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What’s Your Favorite Whitney Houston Song of All Time? Vote!

A decade after her death, Whitney Houston‘s legacy is the focus of Billboard‘s latest cover story, with Primary Wave using the singer’s legendary catalog to supercharge the fortunes of her estate.

And speaking of that catalog, Houston notched a whopping 23 top 10 hits — including 11 No. 1s — on the Billboard Hot 100 across three decades. And now we want to know: Which of her songs is your all-time favorite?

“You Give Good Love,” the debut single from Houston’s eponymous debut album, peaked at No. 3 in July 1985, and its trio of follow-up singles — “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know” and “Greatest Love of All” — all shot to No. 1 on the chart for a combined total of six weeks.

By the release of 1987’s Whitney, Houston was a bona fide superstar, and she scored four more No. 1 hits with “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and hit the top 10 with “Love Will Save the Day.”

In the early 1990s, the icon churned out more smashes with “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” “You’re All the Man That I Need” and “Miracle,” but it was the release of 1992’s The Bodyguard that she found her career-defining hit with a cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” The power ballad ultimately spent 14 weeks reigning atop the Hot 100 and easily became the love song of a generation due to Houston’s sky-high vocals and emotional aplomb.

Throughout the rest of that decade and into the 2000s, her status as a hitmaker remained intact, with her 2001 reissue of “The Star Spangled Banner” serving as her final top 10 single in her lifetime.

From “Saving All My Love for You” to “My Love Is Your Love” and beyond, vote for the Whitney song you love best and let your voice be heard in Billboard‘s latest poll!

Manuel Turizo’s ‘La Bachata’ No. 1 on Billboard Argentina Hot 100 Chart for Eighth Week

Manuel Turizo’s “La Bachata” spends an eighth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100 chart (dated Oct. 29). The song enters a tie with Bizarrap and Quevedo’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 52” for the second-most weeks at No. 1 in 2022, trailing only Tiago PZK’s “Entre Nosotros,” with LIT Killah, Nicki Nicole and Maria Becerra, which ruled for nine weeks this year (16 weeks overall).

Shakira and Ozuna earn the highest debut of the week as their first partnership, “Monotonía,” debuts at No. 7. While the former earns her second top 10, the latter collects his ninth. Meanwhile, Wisin & Yandel clock their first top 10 as a duo with their latest single “Besos Moja2” with Rosalía, which lifts 11-8. The Spaniard adds a sixth top 10 to her career board.

Argentinians DJ Tao and Callejero Fino earn their highest debut since both scored their first entry in 2021 as “DJ Tao Sessions #723” bows at No. 21.

Taylor Swift scores six debuts on the current chart, all stemming from her latest No. 1 album, Midnights. It’s the most simultaneous entries for a non-Spanish-speaking artist since the chart launched in 2018 (among all acts Bad Bunny continues to lead with a mammoth 17 entries on the same week). Swift’s “Anti-Hero” leads the pack at No. 40. Meanwhile, “Lavender Haze” starts at No. 70, “Snow on The Beach,” with Lana Del Rey, follows at No. 84, “Midnight Rain” at No. 94, “You’re on Your Own, Kid” at No. 98, while “Maroon” arrives at No. 100.

Back up the tally, Negro Dub claims his first entry as “El Último Romántico,” with L-Gante and Dt.Bilardo, opens ta No. 43.

Further, Maluma takes the Greatest Gainer honor of the week as “Junio” rallies 67-49.

Elsewhere, two South Korean groups score their first entry: (G)i-Dle’s “Nxde” bows at No. 52, while girl group Le Sserafim arrives at No. 74 with “Antifragile.” Plus, Estelares notch its second chart entry as “Encantan, featuring Enjambre,” opens at No. 79.

Meanwhile, Coldplay benefits from its Buenos Aires tour dates with a debut and a re-entry: “Yellow” arrives at No. 81, while “My Universe”, with BTS, rebounds at No. 86, after its No. 36 high in Oct. 2021.

The week’s other debuts include Coral’s “Mejor Que Tu Amor,” featuring Jorge Serrano, at No. 91, and Ozuna’s “Hey Mor,” featuring Feid, at No. 96.

Prosecutor in Puerto Rico Says She Was Told in 2019 to Stop Investigating Kevin Fret Murder

For nearly four years, the deadly shooting of trap artist Kevin Fret has remained an unsolved and salacious mystery that cast a pall over the Latin music scene in Puerto Rico.

After Fret, 24, was shot twice on Jan. 10, 2019, while riding a scooter in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, his mother Hilda Rodriguez publicly accused reggaeton star Ozuna and his manager of ordering the death of her son, charges they have denied and that have not been proven.

Now the prosecutor who was assigned to the investigation, Betzaida Quiñones, says that unbeknownst to Fret’s family and the public, only three months after she began her probe, she was told by superiors to shut it down. In April of 2019, she was interviewing a witness, whom she did not name, when she received a phone call from a superior with a message: “From that point on I was not going to continue interviewing that person,” she said Tuesday on WAPA-TV’s Cuarto Poder. The investigation was at its “peak,” she said, “and I was never given an explanation.”

Quiñones’ public statements over the past week, made in a series of television interviews in Puerto Rico, have called the murder investigation into question, raised concerns about undue influence from the rich and powerful and added to questions about Wanda Vázquez, the former attorney general and ex-governor, who was Quiñones’ ultimate boss. 

In statements to the media, Quiñones has said that Vázquez and Olga Castellón, the head of the criminal unit in 2019, were involved in the alleged freezing of the investigation. 

Public officials, including the island territory’s governor and its current attorney general, Domingo Emanuelli, have promised to investigate the claims. On Thursday (Nov. 3), Emanuelli said that after reviewing “reports and documents related to the case” that he was referring the matter to the division of Public Integrity and Comptroller Affairs for further review.

“These are serious allegations that should be examined in greater detail in accordance with laws and regulations,” the attorney general said in a statement on Thursday. 

On Tuesday, Emanuelli said “there should be no doubt that if evidence of any improper intervention arises it will be investigated, no matter who the person is. We are not going to put the integrity of the Department of Justice and its officials at risk for anything or anyone.”

Ignacio Fernández, an attorney for Vázquez, defended the former governor. “It’s an absolute lie,” Fernández tells Billboard. “Why did [Quiñones] wait three years? She had an obligation to come forward at that time. If she doesn’t have the moral rectitude to not bend to powerful people, then that is on her.”

Fernández also defended Castellón, saying “there is no way that Olga would agree to anything like that. She would investigate her own mom if she had to.” (A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department in San Juan, where Castellón is an assistant U.S. Attorney, had no comment.)

Quiñones’ claims that higher-ups influenced the investigation have also renewed concerns about the San Juan police department’s handling of the murder probe. A police spokesperson tells Billboard that the case was transferred this September from the homicide division to its Major Crimes division that deals with cases of “high complexity.”

One of the homicide officers originally involved in questioning witnesses, Tito Rivera Hernández, took a selfie with Ozuna at the police station in February of 2019 following a police interview with the Latin star, which Rivera Hernández later posted on his social media accounts. 

Col. Roberto Rivera, the head of the investigative branch of the Police Bureau, said this week that his office had filed an administrative complaint against the officer related to his handling of the probe and had put him on leave pending results of the review. Rivera Hernández, who is currently working with a team of federal agents, would be reassigned to another police division if the federal team does not keep him on, according to El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican news outlet. 

The colonel said that until this October no other agent had investigated the Fret case and that the time Rivera Hernández dedicated to the murder probe “was not extensive” and “not what one expects from such an investigation.” (Rivera Hernández could not be reached for comment.)

Quiñones’ allegations also add to the scrutiny on Vázquez, who was Puerto Rico’s attorney general from 2017 to 2019 and then governor of the island in 2019 to 2021. In August, the Department of Justice arrested her and charged her with bribery and conspiracy in an alleged scheme to finance her 2020 campaign. (She has plead not guilty and expects to go to trial.)

Persons of Interest

In April of 2019, police officials told Billboard that investigators were searching for “two male persons of interest” and were “using every resource at [their] disposal to find these persons,” as well as following up on anonymous tips.

That April, Quiñones interviewed Vicente Saavedra, who is president of promotion and marketing agency Dímelo Vi, as well as Ozuna’s manager, for more than three hours. She also had planned to interview reggaeton and trap singer Arcángel.

But just days later, she said this week, she received a phone call from a superior telling her to shut down the probe. “I had a list of possible suspects, which was communicated at one point to the chief prosecutor [Castellón],” Quiñones said on Cuarto Poder. “It was a list of the possible people who could have participated in Kevin’s murder.” She added that, “obviously, [Fret] was active at that time in the musical world, which was what he wanted to pursue.”

After his meeting with the prosecutor, Saavedra said the prosecutor’s questions focused only on allegations that Fret had extorted money from Ozuna over a pornographic video that Ozuna had appeared in when he was a minor. Saavedra said he was not asked about Fret’s murder and that Quiñones told him he was not a person of interest in the case. (Quiñones said publicly in January of 2019 that she was not investigating Ozuna for the slaying. A police spokesperson this week would not tell Billboard if Ozuna was a person of interest in the case because the probe is ongoing.)

Nevertheless, Rodriguez, Fret’s mother, who lives in Massachusetts, has been insistent that Ozuna and Saavedra were somehow involved. “I know that it was [Ozuna] who ordered my son to be killed, together with Vicente Saavedra,” Rodriguez said in a TV interview in April of 2019. She alleged that Ozuna and Fret, who billed himself as the first gay trap Latin singer, had engaged in an “intimate relationship.” She said she had turned over text messages of conversations between the two artists to law-enforcement officials.

Ozuna’s attorney, Antonio Sagardía, told Billboard this week that Ozuna was only questioned about an alleged extortion scheme by Fret — not about the murder itself. He was not asked back for a second interview, the lawyer said. The controversy involving the alleged freezing of the investigation “has nothing to do with Ozuna,” Sagardía said. “That’s an internal matter with the Department of Justice.” (Sagardía has said his client had “nothing to do” with Fret’s murder.)

Rodriguez has denied that her son had engaged in extortion. After Fret found a link to Ozuna’s pornographic video, “the only thing Kevin asked of him was to help him sing as a featured artist on a song,” she said. According to Rodriguez, “Ozuna said, ‘No, I’m going to give you money and I want you to send me the link so that I can erase the video.” But she added that her son wasn’t the only person that had the video. Rodriguez claimed that her son did not want Ozuna’s money and that he would never have mad the video public.

Fret’s mother said that Ozuna gave her son almost $400,000. Both Ozuna and Sagardía have said that at least one payment was made to Fret, but the lawyer put the amount at “close to $50,000.”

Almost two weeks after Fret’s death, a portion of the video in question, which depicted a teenaged Ozuna masturbating, was leaked to the internet and quickly went viral. That same day, Jan. 23, 2019, the artist apologized to his family and fans via a prepared statement, which also said he had been the victim of an alleged extortion plot hatched by Fret.

After she was told to stop questioning witnesses in early April of 2019, Quiñones says she asked for both verbal and written explanations, writing a memo to the Department of Justice asking why it was being held up. “None of my memos that I sent to the Department of Justice were ever answered,” she said on Cuarto Poder.

The recent move by the police to move the case to the Major Crimes unit, the prosecutor says, “opens another window for a full investigation.” And while significant time has passed since the slaying occurred and the evidence was fresh, she says she hasn’t “lost faith” that “eventually we will know the truth of what happened.”

Tank Takes ‘Slow’ to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay

Tank banks his second No. 1 of 2022 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart as “Slow,” featuring J. Valentine, tops the list dated Nov. 5. The single advances from the runner-up spot after a strong 17% surge in plays that made it the most-played song on U.S. monitored radio stations in the week ending Oct. 30, according to Luminate.

“Slow” gives Tank his seventh career No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay, and his rate of chart-toppers has accelerated in recent years. After capturing two No. 1s in the 16 years from his 2001 chart debut until 2017, he has logged five leaders in the past five years. Consistency, too, has become a standard, with only two of his seven chart entries since 2017 – “I Don’t Think You’re Ready” (No. 3) and a featured turn on J. Brown’s “Don’t Rush” (No. 7) missing the top spot.

As “Slow” reigns, here’s a look at Tank’s seven No. 1s on Adult R&B Airplay:

“Please Don’t Go,” No. 1 for 10 weeks, beginning May 19, 2007
“Next Breath,” one, June 16, 2012
“When We,” 11, Nov. 18, 2017
“Dirty,” three, April 20, 2019
“Can’t Let It Show,” two, July 3, 2021
“I Deserve,” one, March 19, 2022
“Slow,” one (to date), Nov. 5, 2022

Featured artist J. Valentine, meanwhile, achieves his first Adult R&B Airplay with his debut chart appearance.

“Slow” likewise unlocks more achievements for Tank in the latter stages of his recording career. Thanks to “I Deserve” and “Slow,” the singer-songwriter claims multiple No. 1s on Adult R&B Airplay for the first time in the same year. Plus, as “Can’t Let It Show,” “Deserve” and the current champ all spring from his final studio album, R&B Money, released in September, the album is Tank’s first to produce multiple leaders on the radio list.

Elsewhere, “Slow” improves 18-17 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, which ranks songs by audience listenership across both adult R&B and mainstream R&B/hip-hop radio stations. There, the song registered a 15% increase in weekly audience to 7.5 million in the week ending Oct. 30. “Slow” marks Tank’s seventh top 20 effort on this chart, with the previous six comprising all of his Adult R&B Airplay No. 1s, sans “Next Breath,” which peaked at No. 27.

Taylor Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero’ Gets Mashed Up With ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ in New Girl Talk Remix

Taylor Swift‘s latest single “Anti-Hero” received a new remix on Thursday (Nov. 3) courtesy of mash-up master Girl Talk.

In his inventive reimagining of the track, the DJ (real name: Gregg Gillis) injects the No. 1 hit with a ’70s flair as Taylor sings, “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser/ Midnights become my afternoons/ When my depression works the graveyard shift/ All of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room” over the instrumental of Diana Ross‘ 1970 recording of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

By the time Swift reaches the chorus, the familiar chords of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” — the Ashford & Simpson-written song first recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in 1967 — are as unmistakable as the ghosts she’s running from in the music video, punctuated with horn blasts while the superstar comes face to face with her “Anti-Hero” doppelgänger.

In an Instagram video Swift shared leading up to the release of Midnights, the singer/songwriter says, “Track 3, ‘Anti-Hero,’ is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. I really don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before. You know, I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized…This song really is a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself.”

“Anti-Hero” debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, as Swift historically held all 10 positions in the Hot 100 top 10. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was a top 20 Hot 100 hit for Gaye and Terrell, while Ross took the song to the top of the chart.

Stream Girl Talk’s remix of “Anti-Hero” below.

Maneskin Say Censorship at 2022 VMAs Shows ‘Prejudices Towards Rock Bands & Towards Women’

Måneskin is all for keeping the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll alive — which is why the Italian rockers took issue with the MTV Video Music Awards censoring their performance back in August.

When Maneskin’s Victoria De Angelis suffered a wardrobe malfunction that left her chest exposed during their performance of the Alternative Airplay No. 1 hit “Supermodel,” the live broadcast cut away from the bassist to wide shots of the stage instead. In a new NME interview with De Angelis and frontman Damiano David published earlier this week, the duo shared that the censorship was a major disappointment to them as a band.

“It shows that there are still many, many prejudices towards rock bands and towards women,” David told NME. “There is a lot to work on and we try to do our part.”

The televised moment saw cameras at the awards show hastily panning away from the stage following De Angelis’ exposure and to an area containing empty seats; shortly after the moment, De Angelis went down into a pit of fans at the show to continue the performance.

“It’s sad, but it’s good that people then talk about it and think about it,” De Angelis added. “It’s stupid that there has to be this control and censorship over people’s bodies.”

On Sept. 6 — a week after the 2022 VMAs took place — MTV shared a “restored,” slightly less censored version of Måneskin’s performance. De Angelis’ wardrobe malfunction remains, though her bare chest is blurred in the final cut.

Revisit Måneskin’s performance of “Supermodel” at the 2022 MTV VMAs below.

Rapper and ‘Rap Sh!t’ Star KaMillion Signs With UTA in All Areas

UTA has signed rapper, singer, songwriter and actress KaMillion in all areas, the company tells Billboard.

In music, KaMillion’s single “Twerk 4 Me” recently racked up over 1 billion streams in its first six months on TikTok and other social platforms, according to the agency. Her follow-up single, “Fine Azz,” served as the opening theme song for the second season of HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show. In May she released her second EP, Self Made, which was preceded by the lead single “Rich Bitch Walk” and released by her label Pink Money Musiq. As a songwriter, she has written for artists including H.E.R., penning tracks for the singer and guitarist’s Grammy-winning self-titled 2017 album. She has also toured both nationally and internationally and performed at shows including the 2019 BET Hip Hop Awards.

“It’s underdawg season, & I’m Lawry’s!“ said KaMillion in a statement on the signing.

On the small screen, KaMillion is best known for her starring role in Issa Rae‘s HBO Max series Rap Sh!t, on which she plays Mia, an aspiring Miami-based rapper trying to make her way in the music industry alongside high school friend Shawna (Aida Osman). That series was renewed for a second season in September 2022. In July, the fictional freestyle performed by her and Osman’s characters on the show was released as the lead single from the series’ season 1 soundtrack via Rae’s Raedio record label. KaMillion was also a cast member on the third season of VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Miami in 2020.

KaMillion will continue to be represented by Eric Feig Entertainment & Media Law and managed by Dream Lab Music.

How Taylor Swift Changed the Course of the Concert Ticketing Businesses

Fans waiting to buy tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour next week should expect two things: high demand and high prices. After all, it’s been five years and four albums since Swift toured, with her newest album, Midnights, on track to be the best-selling record of the year — earning Swift the title of first artist to ever have 10 songs dominate the top 10 of the Hot 100 chart.  

That popularity means that Swift can set high prices for her tickets — most seats will be priced between $200 to $400, with floor tickets going for as much as $800 a piece. Platinum tickets will cost even more with some selling for thousands of dollars per ticket. 

If there’s any consolation for the impending sticker shock, though — which has caused outcry over recent Bruce Springsteen and Blink-182 tours as well — it’s that unlike with some of Swift’s past tours, most of that money will be going into her pocket, and not scalpers.  

Much like with album marketing and record-breaking sales, as well as revolutionary stances around artists owning their masters and streaming royalties, Swift has had a profound effect on the concert ticket market over the years. Throughout much of her early career, Swift was a master of pricing and marketing and distributing concert tickets to her growing fan base, who eagerly bought up tickets to tours arounds hit albums like Fearless and Red. Unfortunately, scalpers were buying up tickets too. By 2015, with her tour supporting Swift’s crossover pop album 1989, average prices on the secondary market were going for two to three times face value.  

In 2016, promoter Louis Messina — who has been working Swift since she was 17 — had been celebrating the mega-successful 1989 tour, which grossed a staggering $250 million worldwide, when a well-known entertainment executive and friend bragged that he had made more on the tour than Swift or Messina. The executive enjoyed a far more profitable haul from the tour thanks to his ownership in a ticket scalping business that was selling 1989 tickets at a four-to-five-times markup. Messina and Swift had priced the tickets so low, and fan demand was so high that anyone flipping tickets for the concert was bound to make a big return. 

The nexus between ticket prices at the box office and what ticket flippers can sell them for on sites like StubHub was also a problem that Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino wanted to solve. Working with then Ticketmaster president Jared Smith, newly hired head of music David Marcus and company product engineers, the team developed an aggressive pricing strategy to make more money for artists by pricing tickets closer to what they would sell for on the secondary markets. 

After piloting the program with Jay-Z in early 2018, Ticketmaster began implementing its new pricing strategy for Swift’s Reputation Tour later that year. Compared to the 1989 tour, the Reputation Tour average ticket price was only about 10% more, but the best seats in the venue were priced significantly higher than in past years, thanks to new Ticketmaster tools that allowed it to optimize a venue’s seat map on a seat-by-seat basis. Ticketmaster also created a fan identification tool for Swift called SwiftTix, which had fans register in advance for an opportunity to buy tickets during the show’s presale, with their place in line partially boosted by purchasing fan merch and posting about the Reputation tour online. Today, the pricing strategy Swift used has become a staple of how most major tours are priced to capture more profit for artists, while advance registration has become a staple of most high-demand shows. For the Eras tour, for example, fans who register in advance get first crack at tickets while those held onto tickets for Swift’s canceled 2020 Lover Fest shows received even higher priority access for the Nov. 16 onsale.  

Swift initially faced massive backlash over higher-than-expected ticket prices for the Reputation Tour, as well as criticism that SwiftTix was a money grab at the expense of fans. She was excoriated in the press, bashed on Twitter and targeted by ticket brokers for allegedly ruining her career. Not long after tickets went on sale, Gary Adler, executive director of the North American Ticket Brokers association penned a piece called “Why Taylor Swift’s Reputation Tour Is a Total Disaster” saying Swift’s sales scheme was the “best example of how not to sell tickets to a large tour.” 

Adler could not have been more wrong. By avoiding the urge to price tickets so that they would immediately sell out, Swift’s long game, higher priced approach brought in $345.7 million, making it one of the highest grossing tours of all time.  

When Swift’s tickets go on sale next week, millions of fans will be waiting for a confirmation email to notify them when it is their turn to buy tickets and fans will collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying up seats. Based on the size of the tour, the popularity of Swift and the five years since Reputation, some fans will not be able to get the seats they want or will not pay the asking price, either because they can’t afford it or because they do not think it’s worth the money. 

Again, angry fans will go on Twitter to complain about soaring prices, rage at Ticketmaster and lament about how things used to be, when tickets cost less — and, as they’re likely to forget, when scalpers bought them up in a frenzy. And they can thank their favorite “Anti-Hero,” Swift, for helping to develop a ticketing model that shifted more money into the pockets of artists, instead of scalpers — raising upfront prices for fans in the process. Whether that’s a solution or a new problem altogether, those who do buy tickets are likely to be applauding next year anyway when she sings, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” 

Selena Gomez, Bad Bunny, & More: Which Latin Artist Should Taylor Swift Collaborate With? Vote!

Taylor Swift is out here breaking records with her 10th studio album Midnights, released Oct. 21 via Republic Records, including becoming the first artist in Billboard history to dominate the entire top 10 on the Hot 100 songs chart in a single frame. Additionally, Midnights debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, marking the biggest week for any release in seven years.

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In celebration of her historic streak, Billboard Latin has compiled a fan poll, asking readers to vote for which Latin artist she should collaborate with.

Though Swift has shared the stage with artists such as bestie Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez and Camila Cabello, who opened her Reputation Tour and would come out to help sing “Shake it Off,” she’s yet to collaborate with a Latin artist.

The poll includes everyone from Bad Bunny (who has teamed up with Drake and Dua Lipa), to Natti Natasha (who has collabs with the Jonas Brothers and Meghan Trainor) to Ozuna (who has dropped tracks with Doja Cat and Swift’s very own BFF Selena Gomez), plus more. We also highlight some of Latin pop’s biggest names, who we think would have great musical chemistry with Swift, such as Camilo, Sebastian Yatra and Pablo Alboran. 

Below, vote for which Latin artist Swift should collaborate with.