The 40th anniversary of the MTV Video Music Awards was what you would expect from a TV network that no longer plays music videos: a 60-year-old won in the rock category, a solo Thai performer won in K-Pop, and they had two of the most popular performers on the globe (Taylor Swift and Post Malone) but they couldn't figure out a way for them to sing their song together.
Worse, there was a west coast delay implemented for some harebrained reason, an archaic technique to try to attract more viewers in California but then MTV posted full songs on Twitter, thus spoiling it for a fifth of the country.
For the hyperactively prolific King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, 2024 has become an anomaly in regards to new material.
Last month they released Flight b741 which is their only studio album of the year and if there isn't a followup this quarter it will be one of the few years the Australian genre-benders have dropped just one new record in a year.
The adorable, low-key, indie darling Clairo kicked off her five night residency at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, California, with a bunch of songs from her latest album, fan favorites, and big time guests in the balcony.
Clairo's new wax is the delightful Crush, which she live debuted at the Mercury Lounge in NYC in July, but is currently hitting the road to share those tunes with her fans.
The Weeknd has been known to put on quite the show with high production values, but his one-off special concert for 70,000 fans in São Paulo, Brazil on Saturday was eye-opening.
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, dazzled the capacity crowd of the Estádio MorumBI using fire, dancers, an amazing set, an enormous video screen, so many blinding lights, special guests, and drones as he debuted his forthcoming album, Hurry Up Tomorrow in a beautiful concert that was also presented on YouTube.
Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty aka Nicki Minaj has been in the entertainment game for 20 years now, and on the new Pink Friday 2 World Tour, she is wise to remind you of her reign.
Not many stars could deluge their audience with 15 cuts from their new album and have nearly 30 more songs at the ready to fill up a show, Nicki, arguably the best female rapper in the game can.
What started as a judo complex built for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, the Nipon Budokan naturally turned into one of the most popular music venues in all of Japan, and a favorite for artists to record concerts.
Thanks to its beautiful acoustics and the fact that Japanese concert attendees are well-behaved and often quite quiet, live recordings from the 14,000 seat octagon are some of the finest to this day.
Iron Maiden is really testing the loyalty of their fans on the 2024 legs of their Future Past World Tour.
The metal giants kicked off this year's edition of the tour much like where they left off in 2023: heavy doses of their most recent album, Senjutsu as well as 1986's Somewhere In Time.
Seattle's three-day Labor Day weekend festival was back under the Space Needle with memorable performances from Pavement, Cypress Hill, James Blake and many more. Besides the music there was skating, cheerleading, burlesque karaoke, a parking lot of sculptures and all the wacky things you'd hope to find in a music festival based in the Pacific Northwest.
