Bruce Springsteen was celebrated in London as he was honored as an Academy Fellow of The Ivors Academy.
He was the first international songwriter to receive the honor by the U.K. organization, which presents The Ivor Novello Awards, celebrating excellence in British and Irish songwriting.
Paul McCartney, an Academy Fellow himself, was on hand to give Springsteen his honor. During his speech, The Boss recalled his early shows in London.
U2 was just honored as the 2025 Academy Fellow of The Ivors Academy. They became the first-ever Irish songwriters to earn a fellowship.
It’s been eight years since the last U2 album, but Bono and the boys are back.
The BBC reports that backstage at The Ivors ceremony in London on Thursday, where the band was given a prestigious fellowship of The Ivors Academy, they said they were in the studio making new music, complete with drummer Larry Mullen Jr. He’d been sidelined due to a neck surgery and was absent from U2’s residency shows at Sphere Las Vegas.
“It was difficult being away because of injury,” Mullen said. “So I’m thrilled to be back in a creative environment, even if I’m not 100% there and I’ve got some bits falling off.”
He added, “When I was away from the band, I missed it, but I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”
The band’s most recent projects have looked to their back catalog — playing Achtung Baby at the Sphere, rerecording their catalog acoustically on the Songs of Surrender album and reimagining How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. But as Bono said Thursday, “You do that because you need to understand where that desire to be heard came from.”
Now, however, “The sound of the future is what we’re most interested in. It doesn’t exist yet. It’s ours to make, and that’s what we have the chance to do.”
According to the BBC, Bono said U2’s latest songwriting sessions consisted of “just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, ‘What’s that feeling? Oh right, that’s chemistry.'”
“We’ve had it over the years but you lose it sometimes,” he added. “But isn’t it strange that it’s just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea? That’s where we’re at in 2025.”
Heart returned to the road earlier this year with their Royal Flush tour, and fans who caught their show saw a set that was filled with more than just Heart classics.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band is known to cover Led Zeppelin in concert, and Nancy Wilson says there’s a good reason they include those songs in the set.
“We’re kind of built to play Zeppelin,” she tells ABC Audio, “because Zeppelin was another rock band who had the capability and the diversity enough to go all the way acoustic or big, loud electric.”
Nancy says it’s “hard for us not to do at least two Zeppelin” songs each show, noting they’ve covered such classics as “Going to California,” “Battle of Evermore” and “Stairway to Heaven” in the past.
“It’s kind of a variety show, you know, our show, we cover lots of bases,” she says. “It’s hard to get Zeppelin out of Heart. You know, we can’t ever not do Zeppelin somehow. … It’s just too much fun to not do it.”
Fans will be able to catch Heart playing those Zeppelin tunes, as well as their hits like “Barracuda,” “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You,” when Heart launches the next leg of their An Evening With Heart tour on May 31 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A complete list of Heart shows can be found at heart-music.com.
Deadline reported in March that pop star Lizzo would star as rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe in an upcoming biopic. But now, news comes that Mick Jagger, in partnership with Live Nation Productions among others, is producing a feature film on Tharpe. This film appears to have no connection to the Lizzo project.
Oscar-nominated actress Aunjanue [ingenue] Ellis-Taylor has been tapped to write the movie, which has been granted the rights to Tharpe’s music by the late singer’s estate, according to Deadline. The producers have also secured the rights to the definitive biography of Tharpe, who died in 1973. A companion documentary is also planned.
In a statement, Jagger says he’s “so thrilled to be a part” of telling the story of the “trailblazing singer and electrifying guitarist,” adding that she “reshaped music history and influenced countless artists.”
Tharpe was a queer Black gospel singer, songwriter and guitarist who made a huge impact on early rock ‘n’ roll artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Her electric guitar playing, in particular, influenced artists like Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and Jagger’s Rolling Stones bandmate Keith Richards. Known as the Godmother of Rock and Roll, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
As for the Lizzo project, it’s being developed and produced by an entirely different team and will focus on one event in Tharpe’s life: when she married her manager in front of 25,000 paying customers at a Washington, D.C., stadium in 1951 and then performed. The event has been described as “the first stadium show.”
Here’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d read: A bar in Toms River, New Jersey, won’t allow a Bruce Springsteen cover band to perform there. And the reason has nothing to do with the actual band.
According to NJ.com, Riv’s Toms River Hub had booked a Springsteen cover band called No Surrender to perform on May 30. However, after Springsteen made headlines by criticizing President Donald Trump‘s administration from the stage in Manchester, England, bandleader Brad Hobicorn got a text from the bar owner, Tony Rivoli, telling him the gig was canceled.
According to Hobicorn, Rivoli told him it was “too risky at the moment” to have them play, because his customers are conservative. When Hobicorn offered to simply play classic rock songs, Rivoli said he wouldn’t pay them their fee for that.
“Unfortunately it’s just too much money,” Rivoli texted Hobicorn. “We would have done well but now because Bruce can’t keep his mouth shut we’re screwed.”
In a separate message to bass player Guy Fleming, Rivoli wrote, “Whenever the national anthem plays, my bar stands and is in total silence, that’s our clientele. Toms River is red and won’t stand for his bulls***.”
Hobicorn said that after Fleming revealed what happened in a Facebook post, Rivoli reached out and denied he’d canceled the gig. But the band decided not to play due to safety concerns and the “negative vibes.”
“This is not political for us at all,” Hobicorn said Thursday. “We’re just a cover band that’s trying to make some money and people rely on it financially. We’re the ones really getting hurt.”
Rivoli told NJ.com that he would have let the band play, adding, “I think a lot of people of my base would not have came, but I could have been wrong.”
Elton John & Bernie Taupin in 1971; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Elton John‘s career might have been very different if he hadn’t met Bernie Taupin way back in 1967, so it’s no wonder he wished his songwriting partner a happy milestone birthday on Thursday.
Elton, 78, posted a photo of him and Bernie sitting together in the ’70s. “Happy 75th Brithday, Bernie!” he wrote. “Over 50 years of friendship and we’re still going strong. Forever grateful to be creating and collaborating with you. Love you!”
Elton and Bernie’s most recent collaboration is Who Believes In Angels?, the album they teamed up with Brandi Carlile and producer Andrew Watt to make. And, of course, Bernie wrote the lyrics to all of Elton’s biggest and most beloved hits, from “Rocket Man” and “I’m Still Standing” to “Your Song,” “Tiny Dancer” and “Candle in the Wind.”
Bernie documented his life and career, including his partnership with Elton, in his 2023 memoir, Scattershot. In 2023, Elton inducted Bernie into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 2024, it was announced that a documentary about Taupin is in the works, featuring interviews with the likes of Ringo Starr, Annie Lennox and The Who‘s Pete Townshend.
Denise Truscello/Getty Images for Palms Resort & Casino
Robert Plant is the latest rocker to express his support for Bruce Springsteen, whose onstage comments during his shows in Manchester, England, have drawn the ire of President Donald Trump.
In fan-shot footage of his May 18 show in Finland with the band Saving Grace, Plant tells the crowd, “Right now in England, which is where we come from … Bruce Springsteen’s touring right now in the U.K. And he’s putting down some really serious stuff. So tune in to him.”
Plant continued, “And let’s all hope that we can be …” — the cue for the band to kick into the Led Zeppelin song “Friends.”
Following Springsteen’s anti-Trump administration comments onstage in Manchester, the president attacked him on Truth Social and called for an “investigation” into whether Springsteen, Bono, Oprah and Beyoncé had been paid to endorse Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The celebrities have denied this.
On May 20, Neil Youngsupported Springsteen in a message on his website in which he told Trump, “STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT ROCKERS ARE SAYING. Think about saving America from the mess you made. Taylor Swift is right. So is Bruce. You know how I feel. You are more worried about yourself than AMERICA.”
Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder also spoke out in support of Springsteen during a recent concert.
In other Robert Plant news, he appears on a new album of cover songs by former The Jam frontman Paul Weller.Find El Dorado, which includes Weller’s versions of songs by The Kinks, Bee Gees and Richie Havens, is out July 25.
Jethro Tull really is living in the past with a new reissue that expands their 1972 double compilation album, Living in the Past.
Still Living in the Past, a five-CD/Blu-ray box set, is due out July 11. It includes remixes, edits, demos, live tracks and four promotional films. If that’s too much Tull for you, there will also be a two-LP vinyl edition featuring stereo remixes of the album by Steven Wilson.
The package includes a fully remixed version of Tull’s 1970 release Live at Carnegie Hall, the Steven Wilson stereo remixes and all the tracks from the Life Is a Long Song EP. Songs include “Locomotive Breath,” “Teacher,” “Bourée,” “A Song for Jeffrey,” “Dharma for One” and the title track.
Tull’s Ian Anderson says in a statement, “After 53 years since its original issue, this collection with the Steven Wilson re-mixes and surround sound upgrades is a splendid addition to the Tull album series. It was conceived at the time primarily to update the Tull story for U.S. and European audiences who might not have had the benefit of the many songs which had already reached U.K. fans’ ears.”
He adds, “I am so happy to have this material made available again.”
Paul McCartney & Wings hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “Silly Love Songs,” which spent five weeks on top of the chart.
The tune, from the 1976 album Wings at the Speed of Sound, was McCartney’s answer to critics who suggested he only wrote lightweight love songs.
“Silly Love Songs” was McCartney’s fifth #1 as a solo artist and his 27th #1 as a songwriter, which was a new record.
According to the Beatles Bible, although McCartney continues to tour to this day, he hasn’t played “Silly Love Songs” live since the Wings Over the World Tour in 1976.
Next up, McCartney is set delve into his musical history with Wings in the new book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, coming Nov. 4.
Metallica‘s M72 world tour will last for at least another year.
The metal legends have announced a 2026 European leg, kicking off in Athens in May. The outing will be a mix of One Night Only shows and Metallica’s No Repeat Weekend, which consists of two concerts in one city, each of which features a completely different set list.
Depending on the date, openers include the reformed Pantera, Gojira, Avatar and Knocked Loose.
For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit Metallica.com.
The M72 tour first began in 2023 in support of Metallica’s latest album, 72 Seasons. Its current North American leg continues Friday in Philadelphia.
