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In February, during a writing camp in Palm Springs, Calif., singer-songwriter Teddy Swims had a professional breakthrough — amid a period of personal turmoil, following a breakup. “I was so unhinged at the time,” he remembers. “I just needed to say a lot of stuff.” Over the course of five days, he poured his emotions into half of the songs that would ultimately comprise his debut album, including his biggest hit to date, “Lose Control.”
Rooted in piano-driven production — and an impressive ability to stretch his vocal runs — the R&B-pop ballad details a relationship that’s been tainted by substance abuse. “Lose Control” has steadily grown since its release in late June, leading to Teddy Swims’ first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. “When it was finished, I was showing everybody before the song came out,” he says. “I just felt that energy, like, ‘This is lighting in a bottle.’ I knew this was going to change my life.”
Born Jaten Dimsdale, the 31-year-old began performing a decade ago at his suburban Atlanta high school, trading football for musical theater (he joined with a friend, who still plays guitar in his live band today). His senior year was particularly pivotal: he helped the theater department out of debt prior to graduation with an in-school production of a Star Wars musical parody he created with his teacher. That same year, his band at the time, Heroic Bear, released its first EP, a hardcore project he now deems “really bad.”
In the years that followed, he explored countless genres including country, alternative, funk and metal in various musical projects. “He was in, I kid you not, like eight bands,” says Luke Conway, who started managing Teddy Swims while he was touring as an opening hip-hop act in early 2019. “He was doing every single thing that you could possibly do.”
From left: Teddy Swims and manager Luke Conway photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
In June 2019, on the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Teddy Swims uploaded a YouTube cover of “Rock With You” that soon went viral. The success prompted him to ask his friends for a six-month commitment to help him keep momentum. During that time frame, he sang classics (Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”) and hits of the moment (Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved”) alike, with his spins on Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” and Mario’s “Let Me Love You” each eclipsing 100 million YouTube views. Publishers called first, then booking agencies, and before long, a dozen record labels had made offers. On Christmas Eve 2019 — a day short of six months from when he uploaded “Rock With You” — he signed to Warner Records.
While the covers helped grow Teddy Swims’ audience on a global scale, his priority upon signing was to create an identity all his own. “Some people get stuck in that world and never really make it out,” he says. “There was a lot of fear in no one caring about my [original] songs. I wanted to be an artist with my music.”
Warner placed him in rooms with veteran songwriter-producers like Julian Bunetta and John Ryan to help him hone his voice, and over the next few years, he wrote hundreds of songs, releasing singles across four EPs (including the holiday-themed A Very Teddy Christmas) and getting featured on tracks by Meghan Trainor, X Ambassadors and others. “I go back and listen to some songs that I did four years ago,” Teddy Swims reflects. “They started this idea of the signature Teddy sound that I feel like I’m finally nailing now.”
Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
That “signature” sound punctuates his September debut album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1), which is full of “sad boy breakup songs,” as he puts it. His powerhouse vocals (“Some Things I’ll Never Know,” “The Door”) and poignant writing chops (“Suitcase”) are on display throughout its 10 tracks, but no song better illustrates the style he’s created than “Lose Control.” After its June release, he shared three new versions — live, strings and piano — as the song gained steam on digital service providers and radio. By the end of August, “Lose Control” debuted on the Hot 100, where it has since reached a No. 67 peak. On Adult Pop Airplay, it climbs to a new No. 26 high on the Oct. 7-dated chart.
As the hit keeps growing, Conway says the strategy isn’t to strike while the iron is hot with unrelated follow-up content. In fact, it’s the opposite: he hopes the song becomes “cemented in culture” in the months to come, likening “Lose Control” to Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”
“We have to be protective,” he says. “It’s his story. This is the golden egg we’ve been searching for and fighting to dig out of the ground for five years. There have been a lot of conversations about finding a feature, but we see the lifespan of this song. We can’t dilute it by giving it anybody else’s identity.”
Teddy Swims is currently on a 43-date North American tour in support of the project, studying how each city reacts to the new material. “There’s no A&R that [compares to] when you’re at a show and you see what really moves people,” he says. As the title of his album suggests, there are plans for another installment. He says it could arrive by the middle of next year, though both he and Conway share that the writing likely won’t begin until after the tour wraps.
However, Teddy Swims does suggest that, if all goes well, the follow-up will contain brighter content. “I’m really hoping the next time is me falling back in love and moving on,” he says, taking a beat and then laughing. “Or it’s more sad s–t. You never know. Life is happening to us, what are you going to do?”
Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
A version of this story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Since entering the dance scene nearly a decade back, Spencer Brown has made his name on progressive house music that’s lush, emotive and pristinely produced.
That last part is not a coincidence. Brown, 29, has always been a hyper-perfectionist, and in the last few years he’s gotten a better understanding about why.
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“There’s been symptoms and signs since I was a kid,” Brown tells Billboard over Zoom. “It got really intense five or six years ago, but I didn’t know what was going on.”
What was going on was obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which Brown was formally diagnosed with during the pandemic but had always been a part of his life. The American Psychiatry Association defines OCD as “a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions). To get rid of the thoughts, they feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions).”
For Brown, OCD manifests as an extreme discomfort with uncertainty, with his obsessive thought loops being the compulsion attempting to mitigate it. Since childhood, Brown would find six different ways to ask his parents the same question. As an adult, he’d barrage his team with texts about how tickets to his shows were selling and ask 40 different people which of two mixes they thought sounded better.
“The thing is with with OCD, a lot of people think it means you have to like clean everything,” Brown says. “But in reality, it can come out in so many different ways and for me, it’s almost purely a mental thing. The ritual, so to speak, of milling over things that are uncertain.”
Certainty can be hard to come by for most people, and can be especially elusive for someone in a profession that relies on ticket sales, streams and consistent artistic inspiration. But after starting work with a therapist, Brown says he’s “learned how to sit with being uncertain about something better than I used to.”
It thus follows that his latest album is called Equanimity, a word Merriam-Webster defines as “evenness of mind especially under stress.” Out this past Friday (Sept. 29) via diviine, the album — Brown’s third studio LP — took him four years to make and found him spending 12-18 hours in the study every day during the last three months of production. He says that when he listens to it, he’s certain it’s his best work to date.
“The theme of this album is personal growth, not letting things out of your control affect your mental state,” he says. “That was a lesson I learned that I tried to capture into this music.”
Here, Brown talks about his diagnosis.
Tell me about how your OCD manifests.
With music, OCD for me comes out in perfectionism. I think that’s the blessing of this thing, because I’m so dialed in on what I’m doing. If it’s not a perfect mix, I’m gonna just keep on working on it and testing it out. I have an issue that I’ll finish it and turn it into mastering, then they’ll send the master back, I’ll sit with it and be like, “is this messed up?” I’ll sit with those thoughts, then maybe a couple of weeks later I’ll have to go back and redo the whole thing.
It sometimes drives people who work with me nuts, but we’ve learned to work in a productive way, where my team is fully aware of how my brain works, and I’m fully aware of how my brain works. They understand that sometimes I have this thing, and they totally accept that.
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Are there are other aspects?
I’ve had to make a conscious effort to not bother my team too much. I used to really worry all the time about ticket sales. For a big show, let’s say a couple days before we only have 200 tickets sold, and we need to sell 1,500 tickets. I would be freaking out like, “Is this going to be bad? Are people going to show up?”
I’d be blowing up my team like, “Do you think there’s gonna be walk ups?” But I get to the show and maybe 1,000 people buy a ticket the day of the show, and it’s a packed show. And I’m like, “Why did I spend days having so much anxiety about how this is going to be, when really all I can do is just promote the show?” So now we have a thing on my team. I don’t get ticket sales number counts. No one gives me any of that stuff anymore. It’s really, really helpful for me.
When did that boundary get put in place?
I would say post-COVID. I really started to understand how OCD affects my life about a year into COVID, which is a funny thing, because there’s so much uncertainty with COVID. That was a true test of not letting [OCD] run my life. Basically I learned practicing equanimity, which is which is what my album is called. That means all these things can be happening around you, but you have to ground yourself and understand it’s okay that you don’t know… You have to be okay with uncertainty.
What was the response within your peer group, when you shared the diagnosis?
I do have friends who deal with similar things. But obviously everyone’s very supportive. It’s like, this is my personality. This is how I have been my whole life. All that’s changed is putting a label on how my brain works and realizing it’s slightly different than how other people’s brains work.
Everyone is totally understanding, especially my team, my peers, my collaborators. Everyone knows that this is how I am.
What other adjustments have you made?
Pre-COVID, before I learned how OCD manifests in my life, all I would do is cause myself anxiety. It was this anxiety cycle of uncertainty causing anxiety, then I would do things to try to get certainty, like texting 40 different people sending them two mixes saying “which mix is better?”
Half the people would like mix B, and half the people would like mix A, so then I would go into this loop of like, “oh my gosh, which one is right?” Then I would go to my car and test it. I would go to the club and test it. I would test it in my studio and on my headphones and on my air pod, over and over and over and over. At some point, you just need to decide like, “This is what it is. I’m done.” The past is the past, and I need to move on instead of dwelling.
And both versions are probably good.
They’re different. That’s it’s art is something I had to also had to learn. Some of these creative decisions, there is no right or wrong.
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What other tools have you used to work with your OCD?
I was going into this therapist who’s incredible. And I was talking through all these things that were going in my head that I couldn’t explain. I would say things like “I don’t know if this, or I don’t know if that and it’s giving me anxiety.”
He’d say, “You’re looking for certainty on this, and I can’t give it to you.” All the sessions turned into me basically speaking to a wall. I love the guy, but that was the whole point of the therapy. I learned the same feeling I’m having with my therapist, where he won’t give me certainty on what I have uncertainty for, I need to apply this to my life and music and everything. The lesson is that that there’s no certainty in a lot of things in life, and you just need to be okay with sitting with that.
Have you developed any particular methods of sitting with that, so to speak?
I had a really powerful experience at Burning Man [this year.] I boiled down my career to four principles that, if I do them, it’s all I need to focus on. One is to be a good person to everyone around me — team, venues, promoters, anyone around me. First and foremost, just be kind to everybody.
Number two is to love the music that I’m making. If I’m in the studio feeling like I’m making music for somebody else, or for some other reason other than the love of what I’m making, that’s not the right reason to make it.
Number three, when I’m playing shows, play the music I love, don’t cater to anyone; don’t pander to anyone. If it comes out of the speakers, it must come from the heart for me.
Number four is creating authentic content that is aligned with my values. It doesn’t matter what’s trending or what people think I should do. It must be authentic. These four things are what I’m focusing on in my career. The rest of the stuff like the ticket sales, the numbers, that’s all stuff I need to not focus on. Or comparing myself to others. There’s a lot of uncertainty in that of “Why did they get that?” None of that stuff is relevant.
“We all must make a choice — to be a hero or a villain.”
The familiarity of Morgan Freeman’s commanding voice couldn’t calm down the fans — 80,000 of them, reportedly — standing around Coachella’s Sahara Tent. The perilous tone of his monologue, paired with producer Mike Dean’s sinister synths, stressed the festival’s need for a hero. And comic book animations projected on either side of the stage illustrated there was only one man for the job.
Wearing a custom black Chrome Hearts suit, a masked Metro Boomin emerged from beneath the stage, his purple cross-embroidered cape fluttering in the desert wind. But regardless of the Academy Award-winning actor’s resounding introduction, it was the usually soft-spoken producer’s booming voice that caught festivalgoers — and one of his many guest performers — by surprise when he greeted the crowd.
“When we was done, Future kept telling me, ‘Bro, I ain’t know who the f–k was talking!’ ” Metro recalls. “ ‘I ain’t know you could do that! You be in a room and just be so quiet.’ ”
Future’s description of our hero’s usual alter-ego is true today as Metro sits at his own Boominati Studios in North Hollywood. He isn’t cloaked in his luxe costume; instead, he’s wearing a black Barriers hoodie with the image of Michael Jackson’s moonwalking silhouette highlighted by a baby blue spotlight. One of the studio’s ceiling lights floods him in the same blue as the bandanna wrapped around his tri-colored dreads.
He has gotten more comfortable in the spotlight lately. Over the last decade, Metro, 30, has transformed from a behind-the-scenes trap beat-maker to one of rap’s most in-demand producers. He has managed to take over pop music, too, and without compromising his signature sound, which is characterized by eerie synth loops, 808s, soulful samples and orchestral finishes and branded by his notorious producer tags. (“Metro Boomin want some more, n—a!”) So far, he has produced 115 Billboard Hot 100 songs, including 10 top 10 hits, among them Post Malone’s Quavo-featuring “Congratulations” and Future’s “Mask Off,” and two No. 1s, Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” (featuring Lil Uzi Vert) and The Weeknd’s “Heartless.”
But Metro’s latest solo album, Heroes & Villains — which he released Dec. 2, 2022, on Republic Records and his own label, Boominati Worldwide — continued his ascent into rarefied air: the producer-turned-successful artist. The sequel to his 2018 debut album, Not All Heroes Wear Capes, which topped the Billboard 200, and the second installment of an ongoing trilogy, Heroes & Villains built on Metro’s own cinematic universe, adding depth to his sound with more live instrumentation, like the horns on “Superhero (Heroes & Villains)” or the choral vocals on “Umbrella,” and assembling hip-hop Avengers like 21 Savage, Young Thug, Travis Scott and Don Toliver to perform their melodic and slick-tongued superpowers.
Heroes & Villains became Metro’s third No. 1 album, earning his biggest opening week yet, with 185,000 equivalent album units (according to Luminate), and its lead single, “Creepin’,” with The Weeknd and 21 Savage — a remake of Mario Winans’ 2004 R&B smash “I Don’t Wanna Know” (featuring Diddy and Enya) — spent the first half of 2023 in the Hot 100’s top 10, peaking at No. 3. Between Heroes & Villains’ No. 1 debut and Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape, which topped the Billboard 200 in July, no other rap album reached No. 1 on the list, making it the longest wait in a calendar year for a rap album to lead the chart since 1993 (the year Metro was born).
Amiri sweater and jacket.
Sami Drasin
The album’s success was unsurprising to those paying attention to Metro’s creative promotion strategy for Heroes & Villains. He tapped Freeman, who narrated Metro and 21’s chart-topping album, Savage Mode II, to star alongside him in an action-packed short film directed by Gibson Hazard that also featured actor LaKeith Stanfield, Young Thug and Gunna. The clip kicked off his extensive rollout, which also involved an on-the-nose way to reveal the album’s featured artists.
A$AP Rocky had texted him one day about “this artist on Instagram that was doing all these comic book covers for hip-hop artists. And I was like, ‘Damn, this sh-t looks crazy,’ ” he recalls. “I DM’d [the artist, Alejandro Torrecilla], and I was like, ‘Yo, I’m finna start rolling my album out in three, four weeks. What if you did a cover for every artist on here and I just roll out the features that way?’ ”
The promotional efforts didn’t stop once the album was out: Metro embarked on a four-city in-store CD signing tour, debuted a live beat-making hologram of himself in Los Angeles and Miami, and projected his Heroes signal (from the cover of Not All Heroes Wear Capes) around the world (literally). “He was more in people’s face,” says Republic vp of marketing strategy Xiarra-Diamond Nimrod, who has worked with Metro since 2017. “[With Not All Heroes Wear Capes], we didn’t have as many in-store components. But this time around, we wanted him to have that interaction with [fans] and bring them into his world.”
The heightened visibility around Metro allowed the superproducer to transform into a superstar, separate from the ones with whom he regularly records. And more public-facing opportunities outside of music helped turn him into a household name: Earlier this year, he starred in and produced the music for Budweiser’s Super Bowl LVII ad and teamed up with the MLB Network for its Opening Day video, which was soundtracked by “On Time” and “Trance” from Heroes & Villains.
“That’s one of the things we discussed when we first met: Do you want to be that low-key producer who you know some of their songs but you can walk right past them today and not know who they were? Or do you want to be out and known, like Swizz Beatz, Timbaland or Pharrell [Williams]?” says his manager, Ryan Ramsey. “The numbers he’s doing on his own albums show he’s at that level where people are going to see him and say, ‘Hey, that’s Metro Boomin.’ ” Ramsey, who also manages Brandy, has represented Metro for the last two years under SALXCO, alongside the management company’s founder and CEO, Wassim “Sal” Slaiby; SALXCO vp of A&R Rahsaan “Shake” Phelps; and Amir “Cash” Esmailian through his own YCFU management company.
And while his No. 1 rap album set a high bar, getting a prime-time slot at Coachella served as the perfect climax for his rollout. “We had every intention of stealing the weekend,” Metro confidently says in retrospect.
Junya Watanabe jacket, Fendi pants, Louis Vuitton shoes.
Sami Drasin
In order to pull it off, he recruited a superstar-trained team: creative director La Mar C. Taylor, who works closely with The Weeknd; show director Ian Valentine, whose creative studio Human Person (which counts Billie Eilish and Post Malone as clients) was also responsible for animation, staging, lighting and content; choreographer Charm La’Donna, who works alongside major acts from Kendrick Lamar to Dua Lipa; and his longtime recording and mixing engineer Ethan Stevens, who helped him curate the setlist. He even passed on using Coachella’s designated livestreaming crew and hired his own to ensure the quality of the video and flow of the performance for folks at home.
“There was so many people advising me, ‘Don’t spend your money on that show.’ But I was like, ‘Nah, n—s have to get this,’ ” says Metro, who remains mum about how much Coachella paid him to perform but reveals he spent “over four times” that amount to ensure it happened just as he envisioned. “People were already hearing me different with this album. But they needed to see me different now.”
While his albums have established Metro as a masterful curator, “Trochella” confirmed he was an equally skillful showman. And much like his albums, he brought out his all-star collaborators, including The Weeknd, 21 Savage and Diddy for the first live performance of “Creepin’,’’ to perform the hits they share. While he mostly flexed his superproducer muscles from behind the DJ booth, he made sure to bask in his glory from the stage, too.
As Metro’s biggest risks — like dropping an album during the holiday season or investing a small fortune in an impressive Coachella set — have continued to pay off, he credits his unwavering dedication to the art. “Over time, [I’ve] established trust between me and my listeners, [so they know] that whatever I have to offer as far as music or anything, I’m definitely putting 1,000% into it,” he says. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, look at me like a star!’ Look at me like I care.”
Growing up in St. Louis, the producer born Leland Tyler Wayne looked up to hometown hero Nelly. Country Grammar was the first explicit CD he bought, and it inspired then-literally young Metro to become a rapper. But rapping requires beats, and since he couldn’t afford any, he decided to make his own. Producing turned into a bigger passion and came with added benefits, like not having to compete with so many other aspiring rappers — and sounding like a more legitimate profession to his mother, Leslie Wayne.
Leslie played an instrumental role in getting his career off the ground: When Metro was 13, she bought him his first laptop, where he downloaded the popular music production software FL Studio. And when he was in high school, she made 17-hour round-trip drives from St. Louis to Atlanta nearly every weekend so he could work with artists he connected with over social media, like OJ Da Juiceman and Gucci Mane — while still returning home before school on Monday morning. (Leslie died in June 2022, and Metro pays tribute to her often on social media and during live performances.)
He moved to Atlanta in 2012 to attend Morehouse College but dropped out after one semester to pursue music: In 2013, he got his big break when he produced Future’s acclaimed “Karate Chop” (featuring Lil Wayne). And Metro seemed to take over hip-hop in 2015: He joined the Rodeo Tour with Travis Scott and Young Thug as a supporting act and the latter’s touring DJ; produced most of Future’s DS2 album; worked on Scott’s debut album, Rodeo; and executive-produced Drake and Future’s joint mixtape, What a Time To Be Alive.
But he experienced a career-defining moment in February 2016 when Kanye West dropped The Life of Pablo. Right before premiering it during his Yeezy 3 fashion show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, West called Metro about one of the songs he had produced, “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1.” “I didn’t put that tag on that beat. It’s Kanye’s sh-t,” Metro explains. “He asked for it like, ‘I’m finna play the album, but I need the tag on the song.’ And he just threw it in there real quick.” In a now viral clip, West is seen screaming and embracing a raccoon fur trapper hat-wearing Kid Cudi before “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you” blasts throughout the arena’s speakers. Metro’s tag catapulted him into the pop culture zeitgeist, from the numerous memes that flooded the internet immediately after to the hype it still creates whenever a DJ plays the song at a party. “That just took it to a whole ’nother stratosphere,” he reflects.
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Sami Drasin
From there, Metro continued building relationships with other rappers and elevating their music while reinforcing his reputation as the genre’s go-to producer. “A lot of times an artist will say, ‘I want to work with you, but send me beats.’ With Metro, it’s the opposite. He wants to create with you at a very intentional level,” says Vladimir “V Live” Samedi, who began working as Metro’s tour bus driver in 2016 before he was promoted to Boominati’s head of A&R. Metro dropped collaborative projects with Big Sean, Nav and 21 Savage, the lattermost of whom Metro has worked with on three full-lengths: Savage Mode, Without Warning (with Offset) and Savage Mode II. “Metro is the greatest producer of all time. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my brother,” 21 Savage tells Billboard.
With prestige, a star-studded network and a stacked production discography, Metro had all the tools he needed to fly high on his own. He launched his Boominati Worldwide label in partnership with Republic in 2017 and, the following year, released his first solo album, Not All Heroes Wear Capes, a cohesive, superstar-filled set that plays out like a movie soundtrack. His hero motif stems from a family tradition: He, his mother and his four younger siblings used to “always go see every single Marvel movie together. We done followed the whole timeline on some nerd sh-t,” he reflects. “It has always been an interest to me.”
Sony Pictures Animation, which produced 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in association with Marvel, took notice. The studio worked with Republic on the first Spider-Verse soundtrack (which yielded Post Malone and Swae Lee’s mega-smash, “Sunflower”). When the time came to work on its follow-up, Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group president of music Spring Aspers says it “was just pure luck in terms of timing” that the label had just finished working on Metro’s Heroes & Villains campaign and decided he was its “ideal partner.”
“It started off with him doing a couple songs, and then it just got to the point where I went to him and was like, ‘Yo, do you want to executive-produce this whole thing? Because it looks like I’m going to have that conversation,’ ” Ramsey recalls. “He said, ‘Man, that would be dope!’ ”
Martine Rose suit.
Sami Drasin
Metro started working on the Spider-Verse soundtrack at the end of December — the same month he released Heroes & Villains. “We’re already on a roll; might as well keep it going,” says Stevens, who also served as executive producer. Compared with the two-and-a-half years they spent working on Metro’s solo album, the duo knocked out the Spider-Verse soundtrack in six months. Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse taps a diverse web of artists — Don Toliver, Nas, Lil Wayne, James Blake, Myke Towers, Mora and more — to deliver an ingenious mix of hip-hop, pop, Latin and Afrobeats that nods to the film’s protagonist Miles Morales’ African American and Puerto Rican heritage.
“He once texted us a line that a string quartet had played,” says Phil Lord, one of the film’s co-writers and co-producers, of what became the opening sequence of “Am I Dreaming” with A$AP Rocky and Roisee, an up-and-coming St. Louis artist whom Metro discovered on YouTube years ago. “Then he had [Mike Dean] come over and do this really wild synth stuff. That became the song that’s on the end credits of the movie. And now that’s going to be the official Oscar submission for the film.”
When the time came to promote the soundtrack, Lord and Chris Miller, another one of the film’s co-writers and co-producers, took a page out of Metro’s playbook. “In the first movie, there was this phenomenon where people were making their own ‘Spidersonas,’ ” Miller says. When they saw what he did with Heroes & Villains, they tapped the film’s character designer, Kris Anka, to create Spidersonas for each of the featured artists on his soundtrack.
But they had a special plan for Metro’s own caricature. The day before Metro attended one of the Spider-Verse film screenings, Lord and Miller asked him to swing by the studio an hour early to test out some lines they had written for him. “The Republic team, our team, the music executives from Sony and the editors were crammed into another booth,” Lord recalls. When everyone cracked up after he recited, “My bad, everybody! There was somewhere to run,” Miller says they knew “that was the winner.”
Now his Spidersona — and his voice — actually appear in the film as Metro Spider-Man, but Nimrod wanted to ensure that fans would see him off the silver screen, too. “We made these cool cutouts of his character and were hanging them from light poles, and there were decals on the sidewalks and walls,” she says. “People were fully stealing these cutouts and tagging me on social like, ‘I got my Metro Spider-Man hanging in my room!’ That’s when I was like, ‘OK, now this is fire.’ ”
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Sami Drasin
Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse reached No. 1 on both the Soundtracks and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts — matching, and outperforming, respectively, the performance of the first Spider-Verse soundtrack, which also received a Grammy nomination for best compilation soundtrack for visual media. Ramsey hopes Metro’s Spider-Verse contribution can score the same distinction, and given the success of Heroes & Villains and “Creepin,’ ” next year could well be Metro’s long-awaited Grammy breakthrough. Incredibly, he has been nominated only once, and not for a project one would have expected him to have worked on: He co-produced Coldplay’s “Let Somebody Go” with Selena Gomez, from the band’s Music of the Spheres, an album of the year nominee. “[Frontman Chris Martin is] a good friend of mine. Sometimes we work on ideas; sometimes we just go walk outside,” Metro explains casually.
But with so much music to make, industry accolades are far from his mind. He’s currently wrapping up his long-awaited joint album with Future and still working on his project with J.I.D that the two teased earlier this year. Metro is also working on A$AP Rocky’s highly anticipated album, Don’t Be Dumb, and is one of a few trusted producers working on The Weeknd’s final album.
Nonetheless, there are a few other artists he dreams of collaborating with in the future. “I still really want to do something with Justin Timberlake,” he says. “I need to work with Miguel. I still haven’t worked with Jay-Z.”
But while Metro will always make time for the music, he plans to spend the next decade focused more on his businesses. Since he launched Boominati, “a lot of the business was focused on Metro and our producers that we work with: Chris XZ, Doughboy and David x Eli,” Samedi says. Now Metro is transferring his artist discovery and development skills to the executive side so he can start signing artists. And, he teases, he has already started his own production company that will allow him “to do stuff for screen.”
“The amount of grind and effort I put in my 20s into the music, I’mma put into the business aspect through these 30s,” he says. “I watched my music seeds grow from 20 to 30. I can watch the rest of these grow from 30 to 40.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
This week in dance music: Kenya Grace made her Hot 100 debut with the drum ‘n’ bass infused “Strangers,” Michael Bibi announced he was leaving the hospital amid his ongoing cancer treatment, then immediately jumped on a flight to Ibiza to make a surprise appearance at DC-10, The BPM Festival released its phase one 2024 lineup, Daft Punk announced that a “drumless” version of Random Access Memories is coming in November, CloZee answered 20 questions upon the launch of her fall tour and we spoke with the founder of San Francisco’s Portola festival, happening this weekend, about the event’s lineup and adult vibe.
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And of course, there’s more. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Eliza Rose, “Take You There”
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The Label: Warner Records
The Spiel: “Yeah, I can take you there,” Eliza Rose offers on her latest, before simply proceeding to do so with the slick, swirling, simmering club track. Simultaneously playful and tough, “Take You There” marks another winner in the U.K. artist’s catalog, which already included “Better Love” and “Pleasure Peak” from this year, along with her 2022 smash “B.O.T.A. (Baddest Of Them All).” The new track comes with a trippy, fairly mesmerizing music video that features Rose playing dress-up with friends in a drop top, along with a claymation version of the artist.
The Artist Says: “‘Take You There’ and ‘Better Love’ always come together as a pair, a bit like two-sides of a coin showing how in underground dance music you can have both these slick, summery cute moments, as well as these more mad, chaotic ones. It’s important to me as an artist to touch both sides.”
The Vibe: We’ll literally go anywhere Rose wants to bring us.
VTSS & Boys Noize, “Steady Pace”
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The Label: Big Beat Records
The Spiel: “Feel that groove between our bodies, keep a steady pace,” VTSS whisper-sings on her euphemistic new collaboration with Boys Noize, “Steady Pace.” A punchy beat indeed keeps the track moving at a quick clip, creating the same sort of hypnotic, lightly industrial vibe that have long been core elements of both the Polish and German producers’ respective wheelhouses. Stick around for the gear shift in the last 20 seconds, which hits like a strobe light right in your eyes.
The Artist Says: “The track was made during mine & Alex’s session in LA in our friend’s Sonny’s studio,” says VTSS. “It really came about quite quickly – within probably first our we had a sketch and I’ve written the first verse. I haven’t done much in studio collaborations so I was extremely nervous and frankly I didn’t know Alex that well, but we instantly clicked and have been great friends since.”
The Vibe: High-octane sexual tension.
Logic1000, “Grown On Me”
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The Label: Therapy/Because Music
The Spiel: Berlin-based producer Logic1000 returns with her first release of 2023, “Grown On Me.” Built around a single lyric stating the title over and over, the track maintains the producer’s signature style of fusing an ethereal vibe with weighty production, with the message here taking on greater meaning given that the artist, born Samantha Poulter, recently became a mother.
The Artist Says: “It’s been way too long since releasing something new so this is a special moment for me. Ever since Tom (big ever) and I wrote ‘Grown On Me’ the vocal has been stuck in my head, and the lyric has a very special, private meaning to me, that in fact came after choosing the sample. This song was written (and now released) during a transformative period of my life. I hope it uplifts you the way writing it uplifted me.”
The Vibe: Lush, feminine, maternal.
LP Giobbi, “Time Expands”
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The Label: Yes Yes Yes
The Spiel: LP Giobbi launches her Yes Yes Yes imprint, part of the Defected Records family of labels, with “Time Expands.” The track functions as its title suggests, making three minutes and 24 seconds stretch into a good trip of a good time with a darkly pulsing bass line, flecks of rhythm guitar, a long windup with a percussive breakdown, and a voice spitting hippie philosophy while repeatedly declaring that “time shrinks or expands in exact opposition to what you want to do.”
The Artist Says: “I grew up going to this hippie festival in Oregon called the Oregon Country Fair,” LP says on the label name’s origin. “My parents started going in their 20s, and I have never missed it since the womb. It’s my favorite place on earth because it leans into weirdness, joy, and mind-opening experiences. The first thing you see when you walk on site is a sign that just says, ‘Yes Yes Yes’ and it makes me smile ear to ear every single year. This label is not beholden to one genre or one particular sound. It’s simply about good dance music, made for the dancefloor that expands your mind and makes you feel good.”
The Vibe: Shrinking, expanding, spinning, grooving, vibing — yes indeed.
Sam Gellaitry, UNDER THE ILLUSION
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The Label: Major Recordings
The Spiel: The Scottish producer follows his 2022 album VF Vol II with the UNDER THE ILLUSION EP. Sophisticated and pristinely produced, the four-track project is dancefloor fare equally well-suited for the dancefloor or the afterhours. Gellaitry will surely unfurl them all during his set this weekend at San Francisco’s Portola festival.
The Artist Says: “For this project, I decided to make an EP focused solely on dance music which actually feels like returning home after a long time away for me,” Gellaitry says. “I started making music due to my fascination with Daft Punk and French House when I was ten, so it’s almost bizarre that I haven’t officially dropped a project dedicated to the genre that got me started off in the first place! These tracks are intended for night time usage.”
The Vibe: That rare midnight-to-3 a.m. timespan, and all the possibilities contained therein.
“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
ALIVE COVERAGE
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.
Melody Timothee
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.
Melody Timothee
“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.
Melody Timothee
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.