State Champ Radio Alternative
Green Day’s “Dilemma” becomes the band’s eighth leader on Billboard’s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, shooting from No. 4 to No. 1 on the tally dated April 6.
The song reigns with 6.7 million audience impressions, a boost of 15%, March 22-28, according to Luminate.
Green Day pads its position for the second-most toppers in the Rock & Alternative Airplay chart’s nearly 15-year history. Foo Fighters lead all acts with 11 No. 1s.
Most No. 1s, Rock & Alternative Airplay:11, Foo Fighters8, Green Day6, Cage the Elephant6, twenty one pilots5, The Black Keys5, Imagine Dragons5, Linkin Park4, Red Hot Chili Peppers3, Weezer
Trending on Billboard
Green Day claimed the first No. 1 on Rock & Alternative Airplay, as “Know Your Enemy” led the inaugural list dated June 20, 2009. Prior to “Dilemma,” the trio last led, for seven weeks, with “The American Dream Is Killing Me” beginning in November 2023.
Concurrently, “Dilemma” bullets at its No. 2 best on Mainstream Rock Airplay and lifts 6-5 on Alternative Airplay.
On the most recently published, multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs ranking (dated March 30, reflecting activity March 15-21), “Dilemma” debuted at No. 50. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 376,000 official U.S. streams.
“Dilemma” is the second single, following “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” from Saviors, Green Day’s 14th studio album. The set debuted at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated Feb. 3 and has earned 100,000 equivalent album units to date.
All Billboard charts dated April 6 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, April 2.
When Katie Crutchfield, the 35-year-old singer-songwriter better known as Waxahatchee, released her country-tinged fifth album, Saint Cloud, in March 2020, its intimacy connected with listeners in early-pandemic lockdown and it topped Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart. “I didn’t expect for Saint Cloud to mean as much to people as it did,” she says. “That was obviously a beautiful thing; that’s still, to this day, the thing I’m the proudest of.”
But for her follow-up (and ANTI- debut), Tigers Blood, out March 22, Crutchfield kept a healthy distance from the acclaim of Saint Cloud. “Internalizing people’s praise is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than internalizing criticism,” she says from her Kansas City, Mo., home. “I really try and shut all of it out.”
Trending on Billboard
Tigers Blood carries on in Saint Cloud’s alt-country vein, and like that record, it was made in just two weeks at Texas studio Sonic Ranch with producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail). But the album has a character all its own, thanks in part to Crutchfield’s new backing band: Cook’s multi-instrumentalist brother Phil, drummer Spencer Tweedy and ascendant rocker Jake “MJ” Lenderman, whose vocal harmonies and guitar leads course through the songs. “With Brad, my records are like a great slice of homemade bread with a fresh slice of tomato, a little olive oil, salt and pepper,” Crutchfield says. “The ingredients are so simple. Why overthink it?”
Allison Crutchfield, your sister and longtime musical collaborator, is an A&R executive at your new home, ANTI- Records. What was that signing experience like?
It’s a crazy situation, right? And it feels so correct. She has always been my most trusted confidant. When she started working A&R at Anti-, she really stepped into that role so naturally, and like has such a unique sort of flair, and like take on being an A&R person. When my [Merge] contract was up, I knew I wanted to make a change. I considered my options, but I’m not going to have that type of connection with anybody [else]. And I already just loved ANTI-, their roster and their ethos and approach.
What has Anti- been like as a label partner as you’ve been getting this album off the ground?
They’ve been so perfect. It’s crazy how well it suits me. The team is just so enthusiastic and hardworking and pure of heart. The president of Anti-, Andy Kaulkin, is such a visionary and such a unique person in the music business – like, a true head. He really cares about music and he just wants me to be an artist; he doesn’t want me to be anything I’m not. There’s a lot of mutual trust there.
[embedded content]
Saint Cloud was a creative risk for you in how strongly you embraced country sounds for it. How did you decide to continue in that stylistic direction with Tigers Blood rather than making another hard pivot?
With Saint Cloud, there was no pressure; we were doing something totally new and just going for it. With Tigers Blood, early on […] there was some pressure that Brad Cook and myself were feeling. There is such a weird allure to reinventing yourself – like, that is sort of looming when you’re thinking about what to do next, you’re like, “OK, what pivot am I going to take?” We ultimately landed on the confident choice [being] to double down on what we did before and change a couple of little, small elements and just trust that it’s going to feel new.
Brad Cook is a longtime collaborator who you worked with on Saint Cloud as well as 2018’s Great Thunder EP and your collaborative 2022 album as Plains with Jess Williamson. How has that relationship evolved?
He’s one of my very, very, very best friends now. Finding exactly the type of collaborator that he is has been a lifelong goal of mine, something that I’ve been subconsciously searching for. Since I’ve been working with Brad, I’ve learned a certain amount of self-awareness about exactly what it is I bring to the table. I bring the songs, I bring the voice, I bring a certain amount of vision, of aesthetically how I want this to be. Brad brings a lot of the other stuff — he is a person who knows how to execute a vision. There is this complementary dynamic to our whole thing. We’ve really built this shared world and this shared taste. It just keeps getting easier and better the longer that we make records together.
Jake “MJ” Lenderman has also had a successful few years as a solo artist and as part of the band Wednesday. What did he bring to these sessions?
Brad and I, when we talk about music, a lot of the time we use food metaphors. And he was like, “Jake is a really potent spice — you’re going to taste it.” I really liked that. It’s kind of fun to throw that spice in the mix — that mixes things up for us, too. He just has amazing taste and this great, exciting, youthful energy that we really fed off.
He came on the Plains tour [in 2022] and opened. I came up in this small DIY scene and I had always approached my music career as like, the main thing is artistic integrity and creative integrity – it’s all about the work and it’s about being close with my people and just like having fun with it. And then having this big year with Saint Cloud, this big year with Plains, not that I like got so far away from that, but I got pulled away from it a little bit. I didn’t even totally see that. So when I was on that [Plains] tour, before we made Tigers Blood, with him and his band and seeing how alive their set was every night and how they built this sweet community and they’re in such good spirits and having so much fun with it – and there’s all this buzz around him and his band, but they really don’t see it or care about it. That really realigned me with my own values. I just really appreciated it. My record wouldn’t have landed the same or been the same had I not had that experience.
[embedded content]
Tigers Blood is the second consecutive Waxahatchee album recorded at Texas’ Sonic Ranch. How did the studio impact your headspace while working on the album?
You feel like called home or something – that’s how I feel at Sonic Ranch. It has worked so well for me to be that removed from my own life. It’s just so beautiful and so expansive and the environment is really conducive to being focused on what you’re doing. It’s like summer camp or something, too, because it’s like a compound; Sublime was working on something right next to us. There is this sense of community but there’s also privacy. I wish I had more excuses to go there. I’m jealous of someone like Brad who gets to go there a lot.
Tell me about your reverence for country music and how that has increasingly bled into your own.
It’s foundational to my songwriting. I grew up on Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn and George Jones and all these great country duets and classic country music. And I grew up in the ’90s, when pop country was so huge. All of those things are imprinted on my songwriting DNA. For all the early years, I really rejected that — and so I have been on a journey to reconnect with that. The big artist that helped me bridge that gap is Lucinda [Williams], who is still, to this day, my very favorite songwriter. I’m on a journey with it. It works its way in, always.
How excited are you to tour this record? Is MJ going to join?
I’m really excited to go on tour. MJ is not going to be on the tour. He will pop up here and there. He’s going to have a very busy year himself. He’s gonna do his thing, but of course, he knows there’s an open invitation. And we have a couple of little things planned, so I’m really excited about that. My band this year is really exciting: Spencer’s gonna join me on the road, and the person that’s going to fill the Jake role is Clay Frankel from the band Twin Peaks.
What was the most fun moment of the Tigers Blood sessions?
It was like so magical. We just really bonded. We all lived in this little house on this other side of the property of Sonic Ranch. We were cooking meals for each other and watching basketball and jamming and staying up late and talking and just having the best time. I miss it a lot.
This story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With the release of her 2021 debut album, if i could make it go quiet, alternative singer-songwriter girl in red blurred the line between contemplative songwriting and chaotic production, leaving the Norwegian artist born Marie Ulven with the challenging task of crafting an equally compelling follow-up. Yet I’m Doing It Again Baby! (out April 12 on Columbia Records) lives up to the difficult standard set for sophomore albums: Her songwriting cuts quicker to the core, while Matias Tellez’s production fuses even more influences.
Girl in red, 25, describes the album as an “elevated” version of her previous output. “It feels more creative,” she says, “more fun and more playful, and a little bit more confident. I’m not playing it safe, which is important … Everything is just getting pushed further.” She breaks down the inspirations that influenced I’m Doing It Again Baby!, from working alongside fellow pop superstars to refining her culinary tastes.
Trending on Billboard
Taylor Swift
While finishing her album in 2023, girl in red earned a coveted spot as one of the openers for Swift’s The Eras Tour. “It was like watching history being written in the moment — like, ‘I’m a part of history now,’” she recalls, still in awe. Opening five dates in June, she explains, was more than just a cool opportunity; it provided a career’s worth of educational experiences in less than a month. “I learned so much from watching Taylor’s shows and seeing how hard she works,” she recalls. “My new thing is I’ll ask myself, ‘What would Taylor do?,’ because I’m so inspired by her work ethic: ‘We’re not complaining, we’re just getting sh-t done.’”
Fine Dining
In the process of elevating her music, girl in red found that “my palate and my taste for food and drinks completely changed.” Embarking on gastronomic adventures at Michelin-star restaurants, and even studying to become a sommelier (“I have this delusion where I think I can be anything,” she jokes), the singer found herself taking on more complex topics in her music. “I think food is highly connected to everything you feel. So trying a bunch of really nice wines and nice foods gave me more depth to work with in production,” she explains. “I know that sounds really f–king pretentious, but it’s true!”
[embedded content]
1960s New York
On the final track of the album, “*****,” girl in red pines for the art scene of 1960s Lower Manhattan, specifically Andy Warhol’s iconic studio The Factory: “Six out of six, I never miss, you’ve got to be delusional to be in the biz at The Factory,” she sings. The artist says reading Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, introduced her to the scene’s history and made her immediately yearn for the “electric” times she wasn’t alive for. “I just feel like we’re missing that energy now,” she says. “With Studio 54 and The Factory and all these amazing artists working together to produce great art — it’s just so cool. I wish we had more of that today.”
Cartier Watches
“I had never thought about watches in my entire life,” Ulven says with a laugh. But when her longtime collaborator Matias Tellez started explaining his love of timepieces, the singer says she adopted the same obsession. She soon developed a specific infatuation with Cartier’s brand of stylish wristwear, and convinced Tellez to buy matching engraved gold watches to commemorate the album’s release. “It’s sort of about manifesting,” she says. “All these iconic people have worn these Cartier watches, and there’s something about wanting to wear something that iconic people wore.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Recently, d4vd found himself feeling happy – as it turns out, maybe a little too happy.
“Not that being happy is wrong,” clarifies the genre-blurring artist behind Hot 100 hits “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me” and who last year scored an opening gig on tour with SZA. But, he says, “I started going into these sessions making songs. I wasn’t making music. I’d go in and be like, ‘Let’s make the best song ever.’ But then I wasn’t being as introspective as I used to be, and I was making such surface-level music. It felt like it wasn’t even d4vd anymore.”
This story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And that’s the irony of an artist like d4vd – when things feel too defined, he himself feels lost.
The artist born David Burke is a bit of an anomaly. Born in Queens, New York and raised in Houston, Texas, d4vd grew up on a range of influences from Mozart to Chet Baker to eventually Lil Pump. After a classmate introduced him to Soundcloud, he quickly became a fan of then-underground and sonically diverse rappers like Lil Uzi Vert, XXXTentacion and Smokepurpp. (Even today, he says the platform’s algorithm fits his taste “to a T.”) All the while, his gaming obsession (with Fortnite in particular) led him to discover more indie-leaning rock, which he says predominantly shaped his own approach to making music – a venture that started at first as a means to avoid more copyright strikes on the gameplay montages he would post to YouTube.
[embedded content]
Having made his first two EPs (Petals to Thorns and The Lost Petals, both released on Darkroom/Interscope Records) in his sister’s closet using his iPhone and BandLab, d4vd’s music has a refreshingly stripped-back, DIY aesthetic – or, in his own words, an “ethereal nostalgia.” He believes identifying his music by a mood is more important than being defined by any one genre – a belief his managers and label supported from the jump.
“There was a drive to keep things organic and not change the formula,” he says of his early communications with Darkroom. “To let the creativity flow from where it usually came from…and not subjecting myself to any of the boxes of genre.”
Below, d4vd talks with Billboard about his own unusual relationship with genre and whether he thinks the concept will have much of a place in popular music’s future.
You previously told Billboard it’s an honor to be a gateway for music fans, especially young Black music fans, into alternative music. Why is that role so important to you?
I feel like the most important thing right now in the past five years of music has all been image. The driving force of marketing and promotion and everything has been [about] an artistic image.
[At first] I didn’t show my face at all, because I knew the music that I was making wasn’t what Black kids usually would make when they go into music. I had so many friends I tried to get into music and they instantly went for the hip-hop sound or the alt-rap sound or whatever was going on at the time, underground. But then I started making the indie alternative stuff, and I was like, “What if people didn’t know what I look like?” And that was the most important thing for me, because I wanted the art to speak for itself.
SZA spoke in her Billboard cover story about the “luxury” of trying something new and how it’s harder as a Black woman. When you were on tour with her, what did you learn from watching her blend so many influences into one seamless live show?
We didn’t talk about music that much during our time together, but I can see the career trajectory she’s built. And now SZA has become this sound that everybody’s so used to, but it’s all new people finding out about SOS first, and then not contextualizing her past projects. So that’s the thing about music too, there’s so many new ears hearing you every day. And your work isn’t always fully appreciated because of where you started. And people always see where you are [now]. So it’s interesting to see an artist that prolific have such a passion for making everything.
But then there’s a certain demographic that will only listen to one thing, so it’s kind of hard to kind of expand. I think Lil Yachty is doing that the best right now with his [Let’s Start Here] project, and always bringing in new fans to these sounds that have been around for a long time but aren’t fully appreciated because of the culture.
Who do you think your fanbase is?
I wouldn’t say for sure that I have a target audience yet. Although I’ve been making music for like, a year and a half, done a couple tours, we’ve seen the people that come to the shows… but I don’t have a certain group of people that I’m marketing to. So that allows me to kind of be free with the way I create. Right now, the people that listen to my music are people that are fans of certain sounds, not certain artists. So I don’t have to be compared to anybody else, because the fans like the sounds and not the person behind it.
Do you think that’s a specific trait of Gen-Z and how they consume and even discover music today?
I mean, completely. There’s no more artist development now. It’s like, people are marketing songs before artists, and it works sometimes. But the rest of the time it’s like, I’m hearing a song 50 times a day and I still don’t know who made it. And it’s in my playlist too. And I couldn’t care less about the artist. We’re in a weird spot right now, but I think more people are figuring out how to break through. And it’s just interesting to see internet kids take over the music industry.
Do you think in the next few years that we will still be defining music by genre?
Oh, absolutely. I feel like there’ll be even new genres. We’ve created so many subgenres that subgenres are becoming main genres. So I can’t imagine like, years down the line, how music is even categorized.
Have you ever with your team or friends made up a subgenre that could apply to d4vd?
You know what? No, I haven’t done that yet. I should, to be honest. It’d be like, hyper-alternative indiecore. I don’t know. [Laughs.] We can hashtag that.
How do you describe your music to people who may be unfamiliar?
I like to make old sounds new, I did it best with “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me.” It’s kind of like the old Morrissey from The Smiths, kind of Thom Yorke Radiohead rawness and passion that was lost due to over-technologized music. Now everything is layered with like, 50 vocal stacks and 50 harmonies and this, that and the third.
And kids’ brains are getting oversaturated with so much stuff. When they hear raw [music], it’s refreshing now – when it shouldn’t be refreshing, it should be how music is. I feel like I’m just taking advantage of the fact that kids are not hearing this kind of stuff around anymore. I feel like Steve Lacey is doing it the best right now, too. Dominic Fike, he’s doing crazy right now too.
And that’s the thing too, with genre. It’s like, we got to bring back the weird people making music. I don’t think I’d ever see Thom Yorke come on Tik Tok like, “Did I just make the song of the summer?”
Do you think some of that weirdness is lost because of social media? Are people too concerned now with how they come across?
Yeah, cause people are too worried about what works. Back in the day nothing worked. Nothing was working. So many things are working right now. Even the way people approach different genres in the same way. I don’t like seeing techno and EDM being promoted the same way an acoustic song is on TikTok…it’s like, I’m dancing to this and I’m crying to that, but they’re being marketed the same way and I’m confused.
Is there an artist or band that you would want to work with that you think would shock people who have listened to you before?
Deftones. I want to work with Chino [Moreno, Deftones frontman] so bad. So bad.
This story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Are there any producers that you’ve come across that you would want to work with?
Coming up, it was all YouTube beats, ‘cause I had no connections to anybody in the industry. So I’d go on YouTube and search up this type of beat and that type of beat. And that’s another thing, I wouldn’t go and search up: “indie type beat.” It was like a certain sound or feeling instead of a genre.
Like, if I get [the top spot] on New Music Friday and a bunch of new people are hearing this for the first time, I’d rather them ask, “Why is this on top of New Music Friday?” than have them be like, “Oh yeah, I understand why it is.” I like my music to make people think about why it’s in the position it is. And “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me” did that, and I loved it so much because people didn’t know why [they were taking off]. I want you to not be able to figure it out.
[embedded content]
For artists who are just starting out, is identifying with one genre helpful or hurtful?
It can be both. I feel like whatever makes you confident in your music and your sound, go for it. But I feel like there’s more freedom in not associating yourself with anything. And I feel like most people that start doing music forget that there’s freedom and are going off based on what they see around them. I see the benefits of being like, “Yeah, I just made this song so now I’m gonna make a hundred more like that and see if people like it.”
Whatever makes you confident in your music and your sound and helps you stick to it and not lose the passion for the music…You can lock yourself in a box and also break out of that box later if you want to. So just do whatever you want.
In May of 2020, Travis Barker’s label DTA announced its first signee: a relatively unknown artist named jxdn. Since then, the rising rocker scored two top 10 hits on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, opened for Machine Gun Kelly on tour and became a key player in pop-punk’s next wave.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
But now, after a particularly trying few years – during which his best friend Cooper Noriega died of an accidental drug overdose, he struggled with his own mental health and ultimately entered rehab this summer – the artist is ready for his fresh start.
In July, he returned to social media after a brief hiatus, captioning a fresh-faced smiling selfie: “I finally feel like Jaden Hossler so that’s who I’m going to be.” In September, he announced his new single “Chrome Hearted” to be released under his full name for the first time. The single is not only a reintroduction, but also a redirection for the artist, as the trap-pop song more prominently features his vocals than previous singles and steps away from the punk and rock roots through which he launched his career.
[embedded content]
“I’ve always wanted to be a pop star,” says Hossler while sipping chamomile tea (since prioritizing his sobriety, he’s cut out caffeine). “And I think I couldn’t be the pop star without being the rockstar that I was.”
And while his rockstar persona led Hossler to career highs, it also paved the way for personal lows. He recalls his breaking point this summer, when he “lost it” in London just before he was about to go onstage with MGK. Instead, he booked a ticket home and soon after checked himself into a treatment center for his mental and physical health as he battled anxiety, depression and addiction.
“This past year has been by far the hardest time of my life…and it’s all finally catching up to me,” wrote Hossler in a June Instagram post. “I am trusting my gut that this will put me in the best possible position to be who I want to be, feel how I want to feel and go where I want to go.”
Jaden Hossler
Hunter Moreno
When we meet in mid-July at the Sherman Oaks staple Sweet Butter Kitchen, it’s only been a couple of weeks since he finished his 21-day treatment – and it’s clear his manifesto held strong. Hossler wrote “Chrome Hearted” before entering rehab, saying “I think it was a big reason why I felt comfortable going, because I felt like I had a glimmer of hope. Like I wasn’t coming out to nothing.”
“I wasn’t coming out having to change everything, I had already started this process for myself,” he continues. “And if I came out of rehab and just wanted to drop all of it, I could. But being in rehab and leaving rehab, I felt even more [confident] about it. This song was really the first moment where I was proud of myself again in a really, really long time. And it felt the same way as soon as I got out.”
“Jaden has always had pop tendencies in his music, so it felt like a natural evolution,” says Johnny Minardi, SVP of A&R at Elektra (through which DTA signed a joint venture). “It’s been super exciting for me to witness Jaden’s [growth] both as an individual and as an artist.”
Below, Hossler opens up about his year of change, revealing what encouraged his reintroduction and why he finally feels like the artist, and person, he was always meant to be.
How did the idea for “Chrome Hearted” come about – and why was this the right song to venture more into pop music with?
I’ve been playing with pop for about a year, but I could never find the right sound. It was either too bubble gummy or just didn’t feel like me – I really wanted to find a sound of my own. I’ve always leaned towards ballads, but then I was like, “I want to make [a song] that is uplifting and could go on radio.” I kind of got obsessed with [luxury brand] Chrome Hearts at the time so it came into my mind to use it as an adjective. I had this melody and as soon as I sang it, I was like, “This is gonna be one of my biggest songs.”
We [Hossler and songwriter-producer Andrew Goldstein] made a demo of the hook in 15 minutes. I was showing everybody – I even went up to the president of Elektra, Greg [Nadel], because we were at the Blink-182 concert, and I was like, “I just wanted to let you know I just made a hit.” Once we finished the song, I woke up the next morning and [Greg] called me, my A&R called me, my manager and everyone called me, and they were like, “Holy shit, you were right.” I’ve really struggled with trusting my instincts over the past two-three years, especially when Cooper died, I felt like I lost my identity. And this was the first time where I trusted myself, so that was the start of this whole new process for me.
There’s a bit of attitude to “Chrome Hearted,” which is very different from your prior single “Elevated Heartbreak.”
I kind of wanted to talk my shit a little bit, you know what I mean? I haven’t really shown off my voice as much as I could because of the style of music I was making. This song isn’t the focus track of my album or anything – I’m working on my album separately – but this song is to let everyone know, “Hey, I’m Jaden Hossler now.” It felt like a complete 180 shift, but still felt like me.
Some of the lyrics are a little pointed, like “you don’t hold me down, you just watch me drown” and “she’s so obsessed with herself.” As someone who launched their career online, how do you deal when fans want to know who or what your music is about?
I kind of love it because now I’m in a position where I don’t really care. I think it’s awesome to leave it up to the interpretation of the listener because even when I listen to music I’m like, “What is this about?” I do the same thing. People want a story associated with it. But that’s the best part, a little bit of a mystery. Before, I thought I had to put everything on the table for people to accept me. Now I feel very different. I feel very confident and secure in who I am and my story.
It’s also important to not only have but protect your private life.
And I never understood that. And I haven’t really had one. Especially with social media and TikTok. It’s overtaken everything, and some people lean into it, but I know why they do, it’s because either side hurts. Either side is very invasive and anxiety-ridden and I just am not dealing with that anymore.
Is “Chrome Hearted” indicative of what your next album will sound like?
I haven’t completely put my project together but I made 25 songs, so my plan is to make around 40 and pick from there. I’m itching to make music. That’s all I can do right now. I’m genuinely obsessed with it, which is such a good feeling because for a while I just wasn’t in the studio. I wasn’t really present.
I’m reaching far and wide on the landscape of pop music and trying to center it on my voice. And more than that, center the songs on my story. I feel like I’ve been through a lot of shit and I really want to talk about it. It’s cool for me to express myself in a lot of different ways. It’s a lot of trap-pop, there’s an 80s pop vibe, like The Weeknd, which is really cool. And then R&B, these past few weeks I’ve been making a lot of SZA and Bryson Tiller [inspired] songs. This album’s gonna be a conglomeration of a few different sounds, I never want to put myself in a box again.
The Weeknd recently told W Magazine he wants to kill off his artist character. Do you see your own shift being as dramatic?
Oh it’s incredibly dramatic for me. When I decided to be jxdn, I just wanted to be anything but Jaden Hossler because I couldn’t live with myself from high school and my past. I felt like there was an opportunity to be someone different, and quite literally it was. And a lot of amazing things came from being jxdn, but then there’s a point where the pendulum comes back and I hit that wall of, “I can’t be this person anymore.” I’ve come to terms with all my trauma and all the things that I’ve hated about myself before and all my insecurities. That’s why I’m proud to be Jaden Hossler. I think it’s gonna be the key to open the door for everything that I’ve been dreaming of my entire life.
What is that dream?
I watched Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, when I was nine years old. I can see it clear as day, I was sitting in front of my parents bed and I just started bawling my eyes out throughout this documentary. I saw myself on the stage like he was. And so that was the beginning of manifesting that entire journey for myself. And that night I literally went and found a camera in my house, put on purple because that was his color, and started singing. That was the first time I realized I had a voice. I [always] knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know who I was. Having both is very important.
Who are some other pop stars you’re a fan of?
I didn’t listen to Taylor Swift really at all my entire life but recently I’ve been listening to her because she’s such an amazing writer. And listening to these different styles of music, I have a lot to learn. I’m excited about that. So I listen to anyone and everyone that I can right now, it’s almost like I have homework. There’s this guy named Brakence who I really love. Olivia Rodrigo is amazing; I love “Vampire.” Funny enough, I never listened to the radio before, but I listen to the radio a lot now because I want to see what they’re playing. I want to understand, because as much as people don’t want to believe, it is sort of an algorithm. And so I want to infiltrate it and then fuck everything up.
And Travis [Barker] has always been so supportive of what I want. He’s always believed in me, even when he really had no reason to. And so that’s really the biggest blessing, is to be able to have someone like him that no matter what I do, he backs me because he knows that I’m doing this for the right reasons.
How did the rollout of “Chrome Hearted” compare to previous releases?
I directed my first music video, which is pretty cool. I’m more invested in this project than I’ve been in anything else. Also, I’m fully sober. I thought that I would be less creative before I got sober, but I’m more creative than I’ve ever been in my life. Like, I needed sobriety to fulfill my dreams, and I never knew that.
In a weird way, it almost feels like restarting. Right now, I’m not thinking about 10 years down the line, because one of the things about being sober is trying to be present, but I do know that I’m building a career that’s lifelong.
What did you learn in rehab that you’re still implementing in your daily life now?
It’s the structure that I miss the most. The waking up, making your bed, going to breakfast. I eat three meals a day now, minimum, and I ate one meal every two days before. And obviously it has to do with sobriety, but even more so I meditate, I do things that actually help me throughout the day, that no matter if anything else changes, I have that structure, and that’s what I got to take from the treatment center.
I don’t drink caffeine because I know that if I start drinking caffeine enough it gives me anxiety, and then that anxiety makes me want to smoke, and that makes me want to drink. Little things that make a big difference.
Leading up to this reintroduction, why was it so important to be open about how you ended up here?
People like to talk about the story of starting from nothing and getting to the top. But there’s another story that I think a lot of people can resonate with: I started from nothing and I got success and then I lost myself in that success. I got lost in even good things, too much of anything can kind of turn you the wrong way, but it’s never too late to be who you really want to be, it’s never too late to make a change for yourself. I chose not to give up on myself. I’m here to remind people that you control what happens now and what happens next. And I’m really grateful for that. I feel like this is the start of a brand new life for me.
Two of the most daring and imaginative minds in contemporary popular music have finally linked up on a song together — but not in the way you might expect. Critically acclaimed cross-genre artists Björk and Rosalía have collaborated on a new single to raise money for the fight against fish farming in Iceland. On YouTube, the upload is titled “Help Fight Fish Farming In Iceland.”
“I am offering a song me and Rosalía sang together. The profits will to help the fight against fish farming in Iceland. It will come out in October,” Björk said in a press release. “People at the fjord seyðisfjörður have stood up and protested against fish farming starting there. We would like to donate sales of the song to help with their legal fees, and, hopefully, it can be an exemplary case for others.”
“Iceland has the biggest untouched nature in Europe, and still today it has its sheep roaming free in the mountains in the summers, its fish has swum free in our lakes, rivers and fjords, so when icelandic and norwegian business men started buying fish farms in the majority of our fjords, it was a big shock and rose up as the main topic this summer,” she continued. “We don’t understand how they had been able to do this for a decade with almost no regulations stopping them. This has already had devastating effect on wildlife and the farmed fish are suffering in horrid health conditions and since a lot of them have escaped, they have started changing the DNA in the Icelandic salmon to the worse and could eventually lead to its extinction.”
In addition to releasing a clip of the song on YouTube, Björk also posted a video to her official Instagram page featuring what sounds to be the same snippet, with the press release overlayed on a picture of a fish just like the YouTube clip. Rosalía commented a simple white heart on the post and shared it to her Instagram Story.
Björk’s reps confirmed to Billboard that a full version of the song will be released this month, with an exact date yet to be confirmed. The song’s proper title will also be revealed at that time.
“There is still a chance to safe the last wild salmon of the North. Our group would like to dare these business men to retract their farms! We would also like to help invent and set strict regulations into Iceland’s legal system to guard nature,” Björk concluded in the press release. “The majority of the nation already agrees with us, so this protest is about putting the will of the people into our rule-systems.”
The new collaboration will be Björk’s first musical release of the year, and the latest in a string of singles from Rosalía. At the top of this year, before she and Rauw Alejandro called it quits, the pair released a joint EP titled RR. Two songs from the three-track project — “Beso” (No. 4) and “Vampiros” (No. 32) — hit the top 40 on Hot Latin Songs. The Grammy winner also released “Tuya” (No. 38) and “LLYLM” (No. 22), both of which also hit the top 40 on Hot Latin Songs.
Last year, Björk unleashed Fossora, her 10th studio album, which peaked at No. 100 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Grammy nomination for best alternative music album. Earlier this year, in recognition of Record Story Day (Apr. 22), Björk released an expanded double LP edition of her 2010 joint EP with American indie rock band Dirty Projectors.
Listen to a clip of Björk and Rosalía’s passionate new duet above.
“In 1988, after a short-lived format boom in the early MTV era, alternative radio was again attracting the attention of major-market group broadcasters,” Ross on Radio editor, and Billboard alum, Sean Ross wrote in 2013.
“In the late ’80s and early ’90s,” Ross noted, “the core acts of alternative were still very much The Smiths, Depeche Mode and The Cure, but 10,000 Maniacs also [had] a place, and there [was] a significant female singer-songwriter presence, with Edie Brickell, Tracy Chapman, Patti Smith and Joan Armatrading.”
Reflecting the format’s ascent, in the Sept. 10, 1988, Billboard issue, the Alternative Airplay chart, then titled Top Modern Rock Tracks, began. Siouxsie & the Banshees’ “Peek-a-Boo” led the first list — becoming the first of 434 No. 1s and counting, through Bad Omens’ “Just Pretend” on the latest, Sept. 9-dated chart.
Over the chart’s first 35 years, alternative has welcomed acts ranging from one-time entrants to those that have been core to the genre over the survey’s entire existence. Along the way, British bands and singer-songwriters, as Ross chronicled, served as key hitmakers, followed by the format’s segues to grunge, nu-metal, Lilith Fair-era female folk-rock and a return to synth sounds in recent years.
Summarized Ross in 2013, “The alternative radio format is built upon the promise of what’s coming next.”
(Similarly, when the chart began, 29 stations comprised the reporting panel; today, over 50 do. Shout-out to the two both at the start and now: KROQ Los Angeles and XTRA San Diego. Tracy Chapman’s chart presence is likewise as welcome in 2023 as it was in 1988.)
As Billboard celebrates the Alternative Airplay chart’s 35th anniversary, below are 35 of the most notable feats achieved on the ranking. Included are the acts with the most No. 1s and top 10s, the elite songs that hit No. 1 on both Alternative Airplay and the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, and more.
Given the winding road that the format has traversed, it’s difficult to predict what artists and songs will rewrite records by the time of the Alternative Airplay chart’s 40th anniversary. As Chris Payne, former Billboard writer (and author of the newly-released book, Where Are Your Boys Tonight), wrote for the survey’s 30-year mark, echoing Ross, “A period of considerable destabilization in alternative very well may prove to be healthy long-term — a sort of refresh on the genre, in which artists and programmers will no longer be beholden to the bedrocks of alternative radio past, and can try anything and everything to see what works.”
First No. 1
We’re back with a certified-fresh round of picks from the best acts in emerging R&B and hip-hop. Victoria Monet is spicing up the summer with her latest single, “On My Mama,” while Amindi and Ambré are digging into our deeper side with their introspective and smooth new offerings. On the hip-hop side of things, alternative duo Paris Texas are keeping us on our toes, while SoFaygo leans into his inner rock star.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Don’t forget to share the wealth by checking out our Spotify playlist linked below & sharing it with your friends.
Freshest Find: Forest Claudette, “Pool Boy”
On his soulful new EP, Everything Was Green, Forest Claudette shines across genre spaces. On “Pool Boy,” the 23-year-old singer dips their toes into funk and hip-hop, delivering a timeless cut with a worthy message. “If I apologize with heart in hand/ With heavy eyes/ Will that absolve me?” he contemplates within the groovy track’s opening lines.
Victoria Monét, “On My Mama”
Victoria Monet is on a roll. The R&B rising star dips into her vicious rap flow on the Chalie Boy-inspired “On My Mama.” Interpolating the Texas rapper’s breakout single, Monet adds a feminine edge, breathing new life into the confident 2009 cut.
Amindi, “green house”
Boasting one of those timeless tones and cadences, Amindi can’t go wrong. “Green house” is no exception, as the Inglewood native paints a pretty picture of romantic wonder, singing, “Thinkin’ ’bout that green house you said that we’d buy when/ We get at all these millions that we get from ridin’.”
Paris Texas, “Everybody’s Safe Until…”
You can always be sure that Paris Texas will do things their way. On “Everybody’s Safe Until,” the pair dig into the intrusive thoughts about their own insignificance atop bouncy live drums, as they run away from themselves in an artfully simplistic visual. The single comes ahead of their debut album, MID AIR.
Foggieraw, “Psalm 62”
Foggieraw used the power of social media to secure Alicia Keys’s blessing for the use of her 2003 hit “You Don’t Know My Name” for his new track “Psalm 62.” In March, the DMV artist teased the song on Twitter, asking his followers, “okay guys I’ve tried everything in my power to get this out… maybe y’all could kindly ask miss alicia on my behalf lol.” Three months and nearly 60,000 likes later, Foggieraw met Keys, she cleared the sample (her first time doing so for this song) — and “Psalm 62” got its official release, via Republic Records.
Ambré, “Muse Freestyle”
The intro to her new EP, who’s loving you?, “Muse Freestyle” sees Ambré posing the title question of the five-song project. “who’s loving you? is a question I’m asking myself and asking the audience,” the New Orleans artist said in a press release. “What does it feel like? What does it sound like to be loved? I wanted to create something that felt like b-sides or deep cuts, almost like a mixtape. Still very intentional but it was very easy to make.”
SoFaygo, “BEAUTIFUL ROCKSTAR”
“I am a beautiful rockstar/ I got some folks in my life I love, so I do this s–t with my heart in it,” sings the beautiful rockstar himself, SoFaygo. The Atlanta artist delivers this high-energy song as a bonus track on his latest EP, GO+, though he first teased it on Instagram Live in December 2021. “Beautiful Rockstar” also samples Jhené Aiko and H.E.R.’s 2020 hit “B.S.”
JAHKOY, “Man On Fire”
JAHKOY is a walking flame. On “Man On Fire,” the Toronto singer exaggerates his emotions and likens them to a fire. “[The song] is about when a guy feels a spark with a woman, but not only is there a spark, it slowly turns into what becomes a full-fledged fire,” he told Billboard. “The feelings become so ignited that he is now a walking flame.”
Arlo Parks knows her art can’t please everyone — a notion she leaned into on her second album, My Soft Machine, which arrived May 26 on Transgressive Records. Following her critically acclaimed 2021 debut, Collapsed in Sunbeams, which earned the London-based 22-year-old a best new artist Grammy nomination, her poetically complex and genre-agnostic follow-up doesn’t fit neatly into any boxes designed to cluster Black, women or queer artists — as intended.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Inspired by a wide breadth of musical artists (Deftones, Tyler, The Creator) and writers (Zadie Smith, Ocean Vuong), Parks says, “I think my music is pretty cool. I know where it is coming from contextually, and people who enjoy my music understand that, too, and that’s all that’s important to me.” She has since found her people within the indie and queer music scene, and now comfortably takes her place among the canon of artists confidently creating outside the norm. “I definitely have that desire for community-building and just being a student of other people’s processes,” she says.
As you were making this album, did a cohesive ethos emerge?
Initially, it was very much a collection of songs made with different people as little isolated moments of magic in the studio. Then when I sat down at Electric Lady [Studios in New York] to listen to the demos, I was like, “There’s a thread here.” I am saying a lot more. I am pushing away from the more minimal, soul-based sound of Collapsed in Sunbeams. I want to dig into my tastes. I want to wear my influences on my sleeve. I want to create something that feels a lot more sculpted rather than more instinctive — that was very much my energy for Collapsed in Sunbeams. But I really want to chip at marble over time with this. The thread or the ethos is something I realized after the fact rather than going into it with a mission statement. I was like, “This is about my life rather than observing other people.” That was at the core of everything.
Album single “Pegasus” features Phoebe Bridgers. How did that come about?
We’ve sung before, but never on [a] record. We’ve done some covers and played together at Coachella. I’ve always looked up to her as a vocalist and as a storyteller, and also as a shape-shifter. She can go on a SZA track or a Kid Cudi track, she can go wherever and blend into the world while still being completely herself. I love features that feel organic. I did feel that sense of kinship between our voices. It felt natural to ask her, and she said yes. The rest is history.
Do you strive to be a shape-shifter like Phoebe?
It’s definitely something that I want to do because my tastes stretch so far. I would be just as happy on a song with Aphex Twin or Actress as I would be with Dean Blunt or Tyler, The Creator. I love music as a whole. Whether I’d be any good fitting into their worlds, I don’t know. My favorite thing about being in the studio or meeting other artists and sending each other poetry or fragments of writing [is] being like, “I would have never thought to put it that way.”
Are there any other artists you have that exchange with?
One of my favorite people to get recommendations [from] on music, poetry, novels is definitely Lorde. I have never met anyone with her breadth of knowledge and her taste. She recommended a [short story] collection by Lucia Berlin called Evening in Paradise and this book called Animal Joy [by Nuar Alsadir] that happened to already be on my reading list. It’s kind of magical. Not everybody is connected, but especially in the indie space, we are friends and support each other. You never feel like you’re alone in anything, which is really nice.
What other artists inspire you?
If you take Björk, Poly Styrene [of X-Ray Spex] or Arthur Russell, there is an outsider quality to a lot of the music that I love. I love the things that people found strange at the time, with these little idiosyncrasies and the things that made them slightly offbeat or slightly outside of the normal. It taught me that was OK and that you can just be, and that you’ll find your people.
In October, you’re playing the festival All Things Go, which boasts a lineup heavy on queer representation. How are you feeling about that gig?
It’s actually all my people. I feel so excited to have lineups that have moments like that where queer people and nonbinary people and talented human beings are given that space to come together. It’s like one massive family, especially on the second day with me and Ethel Cain and MUNA and boygenius and beabadoobee. I love the idea of creating more of those kinds of queer-positive spaces at festivals. There’s a lot of freedom and power in that.
This story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
05/15/2023
Billboard’s annual celebration of the most innovative and influential young artists in the music industry includes Olivia Rodrigo, The Kid LAROI, d4vd, Ayra Starr and more.
By 
Rania Aniftos, Katie Atkinson, Katie Bain, Stephen Daw, Griselda Flores, Josh Glicksman, Lyndsey Havens, Carl Lamarre, Cydney Lee, Jason Lipshutz, Jessica Nicholson, Jessica Roiz, Neena Rouhani
05/15/2023
