State Champ Radio Dance
Page: 39
Seven years after its 2017 release, Clean Bandit’s Zara Larsson-featuring “Symphony” ranks at No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart dated Aug. 31.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity from Aug. 19-25. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“Symphony” debuts at No. 1, the first to do so since Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do For Love” topped the tally in February.
Trending on Billboard
The seven-year-old song is trending on TikTok thanks to multiple edits using colorful photos and videos of dolphins, with captions and overlays that are generally funny and oftentimes demotivational. Others talk about seeing dolphin images in their everyday life since and being reminded of the new meme.
For her part, Larsson, who is currently on tour, changed the background video of her concert performances of “Symphony” to dolphins as a nod to the trend.
“Symphony” peaked at No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart in 2017. In the week ending Aug. 22, it earned 784,000 official U.S. streams, up 7%, with more gains likely for the week ending Aug. 29.
The song reigns over Surf Curse’s “Disco,” which jumps from No. 7 to the runner-up spot on the TikTok Billboard Top 50. As noted in the article announcing the Aug. 24 chart, “Disco,” released in 2019, surges due to a dance trend sporting two creators facing each other while performing their moves.
“Disco” leaped 82% in streams in the week ending Aug. 22 to 1.7 million. It’s the second Surf Curse song to sport major attention on TikTok years after the song’s initial release, following “Freaks,” which found so much success that it became a radio single for the band, peaking at No. 15 on Alternative Airplay in 2021.
Jordan Adetunji’s “Kehlani,” which had led the TikTok Billboard Top 50 for the preceding two weeks, falls to No. 3, while DJ Drama and Gucci Mane’s “Photo Shoot” and Hanumankind and Kalmi’s “Big Dawgs” round out the top five.
It’s worth noting too that Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” the chart’s longest-running No. 1 at 10 weeks earlier this year, drops 4-6, marking the first time in its 17 weeks on the survey (dating back to May) that it has not been in the chart’s top four.
Two other songs join “Symphony” as debuts within the top 10, and unlike the No. 1, the ensuing two are brand new songs: Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” bows at No. 8, followed by Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” at No. 9.
“Die With a Smile” is the first TikTok Billboard Top 50 appearance (the chart began in September 2023) for both Gaga and Mars. The top-performing clip featuring the song so far is an upload on Mars’ own account showing a portion of the music video, while other early successes include fan edits of movies and TV (Tangled, Elemental and more), reaction videos to the song and music video, lip-synch renditions and more.
The tune concurrently debuts at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 27.4 million streams, 13 million audience impressions and 21,000 sold, as previously reported.
“Taste,” meanwhile, hasn’t yet made any other Billboard charts – that’s because it was released on Aug. 23, alongside the rest of Carpenter’s new album, Short n’ Sweet. The song benefits from the tracking week for the TikTok Billboard Top 50 being a Monday-Sunday setup (Aug. 19-25) vs. the majority of Billboard’s other charts (Friday-Thursday), though it still needed a hefty amount of attention in those three days to even crack the ranking, let alone the top 10.
According to TikTok, creations using the main “Taste” sound have already surpassed 2 million, with one of the top-performing uploads a behind-the-scenes video of the “Taste” music video uploaded by Carpenter herself, asking, “Am I babygirl?” Others feature lip-synchs to the new track, whose full Billboard chart impact will be known on the tallies dated Sept. 7, utilizing data from Aug. 23 to 29.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
Clams Casino doesn’t believe in the age-old adage of having to finish what you start — at least in a single recording session. Born Michael Volpe (no relation to the New York Yankees shortstop and fellow New Jersey native Anthony Volpe), he rose to prominence serving as the sonic architect behind a majority of A$AP Rocky’s seminal 2011 Live. Love. A$AP mixtape, which ushered in a new era of NYC rap and kicked off the A$AP Mob frontman’s Harlem Renaissance.
But nearly 15 years later, Volpe’s atmospheric beats has continue to leave an impact on the next generation of artists. Being a fan of his work with Rocky, Clams Casino was already on The Kid LAROI’s radar when a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh, connected the producer to the Australian musician when he was just 17 years old. Though nothing came of the initial studio session link-up, a year-and-a-half later, Clams Casino cooked up another intoxicating beat that he felt matched the vibe LAROI was looking for, and he turned out to be right.
Trending on Billboard
“I hadn’t spoken to LAROI in a long time and I just had a feeling,” he tells Billboard. “I sent him that one and he immediately responded that he loved it and went right in, recorded it on his own and sent it back in like a day.
“He used the MP3 I sent him as-is,” he continues. What came out was pretty much the original demo, which is cool about.” That result is the euphoric “Nights Like This,” which ended up landing on The Kid LAROI‘s debut album, The First Time, last November. And while it didn’t take off immediately, the track would slow-burn to success with the help of TikTok and break through in July on the Billboard Hot 100, where it has remained for the summer and currently sits at No. 67 in its ninth week on the chart.
The 37-year-old producer and LAROI then continued their magic with “Nights Like This Pt 2,” a heart-racing second installment that on The First Time‘s deluxe edition, released in August.
Below, Clams Casino breaks down all things surrounding “Nights Like This,” what stood out to him about The Kid LAROI and working with A$AP Rocky throughout his career.
How did “Nights Like This” come together? How did you originally get onto The Kid LAROI’s radar?
Clams Casino: It was a few years in the making. LAROI first reached out to me online when he was like 17. He was in the studio working with a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh — I think he played him some of my stuff, and they were brainstorming and brought me out to [Los Angeles]. LAROI knew a lot of the music that I had done. Later on, he told me he was a big fan of the [A$AP] Rocky stuff. I went out to L.A. and we met up in the studio and we talked and played some stuff, but nothing really came out of that first time we met up. I kept it in the back of my mind.
I think it was a year-and-a-half later, and I was at my own studio in New York making beats. That [beat] came up, and I just thought this was the one to send to him. This is kind of what they were talking about what they wanted [during the initial session] and the sound they were referencing. I just sent that one beat. He was excited about it. I had a feeling this was the one and it worked out. Once it happened, it was quick, but the roots were a long time in the making.
[embedded content]
Do you remember actually cooking up that specific beat before getting it into his hands?
I had the melodic stuff sitting around a little bit. I knew it was a special one. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I had half of the beat kind of put away. I was like, “When the time is right, I’ll come back to it.” I don’t do full things in one sitting. A lot of stuff, I’ll come back to it months or years later. I messed around trying to do a different arrangement, and I think he was just stuck on the original demo. There was something about it; he kept going back to that. He was right about it. I tried some other things out, but he just wanted that original version, which is cool looking back on it.
What stands out about his artistry?
What’s exciting for me when I hear his music is that he has a very unique sense of melody — his delivery and his vocals. There’s something melodically that just feels like he’s delivering in the tones of his voice [with] a genuine feeling and it connects with his music because of that.
“Nights Like This” was teased back in 2022 and released in November. What do you think about its slow burn onto the charts?
It spread around very organically and I think that’s the best way it could happen. There was like zero push from the label at the beginning — they thought, like, “This is a little interlude or something.” I don’t think anyone took it seriously. From the beginning, I knew it was a really special thing and he did too. He was really excited about it. We had the freedom to do exactly what me and him wanted to do. People really connected with that.
Was there a moment you realized the record was taking off, and saw the fan reaction really moving?
I started seeing headlines, and all of a sudden, it was getting jumps in streams. I started seeing things online with people saying it was going crazy on TikTok. It just slowly started building. That’s how it really happened. I’m glad everyone’s hearing it now and they got around to it because that’s how I felt about it when it came out. I was happy and really excited and proud of that. Even just for it to come out in the first place I was happy, but I’m glad it got to that point. I always knew it was special. I’m glad it really connected with everybody else.
How did this lead into “Nights Like This Pt 2”?
The beginning of that idea came from something I made for myself. An instrumental solo project — that was the first thing when I was starting on my own new stuff. When I was listening back, I was going to save it for myself, and I was like, “Something about it feels like this should be the part two.” This was in March or earlier this year. So, a few months after the first was released. I sent LAROI not the full beat or anything, but melody stuff and it was a start.
He loved it, and he immediately started teasing it online. Ten minutes after I sent it to him, he was on Twitter saying, “Part two coming!” I was laughing about that — he was real excited about it. There was a little bit of back-and-forth after that. Him and [co-producer] Dopamine recorded it and did some other production and sent it back to me. We sent it back a few times. Dopamine did a lot of work on it and we went back a few times. We got it finished up.
[embedded content]
When did The First Time track “Strangers (Interlude)” come into play?
I actually didn’t know about that. I had no idea about that until the album came out. They had done that on their own. I felt like it set up [“Nights Like This”] really nicely. I love how it sounds sequenced on the album. It’s a clip from “Nights Like This” — just the intro to it and filtered out a little and a little skit on it.
Is there more to come from you guys?
Yeah, it feels like we’re just starting to figure it out. We’re both really excited. I’m like such a fan of his music and I’m happy that I’m able to bring what I bring to it. It just makes sense and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m always working on more that I want to send to him and we got some other stuff that we’re going to keep going [at] hopefully.
Outside of those collabs, what else are you working on?
I’ve been working on different stuff, like getting into scoring things. I worked on some original music for an independent movie that premiered at Cannes a few months ago. [It’s called] It Doesn’t Matter and the director is Josh Mond. I’ll definitely be doing more of that. In the meantime, I really have been having fun getting in with a lot of young producers and young people I’m inspired by. A lot of them have been inspired by me since they were younger, and now they’re coming up doing their own thing. It’s really crazy. I just been having fun getting in with all these new guys and seeing what happens. Producers [like] Evilgiane, who did the Earl Sweatshirt song recently. [I] been working with other guys like Ok. I did some stuff on the JT album with Aire Atlantica. I’m always experimenting and having fun doing stuff I haven’t done before. That’s what keeps me going.
Did you work on A$AP Rocky’s upcoming album?
We did work [on Don’t Be Dumb]. I don’t know what’s going to be used or not. It always seems up in the air until the last minute. We definitely had some things in the works. I don’t know what’s going to be released or not.
Can you speak to Rocky’s influence and his enduring legacy as a 2010s rap titan?
I’m just happy to be part of his story and the ride of his career. Seeing it from the beginning when we first met to where he’s at it now, it’s an amazing story. Remembering where it started and seeing where he’s at now, it’s awesome. I’m just happy to be able to see some of that and some of the behind-the-scenes things.
What do you think makes him special as an artist?
Overall, he has a clear sense of vision for everything. All aspects of it. The music, visuals and everything else. He’s always developing and sharpening that. I don’t really know what it is, but he’s got it.
Do you have a favorite collaboration over the years?
All of the first mixtape stuff [Live. Love. A$AP] is super important to me. That whole time, we weren’t really working in the studio. I was sending stuff, but then I’d come meet up with him every couple weeks and he’d play me what he did, but he was recording it [on his own]. The first song we officially did together was “Wassup.” Then we did “Bass” and “Palace” and all that stuff. It was happening one at a time over the spring and the summer leading up to the mixtape. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something good was happening. Those songs are really special. There was an energy there that something was happening. For me, it was exciting and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and we just kept following it.
[embedded content]
For me, I think I gotta go “LVL.”
That was a little bit after the mixtape. That’s another special one doubling down on the sound that we started. That’s when it went from this internet mixtape thing to a major label and we were doubling down on the sound like, “This is what we’re doing.” That’s one of my favorites too.
A version of this story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With the U.S. Presidential election now just 69 days away, the electronic music community is more forcefully entering the conversation with a new initiative from Rave The Vote and Headcount.
As part of a new initiative, a lineup’s worth of dance artists will help provide a free bundle of music to people who check their voter registration status via the non-partisan voter registration organization Head Count.
Participants will receive the downloadable bundle by checking their voter registration status via this link and opting in to text reminders about voting. Participants will receive the treasure trove of dance music in late September.
The batch of tracks and mixes includes work by artists including Tokimonsta, Carl Craig, Seth Troxler, Ardalan, Walker & Royce, Rochelle Jordan, Mary Droppinz, Life On Planets, Baby Weight, DJ E-Clyps and Hercules & Love Affair.
Trending on Billboard
“Dance music in America is bigger than ever, it’s crucial that our community gets out and votes, and ensures its voice is heard,” Rave the Vote organizers say in a statement. “There is a lot at stake in this election, and we need dance music fans to show up and vote for values that are synonymous with our culture; peace, love, unity and respect.”
“Partnering with Rave the Vote is a fantastic opportunity to connect the vibrant energy of dance music with the power of voting,” adds Lucille Wenegieme, Executive Director of HeadCount. “We’re thrilled to join forces in this effort to engage fans and inspire them to make their voices heard at the polls. Music and democracy go hand in hand, and with the support of these incredible artists, we’re confident that we’ll see a strong turnout and a real impact in this year’s elections.”
Launched in 2020, Rave the Vote is a collaborative project headed by Infamous PR. Since 2004, HeadCount has registered over 1.2 million voters through work with artists including Harry Styles, Lizzo, Dead & Company, Billie Eilish and more.
“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.”
Trending on Billboard
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.”
[embedded content]
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.
Trending on Billboard
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.
Trending on Billboard
Mura Masa, Curve 1
[embedded content]
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
[embedded content]
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”
[embedded content]
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)
[embedded content]
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”
[embedded content]
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”
[embedded content]
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.
