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Back in 2014, Tom Campbell was trying to find some inspiration. As an executive producer on RuPaul’s Drag Race — which, at the time, garnered a modest-but-dedicated following in the queer community — Campbell was looking for something new to challenge the latest cast of queens.
Noticing that the cast of the show’s upcoming sixth season had a number of bonafide singers — including alumni from American Idol and Australian Idol, Adore Delano and Courtney Act, respectively — the thought occurred to make a splash with a stage show. “We figured that we should do a Broadway challenge,” Campbell said, recalling a brainstorming session. “And as soon as we heard the word ‘musical,’ we said, ‘Oh, well now it’s a Rusical.’”
Nearly a decade later, what was meant to be a one-off challenge has become a fan-loved mainstay in the show’s construction, with each successive season bringing bigger and bolder production elements to the Rusical format.
The concept of the challenge is relatively simple; each season, the remaining queens in the competition are tasked with putting together a “Rusical,” where they dance, act and lip synch (or occasionally, sing live) in a plot-fueled stage production. Sometimes, a Rusical spoofs an existing story; other times, it tells the story of a pop culture icon throughout their life; and occasionally, you get original concepts that are simply meant to make the audience at home laugh.
As season 15 contestant Loosey LaDuca tells it, the Rusical is more than just a campy, reality-television take on musical theater — it’s an all-encompassing challenge meant to test every queen’s performance skills. “You can’t just skate by in the Rusical — you can’t just go, ‘Oh, I hope to get through and be safe,’” she says. “No, you need to make an impact. And it’s a difficult challenge; you’re putting on a pretty extensive show, and having to learn it and perform it very quickly.”
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For Brett McLaughlin — the pop singer-songwriter better known by his pseudonym Leland — the Rusical challenge offers a sense of “creative freedom” that can be hard to find elsewhere. “Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of parameters technically speaking when putting together a Rusical,” the in-house Drag Race songsmith says. “But you get to check so many boxes, genre-wise. And the process is just so fun, because all we do is sit around and think about what will make us laugh, what will make Ru laugh, and what will give each of the queens a show-stopping moment.”
So, how does a typical Rusical get made? It always starts with an idea that will make RuPaul laugh. Or, as Campbell puts it, “oftentimes the best ideas on Drag Race start with a stupid pun.” Take, for instance, season 11’s PharmaRusical — as Campbell explains, the show’s writers and producers became fixated on the idea of working the pharmaceutical commercial format into a challenge, and they decided that turning them into their own “twisted” musical would be hilarious. “I’m not saying it was it was the biggest success, but we were just obsessed with it,” he says.
Upon finding an idea that they think will work, the heft of work is then passed on to McLaughlin, who spends an average of three to four weeks “writing the songs, getting them approved, structuring out the narrative, finding the comedy, trimming it down, recording the vocals and finishing the tracks.”
Writing the original songs — or in some cases, retooling tracks from RuPaul’s expansive discography — for each season’s Rusical takes up the most time, McLaughlin says. “I try to take the first five days and just sit at the piano and start working up ideas,” he says. “I will just send a lot of voice memos to the team and ask, ‘Do you like where this is headed?’”
With each season, McLaughlin’s job changes slightly; while some seasons see the queens lip-synching throughout their show to pre-recorded tracks, others see them recording and performing their own vocals, which presents its own parameters when it comes to the actual challenge itself. “If the queens record their own vocals on camera, that’s basically a whole additional day of production work for us,” he says, before wryly adding that “the skill of the queen determines how much work it takes for us after they’re done.”
But the goal of the creative process remains the same for both McLaughlin and Campbell — give each competitor an opportunity to stand out in their respective roles. “I think they all do what they’re meant to do, which is to put the queens into a challenge to see how they react and create these star turns,” Campbell says. “So, we’ve been very fortunate to be able to achieve that.”
Yet some time in the last few years, the Rusical challenge seemed to change for the better; fans noticed that the music, lyrics, set design and performances being brought to the stage were bigger and grander, making the challenge pop even more than it used to.
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One of the latest examples of that fact came in the form of “Wigloose: The Rusical.” What could have once been a cute reinterpretation of the 1984 classic Footloose became an emotive, poignant show that seemed to eerily comment on the bleak state of affairs for drag queens around the U.S. Filmed in 2022 before controversial “drag bans” began sweeping the country, the show centers around a small town that attempts to ban the art of drag and is thwarted by a community of expressive queens.
LaDuca, who performed in “Wigloose” alongside five of the other season 15 contestants, says that the cast immediately could tell there was something special with this Rusical. “It had this incredible cohesion to it; it was a fully realized story from beginning to end where you really get to know who each of the characters are,” she says. “The musical seemed like this very out-there parody version of what’s going on, and then it was suddenly like, ‘No, this is what’s actually happening.’”
Over the course of just two days, LaDuca and her competitors learned their respective parts, blocked out the stage and rehearsed their extensive choreography again and again. “Our choreographer, Miguel [Zarata], has got such a special talent of getting stuff done in a very well-rehearsed way,” she says. “Choreographers have to be really focused, and he was so good at letting us know, ‘Ladies, you have this amount of time left, and you have to learn this much stuff.’”
The political implications of the story, as LaDuca explains, were not top of mind for the queens — while there had been plenty of protests and discussions about Drag Story Hours, the right-wing campaign against the art of drag had not quite begun in earnest when they were filming the show. “I can only speak to my experience, but I had my head in the game. We had to learn so much material so quickly, that it was just like, ‘Let’s bang all this out,’” she says. “Looking back at it, all of us were like, ‘Oh my God, this really is happening.’ We’ve worked so hard on making this a real job, and now it’s being outlawed, which is incredibly unconstitutional.”
When Campbell and the other executive producers of the show saw the cultural moment that “Wigloose” was indirectly commenting on, they decided to act — teaming up with MTV, World of Wonder and the ACLU, Drag Race helped create the Drag Defense Fund, which actively funds the ACLU’s efforts to battle anti-LGBTQ laws throughout the U.S. “I’m so proud of the network and World of Wonder for doing that,” he says.
With such a timely plot, “Wigloose” works as well as it does in large part thanks to its expansive original score from McLaughlin. Riffing on Footloose’s ’80s setting and iconic score, McLaughlin says that as soon as the idea was passed down to him, he was able to sketch out a blueprint for the show in a matter of days.
“The second I heard about it, I watched Footloose that night and I started getting really excited and understanding the checkpoints that we would need to hit,” he says. “We immediately talked through the script, where the songs should be placed, when it should be an up-tempo, mid-tempo song, our big ballad moment, and just dividing it all up.”
While he didn’t have the task of transforming RuPaul songs into showtunes for this challenge, McLaughlin says she still went ahead and trawled old episodes of Drag Race and interviews given by RuPaul to find meaningful quotes that he could interpolate into the lyrics. “To put something like ‘drag is a protest’ in a song and find the right melody … it felt like one of those special moments that doesn’t always happen with songwriting, where the words match the melody which matches the music,” he says.
The hard work from from the cast and creatives behind the show clearly paid off with “Wigloose” — that particular episode of the show earned three of their nine Emmy nominations for 2023, including outstanding directing, picture editing and sound mixing for a reality program.
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Looking back on the nearly 10 year history of the Rusical challenge, Campbell remains in awe of what he and his team have managed to accomplish. “It was meant to be a one and done challenge back in season 6 … and we just brought it back because we loved it so much,” he says. “This challenge, and Drag Race itself, is like a healthy tree that grew through a crack in the sidewalk — it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t fit the algorithm, but it touches people’s hearts and and that’s what’s important.”
With so much innovation already done to the challenge’s format, where can Drag Race possibly take the Rusical challenge in the future? LaDuca offers that, despite how difficult the challenge already is for queens, it could be interesting to get them more involved in the creative process. “It might be interesting to have the contestants be able to maybe write some of the lyrics like they do in other in other challenges — you say, ‘Here’s the story, now you put it together,’” she says. “I also would really love if the contestants had the ability to maybe even have a have a hand in designing the costumes.”
For his part, McLaughlin can’t help but think beyond the scope of reality television. “I started to write my first musical this year, and this has been the best training wheels for me,” he says. “I think we should eventually start showcasing these Rusicals in a live setting, because at this point, I think they deserve to have a life outside of the show, too.”
On Wednesday night, The Weeknd announced the “final feature” of his career during his Warsaw tour stop. The Canadian-Ethiopian superstar born Abel Tesfaye performed his verse from “Another One of Me” at Poland’s PGE Narodowy. “This next song I’m about to perform is an unreleased record. I haven’t dropped it yet. It’s called ‘Another One […]
The Album
The Window, out August 25 on Topshelf
The Origin
For Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan, college started paying off before taking a single class. “Dave and I met during freshman orientation” at Notre Dame, Steiner tells Billboard. “We were both music nerds in a sea of – in a student body that isn’t full of music nerds. We showed up to college and neither of us had plans to start a band or to seek out people to play music with. We just kind of found each other really quickly.”
Before long, Steiner and Sagan were posting their recordings online and playing regional DIY shows. “The first community that we found ourselves in was in the south suburbs of Chicago, which is where Dave and [bassist] Sean [Neumann] grew up,” Steiner says. “I immediately got welcomed into this community of bands and music freaks down there that loved every type of music and were really passionate about having house shows with a million different types of bands.”
In the mid-’10s, Ratboys went from Chicago upstarts to Windy City rock fixtures, cementing their reputation with Topshelf releases AOID in 2015 and GN in 2017. That year, the quartet solidified its current lineup with the additions of Nuemann and drummer Marcus Nuccio; all four played on Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ critical breakthrough that arrived just before the pandemic in early 2020.
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The Sound
Years ago, Steiner referred to Ratboys as “post-country” – riffing on an inside joke with Sagan about the vagueness of terms like “post-hardcore” and “post-rock” – and the descriptor has followed the project, thanks to its vivid lyricism and natural fusion of sounds. Sagan’s description today is more direct: “We’re like Tom Petty,” he says. “We’re just a tight rock band.” (Steiner chimes in, “How humble of you, Dave!”)
Tongue-in-cheek or not, Steiner’s description has proven prescient for both Ratboys and their peers. “I think you were kind of ahead of your time there a little, Julia,” Nuccio says. “I mean, look at the landscape of indie-rock right now. So many bands, like Big Thief and Wednesday and Florry and all amazing bands, it kind of is like post-country, right? In the way that post-rock or post-hardcore is taking a genre and then adding a little modern twist to it.”
“Some of the tunes that we make are within – or at least paying homage to – that country tradition,” Steiner concludes.
The Record
While on tour with Foxing in 2018, Ratboys met Chris Walla, who had produced their tourmates’ acclaimed album Nearer My God out of his Seattle recording studio. In 2021, with a stable of new songs penned in quarantine, Ratboys cold-called Walla, best known for his time in Death Cab For Cutie, to helm the boards for what would become The Window.
When a tour later that year took Ratboys through Seattle, the band met with Walla; he asked them about their vision for their next album during on a walk back from a grocery store in the pouring rain. “We immediately dove into the details as if we’d known each other forever,” Steiner says. “He’s just a very easy person to spend time with.”
Soon, the band was sending demos to Walla for creative guidance, and in early 2022, Ratboys returned to Seattle to for a month to record, marking their first sessions outside of Chicago. Neumann says Ratboys cherished the opportunity to immerse and “make a record without thinking about the outside world,” comparing the sessions to staying over at a friend’s house. “There was one couch in there, and everybody had their preferred spot on the couch,” Sagan adds. “By the end of it, everybody had their own, like, perfectly formed butt groove.” (“That was the provisional title of the record, actually,” Steiner quips.)
Walla helped the band record live-to-tape for the first time, and also proved an empathetic sounding board for The Window‘s lyrical content. “I told him, ‘A lot of the songs are more personal, more real, more honest than some of the things we’ve made before – like, I just want it to be very real, unflinchingly so,’” Steiner recalls. “He was game for that. We really looked at everything in the face and [were] full-steam ahead with some of these ideas.”
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The Breakthrough
In January 2020, Ratboys received an unlikely boost. Organizers for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign contacted the band to open for one of the senator’s Iowa rallies, and Steiner and Sagan braved a blizzard to play the gig. When Sanders took the stage for his speech, he thanked Ratboys – but Steiner’s phone died as she tried to film the moment for posterity.
“I was like, ‘Well, bummer, I guess I’ll never get to share that with anyone,’” she says. Luckily, a friend captured the moment – and endearing footage of Sanders saying “Let me thank the Ratboys for their music” went viral.
The episode dovetailed with the rollout for Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ most accomplished set of songs yet, which arrived that February to rave reviews. The pandemic disrupted the band’s planned headline tour, which was to begin March 14, 2020, but Ratboys made lemonade from lemons, diving into livestreaming and writing. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Ratboys re-recorded several early songs – and a new one, the instant quarantine classic “Go Outside” – for the 2021 full-length Happy Birthday, Ratboy!; the project coincided with Ratboys’ first overtures to Walla.
Two years after Happy Birthday, Ratboys returned with the longest song of its career, the eight-and-half-minute “Black Earth, WI.” The expansive rocker – along with other new singles “It’s Alive!,” “The Window,” “Crossed That Line,” and “Morning Zoo” (out today) – flashed the band’s recent lyrical and musical growth.
The Future
Ratboys co-headlined a tour with Wild Pink in 2021, but the band is excited to finally make good on its nixed 2020 touring plans and head out on a headline run of its own next month. “We’ve never had the opportunity to do a real, ticketed headline tour,” Steiner says with excitement. “It’s finally happening!”
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The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without
Steiner: “A roll of gaffe tape. Very useful to have around, not just for cymbal-dampening purposes – which I know nothing about, that’s like black magic to me – but I found a very, very important lesson while vocal tracking on this record: sometimes in order to unlock the best vocal performance, you need some sort of physical object to interact with while you’re singing. At one point, I grabbed this heavy-ass roll of gaffe tape that we had and just the weight of it in my hands, I was able to sing better. That was indispensable to me throughout the session.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Neumann cites Chicago pal Nnamdï, and Nuccio teases “a secret Nnamdï surprise coming in the Ratboys world, for any of the vinyl heads out there” who buy The Window on wax.
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Sagan: “Play a show before you start thinking about any Spotify listeners. Don’t worry about how people receive your music – just play it first.”
The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry
Steiner: “The music industry today kind of treats music like a public utility, and I really fear that there’s no way to go back from that entirely. The value of a song, the value of an artistic idea has kind of been washed away. If there’s some way that we could reframe the way we look at music… honestly, we’ve talked about this in the band: Spotify should be $100 a month. It’s so cheap. It’s just a matter of finding that tipping point where people will agree that this has value and be willing to pay more for it.”
In 2023, any Taylor Swift song can become a hit. “Cruel Summer” was released four years ago, but the Lover standout has morphed into one of the biggest hits of this season, simply because her fans willed it to happen. “Karma” kept climbing the Hot 100 before it received an official video or remix, and […]
“It’s very nerve-racking,” Olivia Rodrigo tells Billboard during a call a few days before the release of her new single, “Vampire.” But also, she admits, “I haven’t put out music in, what, two years now?”
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Two years, one month and nine days, to be exact: with 2021 debut album Sour, Rodrigo ascended to superstardom and capitalized on the Billboard Hot 100-topping enormity of its lead single, the brilliant breakup ballad “Drivers License.” A pastiche of pop-punk flare-ups, bedroom-pop ruminations and crunchy alternative, Sour led to a best new artist Grammy win, a sold-out 2022 headlining tour, a documentary and a prom-themed concert film… but zero new music from Rodrigo since its release, save for a few previously recorded tunes from her role on the DIsney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
Rather amazingly, all 11 songs on Sour have peaked within the top 30 of the Hot 100 — but they haven’t been followed by any bonus tracks, guest features or stopgap songs. No wonder “Vampire,” the lead single to Rodrigo’s forthcoming sophomore album GUTS (due out Sept. 8 on Geffen Records), is arguably the most anticipated new single of the year.
Created with her main Sour collaborator, writer-producer Daniel Nigro, “Vampire” begins as a betrayal-strewn piano ballad in the vein of “Drivers License,” but then busts open into a pop-rock epic full of jittery percussion and wounded, dramatic vocal runs — something like My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, refracted through a generation raised on Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. “Vampire” represents a go-for-the-gusto pop statement that both pushes Rodrigo’s songwriting forward while also providing plenty for Sour fans. It sounds purposely huge, and like it’s about to be inescapable.
“Putting out a new song is a little bit daunting, but ultimately really exciting,” Rodrigo says. “I just feel really lucky to have so much support coming from all angles.” Below, Rodrigo explains how the song became her new single, and the period of growth she experienced since Sour that will inform GUTS. (Ed. note: this interview has been edited for clarity.)
How did “Vampire” come together?
I wrote it on the piano, the original version, in December of last year, and I really liked it. I remember writing it and feeling like something special was there. And I took it to my producer Dan, and we finished it up together and rewrote some things and produced it. It was quite a long production — it’s pretty lush, so it took us a while. But I’m really happy with the way it came out.
I love how the song opens up after the first chorus into this huge, multi-part, theatrical statement. At what point did it become obvious that this would be the lead single?
We always said that it was kind of our version of a rock opera. [Laughs.] I think as the album was coming together, we were coming up with a bunch of songs that we really liked, but this one always stuck out to me as something that I felt like was honoring my singer-songwriter roots, but felt like an evolution — in a good way that wasn’t too stark. And so I really liked it for that, and it was always one of my favorites.
I’m curious about the messaging of the song — your take on someone using you, and leeching off of your fame. Where did those themes come from? Had they been rattling around in your mind for a while?
I think it’s just a song about feeling used, and all of the anger and regret and heartbreak that comes with it. And I think that’s a common feeling, whether or not someone’s famous. That was something that was just really bubbling inside of me — it’s kind of an angry song, and I think I have a lot of trouble expressing feelings like anger and regret, those are particularly tough ones for me to express. I go to songwriting to get those feelings out that aren’t super comfortable to express in everyday life. So it was a very therapeutic experience, writing this song.
It’s hard to imagine how cathartic this one is going to feel for you when you first perform it live.
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I’m really excited for the live show — I feel like the album is shaping up to be a really fun set.
You’ve spoken recently about the incredible growth you’ve experienced over the past two years — this whirlwind that included Sour, touring, the Grammys, traveling, now writing again. When you look back on the past two years, what was the most surprising part, something that the Olivia of two years ago never would have expected?
I mean, the Olivia of two years ago definitely wouldn’t have expected her career to do all the crazy, wonderful things that it did so quickly, and I’m very grateful for that. I’ve changed so much in the past few years. All that crazy stuff happened in my career — “Drivers License” came out and it broke all these records, and I was lucky enough to win some Grammys, which was a huge dream of mine ever since I can remember.
But I think the most change I’ve felt was just in Olivia as a girl — growing up and changing from being a teenager to a 20-year-old. All of the maturing and figuring yourself out, that’s just on a normal human-to-human level — I think that was the most surprising thing for me.
Is the pressure you’re feeling ahead of this single release significantly different than what you were feeling ahead of “Drivers License” or Sour?
Totally. It’s definitely a different feeling, and it felt different making this album too. I mean, it’s a lot of pressure. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel that. But I think I got to a place throughout making the record where I really shifted my perspective from being like, “Oh, we have to make something that’s gonna impress everyone, and beat the last one!” All of this was just swimming in my head, and I wasn’t writing songs that I resonated with. It wasn’t productive, and conducive to good work.
And so I had to shift my perspective into just trying to make music that I would like to hear on the radio, and once I did that, things started flowing a little easier. So I just try to maintain that that perspective.
How indicative is “Vampire” of the sound of the rest of the album?
I actually feel like the album is really, incredibly diverse. There are other kinds of ballads — I guess I consider “Vampire” a ballad on the record — but yeah, I don’t know! It’s all pretty different.
With “Drivers License,” you translated this painful personal moment into something relatable for a wide audience. Now that you’re at the top of that roller coaster again with this lead single and ready to rush down, how does it feel to be sharing this new piece of yourself?
I mean, not gonna lie, it’s pretty scary! I was definitely a little more dauntless last time with “Drivers License,” because I had no idea that anyone would listen to it – but it’s scary to think about putting a song out into the world that’s vulnerable and represents painful feelings for you.
I’m just trying to not think about it, to keep my head down and do all the work. Everything else is out of my control. It’s kind of nice to give it to people, and then it’s not yours anymore. It’s a beautiful thing! So I’m just trying to remember that.
Amber Bain has a bit of a self-flagellating streak when it comes to her music. “I have this thing where I release songs, and I’ll come back to them later and be like, ‘That’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard,’” she tells Billboard, as a smile slowly forms on her face. “That’s not happening this time.”
Bain, formally known on stage as The Japanese House, sounds almost surprised as she reveals her lack of contempt for her new music. Her new album In the End It Always Does (out Friday, June 30 via Dirty Hit) shares plenty in common with her past works like 2019 debut LP Good at Falling or 2020 EP Chewing Cotton Wool — meticulously-crafted indie synth-pop that revels primarily in its own honesty about loss and heartbreak.
But Bain noticed something different about In the End shortly after she wrapped recording on the album last year. “It wasn’t intentional, but I think I used female pronouns on nearly every song,” she says. “That kind of stuff used to feel so huge to me — when I was a kid, I’d rewind t.A.T.u.’s ‘All the Things She Said‘ to listen to the word ‘she’ 3,000 times.”
The inadvertent proliferation of queer themes throughout In the End extends to Bain in real life — sitting in a conference room in Billboard’s New York office, Bain sports a beige t-shirt that reads “Abercrombie & Butch,” which she proudly points to as a sign of personal growth. “Three years ago, I would never have worn this, because I wouldn’t want to associate myself with the word ‘butch,’” she says, lightly laughing.
Below, Bain breaks down the conception and creation of her new album In the End It Always Does, how she worked with The 1975’s Matty Healy and MUNA’s Katie Gavin to bring it to life, and how it’s helped her come into her own as an artist and a queer person.
The album is coming out soon — how are you feeling about people finally getting to hear it?
I’m feeling super excited. I recorded it in summer of last year, so I’ve been living with it for quite awhile. which is kind of nice. Because I’ve had quite a big break from listening to it, I’m actually getting to hear these songs as a listener.
I really love that you’ve put a focus on releasing live sessions of some of the songs in lieu of more traditional music videos — is there a reason why you wanted to do that?
I think that, in doing this record, I’ve realized how much I really enjoy playing instruments and playing as a band. I love the musicality of that side of production — I’ve been less drawn to the electronic setup, on my laptop with my fancy screen. It didn’t feel natural to do a music video, because I didn’t want to create a whole narrative. The songs themselves are far less abstract than before, and they’re quite direct and to the point. So I thought, “Well, if I’m doing a performance video, it’d be cool to do a different version of the songs.” Some differ more than others to the original versions, but like, they’re all pretty different.
That “Sad to Breathe” live session was phenomenal, it was so cool to immediately get this very different interpretation of the song.
Thank you — yeah, it was nice to record them, because I really like my band. We haven’t toured since 2020, so those were the first time we were playing as a full band together again.
“Boyhood” is such a fitting lead single for this project, because it shares some DNA with your past work, while also getting right into the more explicit queer themes you see on the record. What went into the writing of that single?
It was a lot of things that sort of amalgamated into this one song. I’d called it “Boyhood” because I’d watched that Richard Linklater film — I love that film — and realized that I have some weird links to it; I think [the protagonist] is exactly the same age as me; my parents are also divorced. So then, I was just thinking about the way that you grow up, and how the things that did or didn’t happen to you really mold you, to the point where you either have to let certain things go or embrace them. And I was thinking about how it’s quite sad that you don’t have a choice of who you are.
That then made me think about how that tied into gender. For the last few years, I’ve really been exploring that I don’t feel like a girl. I really didn’t relate to a lot of my friends who were girls growing up — in our girlhood, I didn’t feel like I fit in to that bracket at all. As a kid, I truly think I was verging on trans; I would really think about changing my gender a lot. As I grew older, there was suddenly language that made it possible to talk about the fact that there are more than two genders, which allowed me to settle into just being whatever gender; I don’t really have a label for myself, maybe genderqueer. So, the song is me wondering how different I would be had I had the boyhood that I wanted. It’s about letting go of needing to know the exact catalysts for everything.
That’s part of what makes it so relatable — because it feels like, on the whole, labels around gender and sexuality have become a lot less important to a lot more people.
Completely — though I do think it’s obviously different for everyone, as well. I think people sometimes talk quite negatively about people making certain aspects of themselves a big part of their identity. But who cares? I mean, I used to be so afraid of making being gay part of my identity, in terms of releasing music. The thought was that I didn’t want that to be my “thing.” Now, I absolutely don’t care if it’s my thing — in fact, it’s kind of amazing that it can be a thing. Today, I walked down the street and I can’t tell if I’m looking at a bunch of lesbians or they’ve just been born after the year 2000. Everyone looks like a lesbian, and I love that!
What felt different to you about the making of In the End It Always Does compared to Good at Falling?
One of the main differences was working with Chloe [Kraemer, the album’s producer and engineer]. When I started working with Chloe, we just kind of became best friends. I don’t think I’d ever worked with another queer woman in that capacity, and it felt like I could see myself reflected. We’re so similar in a lot of ways; musically, our personalities, our identities. That just kickstarted the whole project.
We always talk about the lack of representation for women and queer people in production — getting to work with Chloe, what stood out in getting to experience that feeling of shared space?
It was kind of life changing — like, I don’t ever want to work on anything without her. We have such a close connection, which I do think is because we share such a similar experience. That’s not to say that I’m “missing” something when I’m working with George, but I can just look at her and roll my eyes, and she gets it. You feel f–king crazy when these old men in their 60s are telling you what a microphone is.
In one of the first meetings I had with a manager who I never worked with, he said, “You’re a girl, but you can also produce, that’s so crazy.” Like, why is it crazy? We can use computers. That was about 10 years ago, so just having that connection with someone and feeling completely comfortable and understood made a world of difference.
You also got to work with Katie Gavin from MUNA on “Morning Pages” and “One for Sorrow, Two for Joni Jones.” What was she like to work with?
So “Joni Jones” is probably my favorite-ever studio experience. I had this piano-y song I had recorded that was this really obvious ode to Joni Mitchell. Matty and I decided to make the vocal be this sort of rambling, non-linear piece with it. That morning, Katie was gonna come into the studio because she was in London and we were hanging out. I’d written this weird little poem, which would end up being the lyrics — I was too involved in thinking of how to do it, and so Katie just looked at it and said “I’ll give it a go.”
She sat at the microphone and in one take, note for note, did that entire song. I mean, we were sobbing. She’d never heard the song or read the lyrics. So we kind of got high off that moment for days after. Yeah, I love working with Katie, she’s just a really great friend.
You’ve been with Dirty Hit for nearly a decade of your career at this point — how have you seen your label evolve over the last few years?
I joined Dirty Hit when The 1975 were playing to a few hundred people — I was one of only a handful of people on the label, and I’ve been collaborating with George and Matty for pretty much the whole of my career. Now, the label has all of these other artists, and I feel like there’s a lot of producers who really like working with Dirty Hit. So it’s now a situation where, if you want to work with someone, there’s probably a way through all these artists and connections that you could get there. Which is kind of amazing.
Part of what makes this album work so well is the fact that you’ve clearly figured out a sound that works for you, but still offers you lots of room to play around. How much of that flexibility was an intentional part of the process?
I’ve never really made anything with a direct goal for what it should sound like; it kind of ends up sounding how it sounds, because I just prefer that in the moment. It will just sound like me. But I think your tastes change — the things that excited me five years ago are not the things necessarily that excite me now, but then there’s also like classic things that I’ll always be drawn to. Certain melodies, certain ways of producing instruments, stacking vocal harmonies; that’s just what I love, because it scratches that itch in my brain when I hear it. A lot of producing feels like Tetris to me — you’ve got the perfect line, and you fit it in just the right spot. That’s how I feel when I know that the song is right; it’s just satisfying.
Keanu Reeves dismisses the idea that playing bass in his long-defunct rock trio, Dogstar, was a passion project that he hoped to make time for in between a prolific Hollywood career. “It’s not ‘make time for it,’” he tells Billboard, his hair shagging into his eyes, during a Zoom call earlier this week. “It’s something that’s part of my life.”
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Although Dogstar hadn’t released an album in over two decades — 23 years and four John Wick films ago — Reeves says that a proper reunion with his pals Bret Domrose and Rob Mailhouse had been on his mind for a while. “I missed playing together, I missed writing together, I missed doing shows together. It’s something I’ve always missed,” he admits. “We came to a spot where we weren’t playing anymore, and I missed it … Once we started to play, and it felt good, and really positive and creative, that’s when it was like, ‘Okay, let’s make this happen.’”
The reunion of Dogstar — which has been teased since last July, when their Instagram account declared, “We’re back” — finally comes into focus this weekend, when the trio takes the stage for their first public performance together at BottleRock Napa Valley music festival on Saturday (May 27). The band will play a mix of older songs from their previous studio albums, 1996’s Our Little Visionary and 2000’s Happy Ending, as well as unveil cuts from a forthcoming, as-yet-untitled album — which was always part of the plan when the reunion became official.
“I think all three of us just said, ‘Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s make a record,’” says Reeves. Singer-guitarist Domrose adds, “We just knew that there was ‘X’ amount of time, and we needed to make the most of it. We just locked on as wanting to make this record, and it happened pretty quickly.”
Reeves, Domrose and Mailhouse kept in touch over the years after Dogstar played its final show together in 2002. “We’ve sort of been sporadically getting together, because we’re all friends,” Mailhouse explains. The three would occasionally meet up in the rehearsal space of drummer Mailhouse’s home in Silver Lake to jam, but would seldom come up with new song ideas.
During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, however, those jam sessions became a bit more concentrated: house visits turned into shared quarantining, and with travel restricted, soon the trio were “stuck together, like we were at camp,” as Mailhouse puts it, and logging eight-hour rehearsal days together. Reeves adds, “We played the catalog songs, and then we can’t help it — we just started writing.” Within two and a half months, the guys had written more songs than they needed for Dogstar’s third studio album.
The timing and release details of the Happy Ending follow-up have yet to be announced, although the band members are confident that they and producer Dave Trumfio (Wilco, Built To Spill) have located a sound that will satisfy new listeners as well as longtime fans who have been waiting for their return. “[Dave] understood where we were coming from,” says Mailhouse, “and worked really well with Bret, layering guitars and doing lots of different sounds and ambient things — things that weren’t just hard rock, in-your-face music, [but] a little more textural.”
Dogstar has played private performances since reuniting, but Saturday’s set at BottleRock marks their years-in-the-making return to the spotlight, and the first of what they hope to be many more shows. The trio says that they’re too excited to feel jittery. “I’m sure as the hour grows closer, I’m gonna get much more nervous,” Domrose says with a laugh.
For Reeves, who joined the band as a rising Hollywood star and returns to it as one of the most consistent leading actors of the century, Dogstar represents a passion that he’s thrilled to return to in a real way after all these years. “It’s a space that I love,” he says, “and a space that I tried to protect.”
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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