Category: Music

Thousands of mourners gathered Saturday (Jan. 17) at San Francisco’s Civic Center to celebrate the life of Bob Weir, the legendary guitarist and founding member of the Grateful Dead who died last week at age 78.

Musicians Joan Baez and John Mayer spoke on a makeshift stage in front of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium after four Buddhist monks opened the event with a prayer in Tibetan. Fans carried long-stemmed red roses, placing some at an altar filled with photos and candles. They wrote notes on colored paper, professing their love and thanking him for the journey.

Several asked him to say hello to fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia and bass guitarist Phil Lesh, also founding members who preceded him in death. Garcia died in 1995; Lesh died in 2024.

“I’m here to celebrate Bob Weir,” said Ruthie Garcia, who is no relation to Jerry, a fan since 1989. “Celebrating him and helping him go home.”

Saturday’s celebration brought plenty of fans with long dreadlocks and wearing tie-dye clothing, some using walkers. But there were also young couples, men in their 20s and a father who brought his 6-year-old son in order to pass on to the next generation a love of live music and the tight-knit Deadhead community.

The Bay Area native joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.” He was generally considered less shaggy looking than the other band members, although he adopted a long beard like Garcia’s later in life.

The Dead played music that pulled in blues, jazz, country, folk and psychedelia in long improvisational jams. Their concerts attracted avid Deadheads who followed them on tours. The band played on decades after Garcia’s death, morphing into Dead & Company with John Mayer.

Darla Sagos, who caught an early flight out of Seattle Saturday morning to make the public mourning, said she suspected something was up when there were no new gigs announced after Dead & Company played three nights in San Francisco last summer. It was unusual, as his calendar often showed where he would be playing next.

“We were hoping that everything was OK and that we were going to get more music from him,” she said. “But we will continue the music, with all of us and everyone that’s going to be playing it.”

Sagos and her husband, Adam Sagos, have a one-year-old grandson who will grow up knowing the music.

A statement on Weir’s Instagram account announced his passing Jan. 10. It said he beat cancer, but he succumbed to underlying lung issues. He is survived by his wife and two daughters, who were at Saturday’s event.

His death was sudden and unexpected, said daughter Monet Weir, but he had always wished for the music and the legacy of the Dead to outlast him.

American music, he believed, could unite, she said.

“The show must go on,” Monet Weir said.

Kenny Morris, the original drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees, has died. He was 68.

News of Morris’ passing was announced Thursday (Jan. 15) by music journalist and longtime friend John Robb in the publication Louder Than War. An exact date and cause of death were not disclosed at press time.

“Kenny was a friend of ours, and it was always a pleasure to see and hang out with him when visiting Cork in Ireland, where he had been living,” Robb wrote in a lengthy tribute. “He was sweet, articulate, artistic and fascinating company and his beautiful eccentricity was adorable.”

He continued, “He would turn up in a suit and a dress with open handcuffs on one hand and the next time in a totally different yet perfectly created bricolage of style, whilst still dressing in the artful confrontation of the 1976 punk era that he was such a key part of.”

Robb noted that Morris had his “ups and downs” before moving to Ireland in 1993 and closed the tribute with a personal message to the late drummer.

“It was great to know you, Kenny and we will miss your sweet eccentricity and long WhatsApp messages and your art and your gentle presence in a cruel world,” he wrote.

Born in Essex, England, in 1957 to Irish parents, Morris studied fine art and filmmaking at North East London Polytechnic and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. He briefly joined his friend Sid Vicious’s band the Flowers of Romance in 1976, according to Robb.

Morris became the original drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1977, a year after vocalist Siouxsie Sioux and bassist Steven Severin formed the band in London. He had first seen them perform live in September 1976, with Sex Pistols’ Vicious on drums.

“When I turned up for the audition, there was some drum kit there, and I was fiddling around trying to figure out how to even set the thing up when Nils Stevenson, the Banshees manager, came up to me: ‘You’re supposed to be a f—king drummer, aren’t ya?’” Morris recalled in a 2023 interview with Tripe + Drisheen. “I took an instant dislike to him. But by the end of the audition, we had eight songs.”

Morris recorded two albums with Siouxsie and the Banshees — The Scream (1978) and Join Hands (1979) — and played on their debut single “Hong Kong Garden,” which reached No. 7 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart.

He abruptly left the group during their 1979 tour supporting Join Hands, following an argument during a record signing. Guitarist John McKay departed at the same time. Morris was succeeded by former Slits drummer Peter “Budgie” Clarke, while McKay’s role was taken over by the Cure’s Robert Smith.

After leaving the group, Morris continued drumming, directed several short films and pursued painting and drawing. Prior to his death, he was performing with the post-punk goth band Shrine of the Vampyre and had reportedly completed a memoir scheduled for publication later this year, according to the New York Post.

Perrie Edwards and her fiancé, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, are celebrating the arrival of their second child.

On Saturday (Jan. 17), the 32-year-old Little Mix singer announced on Instagram that she and the professional soccer player, 32, welcomed a baby girl.

“Alanis Valentine,” Edwards captioned a sweet black-and-white photo of the newborn, adding pink heart emojis.

The adorable snapshot shows Alanis snuggled against her mother’s chest while her parents and the couple’s 4-year-old son, Axel, gently rest their hands on her back.

Edwards and Oxlade-Chamberlain, who got engaged in 2022, revealed in September 2025 that they were expecting another child. In a video shared on Instagram at the time, the singer wore a T-shirt reading, “If He Wanted To He Would…” on the back. As she turned around, she revealed her baby bump along with a second message on the front that read, “…and He Did!”

Moments later, Oxlade-Chamberlain and their son joined her in the frame, sharing a sweet family embrace.

The happy announcement came after Edwards previously shared her experience with a heartbreaking pregnancy loss following Axel’s birth in 2021. Speaking candidly on the We Need to Talk podcast in August 2025, the singer reflected on one of the most challenging periods of her life.

“Axel wasn’t even walking yet and we were pregnant,” the former X Factor star said. “I found out when I was rehearsing for the Little Mix tour. I was at rehearsals and I thought, ‘Oh I don’t feel good.’ Every symptom under the sun so I was like, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’”

Although tests confirmed she was expecting again, Edwards said something didn’t feel right once she began touring in April 2022 with bandmates Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall. Despite early reassurance from doctors, she later received devastating news during her 20-week scan.

See Edwards’ birth announcement on Instagram here.

Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams made his catwalk model debut Friday (Jan. 16), opening the Dsquared2 fall 2026 runway show in Milan to an A.I. reworking of Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run.”

Ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics — which are taking place in both Milan and Cortina, Italy, starting next month — the Dsquared2 presentation was themed around winter sports and closed the first day of Milan Fashion Week Men’s Fall/Winter 2026.

The soundtrack of the 15-minute runway show largely consisted of a mash-up of reworkings of “Let the River Run,” with the opening two minutes scored by an orchestral-rock interpretation of the Academy Award-winning song. On streaming services, the song is credited as “Running on the Water” and is billed to such artist names as Kradex (on Apple Music) or Da Soul Orchestra (on YouTube and Deezer). Notably, on Deezer, the track carries an “AI-generated content” label, which indicates the release is “detected as AI-generated” by the service. Further, on Da Soul Orchestra’s YouTube channel, the act’s bio notes “we use AI technology to rework iconic tracks in fresh styles.”

Simon’s “Let the River Run” was written for the 1988 film Working Girl, starring Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith. The film’s opening sequence and end credits are soundtracked by “Let the River Run.” The track would go on to win Simon the Oscar for best original song and the Grammy Award for best song written specifically for a motion picture or television. The single climbed to No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 11 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart.

Milan Fashion Week continues through Jan. 20. Could Williams’ Heated Rivalry co-star Connor Storrie hit the fashion slopes in Milan? W magazine noted rumblings of Storrie possibly making his runway debut for Dolce & Gabbana on Saturday, but the outlet said the actor’s publicists denied the rumor.

This week’s Friday Music Guide brought a trio of albums and a trio of songs that Billboard editors will have in our headphones all weekend — but which of the half-dozen selections is your favorite new music of the week?

Starting with the albums, we had the long-awaited A$AP Rocky project Don’t Be Dumb — his first album since 2018’s Testing. We heard lead singles “Punk Rocky” and “Helicopter” first, but Friday’s (Jan. 16) release brought 15 tracks on the standard album plus two digital bonuses.

ENHYPEN (Heeseung, Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Sunoo, Jungwon and Ni-Ki) dropped the 11-track EP The Sin: Vanish on Friday, highlighted by lead single “Knife.” The vampire-themed release is the first in the seven-member K-pop group’s expected The Sin series.

Finally, Madison Beer put out her third album locket, which follows 2023’s Silence Between Songs. We all know the 2024-released single “Make You Mine” — a top 10 hit on Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart — and the album was also preceded by the songs “Yes Baby” and “Bittersweet” (Beer’s first Billboard Hot 100 hit).

On the song front, we got new tunes from Nigerian superstars Wizkid and Asake (“Jogodo”), country crooner Megan Moroney (“Wish I Didn’t”) and indie-pop singer/songwriter Mitski (“Where’s My Phone?”).

But which was your favorite of the week? Below, you can vote for one of our half-dozen Friday Music Guide selections or write in your own in our poll. We’ll close the poll on Sunday and share the results so fans can see which album or song wears the weekly crown.