On Tidbit Thursdays, we explore some recent stories in music news. Let’s go!

• Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins recently spoke with Apple Music about the loss of Kurt Cobain, saying: “I cried because I lost my greatest opponent.”
• Rivers Cuomo of Weezer was recently on Flea’s podcast This Little Light. He explored a number of topics, notably including the fact that Weezer may have released too much music.
• D4vd recently spoke with Billboard about his music career, which took off thanks to Tik Tok, but was kickstarted by his love of soundtracking videos of his exploits in Fortnite, which got copyright stricken, prompting his mother to suggest that he make his own music.
• The Cure’s North American tour with The Twilight Sad has begun, and all signs point to it being fan service. Not only was Robert Smith fighting for reasonable ticket prices, but reports are also showing reasonable merch stand prices and long sets. There’s new music from their upcoming album (release date as yet unknown), album cuts, and plenty of their old hits.
• HAIM recently appeared on Sesame Street, singing their ABCs.
  Editor’s note: My lifelong dream is to appear on Sesame Street.
• The Foo Fighters’ “Rescued” rode to #1 last week on both mainstream rock airplay and rock & alternative airplay.
• Tony Hawk has been somewhat active on social media over the last few years, mostly documenting interactions in which people know who Tony Hawk is (and maybe even accuse him of looking like Tony Hawk), but just can’t put the last piece of the puzzle together to understand that he is Tony Hawk. But just a few days ago, Hawk made what I believe is his musical debut, singing lead on a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish.” It’s actually pretty solid. Maybe someday, people will recognize him as “Tony Hawk the singer”- or more likely, they will still not recognize him.

• Lil Wayne is apparently trying to make us all forget about the Frank Ocean situation at Coachella by starting late and ending early during his Los Angeles show on Saturday. After the show started an hour late, Lil Wayne performed for around thirty minutes before giving the other artists on his label a chance to play. He felt as though the crowd reaction was unacceptable and returned to the stage to announce that the show was over. “We work too hard for this s***,” he said.
• Good news for fans of Ed Sheeran: it looks like he won’t be handing in his guitar after all. Sheeran has been dealing with some copyright lawsuits surrounding his work for a while now and said that if he lost, he might just give up on music, a sentiment shared by many artists who live in fear of some kind of copyright issue from the media conglomerates that buy up licenses just so they can make money from lawsuits. In the wake of the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit, the future of music copywriting has been looking bleak. Luckily for Sheeran though, it seems that his second lawsuit was dismissed. The first saw him deemed “not liable.” A third trial is still to come.

In Case You Missed It:

• The Pretenders and Queens of the Stone Age both announced new albums last week. The Queens of the Stone Age album, In Times New Roman will be released very soon, on June 16th, while The Pretenders Relentless will be out September 1st. They both have excellent new singles out to promote the albums. 

• Matt Healy of The 1975 recently appeared on a beautiful single by The Japanese House, an indie pop artist from Buckinghamshire, England. The track is called “Sunshine Baby,” and it’s part of her forthcoming album In the End It Always Does, out June 30th. The production on “Sunshine Baby” sounds reminiscent of The 1975, and for good reason. Healy has produced The Japanese House in the past and In the End It Always Does is co-produced by George Daniels of The 1975 (along with Chloe Kraemer and The Japanese House’s Amber Bain herself). The album will also feature contributions from Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Katie Gavin of Muna.

• Portugal. The Man have released the latest single from Chris Black Changed My Life (out June 23rd). It features rapper Black Thought and singer/songwriter Natalia Lafourcade.

–Just Emma (JustEmma@CD929FM.com)