Music Today: John Prine Turns 80 With 'Found Dogs,' Bruno Mars Owns Levi's Stadium, and an Outlaw's Last Album

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Some weekends the music news is about who's on top of the charts. This one was about who the songs belong to. John Prine would have turned 80 yesterday, and instead of a quiet anniversary, his people threw him the kind of birthday you throw for someone who never really left: a Chicago Theatre full of friends singing his songs, a foundation carrying his name doing the work, and a brand-new old record — Found Dogs — landing with five songs nobody had ever heard. We've got a full feature on the Prine weekend below; here's everything else that moved in music.

Bruno's stadium weekend

Bruno Mars played Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara last night, and he does it again tonight — the second of two Bay Area dates on The Romantic Tour. The venue bills the run as his first full headlining stadium tour in nearly a decade, produced by Live Nation, spanning nearly 40 shows across North America, Europe and the UK. RAYE and DJ Pee .Wee are on the bill, with a 7 p.m. local start.

The tour takes its name from The Romantic, the album behind Mars's return to solo music — his fourth album and his first solo release in a decade. After tonight, the routing heads to BC Place in Vancouver on October 14, then onward, with Mexico City dates at Estadio GNP Seguros in December. For an artist who spent years as Vegas's most reliable resident headliner, watching him take the stadium run on the road feels like the victory lap after the victory lap.

The outlaw's last album

David Allan Coe's final studio album, A Million Reasons, arrives digitally Friday, October 16 via F3 Entertainment in Nashville. Coe — the Akron-born outlaw who died April 29 in Daytona Beach, Florida, at 86 after a bout with pneumonia — cut the record back in 2017, and it's been sitting in the vault ever since.

The backstory is pure Coe. The sessions were spearheaded by Colt Ford through Average Joes Entertainment, produced by Noah Gordon and Lex Lipsitz, and then the album simply never came out. In 2022, Coe's former co-manager Ken Madson acquired the master recordings and set about finishing the project; after Coe's passing, Madson said getting it to the fans felt more important than ever. The 11-track set mixes newly recorded songs with unreleased material: Kid Rock co-wrote two of them ("Single Father" and "Only God Knows Why"), there's a Johnny Cash tribute called "Corner of Cash and Coe," and the whole thing opens with an introduction from Ric Flair — because of course it does.

The anchor is a new recording of "You Never Even Called Me By My Name," Coe's 1975 signature, which premiered via Taste of Country and hit streaming on September 6 — what would have been his 87th birthday. There's also a southern-rock take on "Take This Job and Shove It," the song Coe wrote that Johnny Paycheck turned into a workingman's anthem. Coe wrote more than 60 charting singles for himself and others — Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, George Jones — and never quite got the mainstream due. Friday's release is the last word, in his own voice.

Don Was honors Bob Weir; Paul Simon's quiet celebration

Two legacy moves worth your attention. Six-time Grammy winner Don Was announced Live Dispatch Vol. 1: Blues For Allah '26, a live album from Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble honoring his longtime friend and collaborator Bob Weir. The record — captured on the ensemble's recent tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's Blues for Allah — arrives November 20 via Verve Records, led by the single "The Music Never Stopped." Was and Weir formed the Wolf Brothers back in 2018 and toured together until Weir's passing this year; Was has said that playing with Weir drew him deep into the Dead's music, and that the songs became less like a chord chart and more like old friends. The Pan-Detroit band is stacked with Motor City jazz players, including saxophonist Dave McMurray.

And Paul Simon's The Quiet Celebration Concert arrived Friday via Legacy Recordings — a 2-CD/3-LP set recorded at McCaw Hall in Seattle. It's the first-ever live performance of his complete Grammy-nominated Seven Psalms, wrapped in an intimate career-spanning evening with new arrangements of the classics and deep cuts, including a turn with his wife Edie Brickell. Simon came out of his post-2018 retirement to tour again in 2025, ran the U.S. and Europe, then a second U.S. leg this year. The voice has aged into something weathered and conversational, and by every account the shows have been better for it.

Hip-hop Friday's stragglers

Friday's rap releases mostly got their due in our coverage this week — Offset's "Every Night" with Don Toliver, Ovrkast.'s STRIKING with Joey Bada$$ and Nali on "STATIC," and Tobe Nwigwe's latest — but two more deserve a spin. Gunna opened the weekend with "pop it," a tight two-minute solo single via Gunna Music. And Cardi B's "Don't Chart" ties this week's releases to Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album — the game's soundtrack rollout keeps pulling real records into its orbit, as we covered with the Cardi B and Fuerza Regida singles. Tobe Nwigwe also linked with Busta Rhymes on "CHINEKE," which is exactly as heavy as that pairing sounds.

Elsewhere on Previously this weekend: Remi Wolf's Mud and the 2027 Mud Tour, Austin City Limits' second weekend with Kings of Leon's Zilker Park comeback and a Charli xcx and Troye Sivan surprise, Staind's extended 25th-anniversary run, Riley Green's 2027 tour, Brooks & Dunn's first Australia return in 18 years, last night's SNL with Shane Gillis and Rosalía, and Dolly's "Jolene" crossing a billion Spotify streams. Yesterday's full rundown is here.

More from the newsroom: John Prine at 80 — the full feature · Remi Wolf's Mud Tour · ACL Weekend Two