Taking Back Sunday Keep Evolving: ''By Any Means Necessary''

From discovering Warped Tour as teenagers to returning as one of its veteran acts, the band has found new reasons to keep evolving.

Billy Eff is the Content Director for Rolling Stone Canada. An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has previously contributed to outlets including VICE and Urbania. A passionate advocate for underground music and a musician himself, he has conducted several hundred interviews with artists and industry professionals across a wide range of styles and genres over the past 15 years. He is based in Montréal, Québec.

Taking Back Sunday showed up at Warped Tour in Montréal this weekend wearing matching brown suits, arguably not the most punk-rock way to prepare for a day of sun, sweat and thousands of fans. The look was deliberate, though. As the band worked on their latest record, so did a visual world built from mood boards and images collected along the way.

"We had a lot of mood boards," frontman Adam Lazzara reveals. "I've been collecting stuff for a while, just as the record was taking shape."

The actual shopping trip was considerably less elaborate. "We were like, okay, we're all going to go to the store together, we're going to get suits," he says. "And then we didn't even go and really shop around too much. We found these at the first store, and we were like, ‘Okay, they're good.’"

After spending much of their career trying to avoid dressing like they had "real jobs," the band has apparently come around. "We hustled so hard so we wouldn't have to wear them," says bassist Shaun Cooper. "And then it became more comfortable to wear them than sweating through jeans every night."

That is the kind of perspective that comes with nearly three decades in a band. Taking Back Sunday have grown from young musicians chasing the next show into adults trying to reconcile touring with marriages, children and lives that exist outside the road. "We're still trying to figure the balance out," they admit, one of them joking that their child thought they worked at the airport because they were there so frequently. "We weren't too good with balance for a long time."

Once upon a time, the band's instructions to their agent were simple: "We don't care if we're home. Keep us working. Keep us out, we want it." These days, they try not to book anything longer than four or five weeks.

The contrast is particularly striking considering that, in 2003, they toured with Saves the Day for three months. When they reunite with Saves the Day this fall, alongside Thrice, they will be approaching the road from a very different place in life.

Warped Tour itself provides an even longer timeline. Guitarist John Nolan's first experience with the festival came in 1995, when he was still in eighth grade. He remembers seeing Sublime, L7 and Quicksand, buying a No Use for a Name hat and discovering Fat Music for Fat People Volume 2 for three dollars.

"It was just a core memory," he adds. "It was the summer after eighth grade before I started high school, and it was just such a great time with all my friends there sweating it out in the parking lot."

Now, the people who once inspired Taking Back Sunday are part of the band's own history, while the festival they once experienced as fans has become something they can return to as veterans. "It's amazing," Lazzara says. "Like John and Sean were just saying about having these core memories, so it’s amazing to be able to say that you got to be a little part of that story too."

For them, Warped Tour represented something that was difficult to find before the internet made music discovery effortless. "They were bringing this music that you could only find out if you were in a record store or had a zine from another city," Nolan says. "Like, no internet, and they were bringing this whole culture, this whole community to these off-the-beaten-path places."

That sense of community is still what they see when they look out from the stage. Their audience now includes people separated by decades, but the gap disappears once the music starts. "There's people from all different chapters of life, ranging like a huge age gap for like 30, 40 years," they say. "But all getting lost at the same time to the same thing."

It is a fitting idea for a band that has spent so long refusing to become static. Asked how they have managed to survive when so many of their peers have broken up or moved on, they point first to stubbornness.

"We're all pretty stubborn," Cooper jokes. Then comes the more serious answer: they still have somewhere to go.

"We all have a kind of an idea of how we want the band to evolve," they explain. ‘’Whether it's wearing suits now, or where the sound is going to go or how we're going to shape the songs and the direction and continue to grow and evolve. The three of us have a kind of shared vision in that. And when we can bounce ideas off each other, that keeps exciting and fresh.’’

That might be the secret. Taking Back Sunday have been doing this long enough to know exactly what it takes to keep a band alive, but not long enough to lose the feeling that made them want to do it in the first place.

As Lazzara puts it: "I wanted to do this for as long as I can remember. And I'm able to. So I’ll keep doing it, by any means necessary."

Twenty years after Loose turned Nelly Furtado into one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the Canadian singer is opening the vault.

Furtado will release Loose (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) on September 4, bringing the landmark 2006 album back with previously unreleased recordings, session tracks, new versions of familiar songs and even a secret demo. The expanded edition will arrive digitally with a whopping 28 tracks, alongside a 2LP colour-vinyl release. Today, she shares a reimagination of her hit ''Maneater'', this one dubbed a 'Ritual version'.

When Loose arrived in June 2006, Furtado was already established as an international star, with hits like "I’m Like a Bird". Working closely with Timbaland, she moved away from the folk-pop identity associated with her earlier records and into something that would change the face of pop, combining hip-hop, R&B, electro, Latin music, house and dance-pop.

Loose produced three of Furtado's signature songs: "Promiscuous," "Maneater" and "Say It Right." The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and ultimately sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. The new edition leans into that spirit of reinvention. Four tracks have been reimagined with Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Adam Tendler, stripping the songs down to piano and voice. The recordings were made as improvisational, one-take performances.

After a lengthy period away from the spotlight, she returned with 7 in 2024, her first studio album in seven years. She subsequently announced in October 2025 that she was stepping away from live performance for the foreseeable future, saying she wanted to concentrate on personal and creative pursuits better suited to the next stage of her life. That decision, however, did not mean abandoning music. Furtado made clear that songwriting remained central to her identity.

In 2026, she was also inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards, where Drake introduced her in a tribute that highlighted the remarkable range of her career.

Loose (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) is out September 4th via Universal Music Canada.

Mick Jagger onstage at the Rolling Stones' 1976 Knebworth Festival.

The second season of Laverne & Shirley had just gone into production when Cindy “Shirley” Williams came down with viral pneumonia, forcing producers of the hit ABC sitcom to shut down production for two weeks. “You can bet Cindy received posies from The Fonz since she’s been hospitalized,” reads a report by Shirley Eder that ran in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph on July 22, 1976, conflating the fantasy world of the Happy Days extended universe with reality in a very odd way. “I don’t know about a romance, but they have been good friends for years.”

With that important update out of the way, Eder turned her attention to the music world. “The Rolling Stones will headline the Knebworth Fair August 21, and 100,000 fans are expected to attend this medieval festival 40 miles from London,” she writes. “The whole fair will be under the Stones’s direction this year – including historical sideshows from acrobats to jousting matches.”

That’s the extent of Rolling Stones info in Eder’s entertainment column, which goes on to note that Norwegian actress Liv Ullman brought Shirley MacLaine “three pounds of imported caviar” while visiting her backstage at New York’s Palace Theater, and new footage was being shot for the 1974 movie Earthquake in preparation for a three-hour TV broadcast, but there was much she didn’t mention.

Most significantly, Keith Richards lost his ten-day-old son Tara due to SIDS on June 6. Just a few weeks before the tragedy, the guitarist was detained by police in London following a car crash where they discovered cocaine in his vehicle. “Since then, the London Daily Mirror has reported the Stones as the unknowing couriers of a drug syndicate,” read a July 15, 1976, report in Rolling Stone. “Under headlines reading ‘Drug Smuggling Shock for the Stones’ and ‘Cocaine Hidden in Pop Star’s Bentley,’ news stories told of police suspicion that cocaine and cannabis had been hidden in clothing, jewelry and equipment carried by the ‘unsuspecting’ Stones and their entourage during their 9-country, 36-day tour.”

Richards somehow had the fortitude to continue a grueling European tour in the middle of all this chaos and sorrow, but a stadium run through America at the end of the summer was simply too much to ask. He was in desperate need of downtime to process the loss of Tara and deal with his growing drug problem.

But the band decided to go forward with their plan to stage a massive concert in Knebworth, England, on Aug. 21, with special guests 10cc, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Todd Rundgren, and Hot Tuna. “It may be the most memorable rock festival ever staged in Britain,” read an Aug. 19 report in the Belfast Telegraph that seems to be discounting the 1969 and 1970 incarnations of Isle of Wight. “The Stones seem certain to go on making records and they are currently asking for a large sum of money to put their signature on a recording contract, but they may have finally decided it is time to fade away from festivals and concerts after 13 years of gigging. Says Jagger (33): ‘I would hate to think I would still be singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty.'”

The ludicrous notion that the Stones were going to call it quits after the Knebworth show was all over the U.K. press, likely spread by promoters hoping to move tickets. “Some people close to the group say that, because of the magnitude of the 12-hour event, it could be the Stones’ Swan Song,” read an Aug. 21 article in the Leicester Mercury. “The stage was still being built in the early hours of the morning – a day surrounded by polythene lips in the shape of the now familiar emblem – a gaping mouth. In front of the stage is a hundred-yards-long catwalk which Mick Jagger will use during a two-and-a-half-hour concert – possibly his longest ever.”

“[The stage] is understood to have cost about £100,000 to build,” the article continues. “The 12 hour long pop concert at the stately home will be staged in an arena capable of holding up to 200,000 pop fans. Thousands of fans – who pay about £4.50 for the concert – were already camped outside in tents, wigwams, and make-shift overnight homes early today. People already camping by the site for the concert – which starts at 11:00 am – were urged not to light cooking fires because of the danger of grass fire.”

As the Stones learned the hard way seven years earlier, grass fires weren’t the only possible dangers at an enormous festival. But unlike Altamont, Knebworth was organized over several months as opposed to a matter of days. And the festival grounds held events in 1974 (Allman Brothers/Doobie Brothers/Van Morrison/Tim Buckley) and 1975 (Pink Floyd/Captain Beefheart/Monty Python/Steve Miller Band) that provided them with a framework.

That doesn’t mean everything was easy. “The British Army will come to the rescue of the Rolling Stones Knebworth Festival on August 21,” an Aug. 2 article in the Press-Telegram read, “by agreeing to install 400 portable toilets on the grounds of the Knebworth estate.”

The morning of the event, an ominous item appeared in The Daily Telegraph that surely sent the Stones’ camp into a panic: “Hundreds of Hells’s Angels are expected to descend onto site. Police can call on neighboring [police] forces if there is trouble, and all leave in the county has been cancelled.”

Unlike Altamont, the Hell’s Angels were unwelcome visitors this time rather than an unofficial security force. And a combined unit of public and private officers was brought onto the grounds to maintain order and avoid any chance of a repeat of 1969, though they apparently were unconcerned about drug use. “There was a carnival atmosphere and the usual wafts of marijuana smoke, but police said they had made no arrests by early evening,” read a report the Monroe Morning World filed midway through the show. “Marijuana, hashish, and pills were sold openly at the site, but organizations set up to deal with drug users on bad trips said there had not been much demand for their services.”

The Stones were supposed to take the stage around 9 p.m., but technical issues throughout the day delayed their set by over two hours. During the downtime, the middle portion of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” played on a loop as rumors spread the Stones might cancel. But all was forgiven when they took the stage and burst into the song that Jagger didn’t want to still be playing at 40, but was happy to sing at 33.

It was their first live rendition of “Satisfaction” since 1972, and an early sign this was going to be a very different show than the one they brought around North America and Europe earlier in the year, even though they were once again joined by pianist/singer Billy Preston and percussionist Ollie Brown.

The surprises continued with their first cover of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” since 1966, their first cover of Willie Dixon’s “The Little Red Rooster” since 1965, and their first “Let’s Spend the Night Together” since 1967. They were technically supporting Black and Blue with this tour, but only played four songs (“Fool to Cry,” “Hand of Fate,” “Hey Negrita,” and “Hot Stuff”) from it to make room for standards like “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Wild Horses,” and “Happy.”

Near the end, Jagger handed over the mic to Preston so he could play his recent solo hits “Nothing From Nothing” and “Outa-Space,” before wrapping up the night with fierce renditions of “Midnight Rambler,” “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It),” “Brown Sugar,” “Rip This Joint,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and “Street Fighting Man.” They played 28 songs across two-and-a-half hours, one of the longest shows of their entire career, wrapping up after 2 a.m.

The Sunday Telegraph sent an older writer, Ronald Payne, to report from the scene like an anthropologist. “Had even a good regiment of infantry been forced to wait hours in the sun in such conditions there would have been a mutiny,” Payne writes. “But they sat, the big battalions of pop in their unisex uniforms of blue jeans and T-shirts, apparently happy. Up the hillside there ever pours in reinforcements, clutching cans of beer and occasionally flags…There is something about it all of a children’s crusade, the young people look so innocent and take their pleasure so gravely. Yet over them loomed the music, which I fail to comprehend, of such a high decibel count as to make the roar of Concorde seem like the whirring of a clockwork toy.”

(It’s fortunate the music was so loud, since there were somewhere in the ballpark of 150,000 to 250,000 attendees — estimates vary wildly — and only two screens with nothing close to the fidelity we’re accustomed to at shows today, even if they were state-of-the-art by 1976 standards.)

In The Guardian, writer Robin Denselow compared the event to the Republican National Convention, which nominated Gerald Ford for his first proper term as president just a couple days earlier. “Even with the wildest stretch of the imaginations, it’s difficult to equate Jagger howling through ‘Street Fighting Man’ with Betty Ford’s victory waltz across the platform to the strains of ‘I Could Have Danced All Night,'” Denselow writes. “But in terms of style, both were vast-scale marketing exercises that drew enormous audiences, and both star attractions used old-fashioned showbiz techniques to win the lumps in the throat, wet eyes, and applause.”

Once the show was finally over, the group was happy to admit they had no plans to actually stop touring. “We are planning a tour of South America at the moment for next year,” bassist Bill Wyman told the press. “Before that we are going to the south of France to rest. If possible we should like to come back here again some time next year for concerts.”

The future didn’t unfold quite as Wyman envisioned. The Stones somehow didn’t hit South America until 1995, a couple years after Wyman quit the band. And there was no European tour in 1977. The only dates they played that year were the infamous pair of shows at Toronto’s El Mocambo, where they billed themselves as the Cockroaches.

The band spent the rest of 1977 dealing with the fallout from a second Keith drug bust, this time a much more serious incident where he was caught with heroin in Canada and faced the possibility of serious jail time, and beginning the recording of Some Girls. (With typical Stones luck, the judge was merciful and ordered Keith to play a benefit concert for the blind, when he could have locked him up for seven years.)

Today, Knebworth remains the site of the biggest concerts on the U.K. summer calendar. And while nothing has been even remotely confirmed, there are persistent rumors that Oasis might return in 2027 for a repeat of their legendary 1996 two-night stand.

And despite all the speculation that the Stones were going to call it quits after their 1976 Knebworth show, they remain an active band 50 years later. But they haven’t played in two years, and Keith has indicated he has no desire to tour again. The idea of residencies has floated around. If they stage one in England, expect it to take place at Wembley or Twickenham Stadium. Their fans no longer want to schlep out to Knebworth and deal with festival “seating,” which means no seats at all.

If the Stones ever want to revisit Knebworth, their best bet is to officially release the surviving audio and professionally shot film from 1976, about 95 minutes in total. Sadly, it appears that there’s about an hour missing from the footage that may simply not exist. That’s not too shocking since it was a chaotic day, but at least they got through it without the Hell’s Angels beating anyone to death. From that perspective alone, it was a tremendous success.

John Paris of Earth, Wind, & Fire performs in Alpharetta, Georgia, in 2017.

Earth, Wind, & Fire offered an update on drummer John Paris, who was put into an induced coma after suffering a medical emergency earlier this month.

Paris, 58, has since woken up, according to statement shared with People by a representative for band member Verdine White. “Since our last few updates, there have been both encouraging moments and new challenges,” the rep said. “As we’ve said from the beginning, recovery isn’t a straight line, and John’s journey continues to remind us of that every day.”

The statement continued, “Many of you may remember that earlier in John’s journey, he briefly awakened before needing to be sedated again. Since then, we’ve experienced another significant milestone—John woke up again. This time, there was encouraging progress.”

Paris will remain in the intensive care unit and will need two major surgeries. His wife, Kathy Merrick, told People, “This journey is definitely a marathon, but JP is fighting every single day and our hope is strong. John has already overcome obstacles that once seemed impossible, and while there is still a long road ahead, each step forward gives everyone around him renewed hope.”

The drummer “experienced a critical medical emergency” ahead of Earth, Wind, & Fire’s show with Lionel Richie in San Francisco on Aug. 6. The band postponed the concert and told fans they hoped to reschedule. “We sincerely apologize for the unexpected change and appreciate everyone’s understanding,” the group said in a statement on social media.

Initially, Earth, Wind, & Fire did not reveal which member of the band had suffered the emergency. The following week, White’s wife, Shelly Clark White, and friend Tazz Cole shared an update on Facebook and confirmed the details had been “intentionally” left private.

“As information has begun to circulate publicly, we feel it’s important that everyone hears the story directly from us so there is no confusion about where things stand today,” the statement noted. They explained that Paris had been rushed to the hospital, and “when John arrived at the hospital, his doctors placed him into an induced coma while they worked to provide the critical care he needed.”

They explained that when Paris woke up there was “renewed hope” for his recovery, but “that moment was short-lived. He was placed back into the coma to stabilize him, but has now woken up again, per yesterday’s statement.

A friend of Merrick launched a GoFundMe page for the drummer and his wife. “Today, we’re asking family, friends, fans, and the music community to surround John and Kathy with the same love, kindness, and generosity they have shared with so many throughout the years,” the page reads.

A photo of Nickelback in 2002

Canadian hard rock Hall-of-Famers Nickelback are back in full force with the release of “Leave Me Behind,” the latest single from their upcoming album Everything Under The Sun.

The Alberta-born band released the track Friday, giving fans another preview of the 11th studio album, which is scheduled to arrive October 30 through Virgin Music Group. The song follows the singles “Bones For The Crows” and “Rattle The Cage,” the latter featuring Mötley Crüe guitarist John 5.

“Leave Me Behind” is an expansive power-ballad, taking a more emotional route than the hard-charging “Rattle The Cage.” The new song focuses on loyalty, emotional baggage and the difficult process of helping someone move forward. The track centres on the idea of standing by someone through a difficult period while confronting the fear of being abandoned along the way.

“There’s a lot of weight in this song, but there’s also a lot of hope,” says frontman Chad Kroeger. “It’s about being there for someone when they’re dealing with the things that have broken them down - picking up the pieces, taking some of that weight off their shoulders, and reminding them they don’t have to go through it alone. At the same time, there’s that feeling of not wanting to be left behind. We liked that tension. It makes the song feel really personal.”

Everything Under The Sun will be Nickelback's first studio album since 2022's Get Rollin'. The new record will be their first with new label Virgin Music Group.

Jonas Brothers perform during their Burning Up Tour All Over Again show at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 20

Jonas Brothers debuted a new song, “Listen When Sad,” during their concert at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night. The group, Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas, showcased the track during the latter half of the show.

“We’ve tapped back into a sound that was kind of the sound of the early 2000s,” Nick told the crowd. “To be honest, that was heavily inspiring to us. Bands like Switchfoot, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional. We re-teamed with the producer of our self-titled album, A Little Bit Longer, and Lines, Vines and Trying Times.”

Jonas Brothers are currently on their Burning Up Tour: All Over Again, which includes three nights at MSG. The original Burnin’ Up Tour took place nearly two decades ago in 2008. The global trek came after the release of their album A Little Bit Longer, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The album went on to sell more than two million copies and remains beloved by fans today.

The trio also recently relived their early years by returning to Disney’s Camp Rock franchise. Camp Rock 3, out now, finds the Jonas Brothers returning as fictional band Connect 3, who are looking for a new opening act. That search brings them back to Camp Rock, where a fresh set of campers are ready to show their stuff. The film’s soundtrack includes a new JoBros number, “Come On Over,” although it’s billed under Connect 3.

Jonas Brothers have yet to announce a release date for the studio version of “Listen When Sad.” The tour continues tonight at Madison Square Garden, and will head to cities across the U.S. this fall, kicking off in Boston on Sept. 25.