KISS, technically, retired this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still rock and roll all night with the greasepaint and pyro legends. The band announced the upcoming release of a huge box set celebrating the 50th anniversary of their landmark Alive! concert album.

The Super Deluxe version of the album will feature 4 CDs + Blu-Ray audio, an Alive! track list t-shirt with 120 tracks, including 88 previously unreleased tracks. The first CD features the original album on one disc for the first time ever, newly remastered from the original 1975 stereo analog master tapes. In addition, CDs two and three will feature two full-length concerts from the 1975 Dressed to Kill tour at the RKO Orpheum Theatre in Davenport, Iowa on July 20, and the Wildwood Convention Hall in Wildwood, N.J. on July 23, newly remixed by the legendary engineer Eddie Kramer from the original multi-track analog tapes with no overdbubs.

The fourth CD will pull together five rehearsal tracks from the Davenport show, including an impromptu jam and another six songs from Cleveland Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio on June 21, 1975, remixed by Kramer from the original multi-track recordings. The Blu-Ray audio disc will contain a new Alive! mix from Kramer from the original album multi-track analog tapes in Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround, as well as newly remastered stereo in 192 KHZ 24-bit and 96 KHZ 24-bit PCM stereo set to a new visualizer with unreleased photos and tape box images.

The Super Deluxe version ($400.48) has a number of other extras, including a 100-page hardcover book with extensive liner notes by Ken Sharp and new interviews with singer/guitarist Paul Stanley, bassist/singer Gene Simmons and other notable Alive!-era KISS team members, as well as a number of unreleased photos and rare images. In addition, it will fold in an Alive! 1975 press kit with: four black and white glossy photos, an Alive! tour program, album cover lenticular, t-shirt iron-on, four live color glossy photos, a Peter Criss drum head litho, a number of concert posters, ticket stubs and backstage passes, coasters, guitar picks, bumper stickers and a track-by-track interview with Kramer discussing nearly all the tracks in the collection.

The anniversary edition will also come in a 4-CD box set version with a t-shirt ($287.55), a deluxe picture disc edition with sweatshirt ($251.89) and a premium color vinyl version with a sweatshirt ($125.98). All the editions are slated to ship on Nov. 21, with Kiss Army members eligible for pre-order now here.

Alive! was KISS’ fourth album and their first live LP, as well as a kind of standard-bearer for live rock albums going forward. Though they’d released three albums by that point, the band rose to a new level of fame thanks to the double concert album that collected songs from the theatrical group’s 1974 self-titled debut, as well as that year’s Hotter Than Hell and 1975’s Dressed To Kill, including such future stone-cold live staples as “Deuce,” “Strutter,” “Firehouse,” “Black Diamond,” Cold Gin” and “Rock and Roll All Nite.” (Click here for a taste of Sharp’s extensive history of the making of Alive!)

The album features the indelible work of late founding guitarist Ace Frehley, who died last month at the age of 74 following injuries from a fall in the studio. Frehley will become only the third person to receive the Kennedy Center Honor posthumously when KISS collect the award at a ceremony slated to tape on Dec. 7 and air on CBS on Dec. 23.

Check out the track list for the Alive! 50th anniversary box set below.

CD ONE:

1. “Deuce”

2. “Strutter”

3. “Got To Choose”

4. “Hotter Than Hell”

5. “Firehouse”

6. “Nothin’ To Lose”

7. “C’mon And Love Me”

8. “Parasite”

9. “She”

10. “Watchin’ You”

11. “100,000 Years”

12. “Black Diamond”

13. “Rock Bottom”

14. “Cold Gin”

15. “Rock And Roll All Nite”

16. “Let Me Go, Rock ‘N Roll”

LIVE IN DAVENPORT, IOWA – RKO ORPHEUM THEATRE – JULY 20, 1975 – SECOND SHOW*

CD TWO:

1. “Deuce”

2. “Strutter”

3. “Got To Choose”

4. “Hotter Than Hell”

5. “Firehouse”

6. “She”

7. Ace Frehley Guitar Solo

8. “Nothin’ To Lose”

9. “C’mon And Love Me”

10. “100,000 years”

11. Peter Criss Drum Solo / “100,000 Years”

12. “Black Diamond”

13. “Cold Gin”

14. “Let Me Go, Rock ‘N Roll”

LIVE IN WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY – WILDWOOD CONVENTION HALL – JULY 23, 1975*

CD THREE:

1. “Deuce”

2. “Strutter”

3. “Got To Choose”

4. “Hotter Than Hell”

5. “Firehouse”

6. “She”

7. Ace Frehley Guitar Solo

8. “Nothin’ To Lose”

9. “C’mon And Love Me”

10. “100,000 years”

11. Peter Criss Drum Solo / “100,000 Years”

12. “Parasite”

13. “Black Diamond”

14. “Cold Gin”

15. “Let Me Go, Rock ‘N Roll”

BONUS LIVE

CD FOUR:

REHEARSALS – LIVE IN DAVENPORT, IOWA – RKO ORPHEUM THEATRE – JULY 20, 1975*

1. “KISS Jam”

2. “Room Service”

3. “Strange Ways”

4. “Rock Bottom”

5. “Watchin’ You”

LIVE IN CLEVELAND, OHIO – CLEVELAND MUSIC HALL – JUNE 21, 1975*

6. “She”

7. Ace Frehley Guitar Solo

8. “Nothin’ To Lose”

9. “C’mon And Love Me”

10. “100,000 Years”

11. Peter Criss Drum Solo / “100,000 Years”

BLU-RAY AUDIO – ALIVE!:

DISC FIVE:

[Dolby Atmos* / Dolby True HD 5.1* / 192kHz 24-bit & 96kHz 24-bit PCM Stereo]

1. “Deuce”

2. “Strutter”

3. “Got To Choose”

4. “Hotter Than Hell”

5. “Firehouse”

6. “Nothin’ To Lose”

7. “C’mon And Love Me”

8. “Parasite”

9. “She”

10. “Watchin’ You”

11. “100,000 Years”

12. “Black Diamond”

13. “Rock Bottom”

14. “Cold Gin”

15. “Rock And Roll All Nite”

16. “Let Me Go, Rock ‘N Roll”

* Previously unreleased

Maroon 5 has joined the star-studded lineup for next summer’s BST Hyde Park 2026. The Adam Levine-led band will headline the July 3, 2026 show along with their friends in OneRepublic. “London, we’re coming back!! We’re excited to announce we’ll be headlining BST Hyde Park on July 3, 2026 with special guests @OneRepublic,” the band said in an announcement.

Additional acts on the bill will be announced at a later date, with tickets going on sale on Nov. 12 here.

In the meantime, Maroon 5 will be busy barnstorming the U.S. on their Love Is Like tour, with a show on Friday night (Nov. 7) at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, followed by shows in North Little Rock, Ark. (Nov. 9), Atlanta (Nov. 11), Chicago (Nov. 13), Pittsburgh (Nov. 14), Baltimore (Nov. 16), New York (Nov. 19-20), Boston (Nov. 22), Cleveland (Nov. 24) and Detroit (Nov. 25). The band will round out the year on the the rod supporting their eight studio album, Love Is Like, with a New Year’s Eve show at the Atlantis – The Palm in Dubai on Dec. 31.

This year’s BST Hyde Park will feature a wide variety of rock, pop, country and Latin acts, including Garth Brooks playing his first U.K. show in nearly 30 years on June 27, followed by Pitbull with Kesha on July 10 and Lewis Capaldi on July 11-12. The summer classic will be joined by a sister fest this year, the Leeds-based Roundhay Festival, which will feature Pitbull and Kesha (July 3), Capaldi (July 4) and others to be announced soon.

Check out the poster for Maroon 5 at BST Hyde Park 2026 below.

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Hearing Judy Garland‘s 16-year-old voice singing the original “Over the Rainbow” a cappella — minus The Wizard of Oz orchestration — was not the intensely emotional experience you might predict for her daughter, Lorna Luft. As the singer and actress put it: “Well, I heard my mom sing it a lot.” 

But this newly edited version of Garland’s signature song, which makes its debut on streaming services on Friday (Nov. 7), will blow most Oz fans’ minds. “It’s just so honest and so pure,” says Luft. “To be able to hear my mother’s vocal as if you’re in a room with her, and there is no piano, just her vocally — people have gotten so emotional when they hear this. It takes them back to where they were when they heard the song.”

This stripped-down “Over the Rainbow” is part of a re-recorded The Wizard of Oz soundtrack that first aired only as part of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, an immersive 4D version of the 1939 classic that opened at the Las Vegas venue in June. The uncluttered voice of Garland, who died in 1969, is the centerpiece of the new 42-track recording, which unites the original actors’ voices with a contemporary orchestra convened at the original MGM studio in Culver City, Calif. “You’re hearing things that you’ve never heard before — nuances and themes you didn’t catch onto — because you’re hearing it so clearly,” says Julianne Jordan, the production’s music supervisor. 

To prepare Oz for its Sphere treatment, the production team separated the vocal stems from the music and the background noise from the original mono recordings. “I had an Oscar-winning friend, who will be unnamed at the moment, who did a test for me and took ‘Over the Rainbow’ and said, ‘I can help,’” says Ralph Winter, Sphere Studios’ head of production. “What he was able to do was separate out the music and the effects and the tracks and the noise and come up with just Dorothy’s vocals. It was so pure to hear what only maybe those studio executives and the director heard back in 1939.”

In August 2024, the Sphere team convened an 80-piece orchestra to re-record the tracks from the Oz score at the MGM scoring stage, now owned by Sony, in Culver City, Calif. Conducted by longtime film composer David Newman, the orchestra employed instruments used for Oz, like the ocarina, or hand flute, featured in the Scarecrow’s “If I Only Had a Brain.”

To align the new orchestral recordings with the original vocals from Garland, Ray Bolger (who played the Scarecrow), Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion), Buddy Ebsen (the original Tin Man, who sang for the soundtrack but was replaced in the film) and the rest, Sphere Studios and Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services teamed up to separate the tracks into stems. Thus, in spring 2024, Jordan was present when the Sphere team unveiled the a cappella “Over the Rainbow” on a Warner Bros. stage. “Not a dry eye,” she says. “Incredible. Really clean.”

The original “Over the Rainbow,” recorded in October 1938, was two Garland takes spliced together. “She got up [to] ‘somewhere over the rainbow, way up high’ — and she coughed, and she apologized, and they started again,” says John Fricke, a New York-based Oz historian who has written several books about Garland and the film. “They used the beginning of that take because they liked it more and married it with the almost-full take of the rest of the song.”

Luft shared the new a cappella version two weeks ago with Fricke, a longtime friend who first heard the original when he viewed The Wizard of Oz on TV in 1956. “My first reaction was, it’s amazing that this can get to me the way it does when I know every second of that track,” Fricke says. “The magic is that it’s still magical.”

The original Oz score and soundtrack, created at the MGM studios in 1938, was created by a team of musicians that included songwriting duo Harold Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, who wrote classics like “Over the Rainbow” and the vaudeville-influenced “If I Only Had a Brain” and “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Meanwhile, the studio’s music director, Herbert Sothart, composed most of the score, including the ghostly strings and brass in “The Haunted Forest.” According to Luft, the Garland estate, which includes her half-sister Liza Minnelli, owns Garland’s name and likeness rights and quickly signed off on the new “Over the Rainbow” release after Sphere inquired.

“I just want people to understand how important this movie is, and this song, and now to be able to hear my mother’s vocal as if you’re in a room with her,” Luft says. “It’s a song about finding a better place. That doesn’t mean physical. It means in your mind. It means there is hope.”

Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl (via Republic/Universal) continues to twirl on the ARIA Charts, as it enters a fifth consecutive week at No. 1 on the national albums survey, while “The Fate Of Ophelia” retains top spot on the singles tally.

“The Fate Of Ophelia” is Swift’s 13th chart leader in Australia and, with five weeks in the penthouse, it’s her second longest leader after 2022’s “Anti-Hero,” which logged six weeks at No. 1.

The top debut on the latest ARIA Albums Chart, published Friday, Nov. 7, belongs to Florence + The Machine, as the British alternative pop outfit’s sixth album, Everybody Scream (Polydor/Universal) opens its account at No. 4. All of Florence’s albums have cracked the ARIA top 10, including No. 1s for Ceremonials (in 2011), and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015).

Powderfinger frontman Bernard Fanning returns to the top 10 thanks to the 20th anniversary edition of Tea & Sympathy (Dew Process/Universal), his debut solo album. Tea & Sympathy re-enters at No. 7 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and leads the Australian Albums Chart, the Vinyl Chart and the On Replay Albums Chart.

The veteran Brisbane singer collected the most entries in triple j’s Hottest 100 of Australian music countdown in July, with four total songs, including three with Powderfinger and his solo number “Wish You Well” (at No. 57), lifted from Tea & Sympathy, a chart-topper following its release in late 2005.

Also new to the chart is Vitriol (GYRO), the debut from Western Australia rock outfit Cloning. It’s new at No. 12, arriving ahead of a national tour that gets underway later this month.

Radiohead is back in the headlines, as they prepare for another U.K. tour later in the year. The Rock Hall-inducted British alternative rock act is back in the charts, too, as Hail To The Chief Live Recordings 2003-2009 (via XL) appears at No. 15. The studio version of Hail To The Chief was released in 2023, hitting No. 2.

Paramore singer Hayley Williams impacts the chart with her independently-released solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, new at No. 24. The project is an unusual one, which collects and repackages the songs Williams dropped earlier this year across her artist pages and on streaming services.

Close behind is Frankston, Victoria indie rock band the Belair Lip Bombs, which cracks the chart for the first time with Again (Third Man Records/RK), their sophomore set. It’s new at No. 25, and is one of eight homegrown recordings on the ARIA top 50. The Belair Lip Bombs are the first Australian band to sign with Jack White’s Nashville-based Third Man Records.

Further down the list, Brisbane nu-metal band Headwreck just misses out on a top 40 berth with Attitude Adjustment (Ditto). The debut collection drops in at No. 43, for Headwreck’s first appearance on the ARIA Charts.

Over on the ARIA Singles Chart, just one Australian track makes the cut, Tame Impala’s “Dracula” (Columbia/Sony), which lifts 50-37, a new peak position. And just one new single makes its mark for the first time, Lily Allen’s “Pussy Palace” (BMG), at No. 50.