn more about the album right here!
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