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Batman has been an iconic character in comic books, TV and film for 85 years. On Thursday, Sept. 26, he’ll make history as the first superhero with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star will be at 6764 Hollywood Boulevard in front of The Hollywood Guinness World Records Museum. Michael Empric, an official Guiness World Records adjudicator, will be on hand to certify Batman’s history-making achievement.
“The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is proud to honor our first superhero on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! The one, the only, Batman!” stated Ana Martinez, producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Fans from around the world will be thrilled to know that Batman will have his star dedicated next to the stars of television’s Batman, Adam West, and the co-creator of Batman, Bob Kane.”
Jim Lee, DC Comics’ president, publisher, and chief creative officer, and Anne DePies, SVP & general manager, will be there, as will Steve Nissen, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president & CEO, who will emcee the event.
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Created for DC Comics by Bob Kane with Bill Finger, Batman first appeared in 1939’s Detective Comics #27. The Batman TV series, starring West and Burt Ward as Robin, debuted on ABC in January 1966. Neal Hefti’s memorable theme song to the series won a Grammy for best instrumental theme and sparked a cover battle on the Billboard Hot 100. Hefti’s original version reached No. 35, but a cover version by the sur-rock instrumental band The Marketts made No. 17.
With the help of director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton, Batman would usher in the age of the comic book movie in 1989. Danny Elfman composed and produced the score album, which reached No. 30 on the Billboard 200. Elfman’s “The Batman Theme” won a Grammy for best instrumental composition.
Prince composed and produced an album of songs “inspired by and featured in” that 1989 film, which did even better than the score album. This ushered in the era of pop soundtracks which were distinct from (and often more successful than) score albums. Prince’s album topped the Billboard 200 for six consecutive weeks and spawned a No. 1 single on the Hot 100, “Batdance.”
The soundtrack to Batman Forever in 1995 reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and spawned a No. 1 smash, Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose,” which won Grammys for both record and song of the year. Seal didn’t write the song for the film, so it wasn’t Oscar-eligible. The soundtrack also featured U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” which reached No. 16 on the Hot 100, as well as genre hits by Method Man and Offspring.
The soundtrack to Batman & Robin in 1997 also reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and featured hits by such diverse acts as Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel, R. Kelly, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Eric Benet.
Hans Zimmer composed and conducted the scores to The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), both of which reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200. Zimmer also composed and conducted the score to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which reached No. 25.
The Batman film franchise has grossed more than $6.8 billion at the global box office, making it the 10th highest-grossing film franchise of all time.
The star unveiling ceremony will be streamed live at www.walkoffame.com.
In the weeks preceding my trip to Grenada to celebrate Spicemas 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris – amid her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket – became the subject of a kind of Birtherism 2.0, in which former President Donald Trump attacked and undermined her Blackness because, in his mind, a person cannot be both Black and South Asian or any combination of races.
While I am not mixed, I identified with those attacks. I grew up the only son and eldest child of two St. Lucian immigrants in a majority Afro-Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I’m Black. I’m American. Ethnically, I’m Afro-Caribbean. Culturally, I’m a pretty solid mixture of Caribbean and African-American. I’ve always understood myself to be all of these things at the same time. Trump’s attacks on Harris’ Blackness hit so close to home, not because she and I share the exact same racial-ethnic-cultural makeup, but because his disrespectful jabs were an extension of a nefarious movement to strip non-American Black people of their Blackness. All this is to say, how I perceive and define my own Blackness was heavy on my mind as I boarded my flight to Grenada on Aug. 9.
I should note that I’ve yet to visit St. Lucia – fingers crossed for this winter – so this trip to Grenada was my first visit to the Caribbean, the place in the world where the majority of my roots lie. Upon reviewing the trip’s itinerary, which was painstakingly curated by the Grenada Tourism Authority, Industry 360 and Mel&N Media Group, I noticed that we would be learning the history of the Grenadian tradition of jab jab. Now, I had heard about jab jab here and there growing up, but with descriptors that often landed on some variation of “demonic,” I wasn’t really sure what I was actually getting into. I wasn’t afraid, but I was relentlessly curious. After feeding my musical soul at Soca Monarch and Panorama, I was ready to indulge myself in the rawer parts of my Caribbean heritage – and hear from actual Grenadians about this specific cultural practice.
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On Friday, J’Ouvert morning, about two hours before the sun announced itself, my fellow revelers and I enjoyed a traditional Grenadian breakfast at Friday’s Bar, where we got to hear the true history of jab jab.
“Black was seen as the devil. Black was seen as bad, substandard, scum of the earth. So, we got even blacker,” explained Ian Charles, one of the founders of Jambalasee Grenada, a group committed to the preservation of Grenada’s culture and history. “You have to understand that jab jab utilizes satire, mockery, [and] ridicule to fight against a system which was designed deliberately to mentally, physically [and] spiritually break us.”
Dating back to 1834, the jab jab tradition finds its roots in freed Afro-Grenadians celebrating the abolition of British-operated slavery through masquerading. Across the island, Grenadians literally become “blacker” by coating their entire bodies in molasses, black paint, tar, engine oil, or the more recent (and more sustainable) combination of vegetable oil and charcoal powder.
Repurposed helmets adorned with either cow or goat horns crown their heads, while their hands drag loose chains (also black) in recognition of their freedom. Although we hit the road a bit later than anticipated, I was still able to catch a glimpse of the Capitals — individuals who lead different groups of jab jabs in call-and-response chants (also known as spellings) that blended unifying proclamations with historical and sociopolitical commentary.
Spicemas
Querine Salandy for Chambers Media Solutions
As I rubbed the charcoal-oil concoction over my body – and eventually gave into the gravity of the engine oil’s richer pigmentation – everything clicked. Jab felt natural in a way that I wasn’t necessarily anticipating. Everything was so Black. From the dozens to the Black ballroom practice of “reading,” satire, sarcasm and a general finessing and manipulation of language is inherently Black. It shows up across the diaspora in the ways we converse and the ways our intonations shift mid-dialogue. By painting ourselves black, we were tapping into the tradition of “playing the devil.” (“Jab” means “devil” in Patois). If slave masters were going to call us devilish, we were going to take it, flip it and mock them. As we made our way down the road, I thought about the ways I’ve unknowingly “played Jab” in different contexts in my life.
I haven’t been on this Earth for too long, but my story is pretty lengthy: lots of twists, and a few turns as well. I’ll spare you all the details here, but there were more than a few instances in my life in which my Blackness was demonized with the hopes that I would try my best to detach myself from it. I doubled down every time. Yes, the scales are vastly different, but, to me, the essence is one and the same. When all is said and done, our Blackness will never be demonized; not by ourselves, and certainly never by those who are wholly unable to see Blackness for what it truly is.
In conversation with the late Greg Tate, hip-hop artist Djinji Brown said: “Sometimes when I’m rhyming on the [mic], I feel like there’s nothing inside me but blackness – no veins, no organs, just a shell physically, but open and full of universes from my toes to my hair follicles. There are rhymes coming out of me, because there ain’t no stomach, there ain’t no heart, no intestines to get in the way of that s–t.”
We weren’t rapping on the road – although some of those chants were a not-so-subtle sonic bridge between call-and-response rhythms and hip-hop song structures – but there was indeed nothing but blackness inside of and all around us. In that blackness lay a level of liberation that was hard-fought, and a predisposition for resistance that was inherited – and reinvigorated in the wake of Hurrican Beryl. Like everything else, my Spicemas experience exists in the context of all that came before it, including Hurricane Beryl, which particularly ravaged Grenada’s sister islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique. While stepping into Grenadian culture, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the Global South – and its people, artists and culture – will be the first to feel the cruelest effects of climate change primarily spurred by superpowers in the Global North. It’s not fair and it’s not right. It’s just the latest effect of the incredibly violent and heinous project that is colonialism. But it’s also a stark reminder that we must protect the breadth of our West Indian cultures with every fiber of our beings.
Spicemas
Querine Salandy for Chambers Media Solutions
Whenever my height doesn’t annoy me, it can be quite an advantage. My heart swelled as I took a look at the sea of Blackness in front of me and the waves of Blackness behind me. I was literally and figuratively consumed by Blackness on all sides and it couldn’t have been a more picturesque sight. I’ve always considered Brooklyn to be home, and I still do – those blocks raised me, after all – but the sense of connection I felt to the literal land of Grenada while playing jab forced me to, if only for a few moments, seriously reconsider how I understand the term “home.” As far as I know, I don’t have any family in Grenada, but the air felt familiar, as did the energy that permeated the atmosphere. Almost all of my family hails from another island just over 100 miles away, but I still felt the connection of a deep, shared history that I felt an innate responsibility to help protect.
From Miami to Notting Hill, the Caribbean carnival experience has evolved into myriad celebrations around the world – many of them inching further away from the history that grounds those practices. As we continue to wade our way through this particular era of globalization and the commercialization and corporatization of carnival celebrations, maintaining and respecting the rich history of its formative traditions will be paramount to protecting the integrity and sanctity of the Caribbean at large. Jab jab is resistance in one of its purest forms, rooted in the soil of Grenada. What’s Blacker than that?
Seeing how fiercely protective and reverent Charles was in his explanation of jab jab reminded me of something chart-topping Afrobeats superstar Rema said in an Apple Music interview promoting his new Heis album. “Everyone is chasing something that the whole world can enjoy… we’re listening to the voices of the world too much,” he said. “We gotta listen to the voices back home to keep our roots. Our roots [are] very important.”
But how do we balance prioritizing “the voices back home” while inviting outsiders amid an effort to increase the amount of capital we can squeeze out of centuries-old cultural practices? That’s a question I toyed with a lot. After all, I’m a first-generation St. Lucian-American experiencing Spicemas by way of a press trip — is the call not coming from inside of the house, to some degree? For Jab King, a Grenadian soca powerhouse whose “Jab Did” was inescapable throughout Spicemas, it’s certainly a “bad idea” when cultural practices start bending to the whims of capitalism and corporatization, and we should “let the Carnival evolve on its own and control it along the way.”
Ideally, that’s the next frontier of this era of musical and cultural globalization: concerted efforts to protect the history of the cultures that so often get pillaged and bastardized for capitalism-blinded, voyeuristic eyes. The pessimist in me says that’s wishful thinking, but there was simply too much hope in that sea of blackness for me to let that voice win.
Billboard hosted its first-ever R&B No. 1s party at The Box in New York on Sunday night (Sept. 8). Usher accepted the Entertainer of the Year award, after his “Good Good” collaboration with Summer Walker and 21 Savage became his sweet 16th No. 1 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, extending his record for the most among all singers. Luther […]
Marsha Ambrosius is setting up shop for one night only with Billboard at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City tonight — but you don’t need to be near Manhattan to tune in. Featuring songs from her new album Casablanco and beyond, the nine-time Grammy nominee’s performance at the famed jazz club will be […]
Attending Burning Man is an investment. There’s the $575-plus needed for a ticket; more for the flight or long drive to Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, where the event takes place each August. There’s the money for food, outfits, a bike and the many other supplies needed to survive in the barren setting. Most attendees take time off from work, including a few days on the back end to get home and recover. It’s hot, dusty and often mentally, emotionally and physically draining. A lot of people love it; others say they’d never go, and some simply don’t have the resources to make it happen.
But while the Burning Man Project’s famous mothership event is happening this week (Aug. 26-Sept. 2), another 85 official global Burning Man events, called “Regionals,” have long offered people around the world a chance to Burn more locally. In 2023, 93,000 people attended these global Regionals. There’s Kentucky’s Singe City; Michigan’s Lakes of Fire; and events in Arkansas, Utah, Virginia and approximately 70 other U.S. sites. The biggest Regional, AfrikaBurn, draws roughly 10,000 to Cape Town, South Africa every April. Taiwan’s Turtle Burn launched in 2019. Each July, roughly 400 people gather in the Romanian forest for RoBurn.
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Burning Man 2024 has made headlines for not selling out for the first time in years, with tickets usually very difficult to get. (Sources close to the event estimate that roughly 10,000 tickets went unsold this year, bringing the attendance number down to approximately 70,000.) But while many Burners say the extreme heat of 2022 — when daytime temperatures reached 106 degrees — and the headline-making rain of 2023 are reasons many veteran Burners are taking this year off, Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell also points to the generally soft festival market, and to the Regionals.
“The goal has always been to decentralize this, because Black Rock City was never going to have the capacity,” Goodell says. “And with travel challenges, the cost, the heat — it isn’t for everybody. But when I meet people that tell me, ‘Are you f–king kidding me?’ [in regard to going to Black Rock City], I’m like, ‘Well, where do you live?’”
Goodell and Burning Man Project — the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that produces Burning Man and supports the global Burning Man community — has been directing Burners to Regionals since 2007, when the first official offshoot launched. Regionals had been germinating since 1997, when representatives for Pershing County, where Burning Man is held, sent organizers a huge bill for county services at the end of the event. Groups of Burners offered to fundraise, including one based in Austin, Texas. The internet had just come online, so Goodell created austin@burningman.com to help facilitate the fundraiser, and the first Regional group was born.
“Then I did New York, Canada and Seattle,” she says. “The internet allowed people to leave Burning Man and say, ‘Where are the other Burners?’”
As it turned out, with the global Burning Man network growing in tandem with the growth of the main event, they were everywhere. Soon, groups of Burners were meeting up across the country, placing glowsticks on bar tables to identify themselves and, in doing so, living out the Burner philosophy that it’s not just an event, but a culture that can exist anywhere.
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
Ignacio Roizman has traveled to Black Rock City from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina many times over the years. Wanting to help bring Burner culture back home, he co-organized Argentina’s Regional, Fuego Austral, in 2016, when two groups of Argentinian Burners who’d been gathering for meetups joined forces to put on a multi-day campout.
“It’s very expensive to get from Argentina to the U.S.; you need a visa, you need the supplies,” Roizman says. “It’s basically an economic and logistical challenge.”
The most recent edition of Fuego Austral, in February, brought roughly 1,000 people to a swath of verdant farmland four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Like in Black Rock City, there was art, music and the ritualistic burning of a man made from wood. (In the past, Israel’s Midburn has set fire to both a man and a woman.)
“The biggest difference between Regionals and Black Rock City,” Roizman continues, “is the intimacy you can create in a space where you have 1,000 people instead of 80,000. By the end of the week, everybody knows each other.” Most Fuego Austral attendees have never been to Black Rock City, although Burners from countries like Brazil, Israel and the U.S. have flown in to attend.
Representees from The Org (as Burning Man Project is called in Burner parlance) advise Regionals on how to organize, with a few primary requirements. One is that events start small, with Goodell saying that even 1,000 people is too big for an inaugural year. Organizers need to have gone to Black Rock City at least once. Like Black Rock City, Regionals must allow children.
“We have a team that decides if the intention is in the right direction and if the people are skilled enough to do it,” says Goodell. “We’ve taken permission away when events looked more like a rave.”
Aspiring Regionals must also abide by Burning Man’s 10 Principles, the social guidelines for existing at a Burning Man event; these rules were in fact created in 2004 as a response to the Regionals. When the Regional network was taking shape in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Goodell put groups on an email thread with late Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey, who answered their questions. Over time, the Principles — which include radical self-reliance and leaving no trace — developed as, Goodell says, “a direct response as to what kind of guidelines would help facilitate a Burning Man event.”
“One of the first questions was, ‘Why can’t we do vending? We want to be a Burning Man event, but we want to sell hot dogs or whatever,’” Goodell recalls. Harvey’s response spurred a discussion that ultimately created the “gifting” and “decommodification” Principles, the latter of which states that “our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.”
The Org also offers practical support, helping Regionals write press releases or find an attorney if legal advice is needed. They step in if a death happens at a Regional (which has happened a handful of times over the years), provide advice on creating a business entity like an LLC and, Goodell says, “sometimes go in to help with drama.
“Different cultures deal with different problems differently,” she adds. “The folks in Sweden, for instance, lean towards more socialist solutions when making decisions. Parts of the United States might be more hierarchical.”
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
In a more obvious way, most Regionals look very different than Black Rock City, which is famous for its barren environment. For many, this singular landscape is what makes Burning Man Burning Man.
“We’ve asked ourselves that a lot,” Goodell says of whether the intensity of the desert defines the event. “When I first joined the organization, I asked Larry, ‘Why the Black Rock Desert?’ He said it was a practical thing; that when you’re in nature and forced to reflect on yourself and your role in nature, you can see how small you are. Plus [the environment] makes you band with others for your own survival.”
The philosophy here is thus that Burning Man is not defined by being caked with a layer of dust, but being in the middle of nowhere. (To wit, Spain’s Regional, which takes place in the Monegros Desert, is called Nowhere.)
“Through the evolution of the Regionals, we’ve discovered you really should be as remote as you can, but it can be green rolling hills,” Goodell says. ‘You should not be walking to a store or gas station. To me, that’s more important than the weather being hard.”
A Las Vegas Regional she attended was visible from the road, which, she says, “was a negative.” Miami’s Love Burn, which takes place on the city’s Virginia Key, also has “a lot of challenges” given that attendees can Uber there and stay for a day. Goodell says these shorter experiences are “just not as transformative” as a multi-night event.
But Regional organizers do find ways to build in challenges. Fuego Astral requires attendees to be dropped off at the front gate and then walk across the sprawling site to get to their camp, which makes it so, Roizman says, people “have experienced that sense of overcoming a challenge.”
But while Black Rock City is remote, given that tens of thousands of people arrive there and build a bustling and often very noisy city, it’s not an ideal setting for those who prefer country life.
“Black Rock City has a culture that’s sometimes very urban,” Goodell says. “A lot of people will tell you they’d rather go to Michigan’s Lake of Fire that has 2,500 people instead of 80,000, because they live rural.”
A young Burning Man staffer recently attended Lake of Fire, which happens in Rothbury, Michigan, to help The Org figure out why young people aren’t going to Black Rock City in high numbers. “She feels like the cost is one of the reasons,” says Goodell, who teared up when seeing photos of lights reflecting on a lake at Lakes of Fire in a way that reminded her of Black Rock City. “You don’t have to go to Black Rock City to be touched, create new community, collaborate on art and be together.”
Goodell says for her it’s especially satisfying to see Regionals develop in places like the former Eastern Bloc, where creativity has often been stifled by socio-political circumstances. She says while the Russian and Ukrainian groups are both currently “a bit stunted” because of the war, people from these countries are in attendance this week at Black Rock City. Israel’s Midburn, the second largest Regional after South Africa, typically brings 10,000 people to the desert, but scaled down to about 1,500 this year due to the war. The Thai and South Korean Regionals are produced largely by expats, although Goodell says that “we really would prefer locals produce the Burning Man culture and not the traveling expats.”
The goal with the Regionals is simply to keep growing them. This past April, the European Leadership Summit Gathering happened in Talinn, Estonia and brought 30 staffers and 200 Burners from Europe and beyond together for panels and networking. Estonian Burner and Summit attendee Pille Heido says the experience provided the education and inspiration to “make sure people don’t just focus on that one event in the desert in August, which is great, but make sure there’s other things you can do outside of it as well.”
Goodell says additional funding for Burning Man Project would help spur the Regionals network, with South America and Asia being regions “that could use more encouragement.”
But where this money will come from is, she says, “the 10-million-dollar question.” While Burning Man Project raised $8 million in 2023 through ticket sales and philanthropy, “We’re absolutely at a point where we’re going to need to have a conversation about the longer-term method.” Goodell says a donation model “is the next bridge. Someone who doesn’t go to Back Rock City might still give $250.”
But while that evolution of that issue is yet to be seen, Goodell says Black Rock City being down in population this year is, in a way, a sign of health. “We’re proud of the fact that people are like, ‘I went to my Regional this year, so I’m taking a year or two off.”
Want to be a “Presley for a Day”? Here’s your chance. You and three of your closest friends can undertake a seven-hour insider experience at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
Before you get your heart set on the idea, we should warn you that this day doesn’t come cheap. The Presley for a Day Tour is $6,000 for a group of up to four people. (We tried to brace you so you wouldn’t get “All Shook Up,” though you may still choose to mark this one “Return to Sender.”)
A portion of the proceeds from each tour will go to support local Memphis charities through the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation, with additional proceeds supporting Graceland’s ongoing commitment to the beautification, preservation, and enhancement of Presley’s home and grounds.
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Launching Sept. 6, the new Presley for a Day Tour will be limited to only eight guests per day and provide access to some of the Presley family’s favorite places on the Graceland grounds for the first time since it opened to the public in 1982.
Guests will have the opportunity to enjoy access to the family’s favorite activities with golf cart rides around the grounds, a horse photo op and guided walk through the home’s front pasture, and a “high-end dinner” at the newly renovated Moriah’s House, which is said to offer stunning views of Graceland’s landscape from the back pasture. (Moriah’s House was named after Lisa Marie Presley’s pony, which was once housed there.)
The Presley for a Day Tour is just the first of many events, tours and expansions that will be announced over the next three years as Graceland prepares for the 50th anniversary of Elvis’ death on Aug. 16, 1977. The legendary star was just 42 at the time, and had been famous for half of his life. His death, in the era before Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, before the Internet and social media, still set off shockwaves. Presley had been a superstar on records, in films and on TV for 21 years, with tremendous highs, a few lows, triumphant comebacks and a tragic end that is still hard to accept.
The culmination of Graceland’s “On the Road to 50” will be Elvis Week 2027, when Graceland hosts the largest gathering of Elvis fans from around the globe.
The Presley for a Day Tour is a seven-hour experience for a group of up to four people (two tour groups per day available) that includes:
Personalized Concierge Service: Concierge will work with guests to plan out their experience before arrival.
Personal Tour Guide: Guests will have their own personal tour guide throughout their entire experience.
Guided Tours: Tours of Presley’s Memphis entertainment complex and Elvis’ Airplanes with their dedicated guide, plus exclusive photo opportunities and special “white-glove artifact experiences.”
Golf Cart Transportation: Guests will be chauffeured around the Graceland property on a golf cart by their guide and treated to an outdoor tour of the mansion grounds.
Graceland Stable Tour & Horse Experience: Tour of the Graceland Stables before a guided walk on a horse through Graceland’s front pasture and photo op with horse with Graceland Mansion as a backdrop.
Access to Moriah’s House: Guests will have access to this newly restored space, located in the Graceland pasture, to relax and enjoy dinner, while taking in views of Graceland Mansion and surrounding grounds.
Elevated Dining Experience: High-end meal at Moriah’s House while enjoying views of Graceland from the enclosed deck. From Southern BBQ favorites to gourmet delights, this exclusive dining experience will be tailored to guest preferences.
Graceland Archives Experience: Guests can get a glimpse into the archival work that goes on behind-the-scenes at Graceland — from conservation work on one of Elvis’ sequined jumpsuits or cataloging one of the more than 90,000 photos.
After-Hours Graceland Mansion Tour: After their meal, guests enjoy a guided after-hours tour of Graceland Mansion with exclusive photo ops and white glove experiences.
Exclusive Swag Bag: Each guest will receive a bag of items (valued at more than $450), exclusive to Presley for a Day Tour guests.
For an additional fee (!), fans can stay overnight at Graceland’s resort hotel, The Guest House at Graceland, and enjoy such treats as banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, a favorite of the king. A specialty suite package offers personalized service, including breakfast-in-room service any time of day, charcuterie and champagne upon arrival, turndown service, plus a private midnight movie screening in the Guest House Theater. (Elvis starred in 33 movies – 31 in which he acted, from Love Me Tender in 1956 to Change of Habit in 1969, followed by two concert documentaries.)
Presley for a Day Tours are now available to book for dates starting Sept. 6 through January 2025 at Graceland.com. Find details here.
Graceland is open daily for tours and offers a variety of tour options. More information can be found at www.Graceland.com.
While KCON has long been heralded as the Mecca for K-pop fans, a new party that launched amid the 2024 Los Angeles date could also make it a must-attend for those in the industry as well.
What was meant to be a night to celebrate K-pop ended up being a cross-industry collaboration event hosted by Day 13, a new joint venture merger between K-pop and marketing expert Jenny Zha with Keith Kawamura, the anime and gaming marketing veteran who is also CEO of 3i Productions. Following KCON LA’s second day of concerts on Saturday, July 27, artists, execs, and influencers were on their way to downtown LA hot spot Hatch.
Notable attendees included KCON performers like K-pop star and American Song Contest winner AleXa, as well as Mikha of the Filipino girl group BINI — both of whom enjoyed bites and drinks in the roped-off back section of Hatch with friends like The Kelly Clarkson Show producer Jasmine Stephen, songwriter Vanessa Jefferson whose love of K-pop has been long documented by her sister Lizzo, and Henry Jiang of OfflineTV who talked to AleXa about their interest and collaborating in the game space.
“With the inaugural Day 13 industry party, we wanted to bring everyone together to create more avenues for ideation, and establish a longstanding tradition that can give way to even more exciting cross-collaboration projects,” Zha reflects to Billboard. “Subcultures like K-pop and anime are so pervasive it’s now part of mainstream conversation — especially at the forefront for key stakeholders behind-the-scenes.”
A host of journalists, publicists and other media figures that long worked in the K-pop space were also in attendance. Lively discussions included the extra effort being put into ILLIT’s comeback single, ATEEZ’s recent move to United Talent Agency, excitement and inquiries about TITAN CONTENTS’ first girl group AtHeart (originally revealed on Billboard), a K-pop act’s upcoming song collaboration in partnership with Netflix, a new K-pop artist’s signing with a U.S. PR, gripes about working with and guesses about the future of one major Korean agency, as well as tons more juicy tidbits to compete with Hatch’s wagyu and wasabi skewer.
Also in attendance was award-winning actress and dancer Krystal Ellsworth (who blew up in India after starring in the 2017 flick Heartbeats that was shot in the country). Brian Chau of CAA was in the house, linking up Konami and Bandai Games over drinks to explore how talents could be further integrated in a convo about video gaming industry.
Influencers like “The Transition Guy” Jonny Tran (930,000 TikTok followers) and Twitch streamer iGumdrop (with nearly 300,000 Twitch followers and 450,000 Instagram followers) were seen connecting with members of Sony’s Santa Monica Studios — producers behind the God of War franchise – for collaboration opportunities.
When Nate Bargatze set the attendance record at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena last year, the comedian quickly figured out how to ensure his milestone stood: “I stole one of the chairs from Bridgestone,” he told Jimmy Fallon. “I have the record, so if I take one of the chairs home, no one can break that record.”
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Bargatze need not have resorted to such measures, joking or not, as he is seeing an attendance surge that has him breaking records and filling arenas across the country on the Be Funny tour, which started in January 2023 and has sold more than 1 million tickets.
In Billboard’s Mid-Year Boxscore Report, Bargatze’s outing ranked as the No. 1 comedy tour, ahead of those by fellow comics like Adam Sandler, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. For overall ticket sales, Bargatze came in at No. 12, narrowly behind such acts as P!nk, Coldplay, Madonna and U2. But he is likely taking home a much bigger percentage of the gross: Unlike music acts, who aim to net 30% of the gross, comedians in general have a much lower overhead and generally net between 50% and 60% of the gross, according to industry sources.
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As impressive as the numbers are, even more staggering is the rapid growth Bargatze, 45, is experiencing more than 20 years into his stand-up career. His 2023 shows averaged a gross of $240,000 from 3,612 tickets sold per show, according to Billboard Boxscore. As he progressed from theaters to arenas, his 2024 shows have averaged $781,000 gross from 11,429 tickets per show.
Bargatze is still digesting the boost in his popularity, which he attributes to social media, word of mouth, his specials on streaming services — including “Hello World,” which debuted last September on Amazon Prime Video — and, especially, hosting Saturday Night Live in October, which created “a giant, giant leap” in his career, he says. “It was my first kind of thing really on [a mainstream platform] and it just sent it to a completely new level.” (Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketch was the second most watched SNL sketch of the season, with more than 9.4 million views, according to NBC.)
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In an election year that feels increasingly mean and polarizing, Bargatze’s humor is decidedly apolitical, clean and relatable. His storytelling, delivered in a low-key, deadpan manner, is observational. If there’s a butt of the joke, it’s usually him and his feigned cluelessness.
The response he gets from the people who come to see his family-friendly shows assures him he’s on the right track. And for those times when he thinks “maybe I need to say something” or speak out on an issue, the appreciative feedback he gets from fans who feel uplifted by his gentle humor convince him he does not. “The world is serious. There’s plenty of people and information. You can go get whatever you want to go get. You do not need me to also add to that,” he says. “What I believe I need to do is be entertainment that you can go to as an entire family.”
In fact, he says some of his favorite moments are when he looks out into the audience and sees multiple generations sitting together. “I love when I can see a family sitting there, and if I start talking about my age, I can see the whole family look at the dad or look at the mom,” he says. “And when I talk about my parents, see them look at the grandparents. I love the connection that they’re like, ‘That’s you’ or ‘That’s me.’ That’s the best part.”
Appealing to a multi-generational audience is one of Bargatze’s greatest strengths, says Joe Schwartz, comedy touring agent at United Talent Agency, who has worked with the Brillstein Entertainment Partners-managed Bargatze for more than 10 years and handles his bookings with fellow UTA agent Nick Nuciforo. “The style of comedy that he’s doing lends itself to being so broadly appealing,” Schwartz says. “That gives him such a major advantage over a lot of the other stand-up comedians working today.”
As Bargatze hit new tipping points — such as the Amazon special or hosting SNL — UTA planned accordingly when rolling out tour announcements, knowing the exposures would bump up demand for tickets. But the demand has exceeded even their initial expectations, with Bargatze often playing every day of the week but Tuesday, and sometimes playing more than one show a day on the weekend. “We were holding additional dates where necessary, making sure the show times were at the hours that we knew would be best for that multigenerational audience,” Schwartz says. “We don’t do 10:00 p.m. shows in these arenas. We do shows at 4:00 p.m. after he sells out the 7::00 p.m. because we found that his audience prefers that.”
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Even during the COVID shutdown, Bargatze built his audience, first through drive-in shows and then 2021’s Netflix special, The Greatest Average American, which he taped outdoors (complete with the whirl of helicopters interrupting his set). He received his first Grammy nomination for the special’s comedy album companion.
Through it all, Bargatze has stayed focused on his craft, making incremental gains, preparing for when his big shot came. “You never know when all the eyes are going to switch over to you,” he says. “I’ve done this now for 21 years, so you just kind of keep doing what you’re doing — and then when the eyes end up hitting you, you need to be ready,” he says.
With an exhausting schedule, Bargatze also realized a number of years ago he needed to take better care of himself if he wanted to reach his goals. “I stopped drinking in 2018. I was starting to sell clubs out, and so we’re about to go to theaters [and] I wasn’t able to drink like a regular person.” he recalls. “I knew, ‘Alright, well, if I want to go to the level I want to go to, I have to get this out of my life or I’m not going to be able to get to that level.’ And I’ve seen that now, with even the training and the food.”
Bargatze grew up in Nashville and honed his comedy skills living in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York before moving back to Tennessee several years ago.
The son of a clown-turned-magician, Bargatze absorbed show biz tactics, though he didn’t realize it at the time. “My timing definitely comes from my dad,” he says. “He was working on his magic all the time. Even at home, he was doing it. So, subconsciously, you’re taking it in, like, ‘Well, if you want to be great at something, you have to do this all day long.’”
Though doing magic didn’t appeal to him, stand up did. And once Bargatze began stand up, “I was pretty exposed to already be kind of obsessed with it,” he says. “If you want to get to a high level, I mean, you have to be obsessed with it — you can’t just kind of have your foot half in. The longer I do it, the more I realized how much it was good for me to see that through my father.” His dad often opens Bargatze’s shows and frequently travels with him on the road, as does his mom.
His singlemindedness has always been apparent, says Schwartz. “For as long as I’ve been working with Nate, he has been so driven and so singular in what he has wanted to do. He has just devoted all the time and effort to becoming a great stand-up comedian. He has truly mastered the craft.”
In conversation with Bargatze that devotion to his technique is obvious. He intensely and thoroughly talks about the contrast between playing arenas on this tour, where he can draw out the jokes for his one-hour set, and then having to get back into the late-night television mindset to prep for Saturday Night Live by practicing in New York comedy clubs to come up with his tight, 8-minute opening monologue.
When Bargatze first began playing arenas several months ago, he utilized a traditional setup, with the stage at one end — but quickly changed to an in-the-round configuration to have a closer connection to the audience.
With the stage at one end, “the [audience] is so far away from you and it’s very easy for them to feel disconnected. But the round really changed everything because I’ve cut the distance in half from the farthest person,” he says. He also increased the size of the screens and put TVs on stage so even when his back is to people sitting in the front, they can see his face. “Comedy can work in arenas,” he says. “Weirdly, it can even work better. In a 2000-seat theater, you can’t see my face that great. But in an arena, I play to the cameras.”
He also adjusts his cadence each night. “When you’re doing the arena, it’s like music. My timing is based off their laughter, and it changes according to where you’re at. Every night, it’s a little different,” he says. But he also likes the challenge: “To keep 20,000 people’s attention, I love it. I love how hard it can be. You’re on kind of a tightrope. You’ve got to keep them intrigued the whole time. It’s amazing.”
The Be Funny tour ends Oct. 18. A streaming special filmed April 13-14 at Phoenix’s Footprint Arena will premiere this fall, and a companion album will come out through Capitol Comedy. Bargatze is the first artist signed to the new comedy imprint started by Universal Music Group Nashville.
Bargatze will take several months off from the road while he works on developing other projects, though Schwartz promises he’ll be back in 2025 with “the biggest, most impressive tour he’s ever done.”
Much of Bargatze’s time off from touring will be spent building out The Nateland Company, the umbrella content company geared toward producing family-friendly entertainment that he launched in October. Already off the ground is The Showcase, a six-part YouTube series filmed at Zanies Comedy Club in Nashville featuring up-and-coming comics, as well as three full-length comedy specials directed by Bargatze. The Nateland Company also houses Bargatze’s The Nateland Podcast, which is in its fourth year, and Bargatze has his eye on developing scripted tv and film projects.
Ultimately, Bargatze is aiming for a career and a production company that builds on his nice guy, everyman stand-up image, where fans know what to expect no matter how big his universe expands and what roles he may take on next.
“I tried to do auditions at the beginning and it’s hard. I can [only really] be me. And so if you don’t want this, then it’s not going to completely work out,” he says. “I see Adam Sandler and [Sandler’s production company] Happy Madison … I love that, where Adam Sandler goes and he’s him. You know what you’re getting when you’re in his world. He did Uncut Gems, and he can do all that other stuff and maybe there will be stuff like that down the line, but I gotta get some stuff on the board. The only thing I’ve really had is Saturday Night Live as a thing outside of stand-up comedy. So, there’s a lot of things that I need to get on the board and get moving forward.”
As he builds the Nateland empire, Bargatze feels confident that the audiences he plays before every night prove there is great demand for the kind of humor he and his fellow like-minded comics provide. The proof of concept is there in his hundreds of sold-out shows around the country. “This direction is working, so I want to keep going in this direction,” he says. “I’m in every town in America, and I’m just telling you, it seems to be working.”
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