Pink Floyd, Queen, AC/DC And Other Classic Rock Greats To Release Albums This Year: What Gives?

This week's music news is abound in anachronisms:

• Millennials, who grew up listening to digital music on Spotify and Pandora, are buying up vinyl LPs at Urban Outfitters, and the hipster haven is selling them in record (pun not intended) numbers worldwide.
• Barbra Streisand has the No. 1 album in the U.S. -- at age 72.
• And Queen, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, The Cure and Bob Dylan are all releasing albums this year.

Twitter user @KitschKiller can be forgiven for wondering in a tweet: “What year is it?”

It’s the revenge of the musical baby boomers year, apparently -- with Gen Xers thrown in for good measure. Some of these bands haven’t seen hits or even released albums in 20-plus years, so the question of whether they have something new to offer -- or perhaps have mansion remodeling or college educations they need to finance -– seems fair. After all, trading on their names and a ready-made audience could be a sure thing. Just the mention of a new album typically sends fans into Twitter tizzies.

Queen is releasing their first album in nearly 20 years, featuring unreleased Freddie Mercury vocals (and reportedly a track with Michael Jackson sharing vocal duties with Mr. Mercury), announced The Telegraph. Pink Floyd’s first new album in over 20 years, The Endless River, is described as “ambient instrumental music” and a tribute to Rick Wright, Pink Floyd’s keyboardist who died in 2008. For the first time in six years, Australian headbangers AC/DC are releasing an album in December. Guns N’ Roses’ next record, their followup to 2008’s “Chinese Democracy,” may be done this year. The Cure plan on releasing a double album this year, and Bob Dylan’s remastered “The Basement Tapes” and “Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes” will be released in November.

The musical times, they are not a-changin’.