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Yandel and Myke Towers celebrate a new No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart as “Borracho y Loco” crowns the list dated Feb. 17. It’s the first collaboration by two Latin rhythm acts to top the chart in 2024.
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It advances from the runner-up slot with 10.3 million audience impressions earned in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 8 (up 18%), according to Luminate. It sends last week’s No. 1, Xavi’s “La Diabla” down to No. 7 after one week in charge. The latter declined 26% to 7.1 million in audience.
“The truth is that it makes me very happy that with so many years making music my songs still reach the first places and top lists in the United States and other parts of the world,” Yandel told Billboard.
As “Borracho y Loco” lands at the summit, it becomes the pair’s second No. 1 team-up. The Puerto Ricans last ruled the overall Latin Airplay ranking through a Nio Garcia, Casper Mágico, Ozuna, Wisin and Flow La Movie collab, when “Travesuras” topped the tally for one-week in 2021.
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Thanks to “Borracho y Loco” Yandel scores his 16th champ on Latin Airplay. Further, he ties with Nicky Jam for the seventh-most No. 1s among male urban artists since the tally launched in 1994. Here’s a review of the winners:
36, J Balvin33, Ozuna28, Daddy Yankee24, Bad Bunny24, Maluma22, Wisin16, Nicky Jam16, Yandel
“I am beyond grateful for my fans, my producers and the artists I have had the joy of collaborating with,” Yandel adds. “Now another No. 1 arrives through ‘Borracho y Loco.’ Myke Towers, thanks brother! Here we go, another No. 1 for the books!”
For Towers, the rapper and singer-songwriter lands his 10th No. 1 with his 31st chart appearance. He last topped the chart with the viral TikTok hit “Lala,” which spent two weeks at No. 1 in September 2023.
“Borracho y Loco” takes over Latin Airplay in its 18th week, marking the second-longest climb to the top for both artists. Previously, Yandel placed three songs at the summit each one in its 20th week, including two featured roles: through Maluma’s “El Perdedor,” and in IAmChino’s “Ay Dios Miío,” which also featured Pitbull and Chacal, and with “Nunca Me Olvides,” all in 2016.
Tower’s, meanwhile, secured two songs at No. 1 in 22 weeks each: “Bandido” with Juhn, and “Bésame,” with Luis Fonsi, in June and Nov. 2021, respectively.
For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on Billboard’s social accounts, and all charts (dated Feb. 17) will refresh on Billboard.com tomorrow (Feb. 13).
For Black History Month, Billboard is celebrating by highlighting some of the greatest Black executives in music, and today we’re celebrating Yvette Noel-Schure. Yvette Noel-schure:I’ll probably just be telling the world. Tetris Kelly:For Black History Month, Billboard is celebrating by highlighting some of the greatest Black executives in music, and today we’re celebrating Yvette Noel-Schure. […]
Jimmy Barnes is back.
The legendary Australian rocker will make another comeback for the ages when he performs at Byron Bay Bluesfest on March 31, a warm-up for a full-scale tour of Australia.
This is no ordinary return to the stage. The 67-year-old singer is back from a life-threatening condition. Less than two months ago, Barnes was in ICU, after undergoing open-heart surgery, following an illness that refused to budge.
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Last November, after opening the Mushroom 50 Live concert at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, where he powered his way through “No Second Prize” and his signature song, “Working Class Man,” Barnes contracted bacterial pneumonia.
He was admitted to hospital on Nov. 27, 2023 and became “very unwell” while in hospital with the development of staphylococcal bacteraemia a few days after admission, explains a statement from reps.
Medics discovered he had an abscess at an old operation site due to the infection which required surgical intervention. The staph infection undermined Barnes’ health, causing endocarditis, a life-threatening condition that without urgent treatment may well have been fatal, reps say. Surgeons immediately checked-in Barnes for cardiac surgery on Dec. 13 to replace the aortic valve. The valve itself was replaced some years ago due to a “congenital defect,” he has said.
A year earlier, Barnes revealed he would go under the surgeon’s knife to correct “constant and severe pain” in his back and hip, the result of “jumping off PAs and stomping around stages” for more than 50 years. He also underwent back surgery in 2014, which kept him in hospital on Fathers Days (Sept. 7).
Those health problems, it would seem, are in the past.
“Every day I’m getting stronger. Every day I’m pushing myself a little bit further,” Barnes explains. “I’m excited about getting back on stage, in front of the band and playing for you all. And what better way is there to kick it off than the legendary Bluesfest Byron Bay with a really special celebration of Flesh and Wood. I really want to thank everyone for their support and good wishes while I was ill. The family were passing on your messages of care and it really lifted my spirits.”
Barnes will mark his return to the stage at Bluesfest over the Easter Long Weekend, celebrating the 30th anniversary of his Flesh and Wood LP. Then, two-time ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted artist and his band will headline a run of rescheduled Red Hot Summer Tour dates in April.
Later, Barnes will lead a stretch of stripped back, intimate theater shows on the Hell of a Time tour, running through June, July and coming to a halt Aug. 18 at the Sydney Opera House.
Barnesy, as he’s affectionately known in these parts, is a living legend, with 15 leaders on the ARIA Chart — an all-time record. Counting his five leaders with Cold Chisel, Barnes boasts an unprecedented 20 No. 1s, comfortably eclipsing the Beatles (with 14), Madonna (12), Eminem and U2 (11).
The Scotland-born singer was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame with Cold Chisel in 1993, and again as a solo artist in 2005, and is the first Australian solo act to have a No. 1 album in every decade since the 1980s.
In the lead-up to Christmas 2023, Mushroom Labels issued an expanded version of Blue Christmas, his 20th studio album and most recent No. 1.
Noah Kahan hits the U.K. chart for six as “Stick Season” (via Republic Records) extends its reign.
The Vermont, U.S. singer and songwriter’s breakthrough folky number racks-up a market leading 8.3 million streams, the Official Charts Company reports, as it collects a sixth straight week at No. 1.
That’s the longest consecutive streak atop the Official U.K. Singles Chart since Dave & Central Cee’s “Sprinter” ran through the pack in the summer of 2023.
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“Stick Season” leads an unchanged top three, ahead of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” (Polydor) and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (Atlantic), respectively.
There’s change, however, for Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things”(Warner Records) which vaults 11-5, for the U.S. artist’s first career appearance in the U.K. top 10.
Another artist on the rise is YG Marley, grandson of the late, great Bob Marley, and son of Ms. Lauryn Hill, whose independently-released “Praise Jah In The Moonlight” improves 20-9. That’s Marley’s first-ever U.K. top 10 appearance.
Ella Henderson and Rudimental’s “Alibi” (Atlantic) has a new high point, lifting 24-16 in its fourth week. “Alibi” samples the late Coolio’s 1995 hit “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which logged two weeks at No. 1 and finished the year as the U.K.’s second biggest-selling single.
It’s a great week for The Last Dinner Party, the critically-lauded London band, whose debut LP Prelude to Ecstasy (via Island) blasts to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. The lead single from it, “Nothing Matters,” lifts 22-19 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart, published Friday, Feb. 9, for the five-piece band’s first U.K. top 20 appearance.
Also on the rise is Justin Timberlake’s “Selfish” (up 37-29 via RCA) and Michael Marcagi’s TikTok-powered “Scared To Start” (Warner Records), up 38-31 – a new career high for the singer-songwriter and Cincinnati native.
Finally, it’s a good week for Good Neighbours, the English indie-rock duo of Oli Fox and South London-based Scott Verrill, whose debut single “Home” (Some Action) cracks the top 40 for the first time. “Home” runs 81-40.
The Last Dinner Party feasts on the U.K. chart as Prelude to Ecstasy (via Island) blasts to No. 1.
The outright leader at the midweek point, Prelude to Ecstasy clocks 32,800 chart units in its first week, the Official Charts Company reports.
That’s the biggest opening week for a debut album by a band since 2015, when electronic pop act Years & Years accumulated 55,000 with their debut, Communion.
Also, according to the OCC, the Last Dinner Party’s first-week result includes more than 14,000 vinyl copies, for the fastest-selling debut album by a group on vinyl of the century, and the highest sales week for a vinyl album since Oasis’ The Masterplan remaster dropped last November.
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Based in London, the indie-rock five-piece (Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies and Aurora Nishevci) has some serious hype behind it.
The group snagged this year’s BRITs Rising Star Award and the BBC Sound Of 2024 poll, a brace that assures the Last Dinner Party status as the next big thing in music.
Prelude to Ecstasy features “Nothing Matters,” their breakthrough debut single which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Official U.K. Singles Chart.
Also new to the Official U.K. Albums Chart, published Friday, Feb. 9, is Jamie Webster’s 10 For The People (Modern Sky), at No. 2. With that effort, the Liverpool, England singer and songwriter boasts a new career high, outdoing 2022’s Moments, which peaked at No. 3.
Glasgow, Scotland singer and songwriter Dylan John Thomas enjoys a top 40 debut with his self-titled debut album (via Ignition), new at No. 21, while Britpop-era psychedelic rock act Kula Shaker nabs a fourth U.K. top 40 whose latest release Natural Magick (Strange Folk), new at No. 22.
Finally, Taylor Swift fever spreads on the U.K. chart following the announcement of The Tortured Poets Department, her forthcoming 11th studio album. Several of Swift’s recordings spike on the tally, including 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (up 8-5), Midnights (up 15-6), Folklore (up 18-10), Lover (up 17-13), reputation (up 20-14), and Evermore (up 51-40), all through EMI. Announced during the 2024 Grammys broadcast, The Tortured Poets Department is due out April 19.
Tetris Kelly:For Black History Month, Billboard is celebrating by highlighting some of the greatest Black executives in music and today we’re celebrating Pharrell. Four No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and five No. 1 hits on Hot R&B/ Hip-Hop Songs, Pharrell has been a force in the music industry for decades. He’s also […]
The Black Keys return to the top of Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart for an eighth time with “Beautiful People (Stay High),” which reigns on the Feb. 17-dated survey.
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“Beautiful People” rules in its fourth week on the tally, sporting the quickest rise to the chart’s peak in 2024 so far and fastest since The Beatles’ “Now and Then” also took four frames in December 2023.
It’s the duo’s first No. 1 since “Wild Child” reigned for four weeks beginning in April 2022. Between “Wild Child” and “Beautiful People,” the band also appeared with “It Ain’t Over,” which peaked at No. 5 in September 2022.
The Black Keys first led with “Lonely Boy,” a seven-week topper beginning in December 2011.
With eight No. 1s, the band moves into a three-way tie for the fifth-most rulers in the history of Adult Alternative Airplay, which published its first chart in 1996, alongside Death Cab for Cutie and John Mayer. U2 leads all acts with 14 No. 1s.
Most No. 1s, Adult Alternative Airplay14, U213, Coldplay11, Dave Matthews (solo and with Dave Matthews Band)11, Jack Johnson8, Death Cab for Cutie8, John Mayer8, The Black Keys7, Counting Crows7, R.E.M.7, Sheryl Crow
Concurrently, “Beautiful People” jumps 5-3 on Alternative Airplay and 30-26 on Mainstream Rock Airplay. On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, the track bullets at its No. 3 peak with 5.3 million audience impressions, up 9%, according to Luminate.
“Beautiful People (Stay High)” is the lead single from Ohio Players, The Black Keys’ 12th studio album, scheduled for release on April 5. The band’s last album, Dropout Boogie, debuted at No. 2 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated May 28, 2022, and has earned 146,000 equivalent album units to date.
All Billboard charts dated Feb. 17 will update on Billboard.com on Tuesday, Feb. 13.
For her next album, Dua Lipa pursued perfection. And, as history tells us, perfection takes time and hard graft.
The British and Albanian star opened the 2024 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles with a performance of “Training Season” and “Houdini,” the first singles from her forthcoming third album.
Lipa stayed on in L.A., and stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night (Feb. 8) for a chat about her writing process.
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“Training Season” and “Houdini,” we learned, made the cut from almost 100 songs penned for the project, each of which lives in precious book which Lipa showed to Kimmel.
“It’s got every single song I wrote for this album,” she says of the book. ”I wrote 97 songs.” Are any of them terrible? “Lots,” she admits. “About 80 of them.”
“Training Season” and “Houdini” aren’t among them.
Since the 2020 release of her hit sophomore album, Future Nostalgia, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Lipa has grown in confidence.
“The second I write a song, I know its good or not or whether its close,” she tells Kimmel. “Every song on this album unlike any of the other records I’ve made, I’ve gone in and I’ve re-written it over and over again, until I felt like it was perfect, which I didn’t really have the confidence to do on my previous records.”
Earlier in her career, she continues, whatever was written on the day “was pretty much what everyone heard.”
This time, “I’m much more confident in myself as a songwriter and as a performer and how I want things to be and sound and look.” On the new collection, she “went in, digged a little deeper, and I changed things to the point that it felt perfect to me. And I feel proud of it.”
During her appearance as Kimmel’s guest, Lipa talked fangirling Katy Perry, tested some Albanian expressions with the host, and explained how she has meticulously kept notes since she “was tiny,” collecting on paper her “ideas, plans and dreams.”
What she didn’t discuss was the album title, its tracklist or release date. “Because I want to keep it a secret for a little bit longer,” she says. “I can’t reveal my secrets.”
The forthcoming LP is the followup to Future Nostalgia, which logged four weeks at No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart, won best pop vocal album at the 2021 Grammy Awards, and featured “Levitating,” the No. 1 hit on Billboard’s 2021 year-end Hot 100 Songs chart.
Watch the late-night interview below.
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The fallout from Warner Music Group’s company-wide cull has already reached Australia, where the head of the domestic Warner Chappell company, Matthew Capper, is understood to be among the departures.
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Capper has led Warner Chappell Australia as managing director since 2010, and boasts more than 20 years’ service with the company.
A popular figure in the music publishing community, Capper joined Warner Chappell in 2003, initially as a copyright/royalty analyst, was promoted to general manager in 2004, and was named managing director in July 2010.
Prior to working at Warner Chappell, Capper cut his teeth as administration manager at Festival Music Publishing, a now-defunct Australian independent music publishing brand which was acquired by Mushroom Music in 2005.
Outside of his duties leading Warner Chappell’s affiliate from Melbourne, he is non-executive director of APRA and AMCOS, deputy chair of AMCOS, chair and non-executive director of publishers trade association AMPAL, and treasurer and non-executive director of ICMP, the global trade body representing the music publishing industry worldwide.
On his election to the board of APRA in 2007, he become the youngest-ever director of the authors’ rights society, aged 30 – a record that still stands.
Capper will finish up with Warner Chappell Australia on Feb. 29, 2024, sources say, tying in to sweeping changes announced earlier in the week by Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl.
In an internal memo to staff obtained by Billboard, Kyncl wrote that the company will be reducing headcount by 10%, or some 600 people, as part of a plan to free up $200 million in cost savings to reinvest into the business.
Those cost savings will be realized by the end of September 2025, Kyncl said in the memo; some of those laid off have already begun to be informed, while the “vast majority” will be notified “by the end of September 2024,” he writes.
“As we carry out our plan, it’s important to bear in mind why we’re making these difficult choices,” the memo continued. “We’re getting on the front foot to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the next decade. We’ll do so by increasing funding behind artists and songwriters, new skill sets, and tech, to help us deliver on our three strategic priorities,” which he says includes growing engagement with music, increasing the value of music and evolving how Warner’s teams work together.”
Just before news broke of those company-wide cuts, WMG announced that its quarterly revenue grew 17% for the period ended Dec. 31, 2023, up 11% in normalized revenue, to $1.75 billion — its highest quarterly result ever.
On Monday night (Feb. 5), Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign shared a vague post on social media that hinted at a listening event in Chicago for Vultures, the artists’ first joint project as hip-hop duo ¥$. “Vultures United Center Chicago 02 08 24,” the post read without any additional details.
It was at first met with skepticism, given that the United Center did not have the event listed on their schedule and the multiple times the album’s release date has shifted. But once it was listed on the venue’s website first thing the following day — with tickets going on sale at 3 p.m. local time — fans were eager to get their hands on a golden ticket. Before 6 p.m., the album release party, dubbed Vultures Listening Experience, had officially sold out.
Anticipation was high among fans, excited for an early listen of the long-awaited album, which was initially supposed to be released Dec. 15 and was then moved to Dec. 31, then Jan. 12. While it was expected to drop midnight Friday (Feb. 2), as of press time, the album has yet to drop.
Around 7 p.m., fans — mainly young teens who opted for oversized, dark-hued hoodies or a puffer, cargo pants and their favorite sneakers — crowded around the United Center just as rain and thunderstorms cleared. Before doors opened, Billboard spoke to a trio of friends who drove to Chicago from Virginia. Mauricio, the group’s de facto spokesperson, had a one-word response when asked what his expectations were for this event. “Visuals,” he said categorically. “This guy (Kanye) is really about portraying an image and aesthetic and vibe. The music is just kinda the background.”
Next to Mauricio and his buddies was Sterling from New Hampshire. “As soon as the event went on sale on Tuesday, I was able to buy a $235 ticket but it was a battle with Ticketmaster because the site would go down,” he explained. “My jaw would hit the floor but I eventually got in. Then, I bought a Greyhound ticket, took the bus, booked a hotel and spent almost $1,000. I’ve been waiting to see Kanye for 10 years. I’m just happy to be in the same building as him.”
A little past 8 p.m. gates finally opened and people were allowed inside the venue where official merchandise — black tees and white sweatpants and shorts stamped with a Vultures logo — was sold. Once you made your way inside, you were hit with a foggy view of the barely visible stage erected from an open space surrounded by white flags with the Vultures logo.
Chance the Rapper was in attendance and made a grand entry with an entourage in tow waving at the fans who recognized the hometown hero. Once settled in, he, like everyone else there, patiently waited for the listening session to begin. And it did around 10:10p.m., an hour after it was scheduled to start.
The crowd roared at the sight of Ye and Ty who walked up on the stage. Some of the songs that played throughout the night included “Burn,” “Paperwork,” “Everybody,” “Carnival,” “Vultures,” “Hoodrat,” “Paid” and “Talking/Once Again,” which featured a special performance by North West. Undoubtedly, the 10-year-old’s appearance onstage was one of the best moments of the night with the entire venue cheering her on as she rapped alongside her superstar father.
While the 12 songs that were played throughout the listening session were met with rave and approval by fans who nodded along to every beat, they were in disbelief when the music ended and lights at the venue went on signaling that the show had ended. As if on cue, the confused crowd checked their phones once the event was over. To their surprise (or perhaps not), the album hadn’t been released.
Ye and Ty are expected to host another listening event today in New York’s UBS Arena. Below, a list of the takeaways from Chicago’s Vultures Listening Experience event:
A Nod to Chicago