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12 Sep 2023

Maren Morris Is Dropping New Tracks: ‘These Two Songs Deserved a Moment of Their Own’

Maren Morris is hard at work on a new album, but she’s not making fans wait for the album release to hear new music. The Grammy winner will release a duo of songs, under the collective project title The Bridge, on Friday (Sept. 15), she announced on Tuesday (Sept. 12).

The project contains the songs “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here.” Morris said in an Instagram post that the dual song release “honors where I’ve been and [sic] but also feels like a forward step into the sun.”

Morris added, “As I’ve been working on my record nonstop this year, I realized these two songs deserved a moment of their own – a story in their own right, written a day apart from each other – a tender duo and bridge to my next album. I welcome, celebrate and grieve the changes that have happened these last few years and these two songs say it better than I ever could in a caption or interview….hope you enjoy these. ‘Wherever I’m going, I hope I’m not the only one.’”

Based on the song title, it seems that “Get the Hell Out of Here” may be tied to an image Morris posted on Sept. 7, a visual that appeared may be positioned as a response to Jason Aldean’s recent controversial song “Try That in a Small Town.”

She captioned that post, “I’m done filling a cup with a hole in the bottom,” which was shared alongside a silent clip of a bucolic town with a billboard that reads, “Welcome to Our Perfect Small Town: From Sunrise to Sundown.”  (Her rep did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment at the time.)

Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” garnered both support and criticism due to lyrics that advise people to refrain from burning the American flag, disrespecting police and committing robberies in small towns. (Sample lyric: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face/ Stomp on the flag and light it up/ Yeah, ya think you’re tough?/ Well, try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road.”) “Try That in a Small Town” was written by Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy and Kurt Michael Allison. The song’s video was pulled from CMT, a move that sparked both support and backlash.

Following CMT’s decision, Aldean posted a message to his Instagram Stories regarding the contrasting reactions that the song and video have faced. The controversy helped propel consumption of the song and its video. The visual for “Try That in a Small Town” now has over 35 million views, while the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late July; it is currently in the top 10 on the Country Airplay chart.

Morris’ upcoming full-length album will follow her 2022 project Humble Quest and her 2019 album GIRL, which won a CMA Award for album of the year. GIRL‘s key song, “The Bones,” won Morris single and song of the year honors in 2020, while Morris also picked up her first CMA female vocalist of the year win.

See her new music announcement below:

12 Sep 2023

Kelsea Ballerini’s 10 Biggest Hits on the Hot Country Songs Chart

As Kelsea Ballerini celebrates her 30th birthday today (Sept. 12) and gears up to perform at tonight’s Video Music Awards, she also celebrates nearly a decade of notching hit singles on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts, showcasing her bravura as a singer, entertainer, songwriter and hitmaker.

From her debut album, 2015’s The First Time, Ballerini cemented herself as an adept songwriter, one capable of absorbing pop-fueled optimism and fusing it with heart-on-her-sleeve lyrics. The album garnered Ballerini a trio of Country Airplay No. 1 hits: “Love Me Like You Mean It,” “Dibs” and “Peter Pan.” She also earned a best new artist Grammy nomination, while her sophomore album, Unapologetically, earned a best country album nod.

That album title proved prescient, as she’s forged a career based on proving that vulnerability can be an audience-uniting super-strength. She offered a glimpse at the myriad emotions behind the concerts, fashion-forward styles, bright smile and effervescent personality, on songs such as “homecoming queen?”.

In 2021, Ballerini earned her first two CMA Awards, for musical event of the year and music video of the year, both for capturing the wanderlust of ambition that battles with the draw toward the comforts of home, as she honored her Knoxville, Tennessee hometown through her collaborative work with fellow Knoxville native Kenny Chesney, “half of my hometown,” a song Ballerini wrote with Jimmy Robbins, Nicolle Galyon, Ross Copperman and Shane McAnally.

That same year, she let fans further into her instincts as a writer, and her personal journey, when she released Feel Your Way Through: A Book of Poetry, a collection of poems that contemplated her musical ambitions, struggles with body image, and her own experience in 2008 of watching a classmate die from a shooting when she was in high school. In 2022, she also offered up the project Subject to Change, which contained her current top 20 Country Airplay hit “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too).” Another song from the album, “Heartfirst,” earned Ballerini a Grammy nomination for best country solo performance.

Through song and performance, she also stood for her convictions, as evidenced by a pair of 2023 CMT Music Awards appearances: She opened the show by addressing the mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School earlier this year, which left six dead, and called for change. Later in the evening, she performed “If You Go Down,” and welcomed several drag queens — including Manila Luzon, Kennedy Davenport, Jan Sport and Olivia Lux — to perform with her, using music to address a recent Tennessee anti-drag bill.

This year, Ballerini released what is arguably her creative magnum opus to date, the EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, which distills the complex range of emotions and experiences she navigated through a dissolving marriage, weathering a divorce as a public-facing person, and ultimately, finding personal freedom and reconnecting with her true self. The vulnerability and elegant writing funneled into Rolling Up the Welcome Mat was recently recompensed when the project earned an album of the year nomination for the upcoming Country Music Association Awards; Ballerini picked up her sixth female vocalist of the year nomination as well. She also shared her story with fans through discussions and screenings of her Rolling Up the Welcome Mat short film.

On Nov. 2, it is this mature, bold Ballerini, fully in control of her artistic capabilities, who will bring her music and journey back to her Tennessee roots, when she headlines her first headlining arena show in the city where it all began (and the city she has often referenced in her songs) — her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee — when she performs at the Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center.

Here we look back at Ballerini’s top Country Songs hits.

Kelsea Ballerini’s Biggest Billboard Hits chart is based on actual performance on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, through Sept. 9, 2023. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at lower ranks earning less. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted to account for different chart turnover rates over various periods.

12 Sep 2023

Peggy Gou’s ‘Nanana’: How a Festival Video and a Mashup Turned It Into a Breakout Dance Hit

The scene will be immediately familiar to anyone who has attended a music festival: a DJ riling up a crowd, playing a hit but ratcheting up the anticipation by toying with the melody before the drums charge to the rescue. Only this time, the hit hadn’t come out yet — the South Korean producer Peggy Gou was teasing an unreleased single titled “(It Goes Like) Nanana.” 

Attendees at the Lost Nomads festival outside of Marrakesh hardly seemed to mind; a TikTok video capturing Gou’s set shows listeners throwing their hands in the air with abandon. One onlooker, standing behind the DJ’s right shoulder, removes the cigarette hanging unlit from his lips to unleash a hoot just as the percussion hits. 

That sunset TikTok clip helped kickstart a viral chain of events that has turned “(It Goes Like) Nanana” into Gou’s mainstream breakthrough. The single is her first to scale the Billboard charts, climbing inside the top 40 on the Global 200, and it’s earned 24.5 million on-demand streams in the U.S. since its release, according to Luminate. For a time it was the lead track on Spotify’s flagship playlist Today’s Top Hits, a spot usually taken up by major-label superstars, not dance producers on the independent label XL. 

No one is more surprised than Gou. She didn’t have TikTok when “(It Goes Like) Nanana” started to go like viral; she found out about that success from her friends. She also doesn’t watch the charts. “I really did not expect this reaction,” Gou says. “My song was never on a chart before. In the beginning I wasn’t sure what [charting] meant exactly.”

But the excursion into new commercial territory is welcome — a relief, in fact. After her rubbery 2019 single “Starry Night” became popular on dancefloors, Gou felt pressured to top it. “Sometimes pressure is a good thing,” she says. “It always kind of pushes me.”

“(It Goes Like) Nanana” was born during the pandemic, while Gou was binging dance music and hip-hop from the 1990s. The simplicity of the house music she absorbed from that decade stood out: “A lot of the hooks are repetitive, but it’s still catchy, you don’t get bored.” She cites SNAP!’s chugging hit “Rhythm Is a Dancer” and the German producer ATB as touchstones. 

Musical train-spotters on TikTok have thrown out a handful of other references in video comments: Kylie Minogue! (Presumably because she knows her way around a “la-la-la,” which isn’t too far from a “na-na-na.”) “I Like To Move It”! (Maybe in the progression of the bass line?) A Touch of Class’s “Around the World;” Gala’s “Freed From Desire” — take a fistful of Ultimate Dance Party CDs from the second half of the ’90s, throw them in a blender, and you might get something along the lines of “(It Goes Like) Nanana.”

Gou’s biggest tracks to date — “Starry Night” and “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)” — are sung predominantly in Korean. But when she tried that approach on “(It Goes Like) Nanana,” “it didn’t really work,” so she ended up singing it all in English instead. Gou also subbed in an entirely new bass line at the last minute before she started playing it out at festivals like Lost Nomads. 

Badr Bounailat, who shot the popular video of Gou near Marrakesh on June 3rd and posted it June 5th, has two theories about why it amassed over 7 million views. First, he says, “I’m a photographer, and that’s a good frame.” (The top comment on his post: “Can we talk about that zoom quality ouffff.”) Second: “People were in it, they were responding well to the song.” 

The scenic locale may have helped as well. Harmony Soleil, music director for KNHC, a dance radio station in Seattle, was excited to find the video of Gou in her feed. “I’m a tiny bit obsessed with her, in a not weird way,” Soleil jokes. “She’s always in amazing places. What do you mean, you’re in Morocco and you’re in Spain and you’re in Japan?” (Soleil has been playing Gou on KNHC, jumping at the chance “to support an artist who hasn’t had a lot of U.S. radio airplay otherwise.”)

Thanks to all the online attention, by the time “(It Goes Like) Nanana” was officially released on June 15th, Gou felt like the track “was already out.” She was quickly inundated with requests from DJs — from “EDM to jungle to soul to hardcore techno” — asking for stems to make their own remixes. 

The biggest re-work has come from Ian Asher, a DJ and producer with a large following who has a knack for making mash-ups that drive TikTokers wild. Asher, who calls “Starry Night” “a classic,” decided to fuse Gou’s single with CamelPhat’s “Cola,” a skipping but hard-nosed dance track that became an international hit in 2017. “What I love about it is that you have two party songs,”  Asher explains, “but one is very bright and summery, and the other is like you’re going into a nightclub.”

His mash-up from July went bananas on both TikTok and Instagram, appearing in more than 780,000 user created videos. The “Cola x Nanana” meld is not officially available, which in practice means there are bootleg versions on Spotify, YouTube, and SoundCloud as of this week. “It keeps getting taken down, but people keep re-finding it and uploading it on every platform,” Asher notes. “It’s a whole mini-drama.” (It gets taken down because the remix is technically unauthorized; Gou only gave stems to the German DJ-producer Boys Noize.)

The social media fervor around “(It Goes Like) Nanana” in its various forms propelled the track out of the world of independent-label dance music. “I first became aware of Peggy about three years ago on more of an underground level,” says Jonathan Geronimo, vp of electronic/dance programming for SiriusXM. He found out about “(It Goes Like) Nanana” from his colleagues overseeing TikTok Radio, saw that it was “exploding globally,” and put it into rotation a few days after its official release. SiriusXM has played the track more than 700 times since, and Geronimo believes it has “a shot” to make the jump over to pop radio, “especially with the format really keeping a close eye on what’s happening on TikTok.”

Gou’s single hit the Global 200 in July and has since climbed to No. 33, giving her a strong tailwind as she finalizes her full-length debut, due out early in 2024. The album also draws on her recent dive into ’90s sounds. Once again, though, she is feeling the need to top herself. “I don’t think there’s any track on my album that’s as catchy as ‘Nanana,’” Gou says. “The second single that’s coming out is very different — close to pop.”

That said, predicting audience reactions is notoriously difficult — she didn’t know that millions of listeners would find “(It Goes Like) Nanana” so bewitching. Still, the pressure remains. “My mindset is always: I can do better,” Gou adds. “I can do better.” 

12 Sep 2023

What Did 2023’s Songs of the Summer Sound Like?

With summer over — not officially until Sept. 23, but for chart purposes, given that Billboard has announced the season-end 2023 Songs of the Summer chart, which measures performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 between Memorial Day and Labor Day — a look at the season’s biggest hits reveals what the average summer smash sounded like this year.

Here is an analysis of compositional characteristics of the survey’s top 10 titles at the season’s close.

To recap, here is a rundown of the Songs of the Summer chart’s top 10 for 2023:

  • No. 1, “Last Night,” Morgan Wallen
  • No. 2, “Fast Car,” Luke Combs
  • No. 3, “Calm Down,” Rema & Selena Gomez
  • No. 4, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus
  • No. 5, “All My Life,” Lil Durk feat. J. Cole
  • No. 6, “Cruel Summer,” Taylor Swift
  • No. 7, “Karma,” Taylor Swift feat. Ice Spice
  • No. 8, “Snooze,” SZA
  • No. 9, “Kill Bill,” SZA
  • No. 10, “Fukumean,” Gunna

Summer of Love

Love was in the air in the summer of 2023. A hefty 80% of the Song of the Summer chart’s season-wrapping top 10 features a love/relationship lyrical theme, with the majority sporting romantic subject matter. Among them, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” chronicles his continued desire for his love interest despite their push-and-pull dynamic, while Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” and SZA’s “Kill Bill” narrate breakups.

Also notably, and logically, the positive songs about love include major-key tonalities, while the more negative ones are complemented by minor-key tonalities.

Meanwhile, only one song in the above 10 leaned toward the platonic end of the spectrum: Taylor Swift’s “Karma” featuring Ice Spice.

Playing Hooky, in the Summer

The biggest summer 2023 hits were earworms, even if they weren’t as fast as might be expected.

While all hits in the season-end Songs of the Summer top 10 feature catchy hooks, largely in their choruses, many bolster their hook presence by hitting the listener with a notable, recognizable hook in their intros (60% of the 10 songs) and/or following their choruses with additional post-chorus hook reiteration (70%).

Meanwhile, when most people think of summer hits, they typically think of uptempo, highly danceable bangers. However, summer 2023’s top 10 includes only three songs at over 100 beats per minute, two of which have a notable dance/club influence: “Flowers” (118 BPM) and Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” (107 BPM).

The greatest share of the summer’s top 10 is 80-99 BPM (four titles), including Luke Combs’ “Fast Car,” Swift’s “Cruel Summer” and “Karma,” and “Kill Bill.”

The remaining three songs are under 79 BPM, comprising the R&B/hip-hop hits “All My Life” by Lil Durk featuring J. Cole, SZA’s “Snooze” and Gunna’s “Fukumean.”

Familiar, But Unique

While hit songs possess a host of commonalities that make them familiar to audiences and enable them to easily connect, most also have unique qualities that help them stand out from the pack. The 10 biggest hits on 2023’s Songs of the Summer chart for the season are no exception. Among them:

“Fast Car” has an unusual song structure by today’s mainstream standards. Most hits are based on a core A-B-A-B-C-B form (whereby A: verse; B: chorus; and C: bridge). “Fast Car,” written by Tracy Chapman, who first sent the song to the weekly Hot 100’s top 10 in 1988, features an I-A-T-A-T-A-T-PC-T-B-T-A-T-B-T-A-T-B-T-PC-O form (I: intro; A: verse; T: turnaround; PC: pre-chorus; B: chorus; and O: outro).

“Calm Down” features standout qualities including repetition, more than the other season-end summer top 10s, and the weekly Hot 100’s top 10 in general; hooks combining proper language, slang, nonsensical phrases and Nigerian Pidgin; and an Afrobeats sound, which, despite gaining traction, is still relatively uncommon in the Hot 100’s top 10 and is not present in any of the other top 10 songs of the summer.

Plus, “Flowers” is the only top 10 hit of the summer with a 1970s disco influence and “Kill Bill” features an atypical ‘60s psychedelic influence, while its lyrical hook (“I might kill my ex”) definitely sets it apart.

David and Yael Penn are the co-founders of Hit Songs Deconstructed. In 2022, Hit Songs Deconstructed and fellow song analysis platform MyPart partnered to launch ChartCipher, a new platform analyzing hit songs, as defined by Billboard’s charts.

12 Sep 2023

Kevin Porter Jr., NBA Star, Arrested For Assaulting Woman

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Denver Nuggets v Houston Rockets

Kevin Porter Jr., a rising NBA player for the Houston Rockets, was arrested in New York this week for allegedly assaulting a woman who reports say is his girlfriend. The incident occurred in a hotel early Monday morning (September 11) after officials received a 911 call from the location.

As reported by ESPN, Kevin Porter Jr., 23, and the woman 26, were at a New York hotel with sources stating that the victim of the alleged assault is a former WNBA player. According to a police spokesperson, the woman suffered significant to her face and neck.

“Upon arrival officers were informed that a 26-year-old female sustained a laceration to the right side of her face and was complaining about pain to her neck,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “A preliminary investigation on scene determined that a known individual struck her multiple times upon her body and placed his hands around the neck.”

Porter’s team also issued a statement saying that they’re looking at the matter internally before taking further action.

“We are in the process of gathering information surrounding the matter involving Kevin Porter Jr.,” the Rockets said via a statement. “We have no further comment at this time.”

The NBA issued a similar statement via Mike Bass which read,”The league office is in contact with the Houston Rockets and in the process of gathering more information.”

Porter is facing assault and strangulation charges, both considered felonies in the state of New York.

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Photo: Getty

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12 Sep 2023

Beyoncé Thanks Diana Ross & Kendrick Lamar for Their Renaissance Birthday Show Appearances

From a seemingly endless list of celebrity attendees to a characteristically jaw-dropping performance, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour birthday show (Sept. 4) was one for the history books, and now, the star is thanking two who made that concert extra special.

In a pair of Instagram posts on Monday (Sept. 11), Beyoncé expressed her personal thanks to Diana Ross and Kendrick Lamar for their surprise performances during the show. “Thank you again to the legend Kendrick Lamar for blessing the Renaissance World Tour,” she wrote in the caption for a picture of the pair performing the “America Has a Problem” remix. “I deeply appreciate you. What an incredible experience. Respect, ?.”

For the final show of her three-night Renaissance World Tour run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., Beyoncé brought out surprise guest Lamar for a cinematic performance of their remix of “America Has a Problem,” a fan-favorite breakout song from her Billboard 200-topping Renaissance album.

In a message to Ms. Ross, Beyoncé quoted her own Billboard Hot 100 top 20 hit “Alien Superstar” (No. 19) writing, “Thank you to the incomparable Ms. Diana Ross. The 1 of 1, the number 1, the only one. Thank you from the depths of me, my Queen. ?”

The legendary performer had led the crowd in a performance of “Happy Birthday,” which was completed with a hug from a gobsmacked Beyoncé. The 79-year-old icon first appeared on stage in front of more than 60,000 screaming fans during one of the show’s regularly scheduled intermissions, which features Ross’ 1976 Hot 100 No. 1 single “Love Hangover” as an interlude between songs. Usually, it’s Bey’s backup singers who perform the transition, but this time, Ross herself was on hand to do the honors.

The “Cuff It” singer is gearing up for the final few shows of the North American leg of her tour. She returned to the stage on Monday night at BC Place in Vancouver, Canada. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Beyoncé earned $141.4 million in the first 12 Renaissance shows in the U.S. and Canada, selling 553,000 tickets. That puts the tour’s figures at $295.8 million and 1.6 million tickets (as of Aug. 1), making it Beyoncé’s highest grossing tour yet, passing 2016’s The Formation World Tour ($256.1 million) and 2018’s On the Run II Tour alongside Jay-Z ($253.5 million).

Beyoncé’s latest worldwide trek is in support of Renaissance, her seventh solo studio album, which spawned the Grammy-winning Hot 100 top 10 hits “Break My Soul” (No. 1) and “Cuff It” (No. 6).

12 Sep 2023

UMG Gets in the Desi Trill Business With New Label Venture

Roc Nation veteran Ty-Ty Smith and London-based musician and A&R executive Shabz Naqvi have joined with Universal Music to form a new label venture dedicated to Desi Trill, a new genre that incorporates South Asian music with hip-hop.

UMG said the first release from the label, called Desi Trill Music, will arrive next month with label chief Lucian Grainge’s blessing. “Having worked with Ty-Ty for many years, I know we share a passion for discovery and artist development, and I am excited to watch how he and Shabz influence culture around the world with this exciting new sound,” he said.

Smith got his start at Marcy Music, where he worked at Jay-Z’s road manager. In 2001, he co-created Carter Faculty with Def Jam, and four years later took the role of senior vp of A&R at Island Def Jam. Then in 2008, he helped Jay-Z found Roc Nation, where he held the role of president of A&R for years. Naqvi is also a Roc Nation A&R veteran and, as Mr. Shabz, is known as a member of the UK garage and hip-hop collective So Solid Crew.

“Been fighting for U.K. Hip Hop/UKG/R&B culture for 20 years,” Naqvi noted in an Instagram post on Tuesday. “It was always a dream to bring South Asian culture to the forefront. Been celebrating with my brothers from all different cultures now I can celebrate mine. Music brings everyone together, time to educate.”

Desi Trill is defined by the new label as a “new genre of music that bridges South Asian heritage with the vibrant rhythms of hip-hop. Imagine traditional Desi rhythms, melodies and vocals blended with a mixed array of hip-hop themes. This genre isn’t just about pushing artistic limits; it’s a celebration of cultural diversity in today’s hyper connected world.”

Added Smith: “Music knows no borders. It’s an incredible time for South Asian culture and hip-hop to come together to create a new and exciting genre of music. It gives us great pleasure to bring our vision to the world with DESI TRILL MUSIC.”

12 Sep 2023

Crab-Walking Escaped PA Fugitive Stole A .22 Caliber Rifle, Armed & Dangerous

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Danelo Souza Cavalcante wanted poster

Source: handout / Crime Stoppers

The escaped convict who now infamously crab walked his way to freedom from a county prison last month is now officially armed and deadly.

According to TMZ, the manhunt for Danelo Cavalcante just got a lot more dangerous as authorities are now saying that someone who fit the description of the convicted murderer broke into a home in East Nantmeal Township where he was able to steal a rifle before the home owner opened fire and sent him running for his life.

TMZ reports:

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The outlet reported the resident pulled a gun and fired 7 shots at someone who fit the description of Cavalcante. The burglar got the hell out of dodge, but not before he swiped the .22 Caliber rifle from inside the house.

Investigators could not confirm if the man believed to be Cavalcante was injured but said his sneakers might have been found nearby. Police now consider Cavalcante armed and dangerous, closing a school due to the threat he poses.The frightening development comes as TMZ broke the story … Dog the Bounty Hunter might join authorities in their massive search for the convicted murderer, who was sentenced to a life term after fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend in 2021.
Of course Dog the Bounty Hunter would wanna join in on this search. Dude hasn’t been doing anything but going on racist and homophobic rants for a while now.Even with hundreds of officers and a fugitive task force have been combing the state looking for Danelo, the man has remained elusive ever since he scaled a wall at the Chester County Prison like he was bitten by a radioactive spider and made his way to freedom. Though there have been many tips to his whereabouts, none of them have gotten authorities any closer to catching Cavalcante.

We’re lowkey surprised the man is still in the state after all this time, but that’s his business.

What y’all think of this wild situation? Let us know in the comments section below.

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12 Sep 2023

Olivia Rodrigo Settles the Taylor Swift Feud Talk Once and For All: ‘I Don’t Have Beef With Anyone’

Olivia Rodrigo launches a fiery barrage of pinpoint lyrical missiles at unnamed targets on her laceratingly catchy second album, GUTS. But ask the Grammy-winning 20-year-old singer to go into specifics about who she’s put a bullseye on in her lyrics and the singer who snarls “I wanna meet his mom/ Just to tell her her son sucks” on the new album’s “Get Him Back!” is not going there.

Such as in a new Rolling Stone cover story, in which the interviewer attempts to get an answer to a burning question about whether Olivia is currently feuding with her musical inspiration Taylor Swift. “I don’t beef with anyone,” she said about the singer she said she was “in awe” of constantly in an 2021 interview with Ryan Seacrest; the pair also exchanged letters, Swift gifted Rodrigo a ring she word while recording Red and the singer later gave Taylor (as well as producer Jack Antonoff) co-writing credits on the Sour songs “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” and “Deja Vu.”

“I’m very chill. I keep to myself,” Rodrigo explained, despite heated rumors that the GUTS song “The Grudge” is about a Swift fallout. “I have my four friends and my mom, and that’s really the only people I talk to, ever. There’s nothing to say. There’s so many Twitter conspiracy theories. I only look at alien-conspiracy theories.”

Pressed further on how the co-writing credits on her debut happened — she also retroactively gave Paramore a co-write on “Good 4 U” — Rodrigo demurred. “It’s not something that I was super involved with,” she said, making it unclear if her hand was forced in the matter. “It was more team-on-team. So, I wouldn’t be the best person to ask.”

As for whether she might do the same to a young artist if they were clearly inspired by one of her songs, or if she’d slough it off as Elvis Costello did when the clear similarities between his “Pump It Up” and her “Brutal” were pointed out, Rodrigo said she doesn’t think she would. “But who’s to say where I’ll be in 20, 30 years,” she said. “All that I can do is write my songs and focus on what I can control.”

The profile also featured a co-sign from Katy Perry about the intense pressure to follow-up a debut album, with Perry recalling that she faced similar angst while recording 2010’s Teenage Dream. “You have your whole life to make your first record, and then maybe two years to make your second — while going through a real psychological change as well,” said Perry, who added that she offered to be Rodrigo’s pop music mentor and sounding board. “Like, ‘Oh, my God, I can buy my mom a car,’ and, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have to have the stress from my past.’ But it’s a mental jungle out there.”

For the record, Olivia said, even though there’s a song on GUTS called “Teenage Dream” — and she calls Perry’s album of the same name one of her favorite sophomore collections — it was totally a coincidence. “We thought about changing the name,” she said. “If someone looks up ‘Teenage Dream’ on Spotify, there’s no way in heck that my song’s going to pull up first.”

Rodrigo also noted that the goal on GUTS was to make a more “playful” record than her debut, Sour, which she said was “definitely a breakup record, much to my chagrin.”

One of the pop third rails Rodrigo would also not touch was the speculation that her breakthrough hit from that album, “Drivers License,” was inspired by a love triangle that allegedly involved her, her ex, fellow High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star Joshua Bassett and another Disney actress/singer, Sabrina Carpenter.

“I mean, that’s a tricky one. I actually, genuinely did not read the article you’re talking about,” she said of an story from 2022 in which Bassett said he had a major health crisis as a result of the backlash from strangers about the alleged love triangle. “But, yeah, all that stuff was really crazy. It’s all been handled privately… Handled isn’t the right word, but it’s just not something I like talking about publicly. I take all that stuff seriously, but it happens in privacy. I’m not going to put out a statement. That’s phony. We’re all just people at the end of the day. I deal with it on a person-to-person level that people on Twitter don’t see.”

12 Sep 2023

Taylor Swift Extends Artist 100 No. 1 Record, Jimmy Buffett Returns at No. 3

Taylor Swift spends a record-extending 79th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 chart (dated Sept. 16), thanks to nine albums on the Billboard 200, all in the top 50, and three songs on the Billboard Hot 100.

Leading Swift’s titles on the Billboard 200 are Midnights at No. 5, with 45,000 equivalent album units earned Sept. 1-7, according to Luminate, and Lover at No. 9 (41,000 units).

Here’s a recap of Swift’s current Billboard 200-charting albums.

Rank, Title:

  • No. 5, Midnights
  • No. 9, Lover
  • No. 11, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
  • No. 12, Folklore
  • No. 14, 1989
  • No. 17, Reputation
  • No. 21, Red (Taylor’s Version)
  • No. 31, Evermore
  • No. 50, Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Swift is the only artist in chart history to chart at least nine albums in the top 50 of the chart simultaneously. This is the 19th time she’s achieved the feat.

On the Hot 100, Swift charts three songs: “Cruel Summer” (up 5-4, after reaching No. 3), “Anti-Hero” (32-20, after spending eight weeks at No. 1) and “Karma” featuring Ice Spice (25-24, after hitting No. 2).

Jimmy Buffett re-enters the Artist 100 at No. 3, powered by catalog gains following his death on Sept. 1. He previously reached a No. 2 best on the chart in June 2020, when his album Life on the Flip Side opened at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. His seminal hit “Margaritaville” re-enters the Hot 100 at No. 38, marking its first appearance on the chart since its original run in 1977, when it climbed to No. 8. It also re-enters the Digital Song Sales chart at No. 1, becoming the top-selling song of the week with 16,000 downloads sold. Buffett additionally places two albums on the Billboard 200: Songs You Know By Heart: Jimmy Buffet’s Greatest Hit(s) re-enters at No. 4, a new high (52,000 units) — it’s also No. 1 on Top Album Sales — while Boats Beaches Bars & Ballads re-enters at No. 53.

Rounding out the Artist 100’s top five, Zach Bryan dips to No. 2, as his self-titled album tops the Billboard 200 for a second week (115,000 units); Morgan Wallen drops 3-4; and Luke Combs rises 6-5.

The Artist 100 measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption, blending album and track sales, radio airplay and streaming to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.