Trendy Artists of the Week: Toto, Tom Odell, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Bring Me The Horizon, Yungblud, Calcutta

Steve Lukather Reveals Toto Members “Never Had High Hopes” For Their Classic Hit “Africa”

Lead guitarist for the legendary rock band Toto Steve Lukather has recently sat down with YouTuber and author Vicki Abelson. In the over an hour long interview, Lukather revealed to the audience that the band members did not expect much from their 1982 single "Africa", despite it eventually topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart a little after its release, and still enjoying considerable attention as a part of modern internet culture. Its music video has nearly 1 billion views on YouTube by now. Lukather had this to say about the unexpected success of their song:

"I didn't get it. I love the track... I mean, it's a quirky little song we buried at the end of the album, we never thought much of it. And then it became a hit in 1983. Like, 'How the f*ck did that happen?'”.

Toto celebrated their 45th anniversary last year. Impressively, the band reunited in 2020 and has been regularly doing live shows across the world since.

Tom Odell Cancels Limerick Tour Date

Sometimes success does come with disappointments: British indie pop singer Tom Odell was scheduled to do a live show in Limerick, Ireland on June 2nd next year. However, a better opportunity came along for him, so he instead opted to perform at a bigger venue in Ireland on that date, the 3Arena in the capital city of Dublin, letting down his local fans. His fans in Dublin can only hope an even bigger venue doesn’t come calling Odell until then.

President Biden Confuses Taylor Swift With Britney Spears

Incumbent US President Joe Biden is the oldest man to ever serve in the office - and he tends to show that with his frequent misspeaking and public confusion. His latest gaffe has something to do with the music industry, however, which is why we included in the list. While partaking in the jovial tradition of pardoning a turkey on Thanksgiving, he tried to make a joke that the turkeys had harder times getting a pardon than getting tickets to Beyoncé’s record breaking, recently concluded Renaissance World Tour (so far so good), or, as he said, “Britney’s tour, she’s down… it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now”.

The first problem with that is that it doesn't really make sense. However, once we decipher what President Biden was trying to say, we find out that he wanted to reference the Eras Tour by Taylor Swift, currently on the road in South America, not Britney Spears…

Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes Featured in Yungblud Music Video

Yungblud has just released the music video for his recent single “Happier”, and it features none other than Bring Me The Horizon lead singer Oly Sykes. BMTH and Yungblud have collaborated in the past, on the British rock band’s 2020 single “Obey”.

Calcutta Puts Out Brand New Album “Relax”

Italian pop star Calcutta, perhaps best known for his 2018 hit “Paracetamolo”, has just put out a brand new studio album, the fourth one in his discography. Keeping with the tradition he started with his sophomore record, he gave this one a one-word English title as well: after 2015’s “Mainstream”, and 2018’s “Evergreen”, “Relax” came out in October 2023. And it found quite some success, topping the album charts in Italy.