Dance
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“I’m like a dirty s–thead raver. I come from throwing illegal parties — and not that long ago.”
So says The Blessed Madonna over Zoom one evening from her home in London — roughly 4,000 miles from the Chicago club scene where she made her name, and just as far from her native Kentucky, where she grew up “poor as hell” and first immersed herself in the scene. “Then when you’re talking to people who work in offices about what they think about your music, and suddenly there’s actual money involved,” she continues, “that just seems crazy.”
Weeks away from the release of her debut album, Godspeed, the 46-year-old artist born Marea Stamper is in the midst of such madness. After years of releasing remixes and singles on independent labels, including her own We Still Believe imprint, The Blessed Madonna signed with Major Recordings/Warner Records during the pandemic. The move placed an artist with subversive tendencies — sharing political opinions on social media, still frequenting illegal parties — squarely within the industry.
“Somebody has to get inside,” she says. “And if I’m to be put inside this system that has all these levers of power, my job is to be a little shard of glass in somebody’s foot.”
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Out Oct. 11, Godspeed — 24 tracks long, culled down from more than 100 hours of music — started during the pandemic. During this time, The Blessed Madonna would diagram songs she considered perfect, breaking down Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” to their essential elements to better understand their power.
This self-taught music theory continued during what the producer calls “super-lockdown,” when she was confined to her London home due to her virally triggered asthma. During that time, she had been tasked with transforming Dua Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia, into the Club Future Nostalgia “megamix” — a project in which she welcomed everyone from dance legend Moodymann to Madonna herself.
Unable to work with a studio engineer, The Blessed Madonna handled all of the technical aspects of the megamix herself, poring over YouTube tutorials and getting instructions from friends over the phone. Then, sadly in the midst of it all, her father died of COVID-19. She had to ID his body over email. “It was f–king awful,” she recalls. The ordeal not only elevated her ability to “get the thing out of my head that I wanted to say,” but reinforced her goal of making a dance record that wasn’t just excellent, but personal.
On Godspeed, The Blessed Madonna and a gaggle of collaborators she calls “the God squad” deliver fresh, soulful, often joyous and occasionally challenging takes on club music. Kylie Minogue sings about being “six deep in the bathroom stall” on the piano-laced party anthem “Edge of Saturday Night.” (RAYE was originally set to feature but had to drop out as her own career blew up.) Chicago house royalty Jamie Principle purrs about nights in the city’s mythical Warehouse on “We Still Believe.” And her late dad expresses how her success “fills my heart up with joy” in a voice message sampled on “Somebody’s Daughter.” In interludes, she and her collaborators giggle through unscripted silliness caught on hot mics.
“I feel like most dance records have nothing of the maker in them,” The Blessed Madonna says. “They’re kind of, like, engineered in a lab … But somebody has to make a decision.”
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So she decided to make the antithesis to what she often hears while moving through the world as a heavily touring DJ. “There are songs I only hear in the Uber and I can’t tell them apart, and I don’t know who any of the girls are, and they’re all Auto-Tuned into the f–king grave,” she says. “That is bad for art, and bad art is bad for culture and for thinking.”
Writing sessions happened across London, Chicago, Los Angeles and at Imogen Heap’s home in Essex, England. There, The Blessed Madonna and her husband, along with a group that included electronic duo Joy (Anonymous), gathered over the 2021 holidays. The pair appears on “Carry Me Higher.”
She is also friends with Fred again.., with whom she collaborated in 2021 on “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing),” a hit that reached No. 33 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and soundtracked the final scene in 2022’s Academy Award-nominated Triangle of Sadness. The Blessed Madonna says witnessing “the Beatlemania that exploded around Fred” (whom she calls “so smart, so good at what he does and also so nice that it sort of makes you want to kill him, because it’s all real”) made her question her own goals. “I thought, ‘Am I supposed to want that?’ And I had a little breakdown,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Is this record going where I want it to go? Am I reinforcing the status quo in dance music or am I pushing back against it?’
“We’re all just supposed to get rich and go to Ibiza and stop caring about politics and saying things that will upset people,” she continues. But for a self-described “s–thead raver,” that fate is unlikely.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Jean-Michel Jarre is set to open and close the Paris Closing Ceremony for the 2024 Paralympics on Sunday, Sept. 8. A pioneer in electronic music, Jarre is a native of France.
The Sept. 8 finale will celebrate 4,400 athletes from 168 Paralympic delegations. Following the athletes’ parade and the handover of the flag from Paris 2024 to Los Angeles 2028, the stadium will host an open-air party for the public at Stade de France.
The much-anticipated musical celebration highlights the French electro scene, with Jarre and a number of other French artists on the lineup, including Agoria, Alan Braxe, Anetha, Boston Bun, Breakbot & Irfane, Busy P, Cassis, Chloe, Chloé Caillet, DJ Falcon, Étienne de Crecy, GЯEG, Irène Drésel, Kavinsky, Kiddy Smile, Kittin Kungs, Martin Solveig, Nathalie Duchene, Ofenbach, Polo & Pan, Tatyana Jane and The Avener.
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A press statement notes the “the concert promises to be a visually and musically festive spectacle, closing the Paris 2024 Games in style.”
Thomas Jolly is artistic director, Victor le Masne is musical director and Romain Pissenem is director/designer of festival.
Speaking with the news publication Le Parisien, Jarre said he considers Pissenem one of the world’s greatest show creators.
In a 2022 interview with Billboard Jarre talked about his French roots, saying his album Oxymore “is a tribute to this French way of approaching the roots of electronic music — by actually dealing with sounds rather than notes and injecting the sound design approach to music composition, people have no idea about how big their contribution is in the way we’re doing the music today.”
Mentor Pierre Schaeffer of Groupe de Recherches Musicale, whom Jarre called “the father of musique concrète,” taught him “two quite important things: Don’t hesitate to go to the unexpected, to mix the sound of a bird with a clarinet, to mix the sound of a washing machine with a trombone … And he said, don’t waste your time experimenting, because your path is to create a bridge between the experimentation we are doing is here in this group and pop music and the audience.”
This week in dance music: Chase & Status clocked their first U.K. No. 1 hit with their recently released Stormzy collab “Backbone,” The Tim Bergling Foundation announced an auction of clothes, musical equipment and other memorabilia belonging to late producer Avicii, the team behind Ibiza’s Hï and Ushuaïa pulled off a pretty out of this world PR stunt to reveal that their new club is coming next year, we chatted with Sofi Tukker about croissants upon the release of their new album, DJ Snake distanced himself from Lil Jon’s widely celebrated performance of “Turn Down For What” during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, the video for Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child” hit a billion views on Spotify, Chris Lake and Vintage Culture were announced among the headliners for Costa Rica’s Ocasa Festival early next year, we did a deep dive into the business of touring travel logistics (and why DJs always want to stay in the quietest hotels) and Outkast sued electronic act ATLiens for giving themselves the same name as the hip-hop legends’ classic 1996 album.
And as always, it all comes back to the music. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Mura Masa, Curve 1
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English producer Mura Masa is back with his fourth studio album Curve 1, which — with its club focus, no f–ks attitude and an orange-red version of Charli XCX’s season-defining chartreuse — can be considered a counterpart to Brat. Tracks about doing drugs (“I don’t do drugs, but with you I do,” Daniela Lalita says while guesting on previously released single “Drugs”), sex (with a female voice purring in French on the otherwise sharp-edged “SXC”) and good old making out (“We Are Making Out”) give the project a happily messy YA feel, although the production throughout is fully mature, frequently lush, occasionally soaring and simply just cool throughout. The project is the first release on Mura Masa’s own Pond Recordings.
“Feels very different to be releasing a record this time around, being independent affords so much more control and connection to the work,” the artist born Alexander Crossan wrote on Instagram. “I wanted to make something no frills, no cynical music industry narrative, no manipulative backstory. Just music that I think is really great and that people can gather around. Can’t wait for you to hear it. My love to everybody who worked with me on this, and most of all my love to anybody who listens and connects with it.”
Sofi Tukker, Bread
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Sophie Hawley Weld and Tucker Halpern recently told us that the concept of their new album, Bread, is both simple — the title is an acronym for “be really energetic and dance” — and deep, with the title representing ideas about satiating pleasure with abandon and experiencing nourishing abundance. The visual aesthetic the pair has created around this world reflects these themes, particularly in the video for “Woof,” which features the duo and special guest Kah-Lo (who very much eats on her guest verse) riding around New York City on a double-decker while partaking in many forms of pleasure, from massages to dancing to making out cradling a puppy. Out on Ultra Records, the entire 10-track album contains this same sort of exuberance and style, making Bread a must devour.
Yaeji, “booboo”
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Yaeji says she made her latest after a period of deep introspection, with the producer finding — as so many of us do — that after a lot of soul searching, it feels really good to just dance, hard. Debuted during her recent Boiler Room set in New York, “booboo” is spare, tough and funky, with the producer slowly turning up the dial on a buzzsaw bassline, adding punches of kickdrum and then turning it all off to sample her own 2017 breakout hit “raingurl” before just encouraging everyone “to shake your booty from the left to the right.” The track is out on XL Recordings.
Swedish House Mafia, “Lioness” (Francis Mercier Remix)
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Francis Mercier works his considerable magic on the most recent Swedish House Mafia release, with the Haitian producer stripping the flutes, relaxing the BPM and taking the percussion down by a few levels and altogether turning “Lioness” into a steamy, dreamy, hard-emoting afrobeats affair. “This one hits extra hard for me,” Mercier writes of the remix, “as I remember buying tickets to all of their NY shows. Nothing is impossible.” Mercier has been touring heavily this summer, with dates over the next few weeks including Burning Man, New York Fashion Week and shows across Ibiza.
Mau P & Diplo feat. Gunna, “Receipts”
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Mau P further further establishes himself as an absolute star of the new generation of producers with “Receipts” a hypnotic club-focused collab with Diplo and Gunna that was debuted during the two producers’ four hour b2b at Coachella this past April. “‘Receipts’ came to life as Wes and I were preparing for our b2b Coachella set which was also my debut performance at the festival,” Mau P says. “We had been talking for hours about music and our various influences, after which Wes asked me the obvious question – ‘Should we try to create a song together that we can play at Coachella?’ He had recently done a session with Gunna and gave me an acapella to mess around with. One night during Miami Music Week, I came home from a show feeling pretty hyped up, opened my laptop and landed on the first version of this track. From there, Wes and I went back and forth to nail it, and eventually premiered ‘Receipts’ at Coachella.”
Seven Lions & Subtronics feat. Skylar Grey, “I’ll Wait For You”
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Seven Lions and Subtronics join forces (as “Seventronics,” naturally), with a track as huge and hard as you’d expect from the pair. But while both producers specialize in bass, they’re also both masters of layering on shimmering flourishes that give their work a deep space feel, even as it hits you over the head. Vocals from Skyler Grey give “I’ll Wait For You” added softness and power. The single is out on Seven Lions’ own Ophelia Records.
As summer turns to fall, festival lineups for early 2025 are starting to drop. One of the first out the gate is Costa Rica’s Ocaso Festival, which on Thursday (Aug. 22) announced a 2025 lineup featuring house maestro Chris Lake, globetrotting idols The Martinez Brothers and Brazilian phenom Vintage Culture, along with Space Miami resident […]
Eleven years after its release, the video for Swedish House Mafia‘s “Don’t You Worry Child” is still making history. On Wednesday (Aug. 21), YouTube announced that the video has surpassed 1 billion views on the platform, the first clip by the trio to join this elite group. Released on Sept. 14, 2012, “Don’t You Worry […]
DJ Snake will not, apparently, turn down for American political conventions. In a statement Wednesday (Aug. 21) on X, the French producer responded to the performance of his 2013 Lil Jon collab “Turn Down for What” being performed by the Atlanta rapper during night 2 of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “I did not […]
Beloved dance duo Sofi Tukker stopped by the Billboard News studio to talk about their longstanding professional relationship, their new album and much more.
“The truth is we never stopped going to the studio, so we’re just always making things,” the group’s Sophie Hawley-Weld says of the period between the last Sofi Tukker album, 2022’s Wet Tennis, and their new project, Bread, out this Friday (Aug. 24) through Ultra Music.
The other half of Sofi Tukker, Tucker Halpern, adds that they know a new project is forming “once we feel like the songs are telling a story and once we feel like, ‘OK there’s something cohesive here that feels like they need to belong together,’ then we make the album.”
Halpern calls Bread, a 10-track collection that includes features from Channel Tres, Kah-Lo and MC Bola, “a return to who we are when we started. When we started, I had just finished playing basketball, we were in college, Sophie was a jazz musician playing mostly Brazilian music. I was into house music, playing house parties, she brought everything from her world, and I brought everything from my world, and we kind of mashed them together, and I think [with this album], we did that harder and deeper than we’ve ever done before.”
There are indeed layers of meaning in the project, with the title referencing much more than baguettes and sourdough. The title track and the, Hawley-Weld says, “abundant, fun, ridiculous, over the top, sexy, playful world” they created around it with its sumptuous visuals, was partially inspired by the 2009 book The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.
“Basically it’s about how this idea of virginity and purity is so harmful to women, and the less we have experienced pleasure, the more value we have. It’s just not OK,” says Hawley-Weld. “So we wrote the song ‘Bread’ about owning your appetite — sexually, for food and it’s also a symbol for abundance and owning that as a woman as well.”
“We also don’t want to be preachy when we’re saying things we want to say,” adds Halpern. “We also want it to feel fun and light, because that’s also what people often go to our music for, but there is a lot of meaning there.”
In keeping with this theme, Heidi Klum stars alongside the duo in the recently released video for album track “Spiral.” The trio linked after first meeting the supermodel at Paris Fashion Week, later enlisting her to be in the video, an invitation Klum agreed to under the condition that Hawley-Weld and Halpern appear in it as well.
“There’s just not that many examples of woman who are totally owning their sexuality,” Hawley-Weld says of working with Klum, “and being around that was really heartwarming and awesome, because I don’t want to feel like my sexuality will decline as I’m getting older, and she proves that doesn’t have to happen.”
Watch Sofi Tukker’s interview above.
The creator of Ibiza clubbing institutions Hï and Ushuaïa has announced the opening a new nightclub on the island in 2025.
The space, called [UNVRS], has been dubbed a “hyperclub,” by The Night League, the group behind the new concept and the other two afrorementioned clubs.
While details are still scant regarding what a “hyperclub” is, what this space will look like or what kind of music it will program, Yann Pissenem, the owner, founder and CEO of The Night League tells Billboard that with the new space, “we’re taking everything we’ve learned from creating Ushuaïa and Hï Ibiza—venues ranked among the world’s best—and pushing the boundaries even further.
“A Hyperclub is the next evolution in global nightlife,” Pissenem continues. “Imagine seeing your favorite artists in a space that offers the best elements of a club, the infrastructure of an arena, and the best hospitality in the world.[UNVRS] is about attention to granular detail, from the finishes across the venue to the unique experiences our guests will never forget. It’s a space that retains the raw energy of a rave, connecting the present and future within the walls of stunning architecture.
The announcement of the club technically began on July 31, when many in Ibiza reported seeing a mysterious object in the sky near Es Vedra, a large rock formation just off the coast of the island’s west coast.
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Today (Aug. 19) that situation was revealed to be a marketing stunt, with none other than Will Smith (an original Man In Black, of course) posting a video of himself to Instagram saying he’d seen the “UFO sighting” and therefore “hit my boy Yann, and Yann is like the king of Ibiza,” with Pissenem then sending Smith a pinned location on the island, which lead Smith to the construction site of the new club. In the video, Smith meets Pissenem at the site, with Pissenem declaring “welcome to [UNVRS]” as the Men In Black them song plays.
With The Night League, Pissenem has made Ushuaïa and Hï destinations for many of the world’s biggest DJs, with this season’s Ushuaïa residents including Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren and Hï hosting heavy hitters like Black Coffee, Eric Prydz, Fisher and many more. The company says that together, these clubs bring in 1.5 million attendees each season.
“Ibiza has always been the epicenter of global club culture, and we feel a responsibility to elevate it again, ensuring it remains at the forefront of the nightlife scene,” Pissenem continues to Billboard. “With [UNVRS], we’re not just preserving Ibiza’s prestige; we’re redefining what’s possible in club culture.”
An upcoming auction will sell personal items and memorabilia from late producer Avicii. The live auction happens on Oct. 1 at 3 p.m. CEST, and will include shoes, clothing, musical instruments and other ephemera related to the artist’s career. Hosted by Auktionsverk, the auction’s revenue will go to the Tim Bergling Foundation, which was launched […]
This week in dance music: A load of classic (and signed!) vinyl trance classics are being auctioned off for charity, we spoke to Phoenix about their performance during the 2024 Olympics Closing Ceremony in Paris, an electronic-infused show that generated a streaming surge for Kavinsky’s 2010 classic “Nightcall.” Bicep’s Matt McBriar revealed that he’s recovering from surgery for a non-cancerous brain tumor, the lineup was announced for Damian Lazarus’ annual Day Zero party in Tulum, as was the lineup for the four-day Art of the Wild happening this fall at the Wynn Las Vegas. Charli XCX revealed that one more Brat remix will be released before Brat summer becomes Brat fall, and we chatted about the chart success of her Billie Eilish-featuring edit of “Guess.”
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And of course, we’ve got the goods. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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The Blessed Madonna & Kylie Minogue, “Edge of Saturday Night”
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The Blessed Madonna ramps up ahead of the release of her debut album, Godspeed, with its latest single, a banger of a singalong party anthem featuring the queen herself, Kylie Minogue. Having demonstrated her dexterity in fusing the pop world and dance realms of her Club Future Nostalgia megamix of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, the artist born Marea Stamper again demonstrates the seamless crossover between the two world’s with a piano-laced, shimmeringly synthy party anthem that maintains a lot of muscle in its bassline. An official video for the track, filmed at Ibiza’s classic club Pikes, is forthcoming, with Godspeed itself out on October 11 via Warner Records.
Bonobo, “Xpander”
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Who else but the master Bonobo could so deftly arrange spare beats, an ethereal acapella and what sounds like flute into a kinetic, hard-hitting electronic track that’s long been a weapon in his sets. After playing it out all summer the England-born, Los Angeles based producer had officially dropped fan favorite “Xpander” through Ninja Tune and will surely play it in upcoming performances that include his Outlier shows happening at Red Rocks in Colorado in September and throughout Europe into the fall and a Los Angeles Boiler Room event on September 21.
Peggy Gou, “Find the Way”
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Ahead of her biggest ever headlining show tomorrow (Aug. 17) in London, Peggy Gou has released a one-off single, “Find the Way.” Featuring her own vocals, the track very much extends the cool, dreamy vibe of her June album, I Hear You, and particularly its hit single “It Goes Like (Nanana),” ultimately taking a slightly darker and subtly more psychedelic turn in its final third. “Find the Way” is out through Gou’s own Gudu Records and comes ahead of her show tomorrow in London’s Gunnersbury Park that will also feature Mochakk, LSDXOXO, Sally C and Hiver.
What So Not & Habstrakt feat. Maiah Manser “Realise”
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The Australian producer releases his full Motions EP today, adding two more tracks to the project’s already out and genuinely excellent two singles “Lights Go Out” and “Slow Motion.” Produced alongside French artist Habstrakt and featuring vocals from L.A.-based singer Maiah Manser, “Realise” folds elements of garage and progressive house into a glowing, cerebral anthem for the afterhours. The EP follows What So Not’s Dance Dance Revival Tour, which hit 11 venues around Australia with the goal of platforming rising Australian artists who’ve had a hard time breaking through due to pandemic-related shutdowns, inflation and fewer opportunities, given how far the country is from so many other places, with the run ending with a sweet, raucous finale. Motions is out via Create Music Group.
Radio Slave, “The Lunatics” (Solomun Edit)
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The master Solomun puts his unmistakable touch on Radio Slaves’ “The Lunatics,” from that artist’s May album, Venti. The Bosnian-German producer transforms the original into tough, 80s-influenced and darkly hypnotic anthem in the grand tradition of New Order, and just in time for these sweaty late days of summer.
Duke Dumont feat. Clementine Douglas, “Ain’t Giving Up”
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The English producer returns in fine form with “Ain’t Giving Up,” on which he demonstrates his signature synth forward take on house music, with the power-lunged Clementine Douglas adding chest-pumping vocals about refusing to give up on someone you love over the bewitching production. Dumont’s upcoming shows include Las Vegas’ Zouk this weekend, two nights at the Brooklyn Mirage later this month and two major sold out shows in London and Dublin this fall.