“This album is classic Blondie — an amalgamation of all our different influences and eras into something new,” Debbie Harry said

After nine years, Blondie have returned with their first collection of new music. Their album, High Noon, will be unveiled on Feb. 26, and the LP’s first single, “Spectral Eyes,” is out now.

The upcoming LP marks the final recording of Blondie co-founding drummer Clem Burke, who died in April 2025 at the age of 70. The Hall of Fame musician was the backbone of Blondie’s smash hits and kinetic live performances.

“This album is classic Blondie — an amalgamation of all our different influences and eras into something new,” frontwoman Debbie Harry said in a statement. “This music feels grounded in the present, shaped by who we are and how we’re living now.”

The band describes High Noon as “a broad mix of sounds, ideas and collaborators” where “rock and roll and punk sit alongside dance music and Latin rhythms.” The new project features contributions from Johnny Marr, Glen Matlock, Zach Condon of Beirut, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius and others. The album’s lead single, “Spectral Eyes,” was written by Marr, who also contributes guitar to the track.

Blondie began sessions for the LP in 2022 and recorded in New York City with producer John Congleton, who collaborated with the band on 2017’s Pollinator. David Wrench later joined for additional production and mixing on the new album.

High Noon spans 13 tracks and includes “Heartbreak Kid,” written by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein; “Sleepwalking,” penned by Matlock; and “Man Who Had No Face,” co-written by Stein and Harry. The band also revisits “Little Metal Drummer,” which was originally recorded by Blondie co-founding keyboardist Jimmy Destri for his solo debut, Heart On A Wall. Both Harry and Burke performed on the 1981 original recording.

When remarking on their return, Stein said, “It’s been a long, strange ride, and somehow here we are with another Blondie album.” He added, “I’m not sure what the fuck I’m supposed to say at this point, except that we’re incredibly grateful for all your support over the years.”

High Noon Track List1. “Spectral Eyes”2. “Heartbreak Kid”3. “Come Back Home”4. “Tambo Tambo”5. “Man Who Had No Face”6. “The End”7. “Little Metal Drummer”8. “Sleepwalking”9. “Whistle Into The Wind”10. “Antifreeze”11. “East of Eden”12. “Bad Underwear”13. “Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time”

Joni Mitchell at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February

Sixty-four years after she first arrived in the United States, Joni Mitchell has officially become a U.S. citizen.

Mitchell shared the news via Instagram, holding an American flag. She also posted a video of her receiving official documentation, paired with the caption “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

The news arrives six years after Mitchell’s longtime Canadian pal Neil Young obtained his U.S. citizenship (his process was delayed because of the “good moral character” provision on the immigrant application, when he admitted to smoking weed).

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As Rolling Stone reported earlier this year, Cameron Crowe’s upcoming Mitchell biopic will star Meryl Streep as an older version of Joni. “It’s a movie that will be not from a distance,” Crowe said of the project. “This is from her perspective, her life, looking out.”

Last spring, Mitchell was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Juno Awards, where she appeared onstage and performed alongside Sarah McLachlan and Allison Russell. “I had a [brain] aneurysm, which changed my life — oddly, for the better,” she said during her acceptance speech. “I went into a coma, which helped me to quit smoking. And my house filled up with the most wonderful nurses. I was on the road with men for years and years; now I live with a house full of women. So my life has changed for the better, out of a catastrophe, like a phoenix who grows a better life.”Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of Mitchell’s landmark album Hejira, which appears on Rolling Stone’s new list of the 76 Best Albums of 1976.

Kelly Clarkson

Kelly Clarkson vs. Art of Play has continued to escalate since the singer and TV host called out the Brooklyn shop for treating her like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman. On Saturday, the singer shared that she had visited the store and was looked down on by an employee.

“Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me,” she wrote on X.

Art of Play explained that Clarkson had wanted to purchase Molly, an animatronic singing bird, that wasn’t for sale. Online photos later confirmed the sculpture had a price tag of $15,000. Clarkson responded by saying “you’re not only rude, you’re also a liar.” The shop claimed to have reached out to clear the air, however that air does not seem to be getting any clearer.

The owners of Art of Play have been speaking to the press about the incident, noting that Clarkson’s posts have resulted in substantial trolling for the shop. Adam Rubin, one of the co-owners, told USA Today that the store’s phone and emails have been flooded with threatening messages. He added that Molly is now available for sale at the price of $15 million.

“We are afraid for the safety of our shopkeepers,” Rubin said. “Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger.”

He also alleged that the singer scolded one of the employees on her way out. “Nothing happened in this shop to justify her scolding our shopkeeper on the way out, but I could let that go. Everybody has a bad day,” Rubin said. “But things changed when she used her platform to attack us. It’s asymmetrical social warfare.”

On Tuesday, journalist Pablo Torre shared footage of Clarkson visiting Art of Play. The clip does not contain audio, does show her observing Molly and speaking to an employee. Clarkson can be seen pulling out her phone as she exits the store. According to the footage, Clarkson tweeted only 15 minutes after leaving.

Rubin said Clarkson was in the store for “less than five minutes.” “If this tweetstorm had not happened, we wouldn’t have realized there was a negative interaction in the shop; it was that undramatic,” he said. “We treated her like a normal person, but apparently that didn’t live up to her expectations.”

He added, “I want to be very clear about this. Nobody who has ever visited this store in person is taking Kelly Clarkson’s side.”

Clarkson has yet to respond.

Duane Davis in Las Vegas on Aug. 31

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former Compton gang leader convicted of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur amid escalating East Coast-West Coast rap rivalries, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison, capping a notorious cold-case homicide probe after three decades of uncertainty.

Nevada District Court Judge Carli Kierny sentenced Davis, 63, after a Las Vegas jury needed only three hours to unanimously convict him of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon on Aug. 31. During the two-week trial, Clark County prosecutors presented evidence that Davis orchestrated the deadly drive-by shooting by obtaining the gun, passing it to the back seat of a car, and giving his nephew the green light to open fire on the hip-hop legend.

Given an opportunity to address the court before his sentencing, Davis was unrepentant. “I just want my stuff back that they took out of my house, all them pictures,” he said, referring to photographs seized during a search. Asked by the judge if he had anything else to say before hearing his fate, Davis replied, “No, I’m good. I’m going to appeal this case, for sure,” according to a livestream of the proceeding from the Associated Press.

Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, called her brother her protector and the “promise of all our grandparents” in an emotional victim impact statement. In a soft voice as she held back tears, she said her brother was “born an icon.”

“He had so much promise [and] intentions for a better world for our people. He had plans, he had manifestos,” she said. “We lost something. Our whole generation lost something huge.… I do believe when you take a life like that, you do deserve every minute of the maximum amount of punishment to sit down and contemplate what you’ve done to this world, not just to me.”

When it was time to give her sentence, Kierny rebuked Davis for publicly acknowledging his involvement in Shakur’s murder in a BET interview and in his memoir, only to argue that he has since abandoned gang life, become a grandfather, and deserves to live out his remaining years in peace.

“I’m here to tell you that’s not how this works,” the judge said. “You don’t get to take a man from his family. You don’t get to take his very life, his whole future from him, and just walk away from it, especially when that man is Tupac Shakur. The world never forgot about him and his death, and neither did Las Vegas. It took us 30 years, but at this time, you are going to face justice for what you did on Sept. 7, 1996.”

Davis has maintained his innocence but did not testify in his own defense. His lawyer argued investigators failed to prove Davis was even in Las Vegas when the “California Love” rapper was shot on Sept. 7, 1996. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said Davis orchestrated the shooting as retaliation for an attack on his nephew, Orlando Anderson, at the MGM Grand casino hours earlier.

Surveillance footage showed Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, and others beating Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips, after a Mike Tyson fight. Prosecutors said the confrontation grew out of a longstanding feud between the Crips and the rival Mob Piru Bloods, a gang with ties to Death Row.

A key piece of evidence was a recorded 2008 interview in which Davis told Los Angeles detectives who were working with a federal task force that he had been riding in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac that pulled alongside the BMW carrying Shakur and Knight near the Las Vegas Strip. Davis said he handed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to Deandrae “Big Dre” Smith in the back seat, but Smith hesitated, allowing Anderson to grab the gun and open fire. “He leaned over on the window. He rolled down the window, popped ’em,” Davis said in the recording played for jurors. “If they drove on my side, I would have popped ’em.”

Knight was wounded but survived. Shakur, struck multiple times, died six days later in a hospital at age 25. Anderson denied involvement before he was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998. Smith died of natural causes in 2004, and the alleged driver of the Cadillac, Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown, died in a shooting at a Compton marijuana dispensary in 2015.

Davis sat for the secret police interview in 2008 while he was seeking leniency in an unrelated narcotics investigation. Prosecutors said he later forfeited the protections of his cooperation agreement when he publicly repeated the story in interviews and in his memoir, Compton Street Legend. Davis was arrested in September 2023 and has remained in custody.

Defense lawyer Michael Sanft argued that Davis fabricated the account he told police to avoid drug charges and later embellished it for profit. He pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various retellings and discrepancies with witness testimony, arguing that investigators failed to corroborate key details. “We can’t put Orlando in the car. We can’t even put Davis in Las Vegas,” Sanft told jurors.

Prosecutors countered that Davis had repeatedly implicated himself in extraordinary detail. Former Los Angeles police Detective Daryn Dupree testified that Davis first volunteered his involvement while being questioned about the 1997 killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G. Asked about that case, Davis denied involvement but told detectives, “We did the other one,” Dupree said on the witness stand.

In his closing rebuttal, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said the 2008 proffer agreement was beyond the control of Las Vegas authorities, and Davis benefited from it for years. He claimed Davis eventually went public with his own account because he was angry when Los Angeles Police Detective Greg Kading wrote his own book about the case. The long delay before Davis was charged did not mean Las Vegas investigators doubted his culpability, DiGiacomo said.

“We had to eat crow and allow a murderer to live in Henderson and not charge him because of the various things that happened in this case,” DiGiacomo said. He closed by pointing to a social media clip in which Davis boasted that he had “beat the streets,” “beat the feds,” and “beat cancer.”

“And now he’s trying to beat 12 of you,” DiGiacomo told the jury.

After hearing the guilty verdict, Davis vowed to pursue an appeal. The judge ordered him held without bail. In a jailhouse interview with reporter Jeff Weiss a few days later, Davis said, “Shit, I ain’t worried. I’m getting out on an appeal. They violated my civil rights.”

The Backstreet Boys are extending their Toronto takeover into March 2027, with the group adding a 12th date at Rogers Centre and declaring it the final show of their Canadian residency.

The new concert will take place March 7, following two additional dates announced over the weekend for March 5 and 6. The group’s Into the Millennium – Homecoming: Live in Canada residency was originally scheduled for four February shows before demand prompted a string of additions.

“Well, it truly is a Canadian Thanksgiving!” the group wrote on social media. “We never thought you guys would be this excited, but here we are rounding out four weekends of shows in Toronto in Feb and March!”

The residency now spans Feb. 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26 and 27, followed by the three March dates. The concerts will mark the Backstreet Boys’ first Canadian performances since 2022 and are reportedly their only North American shows on the schedule.

The group has already set a new Rogers Centre record with its original nine dates, surpassing the six-show stadium runs mounted by Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour and The Weeknd on his After Hours Til Dawn tour. The Toronto engagement also follows the Backstreet Boys’ successful five-show run at the Sphere in Las Vegas. The group is currently performing a 10-show stadium residency in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Tickets for the March 7 concert go on general sale Oct. 14 at 10 a.m. local time, following presales beginning Tuesday. Tickets for the other 11 dates are already on sale.

Last summer, Ozzy Osbourne played his final concert, a supersized stadium show to 44,000 fans in his hometown of Birmingham, England with a stacked lineup that rivaled only his own Ozzfest festivals. Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Mastodon, and supergroups arranged by Tom Morello that included Steven Tyler, Sammy Hagar, and estranged members of Osbourne’s solo bands performed his hits.

The 10-hour event, dubbed Back to the Beginning, ended with Osbourne singing a handful of his solo hits and a reunion of Osbourne with Black Sabbath’s founding members. It made for an emotional and stunning farewell for the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, who had been suffering from multiple health setbacks and died 17 days later.

The event was livestreamed and proceeds from ticket sales to the concert and stream went to charity. Now footage from the concert is coming out as the two-and-a-half–hour Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back to the Beginning concert film featuring performances by every artist who performed that day. Osbourne’s family is hosting a “purple carpet” world premiere of the film at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre on Wednesday. (Half of the proceeds from ticket sales to the premiere will benefit homeless charities.) The film will then open in movie theaters around the world on Oct. 28.

Osbourne’s wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, has spent the last year grieving the loss of her best friend. “It’s been very, very tough,” she tells Rolling Stone. “But you know what? I had 46 years of marriage with an amazing guy, so I was blessed.”

She has yet to watch the two documentaries she and Ozzy participated in, in the months prior to his death: Paramount+’s Ozzy: No Escape from Now and the BBC’s Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home. “I can’t,” she says, “I’m just not ready mentally.” But she has watched Back to the Beginning, which filmmaker Ben Wainwright-Pearce (Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour) directed and mixed in 5.1 surround sound.

In a rare interview about Ozzy ahead of the film’s release, Sharon tells Rolling Stone how Ozzy saw the whole day as a great achievement. “It’s just something that will stand the test of time,” she says. “It was groundbreaking for what it was. Like everything with Ozzy, he’s the first.”

How have you been holding up in the past year?It’s been very, very tough. It’s something in life that everyone has to go through, grief, but I’ve had a lot of other things going on — not just grief — but things that have come out about bad advice being handled by people that were not what I thought. It’s amazing that when somebody passes, you see all the bad things that were going on around that person. I’m in a lot of litigation right now with a lot of businesspeople, and it’s just ugly. Ugly.

This film has been in the works for months. How has the process been for you?It was very hard to watch a lot of this film. I had to, but it was very, very hard.

It’s bittersweet. It’s amazing. Everything about the show was amazing and just a joyous occasion and one that will go down in music history. I’m proud of that and that it was for my husband, and I’m so thankful to everyone that took part in it, for their time, their effort, their giving.

The most precious thing we all have is time, and I keep telling my children this. For people to give up days of their lives for us for free, for charity is an amazing thing. Then to see where that money went and what it meant to so many different people, it’s all just overwhelming, but in a great, positive way.

What did it take to get Ozzy to that show?He was in hospital in America before he left. We moved back to England, and we had a whole new team of doctors. His new doctors didn’t want to take doctor’s notes from America. They wanted to make their own assessment on him. He was in hospital for a week in England.

After he came out of hospital, they asked for a meeting, and they came to our house. We had six different doctors and, like, a quarterback, because there were all of these specialists for the heart, for Parkinson’s, for his lungs, because of all the different things that were wrong with him.

They advised us not to do the show. They said it would kill him. We were all together and Ozzy said, “It’s not an option. It’s what I want.” He said, “I know I’m dying. If I miss a few months of my life, I want to go this way. This is what I want.” It was his wishes and we went through it. He said to me, “Another six months, what’s it going to do for me?”

For him to make that decision and perform must have been emotional.He was very, very emotional. But you know what? It was beautiful too. It was amazing. How lucky was he to go out that way? I say he went out like a Viking. It was the way he wanted.

Ozzy always used to say, “I’m one lucky motherfucker. Who else has had my life? I got everything I dreamed about.” He had no regrets about anything. He knew what his destiny was. He chose it.

He sounded good at the concert, too.We’re talking about a guy that had hardly any lungs left. He had emphysema. I don’t know how he did it. But he did it, and it’s what he wanted.

And in that way it’s glorious. It’s not sad. If we all have a chance to pick the way we go out … Do you know what I’m saying? It was a triumph to be surrounded by your friends, your family, your fans that adore you and what you are doing that day. It’s just amazing. It’s not sad. He was blessed to be able to choose the way you die.

What was Ozzy doing in the hours before his performance?He was in his dressing room the whole day watching everybody on the screens in his dressing room, and he just was like a fan. He was a fan of everybody that was there onstage. He was like, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe they’ve just done that number and this and that,” commenting the whole way. He saw everybody. He was just elated with it.

What struck you about the performances when you watched it all again?The love and the respect that was there. It was old friends seeing other friends. It was just amazing for everyone that was there, for all the guys, and everyone. It was just a great day.

Well, it was more than a great day; basically, it was Ozzy’s goodbye, and he knew it was his goodbye. My kids didn’t know. We didn’t tell the children. We didn’t tell anyone. But we knew what was going on. Sabbath didn’t know, nothing. But again, it’s not sad. Look at him, a Viking to the end.

What did it mean to him for that final performance to be with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward — the original Black Sabbath bandmates?It had to end with Black Sabbath. That’s where it had begun. He desperately, desperately wanted to play with Bill. No matter what had gone on with Bill, there was never a week that Ozzy didn’t speak to him.

I think Ozzy was the one that spoke to everyone, because I know Geezer doesn’t like talking on the phone too much, and Tony likes his privacy, and so Ozzy really was the one that spoke to everyone. I’m not saying this to sound bad, it’s just that they’re not the guys that check in weekly with each other. There’s a love, there’s always that invisible thread that holds them all together, but Ozzy was the chatty one.

There was a handful of guys that he would talk to regularly … Jonathan [Davis] from Korn and Slash and Zakk [Wylde], absolutely weekly, always. Tony, too. He would text Tony all the time. They would send each other silly things from online shit, and they’d giggle about it.

Watching Black Sabbath’s set that day, you could see the camaraderie between the four of them.They don’t need to say anything to each other. They just look at each other and know.

What did he say after he performed?He just kept saying, “I did it. I did it.” The next 17 days, he was so, so happy. He was just elated. He just couldn’t believe how everybody turned out for him. It was glorious to see how happy he was, because he’d been so depressed, so down. Last night, I read a letter from a fan who was at the show, and this fan said, “I saw a young man trapped in an old man’s body.” That’s so true.

How did you feel when you saw the final cut, in 5.1 surround sound?I was in awe of it all. In awe. Did it really happen? Am I going to fucking wake up in a minute? It was so immense, the whole thing. But as I keep saying, gloriously so.

I feel that I never, ever thank these guys enough for making it a reality: Every single person, every crew member, the caterers, the crew, the truck drivers, everybody was just fucking awesome. The musicians, come on, look who was there: Sammy Hagar, Steven Tyler, just the greatest guys that are good, good guys, everyone. It was great to see [former Ozzy band members] Jake E. Lee, Rudy [Sarzo]. It was just unbelievable.

How involved were you in which performances made the cut?Everybody that performed is seen on the film. Everybody. It’s so hard to say, “I’m not going to put them in and them in.” No, because every single person helped make money for charity that day and was there out of love for my husband and Sabbath. So no, I couldn’t do that. But of course, we couldn’t show the whole day [since] it’s 10 hours.

Which tribute performances impressed you?Oh my God, there so many great, great performances. It was just overwhelming. Even down to when the drummers were up there, Travis [Barker] and Chad [Smith] and Danny [Carey]. Everything was just great that day. Without Tom Morello, without [Live Nation promoter] Andy Copping, it would never have happened.

Tom Morello was an absolute saint and he is incredible. His sense of music and of what’s right and what’s not right, he’s just an incredible person. He needs a sainthood. He is the saint of metal. He’s so wise and knows what he’s talking about on so many different levels.

Andy Copping, who has been in our lives forever too, from Live Nation, he is just an incredible music man. There’s not one band on that show that wasn’t a friend of Andy’s. Even though he works for Live Nation, a huge corporation, everybody adores Andy Copping. He’s one of the most famous promoters in the world. He’s just the best.

They put together a great lineup. I was impressed with each new band added.We really, really wanted Megadeth. There was no time, we couldn’t fit everybody in on one day. There were so many bands that were due to play that we just couldn’t because there was not enough time.

The artists who did perform seem almost like a “This is your life” moment for Ozzy.Exactly, and it was for a great cause.

When you watched the film, did it feel like Ozzy was still with you?He ain’t left me for a minute. I go to sleep wearing his T-shirts. I wake up wearing his glasses. I’m surrounded by him always. That’s why there’s nothing to be sad. I was blessed to have him in my life, and nothing is forever. It’ll be my time soon, and it’s the circle. That’s what happens with everyone. It was just my time to lose the love of my life, but you go on.

But look at what I had, what I still have. Look at what he left everyone, a great body of work, that fucking smile of his. I always say you didn’t have to like Ozzy’s music to like Ozzy. You just liked him. Look at the amount of musicians that he has worked with; there’s three guys that never liked him, and that’s a fucking great record to have. When you think of everybody’s life who he touched as a musician, and only three of them didn’t like him, it’s like, fucking hell, when I go, there’s going to be fucking thousands. But three guys? I can fucking live with that.

What would Ozzy say if he saw this film?He would say, “How lucky am I?” He goes, “I’m one lucky son of a bitch.” And he knew it. He never took anything for granted, ever.

He’d say, “Look at me. Look at my life. Look at my family that I have, my friends that I have, my fans. I have nothing to complain about. Not one fucking thing.” Even when he was in agony with his health, his last six years, there was so much pain in his body. He suffered greatly. But he was still like, “Hey, I can’t fucking complain. This is it.”

I said to him, “If you could do it all again, if you could have not done the drugs and the drink, would you?” He goes, “Fuck it. I loved it.”