He’s penned and/or produced some of the most quintessential songs in music history: Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” Carla Thomas’ “B-A-B-Y.” Mable John’s “Your Good Thing (Is About to End).” The Emotions’ “So I Can Love You” and “Show Me How.” Now David Porter has chronicled his creative journey with writing partner Isaac Hayes as well as his stellar career — and still influential legacy — at Southern soul stronghold Stax Records in the new memoir, The Soul Man: Life of Songwriter David Porter.

Currently on a promotional junket on behalf of The Soul Man, Porter will stop next in New York City on June 10. On the eve of Memorial Day weekend, the three-time Grammy Award winner and Songwriters Hall of Fame member sat down inside Burbank, Calif.’s Evergreen Studios for an insightful Q&A with Jimmy Jam, one-half of the Grammy-winning songwriting/production duo with Terry Lewis. The special occasion brought out a who’s who in the music industry. Among those spotted in the audience: music icons Stevie Wonder and Peter Asher; Earth, Wind & Fire original member Ralph Johnson and singer-songwriter Siedah Garrett.

Evergreen Studios partner and former Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow noted in his welcome remarks how Porter’s “love for and dedication to the music scene and the next generations of music makers in Memphis has shined a bright light for decades.” Then Jimmy Jam came onstage, declaring “there’s nothing this guy can’t do,” before presenting a video clip about Porter to set the tone for the chat.

Over the next hour, the 84-years-young Porter enthralled the audience with first-hand recollections about growing up in music mecca Memphis, singing in church and hanging out with childhood friends Maurice White (who later fronted Earth, Wind & Fire) and Booker T. Jones (leader of Booker T. & the M.G.’s). He also spoke about his start as a songwriter at then-fledgling Stax Records (initially known as Satellite Records).

In addition to the aforementioned Hayes, Sam & Dave, Thomas, John and The Emotions, Porter collaborated with other Stax luminaries including Otis Redding, William Bell and Rufus Thomas. Over the course of his more than six decades in music, Porter has heard his songs sampled by Mariah Carey, Notorious B.I.G., Will Smith and Wu-Tang Clan.

One anecdote that especially resonated with the audience was Porter’s recounting of what led to the creation of Stax’s immortal soul sound:

“We couldn’t beat Motown being Motown. They had amazing writers like Holland-Dozier-Holland before Stevie Wonder opened their eyes. And we couldn’t beat Burt Bacharach & Hal David, who found a way to make beautiful, extremely impressive records. But we could beat anybody when you talk about the spirituality of the church and emotional connectivity. So we found that our path was in creating signature lines off the bass, drums and guitar, and taking a lot of the spirituality from church.

“We didn’t know it would connect until it did,” Porter added. “And then when it did, we crystallized our efforts with every artist that we worked with to magnify their personalities. We learned that was our lane. That if we wanted to be effective in our lane, we had to stay true to it — and never lose the ability to feel and help other people feel you.”

To learn more about The Soul Man: Life of Songwriter David Porter, click here.

What would Outkast’s “Hey Ya” sound like if it were played solo acoustic by Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo? How about Nirvana’s “Drain You” or Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” as a sad boy emo ballad?

Over the weekend, Cuomo uploaded more than a dozen stripped-down covers to YouTube labeled “Private upload for playlist: randum cuverz,” most of which appeared to have been recorded in 2018 and 2019. The list opens with an emotional cover of Radiohead’s breakthrough 1992 single “Creep,” rendered even more fragile in Cuomo’s unadorned version.

It then dives into a quick-strummed take on André 3000’s “Hey Ya,” from Outkast’s landmark 2003 Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album, with the song getting an indie rock makeover thanks to Cuomo’s multi-layered vocals and suburban dad breakdown on the “lend me some sugar” bit.

He also includes nearly a minute of a sweet cover of Green Day’s “When I Come Around,” a few urgent minutes of Nirvana’s “Drain You” (and a choppy, shouty “Lithium“) as well as a beat-assisted swing through Dolly Parton’s signature hit “Jolene,” with the appropriate amount of yearning in Cuomo’s voice on the most fleshed-out arrangement in the bunch.

Among the most unexpected covers are a strummy, straightforward run through Michael Jackson’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Billie Jean,” complete with an MJ-style yelp and keening falsetto and a heartbreaking, rainy day “Without You,” by Harry Nilsson. Cuomo also dips into his dance pop bag with a charming, twee cover of Whitney Houston’s Hot 100 No. 1 “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” offers up an angsty minute of Post Malone and Quavo’s “Congratulations” and swerves into the country lane again with Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road.”

Some of Cuomo’s Voice Memo-like covers are kind of expected — such as a minute of the Eagles’ “Hotel California” — and the reformed hair metal thrasher’s unplugged rambles through Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” But he also offers up his energetic take on Morgan Evans’ “Country Outta My Girl” and ends with a 2021 snippet of a piano sonata by Schumann.

At press time, Cuomo had not commented on the songs and a spokesperson for Weezer had not returned Billboard‘s request for further comment.

It’s unclear if the songs will ever be officially released in any form, but Cuomo has unleashed his home demos before in the form of 2007’s Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, a compilation covering demos recorded from 1992-2007, as well as 2008’s Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo; a third collection, Alone III: The Pinkerton Years, came out in 2010.

Weezer will hit the road with The Gathering tour in the fall, playing the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento with the Shins and Silversun Pickups beginning on Sept. 8.

Dom Dolla has announced his first-ever stadium show in Melbourne, set for Marvel Stadium on Sept. 24 — a homecoming performance the Melbourne-raised DJ and producer is billing as the world premiere of an entirely new stadium production.

The show, presented by Untitled Group and Frontier Touring, falls on the eve of Melbourne’s AFL Grand Final long weekend and is an Australian-exclusive event. It follows Dom Dolla’s record-breaking stadium debut at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium in December 2025, which set a new benchmark for electronic music events in Australia. The Marvel Stadium show will feature the debut of new tracks “Addicted to Bass” and “Don’t Worry Baby” featuring Tiga, both of which he previewed in Sydney.

Pre-sale tickets for fans registered at Dom Dolla’s website open Friday, May 29 at 12 p.m. AEST. Frontier Members and Untitled pre-sales follow at 2 p.m. AEST the same day. General sale opens Monday, June 1 at 12 p.m. AEST via Ticketmaster.

“Melbourne clubs are where I cut my teeth as a DJ,” Dom Dolla said in a statement. “I don’t get to play at home as often as I’d like these days, so after touring all over the world and learning what makes a great show, I wanted this one to be incredibly special. Turning this stadium into a superclub has been a dream of mine for years now, and I can’t believe we’re finally making it a reality.”

Born Dominic Matheson, Dom Dolla has grown from a fixture in Melbourne’s club scene into one of electronic music’s most globally in-demand acts, with a catalogue surpassing 1.5 billion streams.

On Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, “Rhyme Dust” with MK debuted at No. 9 in March 2023, “Eat Your Man” with Nelly Furtado peaked at No. 15, “Dreamin’” featuring Daya climbed to No. 5 — his highest chart peak — and “Forever” with Kid Cudi debuted at No. 9. He has won the ARIA Award for Best Dance/Electronic Release three times and received a Grammy nomination for his remix of Gorillaz’s “New Gold” featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown. Billboard Dance named him One to Watch, and he has headlined two sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden and topped the bill at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.

Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist whose combination of technical mastery, melodic invention and raw improvisational power made him one of the most consequential figures in jazz history, died Monday (May 25) at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95. His death was announced on his official website. Rollins had been living with pulmonary fibrosis.

His passing marks the end of a direct line to jazz’s post-war golden age. Rollins came of age alongside Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker — and outlived them all, spending the decades after their deaths as a living link to that era’s creative revolution.

In a career that stretched from his first professional recordings in 1949 through his final public performance in 2012, he released more than 60 albums as a leader and remained an active presence in jazz culture well into his later years.

Born in New York City on Sept. 7, 1930, to parents who had emigrated from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Rollins grew up in Harlem and came to the saxophone in his early teens — first the alto, then the tenor, which he adopted in his mid-teens and never abandoned. By the time he finished high school at Benjamin Franklin, he was already recording. His earliest sessions in 1949 included work alongside singer Babs Gonzalez and pianist Bud Powell, and he was performing with Monk before the age of 20.

The decade that followed established him as one of the instrument’s pre-eminent voices. His 1956 album Saxophone Colossus — recorded for Prestige in a single session — is considered one of the essential documents in all of jazz, and the track “St. Thomas,” a calypso-inflected original, became one of the music’s most enduring standards.

That same year he recorded Tenor Madness, a historic session that placed him alongside Coltrane in direct musical conversation. Way Out West (1957), A Night at the Village Vanguard (1957) and The Freedom Suite (1958) followed in quick succession, each adding new dimensions to his reputation.

In 1959, feeling he had reached a plateau, Rollins stepped away from performing — seeking a place to practice alone, he found one on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge, where he played through the night without fear of disturbing anyone. His 1962 return was marked by the album The Bridge, which announced not just a comeback but an artist who had been quietly, privately working to push further. It was characteristic of the way he approached music throughout his life — restless, unwilling to settle, always in pursuit of something just ahead.

He won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for This Is What I Do in 2001, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, and the Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for “Why Was I Born” — from Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert — in 2006, the same year he swept DownBeat’s readers poll. In 1995, New York City Hall named a day in his honour. In 2017, he donated his personal archives to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

His wife Lucille, his partner of nearly 40 years, died in 2004.