Audacy Check-In

Celebrate the release of Spiritbox's sophomore album, 'Tsunami Sea,' with a special Audacy Check In with singer Courtney LaPlante. Dive into the deep end of the band's blistering second offering, their upcoming tour, recent GRAMMY nominations, and so much more during an interview with Abe Kanan.

GHOST frontman Tobias Forge joins host Abe Kanan for a special Audacy Check In, amid the highly-anticipated arrival of the mysterious Swedish metal band's all new 'Skeletá' era with new music, a new ‘Papa,’ and more. Over the weekend GHOST shared images of an epic billboard announcing “V is coming,” along with a link to a livestream which will no doubt host the debut of the band’s “new” singer, Papa V Perpertua, as well as further new music announcements. Papa V, the next incarnation of frontman Tobias Forge, was first teased when revealed as part of Black Sabbath’s 'Back To The Beginning' July concert in Birmingham happening later this year. For the past 20+ years, Tobias has led his “nameless ghouls” in GHOST, one of the more mysterious groups in the Metal scene, as their anti-Papal singer and principal songwriter. Looking back on the group’s constant battles with remaining unknown players when first starting out, it was “fatigue,” Forge says, that eventually led to his unmasking. “It was a constant struggle to maintain anonymity, meanwhile trying to break and make the band bigger because it sort of defies the whole idea of becoming a bigger and more famous band, and not become more a person of interest,” he explains. “However, as I transgressed from, I know that might be the wrong word to use here, but transgressed from wanting to really remain anonymous, no matter what, to being, I guess, more open with it.” “I tried to weigh whether or not if there was a playing field for me, to where I could do both,” Tobias says. “And what I understood it was that GHOST as an entity, as this sort of fictional, cartoonish Rock band, is always -- as long as I continue doing that the way I should -- will always be more known and more recognizable and more interesting than I am as a person. And so far, it has really been like that. Sure, people know who I am, but nowhere near as many as know what GHOST is.” “Any time we have a new person in the band,” Forge admits, “I think it always sets off the sleuths trying to sort of figure out who that person is, and over the years we've had people in the band who've been very good at hiding their identities, basically enjoying the idea of being somewhat more elusive. And then there are those who prefer to be a little bit more visible.” However, as he sees it “Neither is wrong. I think in the spirit of GHOST being a slightly more theatrical, and a little bit more anonymous, whatever that means now in this context, I think it's good if we don't go up on stage and take the mask off, ‘Here we are, it's me.’ You know, that's not great, but I mean it doesn't bother me if you know the name of the guitar player.” Speaking of the band’s brand new single “Satanized” from their forthcoming 2025 album 'Skeletá,' some fans may notice a throwback feel to earlier releases, some of course may not. “I am bad at deciphering or deciding that,” Tobias says, “because if I say, ‘oh yeah, yes, you're right,’ there will be opinionated people listening like, it sounds nothing like Opus… So, no, it's not a carbon copy of ‘Opus Eponymous,’ it's not ‘Infestissumam,’ it's not ‘Meliora.’” “There are elements of everything I've ever done, scattered all over the records, as is with this record too,” he says. “I always go into the studio or into the writing process, the production process, with the idea of trying to write a new album, an album that sounds in a new way, and then pragmatically, I guess you try to be professional and steer the ship. So it resembles a GHOST record. Even though I'm also struggling at times with exactly what that means, but you know, of course I have a gut feeling of which lines you don't cross, and where it feels like that is ‘not a GHOST thing to do.’ Not because I don't dare -- I consider myself fairly daring in my will to push everything forward, or push the envelope and or do things that others might not wanna do. But o ...

Audacy host Jolene was thrilled to welcome the ultimate Idol -- Billy Idol -- for a special Check In, getting details about his upcoming tour dates kicking off in April with Joan Jett, and plenty more. Billy Idol is returning to the road this Spring for his 'It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again! Tour.' Kicking off in Phoenix on April 30, the trek will feature special guests Joan Jett & the Blackhearts who will join Idol at all stops including New York’s Madison Square Garden, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and more. But first congratulations are in order for Idol, who was nominated for inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year. “It's very exciting… it's an incredible honor,” Billy says. “The best news is Steve Stephens being inducted with me, so that really made my day. I don't wanna be up there on my own, so, it’ll be great.” As promised, new music from Idol is also here with his just-released 2025 single "Still Dancing." the initial offering from 'Dream Into It,' his first full-length album since 2014’s 'Kings & Queens of the Underground.' “We were making a documentary the last few years, it kept getting interrupted by the coronavirus,” he explains, “but because of that it kind of really made me aware that at this stage in my life, I could really look over the landscape of my life and really sort of talk about that. ‘Still Dancing,’ the song itself is like my life encapsulated into one song, but the album itself actually tells the story of my life.” “It goes through the sort of Punk Rock era in 1977," Billy adds. "There's a song ‘77’ that talks about coming to America and going solo and then all the shenanigans that happened in between. So, it really does tell the story of my life. The track selection -- normally in the old days you always put the hit single first and the next best song second, but we really did this in the order of my life.” The single “Still Dancing,” he says, “had the most obvious sound of a Billy Idol record that you recognize, but at the same time it's really fresh and vital, and that's what I feel about the album. I feel that there's not a bad song on it, and I think it's probably one of my best records. Just being able to say that at this time in my life and being inducted into the Hall of Fame all in one go, it's pretty amazing. It's gonna be an incredible year, whatever happens.” Looking back on his stellar career, “It's been a long ride,” Billy says, “but the ride's all I've known.” And the ride continues this year as he hits the road on his 'It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again!' outing with his pal, Joan Jett. One of the songs on the forthcoming album, “Wildside,” he says, is “a duet with Joan. So, not only is she gonna be on the tour, but we'll probably be doing one of the songs live, I expect.” Over the years Billy recalls, “We have done some gigs together, but we've never done a tour, so a lot of people are really excited about it as well… it seems like it's a good move.” Finally, Billy says, “I can’t wait to play the music, that’s the thing. It’s gonna be a great year because we haven’t played any of this music live, so it’s all gonna be fresh to us when we get out there.” Don't miss Jolene's full Check In with the Billy Idol above, and stay with Audacy for more interviews from your favorite artists. Plus, follow along with Billy Idol Radio on the free Audacy app. Words by Joe Cingrana, Interview by Jolene

Host Abe Kanan is joined today by singer Marc LaBelle, and guitarist John Notto of Dirty Honey for a special Audacy Check In following the release of their brand new 2025 live album, ‘Mayhem & Revelry.’ As fans can attest, there’s a special something about Dirty Honey’s live performances that can never be captured in the studio. “That was one of the driving factors to doing a live record,” Notto tells us. Since early on in their career, followers and critics alike have told him, “’I love the records, but you guys are better live. There's like a second gear or a third gear. It's like another animal,’” he explains. “I think after enough times of that being said, and in conjunction with us realizing we wanted to bring more of our own sound gear live, we just made sure we could get gear that we can record. That's kind of just the techie side, but one of the main driving factors was realizing we should have something out there that points to why people were actually talking about us.” Along with the live album, the band is slowly rolling out a four-part YouTube docuseries to give fans something to look forward to. “One of my favorite live records when I was a kid was ‘Song Remains the Same,’ Led Zeppelin, and ‘How the West Was Won,’” John explains, “and both of those have accompanying concert films… It just felt like, well, why don't we do something different? So we hired one of Marc [LaBelle]'s longtime friends who was actually very professional… and he directed our ‘Coming Home’ video.” “When I was working on the shoot with him,” he adds, “I just thought his intention to what is artistically interesting kind of grabbed me. So, when Marc was like, ‘Why don't we have him just come out and film us,’ I thought he would have a good eye for when things are interesting, that would be something that would be a nugget that you could really show the audience from behind the curtain that they otherwise wouldn't get.” Looking back on how the band members met, John says it all happened by chance, “because I met a guy who played in his cover band years ago… and he just saw me sitting at an R&B jam. So here we are, the three white guys at this R&B jam, I don't know him, and we're sitting in with like the heaviest of cats who, you know, are all gospel Black musicians who tour with the biggest pop artists in the world. It's just like, ‘Fit in if you can’ kind of thing, and you jam a tune and wing it.” Eventually, he was invited to play with the cover band and after hearing some of Marc's original songs, “I was like, ‘I don't know anyone young who sings rock like that at all.’ You meet some guys who are already 50 and they've done it, and they're good, but… from there, you know, it was kind of kismet right away. I had learned a bunch of songs off that EP that I liked and sat in with them. I always say it’s random because Marc's more of a true rocker, you know, and so Mark would have never been at that R&B jam.” “It really was chance in that sense,” he says, “but there must be something about me that's obvious rocker, because even for that kid to have called me out of the blue and be like, ‘I think you're good for this.’ It's very chance… and it's taken us a lot of work to get the right people involved too, but we have.” “I just remember we were playing this s***ty little dive bar in Santa Monica when John walked in and immediately I was like, ‘This guy looks cool, you know. He's gonna play his Les Paul, that's cool.’ My other guy at the time was playing a Strat, and I actually always kind of liked the blend of maybe like a Telly with a Les Paul… He started playing the Les Paul and I was like, ‘This is awesome. This guy is awesome.'” “I just came down and played a few tunes and hung out and left,” John adds. “They were doing the hustle, you know, four 45-minute sets, you know, cover band status, which we ended up doing many, many of those. That's how we got good.”

Tate McRae is a booked and busy flexible force to be reckoned with. She’s just released her brand new third album, 'So Close To What,' and she’s about to head out on her continent-spanning 2025 'Miss Possessive Tour.' But before all of that she checked in with Audacy’s Bru to chat all about both and more. Tate last checked in on the heels of releasing her album’s debut track, "It’s ok I’m ok." Leading up to the album’s arrival she dropped two more singles, "2 Hands" and "Sports Car,” before officially releasing her 15-track album on February 21. Sitting down with Bru on her album’s release day, Tate shared her extreme excitement, mixed with slight hesitation, to scroll through social to gage the response. “It's like such an overstimulating thing because, you're like, I don't want to look at my phone because if I scroll too far, you're bound to see something that's scary,” Tate expressed. “But I've been also wanting to see if the fans like it, so it's been fun.” Tate has released a steady flow of albums in the last 3 years with 2022’s 'I Used to Think I Could Fly,' 2023’s 'Think Later,' and now 'So Close To What' in 2025. Commending Tate for the grind, and rightfully so, Bru asked her what’s its been like and if she’s had chance to process it at all. Also wondering if it feels like she’s on the same wave as when she put out her first album. "Well, the first album, that feels like ages ago. I was 17 when I started writing that, and then I took a break from writing or from touring and wrote for a full year, so I felt like that was like a separate thing. But Think Later and this album have been really tight,” Tate noted. “Album, tour, album, and it's just felt natural. I've just been writing a lot, I've been inspired,” she added. Sharing what is currently motivating her the most right now, Tate said, “last year was the first time that I've ever danced, danced on tour. So to feel that response and be like — ‘oh, this is what I need to do on tour’ — to perform and want to feel good with my dancers on stage… I think that inspired a lot of the writing for this album.” While we find it hard to remember a time when Tate wasn’t slaying every inch of whatever stage she was occupying with Sean Bankhead choreography, there was a time when she’d just sing, stand, and walk around. While Tate has more than mastered dancing while singing, running while singing (like Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus) is a difference story. “I'm an awful runner,” Tate admitted, “so honestly just getting on a treadmill, I can't do anything, so singing and running would be a bad idea for me.” Fun fact — Tate also shared that “bloodonmyhands” and “Like I do,” were the final two tracks written and added to the album. “It kind of felt like it like tied the whole album together and was like the final little bow,” Tate said. “I wrote it in New York like 3 weeks ago, so it was really last minute and it it really was a satisfying feeling.” Despite being a full fledged Popstar, Tate confessed she has “the worst case of impostor syndrome.” Noting “even last night,” at her album release party, “I was just like I wonder if anyone's gonna show up… like no one's gonna come to a parking lot. And so every time I come on stage and I have like this look on my face where I look really shocked it’s just because I actually genuinely am, like I can't believe people showed up.” Talking about how the collab with The Kid LAROI came about, well aside from the fact that as boyfriend and girlfriend, it just makes sense Tate shared. “It started because I had another record that he loved and I was like looking for a feature, and he was like, ‘let me just cut a verse on it.’” Noting she’s “been a fan of him for so long,” Tate was obviously down. “So he tracked the verse. Then of course you like analyze everything. We were like, let's try and beat this, and we wrote another song. And yeah, it was a fun process, it was ...

Calling in to chat with Audacy’s Julia, benny blanco shared all about his surprise album with Selena Gomez, 'I Said I Love You First,' detailing how the project came about, and discussing the stories behind the first two singles, plus a whole lot more during an Audacy Check In. Sharing how the idea for the new album came about, benny revealed, “I think we were just both kind of… just like a little stuck on what we want to do. Selena was talking about not wanting to make music anymore. She felt like she already said everything she's ever wanted to say. And I remember I just had this like a-ha moment where I was like, well, why don't we just do an album together? It would be so fun.” Noting how he loved it when other musical couples had teamed up on projects, listing off JAY-Z and Beyoncé, and Raw Alejandro and Rosalía as examples, benny thought, “why don't we try?” “I didn't even know if anyone was gonna hear this,” he went on to admit. “We just made it in our house together, like in our room. And I remember saying like, hey, if this is ever weird, we'll just stop right away.” As it turns out, it wasn’t weird at all. “It all like flowed out so easily,” benny continued, "and… I feel like through this, I realized how good a partners we were together because… we didn't fight… there was no argument in the studio. All of our ideas came out exactly how we wanted them to, and we had the same intuitions and it was like, if we didn't like something, we both didn't like it. And I don't know, it was kind of like a therapeutic and cathartic experience.” While the forthcoming album is hardly the first time benny and Selena have worked on music together, aside of Selena’s 2023 summer single “Single Soon,” all the tracks they’ve collaborated on in the past was done as friends. Which according to benny the one major difference between working together before compared to now is that now, “I get to kiss her and we're in love.” Sharing a few things he thinks will surprise us about the album, benny expressed, clarifying he doesn’t mean lyrically, noting, “she’s always raw in what she's saying. But some of the production is like really pulled back… almost like acoustic like… or it'll be one piano and her, you know. And then obviously there's still like the bops and stuff on there too, but I think it was really cool to try out new things that maybe she's never done before." “I think people will be surprised that maybe some of the stuff we're talking about," he continued, “It’s about everything. You know, I really want people to take the journey. I don't want to say too much because it's definitely a journey from the beginning, from how it opens up until how it ends.” Speaking of — how it ends — “Scared of Loving You,” the album’s lead single is actually the last song on the album. Sharing the reason they chose to release that one first, benny said, “I think I just wanted to start by saying like, ‘here's how we feel right now… this is how we feel right now in this moment.’ And then let's go backwards.” “You know… Selena has been through so much and this song really showed — ‘Hey, I'm not scared of loving you right now, I am scared of losing you.’ And just like everyone else, you do a bunch of things in your life and then you're sitting there and you're like — ‘Oh, I'm really scared to jump into this new thing because if I do, that means I'm giving myself to a person again and like that means the potential for heartbreak again’”, benny added. Sharing how they were both “a little hesitant to go into it,” once they did, “then you're like, ‘oh my God… I have so much to live for now… Wait, holy s***, don't leave me.'” Sharing the story behind their second single, “Call Me When You Break Up,” featuring Gracie Abrams, benny revealed he’d previously worked with Gracie on “some of the first music she ever made.. and then I put her on my album in like 2020 or somethi ...

Host Abe Kanan recently welcomed frontman David Draiman of Disturbed for a special Audacy Check In, just before the band hits the road on their North American trek in celebration of 25 years since the release of their debut album, 'The Sickness.' Looking back at 25 years of ‘The Sickness,’ Abe remembers vividly purchasing Disturbed's debut CD at Tower Records, which happened to have two concert tickets stuffed inside for the release party at Chicago’s Metro. “We put ‘em in there,” Draiman admits. “We were trying to get people to come. It was kind of an important show, you know what I mean? So, giving them away, selling them… we weren't about making money at the time. We weren't about selling our own tickets, we’d give them away. We didn't care.” "We just wanted bodies in the room and we were definitely our own street team in many ways,” he explains. “If there were four shows going on in Chicago at a given night, if there was one at the Aragon, one at the UIC Pavilion, one at United Center, we'd hit them all. The band would split up with all of our promotional materials and, to me, that was always the easiest way to get directly to the fans. Here are the fans coming out of another great rock show… ‘Well, here, if you want some more of this… different flavors, same kind of family, come on over and check us out. It fostered this great sense of community… this great sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and I loved it. Those days were really, really magical days back then.” Touching on the artists he’s looked up to over the years David tells us, “I definitely had a tremendous amount of inspiration from guys like Jonathan Davis. That first Korn record was massive for me. Chino Moreno from the Deftones, you know, both those guys wielding rhythm in their vocal deliveries the way that they did were hugely inspirational for me. Guys like Maynard James Keenan from TOOL, you know, those first couple TOOL records, his power, his resonance, his ethereal nature to his vocal delivery. All those guys were definitely huge influences, in addition to The Aussies, the Hatfields, you know, the Dickinsons, the Dios of the world. They definitely were a huge part of who we became and who I became, for sure.” David also spoke about missing the adventure that at one time came with being a music fan; Traveling to record stores, searching for the album you wanted to buy, waiting in line for concert tickets -- “I feel that we have a generation of fans that unfortunately will never ever get to experience that,” he says. “We've become so detached and so disconnected from everything with the help of technology. You know, we don't have physical packaging anymore. I used to really get into getting records, opening them up, reading all the liner notes. Who were they thanking? Who was behind it, you know, what inspired them? What were the lyrics, what were they saying? What were they trying to make me think? Al of that. And I think a lot of that is now lost.” “I think our tendency to consume faster and faster, and more and more rapidly and our attention span, which gets shorter and shorter over the course of time, in many ways, it's enabled so much more music to get on the table and to be heard,” he adds. “But on another level, there's so much that's getting missed, and there are opportunities that will never ever be able to be duplicated or replicated that really do feel bad that people won't ever get to experience.” “I miss a lot about the old days. I missed the vibe of the old days. I missed the sense of rock community that we had back in the old days for sure,” David says. “Everything that we alluded to, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this 25th anniversary run. It's a ton of nostalgia in a bag… It's gonna be massive. I’m very, very excited about it, very excited about both halves of the bill. Incredibly strong, from Sevendust and Three Days Grace, to Nothing More a ...

Checking in with host Mike Adam from the Audacy Sound Space at the Hard Rock Hotel New York, singer Alessia Cara is with us detailing her brand new, fourth studio album, 'Love & Hyperbole,' released February 14, featuring “Fire,” and plenty more. “I'm very proud, honestly, I'd say this for every album that I released, but I promise it's true every time,” Alessia tells us. “This is my favorite project that I've ever made, and this music is just some of my favorite songs I've ever made, ever. I don't know why. I think it's just because I feel most like myself.” “I feel like I've grown so much,” Cara adds. “This music is just like a reflection of all the music that I love, and that I've loved growing up. So, it's really exciting. It feels nice.” Alessia started work on the new release in late 2021, following her third offering, In the Meantime, taking a breather in between albums as she admits. “I think I, just for a moment, needed to take time away from writing and playing music just to come back with a fresh start in a way,” she explains. “But I was creative in other ways, like I learned so many new recipes to cook. I really got my cooking game up a little bit.” Although, sometimes the pressure can build when others wonder where the songs come from. “I just really compartmentalize,” she tells us, “and when I'm home I just really like to savor it… People just expect you to be this artist who's always writing, and I am always singing around the house and stuff, but I really do like to put it away when I'm home. [I] try not to feel too much pressure, because I like to save that creative energy for when it comes, rather than feeling like, ‘OK, I gotta sit down and do it.’ I'd rather it be an intuitive process rather than an analytical one.” The release of Alessia’s debut single, “Here,” just reached its 10-year anniversary. Looking back on her older material, “I'm able to look at it with love,” she tells us. “It’s challenging because when something that you make when you're really young takes off really quickly, you feel like there's always the standard that you're held to by the public, or even yourself, to kind of live up to that. But then in my case, I was trying to live up to a version of myself that was young and underdeveloped. It's weird looking backwards because you feel like the natural thing is to grow, and I felt so much better as a person, but people are always trying to get you to go backwards.” “I do look back on it now with a sense of love and appreciation, and I try not to over-analyze,” she adds. “I was young, and I also didn't really have much creative control yet. I didn't even know what that meant.” “That whole first album was collaborative,” Cara continues. “I feel like after that, I really just took the reins and decided to just take as much creative control as I can. Not because the first process wasn't fun, I just think that's just who I've always wanted to be as an artist. I've always just wanted to speak my own mind and tell my own stories, and just train myself to do it better. It's also fun. It's like a skill that I love to sharpen. I think it's different just because I'm able to say a bit more, because there's no one else around and I don't have to explain to this other person what the story is about.” Since breaking onto the scene in 2015, Alessia has managed to maintain a level of privacy throughout her career unlike many others in her field, mainly thanks to not oversharing on social media. “Honestly, for me, I do think it's fairly easy,” she says. “I think that's just because I'm one of the lucky ones where, I don't know, I think people have always just looked to me and have asked me questions about the music, and I've never had any relationships in the public eye, which I think helps. I do think I kind of made it under the radar, and it's not really any work of my own. I think it's just the way that, you know, the wor ...

On the heels of his latest release 'I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2),' following the outrageously successful run he had with his debut album, Teddy Swims checked in with Audacy’s Mike Adam at the Hard Rock Hotel New York to chat about his musical roots, superior song covers, future fatherhood fears, and more. Definitively putting him on the map, Teddy's soulful anthem “Lose Control” was crowned Song of the Year on Billboard's 2024 Year-End Hot 100 Songs chart, and also claimed the No. 1 spot on Audacy’s 2024 Top Songs. The track’s monumental success also earned Swim's a 'Best New Artist' nomination at the 2025 GRAMMYs, at which he's also performed, along with his fellow nominees. While discussing Teddy’s current genre-spanning musical vibes, Mike asked the musician if there was a particular genre he feels the most comfortable in, or one he wishes he felt more comfortable in. Attributing the starting point to developing his powerful pipes began with metal, Swims, shared, “My roots are as a screamer before I was a singer. So I think, like, I'm one of the gnarliest screamers.” “I don't even think I'm that good of a singer,” Teddy humbly added, pointing to his throat, but actually vocal chords, to say, "I love this instrument… I think I can do all the acrobatics that it takes to do a singer. But I think I'm a really good screamer. I think my most favorite thing, like, where I'm most comfortable in is metal.” Whether Teddy will ever get to scratch that itch again? He confessed he doesn’t know. However he is rather proud of getting “a writing cut on the new Linkin Park record,” and rightfully so. “I wrote with them and did a few records with them…” Swims shared. Noting he “told Mike Shinoda, on the next record I was like, ‘Come on bro, you gotta put me on that record, bro.’” And while acknowledging that Emily Armstrong, the band’s relatively recently announced new lead singer, “is out of this world, like, incredible,” in his own self interest, he told Shinoda, “You should have left my voice on one of those songs, man.” Raised in the South, Teddy grew up on soul music after being introduced to it by his dad, but he also grew up playing football, and was also a theater kid. Which made Mike wonder if Teddy felt like at any point he was living in completely different worlds. While some might feel as though all those factors contrast, Teddy doesn’t agree, which makes so much sense when you try and think of putting Swims into a defined box, because he just doesn’t fit the mold. Which is a very good thing. “No, I feel like… it’s weirder to know that other people have a different perspective or upbringing than you,” Teddy expressed. “You know, you always feel like people are the same… you're the center of your own experience, right? Like you're the lead role in your own movie, right? So like, I just never, you never realize other people are different until you get older to realize other people's expectations. When you're a kid, you're like, we're all doing this, right? I thought everybody was.” “It all felt natural to be who I was," Teddy eventually went on to note. “I don't know, I didn't know that people were living different lives, you know?” As Mike brought up, before Teddy's meteoric rise, like many other artists do during their come up, he posted covers on YouTube. Noting he has opinions about covers that outshine the originals, pointing out Whitney Houston’s rendition of “Higher Love,” Mike asked Teddy if he feels that way about any of his covers. “None of them, everybody hates themselves a little bit," Teddy quipped, “like none of mine are as good as that.” That being said he did have some strong feelings about Jimmy Hendrix owning the cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.” Noting, “Bob Dylan even retired that song… he was like, that's Jimmy's song." Teddy also shouted out Tank’s rendition of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can't Mak ...

Ahead of the release of their new single “Who Believes In Angels?,” the title track from their just-announced collaborative album set for release on April 4, Audacy host Mike Adam got a chance to speak with Brandi Carlile and Elton John about how this amazing joint venture came to be. Although The Who’s Pete Townshend spilled the beans on this project last summer, Elton tells us, “I just forgot about it, and I think most people forgot about it… I didn't scold him. I love Pete. He's one of my dearest friends, so…” “I didn't forget about it, I loved it!” adds Brandi. Expanding on what Townshend revealed was a lightning-fast recording process, Elton says, “We went in with nothing and came out three weeks later with fourteen songs, ten of which make the album. I had a lot of doubt making this record and I was tired, I was irritable, and the first four or five days were really kind of powder keg time. But once we got past that, It was just plain sailing. It was just brilliant.” “The lyrics that we got from Bernie [Taupin] and Brandi were so amazing, Andrew Watt, the producer,” he adds, giving all of his collaborators their flowers. “The four people involved in this whole project, and it was very much a team effort.” “All the lyrics I got were amazing, and they were so easy to write to,” Elton continues. “When you get great lyrics, I write very quickly. So, Brandi's lyrics and Bernard's lyrics were so good that the songs came together really quickly. We had a great band, we had Chad [Smith] from the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers on drums, and we had, Pino Palladino on bass, and we had Josh Klinghoffer from the Chili Peppers on synth, and Andrew Watt on guitar with Brandi.” “And Elton on piano,” Brandi chimed in accordingly. “It was one of the most enjoyable, incredibly quick albums I've ever made. It was wonderful,” John explained. “The energy in the room, it was electric. You could get an electric shock if you touched the wall!” Agreeing that there was some rough water to tread when first coming together, Brandi says, “We pretty much saw eye to eye after that first few days, everything clicked. We just really inspire each other and we didn't know for sure… We knew we loved each other and then we had this great friendship, but I didn't know if we would inspire each other, so it was really scary in the beginning, but we really did. And then everything from the beginning to the end was mostly smooth sailing, and we just tend to acquiesce toward one another, I think as artists in general.” Fans will be happy to hear that there is a full visual aspect to this new album as well. “We filmed every song being written, we filmed every song being recorded,” Elton tells us. “We had nine cameras on the go all the time. Eventually, you'll be able to see the shenanigans that went on at the beginning of the album, which weren't pretty, but it was necessary for the sparks to fly at the beginning, mostly from me, to get that energy going, and boy was that energy in that room when we got going. It was fantastic!” “The best part of the cameras was, I never saw one,” Brandi adds. “They were fixed, so I didn't know where they were and we were forgetting about them all the time. So, it's not as if there was a person standing there with a camera. We forgot, and our behavior reflects that!” Obviously, keeping the cat in the bag around such a massive collaboration was going to be tough. Though Elton admits he “didn't play it to many people,” Brandi reminded him that he did give Kate Bush an early listen, and of course, Pete Townshend. Brandi says she played it recently for Bon Iver, and Aaron Dessner of The National, “and the looks on their faces were just, you can't fake loving an album that much,” she says. “So, we know we've done a really special thing, we're really excited.” “It’s just incredibly life-affirming to me,” Brandi adds. “ ...

Superstar singer/songwriter Kane Brown joins host Mike Adam this week for a special Audacy Check In from the Hard Rock Hotel New York, to discuss his brand new album, ‘The High Road,’ family life as a father of three, and plenty more. Country-crossover superstar Kane Brown just dropped his fourth studio album, 'The High Road,' on January 24, featuring 18 tracks including his hit “Miles On It” with Marshmello, as well as the previously released singles, “Fiddle In the Band,” “I Can Feel It,” “Gorgeous,” and "Backseat Driver," and the duets “Body Talk" and "Do Us Apart" with his wife, Katelyn Brown. “I think Country music is just getting a lot of cool, new elements to the music that's getting added,” Kane tells us, “plus the storytelling. There's a lot of cool artists in Country music that's really stepping out, I'd say.” Now a proud father of three, Kane says aside from 'The High Road,' his kids “will listen to anything. I would say recently, it's been like Dubstep ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ and when that comes on, I usually go crazy too.” His wife, Katelyn, is “a huge R&B fan,” he adds, so the little ones have been getting exposed to “big voices in general… Whitney Houston, anybody with a crazy big voice is what she's trying to get them to listen to… and then of course the Disney princesses.” Kane says he and Katelyn are also attempting to get the kids to watch the classic flicks they grew up with as well. “I'll be like, ‘This was daddy's favorite movie,’ and then Kate will show them her favorite movies. The funniest story I have is, Kate's deathly afraid of ‘E.T.,’ and so I told my kids about ‘E.T.,’ and so now they love ‘E.T.’ and they've just been walking around going, ‘E.T. phone home!’” Luckily for everyone, play-dates in the Kane household never seem to be too far off. “[In] Country music, everybody has a kid,” Kane laughs. “It’s just a big family.” With his new record now on shelves, Kane is getting set to hit the road on his 2025 'The High Road Tour' which kicks off on March 13 in San Diego, CA and wraps on July 13 in Chicago, IL. Along for support on select dates with him will be Mitchell Tenpenny, Scotty McCreery, Dasha, and Ashley Cooke. Tickets are on sale now... Click HERE for a full list of tour dates. Don't miss Mike Adam's full Check In with Kane Brown above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy. Plus, follow along with Kane Brown Radio and more on the free Audacy app. Words by Joe Cingrana, Interview by Mike Adam

Shinedown frontman Brent Smith joins host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In, filling us in on the band's 2025 plans, including their upcoming live dates scheduled for this spring alongside Bush and Beartooth, and their double dose of brand new singles released today (1/24) -- "Dance Kid Dance," and "Three Six Five." Shinedown is kicking off the new year with new music and an impressive touring itinerary, after just revealing their 30-city Dance, Kid, Dance Tour -- featuring guests Bush on the summer dates and Beartooth in the spring -- scheduled to make stops in most major markets including Boston, Detroit, Nashville, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, and more before wrapping up at the end of August. First touching on the two new tracks the band just offered up, “Three Six Five” Brent tells us, “We kind of felt like it definitely had a bit more tempo than maybe the last song that people were familiar with -- maybe the more mainstream leaning, Pop leaning-type songs. So, we kind of bumped up the BPMs a little bit on that. And ‘Dance Kid, Dance,’ we just went to the wall with that.” “It's interesting,” he explains. “I had a friend of mine the other day say to me, ‘Are you a rock band? Are you a metal band? Are you an Alternative band? Are you a Pop… what are you?’ And I'm like, ‘We're just Shinedown.' We play in a big sandbox. We've always been a genre-bending band, because we're inspired by a lot of different styles and we're constantly evolving. We felt like the right move with the first new material that people would hear from us, that we gave them two sides of us.” “I think along the way people started to get pigeonholed,” Smith adds, “or they started using boxes, or ‘stay in your lane,’ or you know… ‘You're only this genre.’ When you expand your palette, sonically or what have you, you're just trying to reach as much of the audience as you can. Some days you feel like you want to throw down and rock, some days you're a little bit more emotional, but that's the beauty of music, man. It constantly evolves and the only thing that we've ever done in this band is, anybody from anywhere at any time we wanted them to be able to know that Shinedown has a lot of peaks and valleys -- kind of like a roller coaster ride, but there's something for everyone.” As the band gets ready to hit the road on their 2025 Dance, Kid, Dance Tour, Brent, obviously a fan of their tour partners Bush growing up, revealed that he had recently been on a call with frontman Gavin Rossdale “just kind of reintroducing ourselves to one another. We met a while back and we really hadn't had a chance to connect, but I got to give a lot of credit to Zach Myers and Shinedown for Bush coming on this tour. He really was like, ‘Man, it would be amazing if we could get them for this!’ And then obviously having who we think is the epitome of the fearless female outlaw, Morgan Wade, is coming out on this tour as well, so there's a lot of diversity. But Bush specifically, having a 30-year anniversary for ‘Sixteen Stone,’ also I think the 20-year for ‘Razorblade Suitcase.’ I might be getting those confused, but they have this kind of nostalgia era coming into their new record where there's still this band that is very much very current, and they they're just a force to be reckoned with.” Making their way back to the new releases, “There's so much wrapped up,” Brent says in “Three Six Five” -- “That one really took hold very quickly. There was a lot of loss last year, personally in our families, and friends of ours that it was their time, and none of us know when it's our time. Our fanbase over the years have really talked about how our music and the songs that we write really helped them at times when they're going through difficulty with what their daily lives can be and how Shinedown is kind of like a security blanket in a way.” “It's very emotional when I think about it, but we've always bee ...

Joining host Abe Kanan for a special Audacy Check In is Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix, giving us details on what's next for the group as they kick off their 'INFEST' 25th anniversary worldwide celebrations with brand new music. Papa Roach is currently on the U.K. and European leg of their worldwide 'Rise Of The Roach Tour' alongside Rise Against, celebrating the 25th anniversary of their iconic breakthrough album 'INFEST' -- and the band just dropped their first new single of 2025, "Even If It Kills Me." The band's 2023 ballad "Leave A Light On," made in collaboration with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) for their 'Talk Away the Dark' campaign was a major accomplishment, "one of the big ones for us," Shaddix tells us. “’Scars’ was another one that was really big for us. ‘Scars’ went multi-format as well, but yeah, man, ‘Leave A Light On’ has been one of the biggest ones in years for us… and it's purpose-driven music. But you know, when we zig, then we gotta zag -- this is the perfect zag.” “It's just got such a cinematic feel to it, and it's just got the big riffs that we are known for, and it's got a hooky chorus,” Shaddix explains of the new track. “I really love the chorus, and it's just one of those songs that when I heard the demo, when the band wrote the music, I just instantly picked up the phone, I called Tobin [Esperance] and I'm like, ‘Dude… I don't even have to think twice on this one, it's go time on this track.’ When we land on those moments, when we're making music, when I just know there's an inner-knowing, there's something magic in that and it always sets a tone for what's to come and what we're gonna write after that.” “We kicked it off with this one and it just was so inspired. It was the first song that we wrote after we had been touring on our last album, ‘Ego Trip,’ and it was the first one that we went back into the studio,” Jacoby adds. At that point, the decision was made: “'Let's start writing music again,'” he says. “It seems like when we've kind of been out there working and playing songs live, and been out on tour, and hadn't been writing new music in a while… the levee breaks, you know, and that's what happened when we wrote that song -- and we're so proud of it. Just wait till you see the music video for this one ‘cause it's leaps and bounds levels up of what we've done lately with our music videos, and I'm so excited about this one.” As far as a new album on the way, Shaddix tells us the band had been working in the studio throughout 2024 on a bunch of music, “and we have songs in a lot of different states. There's songs that are completely finished, we have other songs that are like verses and choruses, and we gotta write maybe a bridge or get back there and kind of retweak them and work them. There's another couple songs that are just like acoustic guitar and vocal, and it's like, ‘All right, this one's gonna be a banger. We just gotta go in there and like ‘bandify’ the song. So, we have a ton of material demoed out. Throughout this year, we're just gonna keep jumping back into the studio and finishing up those pieces.” Jacoby says rather than drop everything at once, he’d prefer to release music throughout the year. “It's going to lead up to an album eventually, whether it's the end of 2025 or early 2026,” he says. “There will be a new Papa Roach album… the music we're making right now is very inspired and it's got us all pumped up. When you go back in the studio, you just don't know what's gonna come, and after we wrote ‘Even If It Kills Me,’ I'm just like, ‘Oh. It's on! Let's go!’” Now celebrating 25 years since their debut album 'INFEST,' and three decades together as a group, “We have definitely come a long way since 1993,” Jacoby admits. “Over the last six months I've kind of been diving back into the old, early releases of Papa Roach ‘cause I just was doing some purging of things from my h ...

Joining host Mike Adam today for a special Audacy Check In, Michael Bublé discusses his big win on this season's 'The Voice,' his brand new holiday duet "Maybe This Christmas" with Carly Pearce, and more. We're just days away from Christmas, a perfect time to sit down with singer Michael Bublé who is such a huge admirer of this festive season, and right when he's got a brand new holiday song as well, while still reeling from his big win on 'The Voice.' “It wasn't what I expected, honestly… It was like 50 times better than I expected,” he says of his experience on 'The Voice.' “I spent most of my morning on the phone with Snoop [Dogg] and writing Gwen [Stefani] and Reba [McEntire], and just talking about how much we appreciate each other. And I've been on with the artists, not just the one who won, but you know, others too, and it's been an incredible thing, man. I don't know if there's anything that's more fulfilling than to be able to give back in that way.” “I think for us that we're coaches in the chairs -- I know it sounds weird for people -- but it wasn't that long ago when we were in the positions of those kids,” he adds. "Hearing ‘No,’ and feeling the crush of disappointment. I think it just really meant something for us to be able to know that we've been really lucky to live out our dream, and now we have this chance to help other people see that through. It's a very cool thing… there's nothing negative about any of it.” “By the way, I got calls all through the day from Kelsea Ballerini and John Legend and Adam Levine, all of them being so sweet with me and teasing me at the same time,” Michael says of the overwhelming support he received from his fellow coaches. “Adam was saying to me last night, he's like, ‘Oh my God, we're never gonna hear the end of this are we?!’” Looking back on his own career, he says there was never just one emphatic "Yes" that made him continue to strive to break into the music industry. “It starts with mom and dad, and grandparents, and your sisters, and the kids that are your best buddies growing up. There's all these people that love you, and there's nothing in it for them. It's not like they're investing and they're getting something back. They do it because they love you and because they see your passion and they see that you're excited -- so it took a million people.” “I always call it ‘the domino effect,’” he adds. “It took people that love me, it took strangers, it took people to really give of themselves and exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about ‘The Voice’ and that experience. People that just loved me and just said, ‘You know what, I want this to happen for you, not because it's doing anything for me, but because it feels good.’ My grandfather, he would take me to every audition, and he sat with me at shopping malls and busking. And of course, my mom and dad, my sisters would help me sell all my theaters. Man, just so many beautiful souls that loved me.” Michael and Country star Carly Pearce teamed up on the new holiday track "Maybe This Christmas," released just before Thanksgiving with the help of producer Greg Wells. Just last week, Carly stopped by 'The Voice' finale to perform the single with Michael, and on December 15 joined him to perform the song again during his Grand Ole Opry debut. The song , he says, “was inspired by real life circumstances that I've gone through with a really great friend I grew up with who, you know, through just a bunch of strange little circumstances and through mental health and stuff that so many of us deal with. It started by me knowing that he had lost his way, and that he had found himself in a bad way on the street, and I helped him off, and got him counseling, and I wrote a song about how it felt when, last winter I had found out. I just realized that this holiday is so hard for so many people. As much as for me, it's beautiful -- it's my kids, and S ...

You might not know it, but Amy Allen’s songs have been stuck in your head all year. With songwriting credits on tracks like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” and actually every other 'Short n’ Sweet' track, as well as Tate McRae’s new single “Two Hands,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “scared of my guitar,” and Justin Timberlake’s “Selfish,” just to name a few, Amy has had an undeniably massive year, and she checked it with Audacy's Bru to chat all about. Recapping how 2024 has been for her, and what it’s been like to write songs so many people have positively responded to, Amy expressed, “It has been insane, but it's been very fun. And I've gotten to travel a lot for work this year, which has been amazing and really inspiring to be in so many different locations and writing there with friends and collaborators that I love. It's just always like a cherry on top to be able to make music that you love and then also have the world react to it in a positive way, and other people love it as well.” On top of all her success with songwriting, Amy also dropped her solo self-titled debut album this year. Opening up about her own personal sound, Amy noted, “I grew up on a lot of Classic Rock and then also being a child of the 90s, I fell in love with like Flaming Lips and then for songwriters, I've always loved Dolly Parton and John Prine, so it's very singer-songwritery. But it also has some more Rock elements and then it also goes a little bit into experimental like some electronic bits. But I think the storytelling is like… the heart of music for me and what I love to do the most.” Sharing why now felt like the right time to put out music of her own, Amy said, “I always had been in bands growing up, like ever since I was 9 years old… And then when I started writing for other people like 7 years ago, I really fell in love with the collaboration process and making songs for and with other artists. So my own music kind of went on the back burner as I made this conscious decision to get better at songwriting. And then I think last year at some point I just realized that it makes me a better songwriter for other people to keep writing for myself.” “I had just accumulated this like body of work of songs that I loved and they felt really poignant to me, and like an artist statement kind of, and I never really felt like that about a body of work of my own before. So I just felt like, you know, why the f*** not, like just go for it.” “I love these songs,” Amy added, “and I think it's important for me as a creative to not only be giving my love of music away to other artists all the time, but also to make some just for myself. It keeps me grounded and why I do this. So yeah, it was a very cathartic fun process.” Amy shared that nerves weren’t really present in the choice of putting out her own work, because she took all the pressure off of it. Unlike when she works with other artists that have massive profiles and this expected response to a lot of the songs, when it comes to her own music, that’s not what Amy expects. Plus, having her co-written tracks become smash hits, heard on the radio and all over the world, is already fulfilling that part of her life. “So I can totally kind of remove any type of response from my own music that I make for myself, because I already have that part being fulfilled by songs I write with other people.” So putting emphasis on how it's received, "nerves didn’t play much into it." “It felt good to just put out something that I like and be like… it doesn't matter if anybody besides my mom streams this song… So it was a very freeing place to be creating, and it just makes me a better songwriter all around.” Her five 2025 GRAMMY nominations including Song of the Year for “Please Please Please," Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for her work on 'Short n’ Sweet,' plus a nod for Song Wri ...

Joining host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In, Neil Sanderson of Three Days Grace is here to talk about the band's brand new single "Mayday," their 2024/2025 plans after reuniting with singer Adam Gontier, and more. After first teasing fans that an important announcement was on the way, Canadian rockers Three Days Grace revealed they would be reuniting with original vocalist Adam Gontier following a decade away along with co-founders Neil Sanderson on drums, Brad Walst on bass, Matt Walst continuing his vocal and guitar duties, and lead guitarist Barry Stock who joined the band in 2003. Today, fans get the first taste of what's on the 3DG horizon with their first single of 2024, "Mayday." "Sometimes life is turbulent," Matt Walst told us of the new song's inspiration, "but beyond the clouds is blue skies. So, just keep going." “First of all, I feel just gratitude for being at this point in my career,” Neil tells Abe at the start of their chat. “We've been doing this almost 25 years, and just to have so much excitement about the new music and, you know, we were able to pull this off, put it together, all good vibes. We don't look back, we only look forward and it's gonna be just bigger and better than it's ever been at this point. I'm in my 40s… it's like, ‘Damn, let's go!’” With Adam back in the band, 3DG will now have dual singers he explains. “It's kind of crazy to think that we have this huge chapter with Adam and then this massive chapter with Matt and with like 17 number 1 singles thanks to people like you and people that care about the music and the fans… We've got all these songs that were really successful at Rock radio and now we can just play them all any way that we want. I have envy for the singers, because they only have to sing half the show. I still got to play drums the whole damn time." On the new single, “Mayday,” both singers are featured. “At first it was like we didn't know how we were gonna kind of like slice it all up and who was going to do what,” Neil remembers, “as we first started sitting down and writing new stuff and trying things out and experimenting. As soon as each guy kind of laid their thing in, it was like, ‘Oh man, this is deeper than we would have thought. We played to each singer's strengths and they didn't try to be anything that they're not. It just creates this completely new dynamic, a new facet to the sound.” “I did see them at one point, like rock-paper-scissors to see who's going to sing the next line, which was kind of funny, but that's how naturally organic it happened,” he adds. “It wasn't forced at all. We started thinking about bands like Pink Floyd back in the day that had two singers and they were both completely different characters with different voices -- but that's part of the magic with it. So, we just really leaned into that.” The impetus to get Adam back in the band he says started with simple conversations. “A lot of the stuff on the Internet over the years is like all this bad blood and stuff, and I think a lot of people made that up in their mental cinema… We were kind of like, ‘Stuff happens.’ The thing about being in a band is, it's like being in a marriage with three other people. So things happen, people go different ways, people have different life directions and stuff. 13 years ago, we kind of came to a crossroads where that became a major factor, but all this time later, it just made sense to investigate what it would be like to make this thing that would be bigger than better than anything we've ever done.” After performing guest vocals with them at a concert and seeing the crowd’s reaction, “We're like, ‘Let's sit around with some guitars and see if we can be creative together because that was the only thing that mattered,” he says. “We need to be able to vibe out; it's like we could pull a stunt or something, but that that's not what we wanted to do. He’s coming ba ...

Joining host Kevan Kenney for a special Audacy Check In on the release day of their 2024 comeback album, FROM ZERO, the members of Linkin Park are with us to talk about the brand new record, upcoming world tour, and more. Mike Shinoda, Dave “Phoenix” Farrell, Joe Hahn, and Emily Armstrong join KROQ host Kevan Kenney today while currently in Bogota, Colombia celebrating the release of Linkin Park's 2024 album, FROM ZERO, and bringing their brand new live show to all corners of the globe. “It's very rare to play a new spot and it came up somehow on maybe Twitter or somewhere, but the last time we had played a new show I think was in Hungary on maybe the last tour cycle,” Phoenix tells us. “But it seems like these days there's one or two new cities or new countries per cycle that we get to see for the first time. It's always a good time.” Finally getting to this point, Mike Shinoda says was a complicated process, “For me, two years ago, it was very overwhelming and I think the best thing that we did was to just basically let things happen in the order and at the timeline that they were gonna happen -- let things happen organically and not push too hard. And I feel like what ended up evolving was we just naturally kind of found each other. We found this new line up, we found [singer] Emily [Armstrong] and [drummer] Colin [Brittain] in particular, and the music just kind of came into focus based on what we were having the most fun doing.” Giving off a smile when Kevan said it felt like the band was getting back to its “roots,” Mike explains, “I love that there's such a strong Linkin Park DNA in the record -- it does really feel like Linkin Park -- but I think there's a part of it that's the old sound, and part of it that's every era of the band, to me, on the record.” “I don't know if I know well, what the Linkin Park DNA is,” Phoenix admits. “It's kind of like when you're too close to something, you just do it, and then other people tell you, they almost interpret it, and then you kind of say, ‘OK, cool, I'm glad that came across.’ But I think in any and all of that creation of an album, or working on new music, or new stuff, or when there's, I don't know ‘interstitials’ or whatever you might want to call it… for me, those things are just us doing us, figuring that out, and moving forward." "In this process," he adds, "one of the things that was so fun and rewarding and cool and energizing was just how, when we started gradually integrating Emily and Colin, it felt like Linkin Park. It just felt like it fit for me and for us, and those were the coolest moments in the entire process. Just feeling like things were kind of gelling and coming together, and we're having a blast doing it the whole time. So, at this stage being ready to finally have the album out, having people be excited about it, that feels great.” Don't miss Kevan Kenney's full Check In with Linkin Park above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy. Words By Joe Cingrana, Interview by Kevan Kenney

Joining host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In is Breaking Benjamin's Benjamin Burnley – along with his son Ben Jr. -- giving us details about the band's brand new music, upcoming album plans, and plenty more. Although Breaking Benjamin has not dropped a full length since 2018's 'Ember,' the longest span of time they have had in between albums, they have kept themselves quite busy in the meantime. The band just wrapped up their most recent co-headlining tour with Staind and special guest Daughtry, and at the start of the month released their brand new single "Awaken," which landed at the top of several Billboard charts. Before discussing new music, Abe wanted to know from Ben Jr. what it’s like having a mega rockstar dad who performs in front of tens of thousands of people at his concerts each night. “It's like something special to me because, you know, I play on stage. I entertain like thousands of people and I'm grateful for that,” he tells us. “Every time he's with me, he plays on stage with us,” Ben’s dad explains. “And also too, I want to mention, for real, the last chorus of ‘Awaken,’ there's like a pad vocal that's going on in the background and he's singing that. So, he's singing on the record. Yeah, he's singing on that song.” Giving us a taste of the raw audio featuring his son, Ben proudly says, “Not many people know, but, I mean, I'm kind of just spreading the word that he's singing on that track.” The new single’s runaway success has, in a way, passed Burnley by since the band has been busy on the road since its release earlier this month. “I had no idea,” he tells us, “because I'm out on tour and just doing my thing out here. We have so much going on during the day… I haven't really checked in. I didn't know it was doing so well. I'm very, very thankful and grateful for that.” “Our day to day out here on tour, we do a meet and greet and then we do the concert and we're not really, because we're traveling so much -- today is the last day of the tour -- the only kind of interaction that we get with actual people is at our meet and greet,” Ben explains. “So, we've gotten some good reactions from that and out here on tour, in the wild, that's really the only gauge that we get, because the rest of the day is stuff like this and the concert.” The positive reaction he admits is “definitely gonna give us a little bit of a pep in our step,” to finish the rest of the album, “but we are already the type of band that we're going to give it our all no matter what,” he says. “That's what's taking so long… that and COVID.” Taking his time writing music during what he considers such an uninspiring period, felt like the best course of action, he believes. “Everybody has a different personality, everybody works best under different conditions, and I'm just the type that I can have the negativity of COVID and all of that be turned into a positive thing. But I'm the type that it has to be after it's over and I reflect on it, not while I'm in it -- and that's like with anything. Like, if something bad happens and I'm hurting or whatever the case may be or even if I'm happy it has to be at a time, which is weird, I guess, but it has to be at a time when that's over and I'm looking back on it, not during. I'm too busy going through it during.” Looking back now as a major headliner, Ben still remembers the early days quite fondly, playing at 11AM when the festival gates officially opened. “Yeah, I'm kind of surprised we're not doing that,” he says humbly. “I'm surprised we're not playing 11 o'clock. I'm really grateful that we're where we are, but I definitely do. I was just talking about that recently, you know how we've all been there, we've all done that. We all do the same things out here, and every step of the way is its own fun, its own allure, because I miss those days kind of in a way, because the climb, you know, the climb is fun. Reaching thin ...

Back on the music scene with three new solo singles, “Rockstar,” “New Woman” featuring Rosalía, and the latest “Moonlit Floor,” LISA checked in with Audacy’s Mike Adam at the Hard Rock Hotel New York to chat all about the new tracks, who's on her collab wish list, and what’s next. LISA’s latest trio of singles, away from BLACKPINK, follows her first solo project, LALISA, a two-song set released in 2021 featuring title tune “LALISA,” and fan favorite “MONEY.” Delving right it, Mike started the conversation discussing LISA’s latest single “Moonlit Floor,” asking her if she was familiar with the Sixpence None The Richer song “Kiss Me,” before she sampled it in the song. “Yeah, actually I remember when I was young, I don't know, five or six, my dad always played that in a car,” LISA recalled. “So I [was] kind of familiar with that song.” Already stacking up an impressive list of collaborators like Ryan Tedder, Max Martin, and Rosalía with the three tracks she’s released thus far, LISA revealed she has a wish list of “a lot” more rockstars she’d love to work with, but at the moment, at the top of that list is Doja Cat. Sharing some things she’s learned and picked up from the people that she’s worked with, LISA expressed, “when I did a music video with Rosalía… I learned something from her. She's amazing, she’s a professional, like every single take, that like action, she's just doing her thing. So I learned that confidence and identity, she just maintains her identity with her music, with her art and everything. So, yeah, I wanted to be someone like her that can maintain my identity.” With dancing being such a big part of her career, LISA also shared a bit about starting dance lessons at the young age of four or five. Recalling her first day at dance school, which her mom dressed her for in a skirt, LISA said, “I just went in and they just tell me to kick… and I was like, I'm in the miniskirt.” Noting, that dancing was something she had a great passion for and worked really hard on, “because I love it,” and “want to be good,” LISA went on to say, “I improved a lot when I moved to Korea, when they give me like intense dance lessons.” Especially through the power of repetition. “I just keep repeating it until my body memorize it." Also discussing how she has the rights to her solo music, which Mike rightfully acknowledged is “just huge,” LISA concurred, saying, “I’m just so lucky, to have that on my own, I'm just so thankful… I’m so lucky.” In addition to new music, also on the horizon, the K-Pop star is set to make her acting debut in season 3 of the hit HBO anthology, 'The White Lotus.' And while she didn’t share any scoop about the super secretive series that’s set to hit the small screen in 2025, she did share that she reached out to friends like band member Jennie, who also starred in an HBO series — 'The Idol,' for some guidance. “Yeah, I actually asked, like how do you memorize all the lines? Revealing the slightly unimaginative, but still helpful advice she received was, “you just memorize it.” To catch the entire conversation, check out LISA's entire interview above. Words by Maia Kedem Interview by Mike Adam