The Current

Great Music Lives Here ®
Listener-Supported Music
Donate Now
The Current Music News

Music News: U2 producer now 'working for KFC,' as Bono puts it

Steve Lillywhite in 2011
Steve Lillywhite in 2011Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for OurStage

by Jay Gabler

April 03, 2017

Steve Lillywhite is one of the most successful producers of his generation. He's worked with artists including the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel, but he's best-known for closely collaborating with U2 throughout their career. Now, as Bono puts it, Lillywhite is "working for KFC."

There's some explaining required there. Lillywhite "fell in love" with Indonesia after traveling there several years ago to produce a record by the Indonesian band Noah, and he moved to Jakarta in 2014. He's now the chief executive of a company that creates CDs to be sold alongside fast food at Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in Indonesia.

"My job is basically like running a record label, except this record label also happens to sell chicken," Lillywhite tells the New York Times. KFC is actually a significant player in the music business in Indonesia, where many record stores have closed due to rampant music piracy.

Lillywhite says the members of U2 "think I'm barking mad" to be putting so much effort into Indonesian fast-food CD sales. "Bono is obsessed with it. He's always telling people: 'Do you know what Lillywhite's doing? He's working for KFC!'"

Lil Wayne will not reschedule Target Center show

After missing his Friday night show at Target Center due to what the venue said were "plane mechanical issues," Lil Wayne won't be rescheduling. Fans who were disappointed to discover that the headliner wouldn't be appearing after they sat through all four opening acts can request ticket refunds.

Ringo discovers lost George song

A previously unknown George Harrison song has been discovered — by none other than his former Beatles bandmate, Ringo Starr. The drummer recently stopped by a pop-up gallery hosted by Harrison's family, and he noticed a sheet of lyrics for a song called "Hey Ringo," from the early 1970s.

"Hey, I've never seen that before," said Starr, as Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison remembers. She responded that she hadn't either. The song, it turned out, had been retrieved from an envelope stored in Harrison collaborator Billy Preston’s piano bench. "Ringo was totally surprised and really happy," says Olivia Harrison, who plans to frame the lyrics and give them to Starr. (Billboard)

Shazam gets the scoops

An increasing number of album announcements are being leaked via the music-recognition app Shazam, as Pitchfork observes. Here's how it happens: an artist shares a teaser snippet of audio before the album is officially announced, and fans use Shazam to check it out. If the label has shared the forthcoming album details with Shazam, sometimes that means that the entire album title and track list pop right up, and the cat's out of the bag. This has happened to artists including the xx, Animal Collective, Moby, Crystal Castles, and Warpaint.

Usually these spoilers are unintentional, and other times they're not. The president of Angel Olsen’s label says that when details of her album My Woman leaked via Shazam after the release of a teaser video, it turned into an accidental viral release announcement, with great results. "I'd love to say we intended that."

For that hip-hop fan who has everything

Here's a unique piece of music memorabilia going up for auction: the nose stud worn by Tupac Shakur on the cover of his 1996 album All Eyez on Me. Bidding on the tiny diamond stud is expected to start at $15,000 to $20,000. The rap icon's California license plates and his personal copy of the Qur'an are among the other items that will go up for auction in on April 7, the day Shakur is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Pitchfork)

Björk goes VR (again)

Björk has released a new VR video for her song "Notget." It's the latest in a string of virtual reality videos to be released from her 2015 album Vulnicura. (Rolling Stone)