A few weeks ago, Fontaines D.C. dropped “Starburster,” the uninhibited lead single off of their recently announced fourth album, Romance, out August 23. In anticipation of the upcoming album cycle, the Irish post-punk band spontaneously announced a one-off show at Warsaw in Brooklyn, and tickets sold out in mere minutes. When the day of the show came, a line of Fontaines devotees wrapped around the block of the Greenpoint venue on an 85-degree May evening, buzzing with feverish excitement.
The band themselves were feeling it, too. Over the last years, they’ve amassed a global diehard fanbase, a level of success they hadn’t imagined for themselves. “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to travel the world and play music,” says bassist Conor “Deego” Deegan. “I think we got quite used to people coming up to us in Dublin by now. But having people coming up to us in New York on the street is really bizarre. Quite shocking, but quite amazing really, to even be able to sell out a gig here.”
At the show, they performed “Starburster” live for the first time. The rest of the 17-song setlist drew on Fontaines D.C.’s growing catalog, with songs from 2022’s Skinty Fia and 2019’s Dogrel zapping the crowd with adrenaline and starting several mosh pits. It felt like every attendee was thrilled to be in that room, proof of the air of communal joy that Fontaines foster. (Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner was among those spotted there.)
The Romance era comes with a stylistic shift for Fontaines D.C. – in terms of personal style, sure, but in content and approach, too. “After seeing yourself represented in publications and reading your own words for a long time, you feel a sense of inertia that I kind of got frustrated with — the sort of unchanging nature of how I was coming across,” says Chatten. “I think changing all angles and aspects of what we do was imperative to make sure that we felt like we were taking a genuine step in a different direction.”
“It’s kind of funny, it’s almost like muscle memory, but for the way we were,” Deegan adds. “Your hands go to the same chords all the time after a while. We were going to the same outfits, and we were going to the same ways of being, and talking, and interviews. I think we really tried to make a conscious break with all of that to stay sincere.”
Words by Leah Lu
Photos by Sacha Lecca and Griffin Lotz
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.