Jake Bugg Page 2

Just 13 months after his smash-hit debut album, Jake Bugg is back with a new record - the Rick Rubin produced Shangri-La.Recorded in the Malibu studio from which it takes its name - a place favoured by Lady Gaga - things have clearly been a little different for Bugg's second outing. 

Jake Bugg Is Back With Second Album 'Shangri-La'

Bugg - dubbed the new Noel Gallagher by the lazier critics - lost out on the Mercury Music Prize to dub-step artist James Blake, though he's not much of a fan.

Continue reading: Jake Bugg On James Blake, "I Didn't Much Enjoy His Mercury Performance"

David Bowie came back from his retirement/hiatus completely unannounced this January, when he released the video for the single 'Where Are We Now,' and managed to catch everyone off guard with his birthday announcement of a new release and the subsequent quality of his first album in a decade.

This is Bowie's first Mercury nomination

The Next Day made the critics swoon after Ziggy Stardust once again and now, five months after he released his twenty-fourth album, Bowie is still being fancied by critics as he emerges as the front-runner to win this years Barclaycard Mercury Prize.

Continue reading: David Bowie Leads The Pack In Mercury Prize Nominations

Austin City Limits Music Festival is set to hit Texas for its twelfth year, bringing with it two weekends of fabulous live music and family fun.

The festival organisers first decided to spread the fun out over two weekends last year, in a bid to welcome yet more people into this unique world, and it appears that they haven't gone back on their word as they are set to return to Zilker Park on October 4th - 6th and 11th - 13th. This year sees some impressive headline acts including Depeche Mode, The Cure, Muse and Kings Of Leon - and if that wasn't exciting enough, Atoms For Peace, Lionel Richie, Phoenix and Wilco are also high up on this year's bill! Some of the other acts scattered around are just as jaw-droppingly impressive, not to mention extremely diverse. We have Californian rockers Queens Of The Stone Age, country star Hank Williams Jr.'s daughter Holly Williams, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar, LA sisters Haim, alt-folk group Thao & The Get Down Stay Down Nottingham singer Jake Bugg and legendary 'Gay Bar' hitmakers Electric Six.

Continue reading: Austin City Limits 2013 Set To Return With A Stunningly Diverse New Line-Up

Leeds Festival 2013 may not have brought with it the best weather of the year, with torrential downpours and heavy flooding putting a damper (pardon the pun) on everyone's camping weekend, but the line-up was enough to put a smile on everyone's mud spattered face!

Green Day Headline Leeds Festival 2013

Biffy Clyro drew in a rapturous audience on the Friday and Green Day had a smaller but dedicated audience on Saturday, but that was nothing compared to Eminem's fantastic closing performance which drew the biggest audience of the whole weekend. Other bands had a few surprises up their sleeves, with Fall Out Boy managing to get Foxes up on stage to perform their collaborative track 'Just One Yesterday' (Pete Wentz' favourite song from their new album) and The Lumineers taking crowd participation to a new level by playing in the middle of their audience.

Continue reading: Leeds Festival 2013 Flooding Fails To Bring The Rapturous Crowd Down

We managed to grab Jake Bugg for a quick chat at Leeds Festival 2013 over the weekend (August 23rd - 25th) where, among other things, he opened up about what to expect from his sophomore album and upcoming tour dates.

On album two, Jake has teamed up with one of the most legendary producers in the history of music; Rick Rubin - co-founder of Def Jam records who has worked with a variety of artists from Jay-Z to Metallica. 'That's the great thing about Rick, he's so diverse in what he does', says Jake. 'This year he's done the Jay-Z record and the Kanye West album and Black Sabbath. He's great to work with, he's so chilled out. I fly [to America] tomorrow to go finish off the second record so I can't wait.' He also openly admitted to not knowing who Chad Smith was (he's the Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer!) when Rubin brought him in as a studio musician but expressed regret that he had to leave the project for a RHCP record.

Watch the full interview with Jake Bugg here

Continue reading: Jake Bugg Talks Album Number Two And Partnering With Rick Rubin [Interview]

As Thomas Mars – the lead singer of Phoenix – explained, "Usually on Sunday night people are really tired.” He was talking about festivals, and he was right, bit he and his band had something planned. "This," he said as the catchy into to 1901 began behind him, "is something different."

Tired crowd or not, the band rocked the final night of Lollapalooza.

So blistering was their closing set, that Rolling Stone have called it “the best performance of the entire weekend.” And this on a record weekend - 300,000 people descended upon Grant Park for the three-day festival, which featured eight stages and 130 acts.

Continue reading: “This Is Something Different” - Phoenix Close Lollapalooza 2013 In Style

"If they pull the plug on this song, you'll have to keep on singing," ordered The Cure's Robert Smith, preparing to play 'Boys Don't Cry' at the end of an ecstatically-received, hit-filled set. The British New Romantics showed that despite mainstream's music current trend for dubstep and electro, the punk roots of music will always hold dear for fans who can still identify with the frontman's penchant for melancholic ballads, backcombed hair and blood red lipstick.

The Cure Showed Their Ability To Still Draw An Enthusiastic Crowd.

Rob Carroll at Plan!tNorthwest described the rockers set as "a fitting headliner to bring Lollapalooza in for a soft landing" with minimal interaction between band and crowd , whilst The Guardian vow that "Robert Smith's ultra-expressive face gives us the most passion and raw emotion from any performer we've seen over the past three days."

Continue reading: Lollapalooza Packs Up For Another Year: What Did Day 3 Bring?

Vampire Weekend and Kings Of Leon will join a rapidly growing list, already peppered with fellow rock royalty, including Queens Of The Stone Age, Sigur Rós, 30 Seconds to Mars and Primal Scream.

It won't be solely a festival of rock though - artists from other genres have also been invited, giving everyone at this September's festival something to look forward to, such as Justin Timberlake, Jessie J, Jake Bugg, Rizzle Kicks, and classical composer Ludovico Einaudi.

Having being held since 2007, the annual iTunes festival is held over every night in September and this year will host over 60 acts at the Camden venue.

Continue reading: Vampire Weekend And Kings Of Leon Added To ITunes Festival Bill That Keeps Getting Better

The iTunes Festival is back! Which is great news for those of you who like going to something with the word ‘festival’ in the title, but don’t actually like the realities of what a British festival is – namely, mud, dodgy tents and someone throwing what you hope is just beer over your head from a distance.

That’s right iTunes Festival takes place indoors – namely at the Roundhouse in Camden, London and boy oh boy do they have a line-up for you this year. The festival will be running every night through September – an excited Jared Leto has told Heat that 30 Seconds To Mars will be performing on the 18^th – and has unveiled the first name to play this year’s event. Joining Leto and co will be Justin Timblerake, Jessie J, Jack Johnson, Jake Bugg, Phoenix, Primal Scream and Queens Of The Stone Age. It’s a pretty mixed line-up really, though there’s no doubting the star power.

It’ll be interesting to see how Biebs gets on back in Blighty given that he had a less than enjoyable time in the country earlier in the year, including being turned away from clubs and turning up on stage two hours late. Expect more of the line-up to be revealed in the next few weeks.

Continue reading: Justin Vs. Justin! Timberlake And Bieber Both Announced For ITunes Festival 2013

Mercury Music Prize winners Alt-J could well be adding an Ivor Novello award to their collection of gongs, NME announced today (April 17, 2013). The band have been nominated in the Best Contemporary Song category for their song Fitzpleasure, alongside Plan B’s Ill Manors and The Maccabees Pelican. Alt J won last year’s Mercury Music Prize for their debut album An Awesome Wave. The album has also been nominated in the Album Award category, alongside Beon Howard’s Every Kingdom and Lianne La Havas’ Is Your Love Big Enough?

The awards ceremony celebrates songwriting ability and the remainder of the categories are Best Song Musically and Lyrically, Best Contemporary Song, PRS for Music Most Performed Work, Best Original Film Score and Best Television Soundtrack.

The full list of nominees is below. The 58th annual Ivor Novello awards will take place on May 16th, 2013 at London’s Grosvenor House.

Continue reading: Will Alt J Add An Ivor Novello Award To Their Mercury Gong?

Even though Jake Bugg is given huge backing by the Mercury Record label – a subsidiary of Universal – and had money flung at his marketing campaign in order to get his debut album to number one in the UK, he still seems to be trying to convince anyone listening that he’s making ‘real music,’ whereas those horribly manufactured, fake One Direction boys are complete frauds. Erm, Jake, you might want to take a step back and look at your own career for a bit first eh?

The beef between the two sides is escalating after Bugg attacked One Direction on Twitter, only to get the pretty hilarious reply from the group’s Louis Tomlinson “Hi @JakeBugg do you think slagging off boy bands makes you more indie?” We’ve got to hand it to Tommo there, that was a prime sucker punch.

Continue reading: Jake Bugg And One Direction's War Of Words Escalates At The NME Awards

Last night’s Brits ceremony could well have been the blandest Brits in years. Aside from a frisson of post-breakup tension between Harry Styles and Taylor Swift (who took to the stage wearing a sexy black hot-pant jumpsuit with gold embellishments) there was little in the way of shock, surprises, or backstage gossip (or if there is, it hasn’t made it’s way down to us yet!).

Taylor Swift arrived in a long black dress before changing into her skimpier stage outfit

Continue reading: The Blandest Brits In Years? Ben Howard Provides Only Real Surprise With Double Win (Pictures)

Teenage wunderkind Jake Bugg might have another thing to be happy about if the rumours surrounding his love life prove to be true, as the singer/songwriter is reportedly dating model Cara Delevingne.

The 'Lightning Bolt' singer and former squeeze of Harry Styles made their first public appearance together last week at a Burberry event in London, before heading off for ex Harry's birthday party at London's famous Groucho club. According to The Sun, the two had been going steady for some weeks already before making their first public outing together and are believed to be looking like a legitimate couple now.

A source believed to be close with Cara also spoke to the newspaper about the blossoming romance, confirming the rumors and saying, "Cara and Jake are an item. They first met a couple of months ago at a party she was at with her best pal Rita Ora. They hit it off straight away.”

Continue reading: Jake Bugg And Cara Delevingne Reportedly Dating Now

Mercury Music Prize winners Alt-J have been given their first BRIT Award nods, after being nominated for three awards: Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough.. Still, despite earlier success the band have admitted that they were still taken by surprise with the announcement of their recognition.

Speaking to NME, keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton described the news as "incredible," but admitted that he and the rest of the band were taken by surprise by the announcement, saying: "thought this this wouldn't be for the likes of us."

Last year the group's debut album, An Awesome Wave, received wide-spread acclaim and was awarded the title of BBC Radio 6's Album of 2012 as well as the Mercury Award and with the BRITs constantly vying to remain relevant and 'cool' it looks like the group might also be in contention to take away at least one gong at February's awards show, regardless of what the modest group members may think of their chances.

Continue reading: Alt-J Taken By Surprise By BRIT Nominations