Digest: Boy George Announces Culture Club Reunion; Jimmy Buffett Recovers From Fall

Nick Harvey/WireImage

Culture Club Will Reunite in 2012
Boy George announced in an appearance on the television series BBC Breakfast that his old band the Culture Club will reunite and record a new album next year. In the meantime, the singer is promoting a new solo album titled Ordinary Alien due out next week in the U.K. [BBC]

Jimmy Buffett Recovering After Fall
Jimmy Buffett has been released from a Syndney hospital after striking his head in a fall from a stage yesterday. The singer is currently scheduled to peform in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday. [Reuters]

Lil' Kim Readies New Mixtape
Lil' Kim has announced that her new mixtape Black Friday will come out on Valentine's Day. The title song is diss track attacking Nicki Minaj. [Rap-Up]

Kiss Return to Studio
Kiss will begin work on their 20th album in March, and is planned for release sometime before the end of the year. The as-yet untitled record will be the band's first set of new songs in over a decade since 2009's Sonic Boom. [NME]

MORE: Jay-Z to Produce 'Annie' Remake Starring Willow Smith; 50 Cent Promises New Album

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter