The full lineup for the Billboard U.K. Live takeover at The Great Escape happening May 13-16 in Brighton, England, has been unveiled.

It was confirmed on Feb. 3 that rising rockers Keo will headline The Deep End venue on May 14 as part of the Billboard U.K. Live experience, marking a major moment in the band’s ascent.  Now, a fresh wave of names has been added to the bill. Bella Kay, Madra Salach, Adult DVD, Bleech 9:3, Slag and Dolder are all lined up to play, with the event set to spotlight the next generation of indie and alternative talent. 

Kay, who is 20, is currently on a hot streak, as stirring acoustic track “iloveitiloveitiloveit” reaches a new No. 17 high on the Billboard Hot 100 on the cart dated April 11. The viral hit is currently at No. 2 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart, and has held strong in the top 10 since the start of March.

Madra Salach, meanwhile, recently wrapped up a headline tour of the U.K. and Ireland, which was entirely sold out. The contemporary folk six-piece is gearing up to release more music later this year.

The group will be joined by fellow Irish act Bleech 9:3, who has previously toured with Keo and drip-fed released a handful of singles this year, including the fan favorite “Ceiling.” Adult DVD is on a similar upward trajectory, having stormed U.K. festivals last summer, while indie outfits Slag and Dolder will perform at The Great Escape for the first time in May.

The Deep End venue is part of The Great Escape’s beach site located on Madeira Drive. Fans can gain access to the show via a TGE wristband subject to the venue’s capacity.

Brighton hosts The Great Escape each May, turning the seaside city into a hub for discovering new music. The festival highlights breakthrough acts from the U.K. and Ireland, alongside other emerging artists from around the world. Across four days, live performances take place in numerous independent venues across the city, accompanied by panels and networking events.

Tickets can be purchased via the festival’s official website, including passes for this year’s spotlight shows with The Kooks, Peaches and Kingfishr. 

Among this year’s performers are The Lottery Winners, Lime Garden, The Orchestra (For Now), Little Grandad, Natalie Wildgoose and Lonnie Gunn. Over the years, the festival has also served as an early platform for artists such as Charli xcx, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines D.C., Sam Fender and Lola Young.

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.