Hump Day, y’all! Do the Humpty Hump!
So as you may have heard, the Grammy nominees (www.grammys.com) were announced yesterday. In the categories we care about (and look, I know most of you don’t give two rat butts about them, but the artists, they are OVER THE FREAKIN’ MOON right now.)
Best Rock Performance:
“Joe (Live From Austin City Limits)” — Alabama Shakes
“Don’t Hurt Yourself” — Beyoncé Featuring Jack White
“Blackstar” — David Bowie
“The Sound Of Silence” — Disturbed
“Heathens” — Twenty One Pilots
Best Metal Performance:
“Shock Me” — Baroness
“Slivera” — Gojira
“Rotting in Vain” — Korn
“Dystopia” — Megadeth
“The Price Is Wrong” — Periphery
Best Rock Song:
“Blackstar” — David Bowie, songwriter (David Bowie)
“Burn the Witch” —Radiohead, songwriters (Radiohead)
“Hardwired” — James Hetfield & Lars Ulrich, songwriters (Metallica)
“Heathens” — Tyler Joseph, songwriter (Twenty One Pilots)
“My Name Is Human” — Rich Meyer, Ryan Meyer & Johnny Stevens, songwriters (Highly Suspect)
Best Rock Album:
California — Blink-182
Tell Me I’m Pretty — Cage The Elephant
Magma — Gojira
Death Of A Bachelor — Panic! At The Disco
Weezer — Weezer
So congratulations! Sent Disturbed‘s David Draiman and Dan Donegan, and Head from Korn emails to congratulate them. This is what David sent back!
But we are all scratching our collective heads, though, about the Beyonce/Jack White nom. I mean, WTF? Who are these people who even THINK that is a rock record? Did anyone we know in radio even PLAY that song? How does this happen? Many of us remember the year Jethro Tull won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental in 1989. They beat out Jane’s Addiction, Iggy Pop, AC/DC and Metallica that year. Please take a moment to watch this old YouTube clip with Alice Cooper and Lita Ford (love the hair) announcing the winners. Then in 1992, when they separated the Hard Rock and Metal Performance categories, THIS happened. Gotta love this industry!
Meanwhile, Mr Draiman and company also have even more cause to celebrate as Disturbed was the most played act of 2016 at the Active Rock radio format, according to industry metrics released by Mediabase, which monitors and analyzes airplay in over 180 U.S. and Canadian markets on both terrestrial and satellite radio. The band’s success was bolstered by several chart-topping singles from its 2015 comeback album, Immortalized, including its massive hit cover of Simon & Garfunkel‘s classic “The Sound Of Silence.”
The other Number One singles from Immortalized included “The Vengeful One,” “The Light” and “Open Your Eyes.” In addition to being the most played artist, Disturbed also had the second most played track at Active Rock with “The Sound Of Silence.” The official video for “The Sound Of Silence” has a staggering 147,500,000+ plays on YouTube, while the band’s Grammy-nominated live performance of the track on Conan also racked up another 37,249,832 views. The song also has more than 91 million streams on Spotify. “The Sound Of Silence” was certified platinum last June for sales or downloads of more than one million copies, while Immortalized, Disturbed’s fifth Number One album in a row, hit gold in September for 500,000 copies sold.
Disturbed singer David Draiman told us he still hasn’t gotten his head around the success the cover has had: “It doesn’t stop being surreal. Every single step of the way, it’s another incredible surprise, it’s incredibly gratifying, and it’s succeeded way above and beyond our expectations.“
In addition to Disturbed, the top five most played artists at the format included Five Finger Death Punch at Number Two, Shinedown at Number Three, Bring Me The Horizon at Number Four and Red Sun Rising in fifth place.
And congratulations to Shinedown as their “State of My Head” from Threat To Survival was the Number One most played song on Active Rock Radio in 2016. Be listening to hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus Dec 30th and the weekend edition of hardDrive Dec 31-Jan 01 for our Year End Revue!
Even though I may be thinking of retirement, Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis revealed in a new interview with RTBF he does not see himself or the band retiring anytime soon, saying, “We might always (be) writing music, writing songs, I can’t imagine that going away. I want to write a song today, tomorrow. That’s quite a satisfying thing to do.”
Kiedis added, “I think about it all the time, there’s so many things that I want to sing, melodies, and lyrics. So, if you have people you want to work with for a lifetime, there’s no reason you can’t write songs until the day you die.”
Bassist Flea told us a while back their love of music has kept the Chili Peppers going through good times and bad: “No matter what has happened, no matter how vulnerable and raw our pain, how much pain we went through or how much was good and we worked really hard and reaped rewards from it — no matter what happened, we’ve always, like the thing that has remained really earnest and really humble is our love for music and our willingness to be students of music.“
Red Hot Chili Peppers have just released a music video for “Sick Love,” the latest single from the band’s 11th studio album, The Getaway. The band recently expanded their 2017 North American tour, confirming 27 additional dates beginning on Apr 12th in Washington D.C. and concluding on Jun 30th in Chicago. This follows the previously announced initial leg that kicks off on Jan 5th in San Antonio and ends on Mar 18th in Vancouver, BC.
Blabbermouth reports Live In Limbo conducted an interview with HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale and drummer Arejay Hale in Toronto, Ontario, Canada this past Oct. You can now watch the chat below.
Asked what their favorite thing is about staying connected to their fans online, Lzzy said: “For me, it’s therapeutic in both ways. Part of the reason that I’m a songwriter is because the only way that I can really understand myself is by getting it out and talking it through or writing it out. So by having all these cool conversations with all these people, it’s really, actually, entertaining for me, and it helps me kind of inadvertently figure out what I’m going through in my life by talking to them. They probably say the reverse, but it goes both ways.”
Added Arejay: “It kind of keeps you on point when you’re going in to write a record. For me, sitting down to write a song, it’s cool to hear another perspective and it kind of gives you a better idea of what you’re going for for your audience. That’s definitely a big part of it. The other big part is having one-on-one interactions with our fans — not to get off subject, but not only with social media, but we also do a lot of meet-and-greets. We go out after the shows and we interact with the fans. Like, if we’re doing big festivals, it’s just mind-blowing being in front of that many people, so when you’re going in to write a kick-ass rock song, then you kind of keep that in mind: ‘What would this crowd love to chant, or love to sing along to?’ You know what I’m saying? Not just the social media interaction, but the human interaction, I think, is a big part of it.”
Halestorm will release its third covers EP, “ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP” on Jan 6, 2017 via Atlantic. Produced by Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice In Chains, Korn, Rush), the effort is available for pre-order now. All pre-orders will receive an instant grat of the first track release, a reworking of Whitesnake‘s hard rock classic “Still Of The Night.”
The Grammy Award-winning band’s take on Joan Jett & The Blackhearts‘ “I Hate Myself For Loving You” will follow as a second instant grat download from Friday, December 30.
“ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP” follows Halestorm‘s previous covers EPs, 2011’s “ReAniMate” and 2013’s “ReAniMate 2.0.”
Stereogum and The Pulse Of Radio reporting Kid Rock was a dedicated supporter of President-elect Donald Trump during the 2016 election and is now showing his continued support by selling a line of Trump-themed T-shirts. The first is a copy of a shirt that Rock was photographed wearing, on which states that voted red are labeled “The United States of America” and states that went blue are called “Dumbf**kistan.”
Another shirt reads “God, Guns and Trump,” while a third suggests Trump haters currently have something in their mouth.
Rock announced his support for Trump early in the year, telling Rolling Stone last February, “I’m digging Trump. I feel like a lot of people, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, feel like if you get Hillary or Bernie, or you get Rubio or Cruz or whoever, there’s going to be the same s**t . . . My feeling: let the motherf**king business guy run it like a f**king business. And his campaign has been entertaining as s**t.”
Rock, who generally leans to the right, also supported Mitt Romney in 2012. The singer’s 10th studio album, First Kiss, debuted at Number Two on the Billboard 200 album chart in March 2015, the eighth album of his to reach the Top 10.
Celebrating life today: Muse drummer Dominic Howard is 39. Tom Waits is 67.