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One week after releasing the sparkling, disco-tinged pop single “Love On,” Selena Gomez has watched the song’s optimism spread across her fan base, and has enjoyed witnessing a positive personal moment translate to her listeners via a new single.
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“It’s been lovely,” Gomez tells Billboard about seeing the general reaction to “Love On” following its Feb. 22 release. “I try not to read too much into things, but I think the whole idea was to make a song that felt good. I feel like I’m in such a light and happy place, and that’s reflected in the song.”
Among the admirers: a certain Oscar-winning actress that Gomez ran into at the SAG Awards last month. “It was really sweet — Reese Witherspoon came up to me and said the song made her really happy and she loved it,” Gomez recalls. “It was a huge compliment, I was glowing. Those messages mean the world to me.”
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“Love On” came together last spring, when Gomez was “in and out of the studio” in April while shooting a film in Paris. Feeling inspired by the City of Light, as well as content within her personal and professional life, Gomez called up longtime songwriting collaborator Julia Michaels and came up with a lyrical concept at once airy and flirtatious.
The standout lyric: “Why we conversin’ over this steak tartare?/ When we could be somewhere other than here/ Makin’ out in the back of a car/ Or in the back of a bar?” Yes, Gomez has seen the flood of TikTok clips dedicated to the “steak tartare” line, and says, “It brings me a lot of joy.”
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The music video for “Love On” captures the song’s romantic effervescence, with French director Greg Ohrel surrounding Gomez with opulent parties, ballet dancers and couples sucking face. “It’s so liberating to not worry about how I look,” Gomez says of filming the video, “and I just wanted it to feel like I was having a good time. I didn’t need it to feel very intense or dramatic. It was just a blast, and I wanted it to convey that — I was genuinely that happy.”
Gomez says that she “definitely” has more material with the “Love On” creative brain trust of Michaels, who has helped pen some of her biggest pop hits, and production/songwriting collective The Monsters & Strangerz, which has worked with Gomez dating back to her Stars Dance album in 2013.
“I feel like I have moments where I hit these strides, and we’re just writing song after song, just in the zone, and I tend to do that when I’m with that dynamic group,” she says. “With Julia and I — for some reason the universe has put us in each other’s lives, because we go through so many similar things in our lives. It just feels so nice to have someone who knows me, knows my voice really well. That’s kind of what I feel like the goal is when I work with that gang — I’m always like, ‘How can I make another song that feels kitschy and fun?’”
However, “Love On,” as well as 2023 track “Single Soon,” may not make the track list to her next album, which will follow her excellent 2020 full-length Rare. Similar to how Gomez preceded Rare with a string of singles (including “Bad Liar,” “It Ain’t Me” with Kygo and “Wolves” with Marshmello) that didn’t make the proper album’s track list — they were later included on the Deluxe edition — Gomez says that these recent singles might just exist on their own.
“I think objectively, I would like to say that I am working towards an album, but I don’t know if those songs would be on that project,” she says. “I feel like I’m brewing, and I’m in the process of really creating some great songs, hopefully. I don’t know if they would fit with what I’m gonna go with.”
However the track list shakes out, Gomez simply wants “to make a great album” in 2024, in addition to continuing her film work. She recently returned to the Only Murders in the Building set, as filming on season 4 of the hit Hulu series has gotten underway.
“I want to continue working towards my goals,” she says. “In the acting field, I feel like I haven’t even started. And with music, it’s always evolving. It’s such a therapeutic experience for me.”
It’s another good week to be Noah Kahan: on this week’s Hot 100, the alt-folk singer-songwriter’s long-rising breakthrough “Stick Season” becomes his first career top 10 hit, rising to No. 10 in its 20th week on the chart. Kahan’s now-signature hit is the title track of his third studio album, Stick Season — which rebounds to its previous peak of No. 3 on the Billboard 200 this week thanks to a new deluxe edition dubbed Stick Season (Forever), 16 months after the album’s October 2022 release. Meanwhile, Kahan launches two new songs from the deluxe edition, “Forever” and “You’re Gonna Go Far,” onto the Hot 100 at Nos. 28 and 86, respectively.
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Kahan’s dual chart triumph is a story of singular success: after grinding out multiple albums and hundreds of tour dates, the Strafford, Vt. native began an ascent towards crossover stardom in earnest last year as Stick Season’s listenership continued to swell. He is now, without a doubt, an A-list artist in popular music – yet the first few weeks of the new year have also suggested that, if 2023 was Kahan’s breakout year, 2024 may be the moment the greater sound of modern pop bends around him.
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As “Stick Season” hits the top 10, a slew of folk-adjacent, guitar-led, vaguely rustic sing-alongs have concurrently infiltrated the Hot 100 — from Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” to Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” to Michael Marcagi’s “Scared to Start” to Good Neighbours’ “Home” — making clear that Kahan’s influence is extending beyond his own wins. “This lane is now open,” Kwame Dankwa, program director of WXXX (95.5 FM) in South Burlington, Vt., tells Billboard of the burgeoning folk-pop boom.
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A little over a decade ago, folk music experienced a pop revival thanks to what has been summarized as the “stomp clap hey” movement, with bands like Mumford & Sons, the Lumineers and Of Monsters & Men scoring banjo-heavy crossover hits and playing to sprawling festival crowds. While some of Kahan’s tunes modernize the stomp-clap sound, the core tenets of his heart-on-sleeve aesthetic — detailed storytelling, vulnerable vocals, scruffy guitar strums that could lead a song anywhere from folk to rock to country to pop — are being refracted through a variety of different styles and voices.
“There’s a confluence of influences — not just in the folk and singer-songwriter space, but also in indie, alt-country, soul,” says Cecilia Winter, Spotify’s Global Hits editorial lead. That’s why, even though a song like Teddy Swims’ soul-pop waltz “Lose Control” doesn’t resemble Kahan’s sound, the emotional songwriting and unfussy vocal take can be grouped together with “Stick Season” in a playlist or radio block. “We’re definitely seeing a heightened demand for these more raw, less-polished songs,” Winter adds.
Part of the explanation for this shift can be chalked up to timing: the advent of TikTok at the beginning of the decade, along with the global pandemic, produced a new wave of young artists stuck at home and sharing clips of themselves performing stripped-down songs from their bedrooms. Kahan experienced that circumstantial effect on his music firsthand: after his 2019 debut Busyhead failed to earn a sizable audience, the singer-songwriter kept writing throughout the pandemic (and about it, too — see the COVID name-check in the “Stick Season” lyrics) and posting song clips on TikTok. Weeks of teasers for “Dial Drunk” last year, for instance, stoked enough excitement that the song earned Kahan his first Hot 100 debut, and kicked off his crossover bid in earnest.
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Also a key factor in the return of folk-pop: a superstar releasing back-to-back projects in that mode. Taylor Swift’s pair of 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore, not only produced more eye-popping commercial returns and critical acclaim, but undoubtedly influenced a new generation of listeners a decade after folk’s last pop crossover.
“The biggest artist in the world [was] writing very grounded folk music that tells stories,” Kahan told Billboard last month, in reference to Swift’s sonic pivot. “And it allowed a huge new audience to find interest in that and to tap into that world.” The rise of alt-country troubadour Zach Bryan over the past two years was another major precedent for Kahan’s success; another rootsier storyteller whose songs were scooped up by the TikTok set, Bryan has become a stadium headliner, while also championing and collaborating with Kahan.
Perhaps the biggest recent change to this movement is happening at pop radio: while Swift’s Folklore/Evermore offerings and Bryan’s early hits never translated from streaming platforms to the top 40 airwaves, songs like “Stick Season,” “Lose Control” and “Beautiful Things” all reside in the top 25 of the current Pop Airplay chart. Dankwa says that, while WXXX has been keeping “Stick Season” and “Dial Drunk” from Vermont’s hometown hero in heavy rotation, he’s noticed that demand of similar-sounding artists on pop airplay is rising.
“With Noah Kahan’s success, so many [listeners] got their tastebuds wet, and they got hooked,” he notes. “They are saying, ‘We want more of this.’”
Along with factors like TikTok, the pandemic lockdowns and radio adoption, Winter suspects that the success of an artist like Kahan also speaks to a greater cultural push against technological superficiality. That includes combating the use of AI in music, of course, but also practices like image-smoothing via Photoshop and carefully curated social media feeds, in order to be more direct and genuine.
“There’s something distinctly human about folk,” says Winter. “With an ongoing shift towards greater authenticity, I think that shift bleeds into pop music, which is really a sponge for whatever is happening in culture.”
And Kahan — a gifted songwriter whose introspective folk songs contain a pop sensibility, so that his top 40-ready anthems still contain a sense of time and place — has served as the perfect emblem of that place. When Stick Season started taking off in 2023, Kahan had already been playing small and midsize venues around the U.S. for over a half-decade, developing a grassroots following that supported his small-town sing-alongs as pop fans began to take notice of his singles.
“Once an artist gets to a third album, sometimes they start to drift away from where normal people are, but I don’t see that happening with Noah,” says Dankwa. Kahan has naturally been heralded by Vermont and the greater New England area as he plotted arena headlining dates and earned a best new artist Grammy nod, but Dankwa believes Kahan is still “willing to tell everybody’s story. … People in Vermont know and understand him, but you could apply his songs to rural life anywhere in America.”
As a result, new hits that range from Boone’s full-throated folk-rocker “Beautiful People” (which spends a second week in the top 5 of the Hot 100) to Marcagi’s wistful strum-along “Scared to Start” (which debuted at No. 98 on last week’s chart) are further placing Kahan’s fingerprints across the pop charts as Kahan himself collects more hits. Juniper, Spotify’s new flagship folk playlist, has collected over 93,000 likes since launching last October — and Winter hopes that, as the sound’s place in pop music snowballs in 2024, more women and artists of color can gain traction in a space that’s been thus far dominated by white men, citing artists like Kara Jackson and Tiny Habits as just as worthy of mainstream moments.
Regardless of where this new boom leads, however, Winter views Kahan as the de facto leader of this movement, and predicts his influence to continue growing. “Noah reminds me of where Billie Eilish was in 2019,” she notes. “She’d been putting out music for a long time and building this core fan base, and then crossed over into the hit space in such a major way that all of a sudden there were a hundred mini-Billie Eilishes. That’s kind of what is happening with Noah Kahan.”
Although The Boy and The Heron, the first film from beloved Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in a decade, was released internationally in July, the breathtaking fantasy has caused quite a stir since its wide release in the U.S. on Dec. 8. The story of a troubled boy who enters a mysterious world following the death of his mother, The Boy and The Heron grossed nearly $13 million in its opening weekend to top the North American box office – the first Miyazaki film to do so.
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As more moviegoers discover the wonder of The Boy and The Heron, they’re also interacting with “Spinning Globe,” the moving end-credits song performed by longtime Japanese star Kenshi Yonezu. Years after Miyazaki first approached the artist about contributing a song to his long-awaited new film, “Spinning Globe,” a heartfelt ballad that blooms into a giant pop sing-along while incorporating element of Scottish folk music, has developed a following in its own right. The song earned 1.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams through Dec. 7, according to Luminate, and that number will surely rise following the film’s North American debut.
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Prior to The Boy and The Heron hitting North American theaters, Kenshi Yonezu discussed the creation of “Spinning Globe,” and how the song yielded one of the most unforgettable moments of his career, in an email interview with Billboard.
What was your reaction when Hayao Miyazaki first approached you to write the theme to his next project?
I was simply flabbergasted, like, “What!?!”
Naturally, I thought, “Why me?,” you know. I heard some background stories of the approach and it turned out that Mr. Miyazaki had heard “Paprika” [a hit song Yonezu produced] on the radio. At a nursery school run by Ghibli, children were singing and dancing to the song; one day, Mr. Suzuki noticed Mr. Miyazaki singing along with them. He thought this could be some kind of destiny and brought up the idea, “How about asking the one who wrote this song to make the theme song of The Boy and the Heron?” and Mr. Miyazaki said, “That’s a good idea.”
Actually, I remember little of the first impression I had on their proposal. It could have had an impact on my memory, but I don’t even remember most of the scene either. I wonder why, and come to think of it, it was an honor, but at the same time, it was very much a scary thing. While it was the biggest honor in my life, chances were, it would put an end to my life as a music maker. That vague anxiety remained intact throughout the four years of making the song. So, to be honest, I don’t really remember how I felt at first.
How much pressure did you feel to create a song worthy of his genius?
For the past four years, this movie has always been in the corner of my head. No matter what I did – when I was writing a song that had nothing to do with it, or just living everyday life, a thin membrane that had the phrase The Boy and The Heron on it was always screening my view. It certainly put a heavy pressure on me, and there was always a sense of preparation for it.
Upon making the theme song of The Boy and The Heron, I thought once again, about what Ghibli movies were, and furthermore, what Mr. Hayao Miyazaki was to me. Then I realized that I have never had anyone to call my master. For instance, in neither music nor art, I experienced being taught something clearly by someone. I have never been into schoolwork and hardly experienced senior-junior or boss-subordinate relationships. I took a look back at my life and realized that I had very little experience of learning from older people and being greatly influenced by them as I shaped my personality. So perhaps I was looking for a master-like figure in Mr. Hayao Miyazaki, as a great master, or if I would say further, a father-like figure.
While his movies are full of celebrations, his books are full of poignant remarks. So, his words do deny me, but at the same time, tell me, “It’s okay for you to live.” I realized only recently, but somewhere in my mind, I might have been seeking that sort of fatherliness in him.
Ever since childhood, his movies have saved my life. And into adolescence, I just started considering him my mentor without asking. Personally speaking, he is probably my all-time number one master. And now I get to work with The Man. Here I am, face-to-face with him, who is seated at the other side of the table… I must take in his every single move, deed, and word. At first, I was trying so hard to look big, strained with tension.
“Spinning Globe” was inspired by the story of the film, but also your passion for Miyazaki’s work. How did you try to capture that passion in the music and lyrics?
At the first meeting I had with Mr. Miyazaki, he said that he would depict all the parts he had “hidden” in his past works, which were “the darkness and mess inside” of himself.
I thought the movie was entirely focused on them. And I had been fully aware since day one that it was simply impossible to make a song by summarizing the story itself. Then how should I do it? I came to the conclusion that the only way to make sense of this song was to focus on the relationship between the two axes: myself, who had grown up watching his movies, enjoying them, and gazing at his back creating them, and Hayao Miyazaki.
Therefore, although the (Japanese) title of the movie could be translated as “How do you live?,” my stance on making this song was more like, “I have lived my life this way,” or, “This is how I will keep going on with my life.” The only way for me to do this was to recapture Hayao Miyazaki in that sense and turn it into music. Therefore, the lyrics were written in that way as well. Having said that, this song is, of course, not on personal matters. I wrote this song for the movie; it projects the main character and what had swirled in the story. But at the same time, all sorts of things, such as Mr. Miyazaki himself and myself growing up watching Miyazaki movies, are also unraveled here while still in opacity. The lyrics go all the way back to one’s birth and into how to live life.
I wanted to start the lyrics from absolute celebration. Mr. Miyazaki has made movies to this day to tell children that “this world is worth living.” Taking that into consideration, I was pretty sure that the song should start from “You were brought into this world to be wanted,” otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.
How did “Spinning Globe” evolve over the years between Miyazaki first approaching you about the theme and its eventual release?
I received the storyboard in 2019, and spent the next four years reading it over and over again, and seeing the rushes of the movie.
At the beginning, it was the time to see if there was anything I could take in from the storyboard, or what to take in. When I received the storyboard, the movie did not have a release date yet; it was probably going to be quite far away in the future. So, I didn’t start working on the song immediately, but instead, spent a very long time figuring out what the movie was all about, and how I felt through looking at it with my own eyes. In fact, for about two years, I had the storyboard at the back of my head while working on other songs and living everyday life.
Then I found myself gradually becoming unable to see the storyboard in an objective way. Even the songs I had been working on at that time, I wondered if they were really okay. Maybe that was the time I had the deepest experience of such things. And when you take a long time working on a song, your appetite comes with eating… you might wonder if you should make it more gorgeous. So, I told myself not to forget the primal sensation of when I first thought it was okay. I created a demo first, and always went back to the feeling of the moment when I thought it was okay, and took a long time disciplining myself, “Adding will do no good… Adding will do no good…”.
Mr. Miyazaki said to me, “Be ambitious when you make a song.” I interpreted it my way, and making “Paprika 2” or something splashy with strings [is] something lazy for me. If asked if such things are ambitious, I don’t think so. As a music maker, I have always sought for something that was not there at that time. With each and every song, I have made it by taking in new elements, no matter how many. Personally speaking, that is what I call ambition.
This time, I made the song extremely simple and earthy. In a sense, it may make the song less pop, but I believe there are things and words that can only be depicted that way. Therefore, to me, this song – “Spinning Globe” – is a very ambitious piece of music.
One day, I had Mr. Miyazaki listen to the pre-recorded demo on the CD I had burned. I went to see him as if I had been on death row, thinking, “Do I have to be there?” We sat around a table, and while listening to this song coming from the speaker, Mr. Miyazaki shed tears in front of me. That is the most memorable moment in the past four years. I will carry it in my heart for the rest of my life.
The film focuses on profound loss, among other issues. Was it difficult to translate that theme into a pop format?
From day one, I already had the foundation of the song, which started with an idea of “creating a Scottish folk tune.” Why Scottish folk tune? It’s very hard to explain, but I have always felt something close to Scottish folk tunes to Mr. Miyazaki’s movies. And at the same time, I wanted to make something simple. Rather than layering different instruments to make it sound gorgeous, I wanted it to be really simple, with minimal instruments like the piano, and use my voice for the rest. I should make music that won’t age but not novel either. In other words, I should make something that is old from the start, in the format that you can listen to it for a long time. That idea has been my focus from the beginning.
I wanted to take an elaborate [creative] process for this song. As pre-production, I crafted the demo as I did the recording at the studio. However, although I did a proper recording, I was trying different instruments, and the mic setting was not really fixed yet. Then, even the creaking sound of the piano pedal made it in the demo. It was not intentional, but when I actually had it, I really liked the sound. I recorded the piano under proper recording circumstances, but the results were always not enough. I tried recording in many settings too.
I went to different studios and tried many pianos. Still, I couldn’t wipe away the feeling that nothing could beat the first piano with that creaking pedal…
I ended up recording with the piano that Yuta Bandoh, the co-arranger of the song, had at his parents’ place. It was an ordinary piano at a very general household. We set up a mic in the room he had lived since childhood, using this old piano his mother had played and passed onto him. The piano had not been maintained regularly, but the texture of its sound was the best to me.
What has the reaction to the song been like since its release, from both your fans and Miyazaki fans?
What kind of presence was the song “Spinning Globe” in The Boy and the Heron? Was it able to serve its role? I consciously try not to be a part of such discussions. I had four years of working face to face with this movie, and in the course of time, many forms were born and gone. It has been several months since the movie was out; I see four years’ worth of flashbacks come and go. But those should not be told anymore. The song “Spinning Globe” should be evaluated by the fans. Now I’m ready to face the next songwriting process.
The Album
Yard, out now on ANTI- Records.
The Origin
Guitarist-producer Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Matthews met as youngsters in a McDonald’s ball pit in their native Madison, Wis., and they’ve been playing music together almost as long. They formed a band with buddy and future Slow Pulp bassist Alex Leeds as preteens and kept making music as teens and, later, students at University of Wisconsin, Madison. That’s where they met singer-guitarist Emily Massey, who was in another band, but began writing with Stoehr for fun.
The creative relationship blossomed and Stoehr invited Massey to join the nascent Slow Pulp. Initially, Massey explains, she “was just kind of an auxiliary member,” helping with rhythm guitar and backing vocals. But while recording 2017’s EP2, Stoehr and Leeds asked Massey to sing lead on a couple of their songs. “They were like, ‘How about you sing this song as well?’ And then we started sprinkling in the songs that we had been writing together,” Massey, now 28, recalls. “It just kind of slowly transitioned into me kind of taking the frontperson role.”
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The Sound
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“Lucinda Williams’ album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, that’s my gold [standard], like, this is how I like music to sound, production-wise” says Stoehr, 29, who produced Slow Pulp’s debut full-length, 2020’s Moveys, and its follow-up, September’s Yard. Massey shares the affinity: She wrote some of Yard‘s songs at a cabin where Williams’ Grammy-nominated 2001 album Essence was one of the few CDs on hand. “She’s just an incredible songwriter,” says Massey, noting the “production cues that [Slow Pulp] took from that Americana world for some of the songs” on Yard.
Stoehr and Massey also gush about the soundtrack to seminal ’00s teen TV drama The O.C., explaining the impact the set of canonical alt-rock and indie-pop songs had on them as younger Millennials. “Overall, on [Yard], there’s a little more earnestness and exposed emotion. And I feel like that [O.C.] era of music was all about that.”
And when it comes to the tried-and-true “Artist A x Artist B = Artist C” equation, one could do worse than encapsulating Slow Pulp’s emotional and vibrant indie-rock than “Lucinda Williams x The O.C. soundtrack.” On Yard, the band’s upped the rootsy quotient – like on late-album standout “Broadview,” a gem laden with steel guitar, harmonica, and banjo that sounds like Slow Pulp exhumed and rerecorded a lost demo from Neil Young’s Harvest.
The Record
Like many young bands, Slow Pulp’s rise is forever linked to the pandemic. The quartet finished its debut, Moveys, in the early months of COVID; around that time, Massey says her own health issues and a serious car accident involving her parents were among the factors that forced the band to “take a breather for a second.”
Writing for Yard began in earnest in early 2022, and by February 2023 the band had submitted the record – and signed with eminent indie label ANTI-, currently home to an eclectic roster that includes Fleet Foxes, Mavis Staples, MJ Lenderman and Japandroids. “They were very down for just letting us take a lot of creative control, which is something that was really important to us,” Massey says.
As she did for Moveys, Massey tracked many of Yard‘s vocals in her musician father’s home studio – “It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; we definitely are good at arguing,” she says with a laugh – and Stoehr ornamented tracks the band recorded with “sound candy type of stuff” to make them pop. The technical prowess helps Slow Pulp’s sharper-than-ever songwriting, chock-full of huge hooks and vivid lyrics, shine.
“Songs like ‘Broadview’ and ‘Yard’ have a different flavor than some of the music that we’ve done before,” Massey says. “And ANTI-, those were some of their favorite songs, like from the jump. That felt cool to have a label be excited about new things and new sounds that are kind of taking a risk.”
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The Breakthrough
When Slow Pulp released EP2, influential YouTuber thelazylazyme gave its closing track, “Preoccupied,” a boost by sharing it. “That was the turning point of, like, ‘Maybe we should look into taking this a little bit more seriously,’” says Massey, explaining how the recognition prompted Slow Pulp to relocate to Chicago.
In 2019, the band opened for Alex G on tour – and noticed a pronounced change in the audiences compared to other support slots it had played before. “That was the first tour we went on where the person we were opening for’s fans were pretty receptive,” Stoehr says. “People were liking it.”
And when touring opened back up following the pandemic, Slow Pulp shored up its indie-rock bona fides with coveted slots supporting Alvvays, Pixies and Death Cab For Cutie.
The Future
In early November, Slow Pulp took the stage – to Phantom Planet’s O.C. theme “California,” naturally – for a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, the third of three sold-out Manhattan club shows. The raucous Big Apple crowd has been the norm since Slow Pulp hit the road days after Yard’s release.
“One of our favorite shows that we played on this tour was in Minneapolis,” says Massey, recalling the band’s second stop this fall. “The album hadn’t even been out for a week, and the crowd sang every song. It was just like, ‘What?! How is this happening?’”
The band’s wrapping the year with a European tour – and is already booked for Spain’s Primavera Sound and the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret in June 2024. Says Massey: “It feels like this big dream is coming true.”
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The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without
Stoehr: “The AKG C414 [microphone]. The gold and black one.”Massey: “My MacBook.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Massey: “Ratboys. They could be huge. The record they put out this year is really so, so cool.”Stoehr: “They’re an amazing band. There’s this other small band from Madison called She’s Green that I think are really sick.”
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Massey: “Have fun. That’s something that we like have to remind ourselves of sometimes. I’ve had a really hard time letting myself just fail and make things that are horrible. That’s OK! Make stuff that’s really bad. Make bad songs and it gets you to the good ones. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The Most Surprising Thing About the Music Industry So Far
Massey: [long pause] “People listen to our music.” [laughs]Stoehr: “Yeah, probably that.”Massey: “That’s pretty surprising, always.”
The Thing They Hope Fans Take Away From Their Album
Massey: “Letting yourself have a certain compassion for yourself. That’s the big takeaway. We all have moments of a lot of self-doubt; there are a lot of things that we’re so hard on ourselves for. And to be able to work towards finding the places where you feel you’re able to care for yourself, outside of all the things that are happening. A lot of this record is about gratitude and reflecting on relationships and things that get you to the place you are now.”
Though Lauren Watkins was born and raised in Nashville, it took leaving Music City for her to come into her own. She honed her acumen as a writer, and poured her talents into her new, six-song project Introducing: The Heartbreak, out today on Songs & Daughters/Big Loud Records.
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“I want people to feel like they know me better,” Watkins tells Billboard while seated at an eatery in Nashville’s Green Hills area. “I want to be a vessel for the songs to get heard. I thought the best way to do that was first introduce ‘the girl,’ and then introduce the things I’ve been through, which is the heartbreak.”
Introducing: The Heartbreak balances husky vocals, razor-sharp lyrics and sonic touches that range from tender to tough, positioning Watkins as far beyond a heart-on-her-sleeve singer-songwriter. “Stuck in My Ways” details the myriad habits she doesn’t plan to change post-heartbreak, while “The Table” conveys a relationship arc from flirtatious desire to heartbroken freedom.
Growing up, it was Watkins’s older sister Caroline who showed an early bent toward music. Their father worked in health insurance and their mother was a painter; meanwhile, the sisters began performing together at the restaurant Corner Pub in the Woods just outside of Nashville.
“We brought our little speaker and invited all of our family and friends, and played on their little outdoor patio,” Watkins recalls. Her sister was already writing songs, so Lauren chimed in on harmonies. “There were moments where I was like, ‘Oh, I kind of wish I was singing lead,’ but honestly, I was too scared to do it by myself. She was like my security blanket.”
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While her sister signed a publishing deal right out of high school and enrolled at Nashville’s Belmont University, Watkins began carving her own persona and creative vision by taking a different path. Watkins followed in her parents’ footsteps by attending the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford, Mississippi.
“I knew I wanted to go to Ole Miss and I knew if I wanted to have a career in music, it would have to be something I did on my own,” Watkins says. “At the time, I thought if I left Nashville, that meant I had to choose between school and music.”
Watkins largely put her musical ambitions behind her, and didn’t perform for the bulk of her university years. But still, “There was this hole in my heart, this tugging,” she says.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, upending everyone’s plans. On-campus college classes quickly pivoted to remote courses, leaving Watkins with ample time to reflect on her goals, write songs — and eventually, make frequent trips back home to Nashville. When her sister traveled to Oxford to visit and perform a show, Watkins sang a few songs with her, a moment that fully reignited her passion for singing.
With still just over a year to go before college graduation, Watkins threw herself into writing songs, drawing inspiration from everyone from Kacey Musgraves to George Jones, and joined a local cover band in order to gain performance experience. Like most Gen Z artists, it was second nature for Watkins to share both some originals and some of her cover song performances on social media.
One of those videos caught the ear of songwriter Rodney Clawson, husband of singer-songwriter and Songs & Daughters label head Nicolle Galyon, setting off a chain reaction that led Watkins to her current publishing and label deals.
Watkins is a co-writer on all six songs on the Joey Moi-produced Introducing: The Heartbreak, alongside her sister Caroline, as well as Galyon, Rodney Clawson, The Warren Brothers, Will Bundy, Emily Landis and David Garcia. She recently wrapped her three-night Nashville residency, dubbed the Heartbreak Supper Club, and is on the road with Austin Snell and upcoming concerts opening for Conner Smith.
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Watkins, November’s Rookie of the Month, spoke with Billboard about signing with Songs & Daughters/Big Loud, and shared the stories behind her new project.
What was the process like of preparing to sign a publishing deal and then a label deal?
After I met Nicolle, she let me do my own thing. She let me just write for a while and kind of hustle on my own. She watched me grow as a writer and then signed me to a publishing deal, maybe a year after we met. I still had a lot of developing to do as an artist. All I did for the past few years was write and write. She let me develop on my own before I signed with Songs & Daughters and Big Loud. You hear horror stories about labels where they want you to fit this certain mold, and I never felt that with them. It felt like this is where I needed to be signed.
“Fly on the Wall” features your Big Loud label mate Jake Worthington. How did he come to be part of this?
The first time I heard of Jake is when he opened for Ernest last year; they took me on the road for a weekend on that tour, so I got to open shows for Jake and Ernest. Jake’s music is so good and he’s just so real country—and he’s not putting it on; he’s really like that. I didn’t write the song as a duet, but the more I listened to it, it needed a male voice on there. It was perfect to highlight the contrast of the couple arguing in the song. The song is so old-school and I wanted it to come across that way.
“The Table” has a great “non-ending,” where the melody carries the lyric itself. How did you arrive at that moment?
Originally, we had “on the table” as the final lyric, and Joey [Moi] and I went back and forth about whether to take the line out. The songwriter in me was like, “Take it out — people know what it means and the music does it for you.” Then I talked to other people and some were like, “Leave it in there; people aren’t going to get it,” but I just didn’t listen to them. I’m so proud of this song. I wrote it with Nicolle and the Warren Brothers on a writing a year ago.
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Carter Faith joins you on “Cowboys on Music Row.” When did you write that song?
She’s one of my good friends and as another female artist, she just understands all these niche things that only other artists really understand. We were on a writing retreat earlier this year in Pigeon Forge, and we were there with my sister Caroline, Lauren Hungate, Ashley Monroe, and Jessie Jo Dillon. We love Tales From the Tour Bus and some of the girls hadn’t seen it so were were showing them all the George Jones and Tammy Wynette episode, the Waylon Jennings episode and that sent us down a rabbit hole of documentaries on those guys. We were inspired because they were just singing about their real lives. It came together quickly, and by the time we were almost done with the chorus, Carter sang part of it and she just has this great sound to her voice that was perfect.
What has the response been like?
Sometimes it can ruffle feathers, that type of song. But we’ve just been saying, “If it ruffles your feathers, then maybe you should look inward,” right? There are real cowboys on Music Row. This song is a hyperbole. There are definitely some real cowboys — Jake Worthington is a great example — and they’re not getting offended. They’re going, “Yeah, tell it to the world. We know we’re here.”
Do you feel like it is easier to write on retreats, versus the day-to-day Nashville writes?
There is definitely something to be said for showing up everyday, writing Monday through Friday. That’s a huge part of it, but as an artist and writer, there’s also something to be said for getting away from Nashville and disconnecting. And there’s this respect that you go and do your thing and they know you’ll come back with something great if you’re just relaxed and focused on writing. And you forge such great friendships—we all got so close on that trip and we still go to dinner when we’re all in town. We hope to do the same retreat again and make it an annual thing. You just write better songs with people that know you and know what you want to say.
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Does having a sister who is also involved in music further strengthen your sibling bond?
We write together so much, and at the same time, I have my artist thing and she has her songwriter thing that’s separate. We have success together but we also have success outside of each other. It’s a lifestyle that so few people understand, and so to have your sister be in it with you is great.
What do you hope listeners take away from your music?
This is me at my most natural place. I love country and I want to be my own form of modern and old-school, and I also want to make all my heroes proud with these songs.
“We had the car radio on,” Dolly Parton recalls of the day she met Carl Dean, her husband of 57 years. “I don’t remember what it was playing, but it was loud and it was rock’n’roll.”
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His love of the genre is, in many ways, what led Parton to record a rock album of her own: Rockstar. “I dedicated it to him because he has always loved rock’n’roll,” she says. “The harder [and] louder, the better.”
Spurred by her 2022 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — an honor the country legend felt she needed to “earn,” initially asking to be removed from the ballot — the 30-track Rockstar finds Parton, 77, taking on rock’s classic canon and often collaborating with the songs’ original artists. Elton John hops on “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” Ann Wilson appears on Heart’s “Magic Man,” and John Fogerty guests on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Long As I Can See the Light,” to name a few. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr join her rendition of The Beatles’ classic “Let It Be,” which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Rock Digital Song Sales chart, marking the first time any of the four Beatles had shared credited billing with one another on a Billboard chart outside of the group.
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The album, out Friday (Nov. 17) through Butterfly Records/Big Machine Label Group, also contains nine originals, including the incendiary “World on Fire,” which topped Billboard’s Rock Digital Sales chart in May. The song gave Parton, who holds the record for the most No. 1s on Hot Country Songs by a woman (25), her first rock chart-topper.
You previously told Billboard you had never considered yourself a rock’n’roller “in any sense of the word.” Now having made this album, have you changed your opinion?
I’m beginning to feel a little rock’n’roll-y, but I’ll always be a country girl. Rockstar was kind of a tongue-in-cheek title. I thought, “Here I am, a rock star at my age.” I’ve done a few covers of some of the classic great songs in a bluegrass country version and I’ve done a few rockin’ little songs, but I’d never done a full-blown rock’n’roll album. It was a challenge, but it was a great joy. I really got into it, and I was surprised that I was able to sing it.
Your voice is so powerful on so many songs here. We don’t usually think of you as a belter.
No, but these songs required that. When you think of rock, you’ve got to do it with passion [and] power. I’ve always had a good range and fairly good pitch, so I knew that my voice would open up to it. I thought, “Well, if I screw this up, I’ve screwed up big time because I’ve got to do it good.” I wanted the rock artists, the rock field, to be proud of me if I was going to do it.
You and Steve Perry tenderly duet on the Journey classic “Open Arms,” but your husband, Carl, had suggested you cut that song years ago with another famous artist.
I’ve loved that song from day one, and that’s one of Carl’s favorite songs. He used to tell me, “You need to do ‘Open Arms’ with Kenny [Rogers].” I missed my chance with Kenny, of course. I had done the song before I’d even called Steve Perry to see if he would sing it with me. He did a beautiful job.
Did you plan to make so many of them duets from the start?
I had recorded a lot of the songs myself before I even realized that I was really going to hit on people to come sing with me. Then after I recorded them, I was like, “Oh my goodness. If I’m going to do ‘Let It Be’ [or] ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,’ I’m going to ask the people known for those songs if they will do it.”
Were you in the studio with any of the collaborators?
John [Fogerty] said, “Let’s just do it live like the old days.” That was one of the best times I had on the whole album. We got a big kick out of being in the booth looking at each other and really feeling what we were doing. Stevie Nicks, Ann Wilson, Debbie Harry… those were some of my favorite times working with all of them live in the studio… They all had their own magic; all had their own little personalities.
What was your most fun day in the studio?
Stevie Nicks stayed four days because she got a little throat thing going on, she was kind of hoarse, and she said, “This has got to be good. I’m not screwing up your record.” So, we got a chance to sample some of our foods and so we got a chance to really visit every day when we weren’t singing. That was a fun time, spending all that time just talking about the business, talking about some of our experiences. She actually stayed with Sheryl Crow, who also sang on “You’re No Good.”
You cover The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with Brandi Carlile and P!nk. Did you approach Mick Jagger?
He wanted to do something different than “Satisfaction” because he’d already done that, so we were trying to find the right song. He was so involved in his own [upcoming] album, which I completely understand, until I ran out of time because [with] vinyl, now you have a six-month wait. We had a deadline. But I wanted so badly to sing with Mick. And then I thought, “Well, if you’re not going to sing that with me, I’m going to get some girl power going here.”
Why have originals on Rockstar?
As a writer and publisher, I thought, “Well, dumbass, you got to write a few of your own. People would expect that of you.” And if it’s really a big seller, I could make some money on it.
One of the originals, “World on Fire,” addresses lying, greedy politicians. You generally stay away from politics. Was there a particular incident that inspired the song?
Anybody with any gumption whatsoever should have a fire in their belly about what’s going on in this world today. We’re gonna destroy ourselves with our pride and our stupidity and our greed. I felt guided to write that song. I wasn’t trying to wax political. I was just trying to make a statement, light the world on fire. Are we so crazy and disrespectful and thoughtless and heartless that we can’t even see or care what we’re doing to not only each other, but to the world? Where are we going to go if we destroy everything? I just kind of bolted right out of bed and thought I gotta go write this. I had finished the album actually…It doesn’t matter what your politics are. When I say greedy politicians, present and past. That’s all the world leaders. I wasn’t just talking about Biden and Trump. I’m just talking about anybody present and past that wouldn’t know the truth. I’m allowed to say what I think. I don’t get involved in politics and when they make jokes and say, “Dolly for President.” I think, “No, thank you.” That would have to be the worst job on Earth.
There was a little bit of controversy online when the track listing got announced and Kid Rock was on there singing an original song, “Either Or,” with you. Did you have any hesitation about having him on here, especially given his shooting up Bud Light cans in protest of Bud Light’s support of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney?
Well, I had already done the song before that all happened, all that deal with the beer cans and all that. But this song was about a bad boy and he just seemed to fit the bill because he kind of has that reputation. He likes it. That’s kind of who he is…I always try to say I don’t condemn nor condone anything, I just try to accept things and people as they are and try to love them because of and in spite of.
Did making this album light a spark to jump into any other genre of music that you haven’t explored yet?
I don’t know yet, but I don’t plan to do another rock’n’roll [album]. I did 30 songs. I think I left enough to where they can do every kind of compilation known to man long after I’m gone from this world. So I think I’ve done it, and I hope I did it well.
When Richard Bravo attends the Latin Grammy Awards in Seville, Spain on Thursday (Nov. 16), the ceremony will be a somewhat bittersweet moment. Nominated for the first time for his own work with his dear friend Camilo Valencia, for their instrumental album Made In Miami, the Venezuelan drummer and percussionist — a three-time-Latin Grammy winner — couldn’t be more proud. But he will have to travel without the composer and main architect of the album: After undergoing a third heart transplant, Valencia died on Sept. 6, just a few days before the nominations were announced.
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“It made me very happy” to receive the nomination, Bravo tells Billboard Español, saying that he found out from friends who sent him screenshots in which his and Valencia’s names appeared. “I was in Europe and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this!’
“The first person I thought of was Camilo,” adds the artist, who is currently on tour with Juanes and will also perform with the Latin Grammys band at the awards show. “I said, ‘Wow, all the effort on this record and all the sacrifice, the time, the energy, the money, everything, and it happened.’”
Valencia, an award-winning Miami-based multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer born in Cuba, worked throughout his career with stars like Carlos Santana, Ricky Martin, Shakira, José Feliciano and many others. He was also the musical director of TV shows such as La Voz Kids, A Oscuras Pero Encendidos and Viva El Sueño, and created countless jingles for commercials with Bravo and Carlos Oliva.
“Here in Miami, not a day goes by that I turn on the radio or the TV and something that he did doesn’t come out,” says his brother, bassist Rafael Valencia, also an experienced musician who worked on the album and received a nomination for best arrangement for “Songo Bop,” his only song on Made In Miami.
He says that, before he was hospitalized, Camilo went to his house for lunch and told him that they had submitted Made In Miami for the Latin Grammy nomination for best instrumental album, and that they also sent his song for the best arrangement category. “I thought, ‘Why!?’ I liked his arrangements better,” he recalls with a laugh, before adding with emotion: “That was a gift that Camilo gave me before he left.”
Nominations were announced on Sept. 19, 13 days after his death due to unexpected complications. He was about to turn 64.
Camilo Valencia and Richard Bravo.
Made In Miami is the only album of his own that Camilo Valencia got to record. Comprised of 11 songs, the project pays tribute to the cultural diversity of his adoptive Miami, fusing elements of pop, jazz, funk, R&B, bebop, songo, salsa, samba and Afro-Cuban. Renowned musicians from Arturo Sandoval and Ed Calle, to Milton Salcedo, Philip Lassiter and Luis Enrique, participated in the album. All of the songs, except for “Songo Bop,” were written by Valencia over the course of two decades.
It all started with the first heart transplant, says Bravo, his friend for over 30 years: “I told him, ‘Camilo — because he always had music in his head — why don’t you make use of your time in the hospital, while you recover, and start writing songs?’ The first one he wrote was called ‘CCU,’ which is the hospital’s cardio unit, and that’s how it started. Little by little he wrote the songs, and in recent years we started recording the entire album.”
In addition to “CCU (Coronary Care Unit),” which opens Made In Miami, there are songs like “Hurricane Jiménez,” dedicated to his cardiologist, and “One Heart at a Time,” dedicated to his second donor, “a teenager from Puerto Rico who was murdered by robbers to steal his car,” says his brother Rafael. But there are also titles that pay tribute to the family, such as “Café Union,” which is named after the restaurant his father owned in Cuba, and “Papadin,” a song in honor of Bravo’s father, with whom Valencia was also close.
Family is an important element that’s also very present musically on the album. “It’s very special, because not only are all the Valencias, but all the Bravos here,” explains Bravo. “There’s my brother, my son and my nephew, who recorded the same song [‘Papadin’],” as well as Rafael and his son Ralfy.
When talking about his feelings the day of the nomination, Bravo recalls that he always thought that he and Valencia would travel to Seville together. “I thought he was going to leave the hospital,” he says. “He did it three times [before], and I thought it was going to happen.”
Valencia is survived by his son Eric, his brother Rafael, his sisters Barbara and Maria, and a large extended family. In his honor, many of them will attend the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony.
Stream Made In Miami below:
As Jimmy Buffett worked on his 32nd studio album, Equal Strain on All Parts, earlier this year, he never acknowledged that it could be his final set.
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“I wasn’t necessarily thinking in terms of this being the last thing he had to say, but I think, in retrospect, he probably was,” says guitarist/songwriter Mac McAnally, who has produced Buffett’s albums with his fellow Coral Reefer Band mate Michael Utley since 1997. “But he never let on. He never surrendered to what was actually happening.”
Buffett, 76, died on Sept. 1 after a four-year battle with skin cancer and lymphoma. “There were people in our organization that didn’t know he was ill,” McAnally says. “He didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for him. He just wanted to be this big ray of positivity that he always was. When I went and said goodbye to him the night before he died, he was still smiling just wider than his face.”
After they finished recording in the summer, Buffett kept tinkering with the sequencing, as McAnally realized the beloved singer-songwriter was rearranging the songs to tell his life’s journey. “When he heard the whole album in sequence, he was so proud of this one in a way that I’ve never seen him be,” McAnally says. “And that may be because he knew it was the last one and he got it right.”
The album, out today (Nov. 3) on Mailboat/Sun Records, opens with “University of Bourbon Street,” which takes listeners to New Orleans, the city where Buffett’s career began more than 50 years ago, and concludes with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mozambique,” a country he longed to visit. In between are autobiographical songs such as “Close Calls” — which recalls some of Buffett’s real-life escapades, including getting beaten up by Sheriff Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame — and “Portugal Or PEI,” which serves as a travelogue of his wanderlust and also lyrically references past hits “Volcano” and his breakthrough song, “Come Monday.”
Moving “Bourbon Street,” which features the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, to the first slot “was the last modification to the sequencing that he did,” McAnally says. “And it ends with ‘Mozambique.’ That’s still him wanting to go the rest of the places that he never got to go. From where he started to where he intended to go. It’s a life story in between. He put so much thought into this group of songs.”
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Buffett began cutting basic tracks in January at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio, and then headed back to his studio in Key West, Florida, to record the vocals, working on the album between concerts until he stopped playing live in May. Though Buffett’s vocal ability sometimes wavered depending upon where he was in his medical treatments, ultimately, McAnally and Utley captured Buffett in very strong form. “I think he really sang well, from the heart, on this one,” McAnally says. “If something has to be your last thing to say, I believe this is one to be proud of.”
The 14-track album is classic Buffett, with songs representing so much of what has endeared him to generations of fans, including the humorous “Fish Porn,” written with noted author/columnist and longtime Buffett buddy Carl Hiaasen and McAnally; the easygoing, escapist “Nobody Works on Friday”; the steel-drum-lined “Ti Punch Café” (featuring Angelique Kidjo); and the reflective, yearning “Columbus.”
Buffett adds his familiar island lilt to “Mozambique.” The new rendition features Emmylou Harris, who also sang on Dylan’s 1976 version. “She thanked us for giving her a lyric sheet because she said when she sang on the original with Dylan, he wouldn’t tell her the lyrics. She was just having to watch his mouth,” says McAnally with a laugh.
Buffett, who often posted photos of his Cavalier King Charles Spaniels on his Instagram, also covered “Like My Dog,” a top 30 country hit for Billy Currington in 2011 written by Scotty Emerick and Harley Allen. “Jimmy loved his dogs more than maybe anything on earth except the show,” McAnally says.
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Even though there was no talk in the studio about it being the final album, first single, “Bubbles Up,” written by Buffett and Will Kimbrough, serves as a fitting farewell to fans, with its message of hope and resilience. The song was inspired by Buffett participating in Navy SEAL training, including jumping out of a helicopter into the ocean with a weighted pack on his back.
McAnally recalls the advice the admiral overseeing Buffett gave: “’When you’re down in the water and you don’t know where you are, follow the bubbles. That’s how you get to where you’re supposed to be.’”
McAnally knew they were on to something special with the song, so much so that he prodded Buffett to replace a vocal recorded earlier in the process. “He generally doesn’t like to be pushed in the studio, and I made him go back and work on his vocal,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is too good, Jimmy. Let’s record it again and really tell the story…’ He didn’t want it to be slick and polished, he wanted it to sound like a bunch of people around a campfire figuring out what’s important about life.”
When McAnally played Buffett the revised version, “He smiled as big as he’s ever smiled on the happiest day of his life, but tears just rolling,” he says. “He was like, ‘This is so good. Thank you.’”
“Bubbles Up” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Digital Song Sales chart for the week ending Sep. 14, according to Luminate. It also started at No. 2 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart. Earlier this week, CMT debuted the emotional video, which includes footage spanning Buffett’s adult life and his love for spending time on the water and on the stage.
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On a lighter note, the album also includes “My Gummie Just Kicked In,” a song inspired by a line Paul McCartney’s wife, Nancy, jokingly said after she tripped while she and McCartney were out to dinner with Buffett and his wife. McCartney plays bass on the track. Buffett flew to Los Angeles in June to be with McCartney in the studio, while McAnally advised remotely.
“Paul wrote himself out a very detailed Paul McCartney chart to play the song. He put a lot of work into it,” McAnally says. “It’s very rare that someone can go in by themselves and overdub on a track that’s already been recorded and add energy to it, but Paul McCartney played bass on that track like a 20-year-old Beatle. It’s unbelievable.”
The title track, written by Buffett and McAnally and inspired by a saying from Buffett’s grandfather, reveals the secret to a good nap is making sure one’s body weight is equally distributed. “It takes a second to realize he’s talking about something good,” McAnally says.
Cameras captured the recording process and a few behind-the-scenes videos have already rolled out. McAnally says it’s possible that a documentary on the making of Equal Strain could be forthcoming. “It will be the final complete project,” he says of the album. “Since we have quite a bit of content that arose from it, I think they’ll probably make use of that because there’s never a bad time to see that smile on his face.”
Buffett didn’t leave a lot of music in the vault, but McAnally says there are some existing tracks he’d also love to see released. There were only two songs recorded for Equal Strain that didn’t make the album, but, “We have a few things over the years of Jimmy that are really good,” he says. “There can be a posthumous release, but it will be just literally a collection of things that we did and we never put out for whatever reason. He’s got a gorgeous version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Amelia.’ I can’t believe we didn’t put it out when we recorded it.”
McAnally says Buffett’s wish was for the Coral Reefer Band, who backed Buffett in various iterations since the ‘70s, to continue. “The Coral Reefer Band is second family to all of us. We are a family. And Jimmy wants us to continue and we want to continue,” he says. “There’s ongoing discussions about the best way to do that, the most practical way to do that and how to do it in a way that is worthy of the legacy that we’re part of.”
In the immediate future, McAnally will take part in a tribute to Buffett on Nov. 8’s CMA Awards. The salute will also include Zac Brown Band, Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson, three acts that he’d recorded with and were deeply influenced by him.
Tate McRae got an inkling that her latest single would be huge the night before it was released.
The 20-year-old pop singer began teasing snippets of “Greedy” on TikTok in August, prior to the single arriving in full on Sept. 15. McRae was in the middle of a North American headlining tour in mid-September, and decided to unveil “Greedy” at her Sept. 14 show at The Fillmore in Philadelphia.
“We put it into the set list, and in rehearsals, I was just so nervous and terrified, because it was such a different sound for me,” McRae tells Billboard. “And then the second we premiered it in Philly, the crowd reaction was crazy.” McRae was especially blown away that the crowd knew most of the lyrics to “Greedy,” even though she had only been posting teasers of the track. “It was just very, very validating,” she says.
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McRae has enjoyed crossover hits prior to “Greedy”: The Calgary native scored a top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 2020 with “You Broke Me First,” while singles like “She’s All I Wanna Be” and the Regard/Troye Sivan collaboration “You” also made their presences felt at top 40 radio. Yet “Greedy” is something different, a propulsive self-empowerment anthem built around a firecracker of a pop hook that finds McRae dipping in and out of a falsetto while exuding unshakeable confidence.
The song has earned 71.3 million on-demand official U.S. streams to date, according to Luminate, and by peaking at No. 14 on the Hot 100 thus far (it’s No. 17 on the current tally), “Greedy” is already McRae’s highest-charting hit on the chart. More important to McRae than the commercial achievements, however, is how the song has expanded her sound and pop persona, offering a commanding vocal take amid whooping sound effects and a danceable beat.
“I think I have a pretty good grasp on what my fans like to hear and what they enjoy,” McRae explains. “But I don’t think you ever really know. I was like, ‘This is a big risk for me as an artist’ — turning 20, I felt like I had to make a big change in my life and my sound. And you can only see so much on TikTok. You never know which direction it’s gonna go, or if it’s going to translate. So it’s been pretty special.”
McRae says that she typically writes songs by herself in her bedroom, so creating “Greedy” in the studio with pop veterans Ryan Tedder, Amy Allen and Jasper Harris felt like an effective crash course. “I just try to be a sponge as much as possible, and just see where their instincts go,” she explains. McRae adds that she and that same trio of songwriters have penned a lot more songs together, potentially for her next full-length. “It feels like a little family,” she says, “and we’re just like trying out new sounds and being ballsy and being like, ‘How do we take a bigger risk and say something different?’”
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Meanwhile, the “Greedy” music video, which is up to 22 million views on YouTube, highlights a different, yet personally familiar, side of McRae. Set in an empty hockey arena, the clip gives the singer an opportunity to showcase her dance skills — with breakneck choreography, courtesy of the esteemed Sean Bankhead — years after becoming a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance.
“I was a competitive dancer until I was like 17 years old, and it was everything to me,” she says. “And then I had no idea how to dance and sing at the same time, because they were just opposite sides of my brain — one was this emotional teenager who needed to express herself, and then the other side was this super-competitive athletic dancer. So it was really cool for me to be able to put my two passions together.”
Having wrapped up her headlining tour earlier this month, McRae says that she’ll be spending the rest of the year finalizing the next phase of her career — logging more studio time, filming more videos and finishing a body of work to follow last year’s debut album I Used to Think I Could Fly. But she couldn’t have asked for a better start to that phase than “Greedy,” and the way it represents what she wants for herself as a recording artist and performer.
“I feel like for the first time in my career — with the visuals and the single art and the music video and the song — it feels like 100% my vision,” says McRae. “I can look at it on Spotify and I can look at it on YouTube and be like, ‘I’m so proud of this.’ And I think that’s why I’m having a really good time. I’m working beside people that I really admire, and people that really respect me as a young woman, and that feels very satisfying … I just feel very lucky right now, and excited for what’s to come.”
The Album
Light, Dark, Light Again out Oct. 27 via Gracie Music/AWAL Recordings
The Origin
Angie McMahon’s first taste of the stage came as the lead singer of a soul-inspired band called The Fabric. She met the boys in the band while at a private Catholic girls school in her home country of Australia, while the guys had gone to the associated boys school.
“We emerged from that traumatic experience somewhat together,” McMahon says. But being the head of a soul band wasn’t McMahon’s lifelong dream, and she applied her skills to a solo career.
McMahon entered songwriting competitions to “see if I was good,” and because she “needed deadlines,” she jokes. She entered the Telstra Road to Discovery competition, where the grand prize was a trip to Nashville to record an EP. “It’s the promise of bridging the gap between our world [Australia] and the big American world of music,” she says. “The reality is our industry, our market is small. The big stuff, the big dreams a lot of the time live over [in America].”
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She didn’t win the Nashville trip, but the extra prize that year was an opening slot on Bon Jovi’s 2013 Because We Can tour. Not only did she open for Bon Jovi, but also for Kid Rock, who was second billed on the lineup.
“It was super weird. Imagine a stadium show, the first 15 minutes after the gates have opened and there’s not that many people there,” she says. “It’s a big deal, but it’s also relatively low-stakes.”
The tour left McMahon feeling “pretty shell-shocked,” and decided to take time off to figure out what she wanted to say as a songwriter. In 2017, she released the single “Slow Mover,” and by 2019 released her debut album Salt, which won the Australian Independent Record Awards for Best Independent Rock Album or EP.
The Sound
McMahon can easily fall into the category of singer-songwriter, which often evokes the image of an artist alone onstage with a guitar. But after years of fronting a loud nine-piece soul band and her trial by fire in front of Bon Jovi’s stadium crowds, her voice has the power to fill just about any room — whether she’s dealing with big feelings about relationships, or in the quiet moments when she’s grappling with her mental health.
She tends to describe her sound based on the different artists she feels are living within or, at least, within the intention behind the choices. “There’s a [Bruce] Springsteen rock thread that carries me through,” she says, “and there’s Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde-like vocal intensity and, on a good day, a courage that I’m trying to tap into.”
She adds Bon Iver, Australian artist Missy Higgins and “just a sprinkle of ‘80s synth sometimes.”
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The Record
Light, Dark, Light Again is an appropriate title for McMahon’s deeply personal second album. While the titular phrase appears in the final track “Making It Through,” the theme feels weaved into nearly every track, as McMahon ebbs and flows from happier stories to tragic ones and back again.
It’s a rock album with its louder moments like the riot grrrl-esque shouting that closes out “Letting Go” or the staccato chorus of “Divine Fault Line.” In its quieter moments like “Fireball Whiskey,” McMahon’s voice is captivating as the drums build tension and she describes a crumbling relationship and navigating her anxiety. With themes ranging from climate change to psychology, McMahon has created an album worth consuming in its entirety.
“I was trying to summarize and articulate things that felt so massive in my body,” she explains. “There are things that are left out entirely and places that I didn’t touch – not out of fear, but out of the intention of wanting to create the ‘light again’ part for myself,” she says.
The Breakthrough
In 2017, McMahon released the contemplative, guitar-heavy single “Slow Mover,” which has been certified double platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The track puts McMahon’s big voice over deceptively profound lyrics about not wanting to buy fried chicken at 4am and trying to be kinder to herself. McMahon recalls the song coming out accompanied by an assortment of feelings — both hopeful and terrifying.
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“I was suddenly needing to have an internet persona, and have my s–t together for interviews that I would maybe read later and tear myself apart for because I hadn’t articulated something well enough,” she says. “But aside from the mental health aspect, it was really nice to be able to start building a world where I was allowed to create and release stuff, which felt really special as well as really scary. I think that feeling remains.”
The Future
McMahon will tour the album starting next year, but in the meantime, she plans to get back to writing and try her hand at creating more beats. “I’m not sure if [making beats] is what I want to do next, but I want to expand my skills. I really love it, making experimental stuff,” she says. Her next record, she speculates, could be an experimental meditation/atmospheric album.
The Studio Equipment She Couldn’t Live Without
“My guitar. But I also have this new instrument that I really love. It’s the Yamaha Reface CP keyboard. I was introduced to it in the studio while making this record. It’s the size of a laptop or a bit longer. It just sounds amazing.”
The Artist She Believes Deserves More Attention
“One is a dear friend of mine, her name is Annie-Rose Maloney. She has changed my life because of her approach to living which is just not centered around capitalism or industry. She’s very grounded and writes really beautiful songs. She has like, no music online, but she’s gonna release a record in the future.
“Also, Mimi Gilbert. Just amazing musicianship and like Annie, a very kind, grounded person who has been playing music for a long time and moves people so much when they the performance.”
The Takeaway That She Hopes Fans Have When They Hear the Album
“I hope it ignites hope. For me, it’s about knowing that there is good waiting on the other side of whatever you’re afraid of and a brand new life for yourself. Maybe it can be an encouragement to go towards what your fear is. For me, the fear changes day to day: rejection, crippling depression. When I have been in the crippling unsureness about being a musician, the stuff that makes me feel like it’s worth it or like it’s doing some good and I’m not just a self-absorbed narcissist, is if I get a message that’s like, ‘I felt seen by that. I felt understood by that. Thank you for making it.’”