State Champ Radio fall preview 2023
This fall, Irish singer-songwriter Hozier is hitting the road for a full U.S. tour — his first outing post-pandemic. Following a handful of warmup dates at smaller venues stateside and overseas, his Unreal Unearth tour (in support of his long-awaited third album, of the same name, released Aug. 18) will bring him and his new backing […]
All that Jorja Smith likes to do is write and sing — which makes separating herself from her career “a bit tricky” sometimes. “I’ll have days where I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I wish I gave myself a different name because I need to switch Jorja Smith off,’ ” she says. “I don’t want to be Jorja Smith all of the time.”
Struggling to find balance not only speaks to her Gemini zodiac sign, says the 26-year-old artist, but is also at the core of her highly anticipated second album, Falling or Flying, out Sept. 29 on her longtime independent label, FAMM. “I don’t really have an in between. I’m either happy or sad, obsessed or completely unfocused, up or down,” she says. “I feel like I’m flying in my career, and then other times, I feel like I’m falling because the pressure can feel [like] too much.”
At 18, Smith left her hometown of Walsall, England, and traveled two-and-a-half hours south to London in order to pursue music full time. Her secondary school yearbook named her most likely to become famous — and she quickly ascended to become one of the United Kingdom’s brightest stars. In 2016, Smith uploaded her socially conscious debut single, “Blue Lights,” to SoundCloud, and it garnered nearly half a million plays in one month. The song eventually appeared on her 2018 critically acclaimed debut album, Lost & Found, which boasted slow-burning songs that blended R&B, reggae, hip-hop, jazz and neo-soul production with a songwriting approach inspired by Amy Winehouse. All the while, Smith earned co-signs from Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy, as well as acclaim in the form of a 2018 BRITs Critics’ Choice Award and a 2019 Grammy nod for best new artist.
But fulfilling her yearbook prophecy had a disorienting effect on Smith, who became famous in her early 20s. After tiding fans over with the 2021 EP Be Right Back, she moved home to Walsall at the beginning of 2023. “I went back when I finally decided I’ve had enough of London … It’s a bit overwhelming sometimes,” she says with a sigh. “I moved back and I feel a lot more balanced. I feel more myself now.”
On Falling or Flying, Smith soars over sprightly tracks that experiment with acoustic indie-rock production, syncopated basslines and retro synth chords. She enlisted U.K. jungle DJ-producer Nia Archives to remix the album’s second single, “Little Things,” which captured a flirty, feverish energy quintessential for clubbing in its original form. But some songs demand the coziness of a jazz club, where Smith’s lithe, velvety vocals can fill the space on their own — and quiet those around her. While Lost & Found comprised teenage love songs Smith had written when she was 16, Falling or Flying finds the singer stepping “into womanhood” and being more sure of herself than ever before. As she sings on “Backwards,” “I stand here and I look down on myself and I am so proud.” Meanwhile, on tracks like “Broken Is the Man” and “Try Me,” she challenges past lovers and harsh critics.
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Walsall production duo DameDame* — Smith has known one of its members since she was 15 — was responsible for most of Falling or Flying, another sign that returning to her roots better served her music. “We laughed, ate food, sang, cried, jammed some more,” she says. “It wasn’t like, ‘I need to make the album uptempo.’ It was just, ‘Let’s mess around, have fun and see what happens.’ ”
Smith teases that she’ll take Falling or Flying on the road for her first headlining run in five years. “That’s all I want to do,” she says, beaming. “That’s where I feel at home. In Walsall and onstage is where I feel like, ‘OK, I can just be me.’ ”
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Holly Humberstone has a confession. Despite the title of her forthcoming debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, she has never actually doused her surroundings in darkness. In reality, her bedroom in the London flat she shares with her sister is what she describes as “so girly.”
But when thinking of what she wanted her first album to signify, Humberstone kept considering the memorable debuts that preceded her own. “I feel like so many artists build such a strong world around them and such an identity, and I feel like I’m changing all the time,” the alternative pop artist says. “I’m 23. I probably should sort of know who I am at this point. I just really don’t.”
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That familiar uncertainty is not only visualized by the title of the album (out Oct. 13 on Darkroom/Geffen/Polydor Records) but also felt across its 13 songs, which embrace the duality of feeling apprehensive and alive all at once.
“I didn’t do it on purpose, but to me, the album sounds like it’s got two sides to it, like there’s two sides of me that I didn’t realize were coexisting,” Humberstone says. She thinks the consistency comes through in her vulnerability. “There’s something really empowering about being able to share so much of myself with people I don’t know.”
For much of Humberstone’s career, this has been all she knows. She released her debut single, the poignant “Deep End,” in January 2020, just before the world shut down from the pandemic, but worked tirelessly to emerge a household name. She released her first EP, Falling Asleep at the Wheel, in August 2020 on Platoon; after scoring a major-label deal the following year, she released her second EP that fall. By the end of 2021, she had won the BRIT Award for rising star, and by the end of 2022, she had opened on tour for Olivia Rodrigo and Girl in Red.
For a self-described homebody who grew up in rural Grantham, England — where “there’s nothing f–king going on” — the transition was a bit overwhelming. “You just have to adapt, and writing really helped me,” says Humberstone, who wrote and recorded much of Paint My Bedroom Black in between gigs. She describes songs like lead single “Antichrist” and the dancefloor-ready “Flatlining” as more “extroverted,” while the title track and songs such as “Elvis Impersonators” “feel like wanting to shut things out and be on my own.”
That honesty has bolstered some of Humberstone’s most affecting songs and helped establish her voice — from “Deep End,” about supporting her sister’s mental health, to the more uptempo 2022 single “Scarlett,” which mined her best friend’s one-sided relationship and ultimate breakup. On Paint My Bedroom Black, Humberstone looks inward, writing about her own attempts at relationships and the guilt that accompanies being gone so often.
On “Superbloodmoon,” which features Darkroom labelmate d4vd (marking the first time Humberstone has welcomed a collaborator on one of her own tracks), the pair sing of being far from home. “It’s a cold kind of love, from a distance … It’s a desperate kind of love that I’m missing,” they sing in longing harmony. And on “Kissing in Swimming Pools,” she sings of “wanting to hold down some form of relationship with somebody that I really liked” only to realize (and ultimately admit) how her career challenges that.
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No matter the production style or vocal delivery of each song, though, Humberstone’s brash honesty puts her in the same class of current stellar songwriters like fellow emerging artist Gracie Abrams and even her idol, Phoebe Bridgers. (Humberstone says the latter’s Stranger in the Alps is one of her most-loved debut albums; when asked whom she would recruit for her own boygenius supergroup, she picks beabadoobee and Arlo Parks, saying that women in music right now “are running the whole show.”)
“Honestly, I think writing my songs is my way of protecting [my personal life] because I can take control and tell the stories how I want them to be told,” she says. Even so, she does worry about its reception. “I low-key hate releasing music,” she nearly whispers. “I love the writing process, and I love having [songs] in my pocket. I feel like it’s my dirty little secret. And then when it goes out, it’s just scary.”
Her best solution so far? Keep writing through it — she’s already thinking of her next project. Coming off sets at Lollapalooza Chicago, Outside Lands and the Reading and Leeds festivals in England, she may even continue her habit of writing on the road.
“It does feel like I’ve poured a lot of myself into [this album], and I am really, really proud of every song,” she says. “I’m just grateful that I am able to make [an album at all], and it sounds really cheesy, but that people will be waiting for it on the other side.”
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Late last year, Ben Gibbard was staring down a pair of significant milestones: Death Cab for Cutie’s breakthrough album, Transatlanticism, would be turning 20 in 2023, as would Give Up, the lone full-length that Gibbard and electronic artist Jimmy Tamborello released as The Postal Service. Death Cab’s management suggested separate 20th-anniversary tours, but Gibbard envisioned a two-for-one nostalgia jamboree.
“I was like, ‘People are going to lose their minds if this is one tour,’ ” he recalls. “And I think the initial response and ticket counts were certainly a vindication of my approach.”
Indeed, the Give Up/Transatlanticism joint tour will bring both indie touchstones to arena and theater crowds beginning Sept. 5, with stops at New York’s Madison Square Garden and two hometown gigs at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena among 31 scheduled dates (up from 17 when the tour was announced in December). Gibbard will naturally pull double duty — performing Transatlanticism front-to-back with Death Cab and all of Give Up with Tamborello and Jenny Lewis, who provided backing vocals on six album tracks.
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For Gibbard, the tour will revisit the most pivotal year of his career. Death Cab, which formed in 1997, famously came close to breaking up in late 2001 after touring and recording at a breakneck pace. The subsequent downtime gave a then-25-year-old Gibbard the space to craft the foundation of Transatlanticism, as well as work with Tamborello on an indie-pop side project by mailing CD-Rs to each other (hence the name The Postal Service).
“All of a sudden, I found myself with a lot of time to meander creatively,” recalls Gibbard, now 47. “I felt very confident, and maybe a little bit cocky. I could musically wander and explore the space, and it was very fruitful for me.”
Give Up turned into a blog-adored cult classic, while Transatlanticism took Death Cab “from indie-rock popular” to “popular popular,” as Gibbard puts it. Although Give Up peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 and Transatlanticism at No. 97, they’ve earned 1.8 million and 1.1 million equivalent album units, respectively, according to Luminate.
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Looking back, Gibbard is grateful that his breakthrough with both albums occurred a half-decade into his career. “We had [already] gone through some very difficult times together, and come out the other end,” he explains. “I can’t say with any certainty that if things were like they are now — a band puts out a three-song EP and is selling out shows and has people putting cameras in their faces — there’s no way we would have survived that.”
While Death Cab was just on the road in support of its 10th album, 2022’s Asphalt Meadows, the upcoming tour will mark The Postal Service’s first concerts in a decade, since Give Up turned 10. For Gibbard, these Postal Service shows will be slightly different — unlike in 2013, Give Up will be played in order, without B-sides or covers — but performing again with Tamborello and Lewis will be just as fulfilling.
“These are two of my best friends, that I get to spend extended time with on this trip,” says Gibbard. “We get to celebrate this record that we made, that became this kind of lauded moment in indie rock — but also, it’s a celebration of our friendship.”
A version of this story will appear in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The ongoing dual Hollywood strikes, by the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, have brought the movie and TV businesses to a grinding halt as the historic work stoppage appears headed into the fall — and perhaps beyond. The impact has already been felt on the red carpet, as actors have had to skip new interviews or promotional appearances for some of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, as well as their upcoming projects.
When Troye Sivan spoke with Billboard recently, the singer was happy to talk about his summer single, “Rush,” but was unable to discuss his work on the HBO drama The Idol, which had wrapped its run weeks earlier. “I am in total support of the strike and am holding strong with everyone in waiting it out and making sure that everyone gets treated fairly,” Sivan said, adding that he also could not discuss his upcoming starring role in the coming-of-age drama Three Months.
Sivan’s statement was pitch-perfect, according to SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, who says that artists are expected to avoid promoting music created for film, TV and streaming under the old contract during the strike. They also cannot enter into any new music licensing agreements or approve any new tracks for film or TV projects and must cease promoting songs already licensed.
The work stoppage over issues including streaming residuals and stricter safeguards against the use of artificial intelligence has shuttered all late-night talk shows for the longest stretch in modern history. It has also raised questions about Saturday Night Live’s 49th season — expected to start in September, though a representative said there wasn’t an update on a return to air — cutting off crucial promotional avenues for rising and established musical acts.
A number of major awards shows that typically feature music performances and presenters have been put in limbo by the action that began May 2, when Hollywood writers walked out, followed by members of SAG-AFTRA (which represents actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, singers and others), who joined them on July 14 to create the first dual strikes by the two unions since 1960.
The just announced 16th annual Academy of Country Music Honors will air Aug. 23 on Fox with returning host Carly Pearce, while the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards had announced a Sept. 12 airdate just as the first strike began. A representative said the latter is still planned for the Prudential Center in New Jersey, but could not comment on whether that date might change or if the broadcast could go ahead with an unscripted show, as the Tony Awards did in June. The 2023 Billboard Music Awards are scheduled for Nov. 19.
“They are not supposed to facilitate any promotion of work done under this contract, which includes going to an awards show and accepting an award,” Crabtree-Ireland says of musicians who are also SAG-AFTRA members. He noted that it’s “virtually impossible” to find a workaround, as the rules require artists to skip red carpets, interviews and accepting their trophies onstage.
A representative for the 96th annual Academy Awards, slated to take place March 10, 2024, had no comment on the strike’s impact. Similarly, a representative for the 2024 Grammys said the show slated for Feb. 4, 2024, at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena is expected to go forward, but additional information isn’t available.
In the meantime, streaming services and networks are judiciously doling out already completed movies and series, like the slate at Paramount+. It includes an Elvis Presley documentary and a Biz Markie biopic; a new CBS game show, Superfan, in which die-hard supporters of artists including LL COOL J, Shania Twain and Pitbull compete for the title of ultimate fan; and the third season of Fox’s celebrity edition of Name That Tune, featuring JoJo Siwa, the Spice Girls’ Mel C, Darren Criss and Debbie Gibson.
The trickiest tightrope for musicians who also act might be social media, according to Crabtree-Ireland: “They can tweet about anything else they want, so long as they are not promoting work done under the [current] contract.”
This story will appear in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
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