Billboard
Page: 141
As the creative forces behind Broadway shows like Hairspray! and Catch Me If You Can, as well as the cult hit TV show Smash, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman have written some of the most beloved musicals of the past couple decades (Shaiman composes; the two write lyrics together).
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
This spring is particularly eventful for the pair. Their new musical Some Like It Hot — a timely adaptation of the classic 1959 film which happens to also offer a poignant, thoughtful take on drag culture and gender identity — is a hit with both critics and audiences. And at long last, as Shaiman and Wittman recently revealed, a much-awaited stage adaptation of Smash is slated to hit Broadway next year.
Below, the duo speak to Billboard about the Smash news, the prescient timing of Some Like It Hot (including its surprise, reimagined twist) and how they’ve maintained career longevity amid the choppy waters the Great White Way.
It’s safe to say the news that Smash is coming to Broadway shook the internet. Can you talk about the path to the big announcement?
Scott Wittman: Well, it’s been in the works for awhile. About a year and a half ago, we did a reading with a script from Rick Elice and Bob Martin, who have written many shows, including The Drowsy Chaperone and Jersey Boys.
Marc Shaiman: They’re great writers who came to the producers of Smash and said they’d love to take a crack at writing a script. For a few years before that, everyone was trying to create a musical of Bombshell, the actual Marilyn Monroe musical we were writing [within] the show, and the original plan was at the end of the season to have a musical we’d produce on Broadway. So it actually was always the idea to bring a show to Broadway.
But what’s different here is that it no longer became feasible to do a version of Bombshell, because the songs we wrote were always trying to speak to what the characters on Smash, the TV show, were going through. We’d find moments from Marilyn Monroe’s life that mirrored what was happening on Smash, so all of these songs had double meanings, and the lyrics were always skewed. Also, if any one woman tried to sing all of the songs we wrote for Marilyn in Bombshell — which were always these big, 11 o’clock showstoppers — they’d die by the end of the performance. Finally our producers said, “Let’s listen to what Rick and Bob would want to pitch us.”
Wittman: We had a great reading about a year ago. Steven Spielberg came and said, “This is fantastic, let’s do it.” So that’s how it happened.
So this is a show about putting on a musical. A musical version of the TV show.
Wittman: It’s like Noises Off. You’re doing a musical but everything goes totally wrong.
Shaiman: What it says on the title page is A Comedy About a Musical. We don’t know if they’ll actually call it a play or a musical. So it’s like the TV show Smash — only, we hope, funnier.
Wittman: It’s very funny. There were very funny people in the reading; who knows if they’ll be in the show.
I guess the next logical step then is to make a movie version of the stage musical inspired by the TV show?
Shaiman: [Laughs.] It’s all so confusing. Then you throw in Some Like It Hot, and it’s really bizarre. It’s a multiverse.
It must be creatively energizing for you guys to look at something from so many different angles.
Wittman: It’s great fun. Even during the read through, we all laughed a lot and even Steven Spielberg went nuts. He actually also came to Some Like It Hot a couple weeks ago.
Shaiman: [Laughs.] He’s our biggest fan.
Does he give creative notes?
Wittman: Yes, very much! What makes him so great is that he’s like an audience member. He watches things like an audience, with a keen eye.
Can we expect Smash cast members from the TV show in the stage version?
Wittman: Some of them helped out at the reading, but it’s still a ways off. It wouldn’t actually go until maybe around this time next year.
Shaiman: The fact that it’s not exactly the TV show means it’s not exactly the characters from the TV show. So it doesn’t necessarily make sense for people on the TV show to play them. But one never knows.
Will there be songs from the show or will there be original songs?
Wittman: It’ll be songs from Bombshell, along with some more we’ll write.
The announcement had fortuitous timing, coming when you have Some Like It Hot — the musical version of the classic movie — on Broadway. When were the seeds planted for that particular project?
Wittman: It’s a funny, meta world. We had done Smash and within that is the musical about Marilyn Monroe. And we even wrote a Some Like It Hot number for Marilyn in that musical. But the producers of the TV show, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, had gotten the rights to the movie and they were thinking of doing the version of it. We were in London doing Mary Poppins Returns when they called. So we’ve been working on it for six years, off and on.
J. Harrison Ghee and Christian Borle in SOME LIKE IT HOT.
Marc J. Franklin
That’s pretty par for the course, right?
Shaiman: Unfortunately these days, yes. If you look back at the golden age of Broadway — and I’m not saying we’re Rodgers and Hammerstein — but they did a show every year! Nowadays it takes an endless amount of workshops and readings, and months in between them all, so it’s not like a steamroller or a train that’s constantly moving.
Wittman: And then of course with Covid, we were a train stuck in a tunnel for a while.
It’s a musical that couldn’t have come at a better time, especially with the current bans on drag and discourse around it. It seems like a show that could open people’s eyes to drag in general.
Shaiman: That is the hope. I mean, Hairspray! was a similar situation. People just might leave a little bit more open-minded about some things they may have not been three hours earlier.
Wittman: It’s always good when a show can incite discussion.
Shaiman: But as Mary Poppins said, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. We just want to entertain, that’s our main focus. That’s what we love to do, that’s what we love to go and see and experience ourselves. We write shows we’d want to go see. Like you said, in this case it so happened that the story was full of things that were so prescient.
Wittman: That’s what made it more intriguing to do. There already had been [the original Some Like It Hot-inspired musical] Sugar, so there was no reason to do another movie-to-stage version of that. So it really had to be something new.
Spoiler: there’s a huge twist when the character Jerry, who is hiding out from the mob by dressing in drag, realizes that they feel much more alive dressed as a woman. It becomes a life-changing and eye-opening experience for the character, which is a stark departure from the original story. How did you realize that was going to be a turn that character was going to make?
Wittman: Right from the very beginning we thought that, along with our Sugar being played by a Black actress [Adrianna Hicks]. Those are two things that made us say yes.
Shaiman: Scott and I had lived our whole lives around trans people from when the words weren’t always used. But literally since the time we moved to New York, we have lived, worked, loved and have been friends with trans people.
Wittman: Going back to when I did a lot of shows with the whole Andy Warhol crowd at Max’s Kansas City in the ’80s, with all of these performers like Jayne County.
I know the song “Let’s Be Bad” uniquely made the jump from Smash to Some Like It Hot. What’s the story behind that?
Shaiman: We had a different song that we had done a reading or two with when the girls, Osgood and Daphne decide to break curfew and go to Mexico. The original song that we had was called “The Good Neighbor Policy,” and it was a kind of sly, sexy South of the Border kind of song. But after the reading, [director and choreographer] Casey Nicholaw said, “Can it be something hotter and sexier? Maybe something a little less laid back?” So Scott and I went home and were thinking of the line “Let’s be..” And then we said, “Didn’t we already write this song, ‘Let’s Be Bad”? We kept trying to figure out other ways to say what we had already said in a song. Maybe 20 percent at most of the lyrics are from Smash; for the most part it’s newly written lyrics for a song that now takes on a joyous and fun experience. It certainly works. We actually asked everyone working on these shows, from Smash and now the Broadway show, if we could use it. We didn’t know if they were going to say, “No, you can’t use that song, we’re gonna have it on our own show.” But luckily, everyone said, “Yeah, my God. That would be perfect.” We signed off by saying if the worst thing that happens is that there are two musicals at once with this song in it, then that’s a fantastic conversation piece.
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
Michaelah Reynolds
Speaking of songwriting, I remember hearing Stephen Sondheim said that he’d never write lyrics without drinking a glass of something. Do you have any creative aids when you’re writing?
Shaiman: Yeah, I saw that. Well, I used to smoke dope before I wrote any music or arrangement, but then I started scoring movies. The first movie I scored was Misery, so I’d smoke a joint at then in the morning just to compose because I had never done anything without taking a puff. But by the end of the second day, I realized I couldn’t do it; they were 12 hour days and I’d have to do all of this math with the frames and it was so involved. So one day I said, “Let me see, can I do it [without]?” And that one day turned into the rest of my life.
You’ve been churning out shows for decades now. What have you learned about navigating the ups and downs of a notoriously difficult business over the years?
Wittman: Over the tears, you mean. [Laughs.]
Shaiman: I’m terrible at it. I’ve grown more thin-skinned as opposed to thicker-skinned over the years.
Wittman: We’re like Eeyore and Tigger. So it works in some ways.
Shaiman: I’m Eeyore.
Wittman: It’s not like a movie or a TV show where you do it and then you move onto the next one. It’s such a big chunk of your life. It’s a lot of time investment and sometimes heartbreak and sometimes great joy.
Shaiman: When you work on these things for years, it’s not that people are blowing smoke up your ass the whole time. You work hard to make it be the best that you can. So you’re surrounded by people who are encouraging you and are like, “Yes, that’s it, that’s great.” And then you’re in a room with the cast and you’re all enjoying it and you feel like you’ve done a good job, and putting all this money into it and months of rehearsals. So by the time opening night comes, you have this feeling that it’s worth it and it’s worthy. And then you can suddenly, in one night, in the most off-handed or nasty or rude ways, be shot down sometimes. There’s no way that that’s easy, or easy to ignore.
Wittman: But the opening night of Some Like It Hot was spectacular. We had a very private party with just close friends, most of them being famous. I said, “We don’t want to know about the reviews or anything like that,” but all of the sudden I hear this chant of “Rave! Rave! Rave!” from Bridget Everett. So that was a nice feeling.
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time logs a fourth straight and total week atop the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated April 8). The title earned 197,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending March 30 (down 6%), according to Luminate. One Thing at a Time debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 18 and has held the top spot ever since.
Across Wallen’s two No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 — One Thing at a Time and Dangerous: The Double Album — he has now spent a total of 14 weeks atop the chart. That ties Bad Bunny for the second-most weeks at No. 1 this decade, trailing only Taylor Swift’s 20 weeks (across five No. 1s). Bad Bunny’s 14 total weeks at No. 1 has come from two chart-toppers: Un Verano Sin Ti (13 weeks) and El Ultimo Tour del Mundo (one week).
The last album by a male act to spend its first four weeks at No. 1 was Wallen’s own Dangerous, which spent 10 weeks in total atop the chart — all from its debut week (Jan. 23-March 27, 2021).
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200 chart, BTS’ Jimin bows at No. 2 with his debut solo album, FACE; Lana Del Rey notches her ninth top 10 with the No. 3 arrival of Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd; Luke Combs claims his fifth top 10 set with the No. 4 debut of Gettin’ Old; and Fall Out Boy achieves its seventh top 10 effort with the No. 6 launch of So Much (for) Stardust.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new April 8, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on April 4. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of One Thing at a Time’s 197,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 30, SEA units comprise 177,500 (down 8%, equaling 235.76 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 36 songs), album sales comprise 17,000 (up 36%) and TEA units comprise 2,500 (down 14%).
BTS’ Jimin sees his first solo album, FACE, bow at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The last artist to enter as high with a first charting effort was Olivia Rodrigo, with Sour, which debuted at No. 1 on the June 5, 2021-dated chart.
FACE was led by Jimin’s first top 40-charting song as a soloist on the Billboard Hot 100, “Set Me Free, Pt. 2,” which debuted at No. 30 on the April 1-dated chart. FACE, performed largely in the Korean language, includes six total cuts: “Face-off,” “Interlude: Drive,” “Like Crazy,” “Alone,” “Set Me Free, Pt. 2” and “Like Crazy (English Version).”
FACE starts with 164,000 equivalent album units earned — the second-largest debut week of 2023 after Wallen’s One Thing at a Time’s launch of 501,000 units. Of FACE’s opening-week sum, album sales comprise 124,000 — marking the third-biggest sales week of 2023 and the largest for a solo act this year). SEA units comprise 13,500 (equaling 19.51 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs).
TEA units comprise 26,500, the largest TEA figure for any album in four months. Most of FACE’s TEA units come from the album’s current single, “Like Crazy” — which was available in five different versions (the album version — performed in the Korean language, an English-language version, two dance remixes and an instrumental) during the tracking week. All versions of the song are combined for tracking and charting purposes.
The last time an album had a bigger TEA figure in a single week when Swift’s Midnights tallied 34,000 TEA units on the Nov. 19, 2022 chart, after she released seven new hot-selling remixes of “Anti-Hero” (joining its two previously released versions — an original version and an instrumental).
Like many K-pop releases, the CD edition of FACE was issued in five collectible CD packages (including exclusives for Target and the Weverse webstore) each containing a standard set of items and randomized elements (photo cards and postcards). It was also available as a standard digital download album, plus two late-in-the-week alternative cover digital download variants that were sold exclusively through his official webstore. 79% of FACE’s first-week sales were CDs, while the remaining 21% were digital album downloads.
Jimin is the third member of seven-member South Korean pop group BTS to chart on the Billboard 200, following RM and J-Hope, who have each placed two albums on the chart. RM’s Indigo peaked at No. 3 in December 2022 and Mono. hit No. 26 in 2018. J-Hope’s Jack in the Box reached No. 17 in July 2022 and Hope World hit No. 38 in 2018.
BTS announced that it was taking a break last summer — and since then — three of its members have released solo albums (FACE, RM’s Indigo and J-Hope’s Jack in the Box). FACE is the first of the three to have CDs available the same day that the album was released to streaming services and as a digital download. J-Hope’s Jack in the Box has not been issued on CD, while RM’s Indigo got a CD release two weeks after its streaming and digital debut. (Indigo debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 15, fell off the chart the following week, and re-entered the next week at its peak of No. 3 — powered by its CD sales).
K-pop artists typically sell well with CD albums, bolstered by their collectability. In 2022, seven of the year’s top 10-selling albums on CD in the U.S. were K-pop releases, including the year’s No. 2-seller, BTS’ retrospective compilation Proof. Further, BTS was the No. 2-selling act on the CD album format in 2022, with 917,000 copies sold of its albums on CD last year. (Swift was 2022’s top-selling artist in terms of CD albums, with 923,000 sold. She also profits from the collectability of her CDs. Her most recent album, 2022’s Midnights, was issued in a range of CD iterations — including autographed editions.)
Lana Del Rey collects her ninth top 10-charting album on the Billboard 200 as Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd debuts at No. 3. The set earned 115,000 equivalent album units in its opening week. Of that sum, album sales comprise 87,000, SEA units comprise 28,000 (equaling 36.14 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs — Del Rey’s biggest streaming week yet) and TEA units comprise a negligible sum.
Of the set’s first-week sales, vinyl LPs comprise 67% (58,500 — the largest sales week for a vinyl album in 2023 and Del Rey’s best sales week on vinyl ever). Did You Know was issues in six vinyl variants: a standard black vinyl, a picture disc and four color vinyl editions (pink, green, red and white) all with different covers, exclusive to Amazon, independent retailers, Target and her webstore, respectively. Did You Know was also issued in nine CD iterations (a standard edition, four with alternative covers, and four deluxe boxed sets exclusive to her webstore containing either a T-shirt and a CD or a hoodie and a CD). Del Rey even dropped the album on cassette tape — in five different color variants (black, white, pink, green and red).
Did You Know was previewed by three charting tracks on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart: the title track (peaking at No. 23 in December), “A&W” (No. 10 in March) and “The Grants” (No. 45 on the April 1 chart).
Luke Combs arrives at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with Gettin’ Old. It follows his 2022 release Growin’ Up, which debuted and peaked at No. 2. The new 18-song set is Combs’ fifth top 10, all earned consecutively, on the chart.
Gettin’ Old starts with 101,000 equivalent album units earned in its first week — surpassing the 74,000-unit bow of Growin’ Up. Of the new set’s first-week sum, SEA units comprise 66,000 (equaling 85.4 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 18 songs — Combs’ biggest streaming week ever and the third-biggest overall streaming debut of 2023), album sales comprise 32,500 and TEA units comprise 2,500.
Gettin’ Old was supported by eight physical variants of the album — two CDs (a standard version and a signed edition exclusive to his webstore), five vinyl LPs (standard black, a deluxe black edition containing a slipmat [either signed or unsigned, exclusive to his webstore], an opaque white-colored edition exclusive to Amazon and a blue-colored edition exclusive to Walmart), and a red-colored cassette tape.
Gettin’ Old is the second country album of 2023 to score a 100,000-unit-plus week, following the opening frame of Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (501,000). No country albums in 2022 posted a 100,000-plus week. In 2021, Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) and Wallen’s Dangerous all landed multiple 100,000-plus weeks.
Gettin’ Old was led by four charting tracks on the Hot Country Songs chart: “Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old” (No. 20), “Love You Anyway” (No. 3), “Joe” (No. 22) and “5 Leaf Clover” (No. 15) — all through the most recently published list dated April 1.
With the Nos. 1-4 albums all exceeding 100,000 units earned on the latest chart, it’s the first time since the Aug. 8, 2020-dated list that four albums have cleared 100,000 units in a single week.
SZA’s former No. 1 SOS falls 2-5 on the new Billboard 200, earning 70,000 equivalent album units (down 3%).
Fall Out Boy’s So Much (for) Stardust debuts at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 equivalent album units earned, earning the band its seventh top 10-charting set. The new set is the group’s first new studio album since 2018’s chart-topping MANIA.
Of Stardust’s first-week units, album sales comprise 49,000, SEA units comprise 14,500 (equaling 18.65 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs) and TEA units comprise 500. Stardust was supported by a hefty number of physical formats — one standard CD, two cassettes, nine stand-alone vinyl LPs in assorted colors, eight deluxe vinyl boxed sets (each containing a different color vinyl LP and branded merchandise) and 11 deluxe CD boxed sets (seven containing a CD edition of the album and branded merch — and four consisting of an autographed CD along with merch).
In February, Stardust’s lead single “Love From the Other Side” became Fall Out Boy’s first-ever No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart — nearly 18 years after the band’s debut on the tally in 2005. The band had previously gone as high as No. 2 with “Dance, Dance” in 2006.
Rounding out the top 10 of the new Billboard 200 are four former No. 1s: Midnights falls 3-7 (59,000 equivalent album units; down 4%), Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains is a non-mover at No. 8 (45,000; up 14%), Wallen’s Dangerous dips 7-9 (43,000; up 3%) and Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito descends 6-10 (40,000; down 12%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Kx5, the superstar DJ pairing of Kaskade and Deadmau5, commands a No. 6 start on Billboard‘s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated April 1) with its self-titled debut set.
Kx5 starts with 4,200 equivalent album units in the March 17-23 tracking week, according to Luminate.
Seven of the album’s 10 cuts have hit the multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, with “Bright Lights” featuring AR/CO leading the way at No. 17 with 864,000 U.S. streams. It’s Kx5’s second-highest-charting track yet, after last year’s “Escape” featuring Hayla (No. 11).
Kx5 also rises with “Sacrifice” featuring Sofi Tukker (48-27; one spot short of its No. 26 high in March) and re-enters with both “Alive” featuring The Moth & The Flame (No. 30) and “When I Talk” with Elderbrook (No. 50). Both tracks peaked at No. 26 earlier this year. Rounding out Kx5‘s charted Hot Dance/Electronic Songs hits are “Take Me High” (No. 38 in October 2022) and “Avalanche,” featuring James French (No. 48 in November).
Additionally on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, Fred again.., Skrillex and Four Tet bow with “Baby again..” at No. 11. The team-up makes for Fred again..’s highest debut among 15 charted titles; Skrillex’s fourth-highest of his 56; and Four Tet’s top arrival. Skrillex is now tied with Marshmello for the third-most appearances, after only David Guetta (75) and Kygo (61).
“Baby” earned 1.5 million streams and sold 900 downloads, the latter also good for a No. 5 start on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart.
On the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Cash Cash collects its ninth top 10 with “Anyway,” featuring RuthAnne, who achieves her first (12-3). The track is drawing core-dance airplay on Music Choice’s Dance/EDM Channel, WCPY (Dance Factory FM) Chicago and iHeartRadio’s Evolution, among other outlets.
Also on the survey, Metro Boomin notches his first top 10, The Weeknd adds his 14th and 21 Savage scores his second with “Creepin’” (11-8). The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on around 70 top 40-formatted reporters.
Manhattan has always been a muse for Bruce Springsteen.
The fire escapes of “Incident on 57th Street,” the transistor blasts of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” the darkness, dust and redemption of “The Rising” — all testify to the inspiration New York City has offered to Springsteen through the decades. And his history as a live performer is rich with milestones at New York venues.
In the winter of 1973, at Max’s Kansas City, off Union Square, a Billboard reviewer praised Springsteen’s energy and “incisive” lyrics. At The Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, a five-night, 10-show residency in August 1975 preceded the release of Born to Run. Six nights at the Palladium on 14th Street in the late fall of October and November of 1976 were followed by three dates at that theater in September 1978 (a brief retreat to a smaller hall in the midst of Springsteen’s first arena tour). And a show at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem in March 2012 opened the Wrecking Ball tour and was carried live on Sirius XM’s E Street Radio.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
But Madison Square Garden outranks all New York City venues in Springsteen lore, for the number of times it has hosted The Boss, both on his own tours and as part of benefit concerts. The first time he took the famous stage may have been less memorable; he opened at MSG for Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Chicago in June 1974. But other nights burn bright in the memories of fans.
As Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band return to MSG on Saturday (April 1) as part of his 2023 international tour, here’s a look at his 10 greatest moments at The Garden.
1. “Summertime Blues” (1978)
The hottest show on the road in the summer of 1978 came to New York from Aug. 21 to 23 as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band made their debut as headliners at Madison Square Garden. Less than three months after the release of Darkness On The Edge of Town, Springsteen was playing his first arena tour, opening most shows with that album’s lead track “Badlands.” But not that first night at The Garden. “Well, I’m a-gonna raise a fuss/ I’m a-gonna raise a holler! About workin’ all summer/ just-a trying to earn a dollar!” shouted Springsteen, opening with Eddie Cochran’s 1958 hit “Summertime Blues.”
After the show’s intermission — yes, an intermission — the band returned with the instrumental “Paradise by the `C,’” a showcase for the Big Man on sax, Clarence Clemons. Dave Marsh later wrote in his biography Born To Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story about Springsteen’s reluctance to move from theaters to larger venues: “Certainly, by playing sports arenas so successfully, Springsteen proved that he could have both quality and quantity; in fact, he got a clearer, more powerful sound in Madison Square Garden than many acts have at the Palladium or the Bottom Line.”
2. “Rave On” (1979)
Springsteen shared a bill with Bonnie Raitt (as the opening act) at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge the night of May 9, 1974, for an audience that included his future manager, Jon Landau. By 1979, Raitt had joined with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and others to form Musicians United For Safe Energy (M.U.S.E.) to protest the use of nuclear power and stage five No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden in September of that year.
Springsteen joined the lineup on Sept. 21 and Sept. 22 for a relatively short but intense sets that concluded, the first night, with Mitch Ryder’s “Detroit Medley” and Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” and, the second night, with Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Quarter To Three.” In September 2021, Springsteen released The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts, a film of those Garden performances, edited by his longtime collaborator and filmmaker Thom Zimny from the original 16 millimeter film, with sound powerfully remixed by Bob Clearmountain.
3. “Who’ll Stop The Rain” (1980)
In December of 1980, music fans worldwide were in mourning. The night of Dec. 8, John Lennon had been murdered outside his home, The Dakota apartment building on Manhattan’s Central Park West. After two shows in November at The Garden, Springsteen returned to MSG on Dec. 18 and 19, showcasing that year’s The River, what he later called his “coming of age record.” The first night included Springsteen’s first live cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain.” And for all the somber tone of songs from The River — ”Stolen Car,” “Drive All Night,” “The Price You’ll Pay”– Bruce also offered the joyousness of his first top five Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Hungry Heart.” In 2015, the Springsteen fan publication and website Backstreets posted a previously unheard audio clip of a John Lennon interview recorded for the RKO Radio Networks in which Lennon praised “Hungry Heart” as “a great record.” The interview, according to Backstreets, was recorded the afternoon of Dec. 8, 1980.
4. “Tunnel of Love” (1988)
For a meeting across the river with his fans during the massively successful Born in the U.S.A. arena tour of 1984, Springsteen played 10 shows at what was then known as the Brendan Byrne Arena in the New Jersey Meadowlands — and none at The Garden. But on the first leg of his 1988 arena tour to support the reflective Tunnel of Love album, Springsteen and the E Street Band sold out five nights at MSG between May 16 and May 23 — each opening with the set piece of a carnival ticket-taker onstage. Among the highlights of the closing night at The Garden were performances of “Be True,” a brilliant B-side from the River sessions, and a segue of “Light of Day” and Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild.”
5. “Lonesome Valley” (1993)
Kristen Ann Carr, the beloved daughter of Barbara Carr and Dave Marsh, died on Jan. 3, 1993 of sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. A senior majoring in journalism at New York University, she was 21 years old. On June 26, 1993, the closing night of his 1992-1993 world tour, Springsteen and his band staged a benefit at The Garden to help launch the Kristen Ann Carr Fund, joined onstage by guests Joe Ely and Sananda Maitreya, then known as Terence Trent D’Arby. Ely and Springsteen opened the show with the gospel song “Lonesome Valley” and Maitreya sang with Bruce on “Many Rivers to Cross.” Forty years later, the Kristen Ann Carr Fund continues to support research into sarcoma, underwrites the education of young physicians and seeks ways to improve the quality of life of cancer patients.
6. “American Skin (41 Shots)” (2000)
Amadou Diallo was a 23-year West African immigrant coming home to his apartment in the Bronx, just after midnight on Feb. 4, 1999, when he was approached by four New York City police officers, searching for a rape suspect. He reached for his wallet. The officers later said they believed he was going for a gun—and fired 41 shots, killing him in the vestibule of his building. All four officers were later acquitted in the shooting. On a reunion tour, Springsteen and the E Street Band played an unprecedented 10 nights at Madison Square Garden between June 12 and July 1. His song “American Skin (41 Shots)” was an emotional center of the shows. The HBO special Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City was filmed during these shows, which also introduced the anthemic “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
7. “The Rising” (2001)
Jon Pareles in the New York Times first reported the story, describing how, a few days after Sept 11, 2001, Springsteen was pulling out of a beach parking lot in the Jersey Shore town of Sea Bright “when a fan rode by,” Pareles wrote. “The man rolled down his window, shouted, ‘We need you!’ and drove on.” Springsteen responded to the unimaginable loss of 9/11 with The Rising, and the third night of the tour showcasing that album brought the E Street Band to The Garden on Aug. 12, 2002, their first New York City show following the World Trade Center attacks. Songs from The Rising — ”Lonesome Day,” “Empty Sky,” “Into The Fire” — alternated with blistering versions of older tracks, “Prove It All Night,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “The Promised Land.”
8. “This Land Is Your Land” (2009)
In the summer of 1969, when Bruce Springsteen was still dreaming of a record deal, the folk music icon Pete Seeger saw a different dream come true. Living in Beacon, N.Y., overlooking the then-polluted Hudson River, Seeger envisioned a community-supported sailing sloop that would inspire people to come out on the river — and help save it. Built in Maine and christened the Clearwater, Seeger’s sloop sailed into New York Harbor for the first time on Aug. 1, 1969.
Flash forward to May 3, 2009 at Madison Square Garden where Springsteen joined an all-star cast — John Mellencamp, Tom Morello, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Richie Havens, Roger McGuinn, Ani DiFranco, Taj Mahal, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews and more — to celebrate Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday and raise money for the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which sails on to this day, one of the nation’s oldest activist organizations with its roots in music. Opening the show in acoustic duet with Morello on “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” Springsteen and the ensemble serenaded Seeger with “Happy Birthday” and “This Land Is Your Land.”
9. “Fortunate Son” (2009)
The 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was celebrated with two concerts at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 29 and 30, 2009 — and Springsteen was the life of the party, as captured by the HBO special filmed at the event. He sang “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary” with John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Soul Man” with Sam Moore, and “Da Doo Ron Ron” with Darlene Love, all on the first night. He and Roy Bittan returned the second night to join U2 for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
10. “Land of Hope and Dreams” (2012)
Springsteen and the E Street Band returned to Madison Square Garden throughout the 2000s: for the home-spun Seeger Sessions Band shows on June 22, 2006; the Magic Tour on Oct. 17 and 18, 2007; the Working on a Dream Tour on Nov. 7-8, 2009; and the Wrecking Ball World Tour on April 6 and April 9, 2012. Springsteen’s Garden performance on The River Tour in 2016 marked the most recent time he and the E Street Band played The Garden until now — and remarkably, that show took place almost exactly seven years ago, on March 28, 2016.
Of all those nights, however, one that cannot be overlooked was not planned — until Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York on Oct. 29 and 30, 2012. Billed as 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, the show was an all-star concert like few others, carried on scores of television, radio and web outlets and featuring (among others) The Rolling Stones, The Who, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys and Eddie Vedder. Who could play the opening slot on such a bill but Bruce Springsteen? It was a four-song set that began with the perfect song: “Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine/and all this darkness past,” sang Springsteen. “Well, big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams/ Oh, meet me in the land of hope and dreams.”
Hulu wasn’t explicitly looking to develop a musical comedy when songwriters Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, writer Steven Levenson, and director Thomas Kail presented them with Up Here. The platform hadn’t ever done a musical TV show — which, despite well-received past series like Glee, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Schmigadoon remains a relative rarity in the current streaming world.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
But, as head of scripted content at Hulu Originals Jordan Helman remembers it, it was hard to resist this “who’s-who of the heavy hitters of Broadway in the past decade.” Kail is the Tony-winning director of Hamilton (and now Sweeney Todd); Levenson the Tony-winning playwright behind Dear Evan Hansen; and Lopez and Anderson-Lopez the Academy Award-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning married duo behind the music of Frozen, Frozen 2 and Coco (Bobby, who co-created The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, is also a double EGOT winner).
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
Sarah Shatz/Hulu
Up Here is based on a musical of the same name by Anderson-Lopez and Lopez, produced in 2015 at the La Jolla Playhouse. The story of Miguel and Lindsay (portrayed by Carlos Valdes and Mae Whitman) finding themselves, and romance, in New York City in the 1990s — while battling the naysaying voices of their subconsciouses, personified onscreen — was, Helman says, an “irresistible” opportunity for Hulu to enter the musical landscape. Its audiences have responded positively to female-driven soaps and thrillers in the past, but “we had never really approached [a show] through a rom-com lens,” Helman continues. “This felt like a tailored opportunity to broaden the aperture of what we do, but still feeling deeply relevant to the viewers we have on platform.”
For Lopez and Anderson-Lopez, developing Up Here for TV was also an enticing opportunity to expand upon and rethink their original show — which dwelt on the male protagonist’s subconscious. It was freeing as well, allowing them to explore multiple genres in their songwriting. And with each episode functioning like a mini-musical — complete with elaborate singing and dance numbers — they were able to see a much larger than usual quantity of their compositions make it to the final product (those songs can also be heard on the show’s soundtrack, recently released on Hollywood Records).
“We’re from Broadway,” says Bobby. “And we wanted to bring what was great about Broadway musicals and see if we could do our version of it in a streaming series.” Below, he and Anderson-Lopez speak to Billboard about precisely how they did it.
After the production of Up Here at La Jolla, what did you hope its future would be?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: La Jolla was a huge growth experience. We’d never done book, music and lyrics all together before … while raising two children out of town … and getting infested with bird mites. [Laughs.] That’s a thing that happened! We realized that where we are in our lives, we wanted to work with book writers [going forward]. You can’t address what you need to in production, on all three fronts, overnight, every day. So, we’d started to talk to talk to book writers and had actually identified Steven Levenson as someone with their finger on the pulse of what we wanted to do.
Then life took over: Frozen Broadway, Frozen 2, Coco. There was an Excel spreadsheet somewhere that said we could do nothing else for four years. [Laughs.] So it got put away. But there was always this intention of revisiting it with Steven at some date in the future. And then that date came in 2020 when Tommy Kail called us and said, “Hey, I’d like to do something with you guys on TV” — and we’d fallen in love with Fosse/Verdon [the FX series that Kail directed]. If there’s a president and vice president of the Fosse/Verdon fan club, it’s us.
Bobby Lopez: The production in La Jolla was very different from what we ended up with on Hulu — in that it only really entered the guy’s head, and one of the takeaways was, “Gee, I wish we’d written it so you could see what she’s thinking, too.” We couldn’t imagine rewriting it for the stage in a way that would preserve any of what we had. So, we were a little frustrated.
But when the idea of television came into it — doing a half-hour comedy, where every week we had the structure to write a mini-musical in essence, and end up with 8 mini musicals adding up to a larger grand musical [over a season] — we got very excited. It just seemed like, “This is a new take on the idea, we’ll be able to tell a different story, we’ll be able to change the characters in exciting ways.”
‘Up Here’
Patrick Harbron/Hulu
Did you preserve anything from the original stage show?
Kristen: I’d say the thing that’s preserved is the concept and question of: Can you ever truly know someone? And what does it feel like when a relationship that you assume is, “This is my person” — they become a stranger? And how you realize you’re up against the bubble of your own consciousness.
Bobby: Some of the songs about that theme carried over. For instance, the idea of “I Can Never Know You” — that was a song in the original, and we transformed it into a different song called “Please Like Me” for the show.
Kristen: “Please Like Me” was originally kind of a “I’m Just a Girl Who Cain’t Say No” charm song — an introduction to the female lead — and now it’s about the huge problem she’s battling. I think it probably always was. And we were always curious to see if you could have a song that’s so clearly, “This person needs to grow from this.” But it’s also why you identify with her, because she’s so honest about it.
Even in the expanded streaming world, musical television shows still feel pretty few and far between. Why do you think that is?
Kristen: I can tell you, after doing it for the last three years — it’s very, very difficult to do. TV is always hard to do. It’s always about getting it ready as much as you can, then you have to get lightning in a bottle on the film day, then you have to piece it together. If you add the elements of learning music and choreography, producing music, to something already time-constrained… you’ve added weights to what’s already hard.
Bobby: I think we sold this show on the first pitch, to [co-chairman of Disney Entertaiment] Dana Walden. And they were very excited — we all were — and then we realized the process of developing a TV show. A lot of the writing is done during production, whereas musical theater is very iterative as a process: You write a draft of the whole thing, you have to see it in front of an audience to know whether it’s working. And it’s the same in animation, honestly – we screen the first version of the film, and then kind of throw it all out, and at the end of many iterations we have something we know works and we produce that.
TV is much more accelerated. It took a lot of time before we were greenlit, rethinking the concept of who these characters were. It was a high degree of difficulty to not only have these singing characters, but also the concept of being inside their minds.
What are the specific challenges inherent in making an episodic musical, as opposed to one in film or onstage that’s over in about two hours?
Kristen: Every musical has an architectural scaffold to it: You have your opening, your “I want” song, your charm song, your act break, your finale, your 11:00 number. [For a show] you really want to know what the whole is before you start making the parts.
We really had to think architecturally [with this show] as we were breaking the story – toggling between what it is to break a normal streaming comedy and to break a musical. There’s a little bit of a Russian doll aspect: In order to have the whole series, we needed to have a giant overview and know where the key songs were going to be before you could ever film. And then you need to record all those songs. Everything has to be pretty solid before a single actor has ever stood on a soundstage, because the songs get pre-recorded.
Bobby: Which is the opposite of how we usually work. In theater, the cast album is the last thing. In animation, you kind of record as you go. It’s never the very first thing — like, “Hi Mae, I’m Bobby, this is Kristen! Now, if you step inside the booth, let’s record the first song.”
Kristen: I will say, I have never been part of a TV writers’ room, and I absolutely loved it. It was kind of like eight hours of group therapy every day. It’s just really creative people pretending, basically.
You get to play with musical genre so much from episode to episode. Did that feel like a freeing new direction?
Kristen: It was liberating. We could jump all over – you could have a Fiona Apple[-type] song next to a Katrina and the Waves song next to a weird eight-bit mini opera.
Bobby: The original show was vast — it was meant to be like a British mega-musical, it had a big orchestra, it wanted to sound gigantic. This version, we really went small with it, trying to think of it all as one rock band playing the music. Getting to work with the same players every day, it felt like we were making an album, rather than hiring players to be in the orchestra pit. It felt unified by its small, intimate sound.
Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez
Sarah Shatz/Hulu
What was the casting process like? Both Mae and Carlos are great singers, but they’re not huge, over-the-top Broadway voices.
Kristen: At its heart we wanted this to feel like an extraordinary story about ordinary people – so we didn’t want them to be larger than life. We wanted to find those people we’ve seen – or not seen – who really seem like you could see them on the street. They could [ordinarily] be the sidekick on a show, but this is a chance for the sidekicks to be the lead.
Mae brings with her such a beautiful humility; she does feel like, to me, your little sister. She’s so relatable and just lets you see all her emotions. And Carlos … we put poor Carlos through the wringer. He came in five times, because what he had to do was extraordinary. He had to be able to have these intimate scenes, but also dance up a storm and sing and really show us what’s underneath the toxic masculinity, and bare his soul. And he always rose to the occasion.
Bobby: We were 100% behind them vocally. They both have experience singing, and for what they needed to do in this, they really were rock stars. Not to mention the chemistry they have that just sparked.
Kristen: Mae likes to say she’s not a singer — but I spent years raising my kids on her Tinker Bell! She’s an amazing singer.
Bobby: One of my first gigs, I wrote a song on spec for The Jungle Book 2, and if it had gotten selected, Mae would have been the singer. I think she was 10.
Kristen: And Carlos was in Darren Criss’ band at University of Michigan. He went to this hardcore, triple-threat high school that was like the FAME high school of Atlanta — and then he got into Michigan for musical theater, which is like, where you go to become a Broadway star.
You also have big Broadway stars on the show, like Norm Lewis and Brian Stokes Mitchell — but it seems like you’re having fun casting them against type.
Bobby: There’s always a bunch of people we’re dying to work with and haven’t yet, and this was a great opportunity to. Scott Porter, we’d seen in Altar Boyz a long time ago and knew he was an amazing singer and dancer, so to get him onboard was incredible. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Norm Lewis are baritone titans of Broadway.
Kristen: To talk about Stokes for a second: To bring him in to do a hip-hop Dr. Seuss character, to show this side of him that’s so funny – we knew we needed a really charismatic, attractive silver fox. But then he just had this bead on this character that was so funny, and the ability to really commit that teeters on the absurd. And across the board, that’s what we got with all these Broadway performers. Nobody’s afraid of going toward the stylized, so everyone just committed hard to these big emotions in such wonderful, quirky ways.
Musicals, both on stage and in animated form, go through years of workshopping and development, and so much gets left on the cutting room floor. Up Here on the other hand seems to have a much higher quantity of songs – was that liberating?
Kristen: Yeah! Frozen, we wrote 26 songs and 7 got into the movie. Whereas here we wrote 25 songs and 21 are in the show. Although I will say, if you count La Jolla as part of that development process, the math falls apart there.
Bobby: Then it’s like 75 songs. [Laughs.] But yeah — we did toss a few numbers, but we didn’t have the luxury of doing a lot of cutting and rewriting. We killed ourselves making 21 brand new songs in a row, and having to mix and master and produce tracks that you love, it’s a great deal of work. Now, when we listen to the soundtrack, it does play like a cast recording – it feels like a Broadway show, and that’s what we wanted.
Skrillex is taking the rumble to the Rockies. On Wednesday (March 29) he announced a show at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre that will happen next month.
The set, going down on Saturday, April 29, will feature Skrillex playing a five-hour set from 7 p.m. until midnight, local time. This format emulates his show last month at Madison Square Garden, where he — along with co-headliners Fred again.. and Four Tet — played for five hours, from 7 p.m. to midnight ET.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Tickets for the Red Rocks show go on sale this Friday (March 31) at 12 p.m. ET.
This show announcement comes in the wake of the release of a pair of Skrillex albums, Quest For Fire on Feb. 17 and Don’t Get Too Close, which was surprise released the following day, Feb. 18. Skrillex has not announced a full tour behind these albums, instead opting to play prestige venues like MSG and Red Rocks, along with a hefty list of summer festivals: Something In The Water, Hangout, Movement and Elements, plus a series of European events including Primavera in Barcelona and EXIT in Serbia. This Euro run also includes a show at Ibiza’s influential techno mecca DC10.
Quest For Fire is currently sitting at No. 11 on Dance/Electronic albums, where it peaked at No. 2 upon release and is currently its fifth week on the chart. Album singles “Rumble” and RATATATA” are currently at No. 20 and No. 18 on the chart, respectively. Skrillex also appear on this same chart for “Baby again,” his recently released earworm single with Fred again.. and Four Tet.
Courtesy Photo
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time notches a third straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated April 1). The set earned 209,500 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending March 23 (down 19%), according to Luminate. It debuted at No. 1 with 501,000 units, then tallied 259,000 in its second frame.
In the last 12 months, only two albums have exceeded 200,000 units in each of their first three weeks: One Thing at a Time and Taylor Swift’s Midnights (which surpassed 200,000 in each of its first four weeks).
The last album by a male act to spend its first three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 was Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, which also spent its first three frames atop the list (Sept. 18-Oct. 2, 2021-dated charts).
Further, in the last 10 years, only two country albums have clocked at least three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and both are by Wallen: One Thing at a Time, his last album, Dangerous: The Double Album (10 weeks at No. 1 in 2021). (Country albums are considered those that have hit or are eligible for Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.)
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200 chart, U2 collects its 13th top 10-charting effort, as Songs of Surrender debuts at No. 5. The retrospective sees U2 revisiting its own catalog, re-recording and re-interpreting familiar hit songs from the band’s career. Among the tracks including on the project: “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “One,” “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “I Will Follow.”
Plus, U2 becomes only the fourth group with a newly-charting top 10 title on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the 1980s, ‘90s, 2000s, ‘10s and now the ‘20s.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new April 1, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on March 28. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of One Thing at a Time’s 209,500 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 23, SEA units comprise 194,000 (down 17%, equaling 256.13 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 36 songs), album sales comprise 12,500 (down 41%) and TEA units comprise 3,000 (down 12%).
SZA’s chart-topping SOS climbs 4-2 on the Billboard 200 with 72,000 equivalent album units earned (though down 5%), while Swift’s former leader Midnights jumps 6-3 with 61,000 units (up 31%) following her Eras Tour launch on March 17. Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation falls 3-4 in its second week with 49,000 units (down 59%).
U2’s Songs of Surrender debuts at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 with 46,500 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, album sales comprise 42,000, SEA units comprise 4,000 equaling 4.99 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks) and TEA units comprise 500. The retrospective re-records project is available in multiple editions, including a standard 16-track edition, a 20-track deluxe and a 40-track super deluxe (with the latter divided into four 10-track chapters named after each band member: Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr.). Sales were also aided by a dozen vinyl variants of the album, including exclusive editions sold by Amazon, Target and independent retailers.
U2 is the fourth group to achieve a newly-charting top 10 album on the Billboard 200 chart in the 1980s, ‘90s, 2000s, ‘10s and now the ‘20s. The quartet joins AC/DC, Def Leppard and Metallica.
Rounding out the top 10 of the new Billboard 200 are five former No. 1s: Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito (5-6 with 45,000 equivalent album units earned; down 15%); Dangerous: The Double Album (a non-mover at No. 7 with 42,000; down 2%); Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains (holding at No. 8 with 40,000; up 3%); Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss (10-9 with 38,000; up 12%); and Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti (9-10 with 37,000; up 1%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
As pop choreographers go, Stephen Galloway’s path to major music video collaborator was far from traditional. He spent nearly two decades as a principal dancer with Ballet Frankfurt, under the direction of contemporary ballet legend William Forsythe; began work as a costume designer while at the company, becoming artistic director of Issey Miyake in the ‘90s; spent two decades in an all-around creative advisor role for The Rolling Stones, consulting on movement, clothing, lighting and more for their music videos and tours; worked with other musical artists ranging from Björk to Lady Gaga to Lil Nas X; and still advises on creative movement for high-fashion photo shoots and runway shows.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
That winding path has now led Galloway, 56, to his latest role: creative movement director for Miley Cyrus as she embarks upon her Endless Summer Vacation era. Galloway entered Cyrus’ orbit via a good friend, director Jacob Bixenman. “I did a video for his then-partner, Troye Sivan, for [Sivan’s 2018 single] ‘My My My!’” Galloway recalls. “We’ve always talked about collaborating. So one day [Jacob] texted me and said he had some ideas and he’d like to know if I was interested. And I just went and met Miley.”
Galloway served as creative movement director for the “Flowers” and “River” music videos (directed by Bixenman) as well as for Cyrus’ recent Endless Summer Vacation Backyard Sessions — and he doesn’t see their collaboration ending any time soon. He spoke to Billboard from his Los Angeles home about Cyrus’ singular talents, and why the two don’t even need words to communicate.
Were you seeking out movement direction work with music artists when the opportunity to work with Miley came along?
I never pursued anything. I didn’t even pursue working with the Stones — they got in touch with me first. I was a classical ballet dancer, so being brought into that world … well, maybe some people wake up and say they want to be a choreographer for music videos, but that wasn’t me. My career has just been one step in front of the next. The evolution into this next phase with Miley has just been organic. I’ve been a strong client of my own intuition and my own gut, and it hasn’t steered me astray yet.
What did you know of Miley before starting to work with her?
Of course, I was aware of who she was and what she had done. I had bought her last album. We had a lot of friends in common — that was the common denominator before we started the collaboration. When it works out like that, you know there’s kinda gonna be a vibe. But she was not someone I was actively following or keeping up with their day-to-day moments like I do now. And it’s been wonderful. I know the Miley she is now, and it’s been one of the biggest blessings of my career so far. It’s probably one of the most organic relationships I’ve had in a long time. I think I was waiting for Miley. It’s just been magic.
Many artists need to first work with a choreographer on stage presence — which is something Miley certainly isn’t lacking. What is she bringing to the table as a performer that distinguishes her?
It was just an immediate reaction to first, her as an artist and as a growing and blossoming artist, and of course then the music, how she felt she wanted to physically and through movement portray herself, which requires extreme sophistication. It’s not like we’re doing “choreography” – although you never know what’s coming! For me what’s been the most exciting thing about the project is she basically knows everyone’s job better than they do, because she’s been involved in the industry for so long.
But she honestly remains one of the most curious people I’ve ever come in contact with. She’s constantly questioning, looking at ways of doing things differently. A curiosity in how to express herself physically, without a “5, 6, 7, 8” – understanding a slow turn of a shoulder, a look down and then up. It’s very, very advanced. She understands nuance better than anyone I’ve ever worked with. She’s incredibly bright – and there’s a difference I think between smart and bright. I love bright people. Bright people make the world a better place.
In the videos so far, as you said, we don’t see really formal dance steps happening, but Miley’s movements feel very intentional — from the angle of a leg to the way she moves her hands, there’s clearly thought there.
Right. What I do with her isn’t really choreography. Years ago, I kind of came up with the title of “creative movement director” because it really feels closer to what we’re actually trying to do: working out a way of creatively moving, figuring out a specific creative vocabulary that allows her to express her feelings. You look at some of the videos where she’s basically standing still, but there’s a feeling of understanding nuance and creative movement. And she got it immediately, from the first day. It was almost hilarious. After literally 15 minutes I felt like I’d been working with her, and she with me, for our entire careers.
Do you have a particular philosophy about what choreography should accomplish in a music video?
With certain music videos, sometimes we like them because they represent something we recognize and know and can be familiar with. We all love a Janet Jackson breakdown, you know what I mean? It’s become such a part of us, we can relate to it immediately. I’m very much a child of MTV. So I’ve always been in love with the art of these small movies that great artists were able to tell their story through. I’m very much a visual person like that. I always bring an element of music video into [my work], because it’s about storytelling. And if you find someone who understands that, it’s heaven. It doesn’t always have to be fireworks and costumes and all this stuff. It can be very, very simple.
The “River” video in particular feels like proof of the power of simplicity in a music video context. It was giving me classic Madonna vibes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! The treatments are very simple, they’re not super complex. The fact that we’re able to get so much out of something so simple is a true testament to all the creative people involved. We are a very tight team. What’s crazy is we kind of don’t even talk. It’s a small set always – with “River” there were maybe more people involved, but there’s so little communication that happens. We all just understand where we’re going to go. Miley is in the middle of it all, and in the front and the back, but how she maneuvers her way through all these things is spectacular to watch.
Did you have particular conversations with Miley before “Flowers” about what she wanted to communicate through her physicality in this era?
Nothing was spoken! We didn’t really communicate about any of that. I wish I had a more complex story, but it’s not. I wasn’t aware of all these [personal] backstories going on, because I didn’t really know her. I don’t think I was even following her on Instagram. She doesn’t talk to me about what she wants to do, we just do it. She plays me the music, and then we figure it out. It’s not, “I want to communicate this by doing that.” It’s completely nonverbal. What people want to interpret about the videos, that’s not from us – it’s all in the music and the words. There’s not a plan. It’s just trying to make really great art.
Are you able to give us any clues as to what else might be on the horizon visually for the album next?
No, not really. [Laughs.] You know, we’re gonna continue to work together for as long as we can, I think. I’m always there for her. But there’s good stuff coming! I’ll leave a little tease there for ya.
TWICE claim their third No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated March 25) as Ready to Be: 12th Mini Album debuts atop the list with the act’s best sales week ever. The nine-member South Korean pop act previously led the list with Between 1&2: 11th Mini Album (2022) and Taste of Love: The 10th Mini Album (2021).
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Ready to Be launches with 145,500 copies sold in the United States in the week ending March 16, according to Luminate. That sum also marks the second-largest sales week of 2023 for any act, following the debut week of TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s The Name Chapter: Temptation (153,000; chart dated Feb. 11).
Ready to Be also logs a big week in vinyl album sales (nearly 18,000) – the largest for any all-female group since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991.
Also in the top 10 on the new Top Album Sales chart, Miley Cyrus achieves her biggest sales week in nearly a decade – and 14th top 10 – as Endless Summer Vacation enters at No. 2 with 55,000 copies sold. Endless also collects Cyrus’ biggest ever sales week on vinyl. Plus, rock band Periphery nets its third top 10 – all consecutive – as Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre debuts at No. 10.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Ready to Be’s 145,500 copies sold, physical sales comprise 143,000 (125,000 on CD and nearly 18,000 on vinyl) and digital downloads comprise 2,500.
Like many K-pop releases, Ready to Be was issued in collectible physical format packages (11 different CDs [including exclusives for Barnes & Noble, Target and the group’s official webstore] and two vinyl LPs [one exclusive to Target and one exclusive to the act’s webstore). CD variants of Ready contain a standard set of items and randomized elements (such as a postcards, photo cards, etc.).
Unusually, Ready to Be had a vinyl version of the album available on the same wide release date as the CD edition of the album, as most major K-pop titles in the past were initially available only as a physical album on CD and on no other physical formats (like vinyl or cassette). The vinyl editions of the album did not include randomized items, but were packaged with a lenticular postcard, poster and slipmat. Target’s exclusive LP is marbled orchid-colored, while the act’s webstore exclusive is an ultra-clear vinyl edition.
Ready to Be’s nearly 18,000 vinyl sales marks the largest week for a vinyl album by a female group since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991. It’s also the second-largest sales week on vinyl for any K-pop album, following the debut week of BTS’ Love Yourself: Her earlier in 2023 (18,000; chart dated Jan. 21). Unlike Ready to Be, the Love Yourself: Her vinyl LP arrived to market more than five years after the album’s original release on CD and digital download in 2017.
Beyond the physical editions of the album, TWICE’s U.S. webstore also issued four alternative digital album downloads of Ready to Be – each with a different cover, digital replicas of individual group members’ signatures, and a bonus track (a voice memo from different group members).
Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation debuts at No. 2 on Top Album Sales with her biggest sales week in nearly a decade, as it bows with 55,000 copies sold. Cyrus last had a larger sales week when Bangerz sold a little more than 63,000 during Christmas week of 2013 (reflected on the Top Album Sales chart dated Jan. 11, 2014). Bangerz earlier debuted at No. 1 on Top Album Sales with 270,500 copies sold (Oct. 26, 2013 chart).
Of Endless Summer Vacation’s 55,000 copies sold, physical sales comprise 37,500 (12,500 on CD and 25,000 on vinyl) and digital downloads comprise 17,500. Endless logs Cyrus’ largest sales week for a vinyl album since Luminate began electronically tracking music sales in 1991. On the Vinyl Albums chart, Endless debuts at No. 1 – her second leader on the list following Plastic Hearts in 2021.
Endless was released in four vinyl variants: standard black vinyl, a white-colored edition exclusive to Target and two color editions exclusive to Cyrus’ webstore (red and silver). All vinyl LPs came packaged with a poster.
CD sales were also aided by two deluxe boxed sets (one with a puzzle and a CD, the other with a beach towel and a CD) sold exclusively through her webstore.
Endless is Cyrus’ 14th top 10-charting effort on Top Album Sales, including those albums credited to her Disney Channel character Hannah Montana.
A trio of former No. 1s is next on Top Album Sales: Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (1-3 in its second week with 21,000; down 81%), TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s The Name Chapter: Temptation (6-4 with 11,000; up 5%) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights (7-5 with 10,000; up 3%).
NCT 127’s Ay-Yo: The 4th Album Repackage falls 2-6 on Top Album Sales (9,500; down 67%), P!nk’s former leader Trustfall rises 9-7 (8,500; down 5%), Gorillaz’s chart-topping Cracker Island is a non-mover at No. 8 (6,000; down 37%) and Stray Kids’ former No. 1 MAXIDENT climbs 13-9 (6,000; up 17%).
Closing out the top 10 is rock band Periphery, which scores its third top 10 – all consecutive – as Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre debuts at No. 10 with nearly 6,000 sold. 55% of the sales came from the vinyl edition of the set.
In the week ending March 16, there were 1.961 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 0.9% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.605 million (up 5.3%) and digital albums comprised 355,000 (down 21.9%).
There were 733,000 CD albums sold in the week ending March 16 (up 10% week-over-week) and 862,000 vinyl albums sold (up 1.8%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 6.925 million (up 2.5% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 9.678 million (up 25.4%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 20.609 million (up 8.1% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 16.705 million (up 14.7%) and digital album sales total 3.904 million (down 13%).
A daily briefing on what matters in the music industry
Email Address
Sign Up
Sign Up
By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. // This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.