Music News

One Direction, Pharrell Williams, Stevie Wonder, Sir Elton John and Chris Martin are among the stars to have joined forces to cover 'God Only Knows'.
The 27-member supergroup - which also includes Kylie Minogue, Dave Grohl, Florence Welch, Lorde, Brian May, Emeli Sande, Sam Smith and Jake Bugg - have recorded a version of the Beach Boys' classic hit under the name The Impossible Orchestra to launch the new BBC Music season and the song was played simultaneously across the network's TV, radio and online channels at 8pm last night (07.10.14) and is now available to buy, with proceeds going to BBC Children in Need.
Also featured on the track are Paloma Faith, Chrissie Hynde, Jamie Cullum, Eliza Carthy, Baaba Maal, classical musicians Alison Balsom, Martin James Bartlett, Danielle de Niese and Nicola Benedetti and BBC presenters Zane Lowe, Lauren Laverne, Jools Holland and Gareth Malone, while the artists were backed by the Tees Valley Youth Choir and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was also involved in the record and feels "honoured and humbled" to have his song chosen.
He said: "I just feel so incredibly humbled that the BBC would choose 'God Only Knows' to promote their new music initiative. All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can't thank them enough.
"I'm just honoured that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I've ever written."

McBusted are to release a new album.
The supergroup - consisting of McFly members Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd and Busted's James Bourne and Matt Willis - have signed a deal with Island Records following a bidding war with Sony Music and fans are likely to hear the record very soon.
Tom said: "There was interest really early on but I don't think we wanted to jump the gun."
Matt added: "Island Records felt like the obvious choice. McFly and Busted both signed there as 16 year olds. It's our home."
Ahead of the album, the band will release debut single 'Air Guitar' on November 23 and they can't wait for people to hear the song.
Tom told The Sun newspaper: "When you decide first singles, opinions can be really divided -- this was the first time everyone was united."
Danny added: "We said we wouldn't release anything unless we were all equally excited. Now we want to let the world hear it."
Despite their excitement over the track, the group insist they aren't putting "pressure" on themselves for it to be a number one.
Harry said: "We're definitely not putting pressure on ourselves like that. Once a song's done it's out of your control. You don't know who's going to play it."

Mark Morrison's comeback song is a "proper grime tune".
The 42-year-old rapper is relaunching his music career with new track '2Morrow', which also features Erene, Devlin & Crooked I.
Devlin was thrilled when Mark contacted him and asked him to be on the song and believes grime fans will love the track.
He told BANG Showbiz: "Mark's a good geezer, he reached out to me and put me on the track. It was really good to get on the song with him, if we can do it I'd love to perform it live with him. I'm looking forward to people hearing '2Morrow', it's a proper grime tune."
Devlin was a massive fan of Mark's biggest hit 'Return of the Mack' and thinks the song's everlasting popularity is proof of Mark's massive influence on British rap music.
'Watchtower' rapper Devlin said: "He left his mark on the scene without a doubt and now he's back. With 'Return of the Mack', look, any track you have that becomes that big is a great thing. There are kids now that know that song, they would have heard it at parties, maybe even weddings and they like it. It was, and still is, a brilliant song. I love it. Before Mark there weren't many successful British rappers."
Mark Morrison's song '2Morrow', is out now.

Jay Z and Beyonce are set to go into the recording studio to make a top secret album together.
The married couple, whose relationship has been the source of much speculation in recent months, recently finished their 'On The Run' tour and have already started working on new material, which they hope to release as a surprise album either later this year or in early 2015.
A source told the New York Post's Page Six column that they aspire to repeat the success of Beyonce's last album, which was released in December and was a commercial success, despite the lack of promotion and marketing.
The album, entitled 'Beyonce', featured a number of hit singles, including 'Drunk In Love' and 'XO', while its unusual release strategy has seen it become the focus of a study by the Harvard Business School.
It's been speculated the new album will be accompanied by a number of music videos and possibly even a movie.
Meanwhile, there have also been suggestions the couple will soon move to Paris, where they finished their 'On The Run' tour.
Jay, 44, and his 33-year-old wife have been spending plenty of time in the French capital of late, and the rapper has said it's special to them both because "we got engaged here and this is where baby Blue was conceived".

Catfish and the Bottlemen are "more excited" about having one of their songs on a computer game than a successful album.
The Welsh rockers admitted it was a dream come true when they were asked if they wanted their new single 'Cocoon' to be on the soundtrack of new football video game 'FIFA 15' after a year of trying to get the tune on the title.
Speaking at the 'FIFA 15' soundtrack event, lead singer Van McCann exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "The first thing I used say to someone is, 'Do you know anyone who works in FIFA?' It's been a year's worth of trying to get it on the game.
"I'm more excited about this than I am the album, it's our dream. It's mesmerising.
"Every minute off we get on the road we play FIFA at every opportunity."
As well as Van's persistence, the group - who are also made up of Johnny 'Bondy' Bond, Benji Blakeway and Bob Hall - also have their hardcore fan base to thank for making their dream come true as their supporters set up a Twitter campaign in an attempt to get their song on 'FIFA 15'.
Van added: "I tweeted FIFA messing about saying we love the game, you've got to get us on it.
"I used to say it at gigs and our fans started getting behind it and started getting a hashtag trending.
"FIFA got in touch with the management team and said they'd listened to the band and love us and they were going to put the song on the game."
Catfish and the Bottlemen's new single 'Cocoon' features on the soundtrack of EA SPORTS FIFA 15.
The demo is available to download NOW via XBox Live and PlayStation Network. The band's debut album, 'The Balcony', is available to download from iTunes.

The ceremony of the MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) will be held in Glasgow in November this year. The singer Katy Perry leads the nominations...

Paul Weller says giving up drinking as changed his life.
The former Jam rocker has admitted getting clean has greatly improved his well-being, and while he was "never" fat, he has noticed some weight loss since decided to ditch the booze in favour of a healthier lifestyle.
He told the Times Magazine: "I gave up drinking four years ago and loads of things have changed for me. My body f***ing changed completely.
"I was never, like, really, really fat. But I just dropped all the pudgy weight and puffiness I had from being on the p**s all the time. I'm still smoking loads, though."
The 56-year-old fashion and music icon has previously revealed plans to write his autobiography and wants to give his memoir a science fiction twist.
Speaking earlier this year, he said: "Yeah. But with a science-fiction theme to it. Set in space or something."
However, the 'Wake Up the Nation' singer may have a hard time completing his old stories thanks to a ritual of destroying all his notebooks after making a record.
He added: "I had this ritual, all my notebooks, after I finished a record, I'd either burn them or cut them into little pieces.
"My feelings were always get rid of it, burn it, move on. It's only recently that a mate of mine said, 'You should have kept all of them.' So I've started keeping them now."

One Direction have announced details of the first single from their new album 'FOUR'.
'Steal My Girl', which will premiere around the world on September 29, is set to be released in the UK on October 12.
What's more, it's also been confirmed that the eagerly-awaited new track will come with a remix created by band member Liam Payne.
The announcement comes shortly after One Direction gave away a free taster track entitled 'Fireproof', which broke the download record with 1,089,278 copies in just 24 hours.
Allied to this, 'FOUR' hit the number one spot on iTunes stores in 67 countries two months before its official release.
Last month, Simon Cowell said that the new One Direction album is "fantastic".
He observed that the band have at least six songs that could light up the charts on their fourth studio album.
He told Capital FM: "The album's fantastic. There's probably five or six tracks I've already heard that could be singles.
"There's some very different kinds of songs than what we've done before, they've taken a few more risks. Most importantly, the boys love writing, they love recording."

Nick Cave told Kylie Minogue to "sing less".
The Bad Seed rocker worked with the 'Sexercize' hitmaker in 1995 when they released their single 'Where The Wild Roses Grow' and despite landing a Top 20 hit together, he wasn't overly keen on her singing.
In Nick's new documentary, '20,000 Days on Earth', he tells Kylie: "Sing less and tell the story more."
In the music video for their duet, the Australian beauty plays Eliza Day who eventually gets beaten to death by Nick, but the 46-year-old pop star doesn't hold any grudges against her singing partner.
Reminiscing about their time together, Kylie is quoted by NME Magazine as saying: "When I first worked with Nick it was tender and genuine. And then I saw him perform and speed-read his biography, and I realised that the person I'm watching on stage singing, 'From Her To Eternity' is very different to my experience with him. OK, so he did kill me with a rock - but you know what I'm saying."