Classic Rock News

The innocent can never last, but Green Day has notched another entry on Spotify’s Billions Club playlist.

“Wake Me Up When September Ends” is the latest track from Billie Joe Armstrong and company to reach the billion streams milestone, following “Basket Case,” “American Idiot” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

“Still waking the world up,” Green Day remarks of the accomplishment.

“Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a single off Green Day’s 2004 album, American Idiot. The song often trends around the beginning and end of September as memes will tell you that it’s time to wake up Green Day.

We may hear one of perhaps several of Green Day’s billion-streamed songs when they perform during the opening ceremony ahead of Super Bowl 60, taking place Sunday in Santa Clara, California. The festivities air starting at 6 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.

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Although there has been no official announcement, Clive Davis appeared to confirm rumors that Meryl Streep has been cast to play Joni Mitchell in the upcoming biopic on the singer, penned by Mitchell’s good friend, writer/director Cameron Crowe.

According to Rolling Stone, the music exec spilled the beans during his annual pre-Grammy party Saturday in Los Angeles. While introducing Mitchell to the audience, he mentioned that Streep would portray in Crowe’s film.

Crowe also seemed to confirm the news to the mag. When asked to comment on the casting news, Crowe told Rolling Stone to refer to Davis’ announcement. Streep’s rep declined to comment on Davis’ statement, while Mitchell’s rep did not respond to the mag’s request for a comment.

In March 2023, it was announced that Crowe was planning to write and direct a biopic on Mitchell, a project he had been working on with her for two years. In July of 2024, rumors surfaced that Streep would be playing the singer in her later years.

Crowe offered an update on the long-in-the-works Mitchell film in October 2025, telling Variety, “We’re gonna do it next year.” When asked about the casting at the time, he said there’s “nothing I can confirm,” adding, “I’m just grateful that people are talking about it and that I get to tell the story.”

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Peter Gabriel is out with a new song.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer released the track “Put the Bucket Down” on Sunday to coincide with the latest full moon. The tune is the second song he’s released from his upcoming album o/i, the follow up to 2023’s i/o.

According to a press release, the song “conjures dream-like imagery of mind reading, thought reading and thought writing – all of which are possible through the brain/computer interface.”

“As a side project, I am working on a show with the brain as the central core and there are a number of songs, some on i/o and some on oi that will be part of that,” says Gabriel. “This is one of those and it’s a point in the narrative where we can both read and write thoughts and the person singing is not sure whether he has his own thoughts or not. Is he inside his own mind or inside someone else’s?”

“Put the Bucket Down” is available now via digital outlets.

As he did with i/o, Gabriel plans to release a new song from the album with each full moon of the year. The entire album will be released by the end of 2026, along with Dark-Side and Bright-Side mixes handled by Tchad Blake and Mark “Spike” Stent, respectively.

The Tchad Blake Dark-Side Mix of the song is expected to be released later this month.

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On This Day, Feb. 2, 2025…

The Beatles won the Grammy for best rock performance for “Now and Then.” Neither Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr, the two surviving members of the band, were on hand to accept the award.

It was The Beatles’ first Grammy win since 1997, when the group won for The Beatles Anthology and the single “Free As A Bird.” “Now and Then” was also nominated for record of the year, but it lost to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

Released in November 2024, “Now and Then,” promoted as The Beatles’ “final song,” featured vocals John Lennon recorded on a demo in the late ’70s. His wife, Yoko Ono, gave the three-song demo to McCartney, Starr and George Harrison in 1994. They then used it to create “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which appeared on The Beatles Anthology project in the mid ’90s.

For “Now and Then,” new technology developed by director Peter Jackson helped extract Lennon’s vocals from the demo’s final track. Paul and Ringo completed the song in 2022 using guitar parts Harrison recorded in 1995. 

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The 68th annual Grammy Awards, hosted by Trevor Noah, aired live from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on CBS Sunday, Feb. 1.

The 2027 Grammy Awards will air on ABC.

Here are the winners in the major categories announced during the broadcast:

Album of the year
Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad Bunny

Song of the year
“Wildflower,” Billie Eilish

Record of the year
“Luther,” Kendrick Lamar with SZA

Best new artist
Olivia Dean

Best rap album
GNX, Kendrick Lamar

Best música urbana album
Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad Bunny

Best contemporary country album
Beautifully Broken, Jelly Roll

Best pop vocal album
Mayhem, Lady Gaga

Best pop solo performance
“Messy,” Lola Young

Dr. Dre Global Impact Award
Pharrell Williams

See the rest of the winners here.

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The late Ozzy Osbourne was celebrated with a musical tribute at the 2026 Grammy Awards Sunday night.

During the in memoriam portion of the evening, Guns N’ Roses members Slash and Duff McKagan, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and producer Andrew Watt teamed up to perform the Black Sabbath classic “War Pigs,” with music star Post Malone handling the vocals.

Many of these artists had a connection to Ozzy, with Guns N’ Roses and Smith playing 2025’s Back to the Beginning concert, which took place two weeks before Ozzy’s death and marked his final live concert.

Watt produced Ozzy’s final two solo albums, 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9. Slash, McKagan, Smith and Malone also contributed to those albums. Ozzy also performed alongside Malone at the 2019 American Music Awards.

The Ozzy tribute wasn’t Watt’s only Grammy performance. Earlier in the evening he joined Lady Gaga for her performance of “Abracadabra,” which featured former Foo Fighters and current Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese.

The 2026 Grammy Awards took place Sunday at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and aired on CBS. The 2027 Grammy Awards will air on ABC.

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Box sets from Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen took home trophies at the 2026 Grammy Awards.

Mitchell was the winner for best historical album for her box set Joni Mitchell Archives – Volume 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980), her 11th career Grammy win. As for Springsteen, although he did not win an award, the art directors behind his box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums won best recording package.

And while Springsteen was not at the ceremony, he did help the Grammys pay tribute to The Beach Boys‘ Brian Wilson, who passed away in June at age 82.

“Brian Wilson was the kind of shining musical genius who made generations of songwriters so much better. I know this because i’m one of them,” Springsteen said in a voice-over that accompanied a video tribute to Wilson. He added, “Brian, the last of the Wilson brothers, may be gone but he leaves behind so many great songs and good vibrations that will live forever.”

John Mayer voiced a similar tribute to the late Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir, who died in January at 77. 

“To play music with Bob Weir was to learn from a master. He understood songwriting to its core, having written and performed some of the most enduring music in American history,” Mayer said as photos and video of Weir played on screen. “Bob has left us, but the songs he sang will remain a roadmap for a better, more meaningful life.”

The 2026 Grammy Awards took place Sunday at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and aired on CBS. The 2027 Grammy Awards will air on ABC.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers have released a statement regarding the newly announced Netflix documentary, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The film, set to premiere on March 20, is said to focus on the early days of the Peppers, and specifically the artistic vision of original guitarist Hillel Slovak, who died in 1988. It includes interviews with RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea, as well as “others close to Slovak,” according to the doc’s description.

In a statement posted to the band’s Instagram, the “Californication” outfit stresses that the film is meant to be focused on Slovak, and it is not a Red Hot Chili Peppers project.

“About a year ago, we were asked to be interviewed for a documentary about Hillel Slovak,” the post reads. “He was a founding member of the group, a great guitarist, and friend. We agreed to be interviewed out of love and respect for Hillel and his memory.”

“However, this documentary is now being advertised as a Red Hot Chili Peppers documentary, which it is not,” the statement continues. “We had nothing to do with it creatively. We have yet to make a Red Hot Chili Peppers documentary.”

The band concludes, “The central subject of this current Netflix special is Hillel Slovak and we hope it sparks interest in him and his work.”

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The announcement that Foo Fighters would be performing in tribute to Mariah Carey at the MusiCares Person of the Year gala may have seemed like an odd pairing. Unless, of course, you know about Carey’s secret grunge album.

Back in 1995, an alt-rock record titled Someone’s Ugly Daughter was released by a band called Chick. While nobody knew it at the time, the album featured anonymous contributions by Carey, who later revealed her involvement in the project in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. 

During the Person of the Year gala, which took place Friday in Los Angeles and honored Carey’s career achievements and philanthropic work, Foo Fighters finally brought songs from Someone’s Ugly Daughter to the live stage, including the tracks “Hermit” and “Love Is a Scam.”

For their performance, Dave Grohl and company were joined by Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless on lead vocals. You can watch footage from the show via Momsen’s Instagram Stories.

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The Velvet Underground’s Loaded and The Stooges’ Fun House are the latest albums to get a high fidelity audio release.

Both are part of Rhino High Fidelity’s series of limited-edition, high-end vinyl reissues, cut from the original master tapes. Only 5,000 individually numbered copies have been pressed on 180-gram black vinyl and are available now via Rhino.com.

Loaded, released in 1970, was The Velvet Underground’s fourth studio album, and their last with lead singer and primary songwriter Lou Reed. It featured such iconic tunes as “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll.”

Fun House, also released in 1970, was The Stooges’ sophomore record. Although it wasn’t a commercial hit when released, it went on to develop a cult following and has been included on lists of the greatest albums of all time.

“Something about this record that I like is the way it begins with a couple of very short, fully structured numbers, and then slips farther and farther out of control…yet it never loses a structure of its own,” The Stooges’ Iggy Pop writes in new liner notes. “This is not a meat-and-potatoes record. It’s not ‘ten really good songs that the consumer can depend on.’”

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