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“it’s a daunting task, to follow up that lineup,” says Danny Bell. He’s referring to the bill for last year’s inaugural edition of Portola, which debuted in San Francisco with artists including The Chemical Brothers, Flume, Fatboy Slim, Kaytranada, Peggy Gou, Jamie xx, James Blake and so many more heavy-hitters that the event quickly made its case for being the strongest U.S. electronic festival lineup of the year.
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The even more difficult trick would be doing it all again. “This year really put my booking skills and creativity to the test,” says Bell, the SVP Talent Buyer for Goldenvoice in San Francisco. “There were a lot of changes from the initial plan to what ended up being this year’s lineup. But that’s just the nature of booking festivals. Some years, everything falls into place. That was year one. This year, it was like every time I picked up the phone, there was another piece of news derailing the plan. But we got through it, and I’m very proud of the lineup we’ve put together.”
This weekend (Sept. 30-Oct. 1) Bell and the team are bringing Portola Festival round two to Pier 80 in San Francisco, with another hefty lineup and the credibility culled from year one, with one in-the-know agent calling the event one of the most important electronic festivals in the United States.
Night one will be headlined by Eric Prydz, performing his technical masterpiece of a show, HOLO. The Portola play was made more possible after Prydz closed out the Outdoor stage at another Goldenvoice property, Coachella, on the second night of the festival this past April, allowing the Portola team to use the same equipment and tech elements this weekend in the Bay.
“It definitely helps that we share a production team and an ethos,” Bell says of Portola and Coachella, “so [artists and their teams] know who they’re working with what they’re stepping into.”
Skillex is headlining Portola night two, flying in from a festival play in New Zealand and, through the magic of time zones, managing to play both the show in Auckland and Portola on the same day. “They just really want to make this happen,” Bell says of the producer and his team, recalling the first time he tried booking Skrillex back during Bell’s time as a student at USC.
“The first Skrill quote I got was $2,000 bucks, and I couldn’t afford it. He’s obviously a lot more than that now.”
Other lineup standouts include Jai Paul, the enigmatic artist doing his first major touring run this year. “Jai Paul’s just the s–t, man,” says Bell. “There’s a handful of these super artists that you don’t know if you’ll ever get the chance to see live or book, and it magically worked this year.”
Nelly Furtado will perform her first show in the U.S. in 16 years on Saturday, with Bell saying this pop element (lead by Charli XCX last year) is essential, in that it adds a different and overtly fun facet to a lineup largely composed of house, techno and what Bell calls “esoteric electronic music.” (He adds that when he ran the idea of booking Furtado by his fianceé, “she freaked out.”)
Portola 2022
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This year, the festival site — located on an industrial shipping pier outfitted with a massive crane, warehouses and an actual giant ship — will be slightly reconfigured to prevent the sound bleed that occurred between a few spaces last year. (This reconfiguration should also help mitigate the sound that traveled across the water to Alameda last year, resulting in sound complaints from residents. Bell says San Francisco city officials worked with them on solutions to this issue and hav been altogether great to work with.)
A warehouse space used as a venue — the site of a brief crowd rush incident during Fred again..’s set last year — will be flipped so that the stage is on the opposite end of the building, in order to improve sound quality and crowd flow. (While this space featured live acts last year, this year it’s reserved exclusively for DJs.) There will also be more space for GA attendees to sit and hang out, including an expanded bar area and a a bigger food court. Like last year, Portola expects 30,000 attendees per day.
This year will also feature an art gallery of rave stickers and flyers from throughout the years that’s been curated by DJ and rave culture historian DB Burkeman. Sponsored by Spotify, the gallery is meant to function as a pseudo-highbrow place for people to check out when they need a break from the music.
“The whole thing is that I want people to be treated like grown-ups,” Bell says. “I just felt like there wasn’t a festival to fulfill the desires of a 21-plus audience who’ve been electronic music and dance fans, but who also like other genres and who are interested in an event focused for the older fan.”
Bell knows something of becoming a grown-up raver. He booked shows throughout his time at USC, and started a full-time job as a talent buyer for HARD Events the Monday after he graduated college. The EDM era was peaking, electronic music was becoming a major commercial and cultural force in the U.S., and Bell was helping propel this culture in Southern California by co-designing HARD lineups that nodded to current trends, folded in genre heroes and presented smart, boundary-pushing bills to audiences who, at that time, were often just discovering the sound and scene.
Portola is thus a festival for people who became dance music fans when Skrillex was in his spaceships-and-big-drops phase and who, 10 years later, are equally as excited to hear him play the IDM his sound has evolved into this weekend.
“There wouldn’t be a Portola if it wasn’t for EDC or HARD,” Bell says, “because those were some of the fans’ first introduction to that music in a festival environment.
“I don’t think there would have been a market for a festival like Portola 10 years ago,” he continues. “The longer they stay, the older they get, their tastes change and now a festival like this can exist.”
At 16, Manuel Turizo‘s remarkable ascent to stardom began with his debut chart-topping single, “Una Lady Como Tú,” peaking at 32 on the Hot Latin Songs chart. This smash hit came to life over a weekend when Manuel and his brother, Julián, set out to “create the most romantic song ever recorded.” With only a ukulele and a voice note recording, the bedroom jam session birthed a fan favorite, not only in his native Colombia but also on the global stage.
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Since his debut, the rising act frequently traveled from Colombia to Florida to collaborate with artists and expand his fanbase. In partnership with Delta Air Lines and LATAM Airlines, Billboard caught up with Turizo in Miami, the city he now calls home.
Hailing from Montería, Colombia, Manuel Turizo’s career has far surpassed his initial expectations, marking a breakout year for this emerging star. With global hits like “El Merengue” and “La Bachata,” Turizo has catapulted into the limelight, facilitating successful collaborations with renowned artists like Shakira and Marshmello.
Immersed in music since he jokes in his mother’s womb, Turizo’s musical journey unfolded naturally, guided by his father and brother, who served as his lifelong mentors.
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Looking back, Turizo credits his travels for broadening his horizons and offering him valuable insights into the creative processes of others.
Now 23 years old, the Urbano singer proudly labels Miami as the epicenter of Latin music, where various Latin cultures converge. What started as a short visit to Miami four years ago quickly became a permanent stay.
With mainstays like La Industria Bakery & Cafe, owned by friend and label mate Nicky Jam, Turizo can find many of the delicious Colombian treats he craves from home.
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“I was initially planning to stay for just six months and then return home [to Colombia],” he reflects.
“How long have I been here?” he asks his manager.
“Four years,” comes the reply.
“Four years. And I’m here to stay,” Turizo declares with unwavering commitment.
Thanks to the partnership between Delta Air Lines and LATAM Airlines – that partnered to bring you closer to more than 300 destinations between North and South America – finding inspiration through travel has never been easier.
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Delta Air Lines will be the official airline partner of Billboard Latin Music Week in celebration of its partnership with LATAM Airlines. The Joint Venture between the two award-winning airlines is transforming travel between the two continents by offering an improved customer experience for its customers through benefits such as the joint accumulation of miles/points in frequent flyer programs and faster connections to access more than 300 destinations through the partner hubs in Atlanta, Miami, New York JFK, Los Angeles, Bogotá, São Paulo, Lima and Santiago. Click HERE to learn more!
Read in Spanish HERE
Two months after the release of her third album, Microworlds, French producer CloZee kicks off the tour behind the LP today (Sept. 28) in Minneapolis, Minn.
She’ll tour the U.S. until mid-December on the ambition 43-date run, which picks back up at the end of the year with two New Year’s Eve sets at Mission Ballroom in Denver, arguably the U.S.’s pre-eminent city for bass music and the place CloZee and her girlfriend moved during the pandemic.
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Out via her own Odyzey Music label, the transportive, deep, hard and often sublime Microworlds will take on a new life during this live run, with CloZee bringing the hard-hitting sounds that have made her a favorite in the live electronic space since she entered the scene more than a decade ago with her now signature heavy/cerebral style.
Ahead of the tour, the artist born Chloé Herry talks about the album, her fans and why Denver feels like home.
1. Where are you in the world right now, and what’s the setting like?
I was on tour in Europe the past few weeks, so right now I’m working on the interview during my flight from Romania back to the U.S.A.
2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?
I think it was the CD of Justin Timberlake, Justified, [from 2002]. I was about 10. The “Cry Me A River” song on the radio sounded so unique to me, with all the layered beatbox parts. Since then I have become obsessed with the music production works of Timbaland.
3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what do or did they think of what you do for a living now?
My father is an engineer at Airbus. My mother is taking care of young children. I think they are both proud of what i do for a living, because music is my passion and they know that I’m mostly happy doing creative work, versus having a job related to my diploma.
4. What’s the first non-gear thing you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?
Early career: plants and small art pieces. Later: my first car.
5. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into dance/electronic music, what would you give them?
Oh tough question… I would ask them what they usually like, first, because there are so many amazing EDM albums that all sound so different. But if they like melodic and journey music, I’d recommend Flume’s debut album, ODESZA’s In Return and Bonobo’s Migration.
6. What’s the last song you listened to?
According to my Spotify, it was “Right Now” By Joachim Pastor.
7. I understand you experienced a long period of writer’s block while making music for this new album. What was that like for you, and how did you eventually break through it?
It was really tough, because making music is what usually makes me feel better, my way of meditating, expressing myself. It was mostly during the pandemic, lots of people were obviously depressed and going through a hard time. I think moving to my house in the U.S., starting to see the world opening back on and reconnecting with the fans in real life is what eventually made me slowly overcome it.
8. You live in Denver, which has a thriving scene that artists like Eprom and John Summit have both recently raved to Billboard about. How’d you decide to settle there, and what’s going on there that makes the right place for you to live and work?
I decided to move to the U.S. during the pandemic. First, I moved in with my girlfriend in Atlanta, as I couldn’t get out of the country because of my visa. Then we decided to move to Denver because that’s where we knew the most people, friends- and work-related, and I personally always loved the energy of the city and the dynamism of our industry.
9. Microworlds is being described as your most personal album. How do you insert yourself into music that’s largely without lyrics?
Telling a story or experience just with music and no words is very powerful to me. I always have the listeners in mind, who will have the opportunity to make their own interpretation, associate a song with their own emotions, feelings, and create their own memories. This aspect is very important to me, and that’s what can make a song very personal to them as well.
10. What are the best cities for bass music in the world right now, and why?
It depends on the genre, and I haven’t been to all the places. But after traveling all around the U.S., I can definitely say that Denver is up there. London and Toulouse have some really cool underground parties going on too, especially in drum ‘n’ bass.
11. I know nature was influential to you in the making of this album. What are the most special places that you traveled to while making with music, and how did you feel while you were in them?
During the period of creation of this album, I actually didn’t get the chance to travel much, compared to the previous albums. I mostly tapped into my past memories and experiences for inspiration.
12. You’ve been doing this for a decade or so now. Have you seen meaningful changes happen in terms of representation, diversity and inclusion in the scene and on lineups specifically?
I definitely noticed a small change after the pandemic. I think a lot of people had time to notice and talk about the issues of this industry on the internet, and call out the people making decisions and responsible for booking artists. Representation is so important in the music industry, because of how an artist’s story and music can have such big impacts on people’s life. We need artists that all have different backgrounds, stories, visions, so it can open doors, and touch anyone. The more diversity in this industry, the more people’s lives are going to be changed because they will feel inspired and “not alone”.
13. Most meaningful piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten from a fan?
Simple but efficient: “Please never stop making music.”
14. Do you have guilty pleasure music? What is it?
Mariah Carey‘s albums from the ’90s.
15. The most exciting thing happening in dance music currently is _____?
The evolution and progress of technology which make electronic music production accessible to everyone.
16. The most annoying thing happening in dance music currently is _____?
Also the evolution and progress of technology. For example, AI-powered music production.
17. The proudest moment of your career thus far?
Just in general, being able to live of my passion.
18. What’s the best business decision you’ve ever made?
To create my own label: to have a constant home for my music and musicians we’d like to support.
19. Who was your greatest mentor, and what was the best advice they gave you?
My parents were great mentors for life in general, always reminding me that “we only have one life” and to embrace the moment. For music specifically, it was my guitar teacher who taught me that it was okay to be different and to not sound like everybody else.
20. One piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?
Believe in yourself, don’t be so hard on yourself.
Sometimes, in the middle of a set, Fatboy Slim steps back from the decks — barefoot, because he doesn’t play with shoes on — and takes a moment.
“I look at the crowd and feel the atmosphere and the evening and take a little mental snapshot,” the producer born Norman Cook tells Billboard over Zoom from his home office in Brighton Beach, U.K. “Maybe everyone’s like ‘What the hell’s he doing? Is he having some sort of major panic attack?’ But it’s a good thing.’”
These instances are Cook consciously absorbing his work and his life and the general fun and power of what he does. It’s a habit cultivated amidst a four-decade career in which some moments have been lost in a haze of partying (Cook marked 14 years of sobriety this past March). As of late, there’s been a lot of to absorb.
A global star for decades now, Cook, 60, has been touring heavily, hitting Europe, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and beyond this year. In 2022, he celebrated the 20-year anniversary of his first Big Beach Boutique event — which in 2002 drew 250,000 people to the beach in Cook’s hometown of Brighton — and also launched his own festival, All Back to Minehead. That event returns to Minehead, U.K. this November.
Ahead of that, Cook is also playing a rare Los Angeles set this Saturday (Sept. 23), headlining downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square for a show produced by L.A. promoter Framework and featuring support from DJ Holographic and Francis Mercier.
The party continues next month, with the 25-year anniversary of Fatboy Slim’s massive 1998 LP You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. One of the definitive albums of the big beat era, the project contained the crossover classics “The Rockafeller Skank” and “Praise You” and hit No. 34 on the Billboard 200 in May of 1999. In all, the Fatboy Slim catalog has aggregated 390 million on demand streams in the U.S., according to Luminate.
Funny, deep and affable over Zoom, Cook compares the heights of this album to “what being on top of a wave must feel like.” Here, he reflects on that period, shares what he’s learned from David Byrne (his collaborator on the currently running Broadway show Here Lies Love), and reflects on a forgotten night out with Cher.
1. Where are you in the world right now, and what’s the setting like?
I am on Brighton Beach. We’re experiencing a heat wave, which is very un-British. But it’s very British to have heat waves at the wrong time. It’s like, 32 degrees [90 degrees Fahrenheit] here.
2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?
The first album I ever bought was a cassette of Black and Blue by The Rolling Stones. That’s the first time I could afford to buy an actual real pre-recorded cassette. It was very groundbreaking, because it was the first time I got into production.
There’s a tune on on it called “Fool to Cry.” It’s a really beautiful song, and it started with this noise, and I became obsessed with finding out what this noise was, because it wasn’t a guitar. Then someone said, ‘Oh, it’s a Fender Rhodes played through a chorus.” That was the first time I asked, “How do you make that noise?” I’ve spent the rest of my career asking that same question. I’m a little bit more informed these days.
3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what did they think of what you’ve done and do now?
My dad worked for a glass company, but he actually launched bottle banks. He launched recycling in England. It wasn’t his idea. He just got landed with that job. So he introduced the idea of bottle banks and glass recycling to the country and got the MBE for it, which is quite cool. My mum was a teacher.
My mum is very, very proud of me and always loved music and my capacity to enjoy and perform music. My dad, not so much. He was a negative influence, because he told me that pop music is rubbish and “you want to get yourself a proper job.” So I had kind of good cop, bad cop. One person telling me it was a terrible thing to do, which made me want to do it more. And then another person telling me that was a really great thing to do, which made me want to do it more.
4. What is the first non-gear thing you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?
Non-gear? Oh, right. Equipment you mean. Gear means something else in England. [laughs] Right. The first thing I bought was a car that worked and got you from A to B. I was the only one in the band with a car. It was my first luxury. It was a Chrysler Alpine.
5. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into dance music, what would you give them?
I would say, just to not be obvious, Duck Rock by Malcolm McLaren. Malcolm McLaren was the manager of the Sex Pistols, okay. And he was like a svengali character and after the Sex Pistols split up, he was very much an arbiter of what was going on. He was working in New York and picked up on hip-hop really early, got invited to these the Bronx parties with Bambaata and everyone. And so he made this album called Duck Rock, and it had DJs and scratching and rapping on it. He also went to South Africa and worked with a lot of South African musicians and then he glued them on to the tunes he made with the DJs and with rappers, and then he did a song about double dutch skipping. It was like a snapshot of everything that interesting that was going on in the world of culture.
The cover was done by Keith Haring, and that’s the first time I’d ever seen Keith Haring’s work, and so that introduced me to the world of art and opened my eyes to the idea of sampling things from around the world and bringing them together and making dance music.
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6. What’s the last song you listened to?
The last song I listened to, let me have a look… [he looks into his computer] .. a tune called “Beginners” by Angelo Ferreri. Just a tune for my sets. Didn’t listen to it for pleasure, though. It kind of is a pleasure, but it was like a work thing. Do you want to hear a bit of it?
Sure! [we listen]
So that’s why I spend most of my days doing, just trolling the internet looking for songs to go into my DJ sets… I’ll be honest, most of them I get sent. I’m kind of seen as an influential DJ, and so record companies send me stuff. I get about 30 emails a day with people sending me the new tunes, but I make it a point to give everyone at least five seconds listen. Most of them I dislike. Like, “Okay, that’s drum and bass.” “Okay, that’s EDM.” But if I get one new good tune a week… that’s why I get so excited when I find one I really like.
7. I understand you’re an art collector. What’s your collection like?
It’s expanding rapidly at the moment. It started with Keith Haring. Basically I dug what he did on the Malcolm McLaren album, and then when I travelled being in a band, first place we went to Amsterdam, and first show I saw was a museum with a Keith Haring exhibition. I’m like, “That’s the dude that did the album cover,” so I went, and it just blew me away. It must have been about 1985.
So I started collecting Keith Haring, and then I was really into mainly street art. I’ve always collected it, but over the years as I’ve diversified a bit I’ve started working with artists. I love it, because I’m a complete fanboy with artists. With other musicians, we’ll talk shop, and the magic is somehow lost because I know how they make the records. But with artists it’s like, “How do you do that? How do you come up with ideas?”
8. You’re doing your own festival, All Back to Minehead, in the U.K. in November. You obviously play around the world and see every type of event. What are you doing to make this one uniquely yours?
Obviously I curate all the acts and entertainment. But the main two things for me are that the venue is a classic British holiday camp. In the ’50s and ’60s, that was what English people did, we went to holiday camps. They’re kind of chalets — some of them are like borderline army barracks… There’s this whole culture about it. It’s where The Beatles cut their teeth, and all the bands used to go and play there. It’s a very British institution. A few of these holiday camps still exist, and they’re kind of [struggling], because now everybody can afford to go off to Ibiza and Spain.
The other thing is that the only thing uniting [the festival] is people who like my taste in music and my sense of humor. It’s all ages, very strange cross section of society, but then you put 5,000 of them in a little village where we all live together for a weekend, and it’s hilarious. It’s like the British version of Burning Man, only it’s not sunny or very picturesque. It’s quite down and everybody dresses quite stupid and we don’t think we’re very cool. But there is that feeling of community. I did it for the first time last year and didn’t know if it would work, and it just absolutely knocked my socks off how everybody got involved.
9. Next month is the 25-year anniversary of You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. What are your strongest memories of the release of the time the album was released, and its insane success?
The main thing I remember is just the momentum of it all. I’m not a surfer, but I can imagine it was what being on top of a wave must feel like. There’s something behind you driving it along, and all you can do is try and stay on and ride it with a bit of style, because it’s going there anyway.
Musically, the whole big beat thing, everybody wanted a piece of us, because we were doing something different. I’d just gotten married to the most famous TV presenter in England, so we’d become the celebrity couple. All of these things were driving it along. We were just having a lot of fun trying to stay on and throw a few shapes before the wave crested.
10. Are you satisfied with how you did on that wave?
I’m still alive — which wasn’t a given, considering some of my behavior at the time. I survived it. I rode it to the shore, but I didn’t get on the next one.
11. By choice?
Yeah. It did freak me out somewhat. Because by that point, I’d already been in the music business for 10 or 15 years, so it wasn’t my first rodeo. But this just engulfs your whole life, and when you’ve got photographers following you wherever you go, and if you fart in the wrong place you end up on the front page of the newspapers, it was quite scary. It wasn’t quite what I was signed up for. You know I’ve always loved music, and I wanted to be a success and be appreciated for the music I made. But I never signed up for being famous. So I kind of took my foot off the gas, deliberately a bit — which, with the benefit of hindsight, 25 years later, here I stand. I still have a career, and I still have my health. So I think I did all right.
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12. Do you see your career ever coming to a close? Is there a retirement plan, or does it just go in perpetuity?
No, I tried retirement during lockdown. I had an enforced retirement for a year. Didn’t agree with me at all. I think I’ve gotten to a point now where I can probably ride this one out until I drop. In some shape or form I think they’ll always be a place for me to be doing something. As long as I’m enjoying it and other people are still enjoying it, I don’t see any reason to stop.
13. Or even slowing down?
I mean, I don’t do it at the same pace I used to. I turned 60 this year. I can’t do the stupid things I used to, but I’m quite happy to play until I drop. Athletes have to retire early, boy bands have to retire early, but with DJs, it’s not about our looks or our fitness or anything like that. We can go gray and bald and fat, because we were never supposed to be pinups anyway.
14. You mentioned the forced retirement of the pandemic. I imagine the disparity between being onstage, then just being in the silence and quiet of your house, and how that gulf is so wide. What was that time like for you?
I’m all right with that. The thing I couldn’t deal with is not having an outlet for my joy of music, because my love of music involves sharing it with other people. If I hear a new tune, I’ve got to play it with someone. Like a tree falling in the forest, and no one hearing it — if I don’t share these tunes with people, for me, they don’t have a life. That’s what I noticed during lockdown. That’s why I did a weekly podcast, because I still had to play these tunes to people.
Obviously, I don’t want to live my whole life in that glamorous travel world, so I love coming home and doing the school run and being a quiet dad. But all the while I’m stoking the fire, getting tunes ready for the next weekend.
15. You’ve been touring around the world this year, Europe, all over the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and a few days in the U.S. Is there anything special about American audiences?
I’m always aware of the history. I played Chicago the other weekend, and just being in Chicago, where it all happened… I was in New York doing this show that I did with David Byrne, and Todd Terry turned up to the musical. To some of the Broadway producers, I was like, “F–king Todd Terry is here!” And they were like, “Who’s Todd Terry?”
I’m like, “God, he invented house music right under your noses 30 or 40 years ago.” In England he’s revered as God because of what he did, but he kind of had to come to Europe to get famous. So I’m very aware of going back to where things started, Detroit or Chicago or New York, where the music was was made.
16. Say more about that?
I’ve kind of had a bit of a checkered history [in the U.S.] I first came around 25 years ago, and things were going really well in America. I was over there a lot. Then EDM happened, and I didn’t want to be on that wave, so I let things slip in America. I probably don’t travel enough to America. There’s tons of stuff going on in Brazil and Argentina and Australia and Japan. And so yeah, America got a bit forgotten — which I do apologize for. But I like that I can come over and people are really not blown out, because they haven’t seen me for 10 years.
17. What’s been the proudest moment of your career thus far?
The gigs on Brighton Beach. I’ve had six enormous gigs on the beach in my hometown. It doesn’t get any much better than this, because I love the city that I live in. I’m very, very proud of it. And they seem to be proud of me. It’s a bit like a scene from the film, like the triumphant homecoming and local boy does good.
18. What’s the best business decision you’ve ever made?
Employing my manager. The first person I met who wasn’t my record company, in the music business, was a guy called Garry Blackburn. He was my plugger at first. That was 1985, and I’ve worked with him ever since. He’s only about six years older than me, but he’s like my dad. We’ve been through heaven and hell together. More heaven than hell, but he’s been there for me during the crunchy bits. He’s been really good for me, because he just allows me to do what I do and then translates that into business. I’m useless in business. I have no idea.
19. Maybe you just answered my next question, but who’s been your greatest mentor and what’s the best advice they ever gave you?
The person who’s most inspired me is David Byrne. He musically inspired me, then I worked with him writing this musical 15 or 20 years ago. Working with him really set me on a [path] of where I am today, doing other things outside music.
Look what he did: He started a record label and started putting out Brazilian music, then he does art things. He’s got such an inquisitive mind about everything, always asking, “How can we make it more fun?” I’ve just found him such an inspiration. He’s been the blueprint. After working with him, I looked at all the other things he’d done and said, “Well, that’s how you do longevity, by not being held back by, ‘I’ve got to make an album every three years and have hits.’
Once you’ve done enough albums to have hits and have a name, then it’s like, “Well, let’s flex some other muscles.” Let’s do an art project and other things in your life that interest you, let’s invite them into your life. If you’re respected enough, if your reputation is enough, then you get to hang out with other people and swap ideas and do things that aren’t necessarily just about having hit records. He does things that interest him, rather than just being on the hamster wheel.
20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give your younger self?
Apart from, “Try not to do that, or marry that” — you know, notable mistakes — I would say just try and savor and remember more of it. There are huge amounts of things I don’t remember from my partying days. Someone will say “What is Cher like?” and I’m like “I never met Cher,” and they’re like, “Yes you did, you spent an evening with her” and then they show me photos of me and Cher having a night out, and I’m like, “Oh my God.”
Someone said to me, when I got married, “Take time for the two of you to walk away from your guests for a couple of minutes and soak up the moment, because you want to remember your life.” That was really good advice — and it did work, because we remember that moment.
I just wish I’d done a bit more of that, rather than doing everything by instinct and adrenaline, that I’d sat back and took it all in, because I’ve had the most beautiful life. I’ve gotten to work my whole career in an industry I love, in and around music I love. Most people don’t get to do that. I’ve done some really excellent and excellently fulfilling things. I just wish I remembered all of them.
The first time Nelson Albareda promoted a show at the Madison Square Garden complex in New York — not at the arena proper, but at the 5,600-capacity theater beneath it — everyone told him, “You’re going to lose your ass.” Albareda, a Miami-born Cuban, had assembled what to him was a dream lineup: a 50th-anniversary celebration of groundbreaking salsa artist and Fania Records co-founder Johnny Pacheco, featuring Pacheco and the Fania All-Stars. Still, his detractors were right: Albareda lost $200,000 on the 2006 show.
But after the music ended, the promoter was still buzzing. At midnight, he took his parents, who had attended, to a nearby deli, where his father asked, “How are you laughing? You lost 200 grand!”
“Well, it’s part of the business,” Albareda told him. “We keep moving on.”
Seventeen years later, Albareda, now 47, stands by that take. “In this business, you lose money, and it’s not how quickly you fall but how quickly you come back,” he says.
That fearlessness has helped Albareda become one of today’s most successful music executives. After nearly two decades working at labels and in radio, marketing and concert promotion, including as the leader of his formidable company Eventus, Albareda founded Loud And Live in 2017. The forward-thinking outfit’s flywheel-style model combines independent concert promotion — in 2022, it ranked at No. 14 on Billboard Boxscore’s year-end promoters chart with $96.5 million grossed, propelled by major tours including arena runs by Camilo and Ricardo Arjona — with marketing, brand partnerships and a content development studio. Loud And Live’s breadth reflects Albareda’s own guiding ethos, which emphasizes a broader culture and how disparate revenue streams fit into it, rather than focusing on just one or two of those streams.
“I was very proud of my culture and my heritage, and I wanted to give back,” Albareda says. “I got into music because of culture and because of pride, not necessarily because of the business — even though I ended up being in the business.”
For Albareda, who grew up in Miami during a “golden age” for music in the city in the 1980s, running Loud And Live is a natural fit. As a kid, he would listen to any cassettes or CDs he could get his hands on — he cites Cuban salsa singer Willie Chirino as a childhood favorite and inspiration — and he fondly recalls attending the Calle Ocho festival, where he saw Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine perform.
“I grew up in a moment where Miami defined different sounds within the music business and always wanted to be part of that, primarily because of culture and the heritage of my parents,” he says.
Albareda’s entrée into the industry, while circuitous, laid the foundation for his interdisciplinary career. As a Miami Dade College freshman, he scored a meeting with Bacardi executives and successfully pitched “a branded entertainment concept … mixing music and cigars and the whole lifestyle around a big band.” As the project of “creating a 1950s, 1960s tropical salsa band” commenced, the team enlisted Celia Cruz — and when executives from her label, RMM, got to know Albareda, they offered him a publicity job in-house. RMM was distributed by Universal, then affiliated with the Bronfman family, which owned beverage conglomerate Seagrams; Albareda shared office space with the spirits division and began consulting for the likes of Absolut and Chivas Regal. The experience was formative, and after leaving RMM, he logged time at advertising agency Sanchez and Levitan before landing in radio at Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., where he deployed his passions for music and marketing.
“I saw an opportunity to make money on everything but the radio,” Albareda says. “I started a team that would do events, concerts, festivals — and then we also would go to the brands and say, ‘Hey, you’re Procter & Gamble. How do I help you?’ ”
Albareda understood the deep bond between radio audiences, particularly Hispanic listeners, and their favorite stations — and how it could be harnessed to deliver returns to brand partners. “You listened to that morning show, and you trusted that morning show,” he says. “You trusted the conviction that those are your friends. You wake up every day with them; you drive home with them. That’s what I built: You had the relationship with the artists, you had the relationship with the brands, you have the relationship with the listeners.”
As the company underwent changes, culminating in its absorption into Univision, Albareda realized, “Hey, I can do this without radio. Let me go on my own and really focus on this.” His first, short-lived attempt, a company called Unipro Group, failed when the 26-year-old Albareda misjudged the viability of a Christmas event and lost $3 million. “It was a decisive moment in my life,” he says now. “You realize when you’re at the bottom, you don’t have that many friends.”
After regrouping, in early 2005, he founded Eventus, which would focus on marketing and brands — not just because he knew the area well, but because he now lacked the capital to put on events. Eventus’ first client was the Latin Recording Academy, then still relatively new and looking to grow its footprint. Albareda helped it do just that, particularly through the sponsorship-driven event property Latin Grammy Street Parties, which staged open-air festivals in major cities nationwide. Brands took notice.
“We became the go-to guys for corporate America to connect anything that was culture with brands, specifically in the multicultural market,” Albareda says. “Our core was Hispanic. One by one, we started growing, and we built a company that worked with 60 brands. McDonald’s, Walmart, Dr Pepper, Verizon … those were all clients of ours.”
From left: El Alfa, Nelson Albareda, and Silvestre Dangond photographed on September 5, 2023 at Loud And Live in Doral, Fla.
Melody Timothee
With 40% growth year over year, Eventus also had runway to enter concert promotion, and Albareda focused on the South Florida market. After selling Eventus, now one of America’s biggest multicultural marketing players, to Advantage Solutions in 2013, Albareda remained as CEO until 2016, when he struck out on his own (on May 20, Cuban Independence Day, he observes) with a noncompete clause and free time to boat, fish and develop the kernel of the idea that would become Loud And Live.
“We are marketers turned promoters — versus a lot of the entertainment companies out there, and a lot of the promoters out there want to become marketers,” Albareda says of launching his current company in 2017. Because he understood “what brands want,” he could facilitate the types of partnerships that help make tours profitable. But his decision to focus on touring at Loud And Live before branching out into agency work — effectively reversing his Eventus path — was also borne of necessity: His noncompete around live entertainment expired first.
“When we started, artists would pick up our calls because of brands, but they didn’t necessarily trust us with touring,” Albareda says. To build Loud And Live’s reputation, he deviated from the industry trend — “Everybody was going after urban,” he recalls — and decided to pursue “five or six iconic artists that we can make an impact [with] and that other artists look up to.” He began with Juan Luis Guerra and later added Arjona, Carlos Vives, Franco De Vita and Ricardo Montaner, who all then spread the gospel of Loud And Live. And once Albareda was able to reenter the agency space with Loud And Live, what the company could offer clients clarified.
“The businesses here are all synergistic,” he says. “The way that we treat artists, we are their partner when they’re touring and when they’re not touring. We’re not that promoter that signs a deal, puts a tour [on and says,] ‘See ya.’ ”
Loud And Live’s attentiveness to its clients runs “from the manager to the engineer all the way up to the manager to the artist,” Albareda explains, and while he’s emphatic that “in this business anybody can write a check; we can write a check,” it has helped the company compete with deeper-pocketed, more established competitors.
“They’ve bet a lot on me and will continue to do so,” says Colombian vallenato artist Silvestre Dangond, who will embark on his fifth Loud And Live-promoted tour in 2024. “We have a lot of love for each other. I feel like he’s not even my promoter because of the way he talks to me. He has created a team that’s a hybrid of who he is, with his personality, his positivity, good energy. He’s very decent and very human.”
Adds WK Entertainment founder/CEO Walter Kolm, who manages Dangond and other Loud And Live clients like Vives and Prince Royce: “Nelson is a promoter, but his advantage is that he also thinks like a manager. On top of being a hard worker and great at his job, Nelson is such a kind human, and [that] makes working with him the greatest pleasure.”
The pandemic interrupted Loud And Live’s growth, but now the company is firing on all cylinders. After orchestrating a partnership between McDonald’s and J Balvin in 2020, Loud And Live has continued connecting the restaurant chain with artists including Prince Royce, Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo. The company’s brand portfolio now includes Pepsi, Walmart, Mattel and Michael Kors. When Becky G embarked on her first headlining tour on Sept. 14, she did it with Loud And Live as her promoter — and with a fresh Vita Coco partnership facilitated by the company. Other fall tours for the promoter include U.S. runs by Vives, El Alfa and Diego El Cigala.
With in-person concerts on pause during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Loud And Live was able to grow its content division more quickly than anticipated, and it won a Latin Grammy for its 2021 Juan Luis Guerra concert special. When Lionel Messi signed with Inter Miami CF, the soccer team (already a Loud And Live client) turned to Albareda to help roll out the superstar’s arrival — and Loud And Live assembled LaPresentaSíon, a concert featuring Camilo, Tiago PZK and more. (“All music artists look up to athletes; all athletes look up to artists,” Albareda says.)
And philanthropically, in keeping with his MO that his work place the culture, not business, first, Albareda announced a $1 million donation to the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation late last year; the funds, to be disbursed over five years, will go toward college scholarships, grants and educational programs.
“Throughout his career, Nelson has been an avid supporter of the Latin Recording Academy and our sister organization, the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation, donating time and resources to our events as well as engaging as an advocate to share our mission and vision with artists,” says Latin Recording Academy CEO Manuel Abud. “Among [his] greatest professional strengths are the intangible qualities that are from the heart, particularly his passion for Latin music.”
But despite Loud And Live’s success, Albareda still possesses the scrappy drive that fueled him at his Garden debut nearly 20 years ago. The father of three says he works 18-hour days, adding that his “aspiration is to be the leading Latin promoter and entertainment company in the world.” Immediately before the pandemic, Loud And Live partnered with Move Concerts, a major Latin American promoter that works across genres, to increase its presence in Central and South America, and Albareda is now eyeing expansion into Europe.
And his vision isn’t restricted to Latin music: In November, Thomas Rhett and Sam Hunt will headline the inaugural Country Bay Music Festival, Loud And Live’s first foray into the country market and an attempt to introduce a major country festival in Miami. “Country is a genre that is very similar in culture to Latin,” Albareda observes. “It’s a tight-knit community of family, core values, every song is a story — and we also know that Hispanics overindex in country music. Over 30% of country music fans in the U.S. today identify of Latino origin … My great-great-grandfather came here in 1876. Why is it that I can’t do country music?”
As he navigates a turbulent industry and the attendant pivots, Albareda returns to essential traits like perseverance, determination and trustworthiness. “We don’t sell widgets,” he says. “We sell relationships.”
Additional reporting by Griselda Flores.
This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Fifty years ago today (Sept. 20), Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash in Natchitoches, Louisiana, during a concert tour of southern colleges. In the previous 15 months, Croce had amassed four top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” “One Less Set of Footsteps” and the sing-along smash “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” which spent the final two weeks of July 1973 at No. 1.
The sudden death of someone who was so new to the mainstream was of course a shock. But few would have expected what would happen next: Croce’s death triggered one of the biggest posthumous sales booms in history. “I Got a Name,” which was released the day after Croce’s death, reached the top 10 on the Hot 100 in November. The following month, the poignant “Time in a Bottle” (which had appeared on his 1972 album You Don’t Miss Around With Jim) became his second No. 1. It made Croce just the third artist in the history of the Hot 100 to top the chart posthumously, following Otis Redding (“(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” 1968) and Janis Joplin (“Me and Bobby McGee,” 1971). Moreover, Croce became the first artist in Hot 100 history to top the chart both while living and after his death.
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Croce had even bigger success on the Billboard 200, where You Don’t Mess Around With Jim reached No. 1 on Jan. 12, 1974. Croce was just the second artist in the history of the Billboard 200 to reach No. 1 posthumously, following Joplin (Pearl, 1971). You Don’t Mess Around With Jim stayed on top for five consecutive weeks. For two of those weeks, Croce also had the No. 2 album, I Got a Name. He was the first artist to hold down the top two spots the same week since The Beatles scored in March 1969 with The Beatles (better known as The White Album) and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
Croce’s impact was also felt during awards season. At the first American Music Awards on Feb. 19, 1974, Croce won favorite pop/rock male artist, beating a pair of legends – Elton John and Stevie Wonder. “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” was also nominated for favorite pop/rock song, but lost to Dawn featuring Tony Orlando’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” which had been the biggest hit of 1973.
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” was nominated for two Grammys – record of the year and best pop vocal performance, male. Croce was the first artist in Grammy history to receive a posthumous nod for record of the year. He lost in both categories at the 16th annual Grammy Awards on March 2, 1974. Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” took record of the year, while Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” took the male pop vocal prize. Wonder graciously saluted Croce in his acceptance speech: “I accept this award in memory of Jim Croce, who was a very talented man.”
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Another pop legend paid tribute to Croce that spring. Frank Sinatra covered “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” His brassy version had a seven-week run on the Hot 100 in April and May 1974, peaking at No. 83.
Wonder had two more top 40 hits on the Hot 100 in 1974 – “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” and “Workin at the Car Wash Blues.” All of his hits were gathered in Photographs & Memories/Greatest Hits, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in November 1974, becoming his fourth top 10 album in less than a year.
Croce ranked No. 1 on Billboard’s list of Top Pop Albums Artists of 1974, ahead of Elton John, Charlie Rich and John Denver. He had three albums in the top 25 on that year’s list of Top Pop Albums.
Why did Croce’s music touch such a nerve in the year following his death? Partly, it was because of the sense of loss of a talented young artist who died just as his career was really taking off. The fact that Croce was approached to record “I Got a Name” is a sign of how quickly he was moving up to the A-list. Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox (whose hits include the aforementioned “Killing Me Softly With His Song”) wrote the song for the Jeff Bridges film The Last American Hero.
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Also, Croce had some songs that resonated in the wake of his death, and almost seemed to foreshadow it, especially “Time in a Bottle” (“But there never seems to be enough time/ To do the things you want to do once you find them”). The title of “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” also seemed fit the circumstances. The latter song, at once polished and poignant, became Croce’s fifth and final top 10 hit on the Hot 100 in April 1974.
More broadly, Croce’s music was just right for that era, where soft-rock singer/songwriters were among the hottest acts in the business. His music was a perfect fit alongside such other hitmakers of the era as Denver, Carole King, Seals & Crofts, Gordon Lightfoot, Mac Davis and Dave Loggins.
Croce wrote all of his Hot 100 hits except “I Got a Name” and a 1976 medley of early rock and roll classics. His records were co-produced by Terry Cashman, now 82, and Tommy West, who died in 2021 at age 78.
Croce was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990, alongside Smokey Robinson and Michel Legrand. In 2013, Garth Brooks included his version of “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” on his Billboard 200-topping box set, Blame It All on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences.
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Croce’s widow, Ingrid Croce — with whom he recorded a duo album for Capitol in 1969 — is now 76. Their son A.J. Croce, who turned two eight days after the crash, is 51. A.J., who is also a singer/songwriter, has recorded 11 albums.
News of Croce’s death was reported on page 3 of the Sept. 29, 1973 issue of Billboard. The following week, there were two full-page ads paying tribute to the singer. One said simply “Jim Croce will be missed and deeply mourned by the Phonogram group of companies throughout the world.”
The other, signed by Jay Lasker, the president of Croce’s label, ABC/Dunhill, had an unusually warm and personal tone. It read, in full:
“Some people reach out and feel nothing. Jim reached out an in some way touched everyone.
“Some talk of love and goodness as if they alone remained its custodian. Jim gave his love and goodness as it if belonged to everyone.
“He told me, last New Year’s Day, that he enjoyed taking care of his son’s 2 a.m. bottle and diaper change because it gave him more time to spend with the boy, something he had precious little time for, in light of his heavy travel commitments.
“We are now all the losers for not being able to spend more time with Jim Croce.”
As we’d see in the weeks and months to come, many listeners, most of whom never met the man, felt the same way.
When Floating Points was recording with Pharoah Sanders in the summer of 2019, he was moving quickly. Possibly too fast.
“I didn’t have very much time to work with Pharoah,” says the British producer born Sam Shepherd, “and so I felt this pressure to just constantly be delivering music.”
But Sanders — the legendary tenor saxophonist who rose to prominence in the ’60s playing with John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and other greats while also distinguishing himself as a luminary of the spiritual jazz movement — put his foot on the metaphorical brakes during those 10 days making music at Sargent Recorders, a studio in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown neighborhood.
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“He was just calming, slowing everything down,” Shepherd recalls. “He was like, ‘Let’s just listen to this,’ and we’d sit there and listen to the whole thing. And then we’d listen to it again, then again. Three hours would pass and we’d just be listening and listening.”
It wasn’t the speed at which Shepherd — an electronic musician accustomed to the pace of the internet — was used to working. Working with Sanders, more than 40 years Shepherd’s senior, felt like a throwback to the era when there was only so much recording tape available.
“We’d sit and listen,” Shepherd continues, “Then Pharoah would be like, ‘I’m just gonna go into the booth and play this phrase over this thing.’ He’d go in there having had listened to it for a few hours and just play something so succinct and meaningful. He knows it so well that he’s embodied it. It’s not like he’s searching while he’s playing, he’s done all that. He doesn’t need to search on his instrument, he’s done the searching within himself.”
This contemplative, unhurried workflow resulted in Promises, the 2021 collaborative album from Floating Points and Sanders, along with the London Symphony Orchestra. Clocking in at 46 minutes and composed of nine movements, Promises is leisurely, deep and often fairly mystic, with the Philharmonic adding moments of climactic grandeur and Sanders’ playing serving as the sonic and spiritual center, his signature tone offering moments of elegance and cacophony.
Released on Luaka Bop, the label founded by David Byrne in 1988, Promises earned wide and high-brow acclaim, getting glowing reviews from The New York Times, The New Yorker — who called it “a remarkably intimate experience — and earning a 9.0 rating from Pitchfork. The album spent three weeks on Top Albums Sales, where it reached No. 32 in April of 2021.
“It took me by surprise,” Shepherd says of this success. “We originally pressed very few vinyl copies, because we thought this was a relatively niche, jazz/classical crossover record. It connected more than we’d imagined. I’d say, ‘Pharoah, you know, people really like this record.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, yeah?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, people really like this record, Pharoah.’”
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As the pandemic waned, the two artists — Shepherd in the U.K. and Sanders in Los Angeles — along with their respective teams, discussed doing a one-time only live performance of Promises. The Hollywood Bowl was selected as the venue, and Shepherd booked a flight to Los Angeles to meet with Sanders and make plans. Then, the week Shepherd was supposed to get on the plane, Sanders died, passing away on Sept. 24, 2022 at the age of 81. A cause of death was not given.
“So it was very much a long period of of quiet,” Shepherd says of what happened next. “Then conversations about doing it started to get bounced around again… It took me awhile to warm up to the idea.”
But Shepherd did, eventually, warm. So tomorrow (Sept. 20), almost a year to the day after Sanders’ passing, Shepherd will perform the first and likely only live performance of Promises at the Hollywood Bowl.
Speaking to Billboard on the phone from the Burbank studio hosting rehearsals for the show, Shepherd — enthusiastic, thoughtful and completely affable in conversation — allows that doing it without Sanders being around to give it his blessing “feels a little heavy for me. I haven’t vocalized it, I don’t even think I fully understand it. It’s not a normal thing for a musician to collaborate on a project with someone, and that person is no longer around.”
Without the mythic figure at the center of the project, Shepherd has instead assembled a sort of musical league of legends formed from friends, family and frequent collaborators.
Clearly the most crucial element in designing the performance was figuring out who would play Sanders’ part. Luckily, this answer was also obviou:. British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is a mutual friend of Sanders and Shepherd’s, who played in Shepherd’s first band and is a person who, Shepherd says, “Pharoah was a great admirer of.” While there’s demand to tour Promises, Shepherd says it simply isn’t possible, given that Hutchings is planning to put down his sax to focus on the flute shortly after the show.
Also in the band: electronic artist Kara-Lis Coverdale, “who every time I hear her play is just the most innovative, interesting electronic music I’ve heard in in my life.” Hinako Omori — “another amazing composer I’ve known for years in London” — will play the celesta. John Escreet, “one of the greatest pianists I’ve ever heard” will keyboard and synthesizer. Jeffrey Makinson, the organist at the U.K.’s towering Lincoln Cathedral and also Shepherds’ brother-in-law, will play an electric organ. Lara Serafin, who transcribed the previously unwritten down Promises into sheet music and “knows the piece better than anyone on a forensic level” will play electronics. Four Tet and Caribou — frequent Floating Points collaborators and also Shepherds’ “bezzie mates,” will play piano and electronics, respectively.
“They get the record because they were there when I was mixing it,” Shepherd says of these two producers and pals. “They were really part of the whole process of it all coming together — and they know me and I know them, and I know how they play.”
The show will be conducted by Los Angeles favorite Miguel Atwood Ferguson, who will guide the band, members of the L.A. Studio Symphony String Orchestra and special guests the Sun Ra Arkestra, with whom Sanders played with throughout his career.
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Surveying the gear laid out in the rehearsal space, Shepherd says Promises is, in a way, quite simple, rooted in four looping chords. “On a technical level, everyone can play their parts.”
As such, rehearsals are more about maintaining morale while also getting to the essence of what makes the piece “kind of magical, I guess,” says Shepherd. “That’s something I’ve got to find again from the beginning.” When asked if he knows how he’s going to do that, he answers, “No, I don’t,” with a laugh.
But then Shepherd, who also has a PhD in neuroscience and epigenetics and first connected with Sanders after Sanders heard his smart, spacial 2015 electronic album Elaenia, weighs the question for a minute. He returns to the recording sessions with Sanders, when Sanders would request that they just sit back and listen to the music.
“That sort of calmness and listening more intently is something I need to try and impart on [this] big group by sort of saying, ‘We need to slow it all down, we need to not feel like this is tedious or not getting anywhere, because it is getting somewhere, it’s just that we’ve got to give our patience to this project as well,’” he relates. “That’s something Pharoah taught me, definitely, patience in listening.”
(He adds that, in his own fast-paced fervor, he recorded enough music with Sanders to make another two albums — but says there is no plans to complete or release these projects. Sanders’ 1977 album Pharoah was re-released this week via Luaka Bop.)
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Given the mysterious, ineffable nature of Promises‘ magic, I ask Shepherd how he’ll know if the show was a success. He thinks about it, then refers to the album’s “Movement 8,” which closes with a minute of silence before the orchestra comes back in for the climax.
“That’s going to be a pinnacle moment for me — if that silence is really silent in the Bowl, and all you hear is the noise of some of the stage gear and buzzing through the speakers,” he shares. “If I’ve gotten a little corner of this noisey-ass American city just to be quiet, and ten or twelve or fifteen thousand people are sitting there together quietly because the previous 40 minutes of music has just brought them to this place… I would feel that’s a big moment.”
One can argue that having people sitting in slowed-down stillness would be what Sanders would have wanted to happen, too.
Although British rock band The Last Dinner Party scored a top 10 alternative hit with their debut single, for the five women that comprise the group, they’d been preparing for this moment for years. Just before beginning university in 2020, lead singer Abigail Morris, bassist Georgia Davies and vocalist/guitarist Lizzie Mayland crossed paths and became fast friends, bonding over musical interests. (Morris and Davies attended King’s College London; Mayland at Goldsmiths.) “We would go to gigs all the time, researching and thinking about starting a band,” Morris explains. “We were very intellectual about it for a long time.”
They soon recruited lead guitarist Emily Roberts and vocalist/keyboardist Aurora Nischevi, both of whom were involved in the local music circuit. The five began writing music together at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, though their first release wouldn’t come for nearly three years — but the wait paid off. “Nothing Matters,” the cinematic alt-rock debut single that arrived in April has become a force at radio, reaching a new high of No. 8 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated Sept. 23.
While fleshing out its sound, the group built a fan base by testing its material in pubs and small venues around London. “In the age of TikTok, people thought unless you have a song go viral, there’s no way of generating a following,” Morris says. “Ours just felt like a more natural thing. We had much more of a jumping off point from playing shows to seven people who don’t give a f–k to [then] playing much larger shows.”
From left: Georgia Davies, Emily Roberts, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nischevi, and Lizzie Mayland of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
From left: Emily Roberts, Lizzie Mayland, Georgia Davies, Abigail Morris and Aurora Nischevi of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
As the band’s stature in the local scene grew, it wasn’t long before it gained traction in the industry, too: after Q Prime’s Tara Richardson heard about The Last Dinner Party through an audio engineer that worked with the act in the studio, she received four “very impressive” demos, she says. Subsequently, she saw the band perform live in early 2022, and almost immediately, she signed the act to the management firm. By May, the group had scored a record deal with Island. “It’s just so refreshing to see young, strong women,” Richardson says. “They’re not arrogant; they’re not out to prove themselves. They’re just doing what they do, and if you don’t like it, they’re completely fine with it.”
By the start of 2023, with a team in place, the group prepared to officially launch its recording career with “Nothing Matters.” “We built a reputation around the London live circuit and had a bit of buzz around our first release,” says Davies. “This wasn’t a dress rehearsal.” Adds Morris: “You only get one debut.”
With a swelling bridge and a cheeky hook, “Nothing Matters” originally began as a “slow, sad ballad” that Morris wrote about a then-current romantic relationship. “I very rarely write love songs — I only write about heartbreak,” she says with a laugh. “It’s just easier and more dramatic. [But] I was with my boyfriend at the time and I was very happy.” Davies remembers the bandmates then “throwing everything at” the simple piano ballad in the studio, playing around with guitar solos, horn sections and vocal tones. “It was really a song that became itself once it was in the hands of the band,” Davies says. “It was one completely different thing when it first started and it needed to be played live and have everyone’s input.”
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The song officially arrived on April 19, and was paired with a Pride & Prejudice-coded music video that delivered dark academia with an edgy girl-band twist. “It captures the spirit of what we’re doing now,” Morris says. “ ‘Nothing Matters’ has that maximalist, tortuous freedom that we have and want for the rest of the record.” By the summer, “Nothing Matters” had become a radio hit: in early July, it debuted on Adult Alternative Airplay; the following month, it did so on Rock & Alternative Airplay.
Since the breakthrough hit arrived, The Last Dinner Party has grown its touring platform well beyond the pubs from their early days, supporting Florence + the Machine and Hozier on separate runs and performing at major festivals including Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds. The band will soon embark on a 10-stop U.K. headlining tour, followed by five dates in the U.S. It’ll have two other singles in tow for the trek: The bouncy pop-rock “Sinner” dropped in late June, and its next release, which the band calls a “left turn,” is due to arrive by the end of September.
With a debut album expected sometime in 2024, The Last Dinner Party’s members seem completely in sync: Morris and Davies finishing each other’s sentences multiple times during our interview, including when discussing what keeps the band’s emotional bond so strong. “I think what’s missing in a lot of artists [is] a commitment to themselves because they want to seem cool or ironic,” says Davies. “I want people to see our sincerity and be themselves too.”
“We advise them, but at the end of the day, they know what they’re doing,” says Richardson. “They have mood boards — everything has already been discussed. Excuse the French, but they’re not f–king around.”
From left: Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts and Aurora Nischevi of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
From left: Georgia Davies, Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Aurora Nischevi and Lizzie Mayland of The Last Dinner Party photographed on August 30, 2023 in London.
Nicole Nodland
A version of this story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023 issue of Billboard.
”Bongos,” Megan Thee Stallion’s latest collaboration with Cardi B, serves as Meg’s first musical release of the year — a slight change of pace for the artist who famously pumped out two studio albums, a compilation tape and an EP in a little over two years.
Her most recent album, August 2022’s Traumazine, followed years of intense emotional and personal turmoil, online vitriol and legal sagas for the three-time Grammy-winning rapper. On Aug. 8, Tory Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting Megan in July 2020, a long-awaited conclusion to three years of court drama.
“I feel like I’m finally closing all the old chapters and now I’m starting with a blank slate,” Megan tells Billboard in a new interview. “Very fresh, very new. I think the Hotties are gonna be so excited.”
“Bongos” — a raucous Brazilian-funk-nodding sequel to 2020’s historic “WAP” that debuts at No. 14 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100— is the first section of that new chapter. Alongside the song’s release, Megan and Cardi also treated fans to an eye-popping music video — with choreography courtesy of Sean Bankhead — as well as a showstopping performance at the 2023 MTV Music Video Awards.
With more new music on the horizon and a new collaboration with Flamin’ Hot called Flamin’ Hot University (FU), Megan Thee Stallion is carefully setting the stage to take the entire world by storm — again.
Megan Thee Stallion will serve as Thee Official Hot Girl Dean of Admission for Flamin’ Hot University, which features a one-of-a-kind online curriculum centered on food, fashion and lifestyle. FU will also give students the entire catalog of Flamin’ Hot snacks in a special limited-edition package — complete with exclusive merch designed by Melody Ehsani — approved by Megan herself. Proceeds from the merch line will go toward a scholarship for deserving students at Texas Southern University, the “Thot Sh–” rapper’s alma mater, thus helping them sidestep student debt.
In a hilarious conversation with Billboard, Megan breaks down some of her Flamin’ Hot University courses, provides an update on her forthcoming new album, reflects on her friendship with Cardi B, and gives her true reaction to Justin Timberlake yelling out her trademark “real hot girl sh–” ad lib after the VMAs.
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How did you come up with the curriculum for Flamin’ Hot University? What are your responsibilities as the Hot Girl Dean of Admissions?
I’m basically just the overseer of all things Hot Girl at this camp. I just wanted to have a lot of things that have something to do with things that are personal to me, how to be a Hot Girl, you know? How to make your favorite snacks at 2 a.m. I feel like every college student knows the struggle. I feel like Hot Cheetos are definitely on the menu at every campus, this is what we eat! So I just want to do things that feel real to me.
Recently, the state of public education in the country has become increasingly muddled by some troubling political agendas. What does it mean to you to be able to give back to your HBCU during a time like this?
I know what it’s like to be a struggling college student. I know what it feels like to be discouraged: “I give up, my classes are hard, I can’t even pay for this, etc.” But I really got through it, and I wanted to be able to give back to other students that I know feel the same way I felt. So once I was able to give it, I was like, “Yeah, lemme put my people on.”
That’s real. What’s your favorite Flamin’ Hot snack?
Everybody knows I love me a good fried pickle, so I definitely love making Hot Cheeto fried pickles. That’s my sh–! With ranch!
When you sit back and reflect on how you’ve grown “Real Hot Girl Sh—” from a catchphrase to one of the most recognizable brands in contemporary pop culture, how do you feel?
I feel surprised half the time. Like, wow, I really just be talking, and I just be living, and people are like, “Yes, I wanna do that too!” [Laughs.] I feel like it’s amazing to just authentically be myself and it, you know, translates into a brand. And it makes me feel like, “OK, you know what? I can’t be doing too bad, right?!”
When it comes to the specific Flamin’ Hot University curriculum, what can people expect to see in some of your lessons?
They can definitely expect all of my Hot Girl recipes from the things that I personally would make out of Hot Cheetos and some stuff that I didn’t even know about. Some things that I took from other people. It’s a chef, his name is Chef Scotty and he also went to TSU, and he put me on a few snacks. So I feel like he definitely gonna figure out some things to eat at 2 in the morning.
We gon’ be eating real good!
We gon’ be eating real good! [Laughs]
One of my favorite parts of your TikTok is how hard you go in the gym. What role has physical fitness played in your life over the past couple of years?
Physical fitness helps me with my mental. If I feel like I’m a little stressed or I’m a little whatever I’m feeling that day, I know I can go let it out in the gym and it helps me clear my mind. I love boxing. I love anything HIIT [high-intensity interval training]-wise. I love pushing myself. When I’m in the gym, I’m like, “Girl, if you can’t do two more squats, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to handle two more comments!”
So, I definitely go in the gym and I push myself and I motivate myself and I’m pushing my body. But, to push your body, I feel like it’s to push yourself mentally. The gym is definitely a mental thing. To get yourself out the bed in the morning or whatever part of the day, even if you don’t have time to work out in the morning, if you push yourself to finish your day and go to the gym, I feel like it’s all mental. And I feel like you feel like, “Oh my gosh, I did it,” and now you can reward yourself. Working out just feels super rewarding. I feel very accomplished after I work out.
Congratulations on the “Bongos” release and VMAs performance! The music video is very elaborate. What was it like shooting that?
It was so much fun! Every time me and Cardi link up, it ain’t nothing but laughs and a whole party. Both our teams absolutely love each other. Everybody hangs out on their own time anyway, so it kind of felt like we was going out every morning. Oop, Cardi had me waking up so early for these damn — lemme not even curse — Cardi had me waking up so early for these shoots!
How early y’all was up?
Baby, I will start my glam at 3 in the morning to do my first shot at like 8 or 9, and sometimes it didn’t even happen at 8 or 9. If I’m up at 3 in the morning, I’m probably shooting at 3 p.m.! Like goddang! But it was a great time though.
Y’all built different, because 3 a.m. is crazy.
3 a.m. is crazy! But you know you can’t pay the sun to stay out long, so you gotta get all your shots during the day.
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While recording “Bongos,” did you and Cardi feel any pressure to re-create or live up to the heights of “WAP”?
I know for myself, I don’t make music with any expectations. I don’t really care about charts and stuff like that. Obviously, everybody wanna be No. 1, everybody wants to win, everybody wants to give their fans these bragging rights. But I just make music because I love to make music, so I’m not making it like, “Oh, I gotta top this” or “Oh, we have to be better than the last time.” I’m like, “No, we’re gonna make a song because we like to make music, and it’s gonna be fun!” It doesn’t have to be the same vibe. That was already its great, own moment. It served its purpose at that time. That was two, three years ago. We two different women now! So this is different.
I wasn’t expecting it to be anything like “WAP” because we’re not even in the same headspace. I think it was COVID. Baby, we was in the house recording! [Laughs.] Now we outside! It’s time for everybody to be in a good mood. It’s time for everybody to feel a different way. I was so excited when [Cardi] sent me this song because I had never recorded over a beat like that before. I never rapped to anything like that, and I felt like it was a challenge. I was like, “Oh, this is something new. OK, girl, you want me to go to work today, I got you!”
What is it about Cardi specifically that makes her such a good collaborator and friend?
Speaking to the collaborator part like, she literally just let me do me. This is the second time she’s sent me a song, and I’ll be like, “Friend, can I do whatever I want to do on the beat? I’m finna put two verses on here, all right?” She always let me do whatever I want to do creatively. I just appreciate that so much because sometimes people try to give you a direction and they want you to do what they want you to do, but she’s like “Megan, what you think?” She’ll ask me what I think about this song like, “OK, how you think we could make it better? What should we do next? Just do whatever you wanna do and then we’ll piece it together.”
I love the creative freedom that she gives me. She’s always open to whatever I’m saying or any suggestion, so I love that about her. She not scared to try nothing, and her ego ain’t big. She’s not a woman that’s scared to say “you’re right.” So, I really love that about her work-wise.
Friendship-wise, she’s just so real. When I first met her, she was so shy! Anybody’ll probably see her online and they think her personality gonna be one way, no, it’s so opposite. But like as we got more [close as] friends — you know people start off shy and then they get like “Oh, yeah, this the real you”? — I feel like I definitely get to see the real her. She’s just so nice, and she’s really a kind person. That’s what I really like about her. And she just raw. First thing that come to that lady brain, she gon’ say it! And I like that. I respect people like that. She’s definitely a “take it how you wanna take it” type of person.
When can we expect new music from you, girl? We’re starving!
It’s definitely coming very soon. I’m really excited about this chapter of my life because I feel like I’m finally closing all the old chapters, and now I’m starting with a blank slate. Very fresh, very new. I think Thee Hotties are gonna be so excited. I’m trying different things. I got a lot of things that I produced with Ju and with some new producers.
Oh, you got behind the boards!
Baby, I was behind the piano! Yeah! [Laughs] It’s very exciting. I can’t wait for Thee Hotties to really get in my head with this new person I feel like I’m becoming.
What sounds are you thinking of? Is there anything you know for sure you want to address? Is there a tour on the way? What other tea can you give us!
The tea is… everything about the music is tea! [Laughs] Just expect the unexpected. Expect a lot of rawness, a lot of realness, a lot of sh— talking. Just know I’m coming and I hope everybody ready.
Oh, we ready! One quick question before you go: Were you expecting Justin Timberlake to say “real hot girl sh—” in that TikTok?
Dawg! That’s why my mouth was open big! I was so excited! It’s a good feeling when you know the icons know about you. It made me feel good. I was like, “C’mon, real hot girl sh—!”
Looking back on her last full length album released in 2019, Laetitia Tamko can’t help but feel like it remains in some small part incomplete. Released in October, just five months before a global pandemic shut down the world, Tamko — better known by her stage name Vagabon — sees her self-titled album as an incomplete circuit.
“I never got to play those shows or tour that album — so if you think about it like a cycle, the loop didn’t get too close,” she tells Billboard via Zoom, sitting on the floor of her bedroom. “By the time the lockdown happened, a lot of artists were like, ‘Perfect, I’ll just write new music.’ I spent that first year and a half doing absolutely nothing music-related, because I was mourning the fact that I couldn’t, be out there performing.”
But the pandemic did bring Tamko something she hadn’t expected; a new audience. At the early height of the COVID-19 lockdown, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter watched as a song off of her self-titled album, “Water Me Down,” began to gain significant attention, with fellow quarantined people around the globe finding some solace in her introspective songwriting and experimental alternative sound.
Tamko “wasn’t ready” to make new music, but she knew that she had a new cadre of followers waiting to see what she did next. Now, nearly four years after the release of her self-titled effort, their patience is being rewarded. On Friday (Sept. 15), Vagabon released her highly-anticipated new project Sorry I Haven’t Called, a thrilling, pop-infused album of escapist fantasy, where Tamko fully embraces her potential as a star in the making.
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The project was born in a small village in Germany, where Tamko retreated in 2021 to evade the dreariness of her life in lockdown and to privately mourn the loss of a close friend. Yearning for something to distract her from the tedium of her day-to-day existence, Tamko sat down and did what she does best — she wrote.
“A lot of the stuff I was making was music that I used to lift myself out of my grief. And that was confusing for a while — ‘I am in despair, so why am I writing about sex and horniness,’” she recalls. “I started to realize that that’s a valid reaction to grief.”
When it came time for her to start producing the songs she’d written, Tamko decided to run with that feeling and make Sorry I Haven’t Called her first dance-adjacent album. Filled with house beats and dance-pop synths, while still maintaining the bedroom, DIY feel of her previous work, the album enters uncharted territory for the artist.
Specifically, Tamko refers to the genre of her Sorry as “‘Dancing on My Own‘ music,” paying homage to Robyn’s iconic single. “She is the best there is at doing these huge pop songs with crazy emotional depth for sad girls who love to dance — ‘girls’ being gender neutral,” she says. “Like, ‘Do you have mental illness? Do you want to dance? Great, this is for you.’ That is what I wanted the sound to be here.”
The house influences turned out to be incredibly timely — while Tamko was in the middle of finishing and mastering her album, she watched as megastars like Beyoncé and Drake delivered their own new takes on the genre (“I thought to myself, ‘Okay, this is how I wasn’t taking too long,’” Tamko quips). But as she puts it, house music, as a genre, is largely timeless thanks to its origins in underground Black queer spaces.
“In its foundation, there is a richness of creativity, it’s rich in references,” she says. “When genres sprout up from people making do with what they have, that’s part of the reason that the genre won’t go away. People will always want to be inspired and encouraged to move. And it’s fun to be a musician in those instances, because you get to shepherd other people moving and living. It’s a complete privilege.”
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Towards the end of her writing and producing process, Tamko had a chance meeting with Rostam Batmanglij, the former member of Vampire Weekend-turned-solo artist and producer to the stars. Seeing that Rostam had sent her a DM saying that he loved her music and wanted her to stop by his studio, Tamko took the opportunity and brought him all the music she had been working on for Sorry.
According to Tamko, she knew almost immediately that she wanted to work with him on the album. “He has such a deep musical understanding and knowledge — even just hearing compliment the things that I’ve done was like a badge of honor,” she says. “I just knew I wanted any help he could provide.”
The feeling was mutual. After hearing a handful of tracks, Rostam offered to help produce the rest of the album, bring a “cohesiveness” that Tamko says was not nearly as present before he joined. But of all the many contributions Rostam made to the album, the singer says that his greatest skill came was his malleability.
“He knows how to be in service of the art and who that art is coming from,” she says. “I think that’s why we got along so well — that and the fact that he has great taste and also a very scientific brain when it comes to music.”
Throughout Sorry I Haven’t Called, Tamko still offers the kind of heart-wrenching, introspective lyricism that made “Water Me Down” such a potent pandemic listen. Album closer “Anti-F–k,” for example, sees Vagabon reeling from a relationship that cannot work, as she asks herself “Am I wrong to decide? The last thing I want is unknown/ Am I wrong to reply? The last thing I felt was alone.”
But the feeling of introspection is different this time around — it’s rendered through the lens of a fantasy world generated inside of her own swirling emotional interior. The same way Tamko fled to Germany as a means of managing the emotional fallout of her real life, Sorry I Haven’t Called offers listeners just over 30 minutes of time where they don’t have to actively deal with the myriad struggles of modern existence, but rather let their feelings rush up and out.
“I’ve always looked to music that is the opposite of whatever I am experiencing,” Tamko says. “The ethos of what I wanted on this album was just to tell the audience, ‘We’re fine, at least for now.’ For the duration of this album, you’re being held in this world. There’s still yearning and some heartbreak, because for it to be a world, it needs to have like the valleys so you can better feel the euphoria. You have to embrace the lows before you can reach the highs.”
That very concept in and of itself — the ability for Tamko to conjure up her own universe via songwriting — is a testament to where she has arrived in her own journey. No longer questioning or doubting her own abilities, Tamko says she is finally ready to command the attention she deserves.
“I think I’ve had enough time with the internal,” she offers, bluntly. “It all comes down to confidence, and I have found a profound sense confidence in myself, in my voice, and in my ability to say things and I was maybe too scared to say before. I found a way to take up more space.”