Music News & Notes

Amazing Decade For Veteran Musicians

It was a great decade for the Rolling Stones, U2 and Madonna. They all grossed over $800 million on the road over the course of ten years.

Even more amazing is that U2, who is also the number one touring act of 2009, sold out every one of their 288 shows since 2000.

Billboard's Top Tour Artists of the 2000's

•1. Rollings Stones (Gross: $869 million/Attendance: 8.2 million/190 of 264 shows sold out)
•2. U2 ($844 million/9.9 million/288 of 288)
•3. Madonna ($801 million/6.4 million/244 of 248)
•4. Bruce Springsteen ($688 million/8.6 million/248 of 403)
•5. Elton John ($604 million/5.8 million/470 of 541)

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Page Wants Work

Jimmy Page plans to return to the stage in 2010, but it won’t be alongside the rest of Led Zeppelin. With Robert Plant and Alison Krauss working on the follow-up to the Grammy-winning Raising Sand and John Paul Jones now playing with Josh Homme and Dave Grohl in Them Crooked Vultures, Page is tired of waiting to rock and will take whatever new material he’s cultivated to the stage next year.

“We’re running up to Christmas now and next year I have every intention of playing music live and manifesting it,” Page tells Sky News (via Spinner). “I’ve got the music waiting, and that’s what I’ll be doing. It’s been two years since the 02, so it’s time to do that.”

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Nickelback Named Band of the Decade by Billboard

Nickelback has lived their entire chart-topping history in the '00s, and it started off well with the band's first No. 1, "How You Remind Me" at the the very turn of this millenium.

Since then, the Canada-based rock act has earned five more top 10 singles, even breaking the record for most No. 1s in the 13-year history of the Adult Pop songs chart just earlier this year with "Gotta Be Somebody" rising in January.

Need some more stats? The band's last four albums reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200, including All the Right Reasons, which rang in at No. 1 and spent 156 weeks on the list between 2005 and 2006..

This year, as Nickelback celebrate a Grammy nomination for Dark Horse, the band can also celebrate their victory as Billboard's appointed "top duo/group" of the last decade.