Dance
Page: 34
It’s Friday night in Las Vegas, and Voltaire, the intimate art deco-meets-Studio 54 new performance venue within the Venetian, has transformed into an extremely lit gay club. Beneath countless sparkling disco and glass balls, the crowd of 1,000 dances to the DJ’s mix of a who’s who of dance–pop — Jessie Ware, Spice Girls, ABBA, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s recently revived “Murder on the Dancefloor.” Intermittently, elastic-limbed burlesque artists enter to striptease, dance and execute feats of dazzling flexibility. This is Voltaire’s Belle de Nuit “preshow.” And it’s just the warmup to the main event.
“It’s almost time for Kylie Minooooogue!” the evening’s MC declares. “Yeah, that’s right — Mother is coming!”
Trending on Billboard
The screams become truly deafening when, roughly 10 minutes later, the curtain opens to reveal the diminutive 55-year-old Australian pop star clad entirely in metallic gold. She launches into “Your Disco Needs You,” a rousing track from her 2000 album, Light Years: “Let’s dance through all our fears, war is over for a bit,” she sings. “The whole world should be moving, do your part, cure a lonely heart!”
For the next 70 minutes, Minogue follows her own command, belting songs from her three decades-and-counting career that have united listeners with their infectious dance-pop melodies and lyrics that, whether ebullient or bittersweet, are always anchored by a deep, sincere sense of joy. She shimmies to her cover of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “The Loco-Motion,” one of her earliest hits from 1987 (and still her highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at No. 3); she rises above the stage in a flowing red cape like some disco high priestess to sing her seductive current smash, and her biggest in the United States in more than 20 years, “Padam Padam.” She’s a consummate pop diva, stomping down the stage’s catwalk and striking poses — until each song ends. Then, she simply becomes Kylie: giggling, kicking up her stiletto heels in a happy dance and, at one point, speaking into her water bottle when she mistakes it for a microphone.
These two sides of Minogue — the glamorous, charismatic performer who has somehow also remained deeply relatable — have helped her to maintain a remarkably consistent yet organically evolving career amid the shifting waters of the music industry. “A feeling you get from Kylie’s music is that from an artistic point of view, she enjoys her place in pop culture. She doesn’t challenge it or try to run away from it — she looks to innovate herself and develop within that space,” says Stuart Price, the British electronic music producer who executive-produced Minogue’s pivotal 2010 album, Aphrodite. “And it’s infectious to see someone enjoying being themselves. There’s an openness there that creates a connection between Kylie and her fans.”
Richard Wilbraham dress, Magda Butrym jacket, Saint Laurent boots and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Much of that core fan base feels connected to Minogue because they actually grew up with her. They met her as the feisty teenager Charlene on Australian soap opera Neighbours; followed her first era of pop stardom in the late ’80s as one of the flagship teen idols from the Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) “hit factory” that also produced Rick Astley and Bananarama; watched her break out of that mold in the ’90s on British label Deconstruction, exploring more experimental dance-pop on 1997’s Impossible Princess; and embraced her evolution into global star in the 2000s, especially in the United States, with the release of 2001’s Fever, her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 (No. 3), which yielded “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” the song with a hypnotic “la-la-la” chorus that was a self-fulfilling prophecy and propelled it to No. 7 on the Hot 100.
Over all those years, Minogue has stayed both impressively prolific and commercially viable. Eleven of her albums — including her last nine studio releases dating back to Fever — reached the Billboard 200, and 10 appeared on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, including Disco, a highlight of the dance-pop renaissance of 2020 that went to No. 1 on the latter. She has notched seven Hot 100 and five Mainstream Top 40 Airplay hits. It helps, of course, that her songs tend to “help people to smile and forget their daily problems for a bit as only a good piece of dance-pop music can do,” as disco legend Gloria Gaynor puts it. (She joined Minogue for “Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” on an expanded rerelease of Disco.) But her releases also always feel fresh, genuine and intentional. “Every time she delivers an album, to her it’s like the first,” says Jamie Nelson, senior vp of new recordings U.K. at BMG, Minogue’s label, who is also her longtime A&R executive. “There’s nothing lazy or dialed-in about it.”
Minogue has long been considered pop royalty in the United Kingdom (she’s about to receive the BRIT Awards’ Global Icon honor), Europe and Australia, where she’s the highest-selling female solo artist born in the country of all time; still, her U.S. audience has never quite reached that level. But she has remained popular — and at the front of pop culture consciousness — for long enough that while her older fans stateside remain loyal, younger ones continue to discover her. And that happened in a big way last June, when she released one very unusually titled single and experienced the kind of bona fide U.S. breakthrough that few artists manage in their mid-50s.
[embedded content]
“Padam Padam” — an onomatopoeia for the sound of a heartbeat — went viral on TikTok, with everyone from actress Suki Waterhouse to employees of the British art supply chain Hobbycraft making videos with it; to date, videos using “Padam Padam” have been viewed over 1.3 billion times on the platform. Simultaneously, “padam” became part of the pop lexicon, thanks in large part to Minogue’s LGBTQ+ fans who encouraged use of it as a noun, verb, exclamation or really any part of speech that called for it.
The song was such a runaway hit that, Minogue says, BMG delayed releasing Tension’s title track as a second single, “because ‘Padam’ just kept… Padaming.” With that momentum, Tension became her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 since 2010 (peaking at No. 21) and her second Top Dance/Electronic Albums No. 1. “Padam Padam,” which is now her second-most-streamed song in the United States after “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” became her first Mainstream Top 40 Airplay hit since 2004, her highest-peaking (No. 32) since 2003 and just garnered Minogue her second Grammy Award — the inaugural win in the new best pop dance recording category and her first since “Come Into My World” took home best dance recording two decades ago.
Now, with the Tension train still going strong (Xtension, an album of extended dance mixes, arrived in September) and her Vegas residency a coveted ticket, Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Icon is energized and determined to make the most of this moment. “I told someone at my label: It’s happening now. There’s no snoozing,” Minogue says firmly. “I am wildly inspired right now. I’m at a point in my life where I know it’s not eternal. I just want to maximize this brilliant wave. If you’re not out paddling for when that wave comes along, you’ve got no hope.” And, she promises, she paddles — constantly.
The afternoon following the show in late January, Minogue is in her favorite sweats, sipping tea in the empty Voltaire space and looking surprisingly awake. She doesn’t go onstage each night until after 11, and a two-show weekend renders her “kind of the amoeba version of myself,” she admits, crumpling her tiny 5-foot frame up, amoeba-style. “I’ll have a momentary internal dialogue with myself like, ‘OK, try to go a bit cruise control tonight?’ But it doesn’t work.”
Autopilot has never been Minogue’s thing. When she started out with Stock Aitken Waterman, she found the hit factory’s way of doing things a natural fit — “It’s like working on a TV show: ‘Here’s the script, you know what to do, here’s some direction, do it’ ” — but once her four-year contract ended in 1992, “I was gone. I’m a curious person, and I wanted to do more.” She had observed how the trio of songwriters of SAW worked, seen the craft and diligence it took to create “that song” — but becoming one herself? “That took a bit of haggling,” she says. “It wasn’t easy to make that segue.”
Tony Ward Couture dress and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Thanks to signing with Deconstruction, and particularly her second album with the label, 1997’s Impossible Princess, Minogue escaped the “normalness” of the SAW starlet image, Price recalls, and public perception of her started to shift to “Kylie the Artist.” When he met her around 2009 — a match made by her label at the time, Parlophone, where she had moved in 1999 — Price saw up close one way in which her soap opera training had benefited that artistry.
“She was able to so consistently deliver great performance after great performance,” he recalls — a skill, Minogue matter-of-factly told him, she supposed might come from the days when she would drive to set with a script she had just received and memorize her lines at traffic lights. “Her memory and recall is incredible, and it was the same when we were writing things together,” Price continues. “If she came up with a melody, it was just there — we could go eat a meal, then she’d bring it straight back up.”
“There’s probably a misconception out there that she’s not a traditional songwriter, but she’s phenomenal,” BMG’s Nelson says. “She’s got a belief that the song is God. She’ll really scrutinize her own music in comparison to outside songs, and anything that’s not up to scratch will get dismissed.” Minogue’s collaborators describe her as a fount of fully formed ideas. “The last three albums I’ve done with her, she has been coming up with whole ideas on her phone,” says Richard “Biff” Stannard, who co-wrote the 2002 hit “Love at First Sight” and, more recently, seven Tension tracks with Minogue. “She’s really confident to say, ‘I’ve got this melody that’s bugging me, I’ve got to get it out.’ It’s proper songwriter stuff.”
Oscar de la Renta dress and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
That said, Minogue has never been precious about accepting material from other writers — “Padam Padam” was co-written by Norwegian singer-songwriter Ina Wroldsen and producer Lostboy — and she relishes figuring out not just whether a song presented to her is a likely hit, but a hit for her. “Songs like ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ and ‘Padam,’ I can’t reply fast enough,” she says. “Not only is it an amazing song, but it and me… it’s like, ‘I can do this!’ If someone else performed ‘Padam’ it could’ve been great, but it would have been different.” Lately, she has been spending time in Los Angeles (her home base is Melbourne), working with two entirely new collaborators she won’t reveal quite yet, other than to say she has long wanted to work with them. “I was on cloud nine for like the next couple of days” after their most recent sessions, she says, grinning.
But since 2020, Minogue has also become a lot more independent in the studio: By necessity, amid pandemic isolation, she taught herself Logic and other essential tools of production. “It’s so liberating,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of uncomfortable moments [in the studio]. No one would have known because I just pretended my way through it. But to have my own mic and do it on my own time? It’s amazing. I could go for hours.”
Minogue’s manager, Polly Bhowmik of A&P Artist Management, says Minogue’s infatuation with studio tech has gone so far that “there is now very much ‘studio engineer Kylie’ as well as artist Kylie.” (Minogue has vocal engineering credits on much of Disco and Tension.) At Stannard’s suggestion, I ask about her personal mic collection (“She’s really geeky about microphones now”), and she quivers with excitement describing her current favorite. “It’s a Telefunken 251, and it’s beautiful,” she gushes. “It’s more to carry, but it’s like graduating to the big leagues.”
Her new studio skill set has been both empowering and freeing (she can now record herself and work on music from her Vegas hotel room, for instance), as well as impressive to her collaborators. “She’s actually useful in the studio!” exclaims singer-songwriter Sia, who co-executive-produced Minogue’s 2014 album, Kiss Me Once, and just released the duet bop “Dance Alone” with her. “She’s actually good at her job. And I would say she’s one of the most prolific idea generators of all the artists I’ve worked with.”
Richard Wilbraham dress, Magda Butrym jacket, Saint Laurent boots and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
It has also helped her to achieve more vocal precision. “She’s very forensic about getting her vocals exactly how she’s happy with, and this has given her that ability,” Stannard says. On Tension, the strikingly wide range of Minogue’s voice — she goes from a sultry purr to full belt to stratospheric whistle tones, and at one point even raps — is on full display. The confidence she now has in her voice took time, Minogue says, and voice lessons starting in 2001 taught her techniques that have helped her preserve and develop it.
“Maturing as a person and my voice maturing too, add to that these past two years of self-recording — [my process] is becoming more vacuum-sealed, and that’s so pleasing to me,” Minogue says. “And to accept that I don’t have that big voice, but being proud I have my voice, and really owning that? That has again taken a long time. But I can adapt and be many voices, just like my [visual] presentation. I’m chameleon-like,” she concludes, satisfied. “That is who I am.”
The morning after her “Padam Padam” Grammy win in early February, Minogue still seems to be wrapping her head around what happened.
“I don’t think I’ve touched down yet,” she admits over the phone. She wore a bright “Padam red” gown; she marveled at Miley Cyrus’ hair (“Amazing. She absolutely smashed it”); she sat with Karol G at the ceremony (“I don’t assume anyone knows who I am, but she’d been on my radar for the last year”); she finally met fellow Aussie Troye Sivan. She was embraced by fans new and old, including Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa, who invited Minogue to appear in her Studio 2054 pandemic-time livestream and, shortly after, featured on a remix of Minogue’s Disco track “Real Groove.”
As for the award itself: “It’s a big win for longevity — let’s put it that way,” Minogue says. It’s also concrete proof to both Minogue and her team that she has, as Sia puts it, “broken her glass ceiling” in the United States. “I’ve had this kind of to-and-fro thing with America,” Minogue reflects. “I was the ‘Loco-Motion’ girl for a long time, then I was the ‘la-la-la’ girl, and I guess I’m ‘Padam’ now. But now that we’ve got streaming, the algorithms will take you to discover more of my music.”
Kylie Minogue photographed on January 27, 2024 at Voltaire in Las Vegas. Tony Ward Couture dress, Christian Louboutin shoes and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Nelson says BMG has seen “an uplift on the catalog” since the Vegas residency began in November (it runs through early May), but is careful to note that it’s the culmination of a gradual increase in listenership — beyond the devoted core fan base that already buys multiple vinyl and cassette versions of Minogue’s records — over the past few years. “We are firmly seeing a new audience embracing Kylie,” Bhowmik says, pointing out that 60% of “Padam Padam” and Tension streams have come from listeners under 35 and that her audience on TikTok has grown 43% since the song’s release.
And that expanded audience includes the U.S. market, where Minogue hasn’t done a major tour since 2011’s spectacular Aphrodite trek. Considering the momentum behind her now and the fact that the pandemic prevented her from touring Disco, the time seems ripe for a major Minogue tour hitting America — and indeed, UTA just signed her for representation in the United States and Canada. Bhowmik says that with “more opportunities and accolades than ever before,” there are plans for her to perform across the United States and internationally “in the not-too-distant future.”
It’s a rebirth for Minogue — but really just the latest of many she has had throughout her career. “It’s a continuation, not a comeback,” Price says. “Everything from [Tension], it’s just a short steppingstone away from every other hit she has had. They all sound like innovative pop records made in the year they were released that are ahead of their time. And what they all have in common is that Kylie fever.”
That ineffable Kylie essence is always present regardless of whether Minogue wrote on a song or not. It’s the fizzy effervescence that makes “Love at First Sight” a euphoric dance party starter. It’s the very adult, subtle magnetism that makes songs like “Hands” and “Tension” sexy rather than ridiculous. And above all, it’s the true joy — the kind that’s all the more meaningful because you’ve known sadness, too — that suffuses every moment of anthems like Aphrodite’s “All the Lovers,” Disco’s “Say Something” or Tension’s “Hold On to Now.”
“Joy can come from a dark place,” Minogue says. “But if someone’s able to feel that joy and they might not have felt it this morning? It’s a moment of release. I want the audience to feel…” She searches for the right word, waving her hands excitedly, and then just exclaims: “Feel! I’m a conduit for all the emotions.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Red Bull Dance Your Style, the all-styles dance competition returns to the dance floor this year via four regional qualifier events that start next month in the United States. This year, the global contest will host the World Final in India later this year.
Dance Your Style will host regional qualifiers in Chicago, Memphis, Boston, and Los Angeles before hosting the National Final in Atlanta. As always, the all-styles competition means just that as all dance styles will get a platform including breaking, house, footwork, popping, turfing, and more. How the dance competition stands out is that instead of planned routines, the competitors do their best to outdo each other while trying to win over the crowd, who stand as the judges in place of a panel before advancing to the next round.
One of the beautiful things about Dance Your Style is the fact dancers from all manner of backgrounds join together and show up for one another despite the competitive nature of the event. As 2022 USA champion David “The Crown” Stalter shares, this is an event for the community and a chance of a lifetime.
“Red Bull Dance Your Style is an essential platform for the dance community. It takes dance battles to the next level, giving dancers of any background a space to show off their unique style and connect with other artists from around the world. It’s a genuine celebration of different cultures,” The Crown shared in a statement. “It also allows the audience to appreciate the improvisational nature of battling and makes them feel like they are part of the experience through crowd voting.”
After the National Final in Atlanta, the winners from each of the various global competitions around the world will face off at the World Final in Mumbai, India in November. We’ll share the full schedule of United States qualifier events, along with ways to find out more about the competition below.
Hip-Hop Wired has attended some past events and we strongly suggest you check out the competition in your respective regions if possible. There is nothing in the world quite like it. To the dancers, we wish you all the best.
Check out the schedule below.
April 20: Red Bull Dance Your Style North (Chicago) Regional Qualifier
April 27: Red Bull Dance Your Style South (Memphis) Regional Qualifier
May 4: Red Bull Dance Your Style East (Boston) Regional Qualifier
May 11: Red Bull Dance Your Style West (Los Angeles) Regional Qualifier
May 16-19: Red Bull Dance Your Style National Final and Weekender USA in Atlanta
November 9: Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final in Mumbai, India
For further information about the event, click here.
—
Photo: Red Bull
Movement 2024 has rounded out its lineup with a flurry of new acts, announced today (Feb. 28.) Artists joining the previously announced phase one lineup include Atlanta rap icon Ludacris, Los Angeles-based producer/rapper Channel Tres and techno legend Richie Hawtin, along with The Blessed Madonna, Chris Lake, Masters At Work, Carl Craig and Robert Hood, LTJ Bukem, Paul Woolford performing under his Special Request alias and many more.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
These artists join previously announced names including Fatboy Slim, James Blake, Solomun, Goldie (who will play a second festival set, per today’s announcement), Honey Dijon, Gorgon City, LP Giobbi, Sama’ Abdulhadi, Indira Skream, Mount Kimbie, DJ Minx, Boys Noize b2b VTSS and others.
Trending on Billboard
See the complete Movement 2024 lineup below.
Movement 2024 will take place at the festival’s longstanding home in Detroit’s Hart Plaza on May 25-27. Tickets are on sale now and start at $289.
The annual festival is produced by Detroit-based Paxahau, which launched in 1998 as an underground party promoter. The dance-focused company has produced Movement for the past 18 years, helping it gain global renown as one of the world’s premiere techno festivals. Paxahau is run by a team of 15 year-round, full-time employees across four departments: marketing and communications, production, talent and creative. During Movement, they bring in an event staff of 350 to help bring the event to life.
“This is a labor of love that all of us clustered around since we were young,” Paxahau Founder Jason Huvaere told Billboard in 2023. “Detroit techno culture is what we committed to years ago, it’s second nature.”
Courtesy Photo
Charli XCX occupies a very special and very rare spot in the pop music ecosystem. On the one hand, she’s the mainstream entry point into the underground, with projects such as Vroom Vroom introducing PC music to top 40 audiences back in 2016. On the other hand, she’s also known to deliver a smash single or two for the biggest films of the year and craft chart-topping collaborations with era-defining artists.
As the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Powerhouse honoree, Charli XCX stands as one of the most exciting figures in contemporary pop music. To contextualize her decade-long career, a trip through the Grammy nominee’s chart history is in order.
Charli XCX made her Billboard Hot 100 debut back in 2013 with “I Love It,” a boisterous synth-pop team-up with Icona Pop that reached No. 7 on the chart. The following year, Charli doubled up with two additional Hot 100 top 10 hits: “Boom Clap” (No. 8), the breakout song from The Fault in Our Stars soundtrack, and “Fancy” (No. 1), a monsterous smash collaboration with Iggy Azalea that spent seven weeks atop the ranking.
“Boom Clap,” in addition to fellow single “Break the Rules” (No. 91), appeared on 2014’s Sucker, which hit No. 28 on the Billboard 200, marking her first entry on the chart. She followed that up with four more entries, including 2022’s Crash (No. 7), her first Billboard 200 top 10 title. The following year, Charli revisited her soundtrack roots and cooked up “Speed Drive,” a single from Barbie the Album that hit No. 73 on the Hot 100 — her first entry on the chart in nine years.
With a catalog and career as kaleidoscopic as hers, Charli XCX is a Powerhouse through and through.
After the video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about Peso Pluma and the Mexican music boom, the role record labels play, origins of hip-hop, how Beyoncé arrived at Renaissance, the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and more.
Charli XCX is prepping her next musical era. The singer and pop hit songwriter announced on Instagram on Wednesday morning (Feb. 28) that her sixth full-length studio album, Brat, is coming this summer. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Brat — this summer. 15 songs. 41:23 minutes […]
Daft Punk is going face to face in a whole new way, with Madame Tussauds New York revealing new wax figures of the French duo. Capturing the pair — Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo — in their Random Access Memories-era silk and velvet suits, the figures debuted in the facility on Tuesday (Feb. 27.) The […]
True icons know a thing or two about longevity — just look at Kylie Minogue. At the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Awards, the global superstar will be honored with the Icon Award in recognition of her hit-packed decades-long career.
Across a whopping 16 studio albums, Minogue has cemented herself as both a style chameleon and a master of musical reinvention. From bubble dance pop (1988’s Kylie) to a brave stab at country music (2018’s Golden) to last year’s disco-inflected synth-pop opus (Tension), Minogue has moved throughout her career with a special level of fearlessness.
The Australian juggernaut first hit the Billboard Hot 100 back in 1988 with the No. 3-peaking “The Loco-Motion,” a cover of Little Eva’s 1962 hit. She would once again hit the top 10 14 years later with the classic “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (No. 7), the lead single from her Grammy-winning album Fever. With Fever, Minogue flew to No. 3 on the Billboard 200, her highest career peak yet on the ranking; she has landed 11 total titles on the chart, including 2010’s Aphrodite (No. 19).
In addition to her success on Billboard’s marquee albums and singles charts, Minogue has also proven herself to be a dominant force on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. On that ranking, she’s earned 18 overall entries so far, including the top 10 hits “Dance Alone” (No. 8, with Sia) and “Padam Padam” (No. 7), the first song to win the newly formed Grammy for best pop dance recording. “Padam Padam” also peaked at No. 32 on Pop Airplay, marking her first appearance on the ranking in nearly two decades.
With a career like this, it’s no wonder that Kylie Minogue is the Icon Award recipient for the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Awards.
After the video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about Peso Pluma and the Mexican music boom, the role record labels play, origins of hip-hop, how Beyoncé arrived at Renaissance, the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and more.
This week in dance music: Alesso was announced the performer for the L.A. Galaxy’s 2024 season home opener against Inter Miami this Sunday (Feb.25), and Daft Punk took us back two decades with a one-time only livestream of their 2003 film Interstella 5555, in honor of Daft Punk Day.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And, of course, we’ve got new music too. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Trending on Billboard
Ariana Grande, “yes, and?” (The Blessed Madonna’s Godsquad Remix)
[embedded content]
The Blessed Madonna has an esteemed pedigree when it comes to remixing our apex pop queens, with her 2020 Club Future Nostalgia megamix of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia album existing in a rare and rave-y Venn diagram of prestige underground, pop perfection and absolute fun. So the producer is a perfect fit to edit Ariana’s Grande’s “yes, and?” — itself frothy dance fare that’s now in its fifth week on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. The Blessed Madonna initially simplifies the production before turning the dial up on the track’s string section, ramping up into all-out disco bliss (and giving us more of a good thing, by extending the track by a full minute and a half).
Sebastian Ingrosso, Steve Angello, “Skip”
[embedded content]
Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello — two thirds of the holy trinity Swedish House Mafia — take us straight to the ’90s rave of our minds with “Skip,” their tight, urgent take on tech house with an acid-edge that gives serious “Hey Boy Hey Girl”-era Chemical Brothers. The track is the latest from the pair, who released “O OK?” with PARISI last spring, and comes ahead of Angello’s solo headlining U.S. tour that launches on Mar. 29 in Boston and will itself then skip across the country for Coachella. Swedish House Mafia is also playing summer festivals including Tomorrowland and a residency at Ushuaïa Ibiza.
2hollis, “light”
[embedded content]
At 20 years old, rising Los Angeles producer 2hollis has already received co-signs by Skrillex and Four Tet, and demonstrates why with “light.” Reminiscent of Worlds-era Porter Robinson with an emo edge, the song is punchy — like a strobe beamed directly into your eyes — and a pristinely produced homage to messy love, with 2hollis handling vocals himself. Having already sold out shows around the U.S., the producer is currently in Europe for sold-out performances in Berlin, London and Paris over the coming week.
Cakes Da Kill & Dawn Richard, “Do Dat Baby”
[embedded content]
New York star Cakes da Killa links with the ever-sublime Dawn Richard for the simmering “Do Dat Baby.” The track layers up loads of hand percussion with R&B-oriented keys, Cakes’ rapid-fire flow and Richard’s velvet voice for an effortlessly cool dancefloor jam with sex appeal. The song comes from Cakes’ forthcoming album Black Sheep, out Mar. 22 via Tokimonsta’s Young Art label.
Omar Souleyman, “Rahat Al Chant Ymme”
[embedded content]
Long specializing in dabke — the music that accompanies the traditional folk dance of the same name rooted in the Levant region — Omar Souleyman again crosses that sound with rave-ier impulses on the joyfully high-octane dance jam “Rahat Al Chant Ymme.” Out via Mad Decent, the track is the lead single from Souleyman’s forthcoming album Erbil, coming Mar. 29. The project is the wedding singer turned international star’s tenth studio LP and is all about Erbil, Iraq, the city the Syrian artist now dwells in and which, a press release says, “offered solace and embraced Souleyman during recent uneasy times.”
Three years ago today, on Feb. 22, 2021, Daft Punk rattled the world with the announcement the duo was breaking up after 28 years together. The French icons have since marked the anniversary of this occasion by releasing a trinket from the vast Daft Punk vault on Feb. 22 in the two years since.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And that date has come around again. To celebrate their unparalleled legacy, the French duo is screening its 2003 film, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, on its Twitch channel today. The screening begins precisely at 5:22 p.m. ET.
Overseen by Japanese animation legend Leiji Matsumoto and written and scored by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo and Thomas Bangalter, Interstella 5555 is an hour-long “space opera” completing the story begun by the videos of singles “One More Time,” “Aerodynamic,” “Digital Love” and “Harder Better Faster Stronger,” all from the duo’s era-defining 2001 album, Discovery.
Trending on Billboard
In those videos, an evil impresario kidnaps and brainwashes an extra-terrestrial rock group, transforms them into prefabricated pop stars, brings them back to Earth and manipulates them to the top of the charts. Each “movement” of this silent film is accompanied by a track from Discovery.
“The project was born in 2000, when we flew out to Tokyo with an hour of music and our own script,” Bangalter said upon the film’s release in 2003. “Leiji gave us a warm reception, and after listening to the music, he came on board immediately. Three years later, our dream has come true.”
In terms of comeback rumblings, the French duo was said to be playing the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, a rumor that was quickly shot down by their team last fall. The pair did kinda sorta satiate the ongoing public demand for fresh Daft Punk material by releasing the “drumless” edition of 2013 classic Random Access Memories in November, in conjunction with the album’s 10-year anniversary.
LA Galaxy has scored a major artist for its 2024 MLS Regular Season Home Opener. The soccer team announced on Monday (Feb. 20) that Alesso will be performing at the opening game against Inter Miami CF at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday (Feb. 25). “As a massive football enthusiast, I’m looking forward to being […]