Paul Heaton - of legendary groups The Housemartins and The Beautiful South – has announced a UK tour this spring. For the first time since the days of The Beautiful South he’ll be reunited with former band member Jacqui Abbott, and the pair will be performing some of The Beautiful South’s biggest hits – alongside new material.
Universal Music Publishing has renewed its worldwide publishing deals with Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine), Paul Weller and Steve Booker.
Three years after their much loved self-titled debut, Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and James Mercer return as Broken Bells with their second album ‘After The Disco’, released today and including lead single ‘Holding on for Life’. The album’s theme came from late night conversations between Danger Mouse and James Mercer about the feelings you get the day after the party, and once you grow up and leave your partying days behind.
The Family Rain release their debut album today ‘Under The Volcano’ through Vertigo / Virgin EMI Records. Recorded over four weeks at Berlin's famed Hansa Studios, it’s ten tracks of primal, blues-powered rock 'n' roll. Nagging melodies combine with heavy, metallic riffs to produce a searing rock record of intelligence and wit.
To celebrate a career spanning a decade and three Top 10 albums, Hard-Fi release ‘Best of 2004 – 2014’ today, containing their biggest hits alongside band and fan favourites. Hard-Fi’s double Platinum debut ‘Stars of CCTV’ sold over 1 million copies worldwide, topped the UK album charts, and earned them a 2005 Mercury nomination. It spawned five Top 15 singles including ‘Hard to Beat’, ‘Cash Machine’ and ‘Living for the Weekend’, and made them the most played band on Radio 1 in 2006.
Universal Music Publishing is delighted to welcome Raleigh Ritchie to the UMP family. His musical style is a unique amalgamation of R&B, soul, indie and pop - of which Raleigh himself says, “I know what my kind of music is I just don't know what to call it”.
Looking for the perfect song for your sync? We’ve just launched our new online music platform UMPG Songs – designed to empower advertising, film, TV, and online creatives to quickly pinpoint exactly the right piece of music for their project. UMPG Songs contains hundreds of thousands of tracks available to stream, download and licence – from a writer’s full back catalogue to the latest releases, with new works added every week.
Pixies continue to tease out new material with the release of a second EP to follow last September’s ‘EP1’. ‘EP2’ builds on the momentum of the first release – showing Pixies to be a band far from content to mellow out. The EP features four new songs: ‘Blue Eyed Hexe’, ‘Magdalena’, ‘Greens and Blues’ and ‘Snakes’.
Talking about the tracks Black Francis says that ‘Blue-Eyed Hexe’ “took on different forms, different music and different sets of lyrics before it settled where it is now. It’s a tale from the northwest of the country and it’s a witch-woman kind of a song”. Of ‘Greens and Blues’ he says they were looking to create a “show closer... a good night song. A song that would – musically, emotionally and psychologically – sit in the same place that ‘Gigantic’ has sat”.
The nominees for the Brit Awards 2014 were announced yesterday, with songwriters and artists signed to Universal Music Publishing receiving an impressive eighteen nominations in total. Bastille and Disclosure lead the way with four nominations each., including the prestigious British Album Of The Year.
It’s been a phenomenal year for Bastille, and to top it off, their No. 1 Platinum selling album ‘Bad Blood’ has been named the UK’s biggest selling debut album of 2013, shifting over half a million copies. It was also the most successful digital artist album of 2013.