Slash Releases Track-By-Track Video For New Album

Due September 16, the project is the guitarist's third solo effort, following 2010's self-titled album and 2012's "Apocalyptic Love" release. On Tuesday, Slash will wrap up his North America dates with Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule tour, before turning his attention to launching the new album.

The guitarist will play a series of three concerts in Hollywood's most legendary clubs later this month introduce the new music to fans while also celebrating the Guitar Center's 50th anniversary. Check out the track-by-track video here.

Paul McCartney Releases Half Hour Video Featuring Johnny Depp

The original video was released in July, with the track lifted from McCartney's 2013 album New. The shoot in Los Angeles led to an on-set jam, with the former Beatle joined by Roy Gaines, Al Williams, Dale Atkins, Henree Harris, Motown Maurice, Lil Poochie, Misha Lindes and Depp.

Included in the session are snippets of Charlie Campbell's Goin' Away Blues and Carl Perkins' Matchbox, which the Beatles covered on-stage and recorded during their early career.

McCartney told Rolling Stone: "I happened to ring Johnny Depp. I said, 'Come along and we'll sit around and jam with these blues guys.' He said, 'Yeah, OK, count me in, man.' I knew it was an offer he couldn't refuse."

More details and the video here.

Weezer Go Old School With New Song Cleopatra

Opening with ramshackle acoustic guitar strums, "Cleopatra" begins with a stomp-clap sound similar to what The Lumineers and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have brought to alternative radio in recent years.

But Rivers Cuomo's subdued vocals in the verse give way to a chorus that is simple in its repetition of the title's namesake. By the time the song builds to Cuomo reaching for higher notes and rap-rock second refrain (a la "Buddy Holly"), the song has painted a portrait of vintage Weezer. More hear here.

Mastodon and Butthole Surfers Frontman Release New Song

The fast-and-furious piece sounds more like Haynes' outfit than anything the prog metal band are usually associated with. It's the latest in a series of tracks launched by Adult Swim, with two more to come.

Mastodon, who launched sixth album Once More 'Round The Sun in June, tour the UK starting in November. Check out the dates and stream the new song here.

Fall Out Boy Go A Little Suzanne Vega In New Song Centuries

In an interview with Kat Corbett of KROQ in Los Angeles (a CBS Radio station), Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz explained how the hook from Suzanne Vega song "Tom's Diner" made its way onto the new track. "It was something that kind of came up between us and JR, who produced the track," explained Stump.

"It seems very right for the pickin', right?" added Wentz. "To me, what people are thinking about what culturally, are so into right now. You've got Girl Meets World on TV, like it just feels like, pick it off."

"I feel like it was so ubiquitous when we were kids," Stump chimed in. "I mean, that song was absolutely everywhere and it just kind of disappeared. I haven't heard it in a minute. And I was like that's a shame. That was such an amazing song. I would love for that to get some kind of tip of the hat."

"And, it's definitely a song people know but they know [only] that part and they don't necessarily know the artist or the rest of the song or any of that. It's kinda cool to re-inject that into pop culture," Wentz said.

Interestingly, the band didn't use Vega's original vocal track. Read more and listen here.

Kenny Chesney Picked Passion Over Partying On The Big Revival

In defense of those not fully paying attention, it's true that Chesney's long list of hits includes titles like "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem," "Beer in Mexico," and "Keg in the Closet." And on the strength of that image, he has built one of the most successful careers in country music history, with over 30 million albums sold and more than 30 Top Ten country singles. With the support of his dedicated fans, known as the "No Shoes Nation," he was named Entertainer of the Year four times by both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. His tours fill stadiums from coast to coast.

Yet for his new album The Big Revival, Chesney made a tough decision. He chose not to go out on the road this year, but instead to allow himself more time in the studio to craft an ambitious set of songs, with the power and emotion that he feels is lacking in too much of today's country music - a condition the great Merle Haggard recently referred to as "too much boogie-boogie wham-bam and not enough substance."

"This album ain't about a party," Chesney says. "It's about living with passion, about confidence, about walking into a room full of people and smiling and meaning it. Having the courage to hear this voice in your head and follow it, maybe for the first time in your life. It's about taking your life and living it to the fullest."

Dressed in a V-neck t-shirt, chinos, and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, Chesney, age 46, sat down at Nashville's Acme Feed & Seed - a new restaurant and music venue in a renovated former feed supply warehouse at the end of downtown's Lower Broadway strip - to talk about his vision for the album and his goals at this stage of a two-decade-long ride at the top.

"It would have been very easy for us to make this record on a conveyor belt, because I've been guilty of that before," he says, using the first-person plural construction often heard from Nashville stars. "But I felt like I was at a place in my life, along with the deep relationship we have with the fans, where I deserve more and they deserve more. It was worth really digging into what I wanted the record to be and to see how I was going to take my audience to a place that maybe collectively we haven't been before. And that's hard to do - it's hard to take time off the road because it's a business, and for us it's really big business."

That's a bit of an understatement. Ticket sales to Chesney's 2013 tour topped $90 million for 44 shows, his tenth consecutive tour with over a million tickets sold. But after the final concert at Boston's Gillette Stadium on August 24, he made it clear to his band and his crew - the "us" that keeps his engine running - that he would be staying home for a while.

"It was the best decision I've ever made - for myself as an individual, my relationships, my friendships," he said. "I'm a lot easier to be around now. There was also a little bit of exhaustion in there, honestly, but I knew that this record had to be different, and I knew it was going to take some time."

Chesney chuckles, amused by the idea that after fifteen albums, he isn't content to keep a well-oiled machine running. "Being a creative person is a constant annoyance," he says. "It just is! Because you're never happy and you're always thinking-just when you think you have nothing to do, you think 'I'm not going to write a song today,' there's this thing�and I shouldn't say annoyance, but it is. Sometimes you want to go 'Shut up, leave me alone.'

"But this time, I really wanted to push myself as a writer, an entertainer, an artist, a musician and not just rest on what we've accomplished and the success that we've had. That was the target."

Which is, in some ways, a relatively easy thing to say. After all, Chesney's last album was the introspective, singer-songwriter-oriented Life on a Rock, on which he broke Nashville convention and wrote most of the material himself, exploring his experiences on the island of St. John, his regular Caribbean retreat. Since attaining A-List stardom, he has often switched up his style between such blockbusters as When the Sun Goes Down and Hemingway's Whiskey and more left-field albums like Be Who You Are (Songs from an Old Blue Chair) or Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates, and collaborations with such unexpected artists as Dave Matthews, the Wailers, and Grace Potter.

"A lot of things come with success - jealousy, negativity, stuff," concedes Chesney, "but with success also comes the ability to make a record every now and then like those." But now he was looking for something that could serve both purposes, something that would be personal and meaningful, yet also hit his fans hard and serve as a real anchor for the next tour.

A lot more here.

John Mellencamp Premieres New Song Sometimes There's God

Due September 23, the project is the Indiana rocker's first release under a newly-signed and unprecedented lifetime recording contract with Republic Records.

Produced by Mellencamp, it's also the singer's first release of new material since 2010's "No Better Than This." The rocker recently issued the album's lead single, "Trouble No More".

Mellencamp recently wrapped up a summer tour of North America; next, he'll perform at Farm Aid 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina on September 13. Check out the new song here.

Julian Casablancas Premieres New Song Where No Eagles Fly

On a Strokes continuum - the seminal NYC garage rock band Casablancas fronts - "Where No Eagles Fly" is possibly the furthest from center track of Casablancas' that we've heard.

Unlike "Human Sadness," which wouldn't be out of place in the Strokes' discography, "Where No Eagles Fly" is a frenetic, scruffy guitar freakout that verges on being screamo.

The song starts out normal enough and then a rocky chord change sets it into a completely different direction. To be fair, it sounds like what you'd expect from an album named Tyranny. More including a link to listen here.

Interpol Rock The Bowery Ballroom

The sold-out crowd packed in tight to see a new lineup for Interpol, one without their founding bassist Carlos D., who left the band just before the release of Interpol in 2010. The touring bassist Brad Truax, whose long, thin hair seems straight out of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, opened the show with the first riff of "Evil," a bass line so instantly recognizable in the band's catalog that the scream of the crowd made it so you couldn't hear anything but the first two or three notes. Banks, guitar strung low, stepped up to the mic, to sing about Rosemary.

It's six days before the release of the band's fifth album El Pintor, and a lyric in "Evil" rings in a new way. Banks writes famously inscrutable lyrics, often fodder in conversations for fans and detractors of the band, but here something was highlighted anew for three guys pushing forward and growing older in New York City: "You're coming with me/ through the aging, the fear, and the strife."

Cut back to 2013, away from lights of all intensities and colors, when Banks decamped to a secluded beach on the Pacific coast of Panama to write the bulk of the lyrics to El Pintor. As he talks about his island getaway, the sun sets over Manhattan in a conference room in the Time-Life building in Midtown, surrounded by windows that look south toward the Empire State Building and further, to the Lower East Side where Interpol formed in 1997. He wears a backwards fitted hat and a remarkable button-down shirt.

"I once heard the RZA talk about this idea of like, there's too much electromagnetic waves in his urban environment and so sometimes you gotta put yourself out, and go somewhere where you're in isolation, to just sort of get all these energies that are bouncing off you all the time, away from you."

Banks has been surfing for almost four years now, his ribs calloused, his duck-diving technique on point. He says that he's been writing away from the city for a while now, in the "middle of f-king nowhere." For a man who writes songs that have a symbiotic relationship with New York City, he finds most of his clarity away from the hum of Manhattan.

"I think the urban setting is great for generating fuel," he says, "but then you also gotta get away from all those electromagnetic waves of people, and more toward those ocean waves." He gives a big, knowing grin.

More including photos here.

Nicki Minaj Teaches Models How to Do Her 'Anaconda' Dance

This past weekend Minaj went backstage at New York Fashion Week to teach a few rather slender models-Irina Kravchenko, Ewa Wladymiruk, Valery Kaufman, and Aleah Morgan-how to move their butt.

Thanks to Vogue, we can all see how Minaj's tutorial with models from Alexander Wang's 2015 spring fashion show. After witnessing the ladies trying to work it on their own, Minaj makes an emergency announcement, "Wait, we've got an 'Anaconda' problem."

Minaj then shows these fashionable ladies the dance from her "Anaconda" video. And the ladies still have a ways to go, but they're starting to get it. Watch for yourself here.

Jennifer Hudson Explains Decision To Cut Off Her Hair

She's making the rest of us humans look good, because she's the kind of human who's won an Oscar, a GRAMMY and a Golden Globe for her supreme talents. And with her new album, JHud, she reveals a new look.

"I was on the plane, like, 'I wanna cut my hair," Hudson says of her now-shorn locks. "I'm tired of the long hair with the bang in the middle and the part in the middle and the curls on the side. Ugh! I was like, 'I need something new, let's just cut off my hair.'"

It's the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision that can be life changing, for better (Mia Farrow) or worse (Keri Russell). Hudson seems pleased with her decision, though, saying it helps her get into the tomboy look she's come to embrace with JHud.

"There's a big chance it might not have worked out," Hudson says. "But I think that's the daring part of it. Not caring and just going for it."

More with Jennifer here.

Singled Out: Caleb Hawley's Bada Boom, Bada Bling

About three years ago I was watching Beyonce on the VMAs perform some incredible rendition of her song "Run the World". The lighting design was all the buzz afterwards, but I had been paying far more attention to the lyrics. "Girls, we run this motha! Who runs the world? Girls!" proclaimed the Queen Bey repeatedly.

For a moment I thought, damn that kind of hurts. Until I quickly realized the true reality of what she was saying, and thought about how the tables were turning more and more every day. And that's okay. I mean, what if I could find a sugar mama? How sweet would it be to just sit back and play my guitar and not have to worry about paying for my next pickleloaf sandwich? I'm all in, Ms. Fierce. Sign me up!

And that's where the idea of "Bada-Boom! Bada-Bling! She can buy herself a diamond ring" came from.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the EP right here!

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