As the band wings out a new Legendary Edition of its self-titled debut album, Joe Perry is hoping the train will still keep a-rollin’ for Aerosmith. He’s just not sure where it might lead.

“The band is still kind of definitely not in touring mode, but there are certainly other options, so we stay in touch,” the guitarist tells Billboard from his home in Florida, noting that he talks most with frontman Steven Tyler, “my brother from another mother,” with whom he remixed 1973’s Aerosmith album for the reissue. It was a vocal cord injury and a fractured larynx Tyler suffered just three shows during Aerosmith’s 2023 farewell run that led to its cancellation and the band’s announced retirement from touring.

Perry and Tyler have since recorded an Aerosmith EP with Yungblud — last November’s One More Time, which hit No. 9 on the Billboard 200  — while Tyler has made periodic singing appearances, including at the annual Grammy Awards benefits for his Janie’s Fund and at last summer’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert for Black Sabbath and the late Ozzy Osbourne. Perry, meanwhile, has been out with his Joe Perry Project and will make a summer swing in Europe with all-star Hollywood Vampires, while bassist Tom Hamilton has started another band, Close Enemies, which released its debut album last month.

“You just never know,” Perry says about future Aerosmith activities. “It’s just been in the last six months that Steven’s started to get comfortable with singing; he literally had to take a year off before he was able to start stretching his vocal cords, and you’re always worried about reinjuring it. I learned a long time ago that everything we do is fragile… so we just take it day by day. You hope for the best. You just have to have the confidence and have that vision of positive in front of you. You can’t do it unless you envision it.”

Getting Their Wings

Perry was happy to have a look in the rearview for Aerosmith (Legendary Edition), which came out March 20. He and Tyler oversaw a remix from the original tapes with project co-producers Zakk Cervini and Steve Berkowitz, creating a deluxe set that includes the original and remastered albums, plus a March 20, 1973 show at Boston’s Paul Mall that was broadcast on WBCN. A selection of outtakes that includes a pre-Get Your Wings rendition of the Yardbirds’ “Train Kept A Rollin’” and an instrumental “Joined At the Hip (Aerojam)” that features elements that would become part of “Sweet Emotion” two years later on Aerosmith’s third album, Toys in the Attic.

“I was like, ‘Do we need to do this?’,” Perry reveals, “because we’d put out remastered (versions of the album) before, and I never really noticed all that much difference. But this was different; going in and actually getting to listen to the multi-tracks… it was great to hear it on modern equipment. When everything was translated down to the vinyl (in 1973) it didn’t sound the same as when you’re standing in the room with the band. But these remixes sound like that to me. It’s the same record, the same performances, but it opens it up.”

Specifically, he adds, “We never liked the way the drums sounded on that first album. Now it’s like, ‘Holy shit, this is what it sounded like when we were first recording. So I think it’s definitely worth it. And the old one isn’t going anywhere. It’s still there.”

Perry says the immersion “brought back a lot of memories” to recording the Aerosmith album during October of 1972 with producer Adrian Barber at Intermedia studio in Boston. “We were trying to find our place… what our goals were, what our options were,” he recalls. “We were learning how to write together and play together. We were listening to all of the incredible second wave English bands; there wasn’t much going on in America at the time, for our ears. All the power was coming from the English bands, so we were drawing on that.

“Considering everything, I think that the record pretty much does what it’s supposed to do. I can remember putting the (headphones) on and listening to the first song, and I took ’em off and I shook my head. When you’re in the middle of it you do it piece-by-piece. Then when you start to hear it finished, it’s like…’Holy shit! I’m glad we did this.”

Aerosmith was, of course, the home of “Dream On,” which was released as a single in June of 1973 and reached No. 59 on the Billboard Hot 100, eventually growing into a rock radio staple that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018.

Not bad for a song that wasn’t Perry’s favorite at the time.

“If it didn’t rock out I didn’t have any use for it in general,” he confesses. “I always like the ‘Train Kept A-Rollin” and the upbeat, the energy, the excitement. To me, ballads were just kind of, ‘Eh, time to take a break.’ But there’s something about it. Steven was working on it from the day I met him, and it just grew on us. Now I still love playing it, ’cause I see what it does to the fans. It really stands the test of time.”

More Where That Came From

Perry hopes to take the Legendary Edition approach to more of Aerosmith’s albums and already has his sights set on what’s next.

“I think Toys is the next one, ’cause on that one we were definitely getting our studio legs together,” he says of Aerosmith’s third album, a breakthrough that reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200, has been certified nine-times platinum and gave the band its first top 40 hit with “Sweet Emotion.” “It was definitely a state of mind and we were learning, I was learning everything I could about the recording part of it, like, ‘How come this know does that?’ and that kind of thing. I read about Jimmy Page; at 19 he was one of the most sought-after studio musicians, and he knew what he was doing when he went in to do (Led) Zeppelin. I, on the other hand, just know you put a mic in front of the amp and prayed.

“So Toys is when we started to become recording artists, I think, started to learn how to do that. We wrote some of those songs on the spot, and we were touring all the time, so the band was playing great and finding our own slot.”

The “Joined At the Hip (Aerojam)” outtake, meanwhile, gives fans a listen to both the gestation of “Sweet Emotion” as well as Aerosmith’s creative process in general. “We were pretty much on the road all the time; if we weren’t gigging we were looking for gigs,” Perry says. “When it came time for another record we would slot a month and go into the studio and we’d have maybe two or three songs finished and a batch of riffs we could play, and we would right in the studio. That riff of Tom’s we played it and we jammed on it, and it turned into ‘Sweet Emotion.’ That’s how most of those songs came out in the ’70s.”

Walking His Way

Perry acknowledges that having Aerosmith off the road has opened up space for his other musical adventures. “My solo stuff, I’ve always done it around Aerosmith,” he explains. “I’d put a record out, play one (solo) gig, then be on the road with Aerosmith for six months. So (his albums) never got the kind of push I think they could have. So it feels really good to not have to think about packing my bags tomorrow; I lived like that since I was 15.”

Perry is mulling some sort of compilation of his solo work. “I myself would like to hear 15, 18 of my favorites of my songs, all in one place,” he says. His Joe Perry Project last played dates during the fall of 2025 in conjunction whit his Sweetzerland Manifesto MK II album. Now, however, he, Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Tommy Henriksen are gearing up for the Hollywood Vampires tour, which kicks off Aug. 12 in London, with 19 U.K. and European shows through Sept. 12.

“It’s been awhile since we last toured (2023),” Perry says, “so I think that the set’s going to be maybe two-thirds some of the same songs we played last time, and some new ones.” The Vampires last studio album, Rise, came out during 2019. “It’s more about the vibe, and to just get a kick out of playing together. I’m just hoping we can get a run in the States after this European one.

“So that’s really what’s on the board for me. I know nothing’s going to happen between now and the Vampires tour, but I know next year is wide open, so… we’ll see.”

INXS is this year’s recipient of the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music.

The prestigious honor will be presented at the 2026 APRA Music Awards, set for Wednesday, April 29 at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.

With over 75 million albums sold worldwide, and a slew of international awards from their peers and fans, INXS is one of the most popular bands to emerge from the land Down Under.

They’re “not just part of Australia’s musical history,” reads a statement from APRA AMCOS, “they helped write the global playbook.”

Formed back in 1977, INXS would go on to climb rock’s highest summit, a stadium act whose posters were attached to teenagers’ walls everywhere. The sextet of Andrew (keyboards), Jon (drums), and Tim Farriss (lead guitar), along with Garry Beers, Kirk Pengilly (guitar/sax), and the late, legendary frontman Michael Hutchence, landed five top 20 albums on the Billboard 200, and a No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Kick’s “Need You Tonight.”

In the United Kingdom, the band scored six top 10 albums, including a No. 1 with Welcome To Wherever You Are from 1992, plus a BRIT Award in 1991 for best international group.

“INXS are truly one-of-a-kind,” remarks Jenny Morris, chair of APRA. “Performing with them in the 1980s, at Wembley Stadium opening for Queen to the Listen Like Thieves tour across Europe, North America and Latin America, I saw firsthand the love and adoration they generated. From their compelling and timeless songwriting to their intoxicating performances, few bands have ever left people happily gasping for more the way INXS do.”

Hutchence, who passed in 1997, aged 37, “is as much of a presence in our lives today as the day we lost him,” Morris continues, “and of course the same goes for the band. The legacy of INXS lives on. They remain as relevant as ever, continuing to inspire new generations and bring that unmistakable Aussie spirit to fans around the world.”

INXS called it a day in 2012, with a collection that includes six APRA Music Awards, six ARIA Awards, induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2001, and a bank of hits, including “Don’t Change”, “Original Sin,” “Mystify” and “What You Need.”

The group’s music lives on through shrewd syncs and multi-media projects, from Super Bowl to Toy Story 5, and through tireless support from superfans. The classic 1987 song “Never Tear Us Apart” came in at No. 1 on triple j’s inaugural poll of the greatest Australian songs of all-time, counted down last July.

The Ted Albert Award is one of the Australian music industry’s highest decorations, and is decided by the APRA board of writer and publisher directors.

Previous recipients include the late Mushroom Group chairman Michael Gudinski, Paul Kelly, The Seekers, Cold Chisel, former Alberts CEO Fifa Riccobono, Colin Hay of Men at Work and last year’s recipient, Kylie Minogue.

On the night of the 2026 APRAs, guests will be treated to a series of special performances, including a tribute to INXS, a “landmark occasion” that celebrates 100 years of APRA. Confirmed performers include BARKAA, BOY SODA, Ecca Vandal, Ngulmiya, Playlunch, Rob Ruha and more.

The Ted Albert nod will be a bonus for INXS, which was nominated for the 2026 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, but whose name wasn’t called on Tuesday. Another opportunity awaits for the Rock Hall next year, when the band turns 50.

As previously reported, Amyl And The Sniffers, Tame Impala spearhead Kevin Parker, first-time shortlisters Keli Holiday and Ninajirachi, plus Paul Kelly with his nephew and first-time nominee Dan Kelly, are in the hunt for APRA’s song of the year, the top honor at the annual APRA Music Awards.

The APRAs this year counts 52 first-time nominees, seven of whom are up for two awards.

For more information on the APRAs, visit apraamcos.com.au/apramusicawards2026,

There will unfortunately be one fewer performer at weekend 2 of Coachella.

In a new statement posted to X on Tuesday (April 14), DJ and producer Rezz shared that she had to cancel her next appearance at the festival, citing health issues.

“My body has been whispering for a while that I need a real break,” Rezz explained. “But I continued to push thinking it would be fine.”

Rezz performed in the Sahara Tent at Coachella on Saturday, the second day of the festival’s first weekend. Although the weekend 2 schedule has not yet been released, Rezz most likely would have had a favorable time slot, as her 9:10 p.m. weekend 1 set was nearly an hour long. The DJ did not provide specifics as to why she is pulling out of weekend 2 but made it clear that this decision had to be made.

“I have to put my health first, as things going on need to be addressed,” she said. Rezz then shares her apologies to fans who may be upset to not be seeing her perform at weekend 2, promising to upload her full weekend 1 set to YouTube soon. “I love u all, I hope u understand.”

Rezz concludes by saying that her healing will be a “process,” that she is grateful so got the chance to perform at Coachella and “now it’s time to focus on my health.”

Coachella weekend 2 <3 pic.twitter.com/XT2epg79PA

— RΞZZ (@OfficialRezz) April 14, 2026

Rezz’s weekend 1 performance was the DJ’s second time playing the festival. She made history in 2018 as the first woman to headline the Sahara stage, a tent known for hosting major EDM artists throughout the fest.

Beyond Coachella, Rezz is set to perform at several more festivals this year, including Breakaway Music Festival in Columbus, Ohio, next month and Tomorrowland in Flanders, Belgium, in July. She has not yet made any statements regarding her other 2026 performances.

Right now, the conversation about AI is stuck in a loop: Artists versus AI, rights versus innovation, protection versus invention. You can either respect copyright or embrace progress. It’s a false binary that forces a choice between supporting creators or embracing new technology, as if respecting copyright and pursuing progress are mutually exclusive.

The history of the music industry is a story of a series of technological disruptions. Every shift — broadcast radio, analog recording, the synthesizer, sampling and digital audio workstations — is initially met with skepticism and resistance by people worried their creativity and stature will be undermined. Then the next wave of true artistic innovation happens, unlocking new ways of making music and new possibilities for a new generation of music makers.

Today’s conversation about AI belongs to the first wave. However, once we establish the right foundations, including clear provenance, licensed training data and real economic participation for creators, we unlock a far more interesting question: What happens when technology enables people to be more creative than they’ve ever been? Answering this question will advance our thinking, just as embracing previous technological disruptions led to musical revolutions.

Long before the debate about AI, in the back rooms of M.I.T., I was part of an art technology hacker space, a place where artists, engineers and academics collided in unpredictable ways. It was not unusual to find ballet dancers collaborating with mathematicians, experimental musicians using arc welders to build instruments, and painters working with roboticists. The resulting technology didn’t always work well, and the art wasn’t particularly beautiful, but that wasn’t the point. It was about exploring what could be built at the intersection of art and technology – and the results were strange, exploratory and sometimes even uncomfortable.

We’re already seeing early signals of a shift. Just as the invention of the camera once prompted painters toward abstraction, musicians are pushing music’s boundaries. There’s a French Canadian band named Angine de Poitrine that starts to show this creative expansion. The mysterious, costumed duo defies easy categorization: imagine a dual guitar-bass with microtonal fretboards looping complex riffs against a backdrop of ever-shifting, unpredictable time signatures.

Angine de Poitrine has taken the internet by storm in recent months. On social media and YouTube, artists and commentators are not just celebrating this new art — they are elaborating on the creativity with their own homage videos. Why? I think the main reason is that people see Angine de Poitrine as a creation that AI could never concoct. Faced with generative AI platforms that can create a “new” (but eerily familiar) song with a simple text prompt, people are becoming averse to the homogenous middle. That puts a premium on human creativity. People want something that AI alone cannot dream up.

At the other end of the spectrum, vinyl had its biggest year in two decades in 2025 with almost $1 billion in sales. Gen Z creators at Splice are trading cassette tapes, harkening back to simpler, less digital times and intentionally embracing the comforting hiss that is native to tape playback. The company Teenage Engineering is building musical hardware that recalls Casio calculators and boomboxes. People are craving texture, imperfections and corporeal joy.

There’s a lesson in these examples: the future of music won’t be defined by polished replicas of the past but by things that embrace its imperfections and redefine these edges anew for this next era of creativity.

So how do we get to the next step?

Creators need the ability to realize their potential on their own terms. They need to have economic ownership and creative control. The tech industry cannot claim to help creators with tools that simultaneously undermine their intellectual property. Boundaries of human authorship need to be made clearer, allowing artists paths to monetize their creativity for the future. To create great music, training — the process of feeding vast datasets into an algorithm so it can recognize patterns and generate new outputs — need not be exploitive.

Many business leaders agree that AI must respect creators first and foremost. Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, with which Splice is collaborating on a roadmap for the development of commercial AI tools, has spoken of the need for guardrails and respect for creative works. There are numerous ethical AI companies: Music.AI, ElevenLabs, Lemonaide and Klay Vision, among others, that respect creators’ rights and build their technologies with artists at their center.

If the first wave was defined by what AI took from the artist, the second wave will be marked by what it gives back: time, powerful new capabilities and expansive creative expression. More than anything, though, getting to the next wave offers creators permission to experiment and even to fail. AI tools provide creators with an opportunity to make music that doesn’t make sense, that’s occasionally ugly, or makes us uncomfortable, all places that homogenous music AI cannot touch.

If we can move beyond the “art vs. machine” tropes that define today’s conversations, we will launch a new chapter of creativity using tools that will lower the barriers to entry and raise the ceiling for what is possible.

Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of music creation platform, Splice. Since joining Splice in 2021, she has led major innovations, including AI-powered creation tools, new mobile experiences, and the company’s 2025 acquisition of Spitfire Audio, expanding Splice into virtual instruments. An award-winning entrepreneur, Kakul was most recently named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2025 for shaping how technology empowers, rather than replaces, human creativity. 

Previously, Kakul held executive roles at Yahoo, Flickr, Adobe, and GitHub, helping to build iconic products like Photoshop and Yahoo! Mail, and is known for her product leadership, empathy, and commitment to helping creative communities thrive. A graduate of MIT and UC Berkeley Haas, Kakul lives in the San Francisco area with her family.

Selena Gomez made sure she was in the house for her old Disney Channel friend Demi Lovato on Monday night (April 14) when the “Cool For the Summer” singer kicked off her It’s Not That Deep tour at the Kia Center in Orlando. In an Instagram Stories post from the night, Gomez posted a series of glam pics of Lovato, including one in which Demi was getting her lips touched up with a caption heaping praise on her friend’s impressive vocals.

“I am in tears,” Gomez, 33, wrote. “@ddlovato — this was hands down one of the best shows. Oh and the VOCALS? Psh *blown away.” The reel included a sweet picture of the two women backstage, hugging and smiling for the camera with a heart emoji posted between them. Gomez also posted a short video in which she’s rocking a black “It’s Not That Deep” sweatshirt and dancing along to the show from a suite.

The two singers have a long history together, dating back to their early days on Barney & Friends in 2002. And while their friendship has had its ups and downs over the years, they appear to be back in the groove together. And they’re not alone. At Lovato’s first headlining tour in three years, not only did she perform the live debut of her upcoming (April 17) single, “Low Rise Jeans,” but she also hosted a surprise guest appearance by another Disney Channel pal, Camp Rock co-star Joe Jonas, who popped out for versions of “This Is Me” and “On the Line.”

Lovato reposted Gomez’s praise-filled post on her own Story, including the snap of them together with the caption, “[welled-eyes emoji] thank you so much for coming !!! loved seeing you [white heart emoji].” She also reshared the footage of Gomez dancing and included a TikTok clip of her mouthing the famous Kim Kardashian “okay guys we’re back, did you miss us, cuz we missed you?” meme alongside Jonas. She added a snippet of her sensual live debut of “Low Rise Jeans,” in which a dancer could not keep his hands off her body.

Gomez wasn’t the only one who gushed about the show. Lovato also reposted a comment from her husband, musician Jordan “Jutes Lutes, who wrote, “no words for what I felt tonight watching you put on the best show I’ve ever seen. you are one of the ALL TIME greats. I will forever be in awe of you and I will never EVER shut up about it I love us so much @ddlovato.”

Lovato’s 23-date tour in support of her ninth album of the same name will next hit the Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. on Thursday (April 16) and keep the singer on the road through a planned May 25 show at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.