Dance
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Diplo looks like he’s having the time of his life while attending the FIFA World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
In a pair of photos posted to his Instagram Story on Wednesday (Nov. 23), the DJ is seen wearing a traditional long shirt called a thobe, paired with a loose red and white cloth headdress known as a gutra while watching a match between Costa Rica and Spain from one of the eight stadiums built for this year’s World Cup.
“Damn spain up 7-0 i’m not even paying attention I just wanna make sure my hat thing looks alright,” he wrote, posting one of the same selfies on Twitter.
His Major Lazer bandmate Ape Drums also shared a number of videos from the occasion, including Diplo goofing off and pretending to be a salesperson at one of the arena’s merch stands. “What’s up, habibi? What you want? Anything you want I get for you. I get anything for you,” he quipped to the camera as Ape Drums laughed from behind the lens.
The pair were in Doha along with Walshy Fire for Major Lazer to headline the opening night of the Daydream Festival Qatar on Tuesday night. The fest continues for seven more days through Dec. 18 with performances by Alesso, Nervo, Armin Van Buuren, Tiësto, Jonas Blue and more.
Earlier in the week, Diplo also cheered on Team USA, who will next face England in a match scheduled for Friday.
“We came to support our boys in Qatar and made some new friends,” he tweeted at the time, posting a video as he chanted “USA! USA!” before pointing out a Qatari fan waving an American flag.
Check out Diplo’s many tweets from the World Cup below and Ape Drums’ Instagram Stories here.
Earlier this month 5,000 dance fans gathered at Austin’s Seismic Dance Event to do what dance fans to best — dance.
Held at The Concourse Project, a 7-acre venue holding three stages, 2022 marked the third year for the boutique festival, which launched in Austin in 2018 and has since become a destination for global house and techno acts.
“We want to deliver the big festival experience with an intimate vibe,” Seismic co-founder Andrew Parsons, who produces the event alongside his wife Kelly Gray, told Billboard in 2019. “We aren’t trying to sell 20,000 tickets, because that’s not the goal. We always want to keep it boutique.”
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Parsons and Gray are the creative minds behind RealMusic Events, the Austin-based production company that hosts Seismic and has been credited for injecting underground electronic flavor into the “live music capital of the world.”
The festival is also committed to sustainability, partnering wiht Blond:ish’s organization Bye Bye Plastic for separate waste streams into landfill, compost and recycling. (At the 2021 event, 16,468 single-use plastic cups were saved from landfills.) The 2022 Seismic lineup featured heavy-hitters including Jamie xx, Charlotte de Witte, The Martinez Brothers, Gorgon City and Oliver Heldens‘ HI-LO project.
Additionally this year, UK legend Fatboy Slim played a set that launched with the indelible piano chords to his all-time biggest hit “Praise You” before shifting into Freddy Mercury’s isolated vocal from Queen‘s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” (Seriously, listen to it.) Parisian rising star Chloé Caillet whipped up a heady, sexy vibe; scene queen LP Giobbi meshed house music and classic rock samples; and Palestinian producer Sama’ Abdulhadi delivered the hard-hitting techno that’s made her a global name.
Relive these moments or experience them for the first time with the full Seismic 2022 sets from these four stars below.
Kygo cruises in at No. 4 on Billboard‘s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated Nov. 26) with Thrill of the Chase. The set starts with 5,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the Nov. 11-17 tracking week, according to Luminate.
Thrill is Kygo’s fifth charted entry, all of which have hit the top five, dating to June 2016, when Cloud Nine burst in at No. 1. The quintet of titles ties Lady Gaga for the second-most in that span, second only to The Chainsmokers’ seven. Kygo’s other top five sets are EP Stargazing (No. 3, October 2017), Kids in Love (No. 1, November 2017) and Golden Hour (No. 2, June 2020).
Concurrently, Kygo commands the leading debut on the multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with “The Way We Were,” featuring Plested (No. 18). The first Billboard chart appearance for English singer/songwriter (Phil) Plested, the song earned 988,000 streams in its initial frame.
Kygo has now placed 61 total tracks on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, including nine from Thrill; since the chart’s January 2013 inception, only David Guetta has more (73). The Norwegian DJ/producer’s 24 top 10s lead all acts; The Chainsmokers are next, with 22. Included among Kygo’s top 10s are five from Thrill: “Love Me Now,” featuring Zoe Wees (No. 9, August 2021); “Undeniable,” featuring X Ambassadors (No. 8, October 2021); “Dancing Feet,” featuring DNCE (No. 6, this March); “Lost Without You,” with Dean Lewis (No. 10, August); and “Woke Up in Love,” with Gryffin and Calum Scott (No. 9, September).
Returning to Top Dance/Electronic Albums, Black Eyed Peas notch their first entry with the pop/dance-leaning Elevation (No. 13; 2,500 units). Two Elevation tracks have lifted onto Hot Dance/Electronic Songs: “Don’t You Worry,” with Shakira and David Guetta (No. 7, July), and “Simply the Best,” with Anitta and El Alfa, a re-entry at a new No. 38 best this week.
In 2020, Black Eyed Peas enjoyed 10 weeks at No. 1 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs with “Ritmo (Bad Boys for Life),” with J Balvin. Plus, a collab with Tiësto, “Pump It Louder,” from his album Drive (due Feb. 24, 2023), reached No. 28 last month.
Shifting to the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Afrojack and Black V Neck vault 14-9 with “Day N Night,” featuring Muni Long. Afrojack’s 12th top 10 and the first for each of his collaborators is drawing core-dance airplay on Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel, WZFL (Revolution 93.5) Miami and SiriusXM’s BPM, among others. (The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on around 70 top 40-formatted reporters.)
In a year full of hits built around samples and interpolations of past megahits, Bebe Rexha and David Guetta‘s “I’m Good (Blue)” still stands out as unusual.
The collab, which borrows the distinctive synth and chorus melody of Eiffel 65’s turn-of-the-century dance-pop smash “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” wasn’t even supposed to be a proper single: It was a demo that was recorded in the mid-’10s and never officially released, until unexpected TikTok virality led to demand for it to be dropped in full. Once it was, it was embraced by streaming audiences and radio programmers, gradually climbing the Billboard Hot 100 and hitting a new peak of No. 7 this week (chart dated Nov. 26).
Which artist stands to gain most from the song’s unexpected success? And is it the end of the trend or just the beginning? Billboard staffers discuss below.
1. “I’m Good” is a 2015-recorded song interpolating a 2000 pop hit with tonight’s-gonna-be-a-good-night lyrics that sound like 2009 that got big after being shared on TikTok in 2022. Does the math add up to you for this one, or are you still having trouble wrapping your head around it?
Katie Atkinson: The math is still not mathing, but it doesn’t need to. The fact is, there have been stranger trajectories to a top 10 Hot 100 hit in 2022 than this one, so I’m just not going to overthink it and just keep dancing. As Bebe told our very own Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (shameless plug), “Let’s just give the people what they want. Let’s not judge it for what it is, and just put it out. It’s just a great, fun record.” Preach.
Katie Bain: There’s been a tidal wave of early 2000s samples/interpolations in dance music in the last year, with Acraze’s 2021 Cherish’-sampling smash “Do It To It” more or less sparking the trend. All of these songs together demonstrate a huge affection for that era and thus also an easy way for producers from across all electronic genres to score relatively easy hits. Guetta has never been afraid to trend-hop or to capitalize, and this one, like so many of his previous monster songs, demonstrates his truly singular ability to craft an earworm — or at least to expand on an already existent earworm. So yes, on paper all the elements add up to this song’s success, although at the same time it still kind of sounds like an algorithm at work.
Jason Lipshutz: Consider “I’m Good” the 2022 version of Måneskin’s “Beggin’,” which became a global smash in 2021… as a cover of a 1967 Four Seasons song… that was originally performed and recorded in 2017. These instances of older singles with funky backstories and recognizable hooks being revived years later, thanks in large part to TikTok, will keep occurring and impacting the Billboard charts in the years to come. As for “I’m Good,” one listen to it (especially if you’re a “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” defender) and it’s easy to wrap your head around why it’s a hit.
Joe Lynch: I think the math adds up in that, not dissimilar to an obscurity such as Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” having a TikTok moment, Gen Z and the TikTok landscape aren’t interested in what’s now or next these days. With the history of recorded music at their fingertips, any catchy melody they haven’t heard before can become the now or next thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s retro. It might even be a boon.
Andrew Unterberger: Honestly, I can buy the part about the song existing as an unreleased demo for five years before randomly taking off on TikTok a lot more easily than I can believe that a song that sounds like this — post-peak EDM beats with Black Eyed Peas-type lyrics — is tapping into the 2022 zeitgeist. There hasn’t been a song with this specific sound that’s popped on radio or streaming in a long while, though not quite long enough that I’d imagine folks are already nostalgic for it. It’s a curiously timed success to me.
2. Guetta and Rexha are two of the more indefatigable hitmakers of the last decade-plus, but neither had reached the top 40 in the past four years before this. Which of the two artists does this return to the pop mainstream mean more to, career-wise?
Katie Atkinson: I’m going to say Bebe, because I feel like she’s really been the face of this whole thing. We all knew Guetta could make a reliable dance-floor filler, but maybe we’d assumed the time was up for that style on top 40 radio and outside the club. For Bebe, however, the hurdle she’s consistently trying to clear is being a potentially anonymous part of a massive hit song; everyone’s heard a Bebe Rexha song, whether they’ve sought her out or not, but not everyone knows her name or could pick her out of a lineup. This is one more way to introduce herself beyond being a disembodied voice on your radio — like the showcase she got as one of only 11 performances on Sunday’s AMAs. But also: How much more does this woman have to do to prove herself?!
Katie Bain: David Guetta will always be David Guetta, in the sense that he’ll be able to headline global dance clubs and festivals in perpetuity given his litany of hits and ability to keep up with any given of-the-moment dance sound. So while I’m sure he’s enjoying this return to the top 40, particularly in the context of it extending his already considerable track record as a hitmaker, I think Rexha needed it more as she doesn’t yet the legacy, particularly in a specific genre, as her counterpart on this song.
Jason Lipshutz: Probably Rexha. “I’m Good” represents a pleasant surprise for Guetta, but he’s going to be able to play the dance festival circuit with his mountain of hits for years to come. Rexha also has her fair share of successful singles, but being a modern pop artist is all about what you’ve done for the general listening audience lately, and it had been a minute since Rexha had made a real connection at streaming or radio. She does both with “I’m Good,” and it’s a meaningful new win in a career that quietly contains a bunch of them.
Joe Lynch: Bebe for sure. Guetta is a dance music elder statesman with enough cache and hits to keep people paying to see his shows. Rexha, on the other hand, really benefits by having a new hit that can bring her new social engagement, awards show slots and the like.
Andrew Unterberger: Yeah, it’s gotta be Rexha. While Guetta might not quite have the cultural capital stateside he did a decade ago, he’s still a legacy act at this point, and will probably be a good-sized live draw and decent streaming performer for however long the rest of his career lasts. Rexha still lives hit-to-hit a little bit, and she’s never seemed particularly interested in living her pop career from the sidelines, so it’s not surprising that she’s rejoicing in her unlikely “I’m Good” success like she is.
3. While the song first took off on TikTok and streaming, radio is now the primary driver for its success, as it reaches No. 8 on the Radio Songs chart this week. Does it make sense to you as a contemporary radio smash? Why or why not?
Katie Atkinson: I think familiarity is always going to give you a head-start in 2022 — just look at Jack Harlow’s “First Class.” It also has the “what is this?” factor that might keep someone from changing the radio station immediately. So basically, it makes sense as a “contemporary” radio smash insofar as it has a nostalgic WTF factor that is instantly intriguing.
Katie Bain: As dance-pop and mainstream pop have essentially become the same thing in the last 10 years, I’m not surprised at all that a song that heavily samples a yesteryear hit that itself was a huge radio hit has become a radio hit. (Also shout out to Flume’s 2020 “Blue” edit.)
Jason Lipshutz: I mean… “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” reached No. 2 on the Pop Songs chart, when Eiffel 65 was a total unknown entity to U.S. listeners, so why can’t this facelift of the tune climb as high on top 40 radio? “I’m Good” sounds a little out of step with current pop radio trends, and would have functioned perfectly a decade ago, when Guetta was at the height of his hit-making powers; that said, the tune is undeniable, and sometimes that’s enough.
Joe Lynch: It tracks for me. When you listen to one of those weekend late-night top 40 radio party mixes, songs like the Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” (which this lyrically harks back to) have been in consistent rotation (alongside newer top 10s) for the better part of the last decade. The music snoberati may want to believe that silly good-time party songs from the Obama Era are dead and gone, but the truth is that they’ve never been far from radio airwaves, or the playlist at a Chili’s near you.
Andrew Unterberger: Contemporary? In 2012, probably. In 2017, maybe. In 2022, not so much.
4. We’ve spent seemingly the whole year talking about big interpolations in major pop songs, but few if any have relied quite as heavily on their original source material as “I’m Good (Blue).” Does this feel to you like it will lead to similarly built hits in 2023, or is this closer to the end of the line for this strain of early-’20s pop hit?
Katie Atkinson: I don’t see this stopping anytime soon. Whenever a potential shortcut to chart success is unlocked (see also: DJ Khaled’s top five hit “Staying Alive,” Nicki Minaj’s No. 1 “Super Freaky Girl”), the floodgates open. I give this another year.
Katie Bain: Like I mentioned above, this trend, particularly in the dance world, has been such a huge success driver that I have a hard time seeing producers setting down until the well of songs to sample goes dry. (And even then, a lot of them have been sampling the same songs, so the amount of source material available isn’t even necessarily a factor.) There’s obviously the familiarity/nostalgia factor of hearing these old songs again, so I don’t necessarily see the trend waning from a consumer perspective either.
Jason Lipshutz: I believe we are just getting started here. Everyone in the music industry is perpetually thirsty for new hits, and especially lately, the route to scoring them is by reviving old ones — from “Super Freaky Girl” reworking “Super Freak,” to “Vegas” resurrecting “Hound Dog,” to “Cold Heart” and “Hold Me Closer” returning to Elton John’s classics catalog for modern pastiches. One could argue that the increasing reliance on IP in Hollywood — old franchises with familiar characters being revived as safer bets than original storytelling — is coming to the music industry in the form of these interpolations. And some of them will be more successful than others, of course, but I’d bet that there are a lot more coming.
Joe Lynch: Only the beginning. In the first half of the 20th century, it was very common for hit songs to be resurrected every 10, 12 years via the next big thing singer covering it; people knew a good melody that landed once would absolutely land again. In the rock era, when artists became fixated on regarding the past as passé and writing their own songs, that became less true. But after a full decade of the streaming era, audiences take it for granted that old isn’t necessarily bad and what’s cutting edge isn’t necessarily fun, so why not listen to a little bit of the best of everything?
Andrew Unterberger: I’m not sure if this is going to lead to even more hits along these lines, but I’m confident it’s going to lead to more artists attempting them. If two artists who hadn’t had a major hit in 4-5 years could go top 10 with a revived demo, clearly it’s gonna seem like a plausible path to success for a lot of other past (and prospective future) hitmakers as well. Just how much patience the general public is going to have for such future attempts remains to be seen — but so far, so good there.
5. Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”: fun, nostalgic novelty or annoying, dated relic?
Katie Atkinson: Annoying, dated relic. My only fondness for “Blue” is due to my fondness for the 1999/2000 era in general. I’ll take Sisqo’s “Thong Song” over it, honestly. As Bebe and David would say: “I’m good.”
Katie Bain: An eternal banger for anyone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously.
Jason Lipshutz: Fun, nostalgic… banger. “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” is just excellent pop inside and out, an expertly constructed dance single built around the silliest of concepts. Thank you for your service, Eiffel 65!
Joe Lynch: First one. It’s just a delightful lark. And it undeniably holds a nostalgic place in my heart given that it was one of the verrrry few Eurodance songs that made radio headway around the turn of the millennium. And believe me, before you had every song at the tip of your fingertips, you enjoyed the scraps of lesser-heralded genres that radio threw at you (that being said, I did buy the parent album on CD in a mall. Classic Y2K). Plus, I remember seeing a kid ice do an ice-skating routine to this song once that was every bit as sublimely silly as Eiffel 65 itself.
Andrew Unterberger: One of the only pop songs of its era I cannot enjoy on any level. Kill it with fire.
Daniel Vangarde has lived a fascinating life. He’s lived at least three of them, in fact.
His first act was as a producer, A&R and all-around catalyst for some of the most popular European disco and funk acts of the 1970s and ’80s, shifting millions of copies. Since the late 2000s he’s been residing and working in a Brazilian village of 750 people, teaching English, computer literacy, vocational skills and a range of artistic expression.
Somewhere in the middle he gave birth to a son, Thomas Bangalter, who also made some decent records himself.
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Vangarde (born Bangalter) helped guide the early movements of Daft Punk, at a time when the pre-Homework duo had magic in their fingertips but hadn’t yet mastered the close control of image and narrative which forged their mystique. Vangarde doled out critical advice to Thomas, Guy-Manuel and a coterie of close friends in the ’90s Parisian scene, instilling in them the requisite knowledge to play the industry game on their own terms and better enabling them to sculpt their consequential destiny.
Then followed a high-profile battle with France’s publishing and rights society, SACEM, over both restrictive practices for modern artists and historical aberrations for post-World War II remuneration to Jewish musicians. Sufficiently content with both his own success and the imprint he left on the next generation, Vangarde retreated into silence, only fleetingly emerging when required (including a trip to the 2014 Grammy Awards, where he watched his son clean up). There were no plans to issue communiqués with the music ecosystem — until now.
Following a deal with powerhouse French label Because Music, the vaults of Vangarde’s Zagora Records have been busted open. The resultant compilation, Daniel Vanguarde: The Vaults of Zagora Records Mastermind (1971-1984), out Nov. 25 on Because Music, should re-situate him in a lineage of discotheque-pleasers with a taste for suave, symphonic and Star Wars-influenced material that bristles with joie de vivre. The comp is surprisingly tight for an era which left no excess untested; it’s not a stretch to say, from the colorway of his suit down to his perm, the Daniel Vangarde peering out from the cover might just have been the model for Disco Stu.
Having undertaken the grand sum of zero English-language interviews for 75 years, Vangarde made himself available to Billboard from the deep Bahian forests for an extremely rare and rather charming conversation about it all.
One thing that’s clear across your life is a fascination with culture and society outside of your own. You produced artists from the French Antilles and the West Indies, kickstarted a cossack dance craze in the late ’60s, and latterly founded an NGO. Where does this curiosity stem from?
I always liked traveling: I spent 10 summers of my adolescence in Costa Brava [Spain], visited Swinging London, and in 1966 hitchhiked from New York down to Mexico in order to visit the Tarahumara. Life felt like an adventure.
In 1971, I happened upon Guadeloupe and loved it — the people, the place, and the local rhythmic music, biguine, which I took back to work on in Paris. Throughout trips to Kathmandu, Bali and Malaysia in the ’70s, my love for African, Arabian, South American and other music outside the French or Anglo-Saxon tradition kept growing.
What were your dreams for the world back then?
Ah, that is easy. I was curious about the globe and completely against war. I was politically active from a young age. I was arrested during the student revolution in ’68 and spent three nights in a jail cell without light. That was very frightening. They say there were no deaths but I am certain this is untrue, there was great violence. For years afterward I had to cross the street whenever I saw a policeman, you know?
You had post-traumatic stress?
Yes, yes, it was this: it was post-traumatic stress. But I stayed against nuclear factories, against the Algerian War and successfully avoided my own military service. I did not change my point of view that mass consumption is a dead-end of civilization. In 1968, we had spiritual belief in a more open future. Today we have realism about our present moment, and that is what it is.
When you were 25, you and longtime collaborator Jean Kluger came up with Yamasuki, a faux-Japanese project whose only release is still pored over by record collectors and DJs like Four Tet. Why did you decide to jump into the deep end with such a specific concept?
After the success of “Casatschok,” I was mostly considered a choreographer. Shows about kung fu were beginning to sweep through television, so Kluger and I thought about creating a Japanese dance, which we called Yamasuki, but the great sound of the music caught on more. We really got into a Japanese mindset: I bought an English-to-Japanese phrasebook, we learned phonetic pronunciation and taught a children’s choir lyrics in Japanese. We even hired a karate master to deliver a shout of death [kiai] — except he had no sense of rhythm, so I would stand in the studio, cueing him when to shout… and trembling on the other side of the mic.
As disco became popular globally, and you had French artists like Cerrone winning Grammy Awards for Best New Artist, was there any competition or jealousy? Or did you regard them as your peers?
Peers, totally. There was no competition at all. If there was any competition, in fact, it was with American and English production. I never used a mastering studio; I would be there at the Phillips factory, watching the acetate get pressed, making sure the sound was impeccable. Cerrone, he was not a friend, but we would see each other at the discotheques when taking our new records to the DJ for promotion. The same applies for Jacques Morali {the disco producer responsible for the Village People] — at this time, for the French to have success away from home was a great feeling.
Some of the records you worked on were massive. “D.I.S.C.O.” was the third biggest-seller of 1980 in Germany and the fifth in the UK; the Gibson Brothers sold millions of copies; you’ve been sampled and covered by Erykah Badu, Bananarama, Roger Sanchez — it’s a legacy of success by any other name. Did that come as a surprise to you?
I will say that when I started to make songs, I wanted to write to The Beatles and tell them that there should be five members. [Laughs] I was this certain that I could bring something to them. I imagine that maybe everybody that records hopes that his music will be understood and appreciated by the public. But even if I was expecting success, I recognize it’s a great privilege to live your life off of music.
Daniel Vangarde With The Gibson Brothers
Courtesy of Daniel Vangarde
What was your relationship to fame throughout all this?
I only did one LP as a frontman, which had the privilege of being banned on radio and television. The lyrics concerned how France is the third biggest producer of bombs and mines. Of course, that’s a state secret, so the record was buried, and I was never a frontman again. But that’s alright: I was an author, composer and producer; an artisan. I sought no fame, no show business. A reporter asked me recently: “So you live your life in the shadows?” And I said, “No! I live in the light, normally, like you do.”
Interest in the Zagora reissue is however fun to me, because I was not fashionable at all. I produced La Compagnie Créole, a very big band in the ’80s, and we could sell out three nights at L’Olympia but I could never once get a journalist to come see the show. That’s just how it was then. If it’s not chanson, it’s not serious. In France, popular music is suspicious.
By the time your career wound down around 1990, was the love for music still present? Was it a creative rupture or a decision to be with your family?
Truthfully, I was not producing music that excited me, and I thought it unwise to carry on. When making a hit my hands would become wet while mixing, and a physical sensation would overtake my belly. So if I was not feeling anything, why would anyone else? Also, there was a new generation doing dance music, and of course this was very close for me.
Yes, on that note… perhaps no one in the last 10 years has done more to kickstart the revival of disco and analog production than your son, Thomas. Why do you think that era has swept back into the public consciousness?
I can see why. Nothing replaces rhythm. Songs that you can dance to, with a melody you can sing — not rap, not techno, not even Daft Punk can compete with this human response to a good feeling. There are different chapels today: you have country radio, rap radio, rock radio, but the old repertoire has maintained.
What aggregates the masses are famous hits, and disco was the last of this kind of music. When they decided that disco was over and they started to burn the records [1979’s infamous bonfire of hate, Disco Demolition], I thought it was a joke, because I never thought happy, dancing music could possibly fade. And when disco came back, I realized it hadn’t faded after all.
Your know-how helped ground not only a young Daft Punk, but also their peers Phoenix and Air, all of whom credit your advice with allowing them to navigate the music biz and retain creative freedom.
I think all artists should have this freedom. I helped Thomas, Guy-Man and their friends as much as I could to allow them to release without barriers. They were only 20 years old and the industry could have squeezed them — a normal contract generates interference between your work and the time it’s released. I made an introduction to my English lawyer, who is still [Daft Punk’s] lawyer today, and advised them not to let the author’s rights society in France authorize their music for film or publicity. My input was to help create a good environment that allowed them to produce freely.
Daniel Vangarde
Courtesy of Daniel Vangarde
Do you think the industry is a better place for young artists now than it was in the ’90s, or the ’70s? Or is it contingent on who you are?
That’s difficult to say. I think the music industry is in a terrible situation, not because of the internet, but because record companies and publishers didn’t know how to use the internet. When I helped Thomas set up Daft Club [a groundbreaking hub for digital downloads and fan service, released in tandem with 2001’s Discovery] even then, many considered the internet science fiction for geeks. And what was the result?
They should have contracted the hackers! The best guy from Napster should have been contracted by record companies to organize a new paid system. At a time when people paid $10-20 for an LP, of course they would have accepted paying $1 instead. But the industry did nothing, music became like free air, and once the value collapsed to zero for many years, it was hard to come back from this.
In the ’70s, the artistic directors of a record company or programmers of a radio station held all the control. So I didn’t think it was good then. But I can’t say it’s better today either. It’s difficult for true talent to break through or generate wealth in the same fashion as before.
As you’ve never given interviews, your working practice from that era is lost. I mean — Bangalter now rings with a uniqueness and star quality, so why did you use Vangarde as your professional surname?
I wanted to allow future Thomas to use Bangalter! No, I chose a pen name in case I had success; I did not wish to book a hotel or restaurant and be recognized. Why Vangarde? Originally I had prepared Morane, the name of a small French plane in the early 1900s. But on the day of registration with SACEM, this was already taken, so I was given one minute to change. I quickly thought of another plane called the Vanguard, and this stuck by complete accident.
You’ve been distant from your own catalog for so long. Why now?
I’m afraid it’s not very romantic. I have known Emmanuel [de Buretel, kingpin of French electronic music] since he was 25. When Because Music showed interest in buying Zagora Records and releasing some old tracks, I trusted them, and said, “You’ll be the owner of the catalog, so if you want to, yes.” As I have never done photos or interviews, I did not expect interest at all. I could even not remember some of their choices, so I had to go on YouTube and listen back as I was certain these were not my songs! To see any reaction has been a huge shock. Because made a very good decision.
So you never considered what you’d like your legacy to be?
I think I will not die. I have songs that I did 50 years ago that are still popular. If people are happy when they hear the songs and go to dance, or go to see the bands still touring, they do not die. This is the answer of my legacy.
And are you satisfied?
Yes, I’m very happy. I have the privilege to do what I want, and a good personal life… in the shadows. [Laughs] I have a good relationship with Thomas and now I have two grandchildren. One is 20 years old and the other is 14 — I love them. I go on being free and having my health. What more can I ask for?
Beyoncé’s Renaissance album, which was released in July by Parkwood/Columbia Records and debuted atop the all-genre Billboard 200, as well as Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top R&B Albums, now arrives on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart at No. 1 (on the list dated Nov. 26). The set’s arrival on the list follows a reevaluation of its album genre chart categorization by Billboard, after Renaissance’s further embrace by the dance community in the months following its release.
Upon its release, the 16-track album launched a quartet of hits on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart (“Break My Soul,” “Pure/Honey,” “Summer Renaissance,” and “Thique”). Since then, the album spawned a new dance hit in its second single, “Cuff It.” The song debuted on the Hot Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart dated Nov. 19 at No. 28, following its explosion as a viral dance phenomenon (termed the “Cuff It” Challenge). The disco-leaning track was co-written by dance icon Nile Rodgers, who also plays bass on it.
Starting in September, “Cuff It” was added to dance-focused playlists across all major streamers, including Amazon, Apple Music and Spotify. Beyond “Cuff It,” further album cuts picked up new dance playlist adds in the months following the album’s release.
Plus, on Nov. 15, Renaissance garnered a Grammy Award nomination for best dance/electronic music album, while its lead single “Break My Soul” earned a nod for best dance/electronic recording. Both represent Beyoncé’s first nominations in the categories, which began in 2005 and 1998, respectively. (The album’s songs also got a trio of nominations in the Grammy Awards’ R&B field.)
Renaissance is Beyoncé’s third entry on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, following two remix compilations: 4: The Remix (No. 11, 2012) and Above and Beyoncé (No. 2, 2009).
Billboard genre chart categorization is determined by Billboard’s charts department, using genre classifications provided by content creators as guidelines, along with consideration of how projects are promoted and marketed — at streaming services, radio and beyond. Renaissance was initially categorized, after discussions with Columbia, for Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top R&B Albums charts.
As the World Cup kicks off with great fanfare and controversy this week in Qatar, another soccer tournament is getting set to launch closer to home.
Thursday (Dec. 1) will mark the third Copa del Rave, a soccer (ahem, football) tournament in Los Angeles where teams made up of employees from various electronic industry entities will compete for a good cause.
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After a two-year hiatus due to COVID, Copa del Rave this year returns with teams from WME, Red Light Management, Symphonic Distribution, CREATE Music Group, Your Army, Flaunt Magazine, INF+MOUS (INFAMOUS/2+2 Mgmt) and Kappa. The winning team will not only take home the trophy but have the honor of selecting the charity that will receive this year’s minimum $12,000 donation.
The day-long tournament is happening at Evolve Project in L.A.’s Frogtown neighborhood from 3-10 p.m., with DJ players including Ardalan, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Borgore, Zomboy and Mary Droppinz, with more to be announced. The tournament is free for all to attend, with a spectator donation requested.
The first two installments of Cope del Rave, both in 2019, featured star players including Diplo, GG Magree and The Chainsmokers and raised over $30,000 for Give a Beat and MusiCares, a Recording Academy organization that “provides a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need,” covering “financial, medical and personal emergencies.”
The eight teams competing during the tournament’s triumphant 2022 return will attempt to win the trophy away from current Copa del Rave champions, Red Light Management.
the dance charts, GRiZ revealed the events schedule for his annual holiday charity extravaganza, Beyoncé, RÜFÜS DU SOL, ODESZA and more got nods in the dance/electronic categories at the 2023 Grammy Awards, Gryffin’s “Alive” debuted at No. 3 on Dance/Electronic Albums and we broke down what the heck phonk is, what it sounds like and why you should care.
Beyond all that, it’s a big week for new electronic music. Let’s dig in.
LP Giobbi Feat. Monogem, “Body Breathe”
Have you ever chased an idea or a goal so hard that it only seemed to get further away? Sometimes the best thing you can do for your problems is let them go. When you stop, slow down, free your mind, inhale, exhale and allow yourself to do literally anything else; you’ll often find the solution meets you in a sudden rush of inspiration.
LP Giobbi’s latest track is an invitation to enter that freeform state; to close your eyes, get lost in the rhythm, and see what you might find. “Body Breathe” is a calming sort of invigorating melody. It’s a little bit psychedelic, a lotta bit dreamy, and it features a magical vocal mantra from Los Angeles-based vocalist Monogem. The two met when Giobbi booked her for a show in LA, with their shared love of jazz leading to this jam.
“I booked Monogem way back in the day to play W Los Angeles after discovering her on a Spotify playlist,” Giobbi says. “I loved her voice, and she turned out to be a really kind and wonderful person. We stayed in touch and set up a studio session in my studio in L.A. My studio doors were open, and I was at the piano playing [Bill Evans’] ‘Peace Piece’ warming up and killing time before Monogem got there. She walked in while I was playing, and we started talking about our shared love for jazz. As I continued to tinker around on those chords, she started singing ‘take all the time you need, open up your body breathe…’ Although those chords weren’t right, they got us to her amazing vocals—and that vocal got us to the track.” – KAT BEIN
Romy & Fred Again.., “Strong”
Back in January, Romy and Fred Again.. (alongside HAAi) made magic with their rousing collaboration “Lights Out,” which set a high bar for 2022. Just as they opened the year, the pair are closing it by teaming back up again for Romy’s new single “Strong.” A nostalgic trance throwback, “Strong” is music that moves your heart before it moves your body. “You’ve been so strong for so long / You learned to carry this on your own,” begins Romy in her wistfully haunting voice. From there, the emotion and sonics build up to a glorious, stadium-sized swell of strobing synths, cascading strings and out-of-body euphoria. With a message as healing as its production is piercing, “Strong” is, quite simply, a bonafide banger.
“‘Strong’ came from a moment in my life when I was processing past grief,” says Romy. “Whilst writing the lyrics I was thinking about my cousin Luis, we both have the shared experience of our mums passing away when we were young. I recognize in him the same trait I have which is to try and hold emotions down and put on a brave face. The song was a way to connect with these feelings, offer support and ultimately find a sense of release in the euphoria of music. Luis is with me on the single cover and in the music video too which was really special.” — KRYSTAL RODRIGUEZ
Gordo & Feid, “Hombres y Mujeres”
Having retired his Carnage alias, the producer born Diamonté Blackmon hasn’t waded into his new Gordo project so much as cannon-balled. On the heels of co-producing multiple tracks on Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind, Blackmon is back and collaborating with another global star, Feid, on new single “Hombres y Mujeres.” The Colombian singer talks naughty over Gordo’s tech-house production, which bumps hard and feels appropriately grimy, like a club floor at 4 a.m. with its sticky percussion and eerie synths. According to Gordo’s Twitter, “Hombres y Mujeres” is the first single from his forthcoming third studio album, which he says has been four years in the making. — K.R.
Nico Losada, “Waking Love”
Wait for it. After slowly coming to life with a full minute of shimmery synths and then a lightly tapped hi-hat, “Waking Love” by Colombian born, Brooklyn-based producer Nico Losada then explodes into bright complexity with not just the addition of a beat, but handclaps and a pair of vocal samples that both chant and sing. Altogether giving Sixteen Oceans-era Four Tet vibes (which is to say it’s very good), the song comes from Losada’s debut album Nueva Generación set for release via Ultra Records on in March 2023. — KATIE BAIN
Tibasko, “Hawt”
It was only a month and a half ago that U.K. duo Tibasko dropped its debut EP, but there’s already more where that came from. After teasing the euphoric-rave vibes of “Hawt” on social media, the energetic anthem is officially unleashed, bringing with it a saucy mix of melodic bounce, pitched-up vocals and pumping rhythms. It’s spicy, but it goes down smooth, and it was directly inspired by the rush of excitement Tibasko’s Ken Petalcorin and Andy Bowden felt while traveling the U.S. on their first Stateside tour. “We’re finally dropping our most requested track to date,” the duo says on Instagram. “We’re so excited to share this track to the world, this has been an absolute weapon in our sets.” – K. Bein
NERVO Feat. Ace Paloma, “Is Someone Looking For Me”
This past summer NERVO dropped an unreleased song during their Tomorrowland set that featured the refrain “is someone looking for me?” Not only were the lyrics delivered by Liv Nervo’s three-year-old daughter, Ace Paloma, the question she posed in the driving progressive house production alluded to the track’s deeper meaning. Now out in full, “Is Someone Looking For Me” is a collaboration between NERVO and Hopeland, a New York-based organization that works to prevent children from becoming separated from their families and to help prevent children who’ve experienced such separation from being trafficked. Released via SPINNIN, the track comes ahead of UNICEF’s World Children’s Day this Sunday (Nov. 20), with all proceeds from the song (and a NERVO show VIP experience being raffled off in conjunction with its release) going to Hopeland. — K. Bain
In early September, a 23-second clip posted to Twitter teased that Kelela’s five-year break from music was soon coming to an end — and sent fans into a frenzy. The clip comprised several fan tweets begging for her comeback; one, plucked from the opening sequence of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, characterized it best: “When the world needed her most… she vanished.”
After debuting in 2013 with her mixtape Cut 4 Me, the elusive, genre-bending singer upped the ante every two years, releasing her Hallucinogen EP in 2015 and then her critically acclaimed debut album, Take Me Apart, in 2017. Yet as the concurrent crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement took hold in 2020, Kelela says, “I think the uprising kind of led me into a place of wanting to rethink this whole f–king thing and, quite frankly, wanting to create a more liberatory model for myself.”
The 39-year-old Ethiopian-American artist born Kelela Mizanekristos has always been openly critical of the music business, calling out colorism and other issues in interviews. But what was happening in the world helped her feel more galvanized to free herself from business relationships that she felt didn’t advocate strongly enough for her artistry. In 2020, she wrote letters to the various people and companies she had business with explaining her needs, and based upon their responses — or lack thereof, from some — she cut ties, including with Sony Music Publishing. (The company responded the same day, a source says.) “Because we had an uprising, Black people now have more permission to be like, ‘I don’t like that,’ ” she says. “I am a darker-skinned, Black femme who makes left-of-center R&B/electronic music. I need to work with people who get it.”
Kelela’s music is uniquely situated between electronic dance and alternative R&B, with the music of her childhood in Washington, D.C. — ’90s R&B, soul, jazz and world, like Ethiopia’s Mahmoud Ahmed and South Africa’s Miriam Makeba — serving as key influences. She became a fixture within the rave community for the way in which she paired retro R&B vocals with futuristic club beats — and kicked it up a notch when she recruited Black queer musicians like Kaytranada and Ahya Simone to warp her lead vocals on a Take Me Apart remix album in 2018.
Kelela photographed on November 3, 2022 at Rein Studios in Brooklyn.
Jai Lennard
Throughout her career, Kelela has felt she has had to straddle two audiences: Black fans who are mesmerized by her lush R&B vocals and white fans who are entranced by her club production, thus becoming “a point of discovery for both,” she says. “That’s how I was always thinking about it.” With her long-awaited second full-length, Raven — due Feb. 10, 2023, on her longtime independent label home, Warp Records — she plans to “service the people who are there in the front row and have always been there,” says Kelela. “Queer Black people.”
On Raven, Kelela offers poignant reflections about not allowing herself to be swallowed up in her sorrow but rather celebrating her self-renewal and relishing in her resilience. “As a person who has always felt outside, there’s a deep catharsis in finding an entire social network of people who are also on the outside and making a group based off that marginalization,” she says. “When I service my immediate community, I service myself. Before, I was taking that for granted. I would be like, ‘Those people are going to always be there no matter what I do.’ And I think that’s anti-Black, or there’s some internalized sh-t there that I don’t like, and that’s not serving me, that doesn’t help me.”
She explains, while reading aloud from Wikipedia, that ravens “often act as psychopomps” known to mediate between two worlds, an idea she feels speaks to her own music. On Raven — made of self-recorded demos she later engineered herself along with different producers around the world — the moments where her vocals aren’t present can be the most powerful. In their absence, a specific blend of sensual pop-R&B balladry with atmospheric drum’n’bass beats comes into focus. Being Black is not a monolithic experience, and Kelela’s music cannot be consumed that way either. “My pursuit is to get you introduced to club music and then be able to enjoy it when there’s not a vocal guiding you every time,” she says. “You can see that I let go more.”
Kelela photographed on November 3, 2022 at Rein Studios in Brooklyn.
Jai Lennard
Beyoncé shared in that mission with her latest album, Renaissance, a dance collection with a diva house lead single, “Break My Soul,” which became the artist’s first solo No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 14 years. The release ushered legions of Black people worldwide onto the dancefloor; Kelela believes it also provided newcomers a “reference point” to her music, which they might have overlooked even just a few years ago. “I’m so happy someone like B would help Black people own this music that has been obscured and not perceived as Black,” she says.
Ahead, Kelela confirms she’ll release a Raven remix set because, like last time, it allows her to not stress about the album version of each track. And she knows her community will always be ready for more. “Queer Black people have the range — and no one else has been having the range.”
Kelela photographed on November 3, 2022 at Rein Studios in Brooklyn.
Jai Lennard
This story will appear in the Nov. 19, 2022, issue of Billboard.
Kordhell stumbled upon the YouTube channel Evil Aesthetic (stylized Ǝ V I L Æ S T H Ǝ T I C) by happenstance while digitally crate-digging in 2020. The U.K.-born, Los Angeles-based producer had a background in black metal; Evil Aesthetic specializes in phonk — a style indebted to ’90s Memphis hip-hop. Kordhell heard a kinship. “Phonk sounded similar to what I was already doing,” he says. “It was super dark, with almost a horror vibe, but in a hip-hop way.”
The producer decided to try his hand at phonk, and since then, the genre’s profile and Kordhell’s have risen together. Phonk fandom had primarily been underground, but starting in 2020, it became increasingly popular on TikTok, popping up in clips of car racing, weight lifting and more. That same year, Kordhell scored a record deal with independent label Black 17 Media. He now has two of the most commercially successful singles associated with the genre and has landed a spot on the upcoming mixtape that will accompany the 10th Fast and Furious movie — much of which is phonk-based.
“I signed him in October 2020 when he was doing 5,000 plays a day,” says Tyler Blatchley, who co-founded Black 17 Media in 2015. “Now he’s doing 4 million plays a day on Spotify alone.”
While phonk encompasses a slew of subgenres, one macho variant known as drift phonk has become most popular. Drift phonk hits like Pharmacist’s “North Memphis” and Kaito Shoma’s “Scary Garry” are icy and volatile. They nod to lo-fi Memphis rap mixtapes — creeping basslines, caffeinated hi-hats, eerie, pitch-shifted electronic cowbells — and incorporate samples of drilling, rat-tat-tat lines from rappers like Kingpin Skinny Pimp and DJ Paul, founder of Three 6 Mafia.
Blatchley first discovered “Scary Garry” on TikTok, where it appeared in adrenalized automotive videos. Black 17 had previously distributed some of DJ Paul’s solo releases, making the label ideally positioned to clear Shoma’s sample and officially release the track. “Scary Garry” started to gain attention on Spotify, and after that, Blatchley says, “I found more of these phonk songs and started playing middleman, clearing the samples and putting them on Spotify.” Black 17 now works with more than 300 phonk acts.
Word spread in the drift phonk community that there was an avenue to officially release songs with Memphis samples — and actually make money. Blatchley estimates that 60% of his signings have been brought to him by another act he was already working with; as a result, Black 17 pays an A&R fee out of its profits to any artist that brings a future signing to the label’s attention.
Because many of drift phonk’s most successful producers are based thousands of miles from the source of the samples that animate their work, they may have little understanding of Memphis hip-hop lineage — or of the lines they are sampling. But DJ Paul and Kingpin Skinny Pimp, at least, have said they are happy to be poached from. Phonk’s recent popularity has offered both a new source of income and a new source of exposure: The two are often credited as featured vocalists on tracks with hundreds of millions of streams.
Black 17 focused its phonk marketing in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, and South America, both because the music was already resonating there, and because the cost of TikTok influencer and advertising campaigns is considerably less in those regions than it is in the U.S. Black 17 co-founder Jake Houstle led an effort to establish exclusive relationships with a number of TikTok pages that were active in the phonk scene, which helped drive attention to the label’s new releases.
At the moment, the biggest threat to drift phonk’s growth is geopolitical: Many of its most popular artists are from Russia and Ukraine, two countries at war. A number of acts on Black 17’s roster have tried to flee their homes since fighting broke out in February.
But this tumultuous backdrop hasn’t slowed phonk’s rise. Earlier this year, Artist Partner Group took notice of the genre’s streaming numbers and connection to car culture and decided it would fit well on the next Fast and Furious mixtape. (APG has worked on multiple installments of the Fast and Furious soundtrack.) “We wanted to use a lot of fun music and really lean into the genre,” says Olly Shepard, APG’s vp of film/TV and synchronization. And in May, Spotify launched its official phonk playlist.
Yokai, a “phonk connoisseur” who chronicles its artists and subgenres on YouTube, used to “not even bother trying to explain to most people what the music was,” figuring he’d only elicit blank stares. Now, he says, the genre “has grown to a point where most people have at least a passing familiarity with it.” By the end of 2022, Black 17’s roster of phonk signings is on track to earn over 4 billion Spotify streams. And after experiencing streaming success abroad, Houstle says, “we’ve reached a point where we have the marketing dollars to start playing around in the U.S.”
As for Kordhell, he recently became one of the 500 most popular artists on Spotify, a first for a phonk producer. He’s been busy with upcoming productions and remixes. “I’m exhausted,” he says. But he wouldn’t have it any other way: “I want to ride the wave.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the Nov. 19, 2022, issue of Billboard.