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Hidden up a wooded hill in the sprawling backyard of his suburban Los Angeles estate, Dijon “Mustard” McFarlane is on the tennis court, perfecting his forehand. “I’m an extremist,” the 34-year-old producer explains as he warms up his top spin. “I play every day, sometimes two times a day.” The L.A.-born musician, who shot to […]
Chayanne strides into a rehearsal space at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami, dressed in black from head to toe — tight pants and shirt, crisp blazer, formal leather shoes — and warmly embraces his manager, his assistant, his creative director. He then extends his hand to greet the photographer waiting for a cover shoot. “Nice to meet you,” he says with a broad smile. “I’m Chayanne.”
“I think we all know who you are here,” I say lightly, but Chayanne stops and turns to look at me.
“No,” he tells me without reproach, his smile intact and his voice firm. “My dad taught me that no matter where you are, you say hello and introduce yourself. You can’t assume people know who you are.”
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And just like that, this encounter becomes another among a long list of anecdotes about Elmer Figueroa Arce, better known as Chayanne. The artist who goes out to dinner and gets up multiple times to greet his fans. The performer who’s first to arrive at rehearsals and the last to leave. The star who greets housekeepers by name and dances with them in the hallways. The guy who runs in the mornings, alone.
“He is an exemplary father, an exemplary husband; good-looking, tall; he dances; he’s the perfect man,” says Henry Cárdenas, CEO of Cárdenas Marketing Network, which has produced Chayanne’s tours for decades, including his upcoming global arena trek. “He’s been a guy untainted by scandal. [Chayanne has been married to Marilisa Maronesse for over 30 years and has two children with her: Lorenzo and Isadora, the latter also a singer.] I’ve known him for years. I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and what you see is who he is. He’s the guy who interrupts his golf game to take a photo with a fan.”
Today, at this studio in Miami, Chayanne reveals yet another facet of himself: that of the impeccable perfectionist who, at 56 years old — and looking 15 years younger — is preparing to start the longest tour of his career.
The Bailemos Otra Vez (Let’s Dance Again) tour, which takes its name from the hit album released last year, begins Aug. 21 at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif. It will stop in 40 arenas in 39 cities in North America, ending in Miami on Dec. 15, and then continue to Latin America and Spain.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
“You’re backstage, you haven’t come out, they dim the lights, and everyone starts shouting, ‘Chayanne, Chayanne!’” he replies when I ask how he stays motivated after so many years of performing. He closes his eyes for a moment.
“It’s awesome. Because it’s been many years, but it’s an inexplicable feeling … I started at 10 years old, and I just turned 56. I say it calmly and with joy, because I feel so good, and I have lived the stages of my life with passion, with joy, with emotion. And I have also grown professionally, personally. All of that has shaped the person you have in front of you, but also the people who are going to see the show. Because I didn’t do this alone. They all grew up with me too.”
Talking to Chayanne feels a little like talking to a close friend, albeit a super handsome, super charismatic one who also happens to be among the most revered Latin artists in the world.
Today, we’re chatting in front of a rehearsal stage, designed to exactly replicate his tour set, where he has been practicing seven hours a day for the past six weeks. This interview break is an anomaly, because when Chayanne is in tour prep mode, he shuts down everything else — though he has been preparing for this for decades.
Chayanne began his professional music career at the age of 10. As a member of Puerto Rican boy band Los Chicos, he played stadiums, traveled on private planes and celebrated birthdays in hotels with cakes sent by fans.
But it was later, when he signed with Sony as a solo artist, that he became a true international star. The name Chayanne, which sounds like a stage moniker, is actually his given name (his mother was a fan of 1950s TV show Cheyenne), although it’s not on his birth certificate.
“As a kid, they called me ‘Chancito,’” Chayanne says. “People who really loved me — my mom, my grandma — called me Chancito. You know, the diminutive we use when we’re little. Fortunately, the ‘ito’ eventually dropped out and it became just Chayanne.”
Today, more than 40 years later, Chayanne has accumulated a catalog of hits that includes more than 49 entries and 29 top 10s on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, a record surpassed only by Enrique Iglesias and Luis Miguel among male artists.
In 2023, Chayanne released Bailemos Otra Vez, his first studio album in nine years (on Sony, his longtime label), which debuted in August in the top 10 of the Top Latin Albums chart, his 15th album to do so — making him only the second artist in history (the other is the late Rocío Dúrcal) to achieve a top 10 on the chart in every decade from the 1980s until now.
Simultaneously, Chayanne’s single “Bailando Bachata” became his seventh No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart, where he has already placed 35 songs. The track was No. 1 for 15 weeks, marking a resounding return for Chayanne, who hadn’t had a No. 1 on that chart in 16 years.
And yet, Chayanne hadn’t gone anywhere. During the heyday of reggaetón in the early 2000s, his pop sound — a mix of heartfelt ballads and uptempo dance fare — endured, and his tours continued to be enormous and constant. The last one, in 2019, grossed $28.3 million and sold 311,000 tickets across 49 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore, becoming the second most successful Latin tour of that year, after Luis Miguel.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
Plenty of legacy Latin artists tour regularly and sell massive amounts of tickets: Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Alejandro Fernández and Ana Gabriel, to name just a few. But Chayanne’s fan base, made up largely of women ages 50 and older, is particularly loyal, at least in part, Cárdenas says, because Chayanne’s career has been devoid of scandals. “We Latinos tend to support those idols of ours that have been ‘clean.’ There’s no dirt on Chayanne.”
It also partly explains why Chayanne’s music endures. Beyond their catchiness as hit pop songs, “Tiempo de Vals” and “Yo Te Amo,” for example, are still favorites at quinceañeras and weddings, respectively, passed down from mother to daughter, with multiple generations going together to Chayanne’s shows.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Chayanne was forced to cancel his Desde El Alma tour after 113 shows, with all of South America still left to play. There was a silver lining: With a clear schedule, he finally had time to think about an album.
“Chayanne is an artist who focuses on one project at a time, and if he’s in tour mode, everything is dedicated to the tour,” says Patty Vega, his manager of 30 years. And although he hadn’t released new music prior to the trek, “it didn’t mean he wasn’t listening to material or wasn’t doing his homework. Everything was being finessed.”
“When you release an album, you’re always thinking about what’s going into the tour, because touring is part of my life,” Chayanne says. “Performing live for fans is what I’ve enjoyed most in my career. In other words, the tour was planned; we just didn’t know when it was going to happen. A tour demands dedication. You know you’ll need months of rehearsal, exercise, new eating habits. It’s a responsibility.”
The Bailemos Otra Vez tour, like all Chayanne treks, was conceived as an invitation to take a tour of his career. However, because it will promote his new album and follows five years away from the road, as well as a pandemic, the name took on new meaning.
The process began more than a year ago, when Chayanne sequestered himself to review his setlists from over the years, including the order of songs, arrangements, mood boards and stage production for each.
“Chayanne has an extremely extensive catalog. Getting things out of the setlist isn’t easy,” says Cheche Alara, the renowned music producer (Annie Lennox, Camila Cabello, Natalia Lafourcade) who has served as musical director for Chayanne on four of his tours over the past 10 years. He began working on the Bailemos Otra Vez tour months ago, adding five songs from the album to Chayanne’s classic repertoire.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
From a musical point of view, Alara says that this time around “our vision is different. It’s very rare that we do something the same from tour to tour.” Asked to sum up the tour’s concept in a single word, he replies: “Gratitude.”
Chayanne “wants to thank his fans who have been with him for a long time,” Alara says. “He is not only an extraordinary artist but a very beloved artist, and the more you work with him, the more you realize that it’s not a facade.”
And he’s beloved for far more than his artistry. When I ask if at any point in his career, especially after he scored his first big hits, someone sat him down and explained what success entailed and how to behave in the face of it, he looks at me with surprise.
“That’s what I call values, principles,” he says. “That comes from before, from when I was a kid. It’s everything that I try to transmit and have tried to transmit at home with my children. In my career, I always felt support from my parents. From my dad, a home, food, respect. And from my mom, the romantic part: music, parties, the ‘Come, let’s dance.’ It’s been a beautiful balance. But it all came from my childhood.”
From the beginning of his career, for example, Chayanne made it his mission to go to every Latin country in which his music was released and promoted, visiting every major city and each essential music person in it. “It was going to Venezuela and saying hello, to Argentina, to Puerto Rico, Mexico. It meant shaking hands with every label employee, every radio station owner, every promoter.”
That philosophy extends to his daily life today. Although Chayanne keeps his personal life just that, he embraces his role as a public figure with gusto.
Beyond being accessible to fans when he’s out and about, since the pandemic, Chayanne has become an avid social media devotee. A few weeks ago, he even posted a shirtless photo of himself in his bathing trunks on Instagram that generated commotion among his 10 million followers, with nearly a half-million likes and thousands of comments.
“I have a problem, Chayanne used to be my dad. Now, I want him to be the father of my children,” wrote one fan. “Patrimony of humanity!” wrote another. “What a beautifully-done piece.” “The most beautiful man in all Latin America!” The list goes on and on.
“Oh, my God. Let me cover myself!” he says with a laugh. “OK, yes, I read some of the comments,” he admits. “Some were very cute, very lovely. Like, ‘If you’re going to take off your shirt, why stop there?’ I mean, really,” he says, blushing a bit.
How about his daughter, Isadora, I ask. What did she think of posting that photo?
“She took it!” he says, laughing.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
Chayanne keeps those fans in mind when planning a tour. “Chayanne thinks about the audience and the fans first. It’s not about what he wants to do but about what the audience wants,” says Nancy O’Meara, Chayanne’s choreographer and creative director of 27 years.
Choreography in particular is essential to a Chayanne tour. He’s an accomplished dancer and participates in all numbers alongside the eight dancers (four men and four women from all over the world) who O’Meara trains at her Los Angeles studio.
The entire team then moved to Miami to rehearse with Chayanne every day, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., here at Blue Dolphin Studios, where he keeps a keen eye on all details of the performance.
“He always rehearses as if he were in front of a live audience,” says O’Meara, who has also worked with John Legend and Charlie Puth. “I don’t know anyone else who has such a level of detail.”
At 56, he can still sing and dance for almost three hours nightly — and on this tour, he’ll do just that for 18 months. His stamina in part comes from the discipline he’s developed since childhood, but at his age, his lifestyle matters as well. An athlete who loves golf and water sports and runs daily (“because I like it — I’m not running away from anything!” he says with a laugh), he has also been doing Pilates for the past three years, “because it stretches my body and strengthens my muscles and that’s what I need.”
He’s quick to joke that he keeps expectations for himself within reason. “What I can’t do, I’m not going to do,” he says, laughing. “But [what] I will say is, it’s a dynamic show.”
Chayanne is not high maintenance on the road. His needs are, for a touring superstar, fairly basic: good transportation (a private plane is standard), a gym (he’ll take weights to his room to work out there) and a good bed, “because after the show what I want is to take a shower and go to sleep.” Perhaps he’ll also indulge in a nice meal: “I like to eat well.”
Before every show, he’ll do a meet-and-greet, take photos with fans and, finally, get a little alone time. But that’s not what he ultimately craves.
“I’m restless, like a lion. I can’t wait to start,” he says, his eyes lighting up. “Look,” he adds, pointing to his leg, which is bouncing excitedly. “I pray and hope that everything goes well, that people enjoy themselves. I pray to my mom, to God.
“And then you go out on that stage and all that love that’s coming at you, you can’t describe it. I literally see my life flash before my eyes, because it has been my life. It is a whole life that I have dedicated to music.”
When RIIZE goes out to dinner, it’s a 20-person affair. On this particular Sunday evening, the pioneering South Korean mega-label SM Entertainment has reserved a private room at a hot spot in Los Angeles’ Koreatown popular with music artists for its new boy band. The six members file in around a long table — along […]
On the scale of regular to rock star, being stuck in traffic leans hard into the mundane. And yet on a humid March afternoon in Texas, this is where I find Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — the French electronic music legends better known as Justice. Augé (44, bearded, tall, taciturn) is in the […]
Most people on Manuel Turizo’s team thought releasing “La Bachata” was going to be a big mistake.
“They were scared,” says the 23-year-old Colombian artist. “They told me that I was neither a bachata singer nor Dominican and that I was going to confuse my audience. But that didn’t matter to me because I’m a singer. Music is universal and these are the influences Dominican music left in me.”
Trusting his gut, Turizo released his first-ever bachata track in May 2022, backed by urban beats and weeping string melodies a la Aventura in the 2000s. Not only did it prove his team wrong — it became his biggest hit to date and relaunched one of the most promising careers in Latin music.
“La Bachata” landed in August 2022 at No. 1 on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart, where it ruled for 14 weeks, and rose to No. 1 on the overall Latin Airplay chart last October. It also granted Turizo his only top 10 on both of Billboard’s global charts. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard Global 200, becoming the first bachata song to enter the top 10 since the chart’s inception in 2020, and No. 3 on the Global Excl. U.S. chart. Further, it earned the Colombian his highest-ranking title on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 67 in October 2022.
The song also scored three trophies at the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards, including Global 200 Latin song of the year, Latin airplay song of the year and tropical song of the year.
“Who was waiting for me to release a bachata? No one,” he says with a smile, “but it worked.”
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The attitude may seem nonchalant, but it hides a steely determination. Turizo rose to fame at 16 years old and has trusted his gut ever since.
“I wasn’t going to let this opportunity end ni pa’l carajo! (the hell no!)” he says of achieving fame as a teen. “Everything is going to last, no matter what. I am going to do whatever it takes to make this last. If you notice, I have always focused a lot on my music, not on fame or attention. Fame is just a tool for my music and it’s a side effect of when my music works too.”
At the same time, he reflects on what he sacrificed at a young age, including “quality time with my loved ones” and “having time for myself.” But he’s aware that it’s a decision he made, and he loves what he’s doing.
On the heels of the success of “La Bachata,” Turizo — an artist essentially known for his feel-good urban-pop songs — has become a go-to collaborator for artists across the genre spectrum, sought out for a universal sound that’s equally appealing to Generation Z, millennials and even baby boomers, who find Turizo’s slow, shy smile and his music irresistible on the dancefloor.
AMIRI top, pants and shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
In the past year, Turizo has joined forces with Shakira (“Copa Vacía”), Grupo Frontera (“De Lunes a Lunes”) and Marshmello, with whom he released “El Merengue” earlier this year. The electro-merengue fusion not only earned the famed EDM DJ-producer his first No. 1 on both the Latin Airplay and Tropical Airplay charts (spending 13 weeks atop the latter) but also the crossover artist of the year honor at the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards and a nomination for best tropical song at the 2023 Latin Grammys.
“Manuel and I have never met. He just came to the studio and we winged it,” Marshmello recalls. “Nothing was ready. We just sat there and from the ground up made ‘El Merengue’ happen. I never thought I would top a Latin chart.”
“If he wanted to do something with a 100% Latin flavor, this is one of the most iconic genres we have in our music, and we ended up producing merengue,” Turizo adds of the rhythmic hit. “I knew it was a song that had a lot of energy, but I didn’t know how far it was going to go.”
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Indeed, both “La Bachata” and “El Merengue” gained rapid virality, mainly fueled by Turizo’s dancing stunts on the internet with close friends, industry colleagues and fans at his concerts.
On social media, where he boasts over 20 million combined followers between TikTok and Instagram, Turizo flaunts his sexy, flirtatious and playful side, mostly in videos where he’s hanging out with his friends on a yacht or at the studio. But in person, he’s far more reserved, serious and focused.
He arrives at Billboard’s photoshoot at a local Miami restaurant 10 minutes before 1 p.m. on a hot summer Wednesday wearing a pale green T-shirt and black jeans. He’s in a good mood, greeting the photographer and his team with hugs and kisses. “¿Qué más? ¿Todo bien?” he asks me, but then finishes mingling and goes straight to work.
Turizo is now a Miami local. He has been residing in Florida since 2019 to further expand his music career and opportunities, but mostly because “Miami opened my mind a little to see beyond my ceiling,” he says, “to know that there are many more markets.”
Even though a newfound audience is just discovering his charm and chameleon-like talent, as well as his ability to blend many different genres into a global sound, his journey began 11 years ago in his native Montería, a small town in northern Colombia primarily known for its porro and fandango (two types of folk music).
“I was 12 when I started to feel like I really wanted to try something in music,” he says, crediting his parents and brother for instilling his love for music at an early age. “That’s where it all started, when I took vocal education classes and started writing songs not thinking that they would be possible hits, but because I liked it.”
Ferragamo jacket, pants and shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
As teenagers, Manuel and his older brother, Julián Turizo, began creating music in their room. The former would write songs and sing them, and the latter would help in the composition, handle backup vocals and play the ukulele. At one point, they even considered becoming a duo, but Julián had other plans.
“I knew from the very beginning, when it was simply all a dream, that Manuel sang amazingly and that I didn’t want to sing next to him,” Julián explains. “I only wanted to contribute to the project, and from then on, my brother told me: ‘Well, let’s always work together, please. Let’s do this project together,’ and that’s how we began. My first objective will always be Manuel Turizo.” To this day, Julián plays a key role in his brother’s career, overseeing the creative process of his music and audiovisuals, among other duties.
In 2016, Manuel, then 16, and Julián, then 19, released their first song, “Una Lady Como Tú.” Produced with the help of their friend and music producer Zenzei, they released the track on digital platforms without any assistance — beyond using a cousin’s credit card to pay the $9 it cost to upload the song.
They struck gold instantly.
Introducing Manuel’s deep baritone vocal range to the world, the sweet, pop-reggaetón fusion “refreshed” the music industry, says Manuel, at a time when the Latin trap movement was building momentum with the rise of artists such as Bad Bunny, Anuel AA and Bryant Myers.
“I started with a song very different from what was happening and trending at the time I released it,” he says. “A [new] guy comes out that no one has any idea who he is, singing very romantic and with a sound that no one knows if it’s pop, if it’s a ballad, if it’s reggaetón, but it was like it refreshed people’s ears. It was like a different meal.”
“Una Lady Como Tú” peaked at No. 10 on the Latin Digital Song Sales chart in September 2017, becoming Turizo’s first Billboard chart entry.
“That was the beginning, where the gates of heaven opened,” he says with a laugh. “It was what confirmed to us that we were not wrong with all those dreams. That it is worth it, it is possible, and you can achieve it.”
Manuel Turizo photographed September 6, 2023 at Calle Dragones in Miami. KidSuper jacket and pants.
Mary Beth Koeth
Amid the song’s success and fresh out of high school, Manuel signed his first (and to this day only) record deal with La Industria, helmed by artist manager Juan Diego Medina. He was the label’s second signee after Puerto Rican reggaetón star Nicky Jam. At the time, Turizo says he was offered all sorts of deals but none of them clicked, until Medina arrived.
“He was very transparent from the beginning because he wasn’t like, ‘I want to sign you. I’m going to make you famous,’ ” Manuel recalls. “Rather, his proposition was, ‘You have a song that is No. 1 right now in Colombia. I believe that I can help you make that song become No. 1 in all Latin America. We’re going to try to see what happens.’ And everything has been step by step.”
Just two months after Manuel signed with La Industria, Medina presented the project to Sony Music U.S. Latin for a distribution deal.
Since “Una Lady Como Tú,” Manuel has remained a force on the Billboard charts, earning 26 entries on Hot Latin Songs and 30 on Latin Airplay, 12 of which hit the top 10, with seven reaching No. 1. And his three albums: ADN (2019), Dopamina (2021) and 2000 (2023), have charted high on the Top Latin Albums list.
Manuel’s first No. 1 hit arrived in 2018 on the Tropical Airplay chart when he appeared on Piso 21’s “Déjala Que Vuelva.” That same year, he landed his first major collaboration, with Ozuna, on “Vaina Loca,” which earned Manuel his first and highest-ranking title on Hot Latin Songs at No. 4.
“I always tell my artists that being No. 1 is not sustainable and has a price, that it’s better to be one of the best,” Medina says. “Manuel’s career has not stagnated. He has always been there. Maybe not always No. 1, but he is among the best because he is still on the charts. He is versatile. Sometimes he has that touch of rebellion when it comes to working together and expressing his ideas. And as he says, he always swims against the current. He is real. That’s his success. Success is being in your corner, defending it, defending your flag, defending your message and continuing to do so until you achieve the goal you set for yourself.”
His collaborators, who now include Shakira, Maria Becerra, Nicky Jam, Feid, Maluma, Sebastián Yatra, Myke Towers, Rauw Alejandro and Luis Fonsi, have also been fundamental to his growth. “It’s important [to collaborate] and it’s cool, but I also feel that what you are going to offer alone is very important. You. Your proposal,” Manuel says.
“He isn’t afraid to venture out of his comfort zone and work with artists outside of his genre,” says Maykol Sanchez, Spotify’s head of artist and label partnerships for Latin America and the U.S. Latin market, highlighting that Manuel is “one of Spotify’s biggest Latin artists, with 33.9 million monthly listeners.”
And that’s precisely his strategy: “Nadar contra la corriente.” Swim against the current.
“It took me time to gain my team’s confidence because for them this is also a bet; it’s a business and they don’t want to make mistakes,” Manuel says of his diverse sound. “You have to prove to them that it’s possible and that it works so that they give you their vote of confidence. As that continued to happen with several of my songs, they are finally understanding it. They know that tomorrow I will be able to come up with any crazy idea, any strange sound, and I think they won’t be afraid.”
“He has always had a clear vision for his career and releases, which makes a difference in setting up any project,” says Micheline Medina, director of artist relations and marketing at Sony Music Latin. “He’s not only creative, passionate and innovative, but he’s also involved in every aspect of his releases and is receptive to new ideas that will help him achieve the goals we have set.”
Manuel Turizo photographed September 6, 2023 at Florida Leather Supply in Miami. MM6 Maison Margiela shirt, sweater, jacket and pants.
Mary Beth Koeth
But according to his manager, he’s still the same Manuel, working with the same desire and dedication as on day one.
At the photoshoot, Manuel is now wearing a sparkly, colorful suit. Piercing through the camera lens are his pensive, chocolate brown eyes and seductive smirk. He takes control of the playlist to set the vibe and plays Mora’s latest studio album, Estrella.
“I like what he does. He’s very talented,” he says while striking a pose. “I still like to listen to albums, and right now, I’m studying him and listening to what he did. I like to see the musical vision of my colleagues.”
With that mentality, Turizo fearlessly entered the música mexicana realm, collaborating with Texas-based Grupo Frontera for his latest single, “De Lunes a Lunes.”
The downtempo norteño song — which was originally meant to be a vallenato — was produced and written by Mexican hit-maker Edgar Barrera and finds the singer and sextet chanting about a heartbreak so severe and unfair that it has them drinking for a week straight.
“When I create, I like to try different things,” Manuel explains. “I feel like each song brings something different. The numbers are nice, obviously, but there are songs that don’t necessarily give you that; instead, they help you reach another market and other people discover you. I realized that people also enjoyed it and connected with it. I realized that this was my identity — that is me and these are my true [musical] tastes. I perceived that people received my songs well when I changed genres. And for me, it’s important to continue doing it. I can’t stay in the same box… I have to continue experimenting.”
AMIRI top and pants.
Mary Beth Koeth
And while he keeps experimenting and diversifying his sound to maintain his global momentum, he remains focused and grounded.
“The people around me nurture a large part of who I am,” he says. “There’s a reason I surround myself with them, because I like what they inspire in me, what they share with me and the similar personalities we may have, but what keeps me firmly on the ground is myself and what I think.”
Manuel is on the road with his 2000 tour, produced by Cárdenas Marketing Network, which will wrap Oct. 29 in El Paso. He also hopes to release his fourth studio album, 201 (named after his apartment number in Montería), before the year ends. As expected, it will be charged with different sounds and colors, including a collaboration with Yandel called “Mamasota.”
“201 represents all those dreams I had since I was a child, all those young desires,” Manuel says. “There is no career, no specialization that prepared me, that taught me about this industry. I learned all this on the street, on the road, and it has been a freaking cool dream. I have enjoyed my journey so much and I have lived this dream as I wanted.”
On a bright, sunny day in May in the rural Santa Clarita Valley, a 45-minute drive north of Los Angeles, the quintet known as Fuerza Regida and its clan roll up in three luxury cars: a 2023 black Cadillac Escalade SUV, a graphite off-roader Lamborghini Urus and a white Chevrolet Corvette. As the band members made their way […]
When Lele Pons posts on Instagram, she does it with a mix of glamour, self-deprecating humor and simplicity that has charmed some 50 million fans into following her. And over the past two years, many of her buzziest posts have showcased the Venezuelan influencer’s love for her fiancé, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Guaynaa, who counts 6.2 million followers of his own. But Pons, 26, and Guaynaa, 30, are much more than just a captivating couple, and their recent engagement isn’t limited to marriage: They’ll now be also making music together.
Check out the exclusive photos below, and read the full Billboard cover story by Sigal Ratner-Arias here.
It was a break, not a breakup. But the way the screaming, flailing fans — ranging from teens to those teetering on the brink of middle age — at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theatre are reacting to frontwoman Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro ripping through their spiky new single, “This Is Why,” you’d think Paramore had just risen from the dead.
“It’s funny — everyone always thinks we’ve broken up,” Williams says. It’s a week before the Nov. 13, 2022, Beacon show, and the members of the trailblazing pop-punk band are seated on shabby vintage chairs in an old house in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park on a sunny afternoon. “It’s always like, ‘Will they or won’t they come back?’ ”
“Love to keep ’em guessing,” Farro quips.
“It surprises us every time,” adds York.
“At this point, I don’t understand how we’re still doing it,” Williams continues. “Because it just feels like against all odds every single time — which, honestly, I feel like we’re the most annoying band in the world because it’s always like, ‘Oh, we overcame this, and now we’re making this album.’ ”
Williams, 34; Farro, 32; and York, 33, met as kids with musical ambitions and Christian roots in Franklin, Tenn. Over the next two decades, as Paramore, they released five albums and survived internal band drama, from lineup changes to lawsuits, any of which could have sounded the death knell. But the group’s sixth album, This Is Why — a tight, post-punk juggernaut that zeroes in on pandemic-fueled anxieties, scheduled for release Feb. 10 — marks the first time the lineup has been consistent between two albums, as well as the end of its contract with Atlantic Records, the only label the band has ever known.
“It feels surreal,” York says.
Read the full Billboard cover story, written by Christine Werthman, here.
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