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01 Mar 2023

Tim McGraw to Release New Song, ‘Standing Room Only’: Here’s When It Arrives

Tim McGraw is gearing up to release his release his latest single, “Standing Room Only,” very soon.

McGraw recently teased a surprise for fans on social media, through an Amazon Music playlist titled “Rediscover Tim McGraw,” which featured a blend of the singer’s hits and album cuts. Some fans noticed that the first letter of each song, taken together, spelled out the words “Standing Room Only.”

“Some of you guessed it!,” McGraw said on social media on Wednesday (March 1). “New single ‘Standing Room Only’ coming March 10th. If we get 1,000 pre-saves on this today, I’ll share a little bit of the song with you.”

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The song marks the three-time Grammy winner’s first new music since releasing his most recent album, Here on Earth, in 2020, followed by an ultimate edition of the album the following year. Two songs from Here on Earth, “Thought About You” and “Neon Church,” reached the top 20 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart (Nos. 17 and 20 respectively). To date, McGraw has earned a total of 17 chart-topping projects on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart.

McGraw has several festival appearances on the books in the coming months, including performances at Country Jam USA, Boots & Hearts, Coastal Country Jam, and multiple Country Thunder festivals. He will also join fellow country artist Keith Urban and Lil Nas X as headliners for the 2023 NCAA March Madness Music Festival in Houston’s Discovery Green Park from March 31-April 2.

See McGraw’s announcement for “Standing Room Only” below.

01 Mar 2023

It Takes a Lot of People to Create All This AI Music

Generative artificial intelligence is currently one of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley, and its impact is already being felt in the music industry. BandLab — the music-creation app that has become popular on TikTok — relies on AI as the engine for its tool SongStarter. Users can lean on it to generate beats or melodies at random, or prompt it to spit something out based on specific lyrics and emojis; BandLab’s 60 million registered creators are churning out more than 17 million songs each month, including breakout hits for dv4d and ThxSoMch.

The tracks that emerge from BandLab depend on the interaction of human creators and AI. That holds true for some of the companies focusing on functional audio as well. LifeScore, which uses AI to “create unique, real-time soundtracks for every journey,” relies on “Lego blocks of sound all made in a studio by real musicians playing real instruments through lovely microphones,” says co-founder/CEO Philip Sheppard. Even the sound of a stream trickling through a forest comes from “someone going out with a rig and standing in that stream and recording it.”

The AI kicks in when it comes to assembling that sonic Lego. “The AI is saying, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be delightful if these could arrange themselves in this different way?’” Sheppard explains. “’How about if we could turn that into eight hours that felt like it was original every time you listened to it?’”

All results of these processes may not work. “Unsuccessful soundscapes are generated all the time,” says Oleg Stavitsky, co-founder/CEO of Endel, which offers an app that generates music designed to help users focus, relax or sleep. “Each soundscape goes through a multi-step testing process: from automated testing, detecting sound artifacts and bad sound combinations to in-house testing to our community testing.” That community includes some 4,000 people who provide feedback through Endel’s Discord channel.

“We put human eyes on everything before it goes out,” says Alex Mitchell, founder/CEO of Boomy, a company that offers aspiring musicians the chance to make songs in seconds with help from AI tools. Since 2019, Boomy users have created over 12 million songs. “We have a generic content policy that basically means if all you’re doing is pressing buttons and we detect that, then your release probably won’t be eligible for distribution,” says Mitchell. “We reject way more releases than what gets submitted. That way we’re not flooding the [digital service providers] with a bunch of nonsense.”

How will Boomy scale this approach as it attracts even more users and generates even more millions of songs? “We’re hiring,” Mitchell says. 

01 Mar 2023

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Loses Reelection Bid

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Holds Election Night Event

Lori Lightfoot, the 56th mayor of Chicago, made significant history after winning the spot office in 2019 via a run-off election. On Tuesday (Feb. 28), Mayor Lightfoot failed to win the Democratic Primary vote, and now the race heads for a run-off in April.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Lori Lightfoot, 60, came in third behind challengers in former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, who won 33.77 percent of the vote, and Cook County Commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson, who wound up with 20.29 percent. Lightfoot tallied 17.06 percent of the vote.

As noted in local outlet WBEZ’s report, Lightfoot fell out of favor with some of the voting public on issues such as crime, but her time in office did have some notable successes. However, some of Lightfoot’s maneuvers, in particular, the disturbing Anjanette Young case, further sunk her approval among activists and others in the city.

The success of Vallas seems centered on his pledge to bring crime down in Chicago, which has been ravaged by gang violence and the like during Lightfoot’s tenure as mayor. Johnson, who is Black, said in statements that his goal is to bring financial viability back to the city.

Vallas and Johnson will face off against one another on April 4.

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Photo: Getty

01 Mar 2023

Joe Jonas Pokes Fun at Harry Styles’ Viral ‘Favorite Thing About the Movie Is It Feels Like a Movie’ Meme

Joe Jonas just dropped a bombshell detail about the Jonas Brothers‘ next album: it’s an album. At least, it definitely feels like one. In a recent TikTok, the 33-year-old musician hilariously promoted his band’s upcoming project by referencing a viral clip of Harry Styles saying his favorite part of Olivia Wilde’s 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling was that it felt, yes, like a movie.

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In his TikTok, Jonas lip-syncs to Styles’ voice, poshly putting on a pair of sunglasses. “My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie,” he says.

In his caption, the DNCE frontman replaced the word “movie” with “album,” a play on how his May-slated record with brothers Nick and Kevin is simply titled The Album: “My favorite thing about THE ALBUM is it feels like an album.”

The “As It Was” singer’s slightly redundant but well intentioned quote — taken from a Venice International Film Festival press conference for Don’t Worry Darling, in which he starred opposite Florence Pugh — blew up online after an instantly meme-able clip started circulating on Twitter in September 2022. “It feels like a real, like, you know, ‘go to the theater’ film movie,” Styles had followed it up during the Q&A event, as costar Chris Pine stared blankly ahead.

The quote is a prime example of a point made by Pine in a recent interview, during which he said the Darling cast bonded over the experience of answering questions at press conferences while exhausted from jet lag. “Sometimes when you’re doing these press things, your brain gets befuddled and you start speaking gibberish,” the Star Trek actor explained, revealing the actors even had an inside joke about it.

“We had a joke: ‘It’s just words, man,’” Pine shared, noting that this is what Styles actually said to him in an entirely different viral clip from Darling‘s press run, in which the “Watermelon Sugar” artist appeared to spit in Pine’s lap.

Watch Joe Jonas put his spin on Harry Styles’ now iconic “feels like a movie” quote below.

01 Mar 2023

Miley Cyrus Is Releasing the ‘Flowers’ Demo to Thank Fans for Song’s Continued Success

Miley Cyrus is giving fans a special gift to celebrate the continued success of her smash hit single “Flowers.” On Wednesday (March 1), the singer revealed that with the track spending its sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, she will be releasing the song’s demo on Friday, March 3.

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“Flowers is #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the 6th week in a row,” the Disney Channel alum tweeted, captioning a picture of herself in a shimmering gold unitard. “To THANK YOU I’m dropping the Flowers Demo on Friday.”

Fans were more than excited for the demo of the hit song to arrive. “Can’t wait. I heard the snippet on your Discord server and it’s so good,” one fan replied, while another Smiler wrote, “This whole month about to be everything that we need.”

“Flowers” is the lead single from Cyrus’ eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation, due March 10. The song has proven to be one the biggest hits of the 30-year-old’s career thus far, surpassing her 2013 single “Wrecking Ball” as her longest running No. 1; “Wrecking Ball” spent a total of 32 weeks on the Hot 100.

“I love that this record is connecting in such a positive way & it’s a pleasure to continue creating music for you,” Cyrus shared while celebrating the song’s second week at No. 1 in January. “These milestones are only made possible by the listeners & my incredible fans. Endlessly thankful.”

See Cyrus’ “Flowers” demo announcement below.

01 Mar 2023

Jamaica Reggae Industry Association to Honor Billboard With ‘Extraordinary Impact’ Award

The Jamaica Reggae Industry Association’s JaRIA Honour Awards return on April 10 in Kingston, Jamaica. This year, the show will honor Dawn Penn, Horace Andy and Shaggy with the icon award, as announced Sunday (Feb. 26) in Saint Andrew, Kingston, Jamaica.

Twenty-six of the awardees have already been announced in 16 categories; on April 10, all 31 winners (in 19 categories) will be revealed. One of the already revealed honorees is Billboard, which is being recognized in the extraordinary impact on the reggae industry (media—new media) category.

In addition to several reggae charts, Billboard has covered the pioneers and newcomers in the reggae genre for decades, conducting interviews with legends like Ernest Ranglin as well as rising stars like Grammy winner Koffee – many of them coming from the pen of Billboard contributor and reggae authority Patricia Meschino. Additionally, a comprehensive 2020 cover story detailed the Marley family’s business as it celebrated Bob Marley’s 75th birthday amid a pandemic.

The JaRIA Honour Awards began in 2009. The ceremony honors people, groups and institutions that contribute to the development of the reggae music industry.

One of the JaRIA 2023 icon awards honorees is no stranger to the Billboard charts. Shaggy has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart twice (with “Angel” and “It Wasn’t Me”), and his 2018 collaborative album with Sting, 44/876, spent 23 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart. Trend-setting singer Dawn Penn’s “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” was a Hot 100 hit in 1994, and revered singer-songwriter Horace Andy contributed to several Billboard 200-charting albums from trip-hop outfit Massive Attack.

01 Mar 2023

Meet the Women in Music Honoree Who Escaped the Iron Curtain

Women in Music honoree Doreen Schimk has one of the more interesting backstories in the music business: She escaped from the former East Germany as a teenager.  

In the late 1980s, she and her sister Susann, both promising athletes, went to an East German training camp where she met a teenage boy she liked. Schimk took a bigger step than most girls her age, though, sneaking across the border in his car and moving to Hamburg in what was then West Germany. In 2011, this journey became the subject of the fictionalized German film Westwind.

In 1990, not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schimk moved to London, and later New York, where she says she “picked up English on the street.” “But I was obsessed with music – I was a DJ for a few years – and I thought this was the place I could get into the business, but I didn’t know the difference between an agent and a manager and a label.” 

Then a friend from back home called about an opening for an internship at the German indie label Edel Records. Schimk moved back within 48 hours and then spent six years learning about promotions before taking a job at Sony Music Germany – and then, eventually, at Warner Music.  

In August 2021, she and Fabian Drebes were named co-presidents of Warner Music Central Europe, which oversees operations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. One priority is “cultural change,” she says. “There’s a huge opportunity to create a new way of working in terms of changing the mindset and breaking these barriers in terms of hierarchies.” Another is focusing more on dance music and German language hip-hop.  

“With dance and EDM we have a huge opportunity to grow globally,” she says. For hip-hop, she and Drebes founded Atlantic Records Germany “to be a new door for German rap artists,” she says. “It’s based in Berlin” – Warner Music’s German headquarters is in Hamburg – “and it’s growing out of the culture there.” Change takes time, she says, but Warner Germany has shown strength this year on the singles chart.

As for the movie, she recalls, “I was in my 30s, sitting with my twin sister Susann on a balcony in Berlin, having a drink, and one of the guys we were with said, ‘Why don’t you make a movie about it?’ — [Her sister is a movie producer] — “From such a young age when I made that decision,” she says, “being fearless has always been a driver for me.”

The 2023 Billboard Women in Music Awards take place tonight (March 1) at the YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles. The event will livestream here on Billboard.com and via Billboard’s YouTube account.

01 Mar 2023

Larsa Pippen Shares She Hung Out With Her Beau’s Dad Michael Jordan

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Celebrity Sightings In Los Angeles - February 13, 2023

Larsa Pippen is romantically linked currently with the son of Michael Jordan, Marcus Jordan, and the union has endured its share of criticism due to the names involved. In a recent interview, Ms. Pippen says she’s spent some time with Air Jordan and the family.

Larsa Pippen was a recent guest on The Tamron Hall Show and the Real Housewives of Miami star wasn’t terribly candid about her connection with the elder Jordan but it’s clearly just a bid to get to know the family at large as her romance with Marcus Jordan blooms.

“I’ve recently been hanging out with them, but I don’t really want to talk about them. I feel like it’s not about, you know, my parents or his parents…they’re all happy. Our whole family’s fine,” Pippen said to Hall after being asked if she’s met her boyfriend’s dad and the family.

She added, “I feel like it’s more about where I am, where [Marcus] is. I feel like we’re in a great place. We motivate each other. We’re really happy being together. And I feel like that’s the most important thing.”

The romance raised eyebrows considering Pippen is the former wife of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teammate, Scottie Pippen. Further, Ms. Pippen was rumored to have dated rapper Future and there is a notable age difference between herself and Marcus Jordan although that shouldn’t matter one bit.

Check out Larsa Pippen on The Tamron Hall Show below.



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Photo: Getty

01 Mar 2023

Lil Nas X, Tim McGraw, Keith Urban, Little Big Town to Play 2023 NCAA March Madness Music Fest

The 2023 NCAA March Madness Music Festival will offer up headlining sets from Lil Nas X, Tim McGraw, Keith Urban and Little Big Town. The free ticketed three-day event slated to take place at Discovery Green Park in Houston from March 31-April 2 will also feature performances from Maggie Rogers and Mickey Guyton.

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Fans can register for free tickets here now. The April 1 lineup will have Rogers tipping off the action on the Move by Coca-Cola Stage, with Lil Nas closing things out. The Next night’s Capital One JamFest will feature Little Big Town and Guyton opening for headliners McGraw and Urban; performers and registration information for the AT&T Black party on March 31 will be announced at a later date.

Capital One debit/credit cardholders will get exclusive early access to tickets for the JamFest beginning March 8 at 10 a.m. ET through March 10 at 10 a.m. ET, or while supplies last. Fans can stream Sunday’s live performances on NCAA.com and Bleacherreport.com.

Last year’s March Madness Music Festival at Woldenberg Park in New Orleans had sets from Lucky Daye, BIA, The Kid LAROI, Khalid, Imagine Dragons, Macklemore, Grouplove and Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue.

Warner Bros. Discovery Sports/ CBS Sports will broadcast all 67 games from the 2023 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship across TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV. CBS will air the Division I Men’s Final Four, beginning with the Division I Men’s National Semifinals on April 1, then the Division I Men’s National Championship on April 3 from Houston.

01 Mar 2023

Here’s Why SZA Turned Down ‘Carpool Karaoke’

SZA opened up in a new profile on Monday (Feb. 27) about the reason she turned down an appearance on Carpool Karaoke early in her career.

Speaking to Alternative Press, the R&B sensation revealed she was once offered her own turn in the passenger seat of the popular The Late Late Show With James Corden segment, but declined because she was “scared of being on camera, looking bad, sounding bad and being perceived.”

However, she’s trying overcome those fears and insecurities in the wake of releasing her acclaimed sophomore album, SOS, which is currently spending its 10th nonconsecutive week atop the Billboard 200 (dated March 4). “I really have to remind myself this is my moment in the sun, and I have to take every opportunity because this s–t may never happen again,” she said.

Elsewhere in the interview, the Grammy winner also revealed some of the surprising influences that found their way into the 2022 studio set, including Fefe Dobson, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, Green Day, Blink-182, Paramore and Nickelback — all rock acts she loved growing up. “I was hella moved by that in elementary and middle school,” she said. “It made me feel so many things. I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m in my room with the lights off crying, but that’s how I’m gonna spend my day.”

On Wednesday evening (March 1), SZA will be on hand at Billboard‘s annual Women in Music, where she will be honored with this year’s titular award. Other artists being honored at the star-studded event include Kim Petras, Doechii, Becky G, Lana Del Rey, Rosalía, TWICE, Lainey Wilson and Ivy Queen.