Dance
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Fred Again.. (aka, Fred Gibson) debuts at No. 10 on Billboard‘s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated Dec. 17) with Actual Life (April 14 – December 2020). The set starts with 2,600 equivalent album units, including 2,000 from album sales, Dec. 2-8, according to Luminate.
The pandemic-themed set, originally released in April 2021, hits the chart following its Dec. 2 arrival on vinyl. It’s Fred Again..’s second entry and top 10, after a later release in the series, Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2020) (No. 3, November).
Actual Life 3 spurred five hits on the multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, including the top 20 achiever “Clara (The Night Is Dark)” (No. 18, Nov. 12). Overall, Fred Again.. owns 12 charted titles, including most recent single “Strong,” with Romy (No. 27, Dec. 3), and “Turn On the Lights Again..,” with Swedish House Mafia and featuring Future (No. 16, Aug. 13).
Speaking of Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, INTERWORLD earns its first Billboard top 10 with “Metamorphosis” (11-10). The track, whose profile has surged thanks to TikTok, earned 2.4 million U.S. streams, up 8%.
Jengi (Dutch producer Jan Berendsen) jets to his initial Billboard chart appearances with “Bel Mercy.” The track, at No. 40 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, collected 278,000 domestic streams and sold 600 downloads. With the latter figure, Jengi also jumps in at No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart.
Continuing with Billboard firsts, but shifting to the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Lena Leon spins to her inaugural top 10 with “Spiral” (12-7). The song is drawing core-dance airplay on SiriusXM’s BPM, Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel and iHeartRadio’s Evolution, among other outlets. (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.)
“‘Spiral’ was written with my friends Andrew Tyler, Flo August and the Disco Fries about a panic attack I had in my own house during the pandemic,” Leon tells Billboard. “It’s one of the most personal things I’ve ever written, and I decided to release it myself after feeling like there wasn’t enough female representation in dance music. I never expected this kind of reaction in a million years and I’m so grateful this one is resonating with so many.”
Additionally on the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Tiësto travels into the top 10 with “10:35,” featuring Tate McRae (14-9). It’s Tiësto’s 17th top 10 (and McRae’s third), tying him with Kaskade for the fifth-most top 10s since the chart began in August 2003. The twosome trails only David Guetta (34), Rihanna (24), Calvin Harris (20) and Justin Bieber (20).
Nearly a year after Ultra Records founder Patrick Moxey sold his 50% share of the lauded dance imprint to Sony Music, the executive is being sued by the major label over his continued use of the “Ultra” trademark.
When Moxey sold his remaining stake in Ultra Records this past January, it marked a turning point in dance music history — giving Sony full control of the label it had previously held a 50% stake in. While Moxey parted ways with the imprint he founded in 1995, he held on to his other company, Ultra International Music Publishing, LLC. But in a complaint filed last month in New York, Sony Music argues he has no legal rights to use the “Ultra” name following the sale.
“Notwithstanding that Moxey received a substantial payment as part of the buyout, after which he ceased to have any involvement in the business of Ultra Records, he has sought to perpetuate the falsehood that he remains involved with Ultra Records by wrongfully continuing to use Ultra Records’ ULTRA trademark as part of his music publishing business,” reads the complaint, which was filed Nov. 11.
The complaint continues that under the terms of a 2012 agreement that marked Sony’s acquisition of 50% of Ultra Records, “Ultra International Music Publishing and its affiliates were only permitted to use the word ‘Ultra; under license from Ultra Records. That license was terminated by Ultra Records following the buyout, effective March 29, 2022.”
The complaint goes on to state that Ultra Publishing’s continued use of the name is in violation of the Ultra Records trademark, noting that “No written license agreement was ever executed between Ultra Records and Ultra International Music Publishing concerning the latter’s use of the ULTRA trademark.”
In a statement provided to Billboard, Sony Music states that “Patrick Moxey sold Ultra Records and the Ultra brand to Sony Music Entertainment in exchange for a substantial buyout payment, and now is perpetuating the falsehood that he remains affiliated with his former company by continuing to use the Ultra name in connection with the publishing operations he controls. These actions knowingly misrepresent his involvement with Ultra and are in clear violation of the trademark rights SME acquired in a mutually agreed upon transaction.”
While a representative for Moxey did not immediately return a request for comment, in a statement given to Music Business Worldwide, he claimed that Sony has “done nothing but bully me from the day I sold them my record company. Ultra International Music Publishing has been an independent standalone business for over 20 years, which publishes songs co-written with Drake, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, 21 Savage, Rihanna, Future, Kygo and many more.
“The vast majority of our songs are not on Ultra Records or Sony [Music],” Moxey continued. “I have made it abundantly clear on numerous occasions in media interviews that Ultra International Music Publishing is completely separate from Ultra Records, and always has been. I have every right to use the name ‘Ultra’ in connection with Ultra International Music Publishing, and won’t be intimidated by a massive global corporation.”
After leaving Ultra Records, Moxey announced a new dance label venture, Helix Records, which has since released music from Snakehips, Willy William and Two Friends. The imprint is a division of Moxey’s longstanding hip-hop label, Payday Records. Both labels are distributed by Warner Recorded Music’s indie services arm ADA Worldwide.
It’s perhaps hard for all of us entrenched in the dance universe to bear in mind what a small world it ultimately is, statistically speaking. In the United States, dance and electronic music made up just 3.3% of total recorded music volume in 2021, which means that all of our efforts — all of our emails, all of our late nights and all of our sweat expelled on the dancefloor — are contributing to a scene that’s perhaps easy for other sectors to write off as humble, hard to see, “not the commercial juggernaut it once was.”
But inside it doesn’t feel that way, does it? Inside, it seems that new genres are developing, new markets are opening and new stars are breaking through while veterans are finding success in reinvention. Meanwhile, dance clubs and festivals are doing “amazingly well,” after an existentially fraught two years from which other realms of live events are still struggling to return. And when two of the biggest musical icons in pop history looked for reinvention this year, they came to clubland.
Indeed, while the commercial viability of dance music isn’t making waves like it did during the EDM heyday, the scene has in ways never felt healthier. The genre made an imprint in most realms of recorded music in 2022 — via fusion with sounds from pop to hip-hop to Latin, with creativity and quality at a high and with the sorely-needed diversification of the scene finally starting to happen — though with much work still to be done here and in relation to how we better protect the people and places in the scene that are its founders and foundation.
Driving it all, of course, was the music. It’s cliché at this point to say that dance/electronic is really just a blanket term for dozens and dozens of other genres — many of them wildly different and fairly laughable to compare — but that fact remains true, with this dizzying sonic taxonomy synthesizing a world that feels not just massive, but culturally significant and ultimately unstoppable.
These are our 50 favorite dance tracks of 2022.
Chris Lorenzo will serve as headliner for Monster Energy’s annual Up & Up College Festival series.
Launching in the spring of 2023, the series is meant to function like the Final Four college basketball tournament, with student ambassador teams representing more than 100 U.S. colleges leading marketing and influencer campaigns to rally their school to buy pre-sale tickets (with no date or location) to earn the opportunity to produce a festival with Chris Lorenzo.
The top six schools with the most pre-sale tickets after the 48-hour campaign score the opportunity to collaborate with Up & Up producers to produce a Chris Lorenzo show at a nearby venue. Previous winning schools include the University of Alabama, ASU, CU Boulder, Florida State, LSU, University of Oregon, Penn State, San Jose State and many others.
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The Up & Up series has happened annually since 2016 (except in the pandemic years), with previous headliners including TroyBoi, Alan Walker and Slushii. UK producer Lorenzo is a mainstay of the underground house scene and scored a pair of hits in 2022 with his remix of The Mama & The Papas’ “California Dreamin’” and his edit of J Balvin’s “In Da Getto.”
“Ever since I started touring North America, the whole college system has been a big part of my journey,” Lorenzo says. “Whether playing unofficial after parties or the official frat shows over the years, I’ve always loved the energy the crowds have. It reminds me of when I started DJing back in the UK. So, to be able to have 70 colleges in America pitch for me to come play and then actually get to play six huge shows will be a lot of fun. I’m excited to see who wins and then come and smash the shows for the fans.”
Beloved London nightclub fabric has enacted a lifetime ban on a guest who shared a video of a fellow attendee dancing inside the venue.
The clip, which was shared via Twitter on Monday alongside a caption reading “Yo I’ll never be going to fabric again after seeing this,” showed a minimally dressed attendee dancing freely inside the venue.
Fabric replied to the tweet saying, “Great, given this tweet, we’d prefer it if you didn’t come. Our club was built on the values of free expression and the freedom to dance and not be judged. We also have a No Photo Policy to protect our dancers’ privacy. Please do the right thing and remove this video.”
As of the publishing of this article, the video has not been taken down.
On Tuesday (Dec. 13), fabric tweeted an update saying, “Yesterday we were made aware of a Tweet circulating featuring a video of a dancer at the club. We have requested that due to the nature of the caption and the context in which it was taken, that the video be removed. The author has been given a lifetime ban.”
The club also shared its No Photo Policy, which bans all unauthorized photos and videos inside the club and states that “the policy is in place as a guidance – a statement on our mission to try and encourage our community to stay in the moment. Not taking photos or videos during a club event doesn’t just, we think, [create] a better vibe, but also gives privacy to fellow punters and to the artist playing who might not want to be in your photos or videos.”
Since opening in 1999, fabric has become one of the most well-respected clubs on London and beyond, having hosted all the greats of the DJ world. The venue narrowly avoided closure in 2016 after a “Save Fabric” campaign raised the necessary awareness and funds to help with legal fees after the venue’s license was revoked for a pair of drug-related deaths.
Yesterday we were made aware of a Tweet circulating featuring a video of a dancer at the club.We have requested that due to the nature of the caption and the context in which it was taken, that the video be removed. The author has been given a lifetime ban.— fabric (@fabriclondon) December 13, 2022
Thomas Wesley is riding his horse back into the collective consciousness.
In a video uploaded yesterday (Dec. 12) to TikTok, the producer sidles up to the check-in counter at a lavish hotel. “Checking in for Diplo?” the hotel concierge says. “No, this time it’s Thomas Wesley,” counters the artist. He then winks at the camera before the video cuts to a shot of him strutting down a hallway while putting on a white cowboy hat while a clip of what is presumably his forthcoming country crossover plays.
The clip’s caption notes that “Thomas Wesley is back in business” and IDs the song as “Wasted,” a project with Kodak Black and emerging outlaw country singer Koe Wetzel. No release date for the song has been announced.
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“Wasted” marks a return to country for Diplo, who released his debut album in the genre, Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil, in 2020. The lead single from the album, the Morgan Wallen collaboration “Heartless,” spent 39 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 29. The album, which also included collaborations with Leon Bridges, Noah Cyrus, Cam, Zac Brown, Julia Michaels and more, spent 25 weeks on the Billboard 200, and peaked at No. 50.
“We’re reaching people without Nashville giving us the approval,” Diplo told Billboard of his work in the country genre in a 2020 cover story. “We don’t really need it. With streaming services, you don’t need to be on the radio. Country records go for, like, a year to reach the charts. I’m into that. I’m learning from that.”
Watch Diplo’s TikTok teasing his new song “Wasted” below.
The themes are heavy, but Soulwax is keeping the vibe light with their contributions to the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto Online: Los Santos Drug Wars.
A sprawling update to the game, out Tuesday (Dec. 13), is accompanied by a flurry of original compositions by artists including Soulwax. The duo’s work on the game includes “Autoclown,” a bouncy production by the Belgian electronic icons that mimics the psychedelic themes of the game itself. Hear an exclusive clip from this track below.
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“When Rockstar approached us to be a part of Grand Theft Auto V, we were really excited about the opportunity,” Soulwax tell Billboard in a joint statement. “We had such a great time making and selecting tracks for the original Soulwax FM that we ended up creating a ton of ideas that we couldn’t fit in the final mix. So when the team came to us again to work on GTA Online, we went back to those initial ideas and started shaping them into a new score for Los Santos Drug Wars.”
Soulwax FM refers to a radio station featured in Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online, with GTA developer Rockstar Games having heavily incorporated electronic music into the game over the years, with appearances, radio stations and soundtrack contributions by prestige artists including The Blessed Madonna and Moodymann. In 2021, the game Rocktstar Games also partnered with Ibiza-based club brand CircoLoco for its joint venture, CircoLoco Records.
“We’re so excited to be working with Soulwax again,” Ivan Pavlovich, vice president of music at Rockstar Games, tells Billboard. “Soulwax FM’s driving dance and left field lost gems have made it such a classic station, and their music is the perfect vibe for the wild, psychedelic experience that is Los Santos Drug Wars.”
Part two of Los Santos Drug Wars is set for release in early 2023.
As we collectively process yesterday’s season finale of The White Lotus — What happened between Ethan and Daphne on Isola Bella? Will Greg still inherit Tonya’s money? Did Cameron ever get his suitcase? — the show’s theme song has gotten a house remix from Los Angeles-based producer Enamour.
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On the edit, which you can listen to here, Enamour artist adds layers of percussion and a house bounce to the already hypnotically strange original, “Renaissance (Main Title Theme).” The remix extends the track to six and half minutes, making good use of the source material’s spooky turkey gobble vocals.
The Enamour remix has gotten rinsed by Mikey Lion, who played it during a set last weekend in Los Angeles. Forthcoming Enamour releases are coming via Factory 93, Anjuadeep, Days Like Nights.
The original White Lotus season two theme was composed by Cristobal Tapia De Veer, a Chilean-born Canadian film and television composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist who’s also worked on the scores for Utopia, Black Mirror and the first season of White Lotus, the theme song for which was a variation on that for season two.
For the second season, Tapia De Veer beefed up the theme’s beat and added some primal urgency to the shrieking vocals, with this original serving as something of a dance track in and of itself.
In related news, White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge took part in a conversation with Ariana Grande during which she credited the pop star for helping launch her recent career renaissance.
“I’m curious if you know that when people ask about how my life has changed … Yes, I got to do White Lotus, but I think it really started with you asking me to be in the ‘Thank U, Next”‘ video,” the actress told Grande as part of her Entertainment Weekly Entertainers of the Year cover story published today (Dec. 12).
“I mean, from there I got Promising Young Woman and this whole thing,” she continued. “You were sort of the instigator. I really believe that. I think if you hadn’t put me in ‘Thank U, Next’ and done that imitation, I don’t think I would be here where I am.”
Not even a power outage caused by a generator fire or an impending rainstorm could slow down Kx5 from taking over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday.
Kx5 – a collaboration between Kaskade and Deadmau5 — did their second stadium show of the year in Los Angeles, following Kaskade’s inaugural public concert in July 2021 at the new SoFi Stadium, when Kaskade invited the Mau5 to open the show and the Kx5 project was first teased.
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The Coliseum concert, which Kx5 representatives say drew 46,220 fans, marks the biggest ticketed global dance event of 2022 for a headline artist, according to Billboard Boxscore.
The scheduled two-hour show was marred by a power outage to the stage around the midpoint that forced a nearly half-hour delay. When the duo retook the stage, Deadmau5 told the crowd that “a generator caught fire” and the duo poked fun at the power company. “A little fire is not going to stop a good time,” Deadmau5 said. “I’m actually kind of surprised how quickly we got that back up, considering.”
(Deadmau5 later posted an all-black screen on his Instagram, quipping that “here’s some footage of the stage production when the generator caught fire,” drawing a “hahahahahahahaha” from Kaskade.)
A spokesperson for Deadmau5 and Kx5 tells Billboard that the main generator powering the stage production “caught fire due to overheating, and due to safety reasons they had to wait until flames were put out before the backup generators kicked in.” (The spokesperson adds that the Coliseum allowed the duo to play past their curfew to complete the show.)
The temporary loss of power only impacted the stage production and had no effect on the rest of the venue, Kevin Daly, the Coliseum’s assistant general manager, tells Billboard.
The stadium show capped a year in which Kx5 released several singles together, including “Escape,” “Alive” and “Take Me High.” They plan to release an album together in 2023, a spokesperson confirms to Billboard.
Joel Zimmerman, the Toronto-based producer known as Deadmau5, and Ryan Raddon, the Chicago-born and LA-based Kaskade, have a long history of producing together, dating back to the 2008 dance hit “I Remember” and 2014’s “Move for Me,” songs that helped define the EDM explosion in the U.S. They also performed as Kx5 at this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.
Saturday’s event featured a mix of Kaskade and Deadmau5 hits, including “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” and “The Veldt,” and their Kx5 collaborations. It ended with an encore of “Escape,” the Kx5 track that topped the Billboard Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart in April. British singer Hayla emerged onstage in a glittering silver dress to sing along as fireworks burst from the top of the stage for nearly a full minute. A steady drizzle finally kicked in just as fans were exiting the venue.
Aside from their new musical productions, the duo’s onstage performance on Saturday showcased high-level production, including frequent fireworks and other pyrotechnics and several aerial drone-writing moments, including one depicting the entrance to the Coliseum and another of the outline of the state of California.
The production also leaned into elements of Deadmau5’s previous live appearances featuring the Cube v3 – which he designed and helped write code for — that have earned the Canadian DJ-producer a reputation as a live-event technical innovator. For the Kx5 show the duo took the stage atop separate cubes that moved side-to-side on tracks, spun 360 degrees and could elevate about 10 feet in the air. The cubes occasionally joined up together where the DJs could interact with each other and appear on camera together for the audience.
Saturday’s show also marked the first time that Kaskade had performed in the Coliseum since 2010, when he headlined the last Electric Daisy Carnival to be held in Los Angeles. The two-day festival was scarred by the death of 15-year-old Sasha Rodriguez, who died of a suspected drug overdose after attending the event, leading Insomniac to move EDC to Las Vegas in 2011, after 13 years at the LA Coliseum.
“What was that, a gap of 12 years?” Deadmau5 asked Kaskade in Saturday’s waning minutes. “Holy shit.”
Princes of vibe Rüfüs Du Sol will host the second iteration of their Sundream festival this May 4-7 in San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico, with a lineup featuring UK club powerhouse Michael Bibi, deep house veterans Tale of Us, live electronic favorite Monolink, a b2b from DJ Tennis and Carlita, along with both a live set and a DJ set from Rüfüs themselves. See the complete lineup below.
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Sundream 2023 moves from its original location in Tulum (where it launched earlier this year) to San Jose Del Cabo at the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. The four-day fest will happen at El Ganzo Sculpture Gardens, a 12-acre park that houses a collection of large-scale sculptures by Mexican artists, along with thousands of cacti, succulents and palms from deserts around the world. The Garden and its nearby Crania space — which will also host performances over the weekend — are both adjacent to San Jose Del Cabo’s exceedingly hip hotel Hotel El Ganzo.
In addition to the cacti and music, organizers promise “wellness activities, art installations, intimate DJ sessions and live performances from some of the Grammy-winning band’s closest kin and inspirations,” with the lineup also featuring artists from the trio’s Rose Avenue imprint. Tickets and resort accommodations go on sale this Friday (Dec. 16).
Ahead of the festival, Rüfüs will attempt to win their second Grammy, with the trio this year nominated for both best dance/electronic album for their 2021 LP Surrender and best dance/electronic recording for their single “On My Knees.” The SoCal-based trio are the current reigning champions in this latter category, winning the Grammy in 2022 for their single “Alive.”
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