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Taylor Swift has played her last show on her record-breaking Eras Tour, but fans can still keep up with the singer — and look back on her remarkable career to date — with a new book from Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield.
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Heartbreak Is the National Anthem was released in November as a hardcover book, and you can also listen to it now on Audible. The audiobook version has landed on Audible’s music bestsellers list, just behind books about Van Halen, R.E.M. and Bob Dylan.
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Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music
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Billed as an “intimate look at the life and music of modern pop’s most legendary figure,” the audiobook is read by Sheffield, a well-respected music journalist who has covered Swift’s career from the very beginning. In fact, the expanded title of the book is “A Celebration of Taylor Swift‘s Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties by a Swiftie.”
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The new book chronicles not only the singer’s rise to fame, but also her impact on the music industry and on pop culture as a whole. From her early days as a teenage country singer, to becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 21st century, Heartbreak tracks the people, milestones and experiences that have shaped Swift’s journey.
The audiobook version is read by Sheffield himself, with a run-time of five hours and 29 minutes. You can purchase the audiobook for $21 right now on Amazon or listen to it for just 99 cents with a new Audible deal, which gets you a three-month subscription for just $3 total. Regularly $14.99/month, the new promo saves you 93% off for a limited time.
Heartbreak is the National Anthem was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was released, and reviewers have heaped praise on the book too, with an average 4.3-star rating (out of five) online. One reviewer raves about Sheffield’s writing, noting that he “offers worthy praise, cultural analysis, critical commentary, and clever connections,” along with “stories, details and humor that Swifties will appreciate.”
Another calls the book a “love letter to Swift’s artistry, with Sheffield blending personal anecdotes alongside a thoughtful analysis of her career and the impact she’s had on music and her fans.”
Per publisher Dey Street Books, Heartbreak is the National Anthem is “the first book that goes deep on the musical and cultural impact of Taylor Swift.”
“At once one of the most beloved music figures of the past two decades and one of the most criticized, Taylor Swift is known as much for her life beyond her music as she is for her hits—the most public of stars, yet also the weirdest and most mysterious,” reads the publisher notes. “Heartbreak Is the National Anthem will inform and delight a legion of fans who hang on every word from Taylor and every word Rob writes on her.”
Purchase the book on hardcover or listen to it on Audible here. You can also check out more books about Taylor Swift here.
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The new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, doesn’t hit theaters until Christmas Day, but hype for the new movie has propelled a seven-year-old audiobook about the singer back onto the charts.
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Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties was originally released in 2017, but the audiobook has returned to the top of Audible’s music charts on the heels of the upcoming film release.
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Written by music historian and journalist Elijah Wald (and narrated by Sean Runnette), Dylan Goes Electric follows the uproar that ensued after Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 backed by an electric band, rather than his usual acoustic setup. Kicking off his set with an amplified version of “Maggie’s Farm,” Dylan then roared into his rock and roll hit, “Like a Rolling Stone,” much to the chagrin of what the book describes as “folk purists and political activists who had hailed him as their acoustic prophet.”
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Dylan Goles Electric traces the genesis of that performance and tracks the resulting fallout from the show, described as “a mix of shock, booing, and scattered cheers.” The singer did not return to the Newport Festival for 37 years after that night. Was Dylan indebted to the folk community for making him their star? Or did the artist have free reign to explore his musical independence and blaze a bold new path?
As Wald writes in the book, “It was the shot heard round the world – Dylan’s declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival, and the birth of rock as the voice of a generation – and one of the defining moments in 20th-century music.”
The publisher notes, meantime, write that “Wald explores the cultural, political, and historical context of this seminal event that embodies the transformative decade that was the sixties,” diving “deep into the folk revival, the rise of rock, and the tensions between traditional and groundbreaking music to provide new insights into Dylan’s artistic evolution.”
Dylan Goes Electric is available now on audiobook for $15 through Amazon. But you can listen to the book for just $0.99 as part of a new Audible deal, that gets you three months of access for just $3. Offer ends December 31 so we recommend signing up for the Audible promo while it’s still live. See full details here.
The Dylan Goes Electric audiobook has a run time of 11 hours and 56 minutes. The Timothee Chalamet-led A Complete Unknown, meantime, hits theaters December 25.
Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour Book is following in the footsteps of her record-smashing global tour of the same name. According to the Associated Press, Circana BookScan reported that the $39.99 Target exclusive book chronicling the career-spanning outing moved an eye-popping 814,000 copies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. That made it the biggest publishing launch […]
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The holiday season is officially here, and it’s a great time for book lovers to treat themselves. To expand your collection, we’ve put together a list of seven bestselling books to add to your list. Whether you’re in the mood for a rom-com, holiday-themed book or a true-to-life story, these top young adult books on Audible will keep you entertained all season long and beyond.
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Right now, Audible is offering a steal of a deal. You can sign up for just $0.99 a month for the first three months and get a $20 Audible credit. Plus, for a limited time, you can join Audible at more than 90% off and get an extra $20 to spend on your next audiobook.
Unlike traditional books, audiobooks allow you to enjoy stories hands-free, making them ideal for multitasking during commutes, workouts, chores and more. With Audible, you get access to a vast library of audiobooks, podcasts and exclusive content, all available for easy streaming and downloading.
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This list also features some top picks from #BookTok, like Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, Tell Me Things by Emily Varga, For She Is Wrath and more. TikTok is a great place to discover books that everyone’s talking about, whether it’s a sci-fi romance book, a heartfelt contemporary read or a dark, gripping thriller. So, if you’re looking for what’s trending or just want to find something new and exciting to read, this roundup has you covered.
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Shatter Me by Tahereh Mari
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If you’re looking to add a No. 1 bestselling dystopian romance book, consider adding Shatter Me by Tahereh Mari. This one has become a #BookTok favorite, blending intense action and forbidden love.
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For She Is Wrath by Emily Varga
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For She Is Wrath by Emily Varga is another dark, gripping thriller that follows a woman seeking revenge. It’s filled with suspense, twists and a strong protagonist. Amazon describes it as a “Pakistani romantic fantasy” and labels it “an instant Indie bestseller.”
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The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox
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To add a holiday-inspired book to your list, The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox is a great pick. This #BookTok favorite follows two women who swap lives for the holiday season. The New York Times describes it as “a light but sophisticated romance, a much-needed escape.”
Amazon
Comfort & Joy: A Fable by Kristin Hannah
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This No. 1 bestseller highlights a heartwarming story about love and second chances. It’s a great addition for anyone looking to add a touching read filled with the holiday spirit. One Amazon customer said, “Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. She has a way of sucking you right into the story.”
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Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum
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For those looking for another #BookTok favorite, Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum is a heartfelt story about two people who bond over their shared struggles with grief, finding comfort and healing with each other’s company.
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An Elephant in the Garden: Inspired by a True Story by Michael Morpurgo
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An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo, inspired by a true story, follows a young girl and her family as they embark on a journey to escape World War II, with a surprising and heartwarming companion — an elephant. It’s currently 22% off.
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Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter
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For a sweet, feel-good rom-com option, Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter is a great pick. This book highlights a charming story about love, friendship, and finding your happily-ever-after in unexpected places.
Find a cozy spot in your home, grab your headphones and get ready to dive into one (or more) of these amazing books on Audible.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Imposter syndrome is a universal feeling that isn’t just reserved for the non-famous. Keke Palmer’s book Master of Me proves that […]
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Here’s what you might not know about Swift’s Eras Tour.
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This month marks the 20th anniversary of Collision Course, the six-song collaborative project from Jay-Z and Linkin Park. A landmark release between two superstar artists, Collision Course debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart following its release on Nov. 30, 2004, and spawned a Grammy-winning smash in “Numb/Encore.”
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To celebrate the anniversary, below is an excerpt about the genesis and impact of Collision Course from It Starts With One: The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park, a new book from Billboard executive director of music Jason Lipshutz, published in October through Hachette Books.
Projects like Collision Course were not ordinary in popular music in 2004, so when it was first announced, it sounded like a fever dream. Jay-Z and Linkin Park collaborating on an official multi-song project?
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Two artists at the peak of their commercial power combining their biggest hits, Voltron-style, into new megahits? It was unfathomable, but somehow, it was happening.
Jay-Z had worked with rock artists before 2004, and Reanimation proved Linkin Park’s bona fides as hip-hop interlopers. Yet even so — Collision Course was something different. This was Godzilla versus King Kong, a mega-wattage showdown that, worst- case scenario, would be a publicity stunt guaranteed to move a lot of units. Best case? It could upend the way listeners thought of popular music.
Timing is everything when the world’s biggest rapper calls to collaborate on an extended project. In 2004, Jay-Z was the 34-year-old king of popular hip-hop: the coolest artist in any room, on a years-long hot streak that had transformed him from a rap headliner into a crossover pop star. While mega- selling albums like 1996’s Reasonable Doubt and 1998’s Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life were met with critical acclaim and produced multiple videos in MTV’s hip-hop blocks, Jay turned into a Top 40 hit-maker in the early 2000s with singles like “Big Pimpin’,” “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me),” and “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).”
In 2003, a few months after Linkin Park topped the Billboard 200 album chart for the first time with Meteora, Jay- Z hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 alongside his girlfriend, Destiny’s Child breakout Beyoncé, on the summer-ruling pop smash “Crazy in Love.” Then, in November, Jay released The Black Album, a record stuffed with more hits as well as fond-farewell messaging. The Black Album was positioned as Jay- Z’s final album: he was going to go out on top, relinquishing his throne to become president of Def Jam Recordings so that he could develop other artists (like his producer pal Kanye West and newly signed upstarts named Rihanna and Young Jeezy) into stars.
Jay- Z’s “retirement” was always tenuous, a sentence that ended with an ellipsis instead of a period. That’s because Jay didn’t really go anywhere after The Black Album. He was making moves in the Def Jam boardroom but would still pop up on remixes and as a guest artist on songs by Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Lenny Kravitz, and Mary J. Blige, among others. Jay- Z even released Unfinished Business, a second collaborative album with R. Kelly following 2002’s The Best of Both Worlds, less than a year after supposedly hanging it up. So it was clear that, even though Jay- Z wouldn’t be working on a new solo album imminently, he wanted to remain active in the recording studio as a complementary voice and collaborator.
As luck would have it, that period was exactly when executives at MTV called him up with a new show idea.
MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups was pitched as a taped concert series in which a rap artist and rock artist would jump onstage and rearrange at least one song together in front of a live audience — think MTV Unplugged, but as a genre-splicing jam session. Jay-Z, who had worked with The Roots on an actual MTV Unplugged in 2001, was one of the network’s first calls, and they asked him point-blank which rock act he’d want to work with for the show.
At that moment, Linkin Park was headlining more North American arenas as “Numb” kept climbing the Hot 100 and Meteora trailed The Black Album on the Billboard 200. Jay pointed at them.
For the band, the call from Jay-Z’s management not only came at a fortuitous time — nearly a year into the Meteora campaign, around the same moment during the Hybrid Theory album cycle that Mike began to plot Reanimation — but also came from the right artist. “There are six guys in our band who all grew up listening to different things,” Mike explained. “There are very few artists I can say that we all like. Jay is one of them.”
While the whole band were fans, Mike was the one who had worshiped Jay-Z growing up, an adoring teenaged producer as the MC ascended the NYC hip-hop scene. Prior to joining Xero, Mike had mashed up Reasonable Doubt songs with tracks by Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails in his bedroom; the Meteora track “Nobody’s Listening” opens with an adult Mike paying homage to Jay with a lyrical callback to his track “Brooklyn’s Finest.” So when Linkin Park received the offer to work with Jay, Mike wanted to ensure that — whatever this MTV show would eventually become — the collaboration would become more meaningful than a cable series one-off. “I didn’t just want to say, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’ I wanted to show him what it might sound like if we did it,” Mike said.
The work itself was second nature to Mike. He had grown up watching artists like Public Enemy and Anthrax mash up their sounds into formative records, as well as literally making Jay-Z mash-ups himself! So, before any deal was agreed on, he slipped into the recording studio in the back of Linkin Park’s tour bus and fired up his laptop. Mike synced up Jay- Z’s vocals from a few songs on The Black Album with Linkin Park instrumentals by matching the beats per minute (BPMs) of each: the hater- shedding anthem “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” aligned with the Meteora wall-rattler “Lying from You,” and Jay’s self-mythologizing curtain call “Encore” paired perfectly with “Numb.”
For the latter, Mike chopped up his band’s still-rising hit and reorganized the instrumental into a repeating pattern, similar to a DJ sampling part of an old rock song for a new rap track. He then added in the flourishes of “Numb” — the keyboard hook, the guitar, the piano, the bass — in ways that would support Jay’s flow, before turning the back half of the song into a modified version of Chester’s vulnerable showcase.
Stitched together, the mash-up of Jay’s braggadocio and Chester’s bare emotion isn’t lyrically coherent, but somehow the tones make sense together. Jay-Z sounds more reflective spitting “As fate would have it, Jay’s status appears / To be at an all-time high, perfect time to say goodbye,” over brooding piano and splintered guitar chords, while the introduction of Chester’s verse with “I’m tired of being what you want me to be” acts as a dramatic shift into the song’s back half, his words driving comfortably over accented hip-hop beats.
Mike finished the demos for “Numb/Encore” and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying from You” in less than two days on the tour bus, then sent them to Jay-Z to see what he thought of the direction for the songs. “His reply was, ‘Oh shit!’” Mike recalled. “Needless to say, we were off on the right foot.”
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When Jay-Z hosted listening sessions for The Black Album prior to its release, he often looked around the room and realized that some of his lyrics weren’t connecting with listeners, his lines getting lost in the production. The solution was simple enough: he asked his main engineer, Gimel “Young Guru” Keaton, to play the songs a cappella.
As Jay watched the rooms absorb his unadorned words, he liked what he saw. So he asked Roc-a-Fella and Def Jam to release a full a cappella version of The Black Album, and it hit stores one month after the original. It was an outrageous request, but Jay wielded enough star power that the labels quickly acquiesced.
Mike had downloaded that a cappella album while making the demos to send to Jay-Z; without it, he couldn’t have made such clean mash-ups and may not have gotten such a strong response from Jay. But then again, without the a cappella version of The Black Album, MTV might not have come up with the mash-up show idea in the first place.
Jay’s secondary motivation for the a cappella edition of The Black Album was for other producers to “remix the hell out of it,” according to Young Guru — to place Jay’s voice over other instrumentals, share them online, play them at clubs, and help his legend grow during his “retirement.” This was a stroke of marketing genius, and plenty of producers were happy to oblige. Producer Kevin Brown created a funk- and jazz-based remix album titled The Brown Album, for instance, and Minnesota DJ Cheap Cologne placed Jay-Z’s vocals over Metallica’s own Black Album for . . . wait for it . . . The Double Black Album.
Most famous of all was The Grey Album, which fused Jay- Z’s Black Album vocals with The Beatles’ landmark 1968 self-titled double LP (aka the White Album), by the LA producer Brian Burton, who went by the moniker Danger Mouse. The concept was, at once, deceptively simple and musically brilliant: Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” smacked even harder over The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” freakout, and “Public Service Announcement” became oddly blissed-out above the looped folk of “Long, Long, Long.” Created over two and a half weeks in December 2003 immediately after the a cappella Black Album was released, The Grey Album became internet lore in early 2004, with bootlegged CDs selling like hotcakes and file-sharing sites swarmed with its twelve songs.
Mash-ups had existed for decades before The Grey Album as an integral part of DJ culture, but they became even more commonplace at the turn of the century. Chalk it up to the proliferation of music-swapping platforms and production software, like the Pro Tools that Mike favored or the Acid Pro that Danger Mouse used for The Grey Album. Artists like Richard X, Soulwax (with their 2 Many DJs project), and Freelance Hellraiser rethought the remix in the early 2000s by jamming songs together with creative panache and lighting up the early blogosphere.
Yet The Grey Album represented a critical turning point for the medium: the project was the sort of underground sensation that functioned like a viral YouTube video before YouTube even existed. Suddenly, Danger Mouse became one of the most in-demand producers of the mid-2000s — helming albums from Gorillaz, Beck, and The Black Keys, among others — but not before entering a legal quagmire over The Grey Album, as EMI, The Beatles’ copyright holder, shut down distribution of the project. Obviously, the White Album samples hadn’t been cleared; then again, Danger Mouse had never intended to get rich off of The Grey Album, only to make something cool.
Jay-Z, for his part, liked The Grey Album — which made sense, since he was the one pushing for his a cappella vocals to become natural resources for producers like Danger Mouse. “I champion any form of creativity,” he said in a 2010 interview with NPR. “And that was a genius idea to do, and it sparked so many others like it.”
Although The Grey Album wasn’t legally sanctioned, MTV clearly saw the commercial potential of mashing up Jay-Z’s rapping with the familiar sounds of a famous rock band. So, presumably, did Jay-Z, he of the “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man,” credo. The music industry generally facilitates collaboration between artists, producers, and songwriters regardless of label or publishing info — it’s how chart-topping duets and cross-affiliate tour pairings are born. But a mash-up album is different, with more legal obstacles involving rights clearances, even when both artists are on board. As Mike and Jay traded demos over email and realized that this collaboration could become more significant than an MTV special, both camps pushed to make sure that, whatever was created, it was able to go on sale. Then, after Linkin Park worked on the rearranged production, Jay and the band logged a total of four days together at NRG in West Hollywood in July 2004, rerecording the vocals of their existing songs to better fit the deconstructed tracks.
The result: a retail-ready EP, featuring thirteen songs combined into six mash-ups, with all label partners— Def Jam, Roc- A- Fella, Warner Bros., and the Linkin Park imprint Machine Shop — on board and an “MTV Ultimate Mash- Ups Presents” sticker slapped on the cover.
At the end of that week, on July 19, 2004, the two artists took over the Roxy in Los Angeles for a special joint performance that would double as the pilot of MTV’s mash-ups show. Some fans at the Roxy sported LP tees, others held up the Roc for Jay symbol, and plenty did both. The mash-up project aired on MTV and showed up in big-box retailers by November, just in time for holiday shopping.
“To me, Collision Course is a landmark album,” Mike said later that year, “because it’s a first: two multiplatinum artists getting together, using their original masters and new performances and production to create an album of mash-ups — that’s something that has never been done before.”
Within a year of The Grey Album going viral, Jay-Z and Linkin Park had elevated its concept, jumped through all the necessary legal hoops, and primed it for big business. A couple years later, when Linkin Park and Jay-Z were standing on the Grammys stage together to collect a trophy for “Numb/Encore,” Mike made sure to thank “everybody in management and legal teams that made this record possible, because it was a nightmare!”
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What stands out most today about Collision Course, in both Linkin Park’s and Jay-Z’s respective discographies, is how fun it sounds.
Jay has made plenty of party hits over the years, but he’s never been a party rapper, his flow authoritative and grounded in gritty come-up stories even as catchy melodies float around it. Meanwhile, Linkin Park’s most uptempo singles still focused on heavier themes, and their first two albums had been laboriously fine-tuned by Don Gilmore. When set up side by side without a perfectionist producer lurking in the studio, however, both aesthetics relax, the lyrics freed of their intensity when placed in fresh, buoy-ant atmospheres.
Take “Big Pimpin’/Papercut”: Mike’s words about paranoia and stress from “Papercut” remain intact, but his rhyming is slightly slowed down and placed atop the opulent island boom of Timbaland’s “Pimpin’” production. On “Jigga What/Faint,” Jay re-creates the knuckle-bruising threats of 1998’s “N—a What, N—a Who” — but really, the main attraction of that song is the introduction of the “Faint” strings under his rhyming around the thirty-second mark, which becomes the EP’s purest rush of adrenaline.
By design, Collision Course is a stunt release, and the mash-ups can’t possibly hold the artistic power of the original tracks. Yet the inherent looseness of those moments — the playful energy of two giant artists in their prime, tinkering together in the same room — makes Collision Course worth returning to in the years since its release.
Ultimately, it was the shared studio time, with Jay-Z arriving at NRG and dapping up the band before laying down his verses one-on-one with Mike, that proved crucial to manufacturing the chemistry at the core of the EP. Collision Course gave Mike the opportunity to share space with, and produce, a childhood hero who had become a peer. Jay-Z had been a star for years before Linkin Park took off; it could have easily been a classic never-meet-your-heroes moment for Mike. But the recording sessions were full of bro-hugs and easy feedback, Chester clowning on Mike for working too hard and Jay uttering “That transition’s mean!” while scrunching his face behind the boards.
“I like this shit — I like to do different things,” an animated Jay-Z exclaims at one point on the Collision Course making-of DVD. He’s speaking to Chester while huddled in the corner of a studio room, gesturing and breathlessly trying to keep up with his thoughts. “You just bring what you do to the table, I bring what I do to the table, uncompromising — you’re not trying to be me, and I’m not trying to be you, that fusion, and just whatever happens happens. I love that!”
The casual tone provoked plenty of ad-libs that can be heard on the final cut of the EP: Chester muttering, “I ordered a Frappuccino, where’s my fucking Frappuccino?” and garnering a Jay-Z belly laugh; Jay quipping, “You’re wasting your talent, Randy!” to some guy in the studio Reddit users are still trying to identify. Even the decision to combine “Numb” and “Encore” was partially due to Mike just wanting to hear Chester bellow the “What the hell are you waiting fo-o-o-r-r-r?” line. Again: fun.
“There was no ego at all working with Jay,” Mike reflected later. “If I asked him to perform something a certain way or put a vocal line here or there, he was happy to do it. He’s really easy to work with.”
As they were finishing up in the studio and preparing to perform at the Roxy, a goal formed in Mike’s mind: he wanted the mash-up collection to be so good, so immediately effective, that MTV would never be able to make another one. And that’s exactly what happened. MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups transformed from a series into a one- off concert show that aired on November 10, 2004, with the CD and behind- the- scenes DVD hitting stores three weeks later. To this day, no follow-up episode has ever been executed.
Collision Course debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — a rarity for a six-song EP, in any era — but its true legacy is “Numb/Encore,” which rose to No. 20 on the Hot 100 as the project’s lead single and gave alternative programmers an excuse to sneak Jay-Z onto their airwaves. Beyond that early radio play, “Numb/Encore” has endured as an immaculate equilibrium of rap and rock — its melodies joined logically and wholly, soul-mates that made their way to each other from different parts of the world. Although “Numb” has now crossed one billion Spotify plays on its own, “Numb/Encore” is not far behind it; rather astonishingly, the mash-up remains one of the five most-streamed songs on the platform across Jay-Z’s legendary career.
“‘Numb’s’ other dimension is ‘Numb/Encore,’” Brad asserted. “You could love just one. However, I think about them in tandem. And when you think of Meteora, you think of Collision Course — that moment in collaboration with Jay-Z, which is really special.”
Ultimately, Collision Course did not change popular music in a literal sense — officially released mash-up albums remain a rarity to this day, primarily because of the legal red tape. On a more abstract level, though, the project did foretell a future in which amateur and professional producers crashed songs into one another.
Soon after the release of Collision Course, hip-hop’s mixtape era exploded: artists like Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, and Clipse spent the mid- aughts hijacking other rappers’ beats, freestyling over them, and releasing compilations for free online, one-upping the original artist and favoring internet buzz over commercial sales. Meanwhile, the release of mash-up songs and albums — from DJ Earworm’s annual “United State of Pop” singles, featuring the twenty-five biggest songs of the year rolled into one, to Girl Talk’s full-length pastiches of hundreds of samples, to a 2022 mash-up of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” and Ginuwine’s “Pony” that charted as “Toxic Pony” — became more commonplace in the years after the album’s release.
And the advent of social media and streaming platforms further delivered that mash-up power into users’ hands, with multimedia mash-ups constantly concocted and posted in ways that helped artists gain more listens — even today. Want to know why Lady Gaga’s 2011 song “Bloody Mary” suddenly became a Hot 100 hit in 2023? That’s because TikTok users synced up the song with a dance sequence from the Netflix series Wednesday, and the mash-up went viral enough to make “Bloody Mary” a belated sensation.
Collision Course was like a star-studded summer blockbuster that lived up to the hype upon its release, then proved sneakily influential in the years since. Its mainstream impact still reverberates today with every new spin of “Numb/Encore,” but perhaps most importantly, Collision Course further legitimized Linkin Park in the moment. Jay-Z is widely considered the greatest rapper of all time — and he picked this band, out of any artist, to reimagine his biggest hits.
Linkin Park had entered rarefied air, the type of rock stratosphere that’s reserved for only a few bands per generation. But they wanted more.
Excerpted from It Starts With One by Jason Lipshutz. Copyright © 2024. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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It’s reading season! The holidays are about gifting, finding joy and relaxing with a good book. Whether you plan to travel or stay put for the holidays, an audiobook is a fun way to help you pass the time over the holidays (even though it goes pretty quickly). Audible offers access to more than a million audiobooks, including bestsellers and new releases such as Keke Palmer’s Master of Me and Cher: The Memoir, both released on Tuesday (Nov. 19).
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For a limited time, eligible Amazon customers can join Audible for only 99 cents per month for the first three months.
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The membership includes one free bestseller or new release each month and access to thousands of audiobooks, podcasts and Audible. Plus, Amazon Music subscribers can now access Audible titles, Amazon announced on Tuesday.
The Audible membership will renew at $14.95/month after the promo ends but you can cancel anytime.
See below for more on Audible new releases.
Audible Deep Dive: Audiobooks to Put on Your Radar
In her new memoir, Cher talks love, motherhood, loss and triumph — from her earliest childhood memories to her marriage and divorce from Sonny Bono and forging her own path as a solo artist. The book also details Cher’s relationship with rocker Gregg Allman, motherhood and her bout for independence.
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Cher: The Memoir, Part One (Audibook)
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The audiobook is read in part by Cher and narrated by Tony Award-winning actress Stephanie J. who starred in The Cher Show. Cher and Brooks alternate between chapters creating a “unique audiobook treatment” to immerse listeners into her life story.
“When it came to completing the audiobook, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it all myself due to my dyslexia. But then I thought of Stephanie, who won the Tony for playing me on Broadway in The Cher Show. I knew she would be the perfect choice to get across to the reader the essence of me,” Cher explained. “I called her and within hours she re-arranged her schedule to start the recording. I felt so safe having her help share my story, and she did a beautiful job.”
Reflecting on life lessons, Palmer goes into teaching mode with Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative. Read in her own words, the actress-singer-host gets candid about her struggles with boundaries, unconditional love, forgiveness and feeling worthy.
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Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative (Audiobook)
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“Don’t block your blessings and potential opportunities by allowing the voices of other people to influence your actions,” notes Palmer. “How you’re choosing to set yourself up for success is between you and the person looking back at you in the mirror.”
Other entertainment-focused releases available on Audible include The Mysterious Affair of Styles featuring actor Peter Dinklage, You Never Know by actor Tom Selleck, Stanley Tucci’s Taste, Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me, Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, Mariah Carey’s Portrait of a Portrait and George Orwell’s 1984: An Audible Original Adaptation narrated by Cynthia Erivo, Tom Hardy and Andrew Garfield.
Read more on Audible’s holiday promo here.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Move over Beyoncé and Solange, there’s another member of the Knowles family topping the charts. Tina Knowles’ forthcoming memoir is currently […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Reading requires focus, and for those who often multitask, that means having to pause and pay attention to just one thing for a bit. Amazon‘s Audible helps people enjoy captivating stories, but through audiobooks — and for a limited time you can try the service for more than 90% off.
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Audible’s latest promo gets new users access to the service for just $0.99 a month for the first three months. That includes Audible originals too, such as Words + Music, which spotlights artists including Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg. Each episode gives you an exclusive look into a musician’s creative process while offering fans a more in-depth look into favorite artists and how they make some of their greatest hits. Audible also released a brand new series titled The Wonder of Stevie that takes listeners through Stevie Wonder’s music career, with commentary from Janelle Monae, Questlove and even Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
The limited-time deal is going on from now until Dec. 31, and is stackable with Audible’s complimentary 30-day free trial.
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Keep reading to learn how to score the Audible deal.
How to Get Audible for $0.99 a Month for 3 Months
New members can take advantage of a complimentary Audible membership for 30 days free when you sign up. You don’t need to be a Prime member in order to receive the discount — just click the button to redeem the deal, and then fill out the information required to instantly get access to the service. Once your 30 day free trial is over, you’ll be charged the limited-time promo price of $0.99/month for the first three months (a savings of more than 90%).
Afterwards, your membership will auto-renew at $14.95/month for the Premium Plus plan that includes access to Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts in addition to a monthly free credit to purchase any premium book within the Audible library (regardless of price) and exclusive member-only deals and discounts.
Other Audible Originals you can check out include the eight episode series Origins, which, like Words + Music, spotlights a groundbreaking artist and gives you a peek into their mind, including where they find inspiration. You’ll also get to hear live performances, with each episode focusing on a different artist. Musicians you can look forward to learning more about include Billie Eilish, Doja Cat and King Princess.
Besides Audible Originals, the service includes a vast library of audiobooks that you can add to your listening list, including musician memoirs and music books. Instead of reading Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir, you’ll be able to listen to actress Julia Roberts narrate the star’s life, or hear from JoJo as the “Too Little, Too Late” artist narrates her own memoir.