The final four have been chosen! Lelia Broussard, Empires, Fictionist and the Sheepdogs are left to face off in Rolling Stone’s Choose the Cover contest. The final two, chosen by you, will perform in a Battle of the Bands at the Bonnaroo Festival in June. In addition to landing the cover of Rolling Stone, the winner will be also take home a recording contract with Atlantic Records.
Check out the bands’ reactions to the news, and vote for your favorite at Rollingstone.com.
With inspirations ranging from Edgar Allen Poe to New Orleans, Stevie Nicks’ first album in a decade finds her returning to her familiar mystical storytelling. The album, In Your Dreams, won’t be in stores until May 3rd but Rollingstone.com is exclusively streaming it now.
Listen to the album and check out Rob Sheffield’s review of In Your Dreams on Rollingstone.com.
Steven Tyler talks drugs, Aerosmith’s triumphant return, and Idol in this week’s Rolling Stone (on newsstands and digital archive April 29). On his Idol gig, Steven says “I’m on top of the world: I’m Hollywood’s little fuckin’ sweetheart, basically.”
He continues to talk about this Idol season’s top 20, saying “You know what, out of the 20 kids you saw tonight, if you could just sprinkle 10 years of smoking pot, getting fucked up, getting laid, getting fucked, and 10 years of just life, which one of those people wouldn’t be a star?”
See what Steven says led to Aerosmith’s ill-fated attempt at cutting a new album and more at Rollingstone.com.
Caleb and Nathan Followill of Kings of Leon recently spoke to Rolling Stone about their upcoming summer tour and new documentary “Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon,” which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival. Caleb Followill says of their earlier days, “Us in the garage, writing songs, learning E chords and G chords, really good stuff. But we had a rental car, and we left the camcorder in the car, and it was stolen. They stole the most priceless footage. People are going to want to know more about those early days, but we don’t have it.”
Check out more on RollingStone.com.
This year marks the 20th anniversary for the Lollapalooza Music Festival and they are going big. Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Muse and My Morning Jacket are all headlining the festival, while artists like Cee Lo Green, Deadmau5, and Cold War Kids are also on the bill.
A 15,000-capacity dance tent will also make its festival debut this year, hosting Girl Talk, Kid Cudi and the festival’s founder, Perry Farrell. Reflecting on the legacy of Lollapalooza, Farrell told Rolling Stone, “I just feel so fortunate that I was able to make something so wonderful for the musicians and the audience. It’s just astounding where it has evolved to. In 1991, we had seven groups and we were performing on dirt fields.”
Read more about this year’s performers on RollingStone.com.
Today is Earth Day, and to commemorate we’ve compiled a playlist of the 15 Corniest Pro-Environment Songs. For some of the featured artists—John Denver, Jack Johnson—odes to conservation already occupied a fair chunk of their songbook, so a swing-and-a-miss was less than memorable.
For others like Miley Cyrus or will.i.am, forays into environmentalism proved a bit more cringe-worthy. Check out the tunes that made the list and have a listen at RollingStone.com.
Bass player for the band TV on the Radio, Gerard Smith, 36, lost his battle with lung cancer yesterday. The band released a statement on their website canceling shows in Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver to mourn the loss of their beloved friend and bandmate.
Back in March, the band revealed Smith was battling the disease, saying, “Already we have seen dramatic results. Combine that with Gerard’s legendarily willful disposition and it might just be cancer that has the problem.” A little over a month later, Smith passed away.
The dust is finally settling in the desert of Indio, CA, where Coachella has wrapped after three days of star-studded music. Our comprehensive guide to the festival has photos and video, interviews with Chromeo and Glasser, plus recaps of Coachella’s biggest shows, from headliners Kings of Leon and Arcade Fire to Kanye West, who capped the weekend in an epic blaze of theatrics—which you can glimpse in this clip of “Power”.
In our latest issue Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely tours the startling reality of the virtual phenomenon Kiki Kannibal. The backlash facing Kirsten “Kiki” Ostrenga, the then-14-year-old girl who packed her MySpace account with pouts and often-suggestive glamor shots, isn’t limited to the internet – where there are 530 anti-accounts that mock her; for Ostrenga, the celebrity of Kiki Kannibal – who is now 18 – has entailed modeling gigs just as it has stalkers, predators and profiteers.
Read about the teen’s rise, fall, and stubborn survival right now at RollingStone.com, where you can also view our gallery of the images that built her celebrity.
Record Store Day is almost here! Tomorrow marks its fifth anniversary, and looks to continue the holiday’s increasing variety of special releases, which grows larger each year. Our guide to the 20 best exclusives cuts through a plethora of releases to highlight artists spanning The Flaming Lips to Lady Gaga, Fleet Foxes to Pink Floyd.
Oh, and if you need help finding a record store (we feel your pain), check out the RollingStone.com guide to the 30 best record stores in the USA.