Music News

Charli XCX could sleep in a bin.
The 'Boom Clap' singer insists she isn't a diva and takes a relaxed approach to life in the road.
She said: "On my last tour I took my childhood best friend and I hired another of my best friends as my assistant. I enjoy touring. I'm the opposite of a diva.
"Would I sleep in a bin? As long as I've had some champagne, then probably, yeah."
The 22-year-old singer also admitted she isn't worried about what she eats and regularly indulges in her favourite calorific foods.
She said: "I love fried chicken. In America I eat fried chicken once a week. I'm not a salads kind of girl. My comfort food is pizza in bed."
While Charli still has a number of professional goals to achieve, she thinks her success so far has given her the right to relax a little.
She told Miss Vogue magazine: "I think I've learned over the last year how to chill out.
"Once you've achieved a few of your goals you feel like you deserve a break. Although I feel like I'm never going to be satisfied."

Jessie Ware's new single stemmed from a song she "messed up".
The 30-year-old singer is preparing to release 'Champagne Kisses' and though she thinks the song is one of the "best" she has recorded, she admits the catchy track wasn't meant to exist.
She said: "I went in [the studio] with another idea, which I messed up. Sometimes, the best stuff happens when you stop overthinking it."
Between her touring commitments, Jessie - who married long-term boyfriend Sam Burrows last August - is starting work on her third album but suggested it may not be as melancholic as her previous two records.
She added to Grazia magazine: "I don't know if I'm going to go full-on Pharrell 'Happy' but I'll have to dig quite deep for those fraught moments because everything is quite nice right now."
The 'Say You Love Me' singer worked with Ed Sheeran for a track on her last album 'Tough Love' and previously admitted she found it "scary" teaming up with the 'Thinking Out Loud' hitmaker.
She said: "I took more risks [on this album] and it was scary.
"Working with Ed Sheeran on the track 'Say You Love Me' really pushed me vocally as he can do loads of things with his voice. I'd be thinking, 'I'd better sing this well and not embarrass myself.'"

Diplo's music comes before his children.
The DJ only sees his sons Lockett, four, and four-month-old Lazer - both of who he has with ex-girlfriend Kathryn Lockhart - for an hour a day because he thinks he needs to make the most of his career while he is still successful and will spend quality time with the boys when they are older.
He said: "I only see them an hour a day - I'd love to be home a lot more often, but I don't see myself having successful records like this for many more years - I'm surprised I'm still popular!
"I should make money while I can. In 18 years my kids will be happy when I can afford to send them to college.
"I'm only on this earth to make music so I'm going to do that as long as I can. Then I will spend time with my children, not wondering what I could have done."
And Diplo - who previously dated Katy Perry and MIA - denied having anything to do with his kids' unusual names.
He told NME magazine: "That's their mom not me. I only chose their middle names."

Martin Kemp says cheese is behind Spandau Ballet's success.
The 53-year-old bassist has revealed having various types of the dairy product with them at all times on tour has become "the glue" that keeps the group - Martin, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman, John Keeble and Gary Kemp - together.
He said: "For the last 30 years our rider hasn't changed. The most important thing is the cheese board - we've got everything: blue cheese, soft cheese, cheddar.
"If we don't have that it's a disaster. That's the glue that keeps everything together."
Martin added that while they also include champagne in their rider he rarely drinks as it leaves him feeling too tired to perform.
He explained: "It's early starts. You can't do the show on a hangover."
The 'True' hitmaker - who is currently touring the UK with the group and is set to fly to Germany for the next leg - prefers to up his vitamin intake instead and always makes sure he hits the gym to keep fit.
He explained to the Daily Mirror newspaper: "We've got vitamin boosters and powder that they always leave out for us. I'm a bit of a gym lover. You've got to keep fit."
The band previously split in 1990 over a royalty disagreement but reunited nearly 20 years later in 2009.

Sam Smith is penning the follow-up to his debut album 'In The Lonely Hour' in Paris.
The 'Stay With Me' hitmaker has flown to the French capital, which is known as the City of Love, to write his second studio album following the success of his Grammy Award-winning first offering.
The 22-year-old singer - who wrote his first record after suffering heartbreak - told The Sun newspaper he is "completely over" his old crush and is now looking for some new inspiration.
Sam's bass player Brendan Grieve tweeted: "Another amazing writing session with @samsmithworld @itsreubenjames."
While Sam is dedicated to producing his second album, he also took some time out from working in the studio to enjoy the romance capital of the world and visited the iconic Eiffel Tower.
He wrote on Twitter: "Amazing hotel room. So happy right now."
Sam recently vowed not to "hide anything" and promised complete honesty on his new record.
The star told the crowd at his sold out concert at Brixton O2 Academy in London: "I had a very broad idea of things I needed to do to become well known. And I thought that if I lost loads of weight ... then people would listen, but the truth was people only started to properly listen to me when I started being myself. And the way for me to do that through music was to be honest. This album is my diary, I've hidden nothing from anyone and I won't hide anything from anyone on my future record, my future songs."

Charli XCX wrote a song about pleasuring herself to make "a feminist statement".
The 22-year-old singer wrote 'Body of My Own' for her second major label studio album, 'Sucker' - released earlier this year - and revealed she made the saucy song to help other young women feel comfortable with their bodies and sexuality.
She explained: "'Body of My Own' is about masturbation, but it's a feminist statement more than a song telling you to put your hand in your pants, because girls should own their own bodies. If they're going to be sexualised, they should sexualise themselves and not let someone else do it for them."
However, the 'Boom Clap' hitmaker believes because of her unusual sources of inspiration and quirky image, she isn't a real pop star, not least because she doesn't own a hairbrush to maintain sleek and silky locks like other female musicians.
She told The Times newspaper: "I feel like an outsider more than a pop star. Sometimes I feel good about it, sometimes I feel bad, but I never feel like one of the pop gang. I don't say the right thing. I'm not always happy. I don't always brush my hair. I don't even own a hairbrush."

The Rolling Stones are considering performing 'Sticky Fingers' in full on tour.
The iconic rockers will head out on a 15-date North American tour in May and are thinking about treating fans to the entirety of the celebrated 1971 album, which features tracks including 'Brown Sugar' and 'Wild Horses', at the shows.
Speaking about the prospect, frontman Sir Mick Jagger said: "We're floating the idea of playing the whole album.
"At the very least, we'll play the songs we don't normally play."
Popular singles from the record - which will be reissued in Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions in May - are regular set highlights for the group, although the band haven't played 'You Gotta Move' live since 1976, while 'Sister Morphine', 'I Got The Blues' and 'Moonlight Mile' have not been performed since the 1990s.
However, the 71-year-old musician is unsure whether it is a good idea as he doesn't want the stadiums filled with fans to get bored by their slower songs.
He told Rolling Stone magazine: "It's a really great album, but it has a lot of slow songs. Normally in a show we'd just do one or two ballads. 'Sticky Fingers' has about five slow songs. I'm just worried that it might be problematic in stadiums. Maybe we'd play it and everyone would say, 'Great,' but maybe they'll get restless and start going to get drinks."
The group - which also features Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts - will kick off their 'ZIP CODE Tour' in San Diego before ending in Quebec in July.

Charli XCX claims 'I Love It' made her life "awful".
The 'Doing It' hitmaker penned the chart-topping Icona Pop single back in 2011 but admitted she felt like it haunted her after it was released, because she thought it was "s**t".
She recalled: "I wrote 'I Love It' in a hotel room in half an hour.
"The next day I gave it to my producer and told him I thought it was s**t, so he sent it to the girls in Icona Pop and a week later they recorded it. That's what made the next year so awful."
The 22-year-old singer released her debut major label album 'True Romance' in 2013 when 'I Love It' topped the UK singles charts, and quickly became fed up with praise for the track because she thought the songs she had included on her record were much better, but weren't appreciated.
She continued: "I made what I thought was a genius pop album and all anyone wanted to talk about was 'I Love It'. I was so bummed out that I decided I hated pop music."
And as a result of the song's success, she jetted off to Los Angeles to work with acclaimed pop producer Dr Luke in an attempt to create a similar hit, but hated the experience because she said it felt too manufactured.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, she added: "After the success of 'I Love It' I was inundated with offers to write 'I Love It' mark II. That led to me going to Dr Luke's house in Los Angeles at 2am, writing in a basement and trying to make a hit. There was a bad vibe, partly because I got pulled into this competitive mentality."

AWOLNATION's Aaron Bruno goes to Steve Perry for advice.
The 36-year-old frontman revealed he has become pals with the Journey icon since rising to prominence as part of the electronic rock group, and also counts Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo as a professional acquaintance.
Speaking to Yahoo about Steve, he said: "He's just this beautiful human being that is still an amazing, caring musical mind, and to have him in my corner and care is incredible. And he's great to go to for advice. I've become acquaintances with Rivers Cuomo and I love Weezer so much, so that's really incredible to me as well. I guess to have these people that I looked up to as a kid just a phone number or text away is absolutely incredible, because I can ask them how they felt when they went through some of the trials and tribulations."
The rocker - who is in the group alongside Drew Stewart, Kenny Carkeet and Isaac Carpenter - performed at Camden's Electric Ballroom in London on Wednesday (01.04.15), where they played tracks from their 2011 debut, 'Megalithic Symphony', as well as new songs from their second album, 'Run', which they released last month.
Opening with their latest record's title track, the 14-song set raced through fan favourites including 'Not Your Fault' and 'Kill Your Heroes'.
After briefly exiting the central London stage, the four-piece group re-emerged for a four track encore, eventually ending with a powerful rendition of their international hit single, 'Sail'.
The band will kick off their tour of North America later this month.