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Two decades since forming MGMT as Wesleyan University students, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser haven’t lost their psychedelic puckishness. Despite its grim title, their fifth album, Loss of Life (out Feb. 23), contains some of the duo’s most sincere, hopeful music yet. “Coming out of the pandemic, there was a whole wave of super doom-oriented art and music and apocalyptic shit,” VanWyngarden says of MGMT’s first album since 2018’s Little Dark Age.
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Recorded in 2021 and 2022, Loss of Life is also the act’s Mom + Pop debut (after leaving longtime label Columbia Records) and features “Mother Nature,” MGMT’s first hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart since its 2007 smashes “Time To Pretend” and “Kids.” As VanWyngarden says, “This album is more reflective and existential and sort of philosophical. But at the core, it’s about always going back to [the idea of] love being something that you can depend on — and that is sort of indestructible.”
How did you settle on Mom + Pop as your new label home?Goldwasser: It was after the album was completed. We got to shop the record around – it was the first time we’ve ever really done that. One of the people works at the label went to Wesleyan, where we also went, and her faculty advisor was the same as ours. We bonded of that the first time we met, just talking about weird stuff that we did in college.VanWyngarden: We kind of did, like, label speed dating. Everyone we talked to was super, super cool. It could have been great to go with any of them. In the end, Mom + Pop had this sort of ethos that was at the foundation of their label that we were attracted to and related to. Goldie, as [Mom + Pop founder/owner Michael Goldstone] is affectionately known, had been in the music industry for decades before for major labels and came out of it kind of wanting to do something [at Mom + Pop] that was trying to change things up and be more all about the artists, like in a true sense. So we liked that.
You’ve said that your last two records, 2013’s MGMT and 2018’s Little Dark Age, dealt with the paranoia and anxiety of living through the modern era. What was your headspace when making this one?VanWyngarden: We both turned 40 while making this album, and we wanted to find a way to retain our light-hearted, playful approach to things but to challenge ourselves to have more of a sincere and hopeful message. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a whole wave of super doom-oriented art and music and apocalyptic shit. A common condition for humans for, like, the entire history of humanity is that you feel like the world is ending – and it’s probably because you know you’re gonna die. Mortality is an apocalypse that’s common to every human. It’s sure, it’s certain. This album is more reflective and existential and sort of philosophical. But at the core, it’s about always going back to love being something that you can depend on – and that is sort of indestructible.
You reteamed with Little Dark Age producer Patrick Wimberly and longtime studio collaborator Dave Fridmann. What do they bring to the table?Goldwasser: Those are the human beings that we feel most comfortable existing with in the creative process. We just want to feel like uninhibited and natural in the whole process of creating music. Especially having worked with Dave Fridmann since our first record, we just have this level of understanding and communication with him. I don’t know how we would ever build that up with anybody else.VanWyngarden: Considering how naive and new to everything in the music industry we were when we first met [Dave], he’s almost like a dolphin trainer. Like we were these dolphins that came to his complex and he trained. Everything we know traces back to Dave Fridmann. Patrick’s the same, really. He’s a peer; he’s a producer, but more so in the sense of helping preserve the atmosphere and the vibe.
For Loss of Life, you also widened your creative circle compared to your previous albums. Tell me about that decision and how it impacted the record.Goldwasser: Part of that’s a result of us being less precious about the way that we make music. It had been hard for us at a lot of points in time, wanting to be recognized more as producers ourselves and wanting people to know that we’re responsible for the sounds on the records – maybe we’ve had a chip on our shoulder about that in the past. With time and experience, we’ve learned to let go of some of that. The most important thing is to make good music.
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“Mother Nature” has a cool lineup: Oneohtrix Point Never, Danger Mouse and Nels Cline. It’s also your first charting hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart since “Time To Pretend” and “Kids.”VanWyngarden: I didn’t even know that.
How’d it come together, and how have you been reacting to its success?VanWyngarden: I’ve driven around so much listening to classic rock radio, and I recognize that now, in terms of time having passed, we’re like eligible to be on classic rock stations. Along with ’90s Britpop, there’s a lot of classic rock influence [on “Mother Nature”]. When we were first working out the piano riff at the beginning, I always felt like there was a Supertramp feeling to it. It all really came together very naturally and organically on that song. We had known Brian Burton [Danger Mouse] for a really long time and we were we were working in his studio. He was there giving us advice and his opinion and helping work through sections. Then once we developed the song out and invited Oneohtrix Point Never on, he and Ben did a session where they just went hog wild with guitars and made this sort of shoegaze-y bridge. Then we got the song closer to where it ended up when we were working at Sean Lennon’s studio in September 2022. It was in upstate New York and Nels and Yuka [Honda] live close by, and then Oneohtrix Point Never was up there. There was this smorgasbord of amazing musicians. We had Nels go in and just fool around on the guitar and we were like, “Wow, this is incredible.”
Oneohtrix Point Never worked on five of this album’s tracks. Artists from The Weeknd to Soccer Mommy have been collaborating with him lately. How’d you connect with him? What did he add to Loss of Life?Goldwasser: Andrew met him at a party in New York – and didn’t know who he was at the time. They just ended up having a really cool hang. After that, they hung out again. And then we thought it would be fun to get together with him and see what happened. It turned out we have a lot of the same musical references. We just got along really well. He got where we were going with the record. The way that he works is very curatorial – he mines sounds and has an encyclopedia of sounds that he knows, like, this is how you get this sound. I always get a kick out of seeing people’s different approaches to how they work.
“Time To Pretend” features prominently in Saltburn. How did that synch happen?Goldwasser: We were approached by the filmmakers. I had been a fan of [director Emerald Fennell’s] Promising Young Woman — so I knew it was going to be something a little out of the ordinary.VanWyngarden: I don’t remember exactly when it was brought to us; I don’t think I was paying too close of attention. I was like, “OK, another [person] who wants to use ‘Time To Pretend’… I wish they would use one of our newer songs.” But then I saw Saltburn and I was like, “Oh, this is set in 2007, this totally makes sense.” It’s really great to be kind of passively participating in another cultural phenomenon. I’m impressed that there’s Georges Bataille-level wildness happening in this massive pop cultural film — that’s not very common. To have a song in that is cool, because we like being subversive and irreverent too.
You debuted with Oracular Spectacular almost two decades ago – and played it in full at Just Like Heaven festival last year. How do you look back on that time?Goldwasser: It’s pretty wild how things get put into context, the stories that people tell about things over the years. At the time, we weren’t thinking about how people were going to be writing about it 20 years later. We were young and dumb and somehow we…VanWyngarden: Wait, how are you going to finish that?Goldwasser: …are still here.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Kevin Martin knew there was a chance he might come off ungrateful detailing his many qualms with the music business on the 30th anniversary of Candlebox‘s debut album and its monster single “Far Behind.”
But he did it anyway.
“The industry is completely f***ed,” the 54-year founder and sole original member of the American rock group explained, laying out a litany of indignities and double-standards ruining rock and irritating him as he makes his final trek across the U.S. for Candlebox’s Long Goodbye Tour.
“This tour bus is costing me $1,500 a f***ing day. It’s bullshit. I would’ve paid $400 for this 10 years ago,” he said during an interview with Billboard while parked at the Orange County fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, Calif. “The air conditioning doesn’t work and they hadn’t cleaned the vents or changed the carpets ever. I’m living in a petri dish and it’s disgusting. But of course I’m really grateful for everything,” he jokingly trails off, laughing and smiling as he acknowledges the moment.
Martin then clarifies that he is genuinely grateful to his core fans who have long supported the band, his wife and adult son who he spends months away from each year, and the guys in his band who recorded Candlebox’s seventh and final album, also named The Long Goodbye, which Martin believes is some of the group’s best work.
“I want it to be the defining moment of the band’s career, whatever the f*** that means,” Martin says.
“I don’t know what legacy means in this band’s whole realm because Candlebox has seen so many different incarnations and been pulled in so many different directions.”
Martin grew up in San Antonio and moved to Seattle in 1983 at the age of 14, eventually meeting Scott Mercado and then later guitarist Peter Klett and bassist Bardi Martin. Candlebox was signed by Guy Oseary to Madonna’s Maverick records in 1992 and released their self-titled debut album in 1993, eventually going quadruple platinum, selling more than 4 million albums thanks to heavy radio and MTV play for megahits “Cover Me,” “You” and “Far Behind.”
Despite their success, Seattle’s music scene didnt openly embrace the group with some labeling the band as derivative of the grunge rock scene, while others falsely claimed the band had moved to Seattle to ride the coattails of bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. Martin says that it was Oseary who filled the role of mentor and champion of the band, which Candlebox needed early on.
“As an artist I was at top of my game in the nineties and Maverick was killing it for Candlebox,” Martin said. But drug and alcohol abuse by bandmates “very quickly snuffed out our career” and after recording two more albums – 1995’s Lucy and 1998’s Happy Pills, the band decided to break up. Thanks to a key man clause in Martin’s contract that required him to turn in a fourth album, Martin became trapped in a legal battle for his band and a larger fight between Warner and Maverick. Martin today owns the band and makes decent money collecting royalties but says it took him 13 years to repay Warner Music to recoup a $250,000 advance.
Today, most Candlebox revenue comes from the $2.5 million per year the band generates on tour, playing headline shows and opening for bands like Three Doors Down, who’s support of former President Donald Trump is a frequent punchline on Martin’s bus.
Between the cost of his bus, the wages he pays to his band members and crew, and the non-stop nickel-and-diming he says he faces on a daily basis, he estimates his take home will be between $125,000 to $175,000.
“That’s a pretty shitty return,” he says. “I can’t take it anymore, missing my wife and my son, for this?”
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He adds that he finds rock radio to be “pretty vanilla” noting, “You want to know why rock radio sucks? Because every f***ing band on it sucks.” As for labels like Round Hill where Candlebox found a new home, Martin comments that “they’re fine but no one does actual A&R work these days.”
Martin says he doesn’t plan to stop writing music and says the songs on Candlebox’s final album The Long Goodbye, like the track “Cell Phone Jesus,” are a preview of what’s ahead.
“Organized religion to me is the most fucked up thing in the world,” he explains. “We’re more concerned about drag queens than we are about kids getting murdered in f***ing school with assault weapons. It’s terrible we allow kids to go through that because we’re so desensitized by it now. The advice to the artist is don’t say anything . Don’t take a stand. Well I don’t care. F *** you. It’s my last record. What are you going to do to me?”
It looks like Kate Bush will stick to running up hills instead of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame stages. The “Wuthering Heights” singer is set to be honored at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Friday night (Nov. 3), but a new statement confirms that she will not attend the Barclays Center-hosted celebration.
Bush opened the statement — which was posted to her official artist website — with heartfelt appreciation. “I am completely blown away by this huge honour – an award that sits in the big beating heart of the American music industry,” she wrote. “Thank you so much to everyone who voted for me. I never imagined I would be given this wonderful accolade.”
Alongside Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine and The Spinners will all be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.
“The RRHOF [Rock & Roll Hall of Fame] has welcomed me into the most extraordinary rostrum of overwhelming talent,” she mused. “When I was growing up my hero was Elton John. I pored over his music, longed to be able to play piano like him and longed to write songs that could move people in the way his work moved me.”
Last year, Bush earned a surprise runaway hit in 1985’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” The song climbed all the way to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming the most successful song of her career on the Billboard charts in the process — after it was used in a pivotal scene in season 4 of the Emmy-winning Netflix sci-fi drama Stranger Things. She referenced the phenomenon, writing, “Last year was such a surprisingly successful time for my track [‘Running Up That Hill’] and I’m sure that a lot of you who’ve voted me [into] the RRHOF also drove that track up the charts. Thank you!”
She continued, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend the ceremony tonight, but for me the real honour is knowing that you felt I deserved it.”
Bush did not give any explanation for her absence. For all intents and purposes, Bush’s statement acts as a de facto acceptance speech. She made sure to thank her biggest inspirations and closest collaborators, as well as wax poetic about what music means to her.
“Music is at the core of who I am and, like all musicians, being on the journey of trying to create something musically interesting is rife with feelings of doubt and insecurity,” she wrote in closing. “I’m only five foot three, but today I feel a little taller.”
Click here to read Kate Bush’s full statement.
Despite pursuing music early on — playing in a high school emo band (at the same Chicago suburban high school this writer attended) and releasing alternative-pop music in college, by his late 20s, the artist now known as Petey found himself feeling stuck in a minimum wage job without any upward mobility. “I was really confused on what direction to go in,” he recalls of 2019. “So I just decided to write and record a couple songs as an avenue or a way out of the spot that I was in. And it’s kind of crazy that that ended up being the thing, the only thing, that worked.”
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He quickly scored a record deal with the independent label Terrible Records and, as he puts it, “kept trucking” through the pandemic, largely thanks to his comedic TikTok skits that helped him gain a massive following of 1.5 million. In 2021 he released his debut album, the DIY and impassioned Lean Into Life (which boasts standout track “Don’t Tell The Boys”), and now, having signed with Capitol Records earlier this year, released his major label debut USA in September. The album debuted at No. 66 on Billboard’s Top Current Album Sales chart while Petey himself appears on this week’s Emerging Artists tally at No. 30.
“Before Lean Into Life, there was nothing. So it was just like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna throw music into the void and try and win over the entire internet,’” says the artist born Peter Martin, 31. “And then afterwards I had basically two years of people really responding positively to the album. I went on tour for the first time. All the shows we played supporting the album were sold out. So I really got to see who the fans were [and that] really informed how I was gonna start writing this album. It alleviated pressure.”
As did the luxury of time — and redos. While recording Lean Into Life, if he made a mistake he’d end up sticking with it: “Maybe that sort of challenge yielded some pretty endearing results in the last record, but this one it was really nice to be like, ‘You know what, we f–ked up today. Let’s go back and try again tomorrow,’” says Petey. “And to have the resources available to be able to make those mistakes and then take our time to figure out how to solve them…there was just so much care put into this record.”
FOUNDATION
Every year on Christmas Eve, Petey and his hometown friends gather at a local bar in the Chicago suburbs. In 2018, on the drive home with longtime friend Will Crane (whose birthday also happens to land on the holiday), Petey played two songs he had recently recorded. “He really liked them,” the artist says. “He dropped me off and then three weeks later, he sent me a text like, ‘Check your email, I just kind of wrote you a little plan that I think would be really fun.’”
Crane was about to move to Los Angeles himself, where Petey was already living, and suggested he help formalize a career path for his friend. “He was basically like, ‘Let’s give this the best shot that we can. Let’s at least try,’” recalls Petey. “It started with a music video. Looking back, it was so funny how seriously we took that process. But it gave us something to focus on and distract us from how ultimately stupid an endeavor like pursuing music is — because it’s just such a risky not-a-lot-of money situation.” Through the process, Crane not only became Petey’s manager but also his director – a two-for-one that became especially essential through the pandemic.
DISCOVERY
Petey says he and Crane started making TikTok videos out of boredom — and because they couldn’t tour through the pandemic. In the comedic clips, Petey plays multiple different characters of all different ages without ever really changing his look, and all of whom are navigating subtly absurd situations — from meeting with a lawyer who only uses a potato as a phone to being attacked by cats because a sniper is following him around. But the humor has had a serious impact.
Not only did the videos help Petey create a built-in following for his music, they also helped the major labels who eventually came calling understand his vision and approach — especially Capitol. “Everyone knew what was up and got the vibes,” says Petey. “I think a lot of the focus with the label is, ‘How can we help facilitate the transition of fans between just knowing the comedy stuff to knowing the comedy stuff and the music stuff.’ Capitol is just shining a light on what we’ve already been doing.”
The best example of exactly that is the music video for the album’s focus single, “Family of Six,” which Crane directed. “Even with all the major label stuff, we’re still getting scrappy,” says Petey. “We got to shoot [the video] ourselves and barely spend any money and just kind of like, run around doing funny, ridiculous stuff.” He adds he’s particularly proud of the song for the way it winds through his biggest influences while still sounding cohesive, which he credits to co-producers John DeBold and Aidan Spiro. “We had such insane chemistry,” he says. “[The album] was the most collaborative thing I’ve ever done.”
FUTURE
To celebrate the release of USA, Petey threw the first pitch at a hometown Chicago Cubs game (“I couldn’t have dreamed of a better situation – and it would have been the same dream as when I was a 6-year-old boy,” he says). Come November, he’ll hit the road for his Tour of the USA, playing 1,200-capacity rooms across the country. Unlike Lean Into Life, which he recorded with a lot of electronic elements then transformed into a rock heavy set with a full band, USA was made to be more “rock forward” from the jump. “I have the most fun when I’m going to see a pop-punk band that I fell in love with when I was 15,” he says. “Bands like Say Anything, Motion City Soundtrack … I just love the energy that it brings out of the audience. I love how it looks on stage. So I try to bring that feel to the live set.”
As it turns out, a member of one of the defining pop-punk bands is a major Petey fan. Blink-182 bassist and co-lead vocalist Mark Hoppus discovered Petey soon after Lean Into Life and has made his fandom known, even sending regular direct messages on Instagram. “Whenever he’s doing Instagram Lives backstage at the Blink shows, he’s playing Lean into Life,” laughs Petey. “He loves the [title track], which is hilarious because I have so much Blink inspired pop-punk leaning shit in my music, none of which is in that song at all.”
Looking ahead, Petey isn’t one for goals — he’s already played at festivals including Lollapalooza and Outside Lands. He does, however, have one sincere hope: “to keep this thing going. I really love this life. It gives me so much autonomy and freedom to do what I want and be where I want and spend a lot of time with people that I really care about … So if milestones like playing Coachella at a certain time slot or whatever, if that’s an indicator of my career going well and being able to keep doing this, then that’s great. I would love to be able to do this for another 10 years.”
In the early 2000s, while the alt-rock band Switchfoot was working on their fourth album, The Beautiful Letdown, the group flew to New York to perform for its new label, Sony Music. Midway through one of the cuts from that record, “Dare You to Move,” a top Sony exec walked out of the performance — and frontman Jon Foreman could hear him muttering, “Why do you keep signing this expletive-expletive-expletive?”
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As the band prepares to release a deluxe version of The Beautiful Letdown, which has sold more than three million copies since its release 20 years ago, Foreman recalls the impact of that moment. “That is a pivotal point for us as a band,” he says. “We had a choice: “Do we listen to him, or do we say, ‘Forget him, we’re going to do what we think is right, and we believe in these songs? That’s where we came from. That’s what that album in 2003 represents — an album that almost didn’t exist at all.” (Sony declined to comment on Foreman’s recollections.)
By phone from the band’s San Diego studio, where Switchfoot is rehearsing for a tour on which they will play The Beautiful Letdown in its entirety, Foreman discusses the “Our Version” version of the album, which dropped in August — as well as covers of its tracks performed by the Jonas Brothers, Jon Bellion, Twenty One Pilots‘ Tyler Joseph and others, that fill out the deluxe edition due Sept. 15.
As you rehearse for this tour, playing all those songs again from The Beautiful Letdown, what are you learning about the album?
We’ve grown up as a band, learned how to play our instruments, learned how to play together. It really has been enjoyable to step back in time and remember who we were and what we were singing about and how we were playing.
What were some of the technical challenges of recreating a record from 2003?
It’s all the happy accidents that are funny that are hard to recreate — but we leaned into that. At the beginning of one of the [original] tracks, “Ammunition,” my friend, Matt Beckley, a producer, happened to be in the room when we were tracking that. His laugh is the last thing you hear at the beginning of that track. We tried our best to imitate that, and I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and called Matt and said, “Can you send us a track of yourself laughing?” So it’s his laugh again. We tried to jump back exactly into the headspace that we were in when we had made the record the first time.
Why did you decide to re-record an “Our Version” of the album?
We all were kind of talking about the album and we thought, “What if we made the album, but this time, instead of for [the Sony exec], let’s record it for everyone who’s supported us the last 23 years — for everyone who’s sung along with these songs?”
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So did you wind up making the album that Sony wanted, back in 2003, or did you release the one Switchfoot had planned to make all along?
The album that came out was entirely our dream — the dream that, with John Fields producing, we loved, and that certain unnamed executive at the top of Sony Records hated. We were relegated to [Sony-owned distributor] Red Ink. It was actually the best thing that could’ve happened to us, because not only did everyone at Red Ink believe in this album and fight for it, it galvanized why we do what we do, and the idea that we don’t play music for the people who don’t understand it. We’re not for everyone, we’re going to be for ourselves. Irrespective of whether people get it or not, we’re going to sing our songs.
Did you wind up working with that Sony executive again?
Fast forward maybe a year and a half, the album had sold 2 million copies, and the same guy comes back, all smiles and handshakes and pictures, with platinum albums and a lot of talk about how “I believed in you guys all along.”
How much did Taylor Swift‘s “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings over the past few years influence Switchfoot’s “Our Version”?
It didn’t have much to do with it. But Taylor has covered two songs from The Beautiful Letdown, one without us and one I got to sit in on. She’s been very supportive.
Tell me about sitting in with her.
We were playing a smaller arena in Arizona [in 2011], and she invited me to come over and play “Meant to Live.” Our friends Needtobreathe were opening the night, and I was struck by just how poised she was on and off stage. She was in complete control, not only onstage but offstage. Everything was accounted for. It’s really fun to see this [Eras] tour blowing up for her.
For the deluxe version, how much input did you have on the reimagined versions from the other artists?
We gave them completely no direction. Some said, “I want you to play the instruments,” and some, like OneRepublic, just wanted to do a more traditional duet. I loved all of it. Jonas Brothers wanted to work with John Fields, who produced the original version. I called Fields and he said, “Oh, is this the talk when you’re going to be the A&R guy and tell me what we’re supposed to do with the track?” And I was like, “Nope! I’m just calling to say hi. I could care less.”
What do you hope both parts of the new version accomplish?
It’s such an odd project, to be honest. Being a songwriter, writing new songs is my favorite thing in the world to do, but to look back and celebrate where we’ve been — that’s what this project is aiming for.
“This is like the best Wednesday ever,” Sheryl Crow says over the phone on the morning the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced she was one of seven performers getting inducted into the Rock Hall’s Class of 2023 this fall.
The singer-songwriter has been eligible for the Rock Hall for a few years but finds herself joining the club after her first appearance on the ballot – which she says was a genuine surprise. “I had talked myself down: ‘Look, you’re not gonna get in the first year, but it’s really cool you’re nominated.’ So I have to say it’s a bit of a shock.”
Crow got the good news yesterday when she was busy rooting for someone else’s success. “I was at my kid’s baseball game, keeping it real, trying not to scream at the entire ballpark, ‘I’m in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!’ I’m just trying to stay regular mom and not have my head blow up.”
The 2023 induction is particularly meaningful for the rootsy hitmaker given that Willie Nelson – whom she hails as “one of the greatest people to ever walk this planet” — will find himself inducted alongside her come Nov. 3 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.
“Even if I hadn’t been inducted this year, I would’ve been there this year for him,” says Crow, who just days ago performed as part of the country trailblazer’s two-night 90th birthday concert celebration. “I tell him all the time and I can’t tell him enough: he’s my favorite person to sing with and he’s also one of my favorite people on the planet. I’m so blessed to know him. He’s uniquely divine as far as I’m concerned. It’s as much of an honor to be there with him as it is to be in it.”
Of the seven new inductees, Crow and Rage Against the Machine are the mostly traditionally ‘rock’ acts in the Class of 2023. The institution has, in recent years, started to expand the sometimes narrow perimeters that define rock music to include artists more commonly associated with genres like pop, hip-hop and country.
“The rock canon can encompass what we call other genres of music — at the end of the day, it’s just music,” she insists, defining rock as “music that sticks its neck out to move and motivate people.” And for her, Nelson – a country music rebel turned elder statesman who only appeared on the ballot for the first time this year after decades of eligibility – exemplifies that.
“He’s a person that, in his unique way, stands up for what he believes in. For me, he sums up rock and roll – he is exactly who he is when he walks on stage,” Crow says. “I think we’ve all cut our teeth on what he’s written, and he’s written some of the most important songs in the American catalog.”
As for her own acclaimed (and commercially successful) catalog, Crow says it doesn’t feel like it’s been 30 years since her debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club, and its smash single “All I Wanna Do” propelled her career into the stratosphere.
“I just wanted to pay my bills. I just wanted to be a working musician that wasn’t waiting tables on the side,” she recalls of the early ‘90s. “I never really thought about how far I was going to take it. It was more, ‘What’s the next thing I’m going to write’ and ‘What’s the next thing I want to say?’ I really have not looked at any of it as goal oriented. I know it sounds weird and a lot of people won’t believe that, but my philosophy has always been to be into the process.”
As for what’s next, Crow says she’s going to have a hell of a time writing a Rock Hall speech that covers the “many people” who have helped her along the way. And that journey is far from done. “I’m still learning. I love the art of producing; I love learning how to play different instruments. It’s still fun and interesting to me and I still feel like my best work is ahead of me.”
On release night for The Record, the celebrated debut album from supergroup boygenius, the band can hardly contain their excitement. “I”m so f–king stoked,” says Phoebe Bridgers.
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Julien Baker adds that though she’s a bit overstimulated, “I’m trying to let it be bliss.” She then speaks to Bridgers directly, excitedly telling her of the text messages she’s received from former bandmates The Star Killers — alerting her how it was 10 years ago to the day that they released their first DIY record on a small Memphis label.
“Are you f–king kidding me?” replies Bridgers, with a cartoonish gasp.
“I almost started crying because it’s been 10 years of me trying to make music with friends and people who care about me, and it’s cool to still be doing it,” continues Baker. “I don’t want it to be a glory-esque, ‘We made it!’ type thing — it’s more complex of a feeling than that. It’s that I still love this in the same way that I did at that moment.”
It’s that exact love — for their craft and one another — that unites boygenius. It informed much of the supertrio’s widely acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut EP and is undoubtably what threads its first full-length together. “I hope that the ethos of our band and relationship is infectious to people,” says Bridgers. “And just seeing that it pays off when you make offerings to each other,” adds Lucy Dacus, saying that part of the magic of this band is that as three musicians with thriving solo careers, they each want to carve out the time to make music together.
And when they do, the results are unmatched by any of them solo. The Record (released March 31 on Interscope) debuts at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard 200 (dated April 15), the highest-charting entry on the tally for any of the members. It also enters at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Vinyl Albums chart, with the format accounting for 67% of the album’s overall first-week units.
“We were told, if we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10. And then it was, actually, maybe we could break top five. And the fact that it’s [No. 4] is cool,” says Dacus, noting that Bridgers was the one to tell them during band practice. “We celebrated by playing the songs.”
Ahead, the band will keep the celebration going with a Coachella set and tour that, according to Dacus, is “at a scale none of us have done before” — and that Baker can only tease as “rock and roll.”
Below, Bridgers, Baker and Dacus discuss the joy of uncomplicated love and why everyone – not least of all themselves — are so obsessed with boygenius.
The fandom surrounding this band is palpable. What do you think drives it?
Lucy: I think since a lot of the boygenius fans are fans of the three of us they have been following along separately and maybe understand that we had to carve out the time for this. I think people know this is a rarity and that there’s no guarantee that it’ll continue. Like, we will continue to be boygenius and be friends, but we also will get back to our own things. So I think people have this awareness that to be present with it now is really to be existing in a moment. We demand presence from each other and I think our fans feel very present with the work and that is a feeling that feels harder to come by as you get older — not to be a Boomer.
You previously talked about some nerves over who was going to bring up becoming a band again. Between then and now, did any anxieties ever creep in?
Dacus: We’ve been holding the idea of this for two and half years — of course there’s been anxiety around it. We’re all people that experience anxiety. But even despite hiccups, I think overall I would still say that it’s been smooth sailing. Because we all still like each other, we all still like the thing.
Bridgers: We got a bad review that made it seem because we have a great relationship with each other, there is no complexity to it. What a way to live. There’s more complexity in this relationship than any relationship in my life.
Dacus: I have a hard time talking about it to other people.
Baker: Totally.
Dacus: Because people can’t relate.
Baker: It’s stupid to have people not be willing to perceive that people can love each other uncomplicatedly, like it must be untrue.
Bridgers: It must be Oasis or fake. And Oasis is fake, that fighting was fake.
Baker: And getting back to the writing, so much of the record is in conversation with each other.
Bridgers: But we’re so f–king spoiled. The reviews have been amazing. We worked really hard and it’s great.
Dacus: I love to stretch my humility with you guys.
Bridgers: I have no humility about this band. I’m just like, “Yeah it’s tight,” or f–k off.
Dacus: Maybe we are annoying.
Baker: We are.
Bridgers: Fuck yeah.
Phoebe you’re now a label boss with your Dead Oceans imprint Saddest Factory. When you were taking label meetings for Boygenius, did you ever consider signing the band?
Bridgers: I think we all wanted a new experience. And also it’s very important that we’re equals — so it’d be weird to have an extra line — which is why we didn’t even sign to any of our labels that we’re signed to. And it has been a f–king treat to be having a first experience with these dudes.
How did you celebrate the release?
Dacus: We [went] to Sound City where we recorded the EP, and we haven’t been back there together since then, and [we listened] to the record in full with a couple people who worked on it and just got in our feels.
The Record sold especially well on vinyl. Why was it important to have the format available on release date?
Dacus: We know that our fans are excitable people, like us. And so having it available when it came out, just felt like a momentous occasion. And I’m a vinyl person too. I think we all have favorite record stores. So we try to do stuff to keep those alive when we can.
During the writing process, was there a specific lyric or song you were all especially excited to share with one another?
Baker: I’m trying to think of a song that I didn’t want to send y’all…
Dacus: I do remember showing “Leonard Cohen” to Phoebe and Julien and Phoebe just like, making this face like, “F–k you.”
Bridgers: Like, “Hey, I wrote you a song,” and it’s just a f–king roast.
Baker: You getting dragged.
Dacus: I’m sorry. I literally call Phoebe an idiot in the song.
Bridgers: You’re making eye contact with me being like, [singing] “You are an idiot.”
What’s the most tattooable lyric on the album?
Bridgers: Oh my god.
Dacus: “I wanna be happy.”
Baker: I was gonna say that.
Bridgers: That’s tight, that’s hella tight. I think that is going to be the climax of the record, and it being the last huge moment that happens. Just the arch of the album, with the singles, and then ending there at the revisiting of our EP — I don’t know, it makes me emotional as f–k.
Baker: It makes me emotional, because it’s you revisiting unhealthy thoughts [and] being coaxed into potential and awareness of possibility for being happy.
Dacus: My girlie exhibiting growth.
A lot of people don’t realize it, but Maroon 5 actually got its start way back in the ‘90s, when frontman Adam Levine was just a teenager, as a group called Kara’s Flowers. After some lineup shifts, a mostly ignored major-label debut (1997’s The Fourth World on Reprise) and a name change, Maroon 5 emerged with Songs About Jane (Octone/J Records) in 2002, a soul-influenced collection of alt-rock that became a sleeper hit when lead single “Harder to Breathe” began to pick up steam on alternative radio, eventually helping the band crossover into the mainstream.
They didn’t look back, kicking off a fruitful period of blockbuster albums, Billboard Hot 100 hit singles and Grammy wins (three so far). When radio and mainstream tastes began shifting away from rock bands in the early ‘10s, Maroon 5 deftly evolved, expanding their sonic palette while working alongside top 40 pop producers and A-list rappers. Unlike many rock bands who broke through in 2002, Maroon 5 is still a commercial force, aided, in part, by Adam Levine’s long tenure on the NBC singing competition The Voice, where his “bromance” with fellow coach Blake Shelton helped propel the show to monster ratings.
But before the TV cameras, there was the music. The band – which consists of Levine, James Valentine, Jesse Carmichael, PJ Morton, Matt Flynn and Sam Farrar (shoutout to former members Ryan Dusick and Mickey Madden) – has scored four No. 1 hits on the Hot 100. Separate from the band, Levine charted as a featured artist on Gym Class Heroes’ “Stereo Hearts” (which reached No. 4 in 2011) and R. City’s “Locked Away (No. 6 in 2015).
Below, we’ve rounding up Maroon 5’s 20 biggest Billboard chart hits as a band, from “This Love” to “Girls Like You” and beyond. The ranking is based on weekly performance on the Hot 100 (from its inception on Aug. 4, 1958, through March 18, 2023.). Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at lower spots earning the least. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted differently to account for chart turnover rates during various periods.
“Wait”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 24, Peak Date June 9, 2018
Listen here.
“Harder to Breathe”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 18, Peak Date: Nov. 1, 2003
Listen here.
“Wake Up Call”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 19, Peak Date: Oct. 6, 2007
Listen here.
“Beautiful Mistakes” feat. Megan Thee Stallion
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 13, Peak Date: July 3, 2021
Listen here.
“Misery”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 14, Peak Date: Oct. 9, 2010
Listen here.
“Love Somebody”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 10, Peak Date: Aug. 17, 2013
Listen here.
“Daylight”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 7, Peak Date: Feb. 23, 2013
Listen here.
“What Lovers Do” feat. SZA
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 9, Peak Date: Nov. 25, 2017
Listen here.
“Maps”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 6, Peak Date: Aug. 9, 2014
Listen here.
“Don’t Wanna Know” feat. Kendrick Lamar
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 6, Peak Date: Feb. 18, 2017
Listen here.
“Animals”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 3, Peak Date: Nov. 22, 2014
Listen here.
“Makes Me Wonder”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 1 (three weeks), Peak Date: May 12, 2007
Listen here.
“She Will Be Loved”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 5, Peak Date: Sept. 25, 2004
Listen here.
“Memories”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 2, Peak Date: Jan. 11, 2020
Listen here.
“This Love”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 5, Peak Date: April 24, 2004
Listen here.
“Payphone” feat. Wiz Khalifa
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 2, Peak Date: May 26, 2012
Listen here.
“Sugar”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 2, Peak Date: March 28, 2015
Listen here.
“One More Night”
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 1 (nine weeks), Peak Date: Sept. 29, 2012
Listen here.
“Moves Like Jagger” feat. Christina Aguilera
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 1 (four weeks), Peak Date: Sept. 10, 2011
Listen here.
“Girls Like You” feat. Cardi B
Hot 100 Peak Position: No. 1 (seven weeks), Peak Date: Sept. 29, 2018
Listen here.
Chvrches has never been prone to releasing one-off singles that aren’t tethered to either a larger project or is a collaboration with another artist. Yet the long-running Scottish trio is kicking off their 2023 with “Over,” a behemoth of a synth-pop track due out on Friday (Feb. 24) that represents a new chapter for Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty — who celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album this year, and are using the new single to launch their recent major-label deal.
“Something that’s come up recently, that I thought was a nice way to frame this, is that we signed new record deals, and there’s kind of a new lease on life for the band,” Doherty tells Billboard. “It’s a chance for us to work within a new paradigm.”
“Over” dates back to 2017, a product of a few nights in which Doherty and producer-songwriter Oscar Holter would hang out and write a few demos together. “That was before he went on the craziest run ever,” Doherty says, referencing Holter’s work on smashes like The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and “Save Your Tears” and Coldplay & BTS’s “My Universe” in the years that followed. “We were working on some stuff just for fun.”
The demo floated in the ether for a few years: the band knew “Over” could be a big song for them, but it didn’t fit on a project like 2021’s Screen Violence, which the trio wanted to write and produce completely on their own. At the end of 2022, the band reconnected with Holter, who wanted to revisit “Over” and help flesh it out into a proper Chvrches song.
The trio and Holter punched up the track and “got it to a point where everyone was happy with it,” explains Doherty, “and where it felt like somewhere that Chvrches could be going, potentially — that isn’t to say that’s where we’re going, but something that felt 2023, and not like something that’s been kicking around for a few years.”
In its newly finished form, “Over” is gargantuan, a more muscular version of Chvrches’ synth-rock sound with a classic Mayberry hook designed for expansive festival crowds. As Mayberry’s voice pleads for understanding and romantic comfort, the synth chords are smashed, lonely guitar riffs wander around and the percussion recalls a classic Jam & Lewis beat; the song has a gusto like it were made without album-track expectation or any of its limitations.
“There’s something incredibly freeing and no-strings about thinking outside of a long-form narrative, for the first time in 10 years,” says Doherty. “It’s quite liberating, and quite fun.”
After rising to fame and releasing their first four studio albums with Glassnote Records, Chvrches signed a new deal with Island Records in North American and EMI in the U.K. last year. Mayberry says that the label jump was the product of an amicable split at a time when the prospect of a new direction was appealing. “We’ve always been really lucky to have great partners with what we were doing,” she says. “Making some of the changes was quite emotional … But we’re really excited by what Island and EMI were bringing to the table.
“I don’t know if we’ve necessarily benefited from the kind of old-school approach — getting songs on the radio, et cetera,” Mayberry continues. “I don’t think that blueprint works for us. And a lot of that is based on — alternative radio in America is all f—king men! It’s all men! And there was a time, at the beginning of the band especially, where there was a narrative of, ‘Oh, we’ve just playlisted [another] band with a female vocalist,’ even if they sounded completely different than us. So it was really exciting to talk to people who viewed it more holistically, like, ‘Where are Chvrches fans, and how can we get things to them?’”
After touring behind Screen Violence over the past two years, Chvrches will head to Brazil in March for a string of dates supporting Coldplay on their global stadium tour, and Mayberry cryptically adds that “there’s another batch of shows that are coming, at some point.” When asked how much writing and recording they expect to get done this year, Mayberry admits that the band isn’t sure.
“Whatever we make next, we have to take the time on it,” she says. “It has to move the conversation forward in some way.”
“It’s an incredibly rare and privileged position after such a long period of time,” adds Cook, nodding to the decade-long run of the band since their 2013 debut, The Bones of What You Believe. “We don’t really have any kind of ceiling on things, or know this is how long this is gonna go on for. We’re just taking things as they come in, and as long as we’re enjoying it, we’ll keep doing it.”
“We’ll never do a second album again,” jokes Inhaler’s Elijah Hewson, feigning the exhaustion that, at this time last year, was very real for the well-coiffed singer-guitarist and his Inhaler band mates.
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After two years of pandemic dormancy, the Irish pop-rockers stormed the stage in 2022, amassing more than 100 gigs in support of It Won’t Always Be Like This, the group’s blistering post-punk-goes-pop 2021 debut. The album, which was largely written and recorded during COVID, hit No. 1 in the U.K. and the Dubliners’ native Ireland, shocking the new-coming foursome.
And so came the need for a worthy follow-up — this time on a working band’s notoriously chaotic schedule. But the tireless lads pulled it off, booking long studio hours in early 2022, between tour stints and festival sets.
Just 15 months after their thrilling curtain-raiser — and with nerve-racking slots at Glastonbury and Lollapalooza now in the rear-view — Inhaler returns with Cuts and Bruises, another jangle-and-thump effort full of confidence and anthemic abandon, out this Friday (Feb. 17) through Geffen. The guitar-heavy sequel sharply merges callbacks to the band’s ‘80s muses — The Stone Roses, Joy Division — with touches of American fascination, courtesy of the band’s run of packed club shows across the U.S. last spring. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have joined the party as influences.
After last year’s hectic return to normalcy, the band — Hewson, guitarist Rob Keating, bassist Josh Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon — plans for a busy 2023, with another list of festivals booked, not to mention opening slots for Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys. It’s easy to imagine a 1975-like obsession before this next album cycle is finished, although the band mates, who have been making noise together since their early teens, can scarcely believe any of it.
Billboard caught up with the ascendant band to retrace their wild 2022, unpack the origins of Cuts and Bruises, and learn how a well-timed documentary influenced their promising next chapter.
How was your very busy 2022, and being able to get back on stage and debut songs written in pandemic isolation?
Ryan McMahon: When we went back to gigging, seeing all these new, unfamiliar faces, singing back the songs was quite a shock to our system. And that was crazy for us to get back out touring and going into places in America, for example, where we never thought we’d be able to go and people knew our songs. We were talking a lot about how we’re very guilty of feeling like we’ve got this sense of imposter syndrome in our minds. We don’t feel worthy, in a lot of ways, of some of the things we get to do.
How has the reception been with U.S. fans, who have been a little slower to catch Inhaler fever?
RM: It’s surreal, because we always pictured America as this fictional place.
Elijah Hewson: I think people [in America] listen to music in a really different way than they do in Europe. Not that it’s like they don’t listen to music as much in Europe, but I feel like when we came here, right off the bat, people were very warm to us and we felt like it gave us a lot of drive and a lot of it made us feel like, oh, “Come on, lads.” And I guess it’s that age-old thing of Irish people coming to America and feeling like the whole world’s at their feet, at their fingertips.
Since you last spoke to Billboard, your debut album, It Won’t Always Be Like This, hit No. 1 in several countries, including your native Ireland. What’s it like to have a chart-topper in your own country?
RM: We still almost feel like it didn’t happen. I mean, when you get into a band when you’re 12 or 13, you don’t ever think that you’re going to go and take on the world with your boys. You just want to get into a room and make noise, because you’re not really that good at anything else. And so fast forward nine, 10 years later, and you wake up to find out that your album that you wrote during a pandemic is No. 1 in the country that you grew up in? It’s hard to put into words, really.
Let’s talk about the new album. First off, why call it Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we kind of realized that being in a band is maybe, sounds silly, but more of a commitment than we thought. Not in a sense that we have to work, but I think in relation to our relationships with each other. It’s a little bit like a marriage, and I think there’s always going to be a little bit of residual scar tissue left over after so many years of working and playing with each other.
We’re starting to realize that it’s important to look after those relationships and pay attention to them, and we have a responsibility to look after each other. And I think that just kept coming up, after the pandemic and being on the road together, it just felt like the only thing we could write about. So I guess the title reflects that, in a way. And it’s not a serious injury. It’s something that we’re able to brush off and heal from.
In a way, the pandemic bought you guys extra time to fine-tune your first album. But Cuts and Bruises was made in the real world, in between a rigorous touring schedule. How much harder was this one to finish?
EH: Switching between those two processes was very exhausting. And I think we all kind of crawled out the back end of 2021 just feeling like we were just really, really — not burnt out, but I think we’d given everything that we could, and I think in some ways the pressure of that, and the spontaneity of it, and the speed at which we did things probably did help the album. And thankfully, we had our producer [Antony Genn] in there to kind of light the fire under our arse, as he often does. And that really kept us on the straight and narrow while we were back in the studio.
How did this new influx of touring experience — and growing confidence in your abilities — influence the writing of Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we learned a lot of lessons on the first one, and I think when we came into the second we had a better picture of how we wanted to do things. … I think the main thing we said is we wanted less information, to let the songs breathe a bit.
I think we were just more confident, and you don’t have to add as much if you are confident in the songs and material. And that was the basis of what we went off and I think it guided us pretty well. But other than that, I mean, you’re going in hoping that you come out with something at the end that is bigger than the sum of its parts. I don’t think anybody really knows what they’re doing. And as David Bowie said, “If you knew what you were doing, it’d be boring. You’d be disappointed.”
Is there one song on the new album you’d point to as the guiding light for what this project is trying to say?
EH: Maybe “Now You Got Me,” because it’s about commitment to something, and a lot of the lyrics are about joining the band and stuff like that. And I think that paints a picture, for me, of the whole album and where we are right now.
RM: [The song] sums up just the overall residing theme of it being an album of love songs, about loving your friends, really.
You guys talk a lot about being in a band and your commitment to each other. I know you all watched The Beatles documentary Get Back, which touches on some similar themes. How did that impact how Inhaler functions?
EH: It couldn’t have come out at a better time for us to be preparing to go into a studio to make a new album. And it was also very interesting for us to watch that and watch some of the conversations that they’d be having with each other as the biggest and best band to ever exist. And we’re just watching it going, “Hey, we argue about that!”
The lead single “These Are the Days” is a big, anthemic song. How’d you land on it to introduce the new album?
JJ: It was funny, because “These Are the Days” was kind of overlooked at the time but we played it to our producers and our managers and they were like, “Hey, there’s something there. Let’s get cooking on that straight away.” Even though it was one of the later demos to arrive, it was one of the first songs we’d finished and we thought it was a good way of coming back into releasing music and saying, “Hey, here we are again. Are people still interested in us?” It just worked out in that way.
How about “If You’re Going to Break My Heart,” which is a departure for you guys? It sounds like an American folk or country song.
RM: That came to us from listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and The Band and Bruce Springsteen, and us falling in love with America, really, and touring it and visiting places like Nashville and sort of familiarizing ourselves a bit more with country music and the storytelling that goes behind that. In music, country artists are the best storytellers. I think that’s what we were aiming for. I think that song actually came fairly naturally to us in the studio, because it’s not super rigid-sounding. It’s a lot more loose and it sounds like a live band, which is, again, what we wanted to achieve with this record.
What does it mean to you to be a rock band in 2023 that’s still finding an audience in real life, especially as so many artists your age are living on TikTok?
EH: It’s everything to us. When we were kids, the most uncool thing you could do was pick up a guitar and join a band. And everyone was like, “Oh, that’s cute.” I think we were just doing it for ourselves, really, because that’s how we found each other — we just wanted to listen to Stone Roses and Joy Division, and it drew us close.
And we saw Arctic Monkeys came out with AM in 2013 and that was very guitar-driven, and “Do I Wanna Know?,” it was a huge single, and I think that gave us a little bit of hope. And I also think that maybe people are just sick of hearing stuff that doesn’t feel authentic. And I think it doesn’t get much more authentic than hearing the clang of a guitar, and that’s a very visceral, physical sound. Maybe that’s why people like listening to bands like us, I guess. But we’re still like, a “pop and roll.” We’re not like idols. We’re still very kind of freaked out that this has even happened.
