Dance
Page: 42
Steve Angello is bringing his selector skills to SiriusXM. The producer and Swedish House Mafia member is launching a new program, “Size Sound System,” on the SiriusXM station Diplo’s Revolution starting Monday night (May 20) at 9 p.m. ET. Hosted by Angello and the producer AN21 (who is also Angello’s younger brother, Antoine Josefsson), the […]
Tonight, one of the world’s major destinations for dance music, EDC Las Vegas, begins at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The three-day festival, produced by Insomniac Events, famously begins each day at sunset and then goes until dawn, with performances from several hundred DJs filling the nocturnal hours in between. Explore Explore See latest videos, […]
This week in dance music: San Francisco’s Portola festival announced a massive 2024 lineup, we looked at why artists are moving their TikTok remixes off of Spotify, Marshmello and Kane Brown made chart history with their track “Miles On It” becoming the first track to hot the top five of both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Hot Country Songs, Chicago announced citywide celebrations for the 40th anniversary of house music, Paramount+ announced that a documentary about the Nova Music Festival massacre will be coming to the platform and French electronic pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre performed with Queen’s Brian May in Slovakia.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And of course, here are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Trending on Billboard
Peggy Gou, “Lobster Telephone”
[embedded content]
Weeks ahead of the release of her debut album, I Hear You, Peggy Gou has delivered the project’s fourth single, “Lobster Telephone.” Gou’s favorite song from the 10-track album (according to a press release) the dreamy house production also function as the project’s spiritual and aesthetic center, fitting squarely in the wheelhouse of the album’s heavy ’90s dance music influence. In her recent Billboard cover story, Gou said that I Hear You (out June 7 via XL Recordings) will be a success to her if people listen to it and “get a feeling.” Emanating warmth, this one feels a lot like the summer season ahead.
Bebe Rexha, “Chase It (Mmm Da Da Da) “
[embedded content]
Bebe Rexha debuted her latest track “Chase” last month at Coachella, and today delivers the song in its most fully realized format, via a slick (and quite sexy) racing-themed video filmed between the L.A. river and a mechanic’s garage. The clip features Rexha and a crew of dancers demonstrating the pop-lock-and-wiggle potential of the song, which was produced by Chris Lake and Sammy Virji (who released their own collaboration “Summertime Blues” late last month), along with Punctual and Marco Straus. This dance-focused project is no surprise, given that Rexha has one biggest dance hits of the last few years with her David Guetta collab “I’m Good (Blue),” which spent 55 weeks at No. 1 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.
Shygirl feat. Danny L. Harle, “Encore”
[embedded content]
“Buy a drink, take a shot/ Spill a bit/ Lick it up,” purrs Shygirl on her latest, “Encore.” The track whips up a spirit of hedonism with both these and other mature-themes lyrics in tandem with a thick, skittering electro production that’s well-matched with a music video capturing the type of late night behavior the song is designed to soundtrack and elicit. A collaboration with British producer Danny L. Harle, “Encore” comes from Shygirl’s forthcoming Club Shy Rmx EP, a collection of remixes of her 2024 Club Shy project by artists including VTSS, Logic1000, X-Coast and Fedde Le Grand. (Both projects are out via Because Music.) The London-based artist is on tour in the U.S. and Europe this summer and will go on the road with Charli XCX and Troye Sivan for their ravey 21-date Sweat tour starting in September.
John Summit & Sub Focus feat. Julia Church, “Go Back”
[embedded content]
On his latest, “Go Back,” John Summit takes the progressive house style that’s coming to define his growing catalog and injects it with a dose of d’n’b via the help of U.K. genre star Sub Focus. Together, the guys — along with South Africa-born, London-based vocalist Julia Church — create a track with the same sort of ecstasy-laced emotiveness of other Summit hits like “Where You Are,” with this one getting a slightly harder, higher BPM treatment via a final third that’s fully dancefloor d’n’b. Out via Summit’s own Experts Only label, the song will surely be heard during his set EDC Las Vegas this weekend, with this stop coming amid a heavy summer tour schedule and a sold out show at Madison Square Garden on June 29.
Fatboy Slim feat. Dan Diamond & Luca Guerrieri, “Role Model”
[embedded content]
The 500th release on Fatboy Slim’s Southern Fried Records is, appropriately, a Fatboy Slim track. Spicy and psychedelic in the style of any given Fatboy Slim set, “Role Model” is all scintillating percussion, cowbell, sirens and a tongue in cheek vocal from Dan Diamond about behaviors that could be considered role model material, depending on the type of person you are. Altogether, it’s high-quality dancefloor fare with an absurdist attitude, classic Fatboy Slim output. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Southern Fried Records was launched to release music by Fatboy Slim’s alias Mighty Dub Katz and over the years has released an eclectic mix of music by artists like Armand van Helden and Crookers.
A documentary chronicling the murderous terror attack on the Nova Music Festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 will debut on Paramount+. The streamer announced on Thursday (May 16) that the See It Now Studios Original Documentary We Will Dance Again will get a worldwide premiere in the fall, a year after the surprise assault […]
40 years ago, a style of new music was emerging from Chicago. The sound was made for dance floors and played at clubs around the city including the Warehouse, a space after which the nascent genre — house music — was named.
Four decades later, house music is a global phenomenon heard in underground clubs, at massive music festivals and — via Beyoncè’s 2023 Renaissance tour — on stadium speakers.
This summer, the genre’s hometown of Chicago is celebrating house music’s anniversary and global impact with an official event series, House Music 40. The new run of parties and parades begins on May 29 with a free daytime party at Chicago’s Daley Plaza that will feature sets from hometown heroes Derrick Carter and DJ Heather. The event will be hosted by Mother Diva, a Chicago scene mainstay and the self proclaimed “Madam Ambassador of House.”
Trending on Billboard
Starting at 12 p.m., this lunch break party is co-sponsored by ARC Music Festival, which launched in 2021 as a platform to celebrate Chicago house and all varieties of the genre that came in its wake.
“I was raised on house music here in Chicago. It’s one of those rare global movements where we can still show our love and appreciation to a lot of the original pioneers and innovators,” ARC co-founder John Curley said in a statement. “House Music 40 understands that after everything those DJs have given us, it’s important for us as fans to give back. It’s impossible to fully thank someone for the gift of house music, but in every action we take with ARC we aim to keep letting them know that ARC is a living monument dedicated to them and house music everywhere.”
House Music 40 is a non-profit that aims to raise awareness of the contributions of Chicago house artists to the global dance scene and raise money for members of the Chicago house scene that are experiencing health issues.
Additional anniversary events this summer include the Chicago House Music Conference on May 31, the Chicago House Music Festival on June 2, the Inaugural House Music Parade and Festival on August 31 and other citywide celebrations.
ARC Music Festival returns to Chicago this Aug. 30-Sept. 1 at the city’s Union Park. The lineup includes Carter and DJ Heather, Marshall Jefferson, Dennis Ferrer, Armand Van Helden, Disclosure, Chicago-born star Honey Dijon, genre icons Carl Cox playing b2b with Green Velvet, German techno pioneer Sven Väth, a redux set from Kaskade, current phenom Dom Dolla, grime veteran Skepta and many more.
Courtesy Photo
Marshmello and Kane Brown combine for a first on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Hot Country Songs charts (dated May 18) with the arrival of their new collaboration, “Miles On It.”
The single becomes the first to hit the top five of both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs – where it soars in at No. 1 – and Hot Country Songs. (The surveys have coexisted since the former launched in January 2013; the latter list became country music’s all-encompassing genre songs chart in October 1958.)
“Miles On It,” released May 3, drew 11.3 million official streams and 7.6 million in radio airplay audience and sold 4,000 in the U.S. in the week ending May 9, according to Luminate. It also debuts at No. 30 on the Country Airplay chart – where Brown boasts 11 career No. 1s, while Marshmello makes his first appearance – and No. 40 on Pop Airplay.
[embedded content]
Marshmello earns his fourth Hot Dance/Electronic Songs No. 1, tying Calvin Harris and Zedd for the most in the chart’s decade-plus archives. Among all acts, only The Chainsmokers have more leaders (six). Marshmello previously reigned with “Happier,” with Bastille, for a record 69 weeks in 2018-20; “Silence,” featuring Khalid (one week, 2017); and “Wolves,” with Selena Gomez (11 weeks, 2017-18).
Brown leads with his first Hot Dance/Electronic Songs entry.
“Miles On It” is Marshmello and Brown’s second chart-topping team-up, as they become the only pair with a shared No. 1 on both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Hot Country Songs: they crowned Hot Country Songs with “One Thing Right” (which did not appear on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs) for a week in October 2019.
Harris Extends Dance/Mix Show Airplay Record
As for another notable No. 1 collaboration, also by acts known for different core styles and who previously recorded together, Calvin Harris and Rag‘n’Bone Man’s “Lovers in a Past Life” ascends to the top of the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart.
[embedded content]
Harris scores his record-padding 15th No. 1 on the tally (which began in 2003).
Most No. 1s on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay Chart:
15, Calvin Harris
13, David Guetta
12, Rihanna
8, The Chainsmokers
7, Madonna
6, Anabel Englund
6, Ellie Goulding
Rag‘n’Bone Man rules Dance/Mix Show Airplay in his second visit to the chart, both made with Harris: their single “Giant” hit No. 17 in 2019. The former has reached multiple Billboard rock charts since breaking through with his worldwide hit “Human,” which marked his sole airplay No. 1 prior to “Lovers in a Past Life,” as it led Adult Alternative Airplay for five weeks in 2017.
San Francisco’s Portola festival is coming in hot with its year three lineup. On Monday (May 13), the fest has released a bill lead by Justice and Gesaffelstein — both coming off buzzy Coachella 2024 appearances — along with fellow big font names Disclosure, M.I.A., Rüfüs du Sol, Fisher, Four Tet and Jamie xx. The […]
This week in dance music: We shared images of the earliest days of The Chemical Brothers taken from the duo’s new retrospective book, Paused in Cosmic Reflection, Charli XCX spoke about writing music for Britney Spears and Hot Since 82 shared a terrifying story about being chased by gunmen in Brazil.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And of course, these are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Trending on Billboard
TroyBoi, “Híbrido”
[embedded content]
London’s TroyBoi has always been especially adept at fusing harder bass with the softer, more sensual side of low end, with that latter element arguably never stronger in his catalog than on his latest, “Híbrido.” Made for that cool down part of the night, the track brings together a hypnotic vocal sample, a sultry melody, spare, crisp percussion and a restrained, mature build and release. The track follows TroyBoi’s Coachella 2024 set at the Do Lab stage and comes from his 4 on the Floor EP coming in June.
“I love to combine different genres together into my work,” the producer born Troy Henry says. “After completing the song, I listened to it and realized I fused elements of baile funk, house, U.K. garage, R&B and funk all together. It truly sounded like a hybrid track and that’s how I came up with the name ‘Híbrido’.” Henry’s other summer dates include EDC Las Vegas, HARD Summer and Ubbi Dubbi.
Anna Lunoe & Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, “Right Here”
[embedded content]
Two of the scene’s most cerebral producers unite for a predictably excellent house production, “Right Here.” Out through Nina Las Vegas’ NLV Records, the track is pure uplift, winding to a place of blissful abandon but maintaining heft and power through it’s acid-influenced bass and percussion. The track comes ten years after the duo’s first collaboration, “Feels Like,” with Lunoe calling this new one “a sassy anthem to remind you who the main character is in your life… (you!)”
Alesso, Hypnotize
[embedded content]
You might call remixing Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night” (which celebrates its 30-year anniversary this year), messing with perfection. But Alesso makes it work. His take on the classic turns up the gothic drama dial with a very Hans Zimmer Interstellar-style intro, before transitioning into a full on deep house production that still maintains the size and grandiosity that’s defined so much of the producer’s work over the last 10-plus years. “The Rhythm of the Night” comes from Alesso’s new three-track Hypnotize EP, with this project officially marking his transition into club-focused productions coming via his new label, Body Hi.
DJ Seinfeld, “If U Like Me”
[embedded content]
Coming off a pair of sets at Coachella last month, Sweden’s DJ Seinfeld drops his first new solo music since 2022 with “If U Like Me.” Out via Ninja Tune, the track is a 2-step club song that balances lyrics about club-style love (“yeah I can’t wait to find out if I’m leaving with you”) with a dash of woozy, minor key melancholy. Seinfeld upcoming dates include a flurry of European festivals and DC10 in Ibiza on May 20.
Hot Since 82 feat. Ron Carroll, “Preach”
[embedded content]
While Hot Since 82 hit a very rough patch last week with the aforementioned situation in Rio de Janeiro where he was pursued by a car full of gunmen, this week ends on a much brighter note with the release of “Preach.” Out as part of Defected Records’ Together series — which pairs talent from the past and present of the U.K. label — this song finds the English artist working with Chicago legend Ron Carroll on a soulful, slow-burn, big-build, huge-payoff house production. The track features a vocal sample from power-lunged Chicago house singer Shawn Christopher, who wails (quite appropriately in this case) that while everything in life has its ups downs “if you turn to the music, everything is going to be alright.”
Charli XCX confirmed longtime rumors that she worked on new music for Britney Spears. During a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live, the “Von Dutch” singer clarified that she did write music for the pop princess, but Spears never recorded the tracks. “It leaked to the press. Britney then did this post where she was like, […]
35 years ago, the trajectory of electronic music history shifted when Ed Simons met Tom Rowlands at the University of Manchester. Then students, the pair would go on to comprise one of the most celebrated electronic acts in the history of the then-nascent genre, after they united as The Chemical Brothers.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The three and a half decades of shows, albums and block-rockin’ beats that have ensued since are under the microscope in the latest Chemical Brothers offering, Paused in Cosmic Reflection. Out today (May 7) via Mobius publishing, the retrospective book unpacks, in often granular detail, the Brothers’ mythology from the earliest days as students to rising U.K. stars to genre trendsetters and worldwide heroes.
Along with extensive interviews with the duo themselves, the book feature new interviews with friends and collaborators, including Noel Gallagher, Wayne Coyne, Beth Orton, Michel Gondry and Beck. The 300-plus-page Paused In Cosmic Reflection also includes many rare and and never-before-seen photographs. Assembled by Robin Turner, the book is dedicated to Stuart “Jammer” James, the group’s longtime tour manager, who died in 2015.
Trending on Billboard
Speaking to Billboard about the book last September, Simons offered, “I guess there’s no end date, but we are nearer to the end of The Chemical Brothers than we are the beginning… It has been good to reflect and remember some history. I guess you’ve got to do it before you start forgetting everything, and I’ve got a really good memory.”
“He remembers, like, every small gig above a barber shop we ever did,” added Rowlands. “Then someone would produce a photograph of it and I’d be like, ‘Oh, gotcha. Maybe we did do that…’ But one of the things about our band is, we don’t like stopping and reflecting. I always want to move on to the next thing. This book really felt like stopping and reflecting.”
See exclusive images from the book below.
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
live show visual Show directors Adam Smith & Marcus Lyall
“Early on, Oasis was accepted as part of that culture,” Noel Gallagher says in the book. “Mixmag gave Definitely Maybe full marks and an incredible review when it came out. When I picked up the guitar and started to write again, the inclusiveness of the lyrics in house music showed up in my songs and became a big part of it. A song like ‘Live Forever’ would never have existed and wouldn’t have been called that before acid house. It would have been melancholy. The euphoria of acid house was so engrained in me, I was so into it and what I loved about it was the inclusivity. Songs were about us, they weren’t personal, they were about the collective. I adopted that and put it into my music.”
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Jake Chessum
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Adam Smith
“There were a few electronic bands playing live in the early nineties,” Simons says of the group’s early days. “We’d gone to see Kraftwerk when we were at university in 1991 and Tom had been in [prior dance act] Ariel, so we knew it was something that could happen, but initially we just DJed. We got offered to do [the club night] Sabresonic very early on; we’d only done a handful of remixes and [Chemical Brothers EP] Fourteenth Century Sky was just out. From the very start, we knew we didn’t want to be in the spotlight on stage. We decided that we wanted to have visuals projected right on top of us. And lots of strobes. That ethos has been the same for every gig we’ve played in the 30-odd years since.”
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Peter J. Walsh
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Mark Benney
“Ultimately, I think The Chemical Brothers have a great predilection for exploration,” says Beck, who worked with the duo on 2015’s “Wide Open” and 2023’s “Skipping Like a Stone.” “Their records always seem to take you to different places. They kind of sit in an unusual place between different eras of electronic music and DJ culture. It’s like they have one foot in multiple decades at the same time in a way that is utterly unique among their peers.”
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Mark Benney
“[1997 sophomore album] Dig Your Own Hole was us giving free rein to all of the different influences that were feeding into us from all around the world,” says Simons. “It was the most extreme expression of that, one where you could have a track like ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ sitting alongside ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’. They’re completely different forms of music but they each evolved from everything that was channelled in, that fed into the making of Dig Your Own Hole. For us, our sound was entirely natural. It wasn’t something we sat down and pondered, tried to perfect. We had no intention of making a pure electronic dance record; we always wanted all of those external forces to be reflected.”
Paused in Cosmic Reflection
Mark Benney