GHOST frontman Tobias Forge joins host Abe Kanan for a special Audacy Check In, amid the highly-anticipated arrival of the mysterious Swedish metal band's all new 'Skeletá' era with new music, a new ‘Papa,’ and more.

Over the weekend GHOST shared images of an epic billboard announcing “V is coming,” along with a link to a livestream which will no doubt host the debut of the band’s “new” singer, Papa V Perpetua, as well as further new music announcements. Papa V, the next incarnation of frontman Tobias Forge, was first teased when revealed as part of Black Sabbath’s 'Back To The Beginning' July concert in Birmingham happening later this year.

For the past 20+ years, Tobias has led his “nameless ghouls” in GHOST, one of the more mysterious groups in the Metal scene, as their anti-Papal singer and principal songwriter.

Looking back on the group’s constant battles with remaining unknown players when first starting out, it was “fatigue,” Forge says, that eventually led to his unmasking. “It was a constant struggle to maintain anonymity, meanwhile trying to break and make the band bigger because it sort of defies the whole idea of becoming a bigger and more famous band, and not become more a person of interest,” he explains. “However, as I transgressed from, I know that might be the wrong word to use here, but transgressed from wanting to really remain anonymous, no matter what, to being, I guess, more open with it.”

“I tried to weigh whether or not if there was a playing field for me, to where I could do both,” Tobias says. “And what I understood it was that GHOST as an entity, as this sort of fictional, cartoonish Rock band, is always -- as long as I continue doing that the way I should -- will always be more known and more recognizable and more interesting than I am as a person. And so far, it has really been like that. Sure, people know who I am, but nowhere near as many as know what GHOST is.”

“Any time we have a new person in the band,” Forge admits, “I think it always sets off the sleuths trying to sort of figure out who that person is, and over the years we've had people in the band who've been very good at hiding their identities, basically enjoying the idea of being somewhat more elusive. And then there are those who prefer to be a little bit more visible.”

However, as he sees it “Neither is wrong. I think in the spirit of GHOST being a slightly more theatrical, and a little bit more anonymous, whatever that means now in this context, I think it's good if we don't go up on stage and take the mask off, ‘Here we are, it's me.’ You know, that's not great, but I mean it doesn't bother me if you know the name of the guitar player.”

Speaking of the band’s brand new single “Satanized” from their forthcoming 2025 album 'Skeletá,' some fans may notice a throwback feel to earlier releases, some of course may not. “I am bad at deciphering or deciding that,” Tobias says, “because if I say, ‘oh yeah, yes, you're right,’ there will be opinionated people listening like, it sounds nothing like Opus… So, no, it's not a carbon copy of ‘Opus Eponymous,’ it's not ‘Infestissumam,’ it's not ‘Meliora.’”

“There are elements of everything I've ever done, scattered all over the records, as is with this record too,” he says. “I always go into the studio or into the writing process, the production process, with the idea of trying to write a new album, an album that sounds in a new way, and then pragmatically, I guess you try to be professional and steer the ship. So it resembles a GHOST record. Even though I'm also struggling at times with exactly what that means, but you know, of course I have a gut feeling of which lines you don't cross, and where it feels like that is ‘not a GHOST thing to do.’ Not because I don't dare -- I consider myself fairly daring in my will to push everything forward, or push the envelope and or do things that others might not wanna do. But of ...

Audacy host Jolene was thrilled to welcome the ultimate Idol -- Billy Idol -- for a special Check In, getting details about his upcoming tour dates kicking off in April with Joan Jett, and plenty more.

Billy Idol is returning to the road this Spring for his 'It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again! Tour.' Kicking off in Phoenix on April 30, the trek will feature special guests Joan Jett & the Blackhearts who will join Idol at all stops including New York’s Madison Square Garden, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and more.

But first congratulations are in order for Idol, who was nominated for inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year. “It's very exciting… it's an incredible honor,” Billy says. “The best news is Steve Stephens being inducted with me, so that really made my day. I don't wanna be up there on my own, so, it’ll be great.”

As promised, new music from Idol is also here with his just-released 2025 single "Still Dancing." the initial offering from 'Dream Into It,' his first full-length album since 2014’s 'Kings & Queens of the Underground.'

“We were making a documentary the last few years, it kept getting interrupted by the coronavirus,” he explains, “but because of that it kind of really made me aware that at this stage in my life, I could really look over the landscape of my life and really sort of talk about that. ‘Still Dancing,’ the song itself is like my life encapsulated into one song, but the album itself actually tells the story of my life.”

“It goes through the sort of Punk Rock era in 1977," Billy adds. "There's a song ‘77’ that talks about coming to America and going solo and then all the shenanigans that happened in between. So, it really does tell the story of my life. The track selection -- normally in the old days you always put the hit single first and the next best song second, but we really did this in the order of my life.”

The single “Still Dancing,” he says, “had the most obvious sound of a Billy Idol record that you recognize, but at the same time it's really fresh and vital, and that's what I feel about the album. I feel that there's not a bad song on it, and I think it's probably one of my best records. Just being able to say that at this time in my life and being inducted into the Hall of Fame all in one go, it's pretty amazing. It's gonna be an incredible year, whatever happens.”

Looking back on his stellar career, “It's been a long ride,” Billy says, “but the ride's all I've known.” And the ride continues this year as he hits the road on his 'It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again!' outing with his pal, Joan Jett.

One of the songs on the forthcoming album, “Wildside,” he says, is “a duet with Joan. So, not only is she gonna be on the tour, but we'll probably be doing one of the songs live, I expect.” Over the years Billy recalls, “We have done some gigs together, but we've never done a tour, so a lot of people are really excited about it as well… it seems like it's a good move.”

Finally, Billy says, “I can’t wait to play the music, that’s the thing. It’s gonna be a great year because we haven’t played any of this music live, so it’s all gonna be fresh to us when we get out there.”

Don't miss Jolene's full Check In with the Billy Idol above, and stay with Audacy for more interviews from your favorite artists. Plus, follow along with Billy Idol Radio on the free Audacy app.

Words by Joe Cingrana, Interview by Jolene

Host Abe Kanan is joined today by singer Marc LaBelle, and guitarist John Notto of Dirty Honey for a special Audacy Check In following the release of their brand new 2025 live album, ‘Mayhem & Revelry.’

As fans can attest, there’s a special something about Dirty Honey’s live performances that can never be captured in the studio. “That was one of the driving factors to doing a live record,” Notto tells us. Since early on in their career, followers and critics alike have told him, “’I love the records, but you guys are better live. There's like a second gear or a third gear. It's like another animal,’” he explains. “I think after enough times of that being said, and in conjunction with us realizing we wanted to bring more of our own sound gear live, we just made sure we could get gear that we can record. That's kind of just the techie side, but one of the main driving factors was realizing we should have something out there that points to why people were actually talking about us.”

Along with the live album, the band is slowly rolling out a four-part YouTube docuseries to give fans something to look forward to. “One of my favorite live records when I was a kid was ‘Song Remains the Same,’ Led Zeppelin, and ‘How the West Was Won,’” John explains, “and both of those have accompanying concert films… It just felt like, well, why don't we do something different? So we hired one of Marc [LaBelle]'s longtime friends who was actually very professional… and he directed our ‘Coming Home’ video.”

“When I was working on the shoot with him,” he adds, “I just thought his intention to what is artistically interesting kind of grabbed me. So, when Marc was like, ‘Why don't we have him just come out and film us,’ I thought he would have a good eye for when things are interesting, that would be something that would be a nugget that you could really show the audience from behind the curtain that they otherwise wouldn't get.”

Looking back on how the band members met, John says it all happened by chance, “because I met a guy who played in his cover band years ago… and he just saw me sitting at an R&B jam. So here we are, the three white guys at this R&B jam, I don't know him, and we're sitting in with like the heaviest of cats who, you know, are all gospel Black musicians who tour with the biggest pop artists in the world. It's just like, ‘Fit in if you can’ kind of thing, and you jam a tune and wing it.”

Eventually, he was invited to play with the cover band and after hearing some of Marc's original songs, “I was like, ‘I don't know anyone young who sings rock like that at all.’ You meet some guys who are already 50 and they've done it, and they're good, but… from there, you know, it was kind of kismet right away. I had learned a bunch of songs off that EP that I liked and sat in with them. I always say it’s random because Marc's more of a true rocker, you know, and so Mark would have never been at that R&B jam.”

“It really was chance in that sense,” he says, “but there must be something about me that's obvious rocker, because even for that kid to have called me out of the blue and be like, ‘I think you're good for this.’ It's very chance… and it's taken us a lot of work to get the right people involved too, but we have.”

“I just remember we were playing this s***ty little dive bar in Santa Monica when John walked in and immediately I was like, ‘This guy looks cool, you know. He's gonna play his Les Paul, that's cool.’ My other guy at the time was playing a Strat, and I actually always kind of liked the blend of maybe like a Telly with a Les Paul… He started playing the Les Paul and I was like, ‘This is awesome. This guy is awesome.'”

“I just came down and played a few tunes and hung out and left,” John adds. “They were doing the hustle, you know, four 45-minute sets, you know, cover band status, which we ended up doing many, many of those. That's how we got good.”

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 ...