Chief Put Together The Best Damn Christmas Music Playlist For You Savages So Enjoy! BONUS – New Music Tuesday

KB’s EDM Face Melters.

RA’s Classic Rock.

Rone’s Underground Hip Hop.

And Coley’s Rap Groups  Nobody’s Ever Heard of or Remembers.

Those are just a few we have in the pipeline. If you have some suggestions or ideas of what you’d like to see, fire them my way either on social media or in the comments below.

And if you need a backup, or just want a continuous party mix, here’s my famous “Elf On The Shelf” Christmas Mix from a few years back.

Here’s everything that happened this week in music- 

POP

– Alicia Keys dropped her eighth studio album Keys. She offered a reminder of her power and creativity as a recording artist: the project is divided into two halves, “Originals” (which offers more classic soul-pop) and “Unlocked” (which playfully reworks those same songs, with producer Mike WiLL Made-It often by her side).

– Billie Eilish returned to Saturday Night Live on Dec. 11, pulling double duty as host and musical guest. Between some hilarious sketches, the 19-year-old superstar singer delivered memorable performances of songs from her latest album, Happier Than Ever.

– Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi’s new collaboration “Just Look Up” is already scorching hot.

– Pink is the best. She hopped on a Zoom call with 63-year-old fan Diane Berberian, who is currently in hospice with terminal bone cancer, to fulfill her bucket-list wish. “THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO TOOK THE TIME TO TRY AND MAKE CONNECTIONS… OUR DREAM CAME TRUE!!!!!” the U.S. Paratriathalon National Championships competitor captioned the post.

– The 20th anniversary of Avril Lavigne‘s breakthrough 2002 single “Sk8er Boi” is just around the corner, and it’s got the singer feeling nostalgic for those simpler days. So nostalgic, in fact, that the 37-year-old singer is planning a big screen celebration of the second single from her debut album, Let Go.

Lavigne told the “She is the Voice” iHeartRadio podcast over the weekend about the song that she revealed is still one of her favorites to play live. “And so, I’m actually going to turn this song into a film… and take it to the next level.”

– “Good Ones” just got a spritz of perfume. Today, Charli XCX unveiled a new remix of her latest hit single courtesy of Perfume Genius.

ROCK

– New Tame Impala 

– Michael Nesmith, the guitar-playing singer-songwriter with the wool hat who along with Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz became a TV star and 1960s pop sensation as a member of The Monkees, has died. He was 78.

Nesmith died Friday of natural causes, his family told Rolling Stone.

– Korn is heading on the road next year. The rock band announced a series 2022 U.S. tour dates on Tuesday (Dec. 13) in support of their forthcoming album Requiem, out Feb. 4. The set of dates will begin on March 4 in Springfield, Mo., and will have stops in Albany, Minneapolis and Hershey, Pa. before concluding on April 1 in Wichita, Kan.

– Guns N’ Roses, Foo Fighters, KISS and Korn will serve as headliners for the Daytona Beach, Fla.-based fest “Welcome To Rockville” which will be returning to the Daytona International Speedway from May 19 to 22.

– Big Thief have shared two new songs, “No Reason” and “Spud Infinity.” Both tracks appear on their upcoming album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, which drops February 11th via 4AD.

– Dashboard Confessional’s latest single “Here’s to Moving On” is an exercise in deep, personal honesty. Yet despite the track — and in fact, much of the album it comes from, the forthcoming All the Truth That I Can Tell — being penned months before Chris Carrabba’s near-fatal 2020 motorcycle accident, its meaning shifted in the wake of that frightening trauma.

– Animal Collective released their latest single “Walker” today, along with the track’s accompanying music video. 

– The official troubadours of winter, Fleet Foxes, have shared a new live album today. Appropriately titled A Very Lonely Solstice, Robin Pecknold and company recorded the 13-track project in December 2020 at the St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York.

– Neil Young and Crazy Horse return today with their new album BARN, via Reprise Records. The band’s 14th studio album was recorded last summer in a restored 19th-century log barn, nestled off the grid in the Rocky Mountains.

– Bon Iver and composer Nicholas Britell have teamed up for a new song, “Second Nature.”

– Ahead of the release of their new album next month, Elvis Costello & The Imposters have shared another single. The latest track from the English power-pop icon is called “Paint the Red Rose Blue.”

HIP HOP

– After Legends Never Die, last year’s posthumous Juice WRLD album, continued the late rapper’s legacy with revealing lyricism and blockbuster streams, follow-up LP Fighting Demons offers 55 more minutes of raw emotion and guest stars paying homage to a singular artist gone too soon. As with Legends Never Die, some of the posthumous team-ups, like “Feline” with Polo G and Trippie Redd, crackle, and some solo cuts like the pre-release single “Already Dead” are difficult to absorb; Juice’s voice remains vibrant throughout the project, another reminder of the enormity of his loss.

– I can’t seem to understand this NFT stuff for the life of me. But I know it’s a big deal right now. And big news this week was Bored Ape #9797 from the influential Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project dropped a music video on Friday (Dec. 10), becoming the first NFT to do so, and Billboard has the first look at the visual.

The video is for a song titled “Delist Your Ape (2DaMoon),” which features hip-hop artist Reo Cragun, who wrote the tune, and Clear Eyes (aka Jeremy Lloyd from electronic duo Marian Hill). In the animated visual created by Syft and Beverly Films, a bunch of Apes are aboard a yacht similar to the one teased by BAYC for its first annual ApeFest held Oct. 31-Nov. 6 in New York City. As the camera zooms in, #9797 — sometimes called “Jimbo” — begins to sing.

– Rick Ross released his new album, Richer Than I Ever Been. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel that Ross has carved out in the rap universe, instead letting him stay in his pocket and deliver more hits, from the opulent “Outlawz” with Jazmine Sullivan and 21 Savage to the chest-thumping title track.

– Burna Boy and Wizkid unveiled their latest collaboration, “B. d’Or,” on Tuesday (Dec. 14) via Atlantic Records.

– FKA Twigs and The Weeknd are gearing up to drop their meditative collaboration “Tears in the Club” on Thursday (Dec. 16). The song, due out at 7 p.m. ET, is the follow-up to FKA’s November team-up with Central Cee, “Measure of a Man.”

– New Pink Sweat$ feat. 6lack, “Midnight River”

– The official Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is set to be released on Jan. 28.

Filmmaker, director and producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson announced the news Thursday alongside documentary producers David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent and Joseph Patel as well as New York Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment and Mass Distraction Media.

The official soundtrack comes exactly one year after the Jan. 28, 2021, release of the captivating documentary.

 – RZA and Flatbush Zombies have released their new joint single “Plug Addicts,” as well as the track’s accompanying music video. 

– Earl Sweatshirt has announced his new project SICK!, out January 14th via Tan Cressida / Warner Records. As a preview, he shared a new single titled “Tabula Rasa” featuring New York City duo Armand Hammer.

EDM

– Zedd‘s arsenal of live artillery just got a little deeper, thanks to a remix of VALORANT‘s 2021 Champions theme, “Die For You.” 

– Martin Garrix, Matisse & Sadko, and John Martin hold the progressive house crown on ‘Won’t Let You Go’

– Vintage Culture, Leftwing Kody, and Anabel Englund unveil progressive house gem, ‘Coming Home’

– R3HAB and Lukas Graham fuse country folk with dance-pop on ‘Most People’

– After a nearly decade-spanning break, Junkie XL is back with a deep and pounding set of techno tracks that brings cinematic sense to the warehouse rave.

A Fluff Scam, as the EP is titled, is out Friday (Dec. 10) on Sasha’s LNOE label. It’s a dark and pulsing four-track collection that was inspired by Holkenborg’s work on the 2020 Netflix mystery series White Lines. The show takes place on the party island of Ibiza. Naturally, scoring the seedy underbelly of clubs got the Junkie XL juices flowing.

– “Metamora” is a joint outing that Apollo Xo makes in tandem with Tanner Dixon. It’s Apollo Xo’s eighth single of 2021 and evidently, in the context of his repertoire, one collaboration begets another, what with “Metamora” succeeding his team up with Rich Furniss in late October, “I’ll Be There.”

– Within his solo work, Tom Morello continues to Rage Against the Machine. Of late, though, he can be found blending his wailing electric expertise with Dr. Fresch‘s electronic acumen on “I Have Seen the Way” with Alex Lifeson, and Kirk Hammet.

– Krewella return to the scene on ‘Never Been Hurt’ feat. BEAUZ

– Jayceeoh set to ‘Bubble Up’ on his latest Deadbeats release

COUNTRY

– Milwaukee’s Summerfest is already heating up, with the announcement that Jason Aldean is set to headline the festival’s opening night on June 23, 2022, at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater. Also joining the June 23 lineup is “The Good Ones” hitmaker Gabby Barrett, who will open for Aldean.

 – Garth Brooks is headed back to Las Vegas next year with the launch of Garth Brooks: The ONE Man Show, an intimate set of two concerts slated to take place on Feb. 4 and 5 at Dolby Live at Park MGM.

“I look forward to celebrating my birthday early that weekend in Vegas. Getting to sing and hear everybody singing is my favorite thing,” Brooks said via a press release. The singer will turn 60 years old on Feb. 7, 2022.

– New Trace Adkins, “A Country Boy Can Survive”

– New Blake Shelton feat. HARDY, “Fire Up The Night”

– New Old Crow Medicine Show, “Paint This Town”

– New Warren Zeiders, “Outskirts of Heaven”

– New Jay Allen,  “Whiskey Prayer”

– New Chris Lane, “Stop Coming Over”