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24 Apr 2023

7 Must-Hear New Country Songs: Tyler Hubbard, Keith Urban, Megan Moroney, Ella Langley, Koe Wetzel & More

This week brings more collaborations to the country world, as Tyler Hubbard reveals a demo collab with Keith Urban. Meanwhile, Ella Langley teams with Koe Wetzel. Also, talented newcomers showcase new music, including Aaron Vance, Catie Offerman and Meg McRee.

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Tyler Hubbard feat. Keith Urban, “Dancin’ in the Country” (Demo)

Hubbard has earned a top 15 Hot Country Songs hit with “Dancing in the Country,” and now he’s offering fans an inside look at how the song was made, via the song’s demo recording, featuring Hubbard and co-writers Keith Urban, Ross Copperman and Jon Nite. Recorded in October 2021, the demo features Urban on guitar, bass, ganjo and harmony vocals, while also taking the lead on the bridge, with Copperman on keyboards and programming. The collaboration between Urban and Hubbard highlights the song’s raw verve and intensity, even sans the added layers of production.

Megan Moroney, “Girl in the Mirror”

As Moroney gears up for her May 5 album Lucky, Moroney examines love in light of low self-esteem in this track about a toxic relationship. “He puts her down/ She put him pedestal high,” she sings, ultimately counseling listeners that “you can’t love the boy more than you love the girl in the mirror.” Moroney wrote the track with Jessie Jo Dillon and Matt Jenkins, reprising the kind of lilting melody and straight-shooting, confessional lyrics that made a hit of “Tennessee Orange.” Combined with Moroney’s desolate, gritty vocal delivery, it makes for a winning shot.

William Beckmann, “It’s Still January”

His ex-lover has been out of his life for about six months, but for him, time’s pace is glacial and he’s still centered in the hurt and pain of her leaving. A waft of her scent on an old still leads to a breakdown. Lyrically, “It’s Still January” feels akin to the next chapter in Beckmann’s 2021 breakthrough “Bourbon Whiskey,” as the protagonist’s arrogance of preferring whiskey over his lover gives way to a stark realization and haunting loss. This tale of heartbreak is framed in traditional country-leaning song structures from writer Keith Gattis and producer Oran Thornton. “It’s Still January” follows Beckmann’s 2022 album Faded Memories.

Ella Langley with Koe Wetzel, “That’s Why We Fight”

Langley and Wetzel make for an angst-fueled, sultry combo in this track, which depicts a couple that seems woefully mismatched in every way — but as they put it, “Baby, we do one thing right/ That’s why we fight.” Together, they pulverize their way through each biting lyric, mirroring the couple’s turbulent method of “smashing every bottle we keep bottled up inside.” This acerbic tale marks a sweet victory and is included on Langley’s upcoming EP Excuse the Mess.

Catie Offerman, “I Just Killed a Man”

Texas native Offerman makes it clear her ex-lover isn’t the only one doing emotional penance, with these deftly-penned lyrics that liken breaking a lover’s heart to snuffing out their essence. She also knows word will get around in the small town, regardless of whether the relationship was flawed to begin with. The understated production highlights the undercurrent of resignation and loneliness in Offerman’s bruised vocals. Offerman wrote the song with Ryan Beaver, Joe Clemmons, Jessie Jo Dillon and Benjy Davis. The single will be included on Offerman’s debut album.

Aaron Vance, “Just to Get By”

Mississippi native Vance’s previous release “Cabin Fever” (the title track to his solid 2021 album) began with the lyric “Sittin’ at home/ Tryin’ not to stay stoned.” On “Just to Get By,” appropriately released on 4/20, Vance surveys an array of society’s coping mechanisms — some resort to violence, others opt for golf. Vance sings of leaning toward something more low-key: drinks, smokes or “one of those funny little green gummies,” when he needs to shake off the struggles of the world. Written by Vance with Rich Karg, “Just to Get By” encompasses a laid-back melody and sparse accompaniment that highlight his at-times gritty vocal and his smooth falsetto moments.

Meg McRee, “Mary Jane and Chardonnay”

Singer-songwriter McRee offered up another 4/20-appropriate ode with this track from her recent album, Is It Just Me?. As she’s running down her dreams, she finds a way to unwind with “paper and leaves” and “a bottle of grapes from overseas.” This dreamy, hazy track encompasses shades of Sheryl Crow alongside a Southern-rock flavored rhythm, anchored by insightful lyricism from McRee, Andrew Petroff, and Aaron Ratiere. McRee signed with Hillary Lindsey’s Hang Your Hat venture with Concord Music Publishing, and has recently opened shows for Lainey Wilson and Morgan Wade.

24 Apr 2023

Forever No. 1: Nino Tempo & April Stevens’ ‘Deep Purple’

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late April Stevens (birth name: Caroline LoTempio) with a look back at her and younger brother Nino Tempo’s (Antonino LoTempio) lone No. 1 together or apart: their slightly offbeat and altogether winning rendition of pop standard “Deep Purple.”

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If you were trying to guess the lone Grammy taken home by Nino Tempo & April Stevens’ “Deep Purple” at the 1964 awards six decades later, best rock and roll recording would probably not be the first category to come to mind. After all, the song — a No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit for the brother-sister duo in November 1963 — was a cover of a 25-year-old pop standard recorded by the likes of Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo, based around sweet harmonies and jazzy piano and not a ton of guitar. More importantly, the song hit its commercial peak two months before the British Invasion, heralded by The Beatles’ January ’64 arrival on the Hot 100, forever transformed the sound and role of rock music in pop culture.

But while rock and roll might not have been the best-fitting box for Tempo’s and Stevens’ version of “Deep Purple,” it’s not immediately clear 60 years later where the song really does belong. It’s an off-kilter arrangement of a truly curious performance, one that so confounded Ahmet Ertegun — the storied co-founder and president of the duo’s Atlantic parent label, as well as the “Purple” producer — that he resisted releasing it as a single until Tempo and Stevens demanded that they be released from the label if it continued to lay on the shelf. But it’s that gentle inscrutability that makes the 100th No. 1 in Hot 100 history (and the final before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination) one of the most rewarding pop records of its era — an era that would already seem worlds away just six months later.

The sibling duo began their careers as separate solo artists, with Tempo a musical prodigy and successful child actor (and later an in-demand session musician) and Stevens — who died on April 17 at age 93 — a star pop vocalist, scoring most of her solo hits in the pre-Hot 100 era. (Their shared family name was actually LoTempio.) Ertegun signed the pair to Atlantic’s Atco imprint as a duo vocal act, but their first few singles failed to make a major impact. Stevens had the idea to do “Deep Purple,” and Tempo came up with an arrangement for it, but the duo were already scheduled to record the pop standard “Paradise,” and had to tuck their “Purple” version into the very end of their allotted studio time. But the duo and their session backing band (including eventual country and pop icon Glen Campbell on guitar) were on their game: “In 14 minutes, we got two takes,” Tempo told Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits.

That off-the-cuff, slightly rushed quality gives “Deep Purple” a good deal of its charm. The mix feels a little off — the bass disruptively high in the mix, the vocals a tad unpolished — and Tempo admits that some of the arrangement’s chords were straight-up incorrect in terms of replicating the standard’s melody. If there is anything particularly rock and roll about the recording, it’s in this breezy looseness — there’s a real energy to it, helped by its slightly amped-up pacing. And while calling the production “raw” would probably be a bit of an exaggeration, it feels messy enough for 1963 to at least not sound like something made to pander to young folks’ parents.

But the real joy of the recording is found in the siblings’ dueting, their harmonies entwining both satisfyingly and unpredictably. The way their respective voices glide up and down the octave, never totally settling into a traceable melody but never sounding out of place either within the arrangement or alongside one another, is somewhat stunning. And the real masterstroke comes with their second run-through the refrain, where a foregrounded Stevens intones the lyrics in deeply felt spoken-word as a backgrounded Tempo casually sings along — a striking and sticky creative choice, inspired by Stevens recording her “narration” simply to help Tempo remember the song’s words, and a friend noting that it sounded cool. Not easy to make a standard that had been around so long that Babe Ruth considered it a personal favorite sound fresh, but Stevens and Tempo managed it.

However, Eretgun didn’t see the commercial potential in the duo’s quirky rendition. He called it the most embarrassing thing that the duo had recorded, and released “Paradise” as their next single instead. But that single flopped, and Tempo asked out of the duo’s Atco contract so he and Stevens could sign with a friend of his who did believe in the song: legendary producer Phil Spector, of Philles Records. Ertegun agreed to meet them halfway — “I’ll release one more record, and if it flops, you’ve got your contract back,” Tempo quotes the Atlantic titan as saying in Number One Hits — but released “Deep Purple” with a B-side of the duo’s “I’ve Been Carrying a Torch for You So Long That I Burned a Great Big Hole in My Heart,” a zippy country-rock hybrid which he believed would become their actual breakout hit.

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The public proved him wrong: “Deep Purple” debuted at No. 94 on the Hot 100 on the chart dated Sept. 14, 1963, and quickly bound its way into the top 40. On the Nov. 16 chart, it replaced Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs’ “Sugar Shack” at the apex — staying there for a single week before being replaced by another duo, Dale and Grace, with the much more conventionally arranged and produced maybe-breakup ballad “I’m Leaving It All Up to You.” (Coincidentally, Donny & Marie Osmond would score top 20 hits on the Hot 100 in the 1970s with remakes of both of these songs, with their version of “I’m Leaving It All Up to You” hitting No. 4 in 1974 and their version of “Deep Purple” hitting No. 14 in 1976.) Tempo and Stevens would have more hits the following year with renditions of standards like “Whispering” (No. 11) and “Stardust” (No. 32), and eventually did go the Spector route with 1966’s All Strung Out — albeit not with Spector himself — and scored a final top 40 hit with the album’s Wall of Sound-aping title track (No. 26). But the British Invasion quickly made relics of the duo, as it also did Dale and Grace, Jimmy Gilmer, and countless other acts on top of the pop world in 1963.

While the rock and roll world might’ve ultimately left Nino Tempo and April Stevens far behind, the most enduring legacy of “Deep Purple” 60 years later is, ironically, a quintessentially rock one. The band Deep Purple, who took their name from guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s grandmother’s love of the song, would become one of the biggest hard rock acts of the ’70s, earning induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. But the highest that band ever got on the Hot 100 was the No. 4 peak of both “Hush” (1968) and “Smoke on the Water” (1973) — still three spots lower than Tempo’s and Stevens’ forever delightful pop oddity.

24 Apr 2023

Taylor Swift Powers Through Hand Injury During Eras Tour Show & Fans Are Impressed: ‘Superhuman’

When Taylor Swift wrote “Death By a Thousand Cuts,” she probably didn’t mean to take it so literally. During her Saturday (April 22) Eras Tour concert, the pop star scraped her hand midway through and powered through the rest of the show with a pretty nasty-looking wound.

Fans watching the second of Swift’s three shows in Houston over the weekend quickly noticed that she was missing a chunk of skin from her left palm, which appeared to bleed on and off throughout the remainder of the performance. One Swiftie clocked that the injury must have happened in between the “Anti-Hero” singer’s quick change between “Tolerate It,” the last song in the Folkore section of the set list, and “Ready For It,” the first song in the Reputation section.

“her wrist is fine by the end of tolerate it and by the time she walks down the stage for rfi you see the blood near her palm,” one fan tweeted.

As the concert progressed, Swift could be seen with bandages wrapped around her wrist and palm. But through all of the costume changes, choreography and guitar/piano-playing the singer does throughout her three-hour set, the bandage seemed to lose its stickiness and slip off of her hand.

If she was in pain, however, Swift definitely didn’t show it. Fans online couldn’t believe how well she powered through the performance without even flinching at the visible gash on her hand, with one Swiftie tweeting, “taylor is actually better than me cuz i cut my hand like this accidentally and i literally couldn’t stop crying cuz it hurt as hell she’s literally a superhuman.”

“taylor’s dedication is unreal,” wrote another. “i cannot believe she performed with her hand THAT injured last night, without letting on that something was going on. we do not deserve her.”

Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.

See photos and fan reactions to Taylor Swift’s painful-looking mid-show injury below:

24 Apr 2023

Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick Call U.S. Drag Bans ‘Bad Karma’ With a Little Help From Taylor Swift

As U.S. state legislatures continue to try and make this Pride season a “Cruel Summer” for drag performers, actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are telling them “You Need to Calm Down” with the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

In an Instagram post on Sunday (April 23), Bacon and Sedgwick are dancing around their living room to Taylor Swift’s Midnights track “Karma,” while wearing T-shirts that read “drag is an art and drag is a right” over an image of a drag performer. Swift’s lyrics helped drive the message home, as she’s heard singing “I keep my side of the street clean/ You wouldn’t know what I mean” while the celebrity couple groove along — by doing the “Karma” dance that the pop star has been performing during her Eras Tour, of course.

Bacon expounded on the topic in the caption, urging his fans to support the ACLU’s Drag Defense Fund going after anti-drag bills being passed throughout the U.S. “Drag bans are bad karma. Right now, drag performers and the LGBTQIA+ community need our help,” he wrote. “Tap the link in my bio to shop the @SixDegreesOfKB campaign supporting the @aclu_nationwide Drag Defense Fund in the nationwide effort to protect creative expression or make a gift. #DragIsARight.”

After publishing their video, the couple received plenty of support from fellow actors such as Alyssa Milano and Rosanna Arquette in their comments section. Meanwhile, singer-songwriter Peter Frampton shared Bacon and Sedgwick’s video on Twitter, simply adding, “Yes #DragIsARight thank you guys!”

The couple’s video comes after multiple states have passed or forwarded legislation that would ban drag artists from performing in public spaces. Tennessee passed its drag ban in early March, before a federal judge temporarily blocked the law from taking effect via a temporary restraining order until May 26, calling the statute “both vague and overly broad.”

This also isn’t the first time that Bacon has spoken out on the state of anti-LGBTQ affairs this year. When the queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 performed a “Rusical” based off of Footloose earlier this year, Bacon applauded the queens on his Instagram Stories, saying , “With all the recent anti-drag bills, this came at just the right time.”

Check out Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s dance clip below:

24 Apr 2023

Carlos ‘Charly’ Pérez Named SVP Communications and PR for Warner Music Latina

Carlos “Charly” Pérez, who for over two decades led public relations and later promotion for Universal Music Latino, has been named senior vice president for communications and public relations for Warner Music Latina, effective immediately, Billboard has learned.

Pérez will be based in Miami and report to Roberto Andrade Dirak, managing director of Warner Music Latina, with whom Pérez previously worked closely with when Andrade Dirak managed Colombian star Sebastian Yatra.

In his new role, Pérez will craft strategies to promote WM Latina’s artists and people across a wide range of different media outlets to a business and consumer audience. He will also work closely with Ruben Abraham, svp of marketing and artist strategy, as well as Hector Ruben Rivera, svp and head of A&R, Latin Music, who both also report to Andrade Dirak. 

Pérez is widely recognized as a beacon of knowledge, integrity and professionalism in the Latin music world as well as for his knack for singling out promising new acts, having pushed for early coverage of future superstars like Karol G, Feid and Sebastian Yatra, to name just a few.

Pérez is also particularly valuable given his deep knowledge of the pop, urban and regional Mexican markets.  

Indeed, he started out 26 years ago working as an assistant to the International department at Mexican media company Televisa, where he later became a label manager.  He later joined Univision Music Mexico as a label manager, focusing largely on regional Mexican music and working with acts like Los Tigres del Norte, Ana Bárbara, Banda El Recodo and Jenni Rivera, and subsequently moved to Miami as press and television coordinator. 

Pérez rose steadily through the ranks and after Univision Music was acquired by Universal Music Latin Entertainment, he worked as national publicity director. In 2020 he was promoted to international vice president of public relations and promotions, overseeing the parent label, Machete Music and Capitol Latin and working closely with regional Mexican labels Fonovisa and Disa.

“I’m very happy and grateful for this huge opportunity to become part of the Warner Music Latina team,” said Pérez. “I’ll bring my experience to bear as we continue to evolve our company, enhancing our value proposition to artists, and positioning ourselves as a leader at the intersection of music and technology.”

Roberto Andrade Dirak adds: “Charly is an amazing addition to the team here at Warner Music Latina.  His knowledge and experience transcend genres and borders, and he’s helped take some of the best Latin music to every corner of the world, empowering the careers of the artists he’s collaborated with.  We’re delighted to have him join us.” 

Pérez leaves Universal on good terms.

24 Apr 2023

U2 Announce Dates For ‘U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere’

U2 announced the dates for their upcoming residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere at the Venetian venue on Monday morning (April 24). The veteran UK Rock and Roll Hall of Famers will kick off the U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere run on Sept. 29, marking their first live run of gigs in four years.

The band first revealed that they would be performing at the cutting-edge building during a Super Bowl commercial in February, with singer Bono and guitarist The Edge peeling back the creative process behind the run in a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. The Sphere gigs will take place on Sept. 29, Sept. 30, Oct. 6, 7 and 8.

In the interview, the pair roll up to the enormous rounded building, the largest free-standing structure on the Las Vegas Strip as Lowe describes the venue as a new Wonder of the World. “There’s nothing like it, it’s light years ahead of everything that’s out there,” Edge says as he shakes hands with the team finishing work on the arena, the only place where the group will perform songs from 1991’s Achtung Baby.

The allure, according to Bono, is that unlike most arenas and stadiums major bands play, the Sphere is built for music and art, not rowdy sports contests, complete with a photo-real highest-possible resolution series of screens that will envelop attendees. “So this building was built for immersive experiences in cinema and performance,” he says, with Edge noting that the sound has been designed as a priority from day one. In fact, unlike most arena shows, when you go see a gig at the Sphere there are no speakers, Bono says, because the entire building is a speaker that Edge notes envelops you in a “completely immersive” sound.

“Depending on where you are in the venue you’ll get your own very unique show,” the Edge promises, describing how the venue will allow the band to deliver Atmos-level sound in a live setting.

Fans can register now for the Verified Fan presale here; fans who previously signed up for Verified Fan for UW are automatically registered for the chance to join the presale. Registration for Verified Fan will close on Wednesday (April 26) at 10 a.m. ET. Fans selected to get an access code will be able to participate in Verified Fan presale starting on Thursday (April 27). Ticket prices begin at $140 and will reflect all-in pricing, which means the listed price is the full out-of-pocket cost including taxes and feeds. According to a release, the large capacity of the Sphere will allow for 60% of tickets to be priced under $300.

In a statement, Bono, Edge and bassist Adam Clayton – drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is sitting out the dates, with Bram van den Berg filling in — said, “U2 hasn’t played live since December 2019 and we need to get back on stage and see the faces of our fans again. And what a unique stage they’re building for us out there in the desert… We’re the right band, ACHTUNG BABY the right album, and Sphere the right venue to take the live experience of music to the next level… That’s what U2’s been trying to do all along with our satellite stages and video installations, most memorably on the ZOO TV Tour, which ended in Tokyo 30 years ago this fall.”

Guitarist The Edge added that the Sphere — which includes such futuristic technology as a 16K x 16K LED display inside the main venue bowl that wraps up, over and around the audience to create a fully immersive experience — is more than just a new venue, but also a “gallery,” with U2’s music slated to be projected all over the walls.

“The beauty of Sphere is not only the ground-breaking technology that will make it so unique, with the world’s most advanced audio system, integrated into a structure which is designed with sound quality as a priority; it’s also the possibilities around immersive experience in real and imaginary landscapes,” Edge said of the 17,500-capacity building with multi-sensory 4D video technology. “In short, it’s a canvas of an unparalleled scale and image resolution and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We all thought about it and decided we’d be mad not to accept the invitation.”

For now, the band has only announced the initial run of shows. But in speaking to Lowe, Bono suggested that depending on the audience’s reaction and their experience on stage, “I think it’s going to be hard to get us out of here.”

The U2.com presale is open now through Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET, while the general onsale (if any tickets remain) will begin on Friday (April 28) at 10 a.m. ET on Ticketmaster.

Watch the trailer for the Sphere shows and the Lowe interview below.

24 Apr 2023

Korean Music Companies Are Exporting More Than K-Pop: How They’re Changing the Global Music Business

On April 3, Billboard broke the news that Jimin’s track “Like Crazy” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a first for a solo Korean artist — while his album, FACE, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Released by Big Hit Music, one of the labels under Korean entertainment company HYBE, “Like Crazy” currently marks the best performance by a member of K-pop supergroup BTS, whose hiatus announcement last year presented a significant challenge to HYBE’s ability to forge another chart success in the United States. “Like Crazy” reached only No. 11 in South Korea, although FACE topped album charts in South Korea and Japan.

Investors took note of Jimin’s U.S. accomplishments. The following day, HYBE’s share price on Korea Exchange rose as much as 11.4% to 212,500 won ($161) before ending the day at 205,000 won ($155), up 7.5% from the previous day (as of April 17, it had risen 40%). That was the highest closing price since June 10 of last year — three trading days before BTS confirmed it would take a hiatus, worrying investors and sending HYBE’s share price down 28% in a single day. For a company with grand ambitions to build off of the success of BTS, “Like Crazy” was an important validation.

The music industry should take note, too. HYBE did with Jimin what all South Korean music companies are attempting with increasing urgency: ride the wave of K-pop’s global success by expanding outside of Korea and build up operations in the United States, the world’s largest music market. “All the shareholders want to see the ability for them to diversify [their] portfolios,” says Sung Cho, CEO of Chartmetric and newly appointed board member of the pioneering K-pop agency SM Entertainment.

Exporting is what South Korea does best. “After the Korean War, the only way to survive was to export things,” says Cho. Over the last three decades, the success of companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai has turned the country of 52 million into a top 10 exporter, according to the World Bank. But in recent years, South Korea has become known not just for its exports of high-tech products and manufactured goods, but as a global entertainment dynamo as well. South Korea’s music business built its economic success into a trade surplus of about $3.1 billion for intellectual property of music and images in 2021, up from $800 million in 2020, according to the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The South Korean film Parasite won a 2020 Academy Award for best picture. A year later, Squid Game became the most watched series in Netflix history, a worldwide phenomenon that racked up 1.7 billion viewing hours in its first month.

South Korean music companies have become international powerhouses by drawing on hip-hop, R&B and pop music and selling the K-pop blend of these genres back to fervent fans in the United States, Japan and Europe. But to compete globally with larger companies, the South Korea approach to the music business, and not necessarily the music itself, could be the deciding factor. “We’re seeing not only the export of K-pop bands — the boy bands, the girl bands — we’re starting to see the export of the K-pop business model,” says Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based artist and label services agency. SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man coined the term “cultural technology” in the ’90s for his system of producing K-pop and promoting it worldwide. Other K-pop companies have adopted a similarly disciplined, systematic approach to finding, developing and promoting musicians.

The widespread music-business anxiety about the death of artist development doesn’t apply to South Korea. Western labels fight bidding wars over viral artists with instantaneous popularity or favor proven artists and catalogs, leaving the task of building an audience to artists themselves or independent labels. In contrast, K-pop companies spend years recruiting and rehearsing talent, as well as giving artists instruction in a specific approach to the music business. “Combing through social media platforms like TikTok may give us a chance to sign artists who are technically proficient as music producers or performers, but we demand more from our artists,” says HYBE CEO Jiwon Park in an email to Billboard. That means trainees work with HYBE’s training and development department to “internalize the values of autonomy and responsibility” so they can navigate the expectations put on them.

To learn the U.S. market, South Korean companies have partnered with U.S. labels to distribute, market and promote their music. HYBE has a joint venture with Universal Music Group’s Geffen Records to create a U.S.-based girl pop group. JYP Entertainment has teamed with UMG’s Republic Records to form the global girl group America2Korea, or A2K. Additionally, Kakao Entertainment’s Starship Entertainment subsidiary has partnered with Sony Music Group’s Columbia Records to co-manage marketing and promotion of the six-member female group IVE in North America.

These U.S.-Korean partnerships have also given domestic labels a chance to learn the K-pop method of A&R. To Glenn Mendlinger, president of Imperial Music, a new division of Republic Records, the JYP partnership has provided insight into “what it is to build a fandom and foster it through immersive packaging and increasing the collectability of the products.” Mendlinger is impressed with JYP’s attention to detail and ability to build storylines for their artists. “That’s why they’re so successful,” he says in an email to Billboard. “The level of care is unparalleled and unrivaled in terms of its intimacy and diligence.”

But more and more, South Korean companies have boots on the ground and control of their destinies in the United States. HYBE is the furthest along in building out its stateside operations. In 2021, it acquired Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings for $1.05 billion and named Braun the CEO of HYBE America, a genre-spanning collection of artist management and record labels that includes SB Projects, Nashville-based Big Machine Label Group and Atlanta hip-hop company Quality Control, which was acquired in February for $300 million. Those deals are “just the beginning,” HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk said in a speech in March. He believes building in the United States will give HYBE the “strong network and infrastructure” it needs to “minimize the cost of trial and error” and attain stronger bargaining power and distribution rates relative to local companies.

SM Entertainment, the company behind such groups as NCT 127 and aespa, and Kakao Entertainment have created a U.S. joint venture and plan to acquire a U.S.-based company to expand into hip-hop or R&B, according to SM’s road map made available to investors. Kakao now owns a 40% stake in SM Entertainment, having quelled HYBE’s attempt to buy a commanding stake and control its board of directors following a break with SM founder Lee.

South Korean music companies’ do-it-yourself nature extends to tech platforms, too. While most labels depend on the likes of Meta, Twitter and Fortnite to reach fans, HYBE owns its own social network, Weverse, and JYP and SM have a joint venture with tech company Naver called Beyond LIVE that streams live online concerts. SM also owns a social networking app, Bubble, and its artists will begin building fan communities at HYBE’s Weverse in September. It makes sense in one of the world’s most wired and wireless countries, says Cho of DFSB Kollective. In Korea, “youth culture, pop culture and digital culture are one and the same in many ways.”

For HYBE, Weverse not only diversifies its business but allows it to control how its artists communicate with their fans. With the addition of artists from North America and Japan, Weverse “will serve as a gateway to the fandom market in Asia, North America and the world,” says Park. With enhancements and new services, “Weverse will seek boundless expansion beyond K-pop.”

This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023, issue of Billboard.

24 Apr 2023

Meet the Choreographer Behind Your Favorite K-Pop Moves

This story is part of Billboard‘s K-Pop Issue.

Los Angeles-born and -raised choreographer Kyle Hanagami has worked with pop stars like Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez and Dove Cameron. But in more recent years, his résumé has started reading like a who’s who of K-pop’s biggest names: TWICE, aespa, Red Velvet, Girls Generation, NCT and NCT Dream, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and, most notably, BLACKPINK. All have enlisted Hanagami to help craft the fierce moves that power their music videos and stage performances, define their brands and now are oft-imitated on TikTok. He has also worked with members of BLACKPINK on their solo efforts — including with Jisoo on the video for her single “Flower,” which has over 118 million YouTube views. Currently choreographing the forthcoming Mean Girls musical movie, Hanagami spoke from its East Coast set about what it took to become K-pop’s most in-demand dance-maker.

Were you a K-pop fan before becoming enmeshed in this world?

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I actually used to listen to K-pop in high school — I had a friend who was really, really into it. But I never in a million years imagined I’d be working in it, especially because I didn’t start dancing or choreographing until after high school. It’s a total fluke.

How did you start working with K-pop acts?

I’d been posting videos on YouTube back when I had maybe 500,000 subscribers [He now has over 4.5 million], and one of the entertainment companies reached out to me. Then more artists and entertainment companies started reaching out. When I first started working in K-pop, there weren’t very many American choreographers. It has been a process figuring out that style and what it looks like and kind of creating it. I think that’s why so many artists I’ve worked with have gone on to become so successful — they have amazing teams who work with them, but it really has been about me developing styles for these people from scratch.

In the United States, it has been a minute since choreo-driven girl groups and boy bands were popular. Does that make working with K-pop acts especially fun?

I used to choreograph for a Latin boy band, CNCO, that was hugely into dance breaks. And then I did *NSYNC’s surprise appearance at Ariana Grande’s Coachella performance, and that was again [a lot of] dance breaks. I’ve always loved that style. It has been cool to figure out how to adapt it to these amazing artists who come out of Korea.

Why is dance so important to the identity of K-pop groups and their members?

It’s about really identifying what makes their music different and bringing it to life. I remember the first time I heard BLACKPINK, when I heard “Boombayah” [for which Hanagami choreographed the video]. I remember thinking, “Oh, this is different. I’ve never heard a K-pop group come out like this, especially as their first single. This group needs to look different than everyone else.” I had the opportunity to choreograph and give visuals that hadn’t been done for K-pop before, and I loved making that a signature of BLACKPINK.

How would you describe that signature?

They’re so innovative as a K-pop group, and I was able with the choreography to really lean into their individuality. They should dance the way they sing — and each of their voices are so unique. I really have to bring that out when I give them solo moments in choreography, but at the same time, it has to work together as a whole. I think what has helped make them successful is all four girls are relatable in their own ways, but they feel like a supergroup when they come together.

Are there certain things you would do with an American act that you wouldn’t with a K-pop act?

Obviously, I make sure there is that element of cultural sensitivity. There are definitely American artists who’ll go way overtly sexy in a way a Korean artist might not be comfortable with, and it’s something I keep in mind. I want to make sure if a 9-year-old is watching [a video] at home and they want to follow along, their parents feel comfortable.

But in general, the artists that come out of Korea train so hard to be where they are, [they’re] becoming these superstars before they even hit the stage, whereas in America, it’s often about finding existing talent versus talent development. Any time I get a new [K-pop] artist, it’s starting with what they have — if someone is a great vocalist, or a great rapper, or a great dancer or very charming — and knowing how and when to make them shine. Using the choreography to show what they do best.

This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023, issue of Billboard.

24 Apr 2023

Why Alt-Rocker LØREN Says ‘Being Miserable’ Motivated Him To Work With BLACKPINK and Step Out On His Own

This story is part of Billboard‘s K-pop Issue.

As one of the few non-English-speaking students at an American international academy in Singapore, the artist born Lee Seung-joo rarely talked to his peers, and he would often skip lunch to avoid eating alone in the cafeteria. Even his stage name is an anagram for “loner,” and his Instagram handle is “lorenisalone” — but as he laughs over Zoom through coughs of smoke while puffing on an orange vape in his Seoul studio at 1 a.m. local time, he says that listeners shouldn’t take those gestures seriously. “Some people DM me like, ‘You’re not alone.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s just my Instagram ID.’ ”

Still, LØREN says being dragged to the academy “kicking and screaming” by his parents — and having to learn English — planted the seed for becoming a global star. “I think being miserable at school is not a necessity,” he explains, “but I feel like if I had been very happy, I wouldn’t have been so eager to make something of myself.”

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Instead of playing basketball and beer pong with his more popular peers, LØREN spent his time learning to play instruments in the band room and listening to Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Too shy to form a band of his own, after graduation in 2013, he forged a more insular musical path: making beats as an EDM producer. He soon connected with other musicians by DJ’ing on the Seoul nightclub circuit and found mentors within The Black Label, an associate company of YG Entertainment, founded by producer Teddy Park. With his help, LØREN leveraged a career as an in-demand producer-songwriter, scoring major credits with K-pop sensation BLACKPINK on tracks like “Lovesick Girls” and “Pretty Savage.”

LØREN

Saint Laurent sweater, pants and shoes.

Ssam Kim

But his attention kept drifting back to rock music. “It kind of got tiring for me,” he says of his start in EDM. “Not that I don’t like [that music], but I grew up so heavily on rock, there was dissonance between what I created and what I really liked. I had an epiphany: Being a frontman of a band doing rock music has been my dream all my life.”

In 2021, he launched his solo career with a pair of singles: the bilingual, early-2000s-inspired rock tracks “NEED (ooo-eee)” and “Empty Trash,” followed by the more pop-facing “All My Friends Are Turning Blue.” LØREN self-released the three songs on his independent label, Fire Exit Records, in partnership with The Black Label.

Now, at 28 years old, the artist is committing to his vision. He signed a record deal with 88Rising earlier this year (still in partnership with The Black Label), saying he knew he needed to be on its roster, which is full of Asian artists with global reach like Joji, NIKI, Rich Brian and more. “I like how their artists, you can just tell they’re doing their own thing without being pressured to create something they don’t f–k with,” he says.

But none occupy the punk-rock lane like LØREN. As he points out, the genre isn’t as popular in South Korea as it is in the United States — and, in a previous interview, went as far as to call rock “dead” in his home country. He now admits that might have been a slight overstatement, though he’s eager to lean on 88Rising’s expertise in finding a larger audience to connect with.

After discovering LØREN’s string of singles, 88Rising executive vp John Yang knew the multi-instrumentalist would fill a sonic gap on the label’s lineup. He says he wasn’t even aware of LØREN’s work with BLACKPINK until after the deal was done. “When we sign artists, we always vibe out with them. What really matters is the person, their personality,” says Yang. “We’re not in this business just to become big or make money out of it. We’re here because we love music, and we want other people to enjoy music, too. LØREN’s character, his storytelling and his passion really got us into him.”

LØREN

Saint Laurent top, pants and shoes.

Ssam Kim

LØREN’s first 88Rising release, the raucous five-track EP Put Up a Fight, was finished by the time he signed his contract. After polishing touches and strategy talks, the project arrived March 24 — and he’s already looking ahead. He has “five or six” tracks completed for his upcoming full-length and is in the throes of practicing something entirely new: playing with other people, for other people.

One of 88Rising’s first orders of business for LØREN was to book a series of U.S. shows, including sets at Coachella and Head in the Clouds, a two-day label-curated festival in New York. He has been hard at work translating his songs for the stage with a band of close friends, which he reveals can be difficult at times, given he records every guitar and drum line on his songs without writing anything down. “Sometimes [my guitarist] asks me, ‘How did you come up with this sound? What pedal did you use?’ I’m just like, ‘I don’t know, dude,’ ” he says with a grin.

But even as everything around him — from his team to his band to his fan base — grows, the inward focus that shaped LØREN early on keeps him grounded. He holds out his hands, nails chipped with black polish, seemingly visualizing the vastness of his future: “I’m a musician at the end of the day,” he continues. “I just want to put out as much music as I can in my lifetime, literally until I die.” 

LØREN

Ssam Kim

This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023 issue of Billboard.

24 Apr 2023

Inside the Race to Create an American K-Pop Superstar

This story is part of Billboard‘s K-Pop Issue.

When J.Y. Park and Monte Lipman announced their forthcoming competition series A2K — standing for America to Korea — in July 2022, the respective founders of JYP Entertainment and Republic Records vowed to jointly produce “the first American artist made out of the K-pop system.” It was something of a full-circle moment for Park, who has eyed South Korean-to-American crossover success since JYP’s Wonder Girls became the first K-pop act to enter the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009. American artists are now clamoring for Park and other top Korean labels to notice them — and help them achieve their big break — in what has become a global race to launch a first-of-its-kind K-pop act.

While K-pop is short for “Korean pop,” genre fusion has always been one of its pillars and a big part of what has helped it reach new audiences — as has cultivating groups with members from countries outside of South Korea. Today, it’s common for trainees to come not only from China, Japan and Thailand but also countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, now, the United States.

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“The whole strategy often started with having a member able to speak the language for the targeted market,” says John Yang, a U.S.-based entertainment executive who has spent 15 years in the Korean music business. “The K-pop industry realized the power of having members of that nation propelling more of the engagement among the fans and a much quicker local expansion.”

Now, with the genre’s growing popularity in major markets, K-pop stars are defined not by nationality, but by industry standards: years of rigorous training, contracts signed under a Korean agency, visual hallmarks (glossy videos, coordinated choreography) and release strategies involving multiple album drops each year.

“K-pop means ‘Korean popular music,’ ” Yang says. “I see this less as where it’s made, but more of who made it and how it’s produced. I may compare this with the restaurant business: It’s not the location defining it as ‘American,’ ‘Italian’ or ‘Korean,’ and also not about the ethnicity or race of its CEO, managers or even customers that defines cuisine, but more of cuisine consisting of the ingredients, recipes and techniques developed across that respective country.”

Despite the growing number of countries represented in K-pop, nearly all the artists are from Asia or of Asian descent. But the expanding definition of who can be a K-pop star is now seeing Korea’s industry leaders incorporating America’s diverse young talent into their system, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Initially, HYBE was the front-runner in this global gamble. A month before Big Hit Entertainment rebranded as HYBE in March 2021, chairman and then-CEO Bang Si-hyuk, alongside Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, revealed a strategic partnership that included assembling a “global” K-pop boy group in the United States under a new joint-venture label between Big Hit and Geffen Records. The plans to air worldwide auditions in 2022 with a “major U.S. media partner” changed a bit: HYBE and Geffen subsequently announced five American cities holding auditions for a “global girl group” in March and April 2022 before expanding the auditions to Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Korea for December 2022-January 2023.

In that time, A2K launched its own American Idol-style auditions, bringing Park to Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Dallas and Los Angeles to select contestants to attend an L.A. “boot camp” reminiscent of The X Factor’s, with semifinalists then flying to JYP Entertainment’s Seoul headquarters for what A2K described as “intensive training” with music, dance and business executives. Winners will be part of a supergroup under JYP and Republic Records for all music releases — just like TWICE, Stray Kids and ITZY, which have earned seven top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, including two No. 1s by Stray Kids, since the companies partnered in 2020. TWICE, Stray Kids and JYP’s Japan-based girl group NiziU were all created on similar competition shows and officially debuted three to six months after their respective finales.

While JYP and HYBE worked directly with label partners, SM Entertainment connected directly with MGM Worldwide Television Group for its global venture. SM announced a partnership in May 2021 with MGM and its then-chairman, Mark Burnett, for a competition series forming NCT-Hollywood, a U.S. offshoot of SM’s boy band collective NCT, which has splinter groups across Korea, China and Japan. At the time, an insider told Billboard the show had been in development even before the pandemic — but Burnett’s late-2022 exit from MGM, Lee Soo-man’s controversial ousting from SM earlier this year and an announcement from SM’s new CEOs that the NCT system would halt expansion after a Tokyo-based team launches in 2023 raise questions about the project. (SM declined to comment for this story, as did Republic Records and Geffen Records — a reluctance likely born out of the high degree of competition and similar timelines to launch that they’re operating on.)

While no major U.S. label has made an earnest attempt, American and British “K-pop” groups have been launched before. Dubbed “the world’s most controversial ‘Korean’ band” by the BBC, EXP EDITION began in 2014 as Columbia University student Bora Kim’s master’s thesis that explored the meaning of K-pop music. Kim held auditions to form a band of six non-Korean men who would undergo a truncated version of the years of rigorous training K-pop hopefuls commit to in Seoul with voice coaching, dance rehearsals, language lessons and media training. Supporters donated $30,000 through Kickstarter and, with the help of a private investor, Kim and four of the six EXP EDITION members moved to Korea.

EXP EDITION booked prime K-entertainment TV slots like Mnet’s M Countdown and KBS2’s Immortal Songs, but experts criticized its inability to achieve captivating, onstage perfection — and the group’s 2018 debut EP, First Edition, was its sole release.

KAACHI, created by Frontrow Records and branded as the first London-based K-pop group, faced similar criticism. Unlike EXP EDITION, KAACHI did have one Korean member. Its 2021 music video “Get Up” was sponsored by a Seoul theme park, and the group performed publicly alongside top K-pop stars at the time. Still, the group disbanded in less than two years.

But crucially, today’s ventures to create global K-pop groups have the backing of some of the most powerful companies — Korean and American — in the music business. Whether or not the artists these initiatives yield break through on the Billboard charts, Yang sees future group launches as the ultimate indicator of a healthy, locally grown K-pop presence in America — much in the same way SM, JYP, HYBE and their counterparts have done for decades now in Asia.

“The most obvious indicators of the success of these projects would be Billboard charting, which will only result with the support of their fans without doubt,” he says. “However, the longevity of these partnerships and the birthing of more groups consistently will be the significant historical marker.”

This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023, issue of Billboard.