SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 | WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 49Katy Perry’s
Witness Tour kicks
off Sept. 19 with
opener Noah Cyrus;
Purity Ring and
Carly Rae Jepsen
later join the
“imaginative trip
from outer space to
inner space.”Post-prison,
Gucci Mane opens
up with album Mr.
Davis (Sept. 15),
The Autobiography
of Gucci Mane
(Sept. 19) and a BET
reality show with
fiancee Keyshia
Ka’oir (Oct. 17).Superstar lovebirds
Tim McGraw and Faith
Hill drop their much-
anticipated duets
album in November,
plus a Showtime
special (Nov. 17) for
their Soul2Soul World
Tour (ongoing through
Oct. 27).J.Lo’s October
all-Spanish album
leads fall’s
Latin pack,
including tours
from her executive
producer Marc
Anthony (pictured)
Ricardo Arjona and
Luis Fonsi.’Tis the season for
pop queens: Miley
Cyrus drops Younger
Now on Sept. 29, Demi
Lovato’s Tell Me
You Love Me arrives
Sept. 29 and Kelly
Clarkson’s Atlantic
Records debut appears
before the year’s end.As I entered Parsons Junior High
where the tough kids were, Paul Simon
became my one and only friend. We
saw each other’s uniqueness. We
smoked our first cigarettes. We had
retreated from all other kids. And we
laughed. I opened my school desk
one day in 1954 and saw a note from
Ira Green to a friend: “Listen
to the radio tonight, I have a
dedication to you.” I became
aware that Alan Freed had
taken this subversive music
from Cleveland to New York
City. He read dedications
from teenage lovers before
playing “Earth Angel,” “Sincerely.”
When he played Little Richard’s “Long
Tall Sally,” he left the studio mic open
enough to hear him pounding a stack
of telephone books to the backbeat.
This was no [1940s DJ] Martin Block.
Maybe I was in the land of payola,
of “back alley enterprise” and pill-
head disc jockeying, but what I felt
was that Alan Freed loved us kids to
dance, romance, and fall in love, and
the music would send us. It sent mefor life. It was rhythm and blues. It
was black. It was from New Orleans,
Chicago, Philadelphia. It was dirty
music (read “sexual”). One night Alan
Freed called it “rock’n’roll.” Hip was
born for me. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee
Lewis. Bobby Freeman asked, “Do
you wanna dance, squeeze and hug
me all through the night?”
and you knew she did.
I was captured. So was
Paul. We followed WINS
radio. Paul bought a guitar.
We used my father’s wire
tape recorder, then Paul’s
Webcor tape machine.
Holding rehearsals in our basements,
we were little perfectionists. We put
sound on sound (stacking two layers
of our singing). With the courage to
listen and cringe about how not right
it was yet, we began to record.
From What Is It All but Luminous:
Notes From an Underground Man
by Art Garfunkel. Copyright 2017 Art
Garfunkel. Excerpted by permission of
Art Garfunkel.“The world ain’t
going to fix itself,”
says Chuck D (left)
of Prophets of Rage,
the supergroup
(with members of
Public Enemy, Rage
Against the Machine
and Cypress Hill)
whose self-titled
debut is out Sept. 15.
With bandmate
Tom Morello, he
offers this path to
political action.09.
PROPHETS
OF RAGE ON
HOW TO
THIS FALL- ART GARFUNKEL DIGS DEEP
In an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir What Is It All but Luminous:
Notes From an Underground Man (Knopf, Sept. 26), the singer recalls
when he met Rhymin’ Simon — and they discovered rock’n’roll
13 14 15 16 17RAISE YOUR GLASS Five years after
The Truth About Love topped the
Billboard 200 and spawned three
top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits,
P!nk will release Beautiful Trauma
on Oct. 13. Since 2012, she has
collaborated with folk singer
Dallas Green on You+Me, duetted
with Kenny Chesney and had a second
child. POLITICAL POP Ed Sheeran’s
“Shape of You” co-writers Steve
Mac and Johnny McDaid worked on the
Max Martin-produced lead single
“What About Us,” which P!nk paired
with a resistance fist on Instagram
and called “the start of us waking
up.” With co-writers Greg Kurstin,
Shellback, Julia Michaels and Jack
Antonoff onboard, expect a slew of
empowering pop anthems. THE TRUTH
ABOUT P!NK... “Verse after verse
was incredible,” says busbee of a
piano ballad he wrote with P!nk.
“It was like throwing logs on that
creative spark.” —JOE LYNCH12.
WHAT WE KNOW
ABOUT P!NK11.
WHO WILL BREAK OUT?
“An artist’s story can
mean more than what’s picked
as a single. One listen to
Khalid’s lyrics and you feel
like you’re best friends. His
story is specific; it’s now.”
—Julie Pilat, global
operations manager, Beats 1GROOMING BY CHRISTINA GUERRA AT CELESTINE AGENCY. CHUCK D: MICHAEL TRAN/FILMMAGIC. MORELLO: ROB KIM/GETTY IMAGES. SIMON: JON LY
ONS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. PILAT: COURTESY OF JULIE PILAT. PERRY: JAMES GOURLEY/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. LOPEZ: GUSTAVO CABALLERO/GETTY IMA
GES.
ILLUSTR ATIONS BY PAUL TULLER. STREAMING ILLUSTR ATION BY DIEGO PATIÑO.“Homeland Security has
pretty much endorsed
fear to keep people
in one place,” says
Chuck D. “Get a damn
passport” and travel.“Garbage on the lawn
doesn’t walk itself to
the trash,” says Chuck
D. Organize with like-
minded people:
“You can think globally
but act locally.”
—REBECCA MILZOFFRead and watch the
opposition. “Don’t just
pick a news channel
that confirms your
prejudices,” says Morello,
a former senator’s aide.Simon (left) and
Garfunkel, circa
1966, when they
released their
second album.