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Mitt Romney Taps Homie Kid Rock For Campaign Anthem

Posted 12/7/11 3:25 pm EST by in Kid-Rock, Politics


Here's how this one usually goes:

1) Clueless Republican politician (and they're almost always Republicans, for some reason) decides to adopt a rousing pop/rock song as their campaign anthem.

2) Singer/band gets wind of said appropriation and demands that politician cease and desist from using the song because a) they don't agree with that person's politics, or b) the pol has completely misinterpreted the song and is using it for jingoistic inspiration when the true meaning of the song is the total opposite of what they think. (Call it the "I don’t think that means what you think it means" corollary.)

3) Said politician quietly agrees to stop using the song, or defiantly vows to keep playing it at rallies without the artist's consent.

Then there's GOP presidential kind-of frontrunner Mitt Romney, a Detroit native who grew up in southeast Michigan as the son of the state's former governor, George Romney. According to the Detroit News, Romney has finally picked a campaign theme song: Kid Rock's amber waves of grain fist-pumping, flag-waving anthem "Born Free."

I know what you're thinking here: "oh man, Kid is gonna go all in on that guy for using his music!" Except he's probably not going to. Unlike Katy Perry, who demanded that momentary GOP frontrunner and gay rights foe Rep. Michele Bachmann cease and desist from using her song "Firework" earlier this year … after Tom Petty sent an actual cease and desist order to get her to stop using "American Girl" at campaign stops. Rock's probably okay with this one. Read More...

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Kid Rock Sets Off Fireworks Before The Fourth Of July

Posted 7/5/11 10:40 am EST by in Kid-Rock, Live Music, rap


Photo by Gil Kaufman

Photo by Gil Kaufman

Cincinnati -- Talk about the perfect bill on the perfect night. Kid Rock and old pal Sheryl Crow kicked off their summer tour on Saturday (July 2) in the Queen City with a three-hour marathon of Americana that had it all – fireworks, giant American flags, songs about lazy (mostly drunken) summer days and pontoon boats, multiple references to funny cigarettes, purple mountains majesty and, of course, a couple of Uncle Sam-loving strippers thrown in for good measure.

What better way is there to gear up for the 4th of July, right?

For the 15,500 at Riverbend Amphitheater, clearly there was nowhere else to be in the windup to patriotic weekend, despite oppressive heat and humidity that made goopy mascara run, sky-high hair droop and sweat to flow in torrents down a sea of butterfly-themed tramp stamps.

Swaggering out from underneath a titanic set of bull horns with glowing red eyes, a red-white and blue-decked Rock banged out "American Bad Ass" and "God Bless Saturday" in front of a rustic set that looked like a woodsy saloon in his native northern Michigan, complete with a stuffed bear wearing a dookie chain and a full-service, two-story bar with beer taps and bottles of Jim Beam lined up across the front. With a 10-piece band backing him, the rapper-turned-Bob-Segeresque heartland rocker quickly reminded fans of his roots with the Run-DMC-like "You Never Met a Motherf---er Quite Like Me," which got him so riled up he needed to take a minute to brush his hair and change hats before continuing the assault with "Cowboy."

Now, I've been going to shows for a long time now and while I can't recall ever seeing a stripper pole on stage, I've now seen a total of four over the past week at two different shows. So I was not surprised when a pair of poles popped up out of the floor and two exotic dancers materialized to shimmy as Rock put on a cowboy hat (a white one, if you can believe it) and told his tale of West Coast pimpin while flanked by two giant American flags.
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Kid Rock: The Confederate-Flag Flying NAACP Hero?

Posted 5/2/11 5:29 pm EST by in Music


By Zach Swickey

It has been a while since Kid Rock was considered "controversial" by the music world, but that changed with his acceptance of the Detroit NAACP's Great Expectations Award. At Sunday night's annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, a small group of about 50 people took to picketing outside the Cobo Center — not due to Rock's questionable lyrics or the hard-partying lifestyle he promotes, but rather due to his common use of the Confederate flag, which the protesters promptly set on fire to further illustrate their frustrations. Attended by nearly 10,000 people, the annual fundraiser was an opportunity for the Michigan-native to defend himself.

"I love America. I love Detroit, and I love black people," Rock said on Sunday night, according to The Associated Press.

Rock's selection as an honoree had been criticized from the beginning by some who feel the Confederate flag remains a symbol of oppression and racism, which conflicts with the ideology of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

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MTV's Musical March Madness: Kid Rock Vs. Adele, Mumford & Sons Vs. Tokio Hotel

Posted 3/16/11 1:30 pm EST by in Music


It's MTV's second annual Musical March Madness! MTV News took the 64 biggest names in rock, split them up into four regions, assigned them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 64, so over the next few weeks, fan voting will determine who will emerge as this year's champion. It's all about the fans, and the artist with the most passionate fan base will score the awesome Musical March Madness trophy!

We're half way through the South bracket, with a handful of bands jumping out to early leads (in an upset-in-the-making, No Doubt is already way ahead of Paramore). Here are two more match-ups, featuring a lot of underdogs who could really put the tournament on its ear.

Just as a reminder, first round voting continues through Sunday night (March 20), and you can catch up with any match-ups you might have missed here. Let's get to the match-ups!

(6) Kid Rock vs. (11) Adele
At first glance, it seems like this would be something of a lopsided match-up. After all, Kid Rock is a veteran who has reached fans of rock, hip-hop, blues and country, and he effortlessly churns out his after hit, year after year. But Adele has picked up a tremendous amount of heat over the past few months, notching two weeks at the top of the Billboard Top 200 with her just-released second album 21 and turning more and more heads on both sides of the Atlantic. Can she pull off the upset, or will Detroit's favorite son prevail?

(3) Mumford & Sons vs. (14) Tokio Hotel
Mumford & Sons are the Cinderella story of the year, a folk and bluegrass combo who have steadily picked up fans and respect all around the world (and they've sold a million albums to boot). Meanwhile, Tokio Hotel was the Cinderella story of last year's Musical March Madness tournament, as they overcame their low seed to fly all the way to the Final Four before being ousted by eventual champs Coheed and Cambria. With a slightly better seed and a bit more experience under their belts, can Tokio Hotel make that extra push, or will Mumford & Sons spoil the party? Your votes decide it!

Watch Adele lay down her case for victory!

Check out the Musical March Madness bracket and be take a look at the hoops-centric photos of some of the tournament's biggest bands.

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Kid Rock Has A Rough Night Out: Wake-Up Video

Posted 2/16/11 8:30 am EST by in Wake-Up Video


Living the rock and roll lifestyle can be sort of complicated. After all, that level of excess can sometimes be overwhelming. But it's necessary for the sake of entertainment, and the best ones — like Axl Rose or Vince Neil — aren't afraid to occasionally brush up against the law every once in a while. Kid Rock is one of the few superstars who is totally willing to push the envelope, and on this day in 2005, he was arrested after a spectacular night of debauchery and rock and roll excess.

The evening began at a strip club in Nashville, Tennessee called Christie's Cabaret. Rock was there partying when at some point he assaulted a guy named Jay Campos, the club's DJ (supposedly, Rock was upset with Campos' choice of music). By the time police had arrived at Christie's, Rock had already taken off to make his way to a second strip club. On the way, he was even pulled over by a police officer who did not detain Rock (though did get his autograph).

After taking time to sober up at the second club, Rock returned to an apartment he had been renting in town, where he turned himself in. Rock pleaded no contest, and his bail was set at $3,000. It wasn't the last time Rock found himself in trouble because of a scuffle, as he got into a dust-up with Tommy Lee at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and also got into a brawl at a Waffle House in Atlanta that same year.

Rock was going through a musical transition at the time, moving from his early rap-rock leanings to a more classic rock-influenced, country-kissed sound of his last few albums (including 2010's Born Free). But he hasn't lost the edge that let him cut hits like "American Bad Ass," a track from 2000's The History of Rock that borrows the riff from Metallica's "Sad But True."


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Spotted: Kid Rock Pumps Up The Volume At The Super Bowl

Posted 2/4/11 1:00 pm EST by in Music


Every day a multitude of stars wander through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with our intrepid correspondents. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.

The Super Bowl began as simply a football game but has evolved into a massive international cultural event. And it isn't just a Sunday — it's a week or so of parties and concerts designed to celebrate the greatness of football. Though the Super Bowl always manages to be one of the biggest events of the year, it also somehow becomes bigger and bigger as the years pass. So it's no surprise that this Sunday's (February 6) game is not only expected to be the most-watched television broadcast in American history but also has seen top-shelf talent descend on the Dallas area all week. One of those huge stars? Kid Rock, who headlined the VH1 Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam at the Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie, Texas. Rock played alongside the likes of Jason Derulo and Duran Duran and was joined on stage by fellow country-rock outlaw Jamey Johnson.

Rock wasn't the only star getting it done, as Lifehouse and the Fray headlined another Super Bowl party in Dallas and "Inception" stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy watched the Los Angeles Lakers lose to the San Antonio Spurs at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Click here for these photos as well as the entire "Spotted" archive, which features over 500 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Rihanna, the Jonas Brothers, Madonna and Kanye West!

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With The Beatles Now Available, What Bands Still Aren't On iTunes?

Posted 11/16/10 12:30 pm EST by in Music


The digital music world got a big break early on Tuesday (November 16), as Apple announced that more than seven years after the establishment of the iTunes Store (the premier digital music outpost on the Internet, responsible for over 10 billion songs sold), the Beatles are finally available for purchase. The legendary band's entire remastered catalog is now live on iTunes, with the bonus addition of an iTunes-specific box set that features all of the group's albums plus a ton of bonus content (including making-of footage and extended liner notes).

For the longest time, the Beatles were the major holdout on iTunes, as most other legendary bands made themselves fully available via the sales service. Led Zeppelin famously held out but eventually made their stuff available a few years back, and despite the fact that digital music has always made them nervous, you can get the entire Metallica collection on iTunes as well.

But what bands are still holding out? It's an interesting combination of artists.

AC/DC
The Australian hard rockers have always been extremely protective of their back catalog. They steadfastly refuse to put together a greatest hits album, and it has paid off, as their old albums (especially 1980's Back in Black) are constants in the charts. They have never made their music available through iTunes, and the only digital deal they've ever signed was with Verizon (where you could purchase their songs via Verizon phones).

Tool
Strangely, you can get just about any of the Tool side projects (including A Perfect Circle and Puscifer), but the band itself is nowhere to be found.

Mid-period Prince
Most of the important Prince albums (1999, Purple Rain, Batman) can be bought via iTunes, but a bunch of the mid-period albums (including Musicology and The Rainbow Children) aren't available.
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Is Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy The Most Anticipated Album Of The Season?

Posted 10/7/10 2:30 pm EST by in Music


If you have been paying any kind of attention to this space in the past week or so, you know that there's a lot of excitement around the MTV Newsroom surrounding the upcoming release of Kanye West's newest album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The songs we have heard (notably "Runaway" and "Power") have certainly fueled that fire, and the recent news about the unveiling of West's new film (also called "Runaway") has similarly stirred the pot. The album promises to be incredibly strange, dark and musically adventurous, which should put it immediately on the short list of best albums of the year.

But we're not only wrapped up in Kanye, as there are a number of other albums that have been getting our motors going. The slow and steady news about Taylor Swift's Speak Now suggest that it should be great. The long-awaited new album from My Chemical Romance is also excellent, as is Come Around Sundown, the new release from Kings of Leon. New music from Rihanna is always interesting, and Kid Rock's upcoming Born Free should also be eye-opening and head-turning. And don't forget about Susan Boyle, who sold nearly 10 million copies of her debut album I Dreamed a Dream. There is also plenty of singles-fueled buzz surrounding Cee-Lo, Nelly and Nicki Minaj ("F--- You," "Just a Dream" and "Check It Out" are all currently in constant rotation).

So which one of those releases is your most anticipated? Which one makes you most excited and will most likely end up on your year-end best-of list? Vote in the poll below and lay out your arguments in the comments!

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Kid Rock Wanders Outside His Comfort Zone: The MTV News Quote Of The Day

Posted 9/22/10 4:30 pm EST by in Music


"I got a pretty good comfort zone: made all my records in Detroit, right by my house, and it's worked out pretty well so far. And to be pulled out of there, and go to L.A., and record this whole record there with these phenomenal musicians in a studio [was different]. I'd play the song on acoustic guitar, we'd chart it out, we'd sit in a room as a band, play it three, four times, listen back, come out, play it three, four more times — done. We got the record recorded in two weeks. I didn't know what to do with my free time. I didn't get a lot of positive things done in that off time."

-Genre-bending rocker Kid Rock, commenting on the process he went through to record his forthcoming album Born Free. For his 10th full-length LP, Rock drafted super-producer Rick Rubin to coax the album into existence, and not only did Rubin introduce a new process but also a whole new city. "[Rubin] kinda pulls out of the artists he works with. He has this vision of where he thinks you might be heading, or want to head, and really pulls that out of you and keeps you focused on that," Rock told MTV News' Tim Kash. "And, for me, he kind of took me out of my element, which was a little bit weird."

The first single from Born Free (which is scheduled to hit store shelves on November 16) is the title track, which Rock feels is already being misinterpreted. "I think that song already has kinda gotten a little bit construed that it's just this big, patriotic American song, which it is in its own right, but it first came to mind to write something like this when I was on one of my trips to Afghanistan, Iraq, playing for our soldiers," he said. "I started to just think about no matter where somebody was born in this world, how lucky you are just by the grace of God to be born free."

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Will Kid Rock's 'Born Free' Be Anything Like M.I.A.'s 'Born Free'?

Posted 8/30/10 2:30 pm EST by in Music


On Monday (August 30), Kid Rock announced that his upcoming album will be called Born Free, and that it will be hitting stores on November 16. In keeping with the decidedly blue-collar path he cut with his 2007 comeback disc Rock N Roll Jesus, Kid won't be rapping on the new album (so says an accompanying press release), instead drawing inspiration from "American classic rock." Bob Seger, Sheryl Crow, Zac Brown and Trace Adkins are all confirmed to appear on the album, not to mention T.I. and Martina McBride, who — in a decidedly WTF twist — both appear on a track called "Care."

The first single off Born Free is, appropriately enough, the title track, which hits radio on September 14. While we're totally pumped to hear it (our flags are already unfurled), we'd be remiss if we didn't point out the fact that M.I.A. already released a song called "Born Free" earlier this year, and — thanks to the accompanying video's rather virtuoso use of violence — it created quite a stir.

And while we're (pretty) sure the similarities aren't intentional, that didn't stop us from thinking about the video Kid Rock will undoubtedly release for his take on "Born Free" and how it will differ from M.I.A.'s version. We thought so much about it, in fact, that we decided to throw together a list. Here's all the (presumptive) ways "Born Free" will differ from, well, "Born Free."

» Nameless troops shall not gather up terrified redheads for slaughter, but rather, scour the city for buxom blondes, who will all be whisked away to Cabo for a totally awesome weekend sponsored by American Badass Lager.

» Bizarre cameo by former Detroit Tigers great "Sweet Lou" Whitaker.
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