bbnews
Page: 287
Polyphia hits No. 1 on a Billboard rock chart for the first time with Remember That You Will Die, which crowns the Top Hard Rock Albums list dated Nov. 12.
Remember launches with 16,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Nov. 3, according to Luminate. Of that sum, 10,000 units are from album sales.
Polyphia previously peaked as high as No. 4 on Top Hard Rock Albums with 2016’s Renaissance.
Remember also begins at No. 3 on Top Alternative Albums, surpassing the No. 5 debut and peak of 2018’s New Levels New Devils. It also opens at Nos. 5 and 6 on Top Rock Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums, respectively, also both new bests for the band.
On the all-genre Billboard 200, Remember is Polyphia’s first top 40 album, starting at No. 33 and outperforming the No. 61 peak of Devils.
Concurrently, three songs from Remember place on Billboard’s multi-metric Hot Hard Rock Songs chart. “Ego Death,” featuring Steve Vai, leads the way at No. 18 with 759,000 official U.S. streams in the week ending Nov. 3.
Look busy, the Boss is here.
At age 73, and with a new album dropping at the stroke of midnight, Only the Strong Survive, Bruce Springsteen proves once again that age is just a number.
For Springsteen, Only the Strong Survive, a collection of covers, is studio album number 21.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“This was something I hadn’t done since the Seeger Sessions,” he said of the format of the new project while nodding to his Grammy-winning 2006 album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a collection of folk songs made famous by Pete Seeger.
Springsteen paid close attention to the vocals, and his team “mastered and sonically modernized some of the most beautiful songs in the American pop song book,” he explained earlier. “I had so much fun recording this music. I fell back in love with all these great songs and great writers and great singers. All of them still underrated in my opinion. And through the project I rediscovered the power of my own voice.”
Spanning 15 works, Survive features songs made famous by Jerry Butler, Dobie Gray, The Commodores, Jimmy Ruffin, Diana Ross & the Supremes, The Four Tops, The Walker Brothers and more.
Springsteen isn’t just surviving, he’s thriving. Only the Strong Survive closely follows the release of Western Stars (from 2019), and Letter to You (2020), both of which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart.
In the peak of the pandemic, in 2021, he returned to his Springsteen on Broadway show, launched a podcast (Renegades: Born in the USA, with President Barack Obama), and published a 320-page book capturing those conversations between the rock legend and the 44th U.S president.
Springsteen and the E Street Band will play an arena or a stadium near you when they kick off an international tour in Feb. 2023, with dates across North America, the U.K. and Europe stretching deep into summer.
Stream Only the Strong Survive below.
For the third consecutive week, Taylor Swift dominates Australia’s main charts with Midnights (Universal) and its hit single, “Anti-Hero.”
Midnights continues its upbroken streak atop the latest ARIA Albums Chart, published Nov. 11, while “Anti-Hero” remains unchallenged atop the ARIA Singles Chart.
Swift’s 10th and latest studio album gets the better of four new releases, as Drake and 21 Savage’s collaborative album Her Loss (Republic/Universal), debuts at No. 2. The new LP has a notable impact on the ARIA Singles Chart, with four songs from it splashing in the top 10 — “Rich Flex” (at No. 3), “P***y & Millions” (No. 5), “Circo Loco” (No. 9) and “Major Distribution” (No. 10).
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
A trio of homegrown recordings complete the top 5.
Japanese-Australian singer and songwriter Joji arrives at No. 3 with his sophomore set Smithereens (88R/Warner), his second No. 1 album after 2020’s Nectar.
Smithereens includes the ARIA song of the year-nominated number “Glimpse of Us,” which peaked at No. 1 on the national singles survey.
Dean Lewis lands at No. 4 with The Hardest Love (Island/Universal), the followup to 2019’s A Place We Knew, which hit No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart. The Hardest Love features the heartbreaking song “How Do I Say Goodbye,” which is climbing charts in the Lewis’ homeland and in the U.K. It’s up 31-29 on Australia’s current singles survey.
Homegrown indie act Slowly Slowly bows at No. 5 with Daisy Chain (UNFD/Orchard). That’s a career best for the Victorian act, besting the No. 7 peak for their third album, 2020’s Race Car Blues.
Over on the ARIA Singles Chart, Meghan Trainor’s return to doo-wop pays dividends as “Made You Look” (Epic/Sony) lifts 19-12, for a new peak position.
Finally, Glass Animals’ hit “Heat Waves” (Polydor/Universal) gathers steam as it passes a chart milestone. The slow-burner lifts 26-23 in its 101st week on the chart. “Heat Waves” broke early in Australia, where it won triple j’s Hottest 100 countdown in January 2021, and led the ARIA Chart for several months earlier this year.
A deeply personal collection of love letters in which a teenage Bob Dylan tells his high-school sweetheart that he envisions changing his name and selling a million records is going up for sale in Boston.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The Hibbing, Minnesota, boy — still known then as Bob Zimmerman — wrote the 42 letters totaling 150 pages to Barbara Ann Hewitt between 1957 and 1959. The missives, to be auctioned by RR Auction, have never before been made public and shed light on a period in the folk-rock icon’s life for which not much firsthand information is known.
“This archive is one of the most culturally important of the 20th century we have ever offered,” said RR Auction Executive Vice President Bobby Livingston, a big Dylan fan.
The collection, including a lavish Valentine’s card, is a “first-person account of Dylan’s formative years,” he said.
Hewitt’s daughter found the letters after her mother died in 2020. They, along with the original envelopes addressed in Dylan’s handwriting, are being offered as a single lot with a starting bid of $250,000. Bidding closes on Nov. 17.
RR Auction is not releasing the exact content of the letters ahead of time, but they deal with timeless and universal teenage concerns: clothes, cars, and musical tastes, the auction house said.
Dylan, now 81, also included snippets of poetry and professed his love for Hewitt. Perhaps most impressively, he also imagined his future success.
In one letter, he asks Hewitt for feedback about changing his name (Little Willie and Elston are mentioned in the letters), and writes about selling a million records (he’s actually sold about 125 million) and appearing on “American Bandstand” in front of throngs of screaming girls.
“They really give an insight into how he’s going to present himself,” Livingston said. “It shows that Dylan dreamed all this up, and it all came true — he foresaw it.”
Alas, like most teenage romances, it came to an end. In one of the last letters, the future Nobel laureate asks Hewitt to return the photographs he sent her.
But it seems likely Dylan did not forget her. Hewitt’s daughter told RR Auction that Dylan called her mother sometime in the late 1960s after he’d hit the big time and asked her to come to California. She turned him down.
Hewitt was a redhead, and Livingston speculates that Dylan’s references to redheaded or auburn-haired women in some songs were inspired by Hewitt, including “Tangled Up in Blue” where in one line he wonders “if her hair was still red.”
Hewitt moved on, apparently. She married another Hibbing man, but divorced in the late 1970s after seven years and never remarried, her daughter told the auction house.
This article originally appeared in AP.
Related Images:
The Masked Singer pulled out the big hitters on Wednesday night (Nov. 9), when two legitimate heavyweights were sent packing.
On “Hall of Fame Night,” Fox’s quirky hit pulled no punches when former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman and funk legend George Clinton were knocked out of the competition.
After performing The Temptations’ “Get Ready,” the Venus Flytrap accumulated the least votes and was giving his marching orders. The mask came off, revealing Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle opponent.” Foreman, the two-time world heavyweight champion and grill king.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
He wasn’t the only champ to go home. Gopher got the chop, after facing off with The Bride in a battle royale, in which the contestants took turns singing Smashmouth’s “All-Star.”
Under the mask was the great George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic.
“Man it’s hot as hell in this, but I’m cool y’all,” explained Clinton, clearly relieved that the mask was off. And why did the funkster get the helmet on in this first place? “You’re always having too much fun on here,” he said. “I had to get some.”
They join the likes of Daymond John (Fortune Teller), the “Brady boys” Mike Lookinland, Barry Williams and Christopher Knight (Mummies), Montell Jordan (Panther), Jeff Dunham (Pi-Rat), Chris Kirkpatrick (Hummingbird), Eric Idle (Hedgehog) and William Shatner (Knight) as contestants revealed so far in the 2022 series.
TMS season 8 rings in the changes, with several big tweaks to its format.
For the first time, each episode features a completely new round of masked celebs with only one contestant moving forward by the end of the hour. Plus, the audience votes in-studio for their favorite performance of the night, and the singer with the lowest tally will then unmask in the middle of the show before taking his or her place in the new Masked Singer VIP section to watch the rest of the episode.
Dermot Kennedy is gearing up to release his new album, Sonder, on Nov. 18, and the artist sat down with Billboard News to discuss his musical journey so far.
“I found the word ‘sonder’ a few years ago, the meaning being just the awareness that everybody is living a life just as important and as complex as your own,” he says of his sophomore LP’s title. “At that point, I didn’t really have any part of my life or career to attach it to, so it was just a word that I appreciated and it meant something to me.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
He adds that in the process of making his new album, he tried to “unlock the same honesty and power of a feeling” as his debut record. “You have to say something worth while and prove that you deserve to be around, and there’s added pressure in that sense,” he explains.
“These albums define the way I live, and I can already feel me putting pressure on myself in a healthy way,” he continues. “This album is about having empathy and being conscious of other people’s struggles and triumphs, so I can’t just say that and not live it.”
As for his writing technique, Kennedy says he captures a “time sample” of where he’s at in his life. “That’s quite a freeing, in a way, though,” he says, noting that it allows him to let go of the pressure to make an album that’s the best he’s ever created. “I should just trust what comes out of my brain, to some extent.”
Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Kennedy above.
Related Images:
SZA stitches together her sixth top 10 hit on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as “Shirt” debuts at No. 4 on the chart dated Nov. 12. The single, released Nov. 4 through Top Dawg / RCA Records, begins in the top 10 of both the genre’s sales and streaming charts as well.
“Shirt” arrives with 20.3 million official U.S. streams registered in the week ending Nov. 3, according to Luminate, enough to prompt a No. 2 start on the R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs chart. In the same period, the track sold 3,000 downloads and enters at No. 9 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales list. In addition, the song drew 990,000 in radio audience in the week. It ranks outside the 50-position R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, though most singles are driven largely by streams and sales in their debut weeks, as airplay is traditionally the slowest-moving metric.
With “Shirt,” SZA nets her sixth top 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Here’s a look at her collection:
Song Title, Artist (if other than SZA), Peak Position, Peak Date“All the Stars,” with Kendrick Lamar, No. 5, Feb. 24, 2018“Good Days,” No. 3, Jan. 23, 2021“No Love,” with Summer Walker, No. 5, Nov. 20, 2021“I Hate U,” No. 1 (one week), Dec. 18, 2021“Beautiful,” DJ Khaled featuring Future & SZA, No. 10, Sept. 10, 2022“Shirt,” No. 4 (to date), Nov. 12, 2022
Beyond its impact on SZA’s chart ledger, “Shirt” returns another R&B veteran – Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins – to the top tier thanks to his co-write and co-production credits. The hitmaker, whose resume includes work on defining hits such as Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” and Destiny’s Child “Say My Name,” cracks the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs’ top 10 for the first time since January 2008. Then, he produced and co-wrote Keyshia Cole’s “Shoulda Let You Go,” featuring Amina, which exited the top 10 that month after having reached No. 7 a few weeks earlier.
Elsewhere, “Shirt” debuts at No. 3 on the Hot R&B Songs chart and gives SZA her 16th top 10 there.