Kelsea Ballerini’s Performance With ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Queens at CMT Awards Playfully Flouts Wave of Anti-Drag Laws

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It may take a greater elixir than anything Dr. Feelgood has to offer to elicit positive vibes in the war of words — and writs — between Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars and the other three members of the group. Following a headline-making lawsuit filed by Mars against the band last week, lawyers or managers for both sides have spoken with Variety at length about the positions they are doubling down on. If you had to sum it up in a hard-rock song, it might be: “Grievances Grievances Grievances.” Until now, the Crue camp had only issued brief statements and a frustrated tweet from Nikki Sixx. But the band’s manager of 29 years, Allen Kovac, was so angered by an interview Mars gave Variety after the suit was filed that he agreed to go on record addressing what he believes are the musician’s most scurrilous accusations — including whether or not the group’s performances are largely on tape. “I have a lot of regret that I’m having to do this,” the attorney says, pointing out that he talked Nikki Sixx, the group’s unofficial leader, out of talking to the press himself, wanting the bassist to keep “taking the high road.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Amazon has come on board this month’s Stagecoach Festival in California to provide a livestream of the country music gathering. Live action from the April 28-30 festival in Indio will be streamed on both Prime Video and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. It marks the second year that the festival will be extensively streamed, albeit the first involving Amazon. In 2022, Stagecoach livestreamed most of the main attractions on its own YouTube channel. In some years prior to that, Yahoo had had exclusive rights to stream select artists’ sets. Coverage from the festival will begin at 3 p.m. each of the festival’s three days. Stagecoach and Amazon did not immediately reveal how many or which sets will be streamed from the festival; a press release promised that performances from the Mane Stage will be seen.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Eddie Vedder-founded Ohana Festival in southern California will again feature the Pearl Jam frontman as one of the top attractions in 2023, as is customary, along with a heavy-hitting selection of rock names in the top slots and an eclectic lineup for the undercard slots. The Killers and Foo Fighters join Vedder as the headliners for the three-day festival, taking place Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at Doheny State Beach in Doheny Point. Haim, the Chicks and the Pretenders are the second-billed acts across the three days. Other marquee attractions in the idyllic beachside setting will include Father John Misty, the War on Drugs, Japanese Breakfast, Goose and Rainbow Kitten Surprise.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Brandi Carlile has been added as a participant in the NAMM Show in Anaheim, Calif. Thursday, where she will be interviewed about the insights she has gleaned into record production over her career. The biggest annual conference for musicians is taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center Thursday through Saturday. Her session, “Brandi Carlile on Producing and Uncovering the Artist in the Studio,” will take place Thursday from 1-1:50 p.m. and will have the singer-songwriter-producer being interviewed by producer/engineer/mixer Dave Way, who has worked on Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” and “Extraordinary Machine” as well as albums by Ringo Starr, Pink and others.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic God only knows it was a matter of time until the Recording Academy picked the Beach Boys as the recipient of one of its annual all-star tributes, and the group’s legacy isn’t done any shame with “A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys,” airing Sunday night at 8 ET/PT on CBS (and for on-demand streaming on Paramount+). No wrong harmonies are struck, literally or figurative, in a two-hour show that starts out feeling a little bit by-the-numbers but eventually lands on a series of knockout covers fit for a Wilson. Are you surprised that Brandi Carlile would be the highlight of a tribute special? Then come out from under your rock and do stay up late enough to catch both of her performances on the show, since she is one of a handful of artists granted both solo and duet slots in the setlist. First in the running order, she has a version of “In Your Room” that can’t really be considered “solo,” since she’s joined by bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth for an arrangement that has their modern mastery of three-part harmony paying homage to the Boys’ sub-incarnation as a balladic vocal trio. You hope for something transformative in tribute performances like these, and you know you’re getting the moment Carlile lends her perfectly subtle vibrato to the “roo-oo-oom” and “a-frai-ai-aid” to some of the opening lines. She and the Hanseroths make the bridge feel you’re doing a gentle waltz while enveloping yourself in a self-assuring hug, before the falsetto ending spoils that warmth with a chill down your spine. Yeah, it’s that good.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Muse was making its eighth visit to downtown L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, frontman Matt Bellamy reminded the audience, shortly into the trio’s return engagement Thursday night — except rather than call it by its current name, he said the venue would always be Staples Center to the band. He added a joking, mumbled reference to “weird fucking con artists,” presumably a reference to his lack of faith in the state of cryptocurrency. Digital assets are fleeting, but office supplies are forever, right? There is some kind of loose analog there — no pun intended — to the situation with Muse, which is forever using futuristic imagery in its shows but reigns as one of rock’s best bands by its rootedness in a slightly pre-digital past.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A touring production of the stage version of “The Bodyguard” was brought to a halt and canceled in Manchester, England on Friday night after patrons would not stop singing along with the musical’s songs, leading to house lights coming up during the climactic number “I Will Always Love You.” Two women were forcibly pulled out of the theater by security, and several police cars arrived to oversee the evacuation of the theater after what patrons on social media described as “fights in the aisles” and even “a mini-riot.” According to news reports out of Manchester and tweets from those inside the Palace Theatre, the show — based on the hit 1992 film — had already been temporarily halted once during the first act because of the disruptive audience sing-alongs, but was resumed. Later, though, with only about 10 minutes to go before the end, it was put on pause again while its star, Pussycat Dolls member Melody Thornton, attempted to sing the climactic song made famous in the movie by Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You,” over the sound of semi-tuneless howling coming from audience members. Thornton’s mic was cut mid-song, the house lights came up and offenders were evicted — struggling against being pulled out by their shoulders, in video footage captured by attendees — and the show was officially called off.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In 2002, director Sam Jones made what is widely considered a benchmark for 21st century music documentaries with “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco,” a movie that lucked into just about all the subject matter that could make B-roll footage of the making of an album into A-list material. It had conflict within the band, between an auteur and another member of great talent; conflict with the soon-to-be-ex-record label, over the basically unwanted classic-to-be “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel”); and said auteur doing his own demon-wrestling, outside foils notwithstanding. Now, it’s easier to see that Jones’ good fortune in happening upon all that wasn’t all luck. More than 20 years later, Jones has come up with another gold-standard music doc, in the form of “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,” newly streaming on HBO Max. This time, as the creation of another amazing record — Isbell’s “Reunions” (recorded in late 2019 and released a few months later) — is put under the filmic microscope, there are no record-company bookkeepers as unseen baddies in the backdrop to a making-of. Major labels and the conflicts that come with them are so 2002, right? But one common thread is intra-band tension… as it probably will be in most good rock docs now or 20 years from now. It gets more interesting than that, though. In this instance, the difficult vibes are between bandmates who double as a married couple — Isbell and his fiddler-spouse, Amanda Shires. Here, unlike the by-now iconic beefing between Jay Tweedy and Jay Bennett, we know no one’s ultimately going anywhere, right?

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Motley Crue has responded to Mick Mars’ lawsuit alleging that the band is trying to force him out after 41 years, with the group’s attorneys contending that Mars already is out — having resigned, effectively, in their view, when he announced he was halting touring for good. Motley Crue’s attorneys also provided Variety with signed declarations from seven members of the touring crew that was out with the band when they toured with Mars for the last time on 36 stadium dates in 2022, alleging that his performances at the shows were under par and created problems for the entire group. “After the last tour, Mick publicly resigned from Mötley Crüe,” said Sasha Frid, the band’s litigation attorney. “Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band.  Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”

Kane Brown can do it all! The 29-year-old country music star is making his acting debut jumping off a train on CBS' hit procedural drama, . «It's really cool,» Brown told ET on the Vancouver set during filming. «I get, like, a superhero moment.» In Friday's episode of the series, Brown plays freight-hopping drifter who leaps into action when the train he's riding on crashes into a party bus.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Mick Mars, Motley Crue’s guitarist of 41 years, has filed legal papers bringing deep and apparently hostile divisons between him and the other three members of the band out into the open. The suit only demands that the group hand over relevant documents about their businesses in advance of arbitration. But the wealth of details in Mars’ filing offers a provocative look at the tension between him and the others, in what he says has been a pattern of “gaslighting” in an attempt to kick him out of the group. The paperwork was filed in Los Angeles County’s Superior Court Thursday filed through Mars’ attorney, Edwin F. McPherson, and says the band has deliberately withheld information about the various Motley Crue businesses that he has a 25% ownership share in. Mars says the band has demanded he sign a severance agreement that would divest him of those and other future interests, in return for a 5% stake in the group’s 2023 tour, which is going on without him.

The CMT Music Awards drew its largest audience ever on Sunday night with 5.43M viewers tuning in on CBS.

Selome Hailu 5.43 million people watched the CMT Music Awards on Sunday night, according to Paramount Global, a 5% increase when compared to the show’s 5.16 million viewers in 2022. This tally comes from a combination of the TK linear viewers who tuned in via CBS and the TK people who streamed on Paramount+. A finalized number including out-of-home-viewing is yet to come, though Paramount currently projects that it will land at 5.68 million total viewers in Live + Same Day. Additionally, the CMT Awards were the most-streamed program of the night on Paramount+, and on social media, Paramount says that the show brought in 2.6 billion potential impressions compared to last year’s 2.5 billion.

slain at the Nashville Covenant School shooting last Monday and recounted her own experience of being in a school shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee.“The community of sorrow over this and the 130 mass shootings in the U.S. this year alone stretches from coast to coast,” the 29-year-old singer said.“I wanted to personally stand up here and share this moment because on Aug.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Tanya Tucker, Patty Loveless and Bob McDill will be the Country Music Hall of Fame’s three 2023 inductees, it was announced in a news conference at the hall’s museum in Nashville Monday morning. Tucker will be inducted into the hall in the “Veterans Era Artist” category, while Loveless will get her entree in the “Modern Era Artist” category. McDill is to be inducted in the “Songwriter” category, which is in rotation with the “Recording and/or Touring Musician” and “Songwriter” categories, each coming up every three years. Cheers went up at the announcement ceremony as well as around Nashville, as all three have long been favored for induction, and Tucker and Loveless particularly talked up as should-be shoo-ins for their historical importance as leading women in the genre.

Iconic!!

Chase Stokes was one proud boyfriend during Sunday night’s 2023 CMT Music Awards.

The winners are in for the 2023 CMT Music Awards!

The CMT Music Awards 2023 proved to be a big night for Jelly Roll who topped the night as the most-awarded artist taking home three trophies.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A couple of members of a fresh generation of country music — Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson — came away as the top victors at Sunday night’s CMT Music Awards, broadcast live from Austin for the first time. But the biggest winners may have been CMT and CBS, putting the three-hour telecast on the map as a show packed with enough performance firepower that it does merit having made the move from a cable platform to major broadcast premiere as of last year. However much the official winners may delight a core country crowd happy to see young radio and streaming favorites get rewarded, the big draw for the CBS audience was likely a series of collaborations between country stars and their pop or rock counterparts, as has been the custom for years on the rival CMA Awards. Most notable were the all-female collabs that had Carly Pearce dueting with Gwen Stefani on No Doubt’s “Just a Girl,” or Alanis Morissette trading lines with a slate of young female artists that included Lainey Wilson, Ingrid Andress, Morgan Wade and Madeline Edwards. The all-star teamings spread to those who presented, too, with Megan Thee Stallion providing the most enthusiastic introduction imaginable for “my new besty,” Shania Twain.

She’s all that! Kelsea Ballerini didn’t only slay as cohost of the 2023 CMT Music Awards, but she served stellar looks too.

The winners have been announced at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. The show – which was co-hosted by Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown – was held at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.

Date night at the CMT Music Awards! Several stars brought dates to the red carpet in Austin on Sunday, April 2, including both cohosts, Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini.

Country music stars focused on fashion while walking the red carpet ahead of the 2023 CMT Music Awards Sunday in Austin, Texas. Kelsea Ballerini wore Dolce & Gabbana to make her red carpet debut with boyfriend Chase Stokes before hosting the show.

Alanis Morissette is about to take over the 2023 CMT Music Awards with an epic performance!

Carrie Underwood meets up with Wynonna Judd on the red carpet the 2023 CMT Music Awards held at Moody Center on Sunday (April 2) in Austin, Texas.

Kelsea Ballerini opened the 2023 CMT Music Awards with a call to action regarding last week's shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, also telling audiences she is the survivor of a 2008 school shooting in the same state. «On March 27, 2023, three 9-year-olds -- Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs -- along with Dr. Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill walked into Covenant School and didn't walk out,» Ballerini began the CMT broadcast.«The community of sorrow over this and the 130 mass shootings in the U.S.

Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini celebrated the women of country music at the 2023 CMT Music Awards!In their opening monologue, the co-hosts took the time to highlight the biggest female stars in the room. «Shania Twain is in the building,» Brown said. «My queen!» Ballerini said. «Honestly it really is my dream lineup.

Paying tribute. Kelsea Ballerini honored victims of the Nashville, Tennessee, Covenant School shooting at the start of the 2023 CMT Awards on Sunday, April 2.

Kane Brown and his wife Katelyn Brown share a kiss on the red carpet at the 2023 CMT Music Awards held at Moody Center on Sunday (April 2) in Austin, Texas.

Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton showed off how to successfully pull off coordinating looks at the 2023 CMT Music Awards held at Moody Center on Sunday (April 2) in Austin, Texas.

Body-ody-ody! Megan Thee Stallion had all eyes on her at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. 

A major milestone! Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes were all smiles during their red carpet debut at the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday, April 2.

Kane Brown and his wife, Katelyn, told ET they are ready to make history at the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday. Should they take home the trophy for Video Of The Year, the duo will be the first-ever married couple to win the prize. «I mean of course it would be so special,» Katelyn told ET's Cassie DiLaura of the potential win.  The couple hit the red carpet in coordinated white outfits they attributed to their shared stylist.

Shania Twain‘s red hair is back!

Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes are taking their relationship to the next level – with a red carpet debut!