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Rob Thomas believes that the lead single to Matchbox Twenty’s first album in over a decade works because the band didn’t overthink it.
“Wild Dogs (Running in a Slow Dream),” the pop-rock sing-along that deploys a racing tempo and a handful of rousing hooks, was added to the track list of Where the Light Goes, the band’s fifth studio album, after Thomas, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Paul Doucette and producer Gregg Wattenberg recognized a spark in its music and lyrics — then proceeded to do as little as possible to mess with its momentum.
“There was a vitality to that track – a drive, a visceral feeling, that if we spent too much time polishing and re-polishing, it was gonna go away,” Thomas tells Billboard. “Gregg was very careful to be like, ‘We’re gonna get in, and once we get it, I want you to get out. Capture it, then step away from it. Don’t just keep adding to add.’”
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In some respect, Matchbox Twenty didn’t need to add to its discography: the alt-rock veterans’ catalog, beginning with 1996’s diamond-certified Yourself or Someone Like You, boasts hits like “3AM,” “If You’re Gone,” “Unwell” and “How Far We’ve Come” that could power summer amphitheater shows for years to come. Yet Where the Light Goes, due out this Friday (May 26) on Atlantic Records, is the product of a creative drive and longstanding collaborative ease: Thomas, Doucette, bassist Brian Yale and guitarist Kyle Cook have conceived the follow-up to 2012’s North, which topped the Billboard 200 chart upon its release, as a loose, unabashedly heartfelt check-in from a collection of old friends.
Matchbox Twenty kicked off their 54-date Slow Dream tour earlier this month, and will be playing a mix of old hits and new album cuts on the road through August. Ahead of the tour kickoff and album release, Thomas and Doucette chatted with Billboard about how an unlikely full-length turned into one of the most satisfying projects of their shared careers. (Ed. note: this conversations has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
Considering it’s been over a decade since the last Matchbox Twenty album, how does it feel to start the machine back up?
Thomas: Oddly comfortable and normal.
Doucette: We’ve done so much in our lives, so it’s like, we haven’t done it in a long time, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that different. The world is different — like, we didn’t have to worry about TikTok [before]. We just made a video for “Wild Dogs,” and part of that conversation is, “How does this work in small little cuts?” Those aren’t conversations that we used to have. So there’s definitely new things in this process for us, but it is still the process that we’ve been doing all of our adult lives.
Thomas: From 1996, we’ve only existed through change. When we started out, it was this period where we got to make a lot of mistakes, and they were private — they didn’t exist online, nobody was there with a camera, TMZ didn’t exist. We were a band that came out at a time when we said the actual phrase, “Do you think we need a website?” Social media didn’t exist until like three records in.
So I think that we came along at a really good time to expect and be ready for change, whenever we were starting a new endeavor. But then at the same time, we’re getting ready to go on tour, and this process where we bring out the gear, we make sure that we’ve got the sound just so — this was exactly the same in 2017, in 2015. That’s the job, and that feels very familiar.
When did you guys start focusing on this group of songs?
Thomas: We were pretty much at a place where we didn’t think we were ever going to make a full-length record. Going into 2020, it was, “Let’s record a couple of songs to accompany the tour, and then maybe that’s our business model — you know, we tour every couple of years, and we maybe release a song or two.” That didn’t excite Paul. He wasn’t sure how much effort he wanted to put into a couple of songs, so he was like, “If you guys want to run with that, go for it.” So during that time, Paul listened to [the song] “Where the Light Goes,” and he was just like, “I like that one, maybe you guys should work on that.” And me and Kyle worked on it.
It was 2022, and other bands were really out touring, and we didn’t go out. And there was a sense that we were letting fans down. It was Kyle who would start the conversation of, “Maybe we do want to make a full-length record — we’re gonna be sitting at home, we’re not gonna be doing anything this summer, and that would make next summer even more exciting for people that have been waiting for three years. It’s another level of excitement to that touring process.” So that just got the ball rolling.
Doucette: I ended season three of [co-composing the score for] For All Mankind in April, I think, and then in May I flew to New York to start working on this, and it was basically from May until December. I think we all kind of felt like we were never gonna make another record — and then suddenly, we were making a record, and that record’s done! In the grand scheme of things, this record came together probably more quickly than any record we’ve ever done.
Thomas: To be fair, though, this wasn’t a situation where we went into the studio and wrote all the songs. Some of those were written during the process, but then some of those were 75% done and then we’d jump in and help finish it together, and some were 100% done. We came in with a lot of material, and then we whittled down a good portion of this album with things that were started at different times, and then just finished as a band.
How much of the creative energy between you guys was just like old times, and how much has it evolved over the years? Since it’s been such a long time that you all worked on an album together, what was it like trying to regain a rhythm?
Thomas: Some things are just very automatic. You’re just like, this is how this works, I see where you’re going with that, let me pick that up. It’s happening amongst a group of guys who are 10 years older than the last time we did it — and the last time we did it, we weren’t young. And so I think there’s a refinement to the process that’s welcomed, in a really big way, and a civility to the process. We’re less precious with our feelings and our ideas — we want to get something done, but at the same time, we’re very precious with other people’s feelings and other people’s ideas. So I feel like everything about it that was different was only for the better.
Doucette: Also, like, you’re not fighting for an idea simply to fight for it. We just want to come up with the best thing, and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because you’re more willing to try stuff that might get shot down. We were working on a song called “One Hit Love” on this record, and we were trying to find the chorus for it. We were playing the track in Gregg’s studio, and we had a microphone, and Rob would get up and say a line, sing a melody. And I’d go, “Oh, no, let me try this.” And I’d try something and he’s like, “No, not that.” It was going back and forth until we got it right, not going, “It has to be this, I believe in this more than anything!” The benefit of age is just being better at that, at being more conscious of each other’s feelings. You can have that conversation in a healthy way.
A lot of lyrics on the new album contain a personal specificity, even as the themes are pretty universal. I’m thinking of a song like “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” which is about identity and how your past informs your present.
Doucette: I know that, at least for me, I’m trying to write from a place that’s searching for positivity. There’s a poster from an artist named Deedee Cheriel that says ‘You Have Everything You Need,’ so I wrote “Friends” about that. “One Hit Love” is a song that we wrote that’s about this might be doomed, but we’re gonna go for it anyway. I just want to keep writing about hopeful things. That said, there’s a song, “Warm Blood,” that’s totally negative.
Thomas: I’m always like write, write, write, and I end up writing four or five songs for every one that I actually like. After 30 years, it’s become about getting a sense of what you’re writing about, but then trying to find a way to say it that has its own flair, its own color. When you talk about relationships, it’s easy to fall into the same tropes – you want to try and find new ways to express yourself. The effort that we put into the lyrics on this record, I think makes it one of our strongest ones that we’ve written.
On this week’s Billboard 200 chart, Ed Sheeran’s – (pronounced Subtract) scores the top debut of the week, starting at No. 2 (behind Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, which spends a 10th week at No. 1) with 112,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate. The album also launches at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart, with Sheeran’s largest sales week since 2017.
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Subtract marks a departure in sound for Sheeran, who worked with producer Aaron Dessner and used the album as an outlet for his grief and pain following a traumatic beginning to his 2022. “Eyes Closed,” the album’s lead single, became a top 40 hit on the Hot 100 upon its March release, and a new version of the song “Life Goes On,” featuring country superstar Luke Combs, was recently released.
What does the No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 signify for Sheeran? And which song from Subtract could turn into a hit single? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
1. Like a whole lot of albums this year, Ed Sheeran’s latest is blocked by Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time from the top of the Billboard 200. On a scale of 1-10, from crushed to elated, how are you feeling about a No. 2 debut with 112,000 equivalent album units if you’re Ed?
Andrew Unterberger: Solid 6. Those are about the numbers that Sheeran’s = (Equals) album did two years ago, with a huge pop hit and generally more commercial momentum behind him. Stinks to not get the No. 1, and it doesn’t seem like this album is going to have a ton of commercial impact beyond the first week, but given the lack of advance buzz for the set (and how divided his attention has been in the weeks leading up to its release), I think that number is on the high end of the range I might expect for its first week.
Jason Lipshutz: A 3. This album, an acoustic exploration of personal pain, was always viewed as a sonic detour for Sheeran, so its commercial performance was likely going to differ from that of his more radio-ready projects. And ultimately, the launch of Subtract falls right in line with the bow of 2021’s Equals, which was preceded by the hit “Bad Habits” and debuted at No. 1 with 118,000 equivalent album units. Wallen’s One Thing at a Time is a juggernaut, and debuting right behind it, with a comparable total to Sheeran’s last full-length, should be considered a generally positive development.
Katie Atkinson: A solid 5. While Ed has a proven track record for No. 1 albums at this point – with every studio album since 2014’s X (Multiply) topping the Billboard 200 – I don’t get the impression he made Subtract with the charts or pop radio in mind. Actually, he might not have even cared if anyone beyond his diehard fans heard it. As he expressed in his Disney+ docuseries, Sheeran was working through a lot of “heavy stuff” during this album, which naturally made for a quieter, more understated album. It’s a project worth listening to, but it’s not the kind of bombastic project that skyrockets to No. 1. In fact, I’d say No. 2 is mighty impressive for this personal, weighty album.
Lyndsey Havens: 8.5. Ed seems like a guy who wants to win, so I’m sure he would have hoped for a No. 1 debut. But that said, to enter the tally behind a top-spot-blocking behemoth and with over 100,000 units is commendable. To know just how much an album that’s meant to honor his family and late friend Jamal Edwards is resonating with fans should arguably be more gratifying than securing a No. 1.
Rania Aniftos: A 4. After watching his The Sum of It All documentary, I learned that Sheeran is really, really hard on himself. Given that knowledge, and also how different this album is from his past few, I’d be pretty disappointed. He really put his heart on his sleeve and tried something new, which I do applaud him for, despite maybe a less-than-ideal outcome.
2. While Sheeran’s previous three studio albums were each preceded by top 10 Hot 100 hits, Subtract lead single “Eyes Closed” has thus far peaked at No. 19. Are you surprised that the single hasn’t taken off yet?
Andrew Unterberger: No. The song just doesn’t have a lot of juice to it — it sounds like a less-striking copy of older Sheeran cuts, without any of the left-turn unexpectedness we were led to expect from this album. Radio will probably continue to play it a little while longer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a couple of months, they’re back to playing “Bad Habits” or “Shivers” in heavier rotation.
Jason Lipshutz: Yes! Very! I first heard “Eyes Closed” a couple of months before its release, and thought that the song – with its combination of finger-picked riff, understated production, affecting emotion and post-chorus “ay-yi-yi” hook – would become another smash for Sheeran. “Eyes Closed” hasn’t connected thus far, and it may never, especially if top 40 radio moves on to his version of “Life Goes On” with Luke Combs. I would have bet big on the lead single blowing up here, but as of now, it seems I would have lost that bet.
Katie Atkinson: No, but only because I think this one will be a slower burn. Sonically, it’s one of the more upbeat songs on the project, and its bittersweet lyrics convey the kind of universal feeling of loss that could eventually connect with an adult contemporary or adult pop radio audience – à la Maroon 5’s “Memories” – a 10-week-plus No. 1 at both formats. Sheeran’s own “Bad Habits” and “Shivers” will both be dominant as well, so I think there will (eventually) be an appetite for this song.
Lyndsey Havens: Not really. Compared to previous singles like “Bad Habits” or “Shivers” off Equals, both of which were sinewy pop hits, or “I Don’t Care” with Justin Bieber from No. 6 Collaborations Project, “Eyes Closed” is most similar to 2017’s Divide. But even songs like “Castle On a Hill” and “Shape of You” packed a bit more of a punch. I think “Eyes Closed” is a stunning ode to loss, but perhaps not what everyone is gravitating towards as we enter the summer months.
Rania Aniftos: No, but only because I think we’re in a readjustment period when it comes to Sheeran’s new music. We had a few years where he was giving us some really catchy pop hits like “Shivers,” “Bad Habits” and “Shape of You,” so Sheeran returning to his softer state might take some getting used to, both from fans and from radio.
3. Some of Sheeran’s biggest hits, from “Thinking Out Loud” to “Perfect” to “Shivers,” were not lead singles. Is there a song on the new album that you has a shot at taking off?
Andrew Unterberger: No, though “Curtains” is a real highlight from the set that I think would have made for a much bolder and more attention-grabbing lead single — even if its commercial upside would’ve also been somewhat limited. (As a near-carbon copy of “Thinking Out Loud,” maybe “Life Goes On” could also benefit from the attention the former has received over the course of Sheeran’s much-publicized recent trial.)
Jason Lipshutz: “Life Goes On” is an effective belt-along in the vein of Sheeran’s bigger ballads, and the new version featuring Luke Combs augments the better qualities of the track. Yet the song I’m keeping an eye on is “Curtains,” which sounds primed for an adult-contemporary takeover if the album campaign allows. The soaring chorus has seeped into my brain – I find myself going “Sun… SHINE! SHINE!” multiple times a day – and the guitar-and-strings arrangement has real teeth.
Katie Atkinson: I have to lobby for “Curtains.” I think it’s a perfect midway point between Ed’s ballads and his “Shape of You”-style radio hits – it’s catchy and has rapid-fire clever lyrics, but also has a bit more of a rock groove that really shows off his musical skills beyond his acoustic slow-tempo numbers. Also, its optimistic spirit is right there in the chorus: Let’s pull back the curtains and see the sun shine.
Lyndsey Havens: “Sycamore” is a gorgeous Ed song that I think people will connect with even more over time. It’s a stellar snapshot of what Ed has always done best, which is tell a beautiful love story in the length of a pop song — only now, the one he’s telling is about what happens after you find that love. It’s not always perfect, and he’s not shying away from that.
Rania Aniftos: I’m torn between “Curtains” and “End of Youth.” I think “Curtains” is the more upbeat, digestible track on the album, and has some hopeful lyrics that we can all relate to about coming out of a dark period. Similarly, “End of Youth” has themes of fear and aging that are so universal that it might connect to enough people to make it a hit.
4. The new album is a mostly acoustic offering that focuses on a difficult period in Sheeran’s personal life — a sharp left turn in sound for a stadium headliner. How do you think the album will endure within Sheeran’s discography?
Andrew Unterberger: I don’t think it’s really that much of an outlier in his catalog, to be honest — the only way it obviously differs from past Sheeran LPs to me is the lack of an obvious pop single, and even without those clear radio plays, it’s not like this set is starkly uncommercial by any means. There are some good songs here, and I imagine one or two might endure as fan favorites, but ultimately I just don’t think this is an album many people are going to think of when they think of Ed Sheeran decades from now.
Jason Lipshutz: Regardless of its commercial performance, Subtract was a risk that I’m glad that Sheeran took: instead of downplaying his personal difficulties and tossing out more pop hits, the superstar changed up his formula, challenged himself as a songwriter and presented his situation with unflinching honesty. Not all of Subtract is successful, but the album stays true to Sheeran’s grief, and offers empathy to any listener experiencing something similar. It’s going to age well.
Katie Atkinson: I find it to be a very worthwhile, if at times a challenging, listen. I think a lot of the lyrical themes of drowning in an infinite ocean can make some of the music feel hopeless – but like navigating the stages of grief, there is life beyond hopelessness, as shown in the more positive moments, as Sheeran begins to heal from all the personal trauma that came his way. The acoustic vibe also fits Sheeran’s busking beginnings, but I think in the end, I probably prefer my Ed in a cheekier musical space, so I would likely turn to other albums for repeat listens.
Lyndsey Havens: I think a lot of these songs will find a home in the “deep cut” section of Ed’s future tours, and rightfully so. Because of how personal they are, I don’t think they would naturally fit alongside some of his more danceable pop hits on a setlist, but that doesn’t mean they’ll fall to the wayside, either. I think with time — and as some of his fanbase perhaps hits the place in life where these songs resonate on a deeper level — the songs that make up Subtract will be held close.
Rania Aniftos: I look at Subtract the same way I look at Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore. They’ll hold a vulnerable, acoustic moment during Sheeran’s tours, though I still think fans will still mostly look forward to hearing the hits and the throwback tracks.
5. A new version of “Life Goes On” features Luke Combs, and in a recent chat with Billboard, Sheeran expressed interest in making a country project. Ed Goes To Nashville: yee-haw or yee-naw?
Andrew Unterberger: Yee-haw! Perhaps Sheeran’s most underrated career strength is his impressive adaptability to different sounds and genres, from Afrobeats to reggaetón to EDM. He’d be a particularly natural fit in country. I’d only hope he explores more than the staid balladry of Nashville, since he’s already maybe a little too deep into that pocket at this point in his career.
Jason Lipshutz: Yee-haw! Even if Sheeran doesn’t record a full country album, maybe we get a little more of that flavor on his next Collaborations project? As a fan of Subtract, I’m down to see what other rabbit holes he can successfully leap down.
Katie Atkinson: Yee-haw! Obviously it served his superstar bestie well for many years, and his voice alongside Combs’ was a perfect (sorry) match at the ACM Awards. A full country project from Ed would make all the sense in the world.
Lyndsey Havens: Yee freaking haw.
Rania Aniftos: I mean, given the Billboard 200 this week, I’d say yee-haw! Let’s get Morgan Wallen on the phone.
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THE ALBUM
An Inbuilt Fault, out Friday (May 5) on Partisan Records.
THE ORIGIN
You wouldn’t recognize the Westerman of 2016. In the earliest days of his life as a professional artist, Will Westerman sported long, curly hair and played folk music that most often earned him comparisons to Nick Drake. By the time he began getting more notoriety, he had totally transformed. Now in his early thirties, he keeps his hair shorn close and wears sleeker clothes, mirroring the evolution of his music.
In the late ‘10s, he began collaborating with the producer and fellow Londoner Bullion, who helped Westerman achieve a more electronic sheen. His early singles — including the breakthrough 2018 track “Confirmation,” which ignited a flurry of blog hype — had an alien quality, singer-songwriter fare put through a strange, otherworldly filter.
Since “Confirmation,” the path has been as circuitous as Westerman’s exploratory songwriting. His debut album, Your Hero Is Not Dead, was finished and ready for release in 2019, but he alludes to various speed bumps caused by some people who “behaved badly.” Eventually it arrived right in the summer of 2020, with Westerman unable to tour or promote it properly due to the pandemic. Afterwards, he underwent a crisis of faith, wondering whether he wanted to release music anymore. “It took me about a year to get back in the headspace where I thought it was worth making music again,” he admits. “I remembered why all this stuff started in the first place.”
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THE SOUND
Part of the power in Westerman’s recent music is the contrast between warped guitars and synth textures, and Westerman himself. He has always had a rich, expressive voice — it can be crystalline, but also not without a smoky huskiness. As a child, Westerman sang in choirs, and recently found solace in revisiting unaccompanied plainsong as a way of reconnecting with the human voice during long stretches of lockdown isolation. It gives him a unique melodic sensibility, where he may wind and surge beyond the lines we usually associate with pop song structures.
Sophomore album An Inbuilt Fault was intended to be serpentine and unpredictable as well. “I wanted it to feel very close, and less sculpted,” Westerman says. “I wanted it to have a breathing quality.” At the time, he was demoing over polyrhythmic loops, experimenting and writing for himself without any expectation of necessarily finishing another album. In addition to the comfort of choral music, he was digging way into krautrock. “It was the sense of freedom, the sound of freeform expression,” he recalls. “It was the music I needed at that time.”
While Westerman’s guitar is still pivotal to his music, An Inbuilt Fault takes the organic/artificial tension of his music to a new extreme, putting his voice to the forefront over a newly percussive backdrop. Abandoning the beats of past recordings, he wanted to embrace playing live in a room with human beings again — once he was finally able to. An Inbuilt Fault ended up being a document of a group of musicians wrestling an elusive sound into being, all tumbling drums and guitars surrounded by all manner of flickering, alluring textures at the songs’ edges.
THE RECORD
With everything on hold, Westerman decided it was time to try a big life change he’d thought about for years — he wanted to move to Athens. Embarking on a “half-baked” plan to live in a van in the Balkans, he started across Europe and stopped to visit his father in rural Italy for a week. Thanks to more COVID lockdowns, he ended up being there for six months.
For all that time, Westerman had very little human interaction aside from seeing his father. He began writing songs again, mostly as a way of keeping himself sane, but eventually saw an album taking shape. When it was time to record, he reached out to Big Thief drummer/producer James Krivchenia — who he’d briefly hit it off with at a show immediately before the pandemic — and with Krivchenia’s touch and ear for percussion, An Inbuilt Fault has that more alive feeling Westerman was looking for.
“I wanted to jump off the cliff creatively,” Westerman says. “I wanted to put myself in an environment that was completely alien to me as a way of trying to grow, to break out of the solipsistic way the music had been forming up until that point.”
That isn’t to say the core ethos of Westerman’s writing was lost in the process. The music unspools and ambles, so it takes longer for these songs to sink into your head, but they don’t leave once they’re there. His melodies are as gorgeous as ever: one of the album’s most simultaneously jarring and transcendent moments is when he slides into the chorus of “Idol:RE-Run,” which happens to wring a hilarious amount of beauty out of the word “motherf–ker.” (“It wakes you up,” he quips.) Meanwhile, “A Lens Turning” uses a dexterous, knotty groove as underpinning for navigating a similarly tangled existential crisis. Closer “Pilot Was A Dancer” has an almost ‘90s alt-rock tone to it, a cathartic burst of guitars as Westerman tells an apocalyptic story about the last human being alive on Earth.
Though Westerman’s songs are inspired by an array of experiences, both his and others, he rarely is autobiographical. At the same time, he acknowledges much of An Inbuilt Fault is traversing relatively dark themes, its title a reflection on our inherent fallibility. At the end of it all, he’s made another striking album that also feels like a hard reset after the ellipsis of 2020. It feels like he’s starting again.
THE FUTURE
Westerman did eventually make it to Athens, and his early days there were wild — things were just reopening, and parties thronged the streets at all hours of the night. One of the singles from An Inbuilt Fault, “CSI: Petralona,” is a rare moment that does derive more directly from Westerman’s actual life, inspired by a “near-death” experience and the kindness of strangers. But since then, it seems he’s settled into his new life in Greece.
“It’s almost the opposite of London,” he muses. “It’s slow-paced. It’s lugubrious chaos. Nothing really works very well but there’s a strange internal logic to it where it does.”
With some distance from London, and from the hubs of the music industry in western Europe and North America, Westerman has found he’s been more clear-headed creatively. He’s come out the other side of questioning his life as a musician revitalized and re-centered. “It remains the same irrespective of whether five people are listening or five thousand,” he says. “The scale is irrelevant in terms of process, and when I remember that it is very helpful. I know I’ll continue to do it now in some capacity, because I know I need to do it.”
To that end, he mentions he’s already close to finishing the recording of another album.
HIS FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR
“I’ve been using this Meris Hedra pedal. It has three pitch shifters but it’s got secondary functions of delay and feedback. I think you can make a whole record with just a voice and this pedal. It would be an interesting thing to do that as a confined exercise. I don’t really understand it. It’s such a deep piece of equipment I don’t know half of it.”
THE ARTIST THAT HE THINKS NEEDS MORE ATTENTION
“There’s loads. There’s an artist called Clara Mann. She’s almost folk revival, slightly maudlin, sadly beautiful minimalistic guitar singer-songwriter. I really enjoyed listening to that yesterday so I’ll go with that now. That’s a difficult question because there’s literally thousands.”
THE THING THAT HE THINKS NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
“I don’t think there is enough protection for artists — in general in the industry, but particularly for younger artists. There’s a disposability culture, where there isn’t really a huge amount of accountability for the way older people in the industry can exploit the good will or naivety of younger people when they’re offering something. It’s not like designing a washing machine. It’s a different sort of thing.
“I think it would be good that, if [and] when people are exploited through their inexperience, there was some kind of culpability for the people who are doing that. Currently there is none. Seemingly there are very few bodies of people you can go to when things go wrong. Generally the people who carry the financial and emotional burden when those things happen are the people least equipped to do it, and that’s an imbalance that is not right.”
THE PIECE OF ADVICE HE BELIEVES EVERY NEW INDIE ARTIST NEEDS TO HEAR
Westerman pauses for a while, and then says simply: “Keep going.”
At one point during the first show of her long-awaited, highly anticipated Eras tour on Friday night (Mar. 17), Taylor Swift described herself as “really overwhelmed, and trying to keep it together all night.” It’s easy to understand: this enormous stadium trek, one of pop’s hottest tickets in years, also happens to be Swift’s first proper tour in five years, thanks primarily to the pandemic. The pop superstar has released a whopping four original albums (plus two re-recorded ones) since last hitting the road, and on Friday night at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., she told the crowd that she had been dreaming about this day — the day that she could finally perform this wealth of new material — for a long time.
“Overwhelming” would also be an apt way to describe the sheer tonnage of the Eras tour: with segments dedicated to all 10 of Swift’s studio albums, the show entertained a sold-out, frequently screaming stadium audience for 3 hours and 15 minutes, as Swift tirelessly showcased her skill set and various artistic personas across a whopping 44 songs. The most dominant artist in popular music has used this live run to reflect on the various iterations of her career to date, and the achievement is often staggering, with costume changes, set-piece upheaval, vulnerable moments in a crowd of thousands and sing-alongs that will rival the scope of any tour this year.
The Eras tour is going to satisfy a lot of Swift diehards in the coming months, who will surely find their own favorite pockets of the set list. And while Swift fans should embrace the entire experience, the opening night provided some clear-cut highlights. Here are the 13 best moments from the Eras tour kickoff in Glendale on Friday night:
The Cathartic Opening of “Cruel Summer”
Although Swift technically opened the show with part of a different Lover track, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince,” the brilliant synth-pop single “Cruel Summer” was the first to get the full, stadium-show treatment, complete with a raised platform, backup dancers and Swift unveiling a diamond-encrusted one-piece with matching tall boots. For both the fans in attendance and Swift herself, the song seemed to represent an exhalation — this tour was finally happening, and this immaculate song, three-and-a-half years old at this point, was finally being performed.
The First Era-Hop, Into ‘Fearless’
“Tonight, we’re going to be going on an adventure, one era at a time!” Swift declared a few songs into the show — a concept that truly sunk in a few minutes later, when the first era of the evening, Lover, gave way to Fearless both in the set list and stylistically. Gone was the glitter getup and deep pop rhythms, replaced with a fringe dress and sunny country licks from Swift’s acoustic guitar, as she jumped into the Fearless title track, “You Belong With Me” and “Love Story.” The “Fearless” change-up marked the moment that the idea of the Eras tour fully snapped into place, and the crowd was enthralled with the approach.
Taylor’s ‘Evermore’ Defense
In the middle of the Evermore mini-set, Swift sat down at a moss-covered piano and talked to the audience about how gratifying it was that she was finally getting to perform her “four new members of the family” — Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights, the four albums she’s released since her last tour. She added that Evermore “is an album I absolutely love — despite what some of you say on TikTok!” She paused for comic effect, then deadpanned, “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen all of it!” Even if some TikTok users haven’t warmed as much to Folklore’s counterpart, Swift gave Evermore prime placement in her set list, with a total of five songs performed from the album, including “’Tis The Damn Season,” “Willow” and “Tolerate It.”
The Unexpected “Don’t Blame Me” Showcase
When the Evermore part of the set ended and snake scales appeared on screen, everyone in attendance knew that Reputation was next up — and while singles like “…Ready For It?,” “Delicate” and “Look What You Made Me Do” were all delivered with high energy, “Don’t Blame Me” was bestowed with a fiery passion that, even compared to how its swooping harmonies were presented on the Reputation tour, elevated the album cut. Quite literally: Swift sprung skyward on a platform while attacking a big, showy note during the song’s climax, making for one of the more memorable technical performances of the evening.
“Enchanted” as the Dramatic ‘Speak Now’ Representative
It’s hard to quibble with set list exclusions when the set list in question contains 44 songs… but still, Speak Now are not going to be thrilled that the Eras tour contains only one song from that particular era. At least that song stood out as a highlight: “Enchanted” found Swift in a flowing ball gown maximizing the emotional stakes, with acoustic strums laying the groundwork for a full-band crescendo. If “Mine,” “Back to December,” “Mean” and “Dear John” aren’t getting any burn on this tour, “Enchanted” will have to be a powerhouse for the third-album diehards… and on opening night, it was just that.
The Extended Version of “All Too Well”…
After rolling through Red highlights like “22,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Swift spoke to the audience about how meaningful the success of both the original Red in 2012 and the re-recorded version in 2021 had been for her. Then, Swift asked if the crowd had an extra 10 minutes to spare. The chart-topping 10-minute version of “All Too Well” followed the roars in response, and naturally functioned as a centerpiece for the entire set, arriving roughly at the halfway point and becoming an emotional anchor for the evening. By the time that paper snowflakes fell across the stadium during the final minute, the magic of the moment was widely accepted.
…And the Three-Word Shout-Along Within “All Too Well”
When you attend a Taylor Swift show in 2023 (and beyond), you simply will not experience a bigger sing-along moment than the phrase “F–k the patriarchy!” In the 10-minute “All Too Well.” Not only does everyone in attendance sing along, they scream along, and wind up to it in the preceding lyrics! Talk about magic! Count on Swifties loudly flipping off men in power, in unison, for years to come.
‘Folklore’ Deep Cut-Turned-Viral Smash “August”
Taylor Swift pays attention to her fans — when she says she’s seen the Evermore hate on TikTok, she’s kidding around, but rest assured she’s actually seen it. So when deciding which tracks from the sprawling Folklore to play, there’s no doubt that Swift noticed the fan adoption to “August,” which wasn’t a focus track upon the album’s release but has since become a fan favorite that’s often bubbling up on social media (especially during the titular month each year). The mass sing-along of “August” may have caught some offline attendees as a surprise, but Swift’s fans fiercely love the wistful folk-pop track, and demonstrated their appreciation at the opener.
The Neon Golf Clubs of “Blank Space”
Swift’s backup dancers rode out on neon-lit bicycles during her performance of the 1989 smash, but that was only prelude to one of the night’s better visuals: Swift and her cohorts brandishing blue-lit golf clubs during the bridge, and then smashing an animated car (a la Swift’s crazed attack in the “Blank Space” video) on a mid-stage screen, each new dent in time with the song’s beat. It was difficult to look away from the spectacle, and became the sort of sight gag that sticks with you long after the show has wrapped.
The Surprise Acoustic Track
Deep into the evening, Swift grabbed her guitar and announced that she planned to perform an acoustic song that wasn’t included in the Eras set list during the tour, with the hope of never duplicating the song she selected for each performance. It’s a strong move in theory — even after the Eras set list gets mulled over endlessly, there will still be a new surprise each night — and was even better in practice, as the achingly beautiful “Mirrorball” was selected for the first performance. The acoustic tracks probably won’t be as strong as the Folklore standout on a nightly basis, but for the Glendale audience, the choice made opening night even more special.
The “Anti-Hero” Metaphor Comes to Life
Earlier in the evening, Taylor Swift gave a begrudging shout-out to everyone in the audience who was dressed like a “sexy baby” in tribute to the “Anti-Hero” lyric; later, when her latest No. 1 smash was performed, Swift embodied the “monster on the hill” line that follows it. On the video screen behind her performance, Swift turned herself into a Godzilla-esque creature terrorizing a city before glumly sitting on (and destroying) an office building. On a night with a lot of impressive choreography and stage setups, that straightforward visual — Swift as the problem, it’s her — became one of the more interesting spectacles of the show, and added to the performance of the hit single.
The “Vigilante Shit” Dance Routine
Speaking of spectacle: Swift goes full-on burlesque alongside her dancers for the Midnights standout, dancing on and around a chair and having an absolute blast while doing it. The song comes about three hours into the performance, but Swift conjures every ounce of energy to turn one of the more sparsely produced songs in her catalog into an enthralling jam.
Ending With a Fan Favorite
The final era presented during the Eras tour is Midnights, and Swift could have capped it with a hit — “Anti-Hero,” of course, or maybe fast-rising follow-up “Lavender Haze.” Instead, she concludes the evening with a trio of non-hits that fans truly adore: “Bejeweled,” “Mastermind” and “Karma.” The logic behind that decision is simple: the Eras tour is less about hits than it is about fan service, and ending on a song like “Karma” nods to those who inhale every song on a Swift track list instead of just paying attention to the singles. This run of shows is for the fully committed Swift listeners, and an album cut like “Karma” is the perfect way to bid them adieu for now.
Chvrches has never been prone to releasing one-off singles that aren’t tethered to either a larger project or is a collaboration with another artist. Yet the long-running Scottish trio is kicking off their 2023 with “Over,” a behemoth of a synth-pop track due out on Friday (Feb. 24) that represents a new chapter for Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty — who celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album this year, and are using the new single to launch their recent major-label deal.
“Something that’s come up recently, that I thought was a nice way to frame this, is that we signed new record deals, and there’s kind of a new lease on life for the band,” Doherty tells Billboard. “It’s a chance for us to work within a new paradigm.”
“Over” dates back to 2017, a product of a few nights in which Doherty and producer-songwriter Oscar Holter would hang out and write a few demos together. “That was before he went on the craziest run ever,” Doherty says, referencing Holter’s work on smashes like The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and “Save Your Tears” and Coldplay & BTS’s “My Universe” in the years that followed. “We were working on some stuff just for fun.”
The demo floated in the ether for a few years: the band knew “Over” could be a big song for them, but it didn’t fit on a project like 2021’s Screen Violence, which the trio wanted to write and produce completely on their own. At the end of 2022, the band reconnected with Holter, who wanted to revisit “Over” and help flesh it out into a proper Chvrches song.
The trio and Holter punched up the track and “got it to a point where everyone was happy with it,” explains Doherty, “and where it felt like somewhere that Chvrches could be going, potentially — that isn’t to say that’s where we’re going, but something that felt 2023, and not like something that’s been kicking around for a few years.”
In its newly finished form, “Over” is gargantuan, a more muscular version of Chvrches’ synth-rock sound with a classic Mayberry hook designed for expansive festival crowds. As Mayberry’s voice pleads for understanding and romantic comfort, the synth chords are smashed, lonely guitar riffs wander around and the percussion recalls a classic Jam & Lewis beat; the song has a gusto like it were made without album-track expectation or any of its limitations.
“There’s something incredibly freeing and no-strings about thinking outside of a long-form narrative, for the first time in 10 years,” says Doherty. “It’s quite liberating, and quite fun.”
After rising to fame and releasing their first four studio albums with Glassnote Records, Chvrches signed a new deal with Island Records in North American and EMI in the U.K. last year. Mayberry says that the label jump was the product of an amicable split at a time when the prospect of a new direction was appealing. “We’ve always been really lucky to have great partners with what we were doing,” she says. “Making some of the changes was quite emotional … But we’re really excited by what Island and EMI were bringing to the table.
“I don’t know if we’ve necessarily benefited from the kind of old-school approach — getting songs on the radio, et cetera,” Mayberry continues. “I don’t think that blueprint works for us. And a lot of that is based on — alternative radio in America is all f—king men! It’s all men! And there was a time, at the beginning of the band especially, where there was a narrative of, ‘Oh, we’ve just playlisted [another] band with a female vocalist,’ even if they sounded completely different than us. So it was really exciting to talk to people who viewed it more holistically, like, ‘Where are Chvrches fans, and how can we get things to them?’”
After touring behind Screen Violence over the past two years, Chvrches will head to Brazil in March for a string of dates supporting Coldplay on their global stadium tour, and Mayberry cryptically adds that “there’s another batch of shows that are coming, at some point.” When asked how much writing and recording they expect to get done this year, Mayberry admits that the band isn’t sure.
“Whatever we make next, we have to take the time on it,” she says. “It has to move the conversation forward in some way.”
“It’s an incredibly rare and privileged position after such a long period of time,” adds Cook, nodding to the decade-long run of the band since their 2013 debut, The Bones of What You Believe. “We don’t really have any kind of ceiling on things, or know this is how long this is gonna go on for. We’re just taking things as they come in, and as long as we’re enjoying it, we’ll keep doing it.”
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It seems there was no limit to Jay-Z’s rapport with the Miller family in the 1990’s. Silkk The Shocker recalls Hov declining payment over a verse.
Contrary to popular belief the legendary MC wasn’t always about the almighty dollar. As spotted on Vibe Magazine Jay-Z apparently told “Give Me The World” talent to keep his coins after doing a verse for him. Silkk recently sat down with the Art Of Dialogue platform and discussed his career. Midway he revealed his interaction with Jay over “You Know What We Bout”.
“Our relationship was dope because when I did the song with him, I thought I had a budget for him,” The Shocker shared. “I was like, ‘Yo, I got a hundred racks’ — that’s a lot of money back in the day too! I’m sure he could’ve used the extra $100,000; who ain’t gonna use that? When I hit him up, I’m like, ‘Yo, the song is dope, you killed it. Where I should I send that bread to?’ Jay was like, ‘Nah, it’s good, man. Just keep it and we’ll figure out something later on down the line.’”
Silkk also detailed why the gesture speaks volumes about Jay’s character when we fast forward to today. “What I came to learn was that it’s bigger than [money] for him,” he explained. “To me, that’s consistent with [where he is] today — if you look at him, it’s not a fluke that he’s successful.” He went to also reveal that he went on to repay the favor. “I don’t care how rich you are, you going [to] be like, ‘Man, send my bread.’ But he was just dead cool. He ain’t even second-guess it like, ‘Yeah, send me half of it.’ The good part about it: down the line, I kind [of] did something for him and I just thought it was solid.”
You can see Silkk discuss the situation below.
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Kimbra is very aware of how big things became.
“Let’s be honest: me and Gotye’s names kind of became household names for a period of time,” the New Zealand-bred, New York City-based singer-songwriter reflects after catapulting to unlikely superstardom with their Hot 100-topping, Grammy-winning 2012 smash “Somebody I Used to Know. The duet went on to become one of the longest-charting hits in Hot 100 history, and remains one of the best-selling digital singles ever.
Over a decade later, however, Kimbra now finds herself picking up the pieces from a particularly turbulent period of her life since her last studio album, 2018’s Primal Heart. The title of her new album — A Reckoning, which was released last month — came to her before the songs did, as a perfect summation of what happened to her following a personal loss, the end of a relationship and a deal dissolution with longtime label home Warner Records, all amidst the pandemic.
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A Reckoning is the result of choosing to turn inward and confronting her own emotions and thought patterns head-on. Co-crafted with Son Lux’s Ryan Lott, with features from Erick the Architect, Pink Siifu and Tommy Raps, the honest, genre-blending body of work twists aggressive beats, R&B-influenced melodies and shape-shifting organic sounds around vulnerable confessions, prayers and empowering declarations. “Replay!” is an ode to compulsive thoughts partially inspired by Kelis’ vocal delivery on “Caught Out There,” while “Foolish Thinking” is a moving piano ballad composed as a letter to her future daughter.
“We love people going through the rough, and then emerging to tell us what the war was like,” she says. With a renewed confidence in herself as a storyteller and in her purpose as an artist, Kimbra is ready to share what she calls a “redemption story.”
It’s been a while since 2018’s Primal Heart. What’s happened since?
We’ve all been through so much. The Primal Heart campaign came to an end, and I began to think about what I want to say next. I went through a stage of really struggling to write. Maybe it was because I was struggling to articulate what I was feeling. I hadn’t landed on something that felt honest. I don’t want to sell people something I don’t really believe.
I wrote “Save Me” in 2020 as things were really collapsing. My relationship at the time was coming to an obvious end as well. I was breaking up with my label. My team was changing. I moved upstate. I lost my best friend out of nowhere back in New Zealand. Some real lows.
I think, sometimes, our greatest breakthroughs happen at rock bottom. “Save Me” was a bit of a breakthrough – that feeling of hopelessness and being stuck with yourself. I struggle with a lot of anxiety and difficult thoughts. If I hold them in, it gets dangerous. I named something in me that I needed to get out. That’s where A Reckoning began. I had titled it before I even had all the songs.
Did the thought ever come that music wasn’t going to be the space for you anymore?
No, and that’s the biggest fear of all: that music won’t save me, and I won’t be able to get out what I want to say. When you keep turning up and believing that there’s something there, it comes through. It took other people — like Ryan Lott, the co-producer — to help identify what the sounds were going to be to tell the story. It’s an act of faith to make an album. You can turn a s—t sandwich into a beautiful liberation. [laughs]
Was there a sonic mood you were striving for?
I think the cohesion in my work is often the storyteller at the center, the voice that leads you through these different worlds. There’s a juxtaposition in the aggression of certain sounds against something very soft and tender, which is really me in a nutshell. I have all these conflicting things that live within me. My art is an attempt to translate my inner world to be understood, like all of us. The sonic identity is ever-changing, because I’m ever-changing.
When you talk about longing to be understood, does that extend to your former label?
Yeah. They wanted to extend my deal. It was already at six albums. They wanted to go to eight. They wanted to pick the producer. I can’t work that way. I need to have the agency in my work to put the right people in place to tell the story. I don’t do this to just sell a product. It’s my life.
It was a rock to my confidence. That’s another kind of reckoning: How bad do you want it? Are you gonna fight to get your music out there, form the right team, and keep turning up when you don’t have also someone breathing down your neck saying, “When’s the record done?” Now you have to motivate yourself.
How did you assemble a team of collaborators on your own?
I met Ryan doing a co-headlining tour with Son Lux. He has such a strange sound world to his music. I bring these catchy melodies – an almost R&B thing. That was an intriguing combination. I often bring people in when I’m struggling to finish a song, or there’s something not quite right. Bringing rappers on to jump on songs, or bringing Questlove in to help the rhythm section of the track — who’s doing this in their own work that could throw another color into the canvas? I’m hunting for the moment when I go, “Ah, that captures something I haven’t yet said.”
“Gun” was written in a Rihanna writing camp. Are you writing for others often?
I’ve done a little bit, not a ton. The whole place was dedicated to writing, every person in the studio. Her vocal coach would come through and guide me on how to perform the demo as her. I’m trying to embody the strength I see in Rihanna.
I’m just a kid from New Zealand. I still can’t believe I have a billboard up in Times Square. I look at a lot of the pop stars as being a lot more strong and badass than I am.
Fake it ’til you make it.
Exactly. And that’s what I did for that song. I don’t feel like I’m the s—t right now, but I’m gonna sing “I’m the s—t, so shout my name,” because I know Rihanna would say that and sell that.
There’s a certain kind of oppression that happens to artists, where you start to believe that you are a product of the people. I had to confront the fact that a lot of people I trusted had broken that trust. It’s about building yourself back up again and realizing there’s this inner strength that deserves to be spoken out loud. I just needed to wait until I was at the time of my life where I could sing a song I wrote for Rihanna. I think it was meant to be mine all along.
Can you talk about the collaborative doors that opened after “Somebody I Used to Know”?
I mean, let’s be honest: me and Gotye’s names kind of became household names for a period of time. There was a lot of respect that came from that song. When I would reach out to my favorite guitarist, they would know my name and have an interest in working together. And it wasn’t just, “Oh, you’re that girl with the random, massive song.” It was, “You made something that I really felt.” What a blessing that I got to penetrate the hearts of millions of people all over the world.
Are there sessions that didn’t see light of day that you wish had?
Yeah, there are songs lying around with various people. I just don’t know whether to name them, because it might still come out. The mysterious thing about music is you make things, and they may not reemerge for another 10 years. That’s another act of faith, to just keep making things, regardless of what timeline they’re on.
Are there plans for a musical reunion with Gotye?
Gotye has been working very hard on music. I’m sure he’ll come out the cave at some point to talk about it. It is not my place to talk on that, unfortunately. I’ll leave that up to him. But, let me tell you… anything is possible in this world. [laughs]
Do you retreat from popular music when you’re making music?
That’s a good question. I do take intentional breaks. Maybe just instrumental music for a while. I think constantly listening to vocals is a lot of stimulus for a vocalist. If you listen to SZA all the time, you might be writing a lot like SZA. Sometimes I will just listen to Philip Glass records or something, so I can work out what is my most genuine melodic perspective right now.
I’m really inspired by artists that are very ambitious in their records. I think Kendrick Lamar is one of those artists. He takes on a spirit of jazz that I think is very important — being able to jump around a lot, but have a very clear message and vision. He knows why he’s here and what he’s doing. It’s aggressive, it’s tough, but he can really speak truth to a lot of things in the world, in a very prophet-like way. Frank Ocean has been one of those groundbreaking songwriters in the last 10 years that I still go back to, with some of the most timeless songs.
Do you feel you still grapple with imposter syndrome?
Totally. I have that mentality still of being a young kid, insecure in high school. The only way I try to combat that is to remember that everyone feels that to a certain extent. You got to accept that you never really feel, at any point of your career, that you’re deserving of that place, or that you’ve done enough work to get there. It’s trusting something I’ve done connects with the world. It’s bigger than me.
I try to be humble about that. If they believe I am this person that’s really helped them through it, then let me turn up to that. Even though I feel s—tty today, that’s the service of the work.
What is your approach to feedback about your music online?
More and more, I’ve realized that anytime you take a risk and try to do something slightly daring, there will be people who don’t like it. There are people who like you to stay small, especially with women. Sometimes when I receive negative feedback, I almost take it as an affirmation that what I’m doing is pushing into something new. It makes sense that someone hates that version I did of a Beyoncé song, or something. Don’t get me wrong: it can really deflate me when I get something negative. People can be very cruel. But f—k, it’s just part of it, man. Every job has its thing that you have to be able to armor against.
So many artists who have come before me have experienced people not giving a s—t when their records came out. They were reviewed terribly. And then years later, they’re heralded as absolutely game-changing. People’s perception of you is always going to be changing. You’re not in control of that. At least there’s a reaction! Better than people kind of being like… eh.
You mentioned covering Beyoncé – you recently took on “Break My Soul.”
I’m always looking to find a new angle on something. I love the dissection process of a song that we all know really well. It comes back to wanting to have fun with music. If I’m always thinking about what other people want to hear, it’s not very fun. But if I’m loving it, then chances are someone else is probably going to feel that same way.
You have a Soundfly vocal arrangement and production class. What are your thoughts on the amount of female engineers in the studio? Has there been a shift?
I’ve seen the conversation change most among men. That’s where it’s important. Women have always been talking about this, but if we’re not being heard or respected by the people that have the power, nothing changes. It’s the same with the #MeToo movement. What we really needed was men to be in the conversation, rather than just being outside of it. I’ve seen a shift there.
There’s a musicality that comes from women in production and technical roles that is different. The feminine in all of us is very healing. We’ve been living in a patriarchy for so long. I think people are sensing we need a shift. It starts with conversations. If more people talk about it, we’re going to be more open to our cultural settings changing as well.
As the dust settles after releasing this record, what goals do you have, personally and professionally?
I really want to take this music to people one-on-one, and lift people up after all this s—t we’ve been through. I’m excited for that.
I’ve written more music in the last five years than I think have in my f—king entire career. I have more bodies of work that I’m currently working on: one is highly collaborative, and one is super dance floor with BRUX, the producer who did “Replay!” We started writing a lot of celebratory, anthemic dance tracks. I’m working on a lot of very heavily leaning R&B stuff. And then I want to make a very organic band record.
As I approach thinking about motherhood in the future, it would be cool to get as much out in this time of my life so I can take a break for a bit.
Personally, I’m always on a journey to keep healing. I make music so that I can better myself, and to be a more empathetic person in the world. That’s always my hope, through the vehicle of music, that I’m growing as a person, and hopefully helping people.
P!nk acknowledges that parts of her new album, Trustfall, could be considered corny by today’s pop standards. Take lead single “Never Gonna Not Dance Again”: Produced by Max Martin and Shellback, the happy-go-lucky groove finds the pop superstar shrugging off problems large and small in favor of unabashed movement, and declaring, “One thing I’m never gonna do/ Is throw away my dancing shoes,” before the bright, splashy chorus kicks in.
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“Never Gonna Not Dance Again” is marked by a dance-pop earnestness that’s seldom heard at the top of streaming charts or in viral hits these days. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s kind of my formula, isn’t it? That sounds like a P!nk song,’” she tells Billboard during a January Zoom conversation of the single, letting out a sigh at the idea of a retread. “And then by the end of it, I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I feel happy. I don’t care if it’s cheesy!’”
Trustfall, out Friday (Feb. 17) on RCA Records, could have been a darker affair — after all, the follow-up to 2019’s Hurts 2B Human was conceived during the pandemic, during which her son Jameson endured a scary battle with COVID-19 at the age of three in 2020, and her father succumbed to cancer in 2021. Yet P!nk’s ninth studio album confronts personal trauma with tempo: working with a wide array of collaborators, from longtime producer Greg Kurstin to ascendant dance artist Fred Again.. to Swedish folk-pop duo First Aid Kit, the best-selling pop star pushes the pace on Trustfall songs like “Runaway,” “Last Call” and the title track, while learning to appreciate the growth that periods of loss often present.
“I think it is one of the best records I’ve ever made,” says P!nk. “And I feel about it the way I felt about Missundaztood and I’m Not Dead and possibly The Truth About Love. And so I’m really excited and anxious.”
P!nk is also eager to dive into her upcoming Summer Carnival 2023 tour, where the longtime arena headliner will bring her cavalcade of pop hits to stadiums across North America, beginning July 24. Although P!nk says that she has found a sense of calm thanks to time at home with her family — husband Carey Hart, and children Willow and Jameson — she also can’t wait to perform in front of the biggest audiences of her career.
Ahead of the Trustfall release, P!nk discussed how the album came together, returning to the road and the way TikTok has (and hasn’t) changed her approach to pop. [Ed. note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]
What moves Trustfall into that class of albums that you feel like are some of your best?
It took time, because COVID gave us all a little bit of time. It’s been three years, and for a little while, at least, there wasn’t a lot else going on. Normally I’m like, “Okay, turn on the faucet, let’s go” — like a race to the finish, how many songs can you write? And they’re all meaningful to me, it’s all my feelings. But this [album] felt like, “Yeah, I felt like that last year, but I don’t feel like that anymore. Now I feel like this.”
The sequencing of this album was really important to me, in case someone does listen to it from start to finish. Because life is like this to me — it’s an emotional roller coaster and it’s a f–king journey, and this album is that. This album could have easily been, Side A is Roller Skate Time, and Side B is No Sharp Objects in the Kitchen Time! But that’s not life. Life is messy and beautiful and messy again.
It was so easy to name the record. I feel like getting out of bed, and getting dressed, and dropping your kids off at school, and being in a relationship, and parenting, and participating in elections — it requires a lot of trust. And most of the time, we feel like we’re falling backwards, and we don’t know where the ground is.
And so much has changed since your last record — which was less than four years ago, but the world has been upended in a lot of ways.
I think we’re all walking around with this sort of low-level trauma that we’re not even aware of. In the last three years, for all of us, this has been our generation’s “thing.” Growing up in a military family and having a dad tell you, “You’ve never been through s–t” — and I’m like, “Well, I have personally! It’s all relative, dad!” But then you’re like, “No, we really haven’t been through anything, as a whole.” And it feels like we have now, and are still, and we don’t know what’s coming next as a whole.
Plus, I lost my dad. And then a month later, I lost another person that was incredibly close to me. And then I’m raising little people, and celebrating my 17th anniversary — and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to say that, but neither did he. But yeah, it’s just life, man. Adulting is a lot.
What was that process like, in terms of experiencing that heaviness, reflecting on those themes and synthesizing into a handful of songs on this album?
Probably harder for the producer than it was for the writer. [Laughs.] Poor Greg Kurstin. When your writer walks in with the song “Hate Me” in their pocket, you know it’s gonna be an awkward day. God bless him — he’s been through so many of those days with me. I just walk in and start crying, because for me, I’m like an open wound walking around in the world. I’m so sensitive, and I can’t hide it. And so people just have to just watch me cry sometimes. Or I go on rants, too. That’s never good!
But I’ve always done that. “Family Portrait” was that for me. It was this really, terribly uncomfortable situation for my family, and [the song] was kind of like an outing. If you’re in my life, then you kind of signed a waiver that I get to write about it. Carey knows! So you just write what you feel. And that’s why I’m not writing like, happy love songs, because I’m useless when I’m happy.
When did these songs start coming together? Was it a burst of creativity, or over a prolonged period of time?
It was three years in the making. “Lost Cause” and “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” were the two album-starters. And “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” was my reaction to adrenal fatigue, cortisol, stress. It was like, “F–k this. If the world’s ending and we’re sliding sideways off our axis, I’m gonna get my roller skates. Let’s take a cocktail class online! What are we doing?” So those songs on the record were a reaction to, “I can’t care all the time. I also need to feel joy, and let that s–t run off my back.”
There’s a lyric in the song “Kids in Love” that goes, “If you don’t f–k up, then you’ll never learn,” and it really pops out.
I learn through experiential f–kery. I mean, that’s my whole life. I have to remember that as a parent, also. I have to remember that.
How you end up working with First Aid Kit on that song?
I’ve been a fan of theirs for so long. And then I went to the BRITs [in 2019], and they gave me this ridiculous award, and I got to sing with Dan [Smith] from Bastille. And we’re hanging out at the after-party, and these girls were there, and Dan introduced them — and I heard him wrong, so I didn’t know it was First Aid Kit. So I was thinking they were some band that I didn’t know about! I was like, “What kind of music do you make?” And they were nice about it. And I was like, “What’s the name of your band again?” They’re like, “First Aid Kit.” I was like, “Shut… the front… door. I’m your biggest fan.”
It was a full turnaround. It was like, P!nk didn’t know who the f–k they were, and then I was like, “No, you don’t understand! I’ve been listening to you forever! You’re from Sweden!” I was like, “Do you think like we can all start a band! Dan can be the singer, and I’ll learn drums!” So we started a band in our heads — me, First Aid Kit and Dan from Bastille. I think that’d be a cool band. But I just wanted to work with them, because they’re awesome. They’re my new Indigo Girls.
Pop music has also changed so much since your last album was released — TikTok is now enormous, and these years-old songs are being revived…
[P!nk visibly winces]
I definitely see that face you just made!
I’m sorry. I’m sorry!
Are you getting that a lot through your kids, the TikTok dances and challenges?
No, they don’t have phones. I won’t let them! I was asked to be on a TikTok two nights ago and I made them very upset when I said “No, thank you.” I mean, look, I don’t want to be a dinosaur. But I want to bring back Atari. [Laughs.] Play Frogger and ExciteBike.
Things have changed, and that’s not what I do. And I’m okay with that. The people that have been coming to my shows, we’ve grown up together. I’m a pop fan. I like The Beatles, I like doo-wop music, I like Broadway. I come from a different thing, and I’ve got to be true to me. I don’t get played on the radio that much anyway, so I’m not really going for that. When I’m making a record, I’m like, “Who am I? How do I feel? What do I need to exorcise?” And, “How’s this going to be [performed] live — what can I climb onto for this song? Or will I be able to say this without crying and humiliating myself?”
So yeah, I can’t do that. But that’s great, because there’s so many people that can!
The thing is, you do still get a good amount of radio play — “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” hit the top 10 of a few Billboard charts. And of course, you have tons of older hits that still get played on radio, and have been streamed millions of times. But I’m always interested in how veteran artists react to, and want to pay attention to, new technologies and platforms.
I don’t really know. With me, when you’re a certain age and a woman, they tell you that what you do doesn’t matter, really, anymore, so just do what you do. And I’ve kind of always felt like that — at 16, I felt like that. But I don’t write songs for other people. I’m very narcissistic when it comes to songwriting, in a very pure way. I write what needs to be written for me, and if somebody else can relate to it, then that’s awesome. We’re all having this human experience, and we’re not all that different.
And I love parts of it, too! Like, Billie Eilish — how do you even put a song out like that, and then it’s No. 1 on radio? Like, 10 years ago, that’s unheard of. These artists are pushing the envelope and we need them to push things forward. My daughter is obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo, and that’s awesome to me, because that girl fronts a full band and writes her own music and writes great songs, and I’m super here for that. I think it’s awesome. It’s just not going to be me.
You’re playing stadiums in a few months, and mentioned thinking about how these new songs are going to be played live. Where are you at in the process at this point?
It’s been a while, but we had a tour meeting the other night with all the key players, and it was sort of that first creative [meeting]: Thinking outside the box, what can we do, how can we top that, what’s physically possible more than once? Like, getting shot out of a cannon — that would be fun, but you can only do that once!
I walk away from meetings like that like, “Oh God, I forgot how much fun I’m about to have.” It puts years back on my life. It is so fun, what I get to do, and I love it so much. And I love that Jameson’s gonna remember it, because he’s gonna be old enough, and I love the people that I get to work with. And then I get new material — there’s nothing worse than going and playing a show, and it’s all the same. But you get new shit to work with, and you’re like, “Oh, I can do anything I want with this, literally! Can I fall from the ceiling and live?”
No ceilings on stadiums, though!
True. There’s that feeling where, “You put two Fenway Park [shows] on sale, for who? Billy Joel? Stevie Wonder? Oh, just me?” It’s very exciting, and I feel like it’s the longest fluke in history, too.
“We’ll never do a second album again,” jokes Inhaler’s Elijah Hewson, feigning the exhaustion that, at this time last year, was very real for the well-coiffed singer-guitarist and his Inhaler band mates.
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After two years of pandemic dormancy, the Irish pop-rockers stormed the stage in 2022, amassing more than 100 gigs in support of It Won’t Always Be Like This, the group’s blistering post-punk-goes-pop 2021 debut. The album, which was largely written and recorded during COVID, hit No. 1 in the U.K. and the Dubliners’ native Ireland, shocking the new-coming foursome.
And so came the need for a worthy follow-up — this time on a working band’s notoriously chaotic schedule. But the tireless lads pulled it off, booking long studio hours in early 2022, between tour stints and festival sets.
Just 15 months after their thrilling curtain-raiser — and with nerve-racking slots at Glastonbury and Lollapalooza now in the rear-view — Inhaler returns with Cuts and Bruises, another jangle-and-thump effort full of confidence and anthemic abandon, out this Friday (Feb. 17) through Geffen. The guitar-heavy sequel sharply merges callbacks to the band’s ‘80s muses — The Stone Roses, Joy Division — with touches of American fascination, courtesy of the band’s run of packed club shows across the U.S. last spring. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have joined the party as influences.
After last year’s hectic return to normalcy, the band — Hewson, guitarist Rob Keating, bassist Josh Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon — plans for a busy 2023, with another list of festivals booked, not to mention opening slots for Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys. It’s easy to imagine a 1975-like obsession before this next album cycle is finished, although the band mates, who have been making noise together since their early teens, can scarcely believe any of it.
Billboard caught up with the ascendant band to retrace their wild 2022, unpack the origins of Cuts and Bruises, and learn how a well-timed documentary influenced their promising next chapter.
How was your very busy 2022, and being able to get back on stage and debut songs written in pandemic isolation?
Ryan McMahon: When we went back to gigging, seeing all these new, unfamiliar faces, singing back the songs was quite a shock to our system. And that was crazy for us to get back out touring and going into places in America, for example, where we never thought we’d be able to go and people knew our songs. We were talking a lot about how we’re very guilty of feeling like we’ve got this sense of imposter syndrome in our minds. We don’t feel worthy, in a lot of ways, of some of the things we get to do.
How has the reception been with U.S. fans, who have been a little slower to catch Inhaler fever?
RM: It’s surreal, because we always pictured America as this fictional place.
Elijah Hewson: I think people [in America] listen to music in a really different way than they do in Europe. Not that it’s like they don’t listen to music as much in Europe, but I feel like when we came here, right off the bat, people were very warm to us and we felt like it gave us a lot of drive and a lot of it made us feel like, oh, “Come on, lads.” And I guess it’s that age-old thing of Irish people coming to America and feeling like the whole world’s at their feet, at their fingertips.
Since you last spoke to Billboard, your debut album, It Won’t Always Be Like This, hit No. 1 in several countries, including your native Ireland. What’s it like to have a chart-topper in your own country?
RM: We still almost feel like it didn’t happen. I mean, when you get into a band when you’re 12 or 13, you don’t ever think that you’re going to go and take on the world with your boys. You just want to get into a room and make noise, because you’re not really that good at anything else. And so fast forward nine, 10 years later, and you wake up to find out that your album that you wrote during a pandemic is No. 1 in the country that you grew up in? It’s hard to put into words, really.
Let’s talk about the new album. First off, why call it Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we kind of realized that being in a band is maybe, sounds silly, but more of a commitment than we thought. Not in a sense that we have to work, but I think in relation to our relationships with each other. It’s a little bit like a marriage, and I think there’s always going to be a little bit of residual scar tissue left over after so many years of working and playing with each other.
We’re starting to realize that it’s important to look after those relationships and pay attention to them, and we have a responsibility to look after each other. And I think that just kept coming up, after the pandemic and being on the road together, it just felt like the only thing we could write about. So I guess the title reflects that, in a way. And it’s not a serious injury. It’s something that we’re able to brush off and heal from.
In a way, the pandemic bought you guys extra time to fine-tune your first album. But Cuts and Bruises was made in the real world, in between a rigorous touring schedule. How much harder was this one to finish?
EH: Switching between those two processes was very exhausting. And I think we all kind of crawled out the back end of 2021 just feeling like we were just really, really — not burnt out, but I think we’d given everything that we could, and I think in some ways the pressure of that, and the spontaneity of it, and the speed at which we did things probably did help the album. And thankfully, we had our producer [Antony Genn] in there to kind of light the fire under our arse, as he often does. And that really kept us on the straight and narrow while we were back in the studio.
How did this new influx of touring experience — and growing confidence in your abilities — influence the writing of Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we learned a lot of lessons on the first one, and I think when we came into the second we had a better picture of how we wanted to do things. … I think the main thing we said is we wanted less information, to let the songs breathe a bit.
I think we were just more confident, and you don’t have to add as much if you are confident in the songs and material. And that was the basis of what we went off and I think it guided us pretty well. But other than that, I mean, you’re going in hoping that you come out with something at the end that is bigger than the sum of its parts. I don’t think anybody really knows what they’re doing. And as David Bowie said, “If you knew what you were doing, it’d be boring. You’d be disappointed.”
Is there one song on the new album you’d point to as the guiding light for what this project is trying to say?
EH: Maybe “Now You Got Me,” because it’s about commitment to something, and a lot of the lyrics are about joining the band and stuff like that. And I think that paints a picture, for me, of the whole album and where we are right now.
RM: [The song] sums up just the overall residing theme of it being an album of love songs, about loving your friends, really.
You guys talk a lot about being in a band and your commitment to each other. I know you all watched The Beatles documentary Get Back, which touches on some similar themes. How did that impact how Inhaler functions?
EH: It couldn’t have come out at a better time for us to be preparing to go into a studio to make a new album. And it was also very interesting for us to watch that and watch some of the conversations that they’d be having with each other as the biggest and best band to ever exist. And we’re just watching it going, “Hey, we argue about that!”
The lead single “These Are the Days” is a big, anthemic song. How’d you land on it to introduce the new album?
JJ: It was funny, because “These Are the Days” was kind of overlooked at the time but we played it to our producers and our managers and they were like, “Hey, there’s something there. Let’s get cooking on that straight away.” Even though it was one of the later demos to arrive, it was one of the first songs we’d finished and we thought it was a good way of coming back into releasing music and saying, “Hey, here we are again. Are people still interested in us?” It just worked out in that way.
How about “If You’re Going to Break My Heart,” which is a departure for you guys? It sounds like an American folk or country song.
RM: That came to us from listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and The Band and Bruce Springsteen, and us falling in love with America, really, and touring it and visiting places like Nashville and sort of familiarizing ourselves a bit more with country music and the storytelling that goes behind that. In music, country artists are the best storytellers. I think that’s what we were aiming for. I think that song actually came fairly naturally to us in the studio, because it’s not super rigid-sounding. It’s a lot more loose and it sounds like a live band, which is, again, what we wanted to achieve with this record.
What does it mean to you to be a rock band in 2023 that’s still finding an audience in real life, especially as so many artists your age are living on TikTok?
EH: It’s everything to us. When we were kids, the most uncool thing you could do was pick up a guitar and join a band. And everyone was like, “Oh, that’s cute.” I think we were just doing it for ourselves, really, because that’s how we found each other — we just wanted to listen to Stone Roses and Joy Division, and it drew us close.
And we saw Arctic Monkeys came out with AM in 2013 and that was very guitar-driven, and “Do I Wanna Know?,” it was a huge single, and I think that gave us a little bit of hope. And I also think that maybe people are just sick of hearing stuff that doesn’t feel authentic. And I think it doesn’t get much more authentic than hearing the clang of a guitar, and that’s a very visceral, physical sound. Maybe that’s why people like listening to bands like us, I guess. But we’re still like, a “pop and roll.” We’re not like idols. We’re still very kind of freaked out that this has even happened.