Tate McRae is a booked and busy flexible force to be reckoned with. She’s just released her brand new third album, 'So Close To What,' and she’s about to head out on her continent-spanning 2025 'Miss Possessive Tour.' But before all of that she checked in with Audacy’s Bru to chat all about both and more.

Tate last checked in on the heels of releasing her album’s debut track, "It’s ok I’m ok." Leading up to the album’s arrival she dropped two more singles, "2 Hands" and "Sports Car,” before officially releasing her 15-track album on February 21.

Sitting down with Bru on her album’s release day, Tate shared her extreme excitement, mixed with slight hesitation, to scroll through social to gage the response. “It's like such an overstimulating thing because, you're like, I don't want to look at my phone because if I scroll too far, you're bound to see something that's scary,” Tate expressed. “But I've been also wanting to see if the fans like it, so it's been fun.”

Tate has released a steady flow of albums in the last 3 years with 2022’s 'I Used to Think I Could Fly,' 2023’s 'Think Later,' and now 'So Close To What' in 2025. Commending Tate for the grind, and rightfully so, Bru asked her what’s its been like and if she’s had chance to process it at all. Also wondering if it feels like she’s on the same wave as when she put out her first album.

"Well, the first album, that feels like ages ago. I was 17 when I started writing that, and then I took a break from writing or from touring and wrote for a full year, so I felt like that was like a separate thing. But Think Later and this album have been really tight,” Tate noted. “Album, tour, album, and it's just felt natural. I've just been writing a lot, I've been inspired,” she added.

Sharing what is currently motivating her the most right now, Tate said, “last year was the first time that I've ever danced, danced on tour. So to feel that response and be like — ‘oh, this is what I need to do on tour’ — to perform and want to feel good with my dancers on stage… I think that inspired a lot of the writing for this album.”

While we find it hard to remember a time when Tate wasn’t slaying every inch of whatever stage she was occupying with Sean Bankhead choreography, there was a time when she’d just sing, stand, and walk around.

While Tate has more than mastered dancing while singing, running while singing (like Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus) is a difference story. “I'm an awful runner,” Tate admitted, “so honestly just getting on a treadmill, I can't do anything, so singing and running would be a bad idea for me.”

Fun fact — Tate also shared that “bloodonmyhands” and “Like I do,” were the final two tracks written and added to the album. “It kind of felt like it like tied the whole album together and was like the final little bow,” Tate said. “I wrote it in New York like 3 weeks ago, so it was really last minute and it it really was a satisfying feeling.”

Despite being a full fledged Popstar, Tate confessed she has “the worst case of impostor syndrome.” Noting “even last night,” at her album release party, “I was just like I wonder if anyone's gonna show up… like no one's gonna come to a parking lot. And so every time I come on stage and I have like this look on my face where I look really shocked it’s just because I actually genuinely am, like I can't believe people showed up.”

Talking about how the collab with The Kid LAROI came about, well aside from the fact that as boyfriend and girlfriend, it just makes sense Tate shared. “It started because I had another record that he loved and I was like looking for a feature, and he was like, ‘let me just cut a verse on it.’” Noting she’s “been a fan of him for so long,” Tate was obviously down. “So he tracked the verse. Then of course you like analyze everything. We were like, let's try and beat this, and we wrote another song. And yeah, it was a fun process, it was ...

Calling in to chat with Audacy’s Julia, benny blanco shared all about his surprise album with Selena Gomez, 'I Said I Love You First,' detailing how the project came about, and discussing the stories behind the first two singles, plus a whole lot more during an Audacy Check In.

Sharing how the idea for the new album came about, benny revealed, “I think we were just both kind of… just like a little stuck on what we want to do. Selena was talking about not wanting to make music anymore. She felt like she already said everything she's ever wanted to say. And I remember I just had this like a-ha moment where I was like, well, why don't we just do an album together? It would be so fun.”

Noting how he loved it when other musical couples had teamed up on projects, listing off JAY-Z and Beyoncé, and Raw Alejandro and Rosalía as examples, benny thought, “why don't we try?”

“I didn't even know if anyone was gonna hear this,” he went on to admit. “We just made it in our house together, like in our room. And I remember saying like, hey, if this is ever weird, we'll just stop right away.”

As it turns out, it wasn’t weird at all. “It all like flowed out so easily,” benny continued, "and… I feel like through this, I realized how good a partners we were together because… we didn't fight… there was no argument in the studio. All of our ideas came out exactly how we wanted them to, and we had the same intuitions and it was like, if we didn't like something, we both didn't like it. And I don't know, it was kind of like a therapeutic and cathartic experience.”

While the forthcoming album is hardly the first time benny and Selena have worked on music together, aside of Selena’s 2023 summer single “Single Soon,” all the tracks they’ve collaborated on in the past was done as friends. Which according to benny the one major difference between working together before compared to now is that now, “I get to kiss her and we're in love.”

Sharing a few things he thinks will surprise us about the album, benny expressed, clarifying he doesn’t mean lyrically, noting, “she’s always raw in what she's saying. But some of the production is like really pulled back… almost like acoustic like… or it'll be one piano and her, you know. And then obviously there's still like the bops and stuff on there too, but I think it was really cool to try out new things that maybe she's never done before."

“I think people will be surprised that maybe some of the stuff we're talking about," he continued, “It’s about everything. You know, I really want people to take the journey. I don't want to say too much because it's definitely a journey from the beginning, from how it opens up until how it ends.”

Speaking of — how it ends — “Scared of Loving You,” the album’s lead single is actually the last song on the album. Sharing the reason they chose to release that one first, benny said, “I think I just wanted to start by saying like, ‘here's how we feel right now… this is how we feel right now in this moment.’ And then let's go backwards.”

“You know… Selena has been through so much and this song really showed — ‘Hey, I'm not scared of loving you right now, I am scared of losing you.’ And just like everyone else, you do a bunch of things in your life and then you're sitting there and you're like — ‘Oh, I'm really scared to jump into this new thing because if I do, that means I'm giving myself to a person again and like that means the potential for heartbreak again’”, benny added.

Sharing how they were both “a little hesitant to go into it,” once they did, “then you're like, ‘oh my God… I have so much to live for now… Wait, holy s***, don't leave me.'”

Sharing the story behind their second single, “Call Me When You Break Up,” featuring Gracie Abrams, benny revealed he’d previously worked with Gracie on “some of the first music she ever made.. and then I put her on my album in like 2020 or somethi ...

Host Abe Kanan recently welcomed frontman David Draiman of Disturbed for a special Audacy Check In, just before the band hits the road on their North American trek in celebration of 25 years since the release of their debut album, 'The Sickness.'

Looking back at 25 years of ‘The Sickness,’ Abe remembers vividly purchasing Disturbed's debut CD at Tower Records, which happened to have two concert tickets stuffed inside for the release party at Chicago’s Metro.

“We put ‘em in there,” Draiman admits. “We were trying to get people to come. It was kind of an important show, you know what I mean? So, giving them away, selling them… we weren't about making money at the time. We weren't about selling our own tickets, we’d give them away. We didn't care.”

"We just wanted bodies in the room and we were definitely our own street team in many ways,” he explains. “If there were four shows going on in Chicago at a given night, if there was one at the Aragon, one at the UIC Pavilion, one at United Center, we'd hit them all. The band would split up with all of our promotional materials and, to me, that was always the easiest way to get directly to the fans. Here are the fans coming out of another great rock show… ‘Well, here, if you want some more of this… different flavors, same kind of family, come on over and check us out. It fostered this great sense of community… this great sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and I loved it. Those days were really, really magical days back then.”

Touching on the artists he’s looked up to over the years David tells us, “I definitely had a tremendous amount of inspiration from guys like Jonathan Davis. That first Korn record was massive for me. Chino Moreno from the Deftones, you know, both those guys wielding rhythm in their vocal deliveries the way that they did were hugely inspirational for me. Guys like Maynard James Keenan from TOOL, you know, those first couple TOOL records, his power, his resonance, his ethereal nature to his vocal delivery. All those guys were definitely huge influences, in addition to The Aussies, the Hatfields, you know, the Dickinsons, the Dios of the world. They definitely were a huge part of who we became and who I became, for sure.”

David also spoke about missing the adventure that at one time came with being a music fan; Traveling to record stores, searching for the album you wanted to buy, waiting in line for concert tickets -- “I feel that we have a generation of fans that unfortunately will never ever get to experience that,” he says. “We've become so detached and so disconnected from everything with the help of technology. You know, we don't have physical packaging anymore. I used to really get into getting records, opening them up, reading all the liner notes. Who were they thanking? Who was behind it, you know, what inspired them? What were the lyrics, what were they saying? What were they trying to make me think? Al of that. And I think a lot of that is now lost.”

“I think our tendency to consume faster and faster, and more and more rapidly and our attention span, which gets shorter and shorter over the course of time, in many ways, it's enabled so much more music to get on the table and to be heard,” he adds. “But on another level, there's so much that's getting missed, and there are opportunities that will never ever be able to be duplicated or replicated that really do feel bad that people won't ever get to experience.”

“I miss a lot about the old days. I missed the vibe of the old days. I missed the sense of rock community that we had back in the old days for sure,” David says. “Everything that we alluded to, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this 25th anniversary run. It's a ton of nostalgia in a bag… It's gonna be massive. I’m very, very excited about it, very excited about both halves of the bill. Incredibly strong, from Sevendust and Three Days Grace, to Nothing More a ...

Checking in with host Mike Adam from the Audacy Sound Space at the Hard Rock Hotel New York, singer Alessia Cara is with us detailing her brand new, fourth studio album, 'Love & Hyperbole,' released February 14, featuring “Fire,” and plenty more.

“I'm very proud, honestly, I'd say this for every album that I released, but I promise it's true every time,” Alessia tells us. “This is my favorite project that I've ever made, and this music is just some of my favorite songs I've ever made, ever. I don't know why. I think it's just because I feel most like myself.”

“I feel like I've grown so much,” Cara adds. “This music is just like a reflection of all the music that I love, and that I've loved growing up. So, it's really exciting. It feels nice.”

Alessia started work on the new release in late 2021, following her third offering, In the Meantime, taking a breather in between albums as she admits. “I think I, just for a moment, needed to take time away from writing and playing music just to come back with a fresh start in a way,” she explains. “But I was creative in other ways, like I learned so many new recipes to cook. I really got my cooking game up a little bit.”

Although, sometimes the pressure can build when others wonder where the songs come from. “I just really compartmentalize,” she tells us, “and when I'm home I just really like to savor it… People just expect you to be this artist who's always writing, and I am always singing around the house and stuff, but I really do like to put it away when I'm home. [I] try not to feel too much pressure, because I like to save that creative energy for when it comes, rather than feeling like, ‘OK, I gotta sit down and do it.’ I'd rather it be an intuitive process rather than an analytical one.”

The release of Alessia’s debut single, “Here,” just reached its 10-year anniversary. Looking back on her older material, “I'm able to look at it with love,” she tells us. “It’s challenging because when something that you make when you're really young takes off really quickly, you feel like there's always the standard that you're held to by the public, or even yourself, to kind of live up to that. But then in my case, I was trying to live up to a version of myself that was young and underdeveloped. It's weird looking backwards because you feel like the natural thing is to grow, and I felt so much better as a person, but people are always trying to get you to go backwards.”

“I do look back on it now with a sense of love and appreciation, and I try not to over-analyze,” she adds. “I was young, and I also didn't really have much creative control yet. I didn't even know what that meant.”

“That whole first album was collaborative,” Cara continues. “I feel like after that, I really just took the reins and decided to just take as much creative control as I can. Not because the first process wasn't fun, I just think that's just who I've always wanted to be as an artist. I've always just wanted to speak my own mind and tell my own stories, and just train myself to do it better. It's also fun. It's like a skill that I love to sharpen. I think it's different just because I'm able to say a bit more, because there's no one else around and I don't have to explain to this other person what the story is about.”

Since breaking onto the scene in 2015, Alessia has managed to maintain a level of privacy throughout her career unlike many others in her field, mainly thanks to not oversharing on social media. “Honestly, for me, I do think it's fairly easy,” she says. “I think that's just because I'm one of the lucky ones where, I don't know, I think people have always just looked to me and have asked me questions about the music, and I've never had any relationships in the public eye, which I think helps. I do think I kind of made it under the radar, and it's not really any work of my own. I think it's just the way that, you know, the wor ...

On the heels of his latest release 'I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2),' following the outrageously successful run he had with his debut album, Teddy Swims checked in with Audacy’s Mike Adam at the Hard Rock Hotel New York to chat about his musical roots, superior song covers, future fatherhood fears, and more.

Definitively putting him on the map, Teddy's soulful anthem “Lose Control” was crowned Song of the Year on Billboard's 2024 Year-End Hot 100 Songs chart, and also claimed the No. 1 spot on Audacy’s 2024 Top Songs. The track’s monumental success also earned Swim's a 'Best New Artist' nomination at the 2025 GRAMMYs, at which he's also performed, along with his fellow nominees.

While discussing Teddy’s current genre-spanning musical vibes, Mike asked the musician if there was a particular genre he feels the most comfortable in, or one he wishes he felt more comfortable in. Attributing the starting point to developing his powerful pipes began with metal, Swims, shared, “My roots are as a screamer before I was a singer. So I think, like, I'm one of the gnarliest screamers.”

“I don't even think I'm that good of a singer,” Teddy humbly added, pointing to his throat, but actually vocal chords, to say, "I love this instrument… I think I can do all the acrobatics that it takes to do a singer. But I think I'm a really good screamer. I think my most favorite thing, like, where I'm most comfortable in is metal.”

Whether Teddy will ever get to scratch that itch again? He confessed he doesn’t know. However he is rather proud of getting “a writing cut on the new Linkin Park record,” and rightfully so.

“I wrote with them and did a few records with them…” Swims shared. Noting he “told Mike Shinoda, on the next record I was like, ‘Come on bro, you gotta put me on that record, bro.’” And while acknowledging that Emily Armstrong, the band’s relatively recently announced new lead singer, “is out of this world, like, incredible,” in his own self interest, he told Shinoda, “You should have left my voice on one of those songs, man.”

Raised in the South, Teddy grew up on soul music after being introduced to it by his dad, but he also grew up playing football, and was also a theater kid. Which made Mike wonder if Teddy felt like at any point he was living in completely different worlds.

While some might feel as though all those factors contrast, Teddy doesn’t agree, which makes so much sense when you try and think of putting Swims into a defined box, because he just doesn’t fit the mold. Which is a very good thing.

“No, I feel like… it’s weirder to know that other people have a different perspective or upbringing than you,” Teddy expressed. “You know, you always feel like people are the same… you're the center of your own experience, right? Like you're the lead role in your own movie, right? So like, I just never, you never realize other people are different until you get older to realize other people's expectations. When you're a kid, you're like, we're all doing this, right? I thought everybody was.”

“It all felt natural to be who I was," Teddy eventually went on to note. “I don't know, I didn't know that people were living different lives, you know?”

As Mike brought up, before Teddy's meteoric rise, like many other artists do during their come up, he posted covers on YouTube. Noting he has opinions about covers that outshine the originals, pointing out Whitney Houston’s rendition of “Higher Love,” Mike asked Teddy if he feels that way about any of his covers.

“None of them, everybody hates themselves a little bit," Teddy quipped, “like none of mine are as good as that.” That being said he did have some strong feelings about Jimmy Hendrix owning the cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.” Noting, “Bob Dylan even retired that song… he was like, that's Jimmy's song." Teddy also shouted out Tank’s rendition of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can't Mak ...

Ahead of the release of their new single “Who Believes In Angels?,” the title track from their just-announced collaborative album set for release on April 4, Audacy host Mike Adam got a chance to speak with Brandi Carlile and Elton John about how this amazing joint venture came to be.

Although The Who’s Pete Townshend spilled the beans on this project last summer, Elton tells us, “I just forgot about it, and I think most people forgot about it… I didn't scold him. I love Pete. He's one of my dearest friends, so…”

“I didn't forget about it, I loved it!” adds Brandi.

Expanding on what Townshend revealed was a lightning-fast recording process, Elton says, “We went in with nothing and came out three weeks later with fourteen songs, ten of which make the album. I had a lot of doubt making this record and I was tired, I was irritable, and the first four or five days were really kind of powder keg time. But once we got past that, It was just plain sailing. It was just brilliant.”

“The lyrics that we got from Bernie [Taupin] and Brandi were so amazing, Andrew Watt, the producer,” he adds, giving all of his collaborators their flowers. “The four people involved in this whole project, and it was very much a team effort.”

“All the lyrics I got were amazing, and they were so easy to write to,” Elton continues. “When you get great lyrics, I write very quickly. So, Brandi's lyrics and Bernard's lyrics were so good that the songs came together really quickly. We had a great band, we had Chad [Smith] from the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers on drums, and we had, Pino Palladino on bass, and we had Josh Klinghoffer from the Chili Peppers on synth, and Andrew Watt on guitar with Brandi.”

“And Elton on piano,” Brandi chimed in accordingly.

“It was one of the most enjoyable, incredibly quick albums I've ever made. It was wonderful,” John explained. “The energy in the room, it was electric. You could get an electric shock if you touched the wall!”

Agreeing that there was some rough water to tread when first coming together, Brandi says, “We pretty much saw eye to eye after that first few days, everything clicked. We just really inspire each other and we didn't know for sure… We knew we loved each other and then we had this great friendship, but I didn't know if we would inspire each other, so it was really scary in the beginning, but we really did. And then everything from the beginning to the end was mostly smooth sailing, and we just tend to acquiesce toward one another, I think as artists in general.”

Fans will be happy to hear that there is a full visual aspect to this new album as well. “We filmed every song being written, we filmed every song being recorded,” Elton tells us. “We had nine cameras on the go all the time. Eventually, you'll be able to see the shenanigans that went on at the beginning of the album, which weren't pretty, but it was necessary for the sparks to fly at the beginning, mostly from me, to get that energy going, and boy was that energy in that room when we got going. It was fantastic!”

“The best part of the cameras was, I never saw one,” Brandi adds. “They were fixed, so I didn't know where they were and we were forgetting about them all the time. So, it's not as if there was a person standing there with a camera. We forgot, and our behavior reflects that!”

Obviously, keeping the cat in the bag around such a massive collaboration was going to be tough. Though Elton admits he “didn't play it to many people,” Brandi reminded him that he did give Kate Bush an early listen, and of course, Pete Townshend.

Brandi says she played it recently for Bon Iver, and Aaron Dessner of The National, “and the looks on their faces were just, you can't fake loving an album that much,” she says. “So, we know we've done a really special thing, we're really excited.”

“It’s just incredibly life-affirming to me,” Brandi adds. “ ...

Superstar singer/songwriter Kane Brown joins host Mike Adam this week for a special Audacy Check In from the Hard Rock Hotel New York, to discuss his brand new album, ‘The High Road,’ family life as a father of three, and plenty more.

Country-crossover superstar Kane Brown just dropped his fourth studio album, 'The High Road,' on January 24, featuring 18 tracks including his hit “Miles On It” with Marshmello, as well as the previously released singles, “Fiddle In the Band,” “I Can Feel It,” “Gorgeous,” and "Backseat Driver," and the duets “Body Talk" and "Do Us Apart" with his wife, Katelyn Brown.

“I think Country music is just getting a lot of cool, new elements to the music that's getting added,” Kane tells us, “plus the storytelling. There's a lot of cool artists in Country music that's really stepping out, I'd say.”

Now a proud father of three, Kane says aside from 'The High Road,' his kids “will listen to anything. I would say recently, it's been like Dubstep ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ and when that comes on, I usually go crazy too.” His wife, Katelyn, is “a huge R&B fan,” he adds, so the little ones have been getting exposed to “big voices in general… Whitney Houston, anybody with a crazy big voice is what she's trying to get them to listen to… and then of course the Disney princesses.”

Kane says he and Katelyn are also attempting to get the kids to watch the classic flicks they grew up with as well. “I'll be like, ‘This was daddy's favorite movie,’ and then Kate will show them her favorite movies. The funniest story I have is, Kate's deathly afraid of ‘E.T.,’ and so I told my kids about ‘E.T.,’ and so now they love ‘E.T.’ and they've just been walking around going, ‘E.T. phone home!’” Luckily for everyone, play-dates in the Kane household never seem to be too far off. “[In] Country music, everybody has a kid,” Kane laughs. “It’s just a big family.”

With his new record now on shelves, Kane is getting set to hit the road on his 2025 'The High Road Tour' which kicks off on March 13 in San Diego, CA and wraps on July 13 in Chicago, IL. Along for support on select dates with him will be Mitchell Tenpenny, Scotty McCreery, Dasha, and Ashley Cooke. Tickets are on sale now... Click HERE for a full list of tour dates.

Don't miss Mike Adam's full Check In with Kane Brown above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy. Plus, follow along with Kane Brown Radio and more on the free Audacy app.

Words by Joe Cingrana, Interview by Mike Adam

Shinedown frontman Brent Smith joins host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In, filling us in on the band's 2025 plans, including their upcoming live dates scheduled for this spring alongside Bush and Beartooth, and their double dose of brand new singles released today (1/24) -- "Dance Kid Dance," and "Three Six Five."

Shinedown is kicking off the new year with new music and an impressive touring itinerary, after just revealing their 30-city Dance, Kid, Dance Tour -- featuring guests Bush on the summer dates and Beartooth in the spring -- scheduled to make stops in most major markets including Boston, Detroit, Nashville, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, and more before wrapping up at the end of August.

First touching on the two new tracks the band just offered up, “Three Six Five” Brent tells us, “We kind of felt like it definitely had a bit more tempo than maybe the last song that people were familiar with -- maybe the more mainstream leaning, Pop leaning-type songs. So, we kind of bumped up the BPMs a little bit on that. And ‘Dance Kid, Dance,’ we just went to the wall with that.”

“It's interesting,” he explains. “I had a friend of mine the other day say to me, ‘Are you a rock band? Are you a metal band? Are you an Alternative band? Are you a Pop… what are you?’ And I'm like, ‘We're just Shinedown.' We play in a big sandbox. We've always been a genre-bending band, because we're inspired by a lot of different styles and we're constantly evolving. We felt like the right move with the first new material that people would hear from us, that we gave them two sides of us.”

“I think along the way people started to get pigeonholed,” Smith adds, “or they started using boxes, or ‘stay in your lane,’ or you know… ‘You're only this genre.’ When you expand your palette, sonically or what have you, you're just trying to reach as much of the audience as you can. Some days you feel like you want to throw down and rock, some days you're a little bit more emotional, but that's the beauty of music, man. It constantly evolves and the only thing that we've ever done in this band is, anybody from anywhere at any time we wanted them to be able to know that Shinedown has a lot of peaks and valleys -- kind of like a roller coaster ride, but there's something for everyone.”

As the band gets ready to hit the road on their 2025 Dance, Kid, Dance Tour, Brent, obviously a fan of their tour partners Bush growing up, revealed that he had recently been on a call with frontman Gavin Rossdale “just kind of reintroducing ourselves to one another. We met a while back and we really hadn't had a chance to connect, but I got to give a lot of credit to Zach Myers and Shinedown for Bush coming on this tour. He really was like, ‘Man, it would be amazing if we could get them for this!’ And then obviously having who we think is the epitome of the fearless female outlaw, Morgan Wade, is coming out on this tour as well, so there's a lot of diversity. But Bush specifically, having a 30-year anniversary for ‘Sixteen Stone,’ also I think the 20-year for ‘Razorblade Suitcase.’ I might be getting those confused, but they have this kind of nostalgia era coming into their new record where there's still this band that is very much very current, and they they're just a force to be reckoned with.”

Making their way back to the new releases, “There's so much wrapped up,” Brent says in “Three Six Five” -- “That one really took hold very quickly. There was a lot of loss last year, personally in our families, and friends of ours that it was their time, and none of us know when it's our time. Our fanbase over the years have really talked about how our music and the songs that we write really helped them at times when they're going through difficulty with what their daily lives can be and how Shinedown is kind of like a security blanket in a way.”

“It's very emotional when I think about it, but we've always bee ...