Steve Baltin

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Evanescence’s Amy Lee at 34: How Motherhood Sparked Her Creativity, Why 'Fallen' Makes Her Cringe

After having her first child, Jack, in 2014, Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee anticipated concentrating on motherhood, with her recording career being a distant second. But two years later, she has a new children’s album, Dream Too Much, and an Evanescence boxed set, The Ultimate Collection, a six-LP set that compiles the albums Fallen, the double-album The Open Door, Origin, Evanescence, and the rarities collection Lost Whispers.

  Lee tells Yahoo Music that she is legitimately surprised to be so busy. “I kind of thought I’d be a mom and I’d be so spent that’s all I would want to focus on — not just about being spent, but just that I want to be a great mom,” she says.

However, becoming a mother instead had the opposite effect, kicking off a new surge of creativity. “I got a lot of inspiration after having my first baby. I never would’ve imagined I would make this kids’ record, and certainly wouldn’t have imagined that I would be really super-motivated and excited about new Evanescence stuff and all this craziness at the same time,” Lee says. “I just feel hugely inspired by it all, so it’s really great, it’s exciting.”

For Lee, the moment she saw Jack it was love at first sight, causing that creative surge almost instantly. “I guess the part that you can’t prepare for is the biological and chemical miracle that happens,” she says. “Some stuff changed, not just in my body, but in my heart, and I literally felt like I was seeing color for the first time and just this flood of feelings and words and thoughts and everything. I was super-inspired just by staring into his face.”

  Lee also credits her age, now 34, with also igniting her creative spark. “I think that’s part of being in your thirties. I feel like, ‘I’m not wasting any more time,’” she says. “It’s not like I’m getting rest anyway when I’m hanging out here. I’m up at six, five in the morning taking care of Jack anyway, so might as well just go crazy, let it be chaotic and creative at the same time.”

Part of the Ultimate Collection will be a new/old song, “Even in Death,” which Lee explains is actually her way of embracing her musical past. “I looked through Origin for the first time in many years this year, through this experience, and that song has always been one that has a good heart and I still like the lyrics,” she says. “[But] our old recording of it is really bad, it’s us as kids with whatever we can find to record with. I think that’s the hardest part for me. You can always redo production but lyrics are lyrics; if the lyrics are dumb, I just can’t get my head around enjoying it. And I think that ‘Even in Death’ has some beautiful lyrics that actually are very much in the art and vision of what Evanescence grew into. So I took that song and redid it with my collaborator friend Dave Egger, on cello, in New York, and we made this really different version that I love. It just felt like redeeming the song.”

The band’s debut, Fallen, sold more than 17 million copies worldwide and is one of only eight albums to spend a year in the Billboard Top 50. Despite that success, Lee admits it is still hard for her to listen to the album at times. “A lot of the really old stuff, it’s been hard for me to revisit because of growing pains,” she says. “I’m sure you started writing when you were young; it was probably a dream of yours to do what you do. Go back to that sixth-grade journal where you’re first writing poetic stuff, and you just are cracking up or gagging at yourself. But what’s funny about me is some of that stuff made it to our most successful record to date. There’s stuff on Fallen I’m cringing at.”

  Now 13 years removed from that album, though, Lee can look back on that phenomenon and appreciate all the album’s success has afforded her and look forward to the future of Evanescence. “I’m still wondering, how did all of that happen? I have no idea,” she laughs. “We’re very blessed and very lucky. I feel like the luckiest thing is I’m afforded the ability and the gift and luxury of being able to make music professionally still today. And we owe a lot to the success from the beginning. Something happened where our music touched people, and that makes me so grateful because I love making music and I’m positive I’ve become a better musician and a better performer since our first album came out. And I’ve been given a platform to prove that.”

[stevebaltin]

Emo Heroes Jimmy Eat World's 'Integrity' Is Still Intact

  photo: Jimi Giannatti

Mesa, Arizona’s Jimmy Eat World are well aware that the time is right for them to put out a new album. Since the release of their last full-length, 2013’s Damage, the emo scene has enjoyed a wave of nostalgia that has seen the music come back in a big way. Among the genre’s success stories of late are regular emo clubs nights in Los Angeles and New York and the return of the Taste of Chaos tour, featuring the Used, Dashboard Confessional, and more.

“We’re super-lucky and grateful there are people out there that are connecting to our music or bands that are like us. And there’s more interest generating towards that,” drummer Zach Lind talking backstage at the Life Is Beautiful festival about their new album, Integrity Blues, out Oct. 21.

However, Lind adds that, as exciting all this renewed interest as this is, Jimmy Eat World are not looking to be just a nostalgia act, going out and rocking tracks like “The Middle” and “Sweetness” for twentysomethings reliving their high school and college years. “We want Integrity Blues to be a record that is something that anchors into the lives of our audience in the same way our other records have,” Lind says. “So I think just going into making Integrity Blues it was something where, rather than revel in the glory of what we have done, we wanted to make something where in 10 years we’ll look back and think, ‘OK, we f—ing accomplished what we wanted to do creatively.’”

Jimmy Eat World’s hope is that in 2026 they’ll be able to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Integrity Blues the same way they did in 2014 to commemorate 2004’s Futures.

For frontman Jim Adkins, the Integrity Blues’ title track was instrumental in shaping this album, saying it was “something that I wrote in the years that we had off. That song, for me, summed up everything in a really general kind of way. There might be problems, there might be pain that shows itself in your life, but what’s really behind that might not be the thing that you think it is, that’s causing it.”

To Adkins, “Integrity Blues” is all about examining the deeper questions that shape our lives. “You have career anxiety or relationship issues or general restlessness that prevails around your life,” he says. “Then there are the things you think will fix that, what’s really behind that? Why do you care about that external validation this relationship might bring you? What is it that you really want? What’s the real solution behind it all? Those are kind of the general marching orders for this album.”

Lind and Adkins have grown up with their fanbase in the 20 years they’ve been Jimmy Eat World, so the questions they face in life now are the same ones their fans address on a daily basis. “We try to be ourselves, and we’ve kind of consistently done that for over 20 years,” Adkins says. “And I think that every album is sort of a snapshot into where we are creatively, where we are in our lives, and that’s OK. You can’t open up your old yearbooks and be too hard on yourself when your picture looks s—y. That’s who you were then, and that’s OK.”

However, Adkins is also aware that, just as they can be too hard on themselves, they have to recognize that the album will endure with fans for decades. “Just on the flipside of that, having this longevity and going in and making a record, I think you realize this s— lasts,” he says. “This will always be around for someone to listen to, so each record is your opportunity to trust where you are in that moment. And we have to take advantage of it.”

[stevebaltin]

The Lumineers Talk Playing President Obama’s South By South Lawn Festival: ‘A Holy S*** Moment’

Jeremiah Fraites (L) and Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers perform during the 2016 Life is Beautiful festival on September 25, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

The Lumineers’ Jeremiah Fraites is sitting backstage in his trailer at Las Vegas’s Life Is Beautiful talking about playing the high-profile festival circuit. He estimates that in 2013 alone, the Denver group played 53 festivals. So the Lumineers are used to performing for big audiences, and for spectators who aren’t their fans. In short, they’re old pros at playing pressure-packed gigs.

But none of those shows quite match the visibility of the Lumineers’ festival gig this coming Monday, when they will be one of the featured acts at the White House as part of Barack Obama’s South By South Lawn conference. The President made his Lumineers fandom known when he included the group on his 2015 Summer Spotify playlist, but lead singer Wes Schultz never expected a formal White House invitation like this.

“When we were recording the album a year ago, I got the news that we were on his Spotify playlist with ‘Stubborn Love,’” Schultz says. “I thought that was the closest I was gonna get to the President. It’s right up there with anything we have ever done as far a ‘holy s—’ moment.”

Fraites concurs there is a sense of disbelief at being invited to play for the President shortly before he leaves office. “We literally this morning got an RSVP from some email that was like, ‘Thank you for RSVPing to the White House,’” he says. “I don’t think we’ve thought about it, it’s like, ‘Hey, what the f— do you play? What do you even say?’”

Fraites is not sure about the outcome of this upcoming election, but he says, “I think Hillary Clinton will win,” and is optimistic that Obama will have a very successful post-Presidential career.

“I saw an interview with Bill Clinton where he said he got more done out of the White House because there’s less red tape. Obama is young; he’s gonna kill it for the next 20 years,” Fraites predicts.

Back on the subject of the festival circuit, Fraites welcomes the challenge of proving himself and his band to those who aren’t familiar with the Lumineers. “Maybe people are here to see Diplo or the Ambassadors or Sia, whoever is here, they might be like, ‘Lumineers, oh yeah, I know one, maybe two songs; they probably suck,’” he says. “I’m kind of more interested in playing to people that might think we’re bad or might think we’re a one-hit wonder. I want to impress the dude in the back that’s like, ‘F— this band.’”

While playing 53 festivals in a single year, the Lumineers learned a lot about how to impress that dude in the back. Fraites has noticed that many festival headliners have a different style than the Lumineers; however, that can work to the Lumineers’ advantage. “A lot of these bands that play at festivals are loud and fast, and the Lumineers are not necessarily loud and fast,” he says. “So I think we’ve taken notes on a lot of bands that are very heavy at festivals, and sometimes by going quieter, you stand out. We just try to do our thing as best as we can.”

Though the Lumineers are Denver-based now, Schultz and Fraites began playing together in New Jersey, where the influence of Bruce Springsteen looms large. Fraites says he admires the way the NJ hometown hero handles himself as an artist. “I do feel like a purist. I want to accomplish really cool stuff with the guitar and piano, the songwriting, like Springsteen,” he muses. “I wouldn’t say I’m a Springsteen fan, but Wes is a massive fan and I like a lot about Springsteen in the principles of songwriting — what he does for shows, how he explains songs. He always explains just enough before he plays that song, and he illuminates the crowd for his audience. The biggest high, for me, of being in a band is that moment when you’re like, ‘Hey, Wes, what do you think of this idea?’ For that brief moment in time, only two people have heard that. It makes me think of the first time Bruce Springsteen wrote ‘Atlantic City,’ off Nebraska. We actually walk off to that song every night.”

While Lumineers haven’t exactly reached a Springsteenian level of success, they’re happy with their achievements so far, and they nothing for granted. “In a very early interview, Wes said our two goals were to play David Letterman and go to Europe. To us, those were healthy 10-to-12-year goals. I think they were done within six months of the first record coming out,” Fraites says. “A lot of people ask us, ‘When did you know you made it?’ or ‘What was the coolest moment?’ There are these very blindingly superficial moments, like Barack Obama putting ‘Stubborn Love’ on his Spotify Summertime playlist, or you notice your fonts on the festival posters are getting bigger and bigger each six months. That’s cool. But me and Wes, as artists, we’re like, ‘That doesn’t mean we made it.’ We’re traveling on a tour bus, but scratching the surface of art, the real deal, because after these shows you’re back in the hotel alone with your thoughts and it can be really lonely at times. Even though you’re connected with tens of thousands of people out there, it’s this fleeting relationship you have. We’re trying to have a good relationship with ourselves. We realize how fleeting success can be.”

[stevebaltin]

Skylar Grey on Redefining Success at 30: ‘I Thought Happiness Meant Having Grammys'

Skylar Grey, née Holly Brook Hafermann, has performed at the Grammy Awards with Dr. Dre and Eminem and garnered multiple Grammy nominations, including one for Song of the Year for Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie.” She has collaborated with Nicki Minaj, Diddy, X Ambassadors, Marilyn Manson, and more. By all measures of music industry success, the singer-songwriter has enjoyed a bountiful career since releasing her debut album as Grey with 2013’s Don’t Look Down. However, Grey has realized that her definition of success has changed.

“I thought happiness would be being successful in music and having Grammys, stuff like that,” she tells Yahoo Music. “But as I got more successful, I noticed that those moments I thought would make me happy were so fleeting. It would be one day of being really high on top of the world, and then the next dealing with some kind of form of rejection in the industry and being sad again. So I realized I couldn’t base my happiness on my career. I needed to learn how to enjoy the moment more.”

On her new album Natural Causes, out Sept. 23, Grey places a higher premium on having fun. “Maybe it’s turning 30, but I just feel like life’s too short to not have fun — especially since music, to me, is supposed to be fun all the time,” she says. “With this album I basically just wanted to make a bunch of music that I absolutely loved, and I don’t really care what anybody thinks.”

Grey cites the song “Straight Shooter” as a perfect example. “[It] doesn’t necessarily fit the rest of the album, but I love performing it so much, I loved creating it, it’s a really fun song for me.” Another one she enjoys is “Picture Perfect.” “That one, to me, is probably my favorite song on the album, because it’s the first time I really feel like I accomplished a sound that I was striving for for a long time. And that’s that hip-hop drum beat with this almost Bon Iver vocal layering kind of thing. Plus I’m rapping on that one a little bit, which I like doing too.”

Yes, after years of being the featured vocalist on hip-hop tracks, Grey has unleashed her own talent for rapping. It started on the track “Wreak Havoc,” from the Suicide Squad film. Originally that was not intended to be her vocals, but that was what the fates intended. “It’s my first rap song I ever released, and I wrote that ‘cause I thought some rapper would come in and replace my rap,” she says. “So my rap was just a placeholder, and they ended up keeping it and liking it. So it was just like, ‘OK, I guess I’m putting out a rap song now.’”

Grey has had some of the best teachers of all time in rapping working with Dr. Dre and Eminem. The latter produced the single “Come Up for Air.” Though “Em,” as occasionally she calls him, is a friend, she doesn’t lose the sense of wonder whenever she gets to be in the studio with the rap icon. “Any time I get to work with him or whatever, I kind of have to pinch myself and I’m not over the fact I’m working with one of my idols,” she says. “It still blows my mind.”

There is one rap artist Grey has not collaborated with yet that tops her wish list: “I would love to work with Kendrick Lamar though, he’s my number-one dream collaboration for sure.”

Lamar and Grey’s two other favorite artists, Bon Iver and Radiohead, have definitely influenced her own writing on Natural Causes. “My favorite albums to listen to as a music fan are not full of singles, so that’s not really my style of artistry,” she says. “So I would prefer to put out a new album every one or two years, get that thought out and move on to the next evolution.”

This evolution finds Grey concentrating lyrically on getting back to nature. “It’s definitely got a dark tone to it, I think it’s darker than the last album,” she says of the new record. “You can definitely hear my nature influences, which is why I called it Natural Causes. Right off the bat, Natural Causes sounds like a kind of morbid thing to call an album. But that covered the dark side of the album, the way it sounds. There are quite a few death references on the album as well. But the play on words there is everything is caused by nature and so a lot of my songwriting is influenced by the nature around me in Utah [where Grey currently resides].”

The lyrics are also her way of understanding her life. “My lyrics are me psychoanalyzing my own emotions so that I can basically explain to myself what I’m feeling and understand what I’m feeling,” she says. “So, pretty much all the lyrics on my album are a result of me analyzing my emotions and using nature as a sounding board. I compare myself to the wild life around me and how they’re so casual about birth and death and everything in nature just happens and the cycle keeps going. And for some reason humans tend to make everything such a big deal and we get so stressed out.”

[stevebaltin]

Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley Talks Near-Death Experience, Learning to Walk and Live Again

Deryck Whibley from Sum 41 onstage in 2016. (Photo by David Wolff – Patrick/Redferns)

(additional reporting by Monica Molinaro)

Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley is sitting on the back of the bus at the Warped Tour in Pomona, Calif., when we walk back to meet him. The tour is a warm-up run for the band, who will be releasing their highly anticipated 13 Voices album this Oct. 7. It’s often cliché to say just releasing an album is the definition of success for an artist. But nothing could be truer for Whibley.

In 2014, roughly five years after his split from first wife Avril Lavigne, Whibley nearly died from years of excessive partying and alcoholism, winding up in an induced coma suffering from liver and kidney failure. He details all of that in this candid interview, opening up about the aftereffects of organ failure, how Iggy Pop and other artists helped him in his recovery, the moments he wanted to give up when he didn’t know if he would ever walk again, and his fears about writing music while sober.

YAHOO MUSIC: I once spoke to Alice Cooper about sobriety, and he told the story that one day he woke up throwing up blood and the doctor said, “If you don’t change your lifestyle, you will die.” Did you have the same sort of epiphany moment?

DERYCK WHIBLEY: Yeah, I had liver and kidney failure and ended up in the hospital. So that was my moment where it was like, “OK, maybe I am drinking too much.” I was dying and they were able to bring me back. When I came to, I didn’t really know where I was; they had to induce coma first for like three days. So when I came out of it, I had no idea. I don’t even remember how I had gotten into that condition of needing to be in the hospital. It was pretty rough, and then I was kind of like, “I think I’m done with this kind of s—.”

Was there one moment then where you realized you had gotten lucky and were given a second chance?

I didn’t really know how lucky I was, because it was such a long recovery and it was uncertain if I was going to have serious damage. As I got better we would do more tests on my liver and all these things, was I gonna have cirrhosis? We didn’t know for a long time. The only thing I got that was permanent was really bad nerve damage on my feet. That was the hardest to deal with, ‘cause I couldn’t walk for the longest time. So for about a year and a half I couldn’t really walk, and I didn’t know if it was ever gonna come back, and they didn’t know if that was ever gonna come back. So that got better and I realized I was OK was this February — and that was two years out of the hospital. We started touring, and I think the touring helped because it built some muscles. When I first went onstage, I was wobbling; it feels like vertigo. Every step was really weird. But I feel lucky now that the record’s coming out and we’ve got a song out.

The incredible thing about music is it’s such a healing process and you can unite with other people who have been going through those same things.

I don’t know how much I help people, I have no idea, but I know they helped me, and I’m forever thankful for that. I’m so thankful just to be back doing it. The new record seemed like the most daunting thing, ‘cause I had to recover and write, which was very difficult and it seemed like the music was suffering for a long time at the beginning of it. Then it finally kind of came together, and here we are.

Are there sober artists you really look up to for the way they changed their lives?

I would say Duff [McKagan], from Guns N’ Roses, has always been an inspiration. He had a very similar story to mine, except his was his pancreas and mine was my liver. He was an inspiration for me before I got sober because I always knew, “One day I’m gonna have to deal with this.” You always know you can’t keep living like this. I just thought I’m still young enough I don’t have to worry yet, but one day I’m gonna want to have kids and I’m gonna have to figure this out. And I was thinking, “Duff’s cool and he still does music and still badass. One day I’ll get there.” Then all of a sudden, the things happened to me and I had to get there earlier than I thought. But it was a great thing. The way we were all living, there was no way you could survive that. It was every single day as much as humans can take, so it was bound to burn you out at some point.

You wrote “Little Know It All” with Iggy Pop on his album Skull Ring. He is certainly one of those people who’s seen and done it all.

Exactly. When I went into the hospital, he’s the first person I called, ‘cause he’s been through it all. “Iggy, what do I do? Am I gonna be OK?” He was just really cool about it. He’s also a humble guy, so he doesn’t think he’s got advice. We just talked.

Are there moments you look back on where that almost doesn’t seem real? Like, “I really wrote a song with Iggy?”

Even though I was young and I didn’t really take much in back then, that one I did, probably ‘cause it turned into so much more than a one-time thing. It became a single for his record that year and we ended up playing on Dave Letterman together, we played MTV awards together , and then another awards show, so we ended up being his band a few times, playing that and “Lust for Life,” which was really cool. We shot a video for it, so we spent a lot of time together and we’ve been friends now for 13 years.

Did you have a pretty solid support group while getting sober?

Yeah, I really didn’t feel like I was on my own at all. Something I didn’t really expect at all was how much the fans were there for me. They were constantly writing in, and I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn’t expecting it to affect me as much as it did. Every day reading new things from fans actually did give me a lot of inspiration and hope and will to get better, along with the group of people that were around me. It almost felt like cheesy to say it: The fans did help, but they really did. That’s the other thing about being sober now, is you say something and you really do mean it. There’s no bulls— anymore. I said the other night, “I’m so happy to be on this stage right now, so glad to be here with you.” And I meant it.

Records usually end up being a snapshot of where you are in life, so is it difficult to go back and listen to all the pain you were going through at that time on 13 Voices? Or are there places you listen and it’s more optimistic than you remember?

The record is definitely all about my whole journey of falling and rising. There’s a song called “War” that was a turning point in my recovery. I couldn’t walk, it had been almost a year into it and there was no progress. And everything just felt really s—ty and I thought, “It’s so easy to go the other way. If I can’t do this and write songs and I can’t walk, what am I even trying to get better for? So why don’t I drink the last bit of my life away and enjoy it? Or you can keep fighting.” And in that moment, I started writing these lyrics and it became the song “War,” about fighting harder than you’ve ever fought before. So once I had those lyrics, I thought, “I’ve got this song now; I better live up to it.”

Ozzy Osbourne said when he did Black Rain that was the first album he ever wrote sober and it was intimidating for him. Did writing this album in recovery feel like starting over to you?

Oh yeah, I hated the whole experience. It was awful, ‘cause the worst part about it for me was that: I’m the sole writer in the band, so when I write I’ll write all day, work on music, and then when I’m done at like 10 o’clock at night I used to just go out to the bar or go out and do something — go for drinks, go to parties. Then you wake up the next day and laugh at the crazy night before, get to work that day, and then do it all over again. And you have an escape. When I’m done working at, say, at 10 at night, I’m just me thinking about the music still. And when I go to bed, I’m just lying there thinking about the songs.

Does it also make it so much more vulnerable when you’re putting it out there sober?

Definitely. The whole process was fear, self-doubt, second-guessing, over-analyzing — everything bad about what you should never do as a writer.

I read [Blink-182 drummer] Travis Barker’s book, and the one thing that stuck out was he said he had to learn how to live again, everything,

Totally, every little thing felt new. It really felt weird to do anything. My motor skills were all f—ed up; even just speaking in a full sentence was difficult for a while. Everything was really weird. I couldn’t play guitar at all, hadn’t played in so long. It felt like everything got reset to zero, it was weird. Things came back, like I could eventually start to play guitar. When I first picked it up, it was like, “This is how it was the very first year I was learning to play guitar.” And I thought, “Is this gonna take me four years to get better?” But it came back within like six months. Those days everything felt weird, like learning everything again.

Do you look back now on your pre-recovery days and wonder, “What was I doing?”

I do think about it all the time, and I think, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” I’m so glad I did it all. The only way I could be sober and enjoy it, I think, right now, is the fact that being sober and healthy is so new and exciting and it’s fun. I like waking up early in the morning. That’s new.

[stevebaltin]

Steve Aoki Talks New Documentary: It’s a Family Affair

Steve Aoki is one of the biggest acts in EDM, a global superstar loved by the masses for his showmanship and flare. A household name with combined social media reach of 16 million followers, who has worked with Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, will.i.am, Afrojack, Snoop Lion, Travis Barker, and many others, Aoki has become one of the faces of the movement’s burgeoning popularity over the past decade.

Now, Aoki’s rise to prominence — and, more specifically, how he became Steve Aoki, the DJ/producer known for the wild stage antics like crowd-surfing in a raft and throwing cakes in the faces of fans — is explored in the new Netflix documentary, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.

“The essence of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is about the process of the development of the start of my career and the drive,” Aoki tells Yahoo Music. But the heart of the documentary is his relationship with his family, including his famous father, Rocky Aoki, best known for founding the Benihana’s restaurant chain. “There’s a lot of personal reflection that goes into my family and conversations with my family, my father, and my mother. It’s a door that’s opened I’ve never really opened before,” says Aoki.

Like his dad, who was a daredevil and consummate entertainer, Aoki is a showman, one who is very comfortable living his life publicly. So for years, following his father’s 2008 passing from complications caused by cancer, Aoki had a videographer and photographer chronicle his life and adventures. Thus, when he was approached three years ago by filmmaker Justin Krook and producer David Gelb (Jiro Dreams of Sushi), Aoki was open to the idea of making a documentary — though he tells Yahoo it wasn’t intended to be the revealing family story that it became.

“It started out them filming on the road what it’s like, the grind, the hustle, all the shows, what it’s like to be on tour,” he explains. “Then they went deeper and they kind of found a direction and navigated through a lot of different stuff to hone in on this storyline. They followed me through Japan to my family burial grounds, and found the story compelling I have with my father.”

The title of the documentary definitely ties into Aoki’s lifestyle. “The title is indicative of the way I live my life in not wasting time and, at the end of the day, I’m just grateful,” he says. “I’m grateful to be sitting in this chair being interviewed here at Yahoo ,and I’m grateful for the position I’m in: I can play my music, make my music, and there’s an audience that actually cares to listen to it. I don’t want to lose sight of that. So, with that in mind, if I have the opportunity to play in front of new crowds and new places all around the world, give it to me and I’ll take it.”

Being one of the faces of EDM, Aoki — maybe more so than most, because of his flashy stage antics — has been maligned by critics who question whether DJs are “real musicians.” He explains the role of the DJ in playing to sometimes hundreds of thousands of fans in one set: “As a DJ, what we do when we’re onstage, we’re playing our musical narrative to the crowd. But when you’re onstage and you’re playing in front of people, you’re not only giving your musical narrative, you are giving an overall sensory experience. When you’re in the crowd watching a DJ, you’re not just hearing music — you’re feeling it. You’re around people that are also feeling it.”

Fittingly, the documentary wraps with one of the biggest gigs of his career, a massive 2015 free show in downtown L.A in 2015 to celebrate the release of the first Neon Future album. That show became a family affair, with Aoki’s mom and many of his siblings on hand to witness “LAoki,” a party in the streets for more than 8,000 fans.

For Aoki, there turned out to be nothing more fitting than having his mother on hand to witness his triumph. As much as he grew up the public son of daredevil, entrepreneur, and celebrity Rocky Aoki, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead chronicles how much Steve is the son of his mother.

“My mom was the constant and the rock that really raised me, through all the thick and thin, ups and downs. She was my parent,” Aoki says. “My dad was my parent, too, but she raised me. And she’s kind of like the uncredited, and not necessarily someone looking for the credit, that really brought me up to who I am today. So I’m really happy that the film really got to give shine to this beautiful wonderful human being that is so generous and so kind and deserves all the recognition that we can give her.”

[stevebaltin]

Dolly Parton Talks ‘Jolene,’ ‘I Will Always Love You,’ and the ‘Pure & Simple’ Joy of Songwriting

HIGHLAND PARK, IL – AUGUST 07: Dolly Parton performs during the Pure & Simple tour on August 7, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images)

It’s 8:30 a.m. Nashville time when Dolly Parton calls in for our scheduled interview. Although it is release day for her new album, the aptly titled Pure & Simple, and this is her third straight day of press, her trademark jubilant spirit is as strong as ever. “Today we’re in Nashville winding up all the publicity, so we’ll be working half a day. You are part of my workday; thank you for your help!” she says graciously.

She estimates this is her 43rd album in five decades; though she is unsure of the exact number, sharing her music with the world is still a very big deal for her. “It’s always new and exciting, even after all these years,” she says. “New music is always exciting.”

As for her classic old material, Dolly Parton is undoubtedly one of the great American songwriters — a legend whose classic compositions have been covered by everyone from Patti Smith and the White Stripes to, perhaps most famously, Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love You.” Her track record is undeniable. However, Parton admits that she never knows for sure if a song will be a commercial success.

Still, looking back, Parton says she felt she had something special with two of her most iconic tunes, “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene.”

“You do, as a writer, have an inner feeling about a song,” she confesses. “‘I Will Always Love You,’ that song was written from an emotional place at an emotional time, when I was leaving the Porter Wagoner show, and all those musicians that played on that session had played on all my records — all of mine and Porter’s hit records up to that time. So everybody had a sense and feeling that was a parting of the ways, and that song was written as a goodbye. And they knew my and Porter’s emotional state at that time. And the song itself is such a good song. I’m so proud of that song. It’s very simple, it’s not complicated, but it was just such a singable thing, and I was very emotional. Every musician and Porter, the engineers and myself, were all crying when we did the song.”

“Jolene” had a completely different – but just as profound — impact on Parton. “When we did ‘Jolene’ it was a fun thing; there were not the emotional tears and all, but everybody was so excited,” she recalls. “I had written a little lick, that little ‘Jolene’ lick, so when we got in to work it out, all the musicians were saying, ‘Wow, this is such a clever little thing.’ So everybody got excited about it, and we made such a good record that day.”

For Parton, the new album Pure & Simple accompanies a massive tour that, by the time it’s completed in December, will have hit more than 60 cities, including two nights at the iconic Hollywood Bowl. Having new material to play live is always a joy for Parton — especially since as the writer and performer of her songs, she can take play them exactly how she wants.

“When you get so many talented people, so many of them have so many original and great ideas; they start handing those things to it and it really brings it to life. A good example: When I wrote ‘I’m Sixteen,’ I thought that could be a song that would be absolutely perfect done a cappella, with no music,” she recalls. “[But] I was torn at that time whether just to do that with voices and just the bass guitar or no bass guitar. So sometimes you get kind of torn into knowing what exactly what you want to do, so the point is we’re gonna actually probably do both…When [songs are] yours, you can take all the liberties you want to, and you don’t have to worry about what somebody else is going to be able to say – ‘cause it’s yours, and you can screw it up if you want to!”

It should come as no surprise to any who have been around Parton that she is a generous author and musician, one who doesn’t boast of ownership of her songs or demand credit for her genius. Instead, she views her songs as belonging to all.

“As a songwriter there’s nothing more exciting, ever, than to hear a song come to life,” she says. “It’s one thing to sit there with a guitar, or however you write a song — but to hear it actually where other musicians start adding their emotion and their sounds and their feeling to it, and all of a sudden it’s just a whole new life and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, did I write that? Did I start that in motion?’ Because so many people add so much to it, so by the time you’re done, the song really belongs to a lot of people. But when you’ve created the original seed of it, that’s what’s exciting and watching it develop and come along.”

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Baz Luhrmann on New Show ‘The Get Down’: ‘It’s a Living History’ of Hip-Hop

PARIS, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 30: Baz Luhrmann attends the Chanel show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Spring/Summer 2015 on September 30, 2014 in Paris, France. (Photo by Dominique Charriau/WireImage)

For Oscar-nominated writer/director/producer Baz Lurhmann, the road to his new Netflix series The Get Down began a decade ago with a single contemplation. “I started this concept with a question 10 years ago, which was, ‘How did a totally new idea get born from a borough in a time where there was little care for that borough or the people in a borough? How did they come up with a brand-new, pure creative idea?’ And that led me on a sort of epic journey myself,” he tells Yahoo Music.

That epic journey had now finally led to the eagerly anticipated The Get Down, which finds Luhrmann and a massive team that includes rappers Nas and Grandmaster Flash bringing to life the beginnings of hip-hop in 1977.

Telling tales onscreen with music is nothing new to Luhrmann, whose Moulin Rogue is one of the definitive movie musicals. But doing it on TV and setting it in an era in his lifetime was a very different endeavor, and it presented several new challenges for the Australian director — who admits he didn’t approach this series, which premieres this week, as if he is an authority on the subject.

“I didn’t go, ‘Wow, I’m the right person to do this.’ I just found myself, just by trying to answer the question, engaging with writers like [music/pop culture critic and author] Nelson George, who is also one of the [show’s] writers,” he says. “It’s a living history… the people are actually alive. And so I worked with them to help tell the story. And that’s really enriching, but also really demanding.”

Nas and Flash were two of the first to come on and recognize the importance of bringing the series to TV. “And then when it came to the music, when I approached Flash, very quickly he said, ‘You’re right, no one’s ever told this story. Everyone wants to know about the cake, but no one wants to know about the recipe.’ And they very quickly realized this story hasn’t been told. So Nas was like, ‘Yeah, why hasn’t this period been told?’ So what has been my great privilege, and I really, really mean that. I found myself not just collaborating with, but really curating, like helping get told, the stories of all that artists that actually lived.”

As a diehard music fan, Luhrmann’s joy is evident as he talks about Chic legend Nile Rodgers being a great resource or recounts the meetings of punks and hip-hop artists back in New York in the ‘70s, like Blondie’s Debbie Harry meeting Grandmaster Flash uptown while he was playing basketball. A great moment to him was being taken to the historical Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx, one of the recognized birthplaces of hip-hop. “I can remember being taken upstairs and being shown the birth of the Andrew Freedman house and it was an amazing secret. It was a surprise — his father had a sound machine in Jamaica, he said, ‘Get the sound machine out and let’s make it dance to get the kids off the street.’ The parents helped him. And I thought, ‘That makes total sense,’” Luhrmann says.

Review: ‘The Get Down’ Gets Fictional TV Music Right

For Luhrmann, telling the tale of The Get Down with music, including helping produce the music for the two soundtrack albums that feature Janelle Monae, Zayn, Christina Aguilera, Miguel, Nas, and young artist Grace, has been one of the great pleasures and sanity-saving aspects of this massive undertaking. “Working with Grace and building that chart, they are small pockets of creative oxygen. And that keeps me going,” he says. “I’ve got very young artists, like brand-new, undiscovered hip-hop artists who are doing contemporary work, and then I’ve got Flash remixing a Teddy Pendergrass and Zayn doing a topline. I’ve been intimately involved in making the music and working with producing and producing myself with collaborators.”

One of his most collaborators was executive producer Nas. “Nas was remarkable. It really wasn’t a long conversation. After I met with him and we talked about it, he was like, ‘This has got to be done.’ And he recognized that he, as someone who had lived the fruits of what those kids invented, should do something to celebrate the fact that those kids invented it. And he’s been incredible on that level.”

Luhrmann has learned a lot working on the show, including answering his original question of how the music was born in the borough. “What I recognized is that in an environment where everything had been taken away and where the outside world looking in saw only devastation and negativity, that the young, if they’re surrounded by negativity, will eventually engage their imagination in their dispirit and they will produce positives,” he says. “So taking the kids’ point of view, they mythologized themselves. Flash was Grandmaster of the culture; they mashed up references and they made themselves into heroes, and they had heroes and they had gurus, and they were within that culture.”

All of this is being told within the framework of a TV show, which allows the more expansive story to be told. The first season is being told in two parts, and Luhrmann knows where he’d like the first season to wrap up — though the show is still being made, so that may change.

“What I was hoping was that the first season would end in ’79, so hopefully we’ll get there,” he says. “The reason ’79 is such an amazing year is that in the summer of ’79 there’s the burning of disco records in Chicago at the White Sox game. Suddenly you see disco incinerate overnight. And in the same summer, you hear the first ever hip-hop record [“Rapper’s Delight”] being played, and [record producer/Sugar Hill Records founder] Sylvia Robinson produced it with a bunch of kids from Jersey. No less than three months later, in December, the last month of the decade, there were I think five hip-hop records in the charts. So in the birth of the ‘80s, we now have this form on the charts full on.

“And the ‘80s would be our second season.”

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Deadmau5 Talks New Music, New VR Game, and Unleashing His Inner Yoko Ono

Joel Zimmerman, better known to electronic music fans as the cerebral and controversial Deadmau5, is never at a loss for words or opinions. It’s what makes him one of the most interesting figures in all of music -- that and the fact he backs up his brazen candor with a deadpan sense of humor and intelligence.

So when asked about interviewing him in relation to a new virtual reality game, Absolut Deadmau5, where fans get to experience what it’s like to spend a night rolling with Deadmau5 on the way to play a gig at a club, it was a no-brainer yes. He spoke to us about the game -- which includes an exclusive new song, “Saved,” that’s just the beginning of new music he promises -- as well as musicians he admires, his cutting-edge new stage show, and what he’d do if he ever decided to leave music behind.

YAHOO MUSIC: Do you have a ton of new music ready at this point?

DEADMAU5: Oh yeah, there’s a good ton. I’m pretty confident I have an album ready; I’m just actually waiting for a few vocal snippets from some singers TBA, so I can get mixing. But it’s this guy’s schedule, that guy’s schedule, my schedule. I’m done, for the most part, I’m just waiting for the machine to catch up.

Any hints on collaborators?

Nobody crazy famous [like] Bieber. Nothing like that.

How exciting is it to showcase new artists?

I love it, I love meeting new talented artists that don’t already have their thing going on and are blowing up millions, because, to me, that just feels like a money play. I can find a guy that’s way more talented, “OK, sure, I won’t sell a billion copies overnight because they’re not…” I don’t give a s---, if it works, it works. And if it’s a good sound, then we make it happen.

Are there artists you really admire the way their careers have evolved?

Artists that are doing more than music -- say, Richie Hawtin. He produces music, but he’s also pushing technology, he’s developing mixers. Guys like Richard Devine, who’s just so into the modular machine with synth, tech, and art installations and stuff like that. Not that I want to be f---ing Yoko Ono and start screaming at s---, but little derivatives that you can take from your field that usually intersect with what you do, but are always handled by other people. I like to go that way too. I know more about stage production, from engineering to hardware to the lighting systems to the desks and video delivery systems, than any artist should know.

Would you sound like Yoko Ono if you just screamed at stuff?

I probably would. I haven’t actually tried to do any vocal lead things on my stuff yet, just ‘cause I haven’t bothered. It would sound like that.

Would you ever want to produce a stage show for someone else?

Absolutely, yeah. I could do this 24/7, I could retire the music thing and just get on this production thing. I like it, it’s fun. It’s a good break and it excites me. I’m always learning new things, like I was at the beginning of learning to make music until I hit... not the wall, because you never really do, but you start to incline up towards the plateau a bit after you’re 10th, 20th year of making music, where all of the pipelines and methodologies become very routine and you’re not really learning lots of new things all at once. You might pick up another new way of engineering music or instrumentation, stuff like that. but with something new, I’m learning every 20 minutes doing this stuff. That’s what challenges me, and I like a challenge.  

Is VR the next level of where production goes?

Yes and no. It’s a great fun exercise. I’ve been getting into that a lot lately. I’ve been keeping a lot of these cards up my sleeve, and that’s part of it. I think my type of music, or my genre, kind of lends itself to video gaming and that kind of technology too. It’s a perfect fit for me, so what we’ve been doing recently is starting to get our feet wet with this Absolut Experience that we’ve just done for mobile. Now, of course, it’s scaled down and doesn’t run like the greatest game I’ve ever seen, because it runs on a cell phone. It’s cool because it’s portable -- you can get it out really easy, you don’t have to have a $10,000 computer, a thousand-dollar headset to experience virtual reality. You can do it on your phone, so we dumbed a lot of the technology down to get it like that, but it’s immersive and it’s a proof of concept. So that’s just our little way of coming in.

You say “your genre.” What is your genre?

It’s called “EDM” when you have three million f---ing kids on Twitter hanging off your s---. You call it anything else, you’re gonna get 2.5 of them saying it’s not. I just don’t want to deal with that.

So what other artists would fit into the gaming world with you?

I think Flume would do really well, in terms of sound design, composition, variety, within their realm. Whereas you’re gonna get another A-liner, he who shall not be named guy, who’s just gonna play the same style, the same BPM and almost the same freaking track. And they’re kind of locked into that small area, the producer. Richard Devine has just done it all over the place, where he’s produced for games. There are a whole fistful of capable producers in what would be considered EDM realm that could make that crossover into whatever they wanted in terms of the triple-A game market.

Tell us about the game.

For the person who just has a cell phone and Google cart board who’s never experienced VR, it’s really quite the little immersion thing. It starts out with the cheesy me in the studio getting ready, but then you’re called into VR land from there and it’s more of an experience, so it’s kind of following me into a little fantasy world into a club and then going on a car ride, chasing my cat around -- who’s also been generously modeled. It ends up in a club; I play a show and you watch a 360 video of that.

Who would you want to go to a show with in a VR experience?

I’d have to say GWAR or Bjork. That’s a hard one. Bjork would be cool because she knows a lot of really great digital artists. So even though it’s not 100 percent her doing things, it’s usually her direction. Not the biggest fan of her music, but holy s--, am I such a huge fan of her visual presence and media. So I think she’d nail it.

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Jean-Michel Jarre Explores History of Electronic Music With John Carpenter, Edward Snowden, and More

(photo: Tom Sheehan)

If you could only select one artist to tell the story of electronic music on record, France’s Jean-Michel Jarre might be it. A giant in electronic music since long before the term “EDM” was a glint in the eye of Calvin Harris or any of today’s pop-star DJs, Jarre released his first album, Deserted Palace, in 1972.    

Four decades later, he took on the herculean labor of love of telling the story of electronic music over two albums -- last year’s Electronica Vol 1: The Time Machine and the follow-up, Electronica Vol 2: The Heart of Noise, out this week.

To celebrate the music he loves, he put together a who’s who of collaborators, from M83, Moby, and Air to Pete Townshend, Cyndi Lauper, and horror movie director John Carpenter. Jarre explains that it was because everybody he asked wanted to participate that the project had to be broken down into two albums. 

“When I started thinking about my wish list, everybody having said yes, I suddenly said, ‘OK, I’m going to divide this project in electronica in two parts, because it was too long,’” he says.

As surprising a collaborator as a rock legend like Townshend or Carpenter (known for movies like The Fog and Halloween) might be, the most unusual cameo on either of the two albums by far is Edward Snowden. Yes, the same Edward Snowden who once worked for the CIA before becoming a folk hero to many for his whistle-blowing about global surveillance programs by the National Security Agency in 2013.

While Snowden has been a source of dissent, with some viewing him as a hero and others a traitor, Jarre is unambiguous on which side of the fence he lies. “I was thinking recently too about someone like Edward Snowden, who is, for me, the illustration of the modern hero,” Jarre says. “At one stage, someone is standing and saying not stop, but just be careful.”

For Jarre, that is so important because he wants people to be aware that technology isn’t always the savior of society that it’s portrayed to be. “I love this idea that technology and digital technology is neutral; it depends on where you use it,” he says. “It’s like the atom; when Oppenheimer discovered the fission of the atom, suddenly it was opening so many doors for biology, for science, but also it created the atomic bomb. So you always have to get this kind of distance with technology.”

That ambiguity of technology is explored continuously throughout the two records. “This whole relationship with technology is one of the recurrent themes all along… the fact that technology is mutual and depends on the way you are using it. It’s great to have the world and all the knowledge of the world in your pocket, but also it has some dark sides, and it’s illustrated in album one with the track I’ve done with Laurie Anderson, this kind of dark love song between a smartphone and a human being,” he says. “Consider the idea that lots of the time, most of us choose to touch their smartphone more than their own partner, so this is something [where] we have this ambiguous and also erotic relationship with our smartphone or connected object.”

One area of technology Jarre wanted to stay away from was the modern way of collaborations, in which you never meet the artist you are recording with. His insistence on working in person with every collaborator is why the project took four years. To him, it was well worth it, though.

“I’m not a big fan of the word ‘featuring,’ because it means you’re going to send a file through the net and somebody somewhere in the world will add some topline vocals, synth, guitar -- and you’re not going to meet with them, never even going to talk to them, and it’s more for marketing reasons or commercial reasons than anything else. In this case, as you understand, it was almost the opposite,” he says. “In this project you have obviously legends and people very know, but also beginners. If you think of acts like F--- Buttons or Gesafflestein, they are known by certain people, but not like the Who or Moby. My choice in the project was really to work with people who have an intrinsic touch, and also there is a reason why for every artist in terms of sound, in terms of source of inspiration. And this is what has been the guide, because I traveled physically to meet with people, to spend some time with people. I must say I’ve been really touched by the fact people opened their door and gave so much to my album and to my project.”

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‘New Americana’ Singer Halsey on Going to Back to School and Feeling the Bern (photo: Getty Images) When Halsey takes the stage at Coachella next month on consecutive Saturdays it will be, for her,...

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‘New Americana’ Singer Halsey on Going to Back to School and Feeling the Bern

(photo: Getty Images)

When Halsey takes the stage at Coachella next month on consecutive Saturdays it will be, for her, the culmination of a breakthrough year, that has seen the “New Americana” singer arrive in a major way.

“Playing Coachella is such an honor. It’s the ultimate mark in the industry that says, ‘Hey, you’re cool,’” she tells Yahoo Music.

Since it is such a big occasion, we had to ask who she’d like to be her big special guest if she could have one. “I’d love to play with Madonna, but I don’t think I could afford her, so I’d have to go with the hologram.”

One thing that is clear about Halsey is she is a having a blast with her newfound success, something very evident when she visits the USC campus in Los Angeles to speak with a group of students as part of the Samsung Level Music Lab program.

As she takes the stage to applause from the packed room, she admits, “Being in school is a terrifying feeling. I’m walking through the quad and all of a sudden I am 17.”

But you can’t tell as she charms the room with very open stories of her deep fandom for Kanye West, her insecurities, and the “fake-ass” diners in L.A.

(Halsey at USC. Photo: Jackie Lee)

We’d give her a solid B+ or A- for as a guest lecturer. How would she grade herself? “I would give the experience an A+,” she tells us. “It’s great to talk to people, who have such a world of opportunity at their hands. It reminds me that everyone else my age is working hard to achieve their dreams and that’s incredibly motivating. I’m not going to grade myself because this question is setting me up for an F.”

She does seem pleasantly surprised by the rapt attention and adoration of the crowd of her peers, even if she is headlining Madison Square Garden on this next tour and it is sold-out. Refreshingly, she shares her apprehension that all of this could go away quickly.

“There’s always going to be a fear that people won’t show up. The moment we sold out Madison Square Garden, I said to myself, ‘OK, maybe this isn’t a fluke. Maybe this thing is real,’” she says. “As long as I have fans that like me, the number of them won’t make a difference. Although, I have to say it’s been pretty cool so far.”

Halsey has already experienced a lot in the industry, enough to know “there’s no such thing as math in the music industry. Nothing ever happens according to a formula. Trust your instinct; this is about something bigger than strategy and marketing plans.”

That said, she knows she has a lot more to learn. If there were one artist besides Kanye West she could ask for advice, it would be Katy Perry. “She worked really hard for a long time and it didn’t happen for her overnight, but she didn’t give up and eventually became one of the biggest artists in the world,” she says. “And I think that’s magic.”

Another person that Halsey has great respect and admiration for is Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. She is unabashedly “feeling the Bern” and sharing that with everyone. “I like Bernie Sanders, because I believe that he is more than just a public speaker; he’s an activist, and I believe in people who take action,” she says. “Many Americans want to see a patriot in office, but the true definition of a patriot describes someone who will argue against a government in order to support the good of its people. I believe Bernie is that patriot.”

Though there are always going to be detractors who say they don’t care what musicians say about politics, Halsey disagrees vehemently. “It’s so important for artists to speak up about politics. Fans trust their favorite musicians the way some people trust a preacher,” she says. “If I can be a safe place for my fans to ask questions and discuss, hopefully it will create a narrative that they share with their friends. Some people are afraid of politics because they’re afraid of feeling wrong or stupid, or uninformed. Hopefully, giving people that comfort can make more people care.”

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Grammy Nominee Tori Kelly Reflects on Her Breakthrough Year (photo: MTV) Ask Tori Kelly her most memorable moments in her breakout 2015, and the Grammy nominee for Best New Artist has quite a few,...

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Grammy Nominee Tori Kelly Reflects on Her Breakthrough Year

(photo: MTV)

Ask Tori Kelly her most memorable moments in her breakout 2015, and the Grammy nominee for Best New Artist has quite a few, though one does stand out: her performance at the Shine a Light benefit in Los Angeles.

“Growing up, I listened to Jill Scott all the time, and she was the first really soulful singer I listened to. I met her that night and that was surreal -- not only that, but I’m in a conversation with her, Pharrell, Sting, Pink,” Kelly recalls. “Then you have Ed Sheeran, all these young people that are in awe of all these legends around them. I got to perform with Miguel, which was great. It was surreal, ‘cause it’s like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

After a career whirlwind that led to her Grammy nod, Kelly hasn’t had much downtime to contemplate the past year and all of its surreal highlights, to which she would add meeting Justin Timberlake. However, she did finally get the opportunity to reflect when shooting an “Artist in Residence” video for American Express, revisiting her early days and performing live in a coffeehouse for a select few fans.

(photo courtesy of AMEX)

As one would imagine, the memories came flooding back to Kelly, going back to her childhood dreams of pop stardom. “After I’d done the interview portion we were shooting this thing where it’s supposed to be like my childhood bedroom, that’s really where it all started,” she said. “I was home-schooled, too, so I had all the time in the world to just sit there, make beats, and produce my own songs at 15. So that came to mind right away.”

It was at 15 that Kelly began playing guitar, and her poetry-writing, journaling, and singing crystallized her vision into becoming a singer-songwriter. Though many see Kelly as an overnight success, anyone who follows music knows there is no such thing. There is always quiet, hard work behind the scenes to reach the public consciousness. That said, eight years from first playing guitar to being Grammy-nominated is pretty rapid by most people’s standards.

“When you put it that way, when you start putting numbers, it is insane,” she says.

Kelly’s rise to pop stardom is also a good lesson for kids, as she admits getting discouraged many times when she was younger, starting as far back as 14. (She was also rejected by American Idol when she was 16.) So now having made it, what would advice would she give to kids looking to make it in music?

“I would say, especially with today’s social media, everything feels like it’s popular one day and out the next. That can be discouraging, I think, because I feel like you’re just chasing it all the time. But I would say to kids that were in this place, ‘All those feelings you’re feeling right now -- discouraged, doubtful, wondering if your time is slipping away – you’ll look back on them and it’s all going make sense when you’re older. Now I get to write about that 14-year-old girl. You’ll look back and be thankful that you were feeling down.’”

(photo: Associated Press)

Kelly can speak from experience, having overcome those early doubts to engage in conversation with Sting, Pink, Pharrell, and John Legend. That kind of star power is pretty close to what she will experience at her first Grammys, so perhaps she’ll be more ready for the big day Feb. 15.

“Maybe in a way, being around so many people I looked up to and realizing they’re just normal people will take some of the pressure off at an event like the Grammys,” she says. “It’ll still be an overwhelming experience, but maybe after a crazy year like I’ve had, it will have prepped me a bit. But I don’t know, I’ve never been to the Grammys. We’ll find out.”

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The House Party’s Over: Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello Gets Personal on ‘Wild Youth’

(photo: Andrew Chin/Getty Images)

Once one third of the biggest EDM outfit on the scene, Swedish House Mafia, Steve Angello has experienced what it feels like to headline arenas and festivals for tens of thousands of people. Now he wants to know what it feels like to be away from the “machine,” which is what he says Swedish House Mafia became at the end due to the band’s massive following.

So on his new album, Wild Youth, Angello has traded in big-name collaborations and “club bangers” for a much more personal statement on the last three and a half years of his life. As he tells Yahoo Music in a wide-ranging interview that covers everything from Adele to the reported SHM reunion (it is not happening anytime soon, if at all), this is a chance for Angello to be authentic, and he hopes others follow suit and bring the humanity back to today’s electronic music scene.

YAHOO MUSIC: Because the sound on Wild Youth is a departure, how gratifying has the response been?

STEVE ANGELLO: For me it’s been incredible, ‘cause, as you know, it sounds a little different. It’s still the same language, it’s still me writing the songs, so it has that anthemic vibe on the chords and the progressions and so on and so forth. I’ve done this for such a long time I felt it was time to actually put the experience and expertise I’ve learned throughout the last 16, 17 years of making music into this new album. Now when the album is coming out and a lot of people have embraced the body of work, I feel like the reward has been so big compared to the work that I put in. For me, personally, this is the way forward, and I think everybody needs to put more time into music ‘cause that makes the genre evolve more. A lot of artists are really tired of what’s going on in the music scene and are really expressing themselves [about] how uncreative the dance scene is, but they’re not doing anything to make it more creative and contributing to the cause of making something move forward. So instead of talking about it, I’d rather just do it. So far, it’s been incredible. It wasn’t the purpose, but at the same time, it’s really nice to get a pat on the back once in a while and see that people are getting it. So I’m happy.

What are your gripes specifically about the scene today?

The creativity is important, but without the humanity and personal touch, that means nothing. That’s what made Bowie so unique and special, was he put himself into the innovations.

I had a meeting yesterday with a couple of friends and I asked them bluntly, “Tell me one thing about a dance artist -- tell me one thing about their personal life, their background, their culture.” You don’t even know what country they come from. And the difference is when I grew up, I knew everything about Michael Jackson, I knew about Quincy Jones, I knew about Pink Floyd, I knew about Bowie, I knew about all these artists I looked up to, because it was themselves in the music. We have hidden behind these fake glamour party vibe on Instagram or on Facebook, and my issue with that is it’s really hard for me, as an artist and a music-lover, to really get a grasp on what’s going on with these artists. I grew up with a lot of disco, synth, and hip-hop, and hip-hop, for me, was always a cultural expression, where something is wrong with the system. And I feel dance, yeah, it’s awesome, it’s happy and it’s great and it’s making everybody move, but at the same time there are all these incredible personalities behind every song we know nothing about. For me, I put my heart and soul into this and this is who I am. This is what I do, I talk about it, I’m aware of everything going on in the world and I’m just being a human. And I think the human element has disappeared a little bit, because nobody tells a story anymore.

Who are the artists you admire, in the way they use social media and put themselves out there?

If you start looking into guys like Trent Reznor, Dave Grohl, Adele, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, there are a lot of artists that are being realistic and real, which I appreciate. At the same time, we live in a different age today; music is consumed like fast food. You get an album illegally or legally and then you just move on from that. Then at the same time you have artists like Adele -- she comes along and she has this really authentic story and honesty and she would win anything. She just comes in and wins, because she’s so real. We miss that a little bit, and I miss that a lot because 10, 15 years ago, it was more about that. It was more about being a human rather than being an artist. When the boy bands came along, they were manufactured and it was honest and open. But nowadays, we don’t talk about the manufacturing of the pop star, because they’re just [supposed to be] artists like every other artist.

Did it become hard to stay authentic and personal in a situation like Swedish House Mafia, which you have described as being like a machine? We tried. With Swedish House Mafia we became these big monsters, but what’s forgotten is we were still personal and honest and opinionated. We were still us; the problem is when something becomes so big, it becomes a machine. It’s hard because people don’t really see that. But now with this whole new album and everything, I could just be who I am. If I keep that tone throughout the rest of my life, I think people are gonna take it seriously. Now, with this album, I had a lot to tell. I have a lot of stuff that I wanted to say musically and I wasn’t afraid to go left, right, or deep. I don’t need to do those massive bangers. For me, it was about the body of work. I want to create something I feel is timeless and that sits there in 10 years and I go, “Wow, that was an incredible time of my life,” rather than “That was a great record, let’s do another one of those.” ‘Cause it’s so much more than that.

Was it difficult to make that transition to a more personal sound?

It’s been really hard. Just a couple of months ago when I was finalizing the album, I had to go back and work on a song I started three and a half years ago. So, for me, it was really important that it still had the same message and I stayed on course. At the same time, I worked really closely with Stuart Price; he was my mentor throughout this whole process. I needed somebody a little more grown-up that looks at music differently than me that I could actually say, “This is what I’m thinking, what do you think of that?” I could get an honest opinion if I was doing the right thing or not. The hardest part was taking those bangers I’m used to doing my whole life and just removing them from the album. That was tough. At the same time, they didn’t fit into the album. There’s always space for more music. If I feel like doing one of those later on, I can do that.

What do you take from this album when you hear it? 

I’m really proud. I’ve gone through a lot just to do this album. It was a lot of politics and a lot of stuff that’s been going on with the breakup of Swedish House Mafia and fans’ reactions. And all of a sudden the fans are like, “Hey, you need to do a hit” or “You need to do this.” But those are not real fans. Those fans don’t understand or appreciate that body of work. So it was really hard to make this album. I’ve gone through a lot personally and it’s been really tough. I feel like regardless of how the album does, I’ve already won because it’s been a battle, though luckily a lot of people are already liking it. And I feel really proud of everything I’ve done on it.

Does fans’ not letting go of the past make you more or less inclined to do a Swedish House Mafia reunion?

It makes it worse. Music is such a sensitive thing for me. When I say “a lot of fans” I don’t actually mean a lot of fans, I mean some fans. Most of the fans get it; they’re so happy this is happening. At the same time, I feel like we’re in a really sensitive time now of music. We haven’t talked about a reunion, we haven’t thought about it, we’re just getting on with our careers and making what we want to do. Like the other guys said and I said, you never know. But, at the same time, it’s nothing we’ve talked about. So I don’t want to say it’s impossible, but at the same time, it’s so far away I couldn’t say it’s a possibility.

What would be a motivation to get back together?

There’s no ego or fights. So for me, if we ever have a real story to tell personally, I think we should go back to making music. But at the same time, if that’s not the purpose of making the music, there’s no point. I think the older I’ve gotten, life’s happened to me, and I have kids and family. The older I get, the more I realize the value of music.

[stevebaltin]

Peaches, Jane’s Addiction, More Bring Halloween Fun to Voodoo Music & Arts Experience Day Two

Day two of the Voodoo Music & Arts Experience in New Orleans brought with it patches of severe rainstorms, but that only led to more dramatic moments in a memorable and event-filled day of music. Here were some of the best tricks and treats delighting fans on Halloween. 

Peaches Bares (Almost) All

Wearing a cross between a leotard and a bikini with a face in the front, the charismatic singer showed she meant to back up her ferocious snarl on “Burst!” where she sang, “I kill, I kill, I kill the other bitches...I kill the competition.” We believe her 100 percent after witnessing the intensity with which she delivered the song.

Jane’s Addiction: Swinging Suspension Girls

If there is any band meant for the Voodoo Music & Arts Experience, it is seminal L.A. alternative act Jane’s Addiction, who have been elevating the live experience since they began on the L.A. club scene in the late '80s. The Perry Farrell-fronted quartet showed just how high they could go with background dancers swinging over the stage from suspension hooks, while the quartet ripped through “Whores.”

Jane’s Addiction: Acoustic “Jane Says”

The whole band took the front of the stage to turn one of their biggest hits into an acoustic campfire song, prompting looks of absolute bliss for the fans watching and singing along.

The Growlers: Big Toe

The Orange County, California rockers conjured up the spirit and sound of the '60s with their hit song “Big Toe.” Add in the element that the whole band were dressed as skeletons -- with frontman Brooks Nielsen sporting face paint -- and you have a very fitting Voodoo Music & Arts Experience performance.

Fantastic Negrito: The Most Famous Murder Ballad of All Time on Halloween

The Oakland, Calif. roots rockers busted out their rendition of the American folk ballad, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?,” a song that dates back all the way to the 1870s and has been performed by everyone from the Grateful Dead to Nirvana. Bringing a heavy dose of blues to the track, Fantastic Negrito put their own sound on it for the New Orleans fans.

The Growlers Get Friendly

A little problem with the sound system equaled no problem for the Orange County group: Needing to keep the fans entertained, frontman Brooks Nielsen delved into the crowd to intermingle with fans while the technical difficulties were resolved.

The Teaches of Peaches

Flanked by gyrating backup dancers on both sides of her, the Canadian electronic musician showered the crowd with champagne while performing the hit “F--k The Pain Away.” Put all the components together, and a vintage Peaches moment was created.

Peaches: Epic Chain Swing

With the rain coming down in New Orleans and beats pulsating behind her, Peaches put on an admirable show swinging a chain around her neck repeatedly -- almost like a metallic hula hoop necklace.

Clutch: Hard Rock and Harmonicas at Voodoo

The rain pouring down made for a fitting visual as Maryland hard rockers Clutch, fronted by Neil Fallon, delivered a big mix of blues and hard rock highlighted by Fallon’s raucous harmonica playing.

Clutch Rocks the Rain at Voodoo

You want to talk “rock star”? Clutch frontman Neil Fallon walking to the back of the stage to towel off his guitar, then turning around and goes back to leading the band in a thunderous jam as the rain pours down hard -- that'll do nicely. No one who braved the rain to stay and watch Clutch will forget the power of this set.

The Suffers Show Off Their Soul

No New Orleans music experience would be complete without a heavy dose of soul. Thankfully Houston’s the Suffers and frontwoman Kam Franklin were on hand to lead a full-on soul revival complete with beautiful horns. With the whole band clad in white and Franklin belting out those notes with full power, the Suffers left a major imprint on Voodoo Music & Arts Experience.

[stevebaltin]

Florence Welch, Ryan Bingham, and More Bring Spirit to Voodoo Music Arts & Experience

Halloween weekend, New Orleans, the Voodoo Music Arts & Experience, and a ridiculously stacked lineup of artists makes for a perfect blend. Yahoo Music was there to capture several of the highlights; starting with the reigning queen of the alternative world, Florence Welch and her Machine. As one would expect from such a consummate performer, Welch embraced the spirit of the weekend, coming out in Day of the Dead face paint.

Florence Welch Riles The Crowd To “Rabbit Head”

“We have come for human sacrifice,” the face-painted Welch said as she ran across the stage, a welcome sight after so many months of her recovering from a broken foot while on tour. As Welch pumped the crowd with her zealous enthusiasm before leading into the song, the crowd predictably went crazy.

Florence & The Machine’s “Ship To Wreck” Slays Voodoo

Welch is a massively dramatic and charismatic performer, one capable of controlling a crowd with just her voice. But to see her leading a crowd in one of the best songs on radio now, with her face painted up, is one of those moments that no one in the audience will soon forget. It was a moment where artist and the occasion come together for magic.

Gerard Way’s Epic Jazz Hands

The former My Chemical Romance frontman reemerged on the scene last year with his debut solo effort, Hesitant Alien. Though he is still relatively new to performing on his own, he hasn’t forgot how to work a crowd after all those years playing to tens of thousands with My Chem. And sometimes that’s as simple and as fun as getting the entire crowd to join you in a massive display of jazz hands as a lead in to a rocking number.

Metric’s Dramatic Entrance

Florence Welch wasn’t the only alternative singer to embrace the moment at Voodoo Music Arts & Experience as Metric frontwoman Emily Haines made an epic entrance of her own, leading the Canadian band on stage. A giant plume of feathers attached to her back provided a visual prop to the moodiness and rhythm of the superb band, resulting in a very striking moment.

Ryan Bingham’s Foot Stompin’ Good Time

New Orleans is known for its musical diversity, and Oscar-winning singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham brought some down-home country flair to the Voodoo Music Arts & Experience with a full-on jam highlighted by some rocking fiddle.

Ryan Bingham’s Voodoo Hootenanny

Proving once again you can’t go wrong with that rocking fiddle, Bingham and his band delivered an extraordinary rendition of “Tell My Mother I Miss Her So” that would’ve made any Irish pub sing and dance with pride.

Florence Conjures Awesome At Voodoo

Picking the standout moments at a Florence Welch show is never easy when pretty much every note is a highlight -- and this mesmerizing version of “What The Water Gave Me” is no exception, as Welch conjures up the essence of the Voodoo Music Arts & Experience with her haunting delivery.