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For a brief shining moment in the 1960s, Black trans soul singer Jackie Shane seemed to be turning into a star. That is, until she inexplicably vanished.
“This is a woman who disappeared off the face of the earth for 45 years and nobody knew if she was alive or dead,” says Michael Mabbott, co-director of the forthcoming documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. “As a filmmaker, that’s an intriguing thing in itself.”
The simultaneously sad and triumphant tale of a groundbreaker before her time is the crux of the film. Co-directed by Mabbott along with Lucah Rosenberg-Lee and co-produced by Elliot Page, it brushes away the dust and traces Shane’s stunning rise as a trans singer during an inhospitable period. The result of her quest is a long-overdue reclamation of Shane’s musical legacy. “This theme of erasure was such a guiding light for working on this project,” says Rosenberg-Lee, who is Black and trans himself. “I recognize how much of our history is lost.”
Shane, a native of the American South before moving to Toronto to escape the suffocating effects of Jim Crow, subsequently made waves with a song that inspired the film’s name, the breezy horn- and drum-fueled “Any Other Way.” Along with landing on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, it became a hit in Canada in 1962. And yet, despite Shane’s fleeting fame, Mabbott hadn’t heard of the performer until about a decade ago when he came across a bootleg of Jackie Shane Live! When he discovered she had been missing since 1971, his interest was further piqued.
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“It was staggering that she was from my hometown [of Toronto] and I didn’t know who she was,” Mabbott says. After Numero Group reissued her music in 2017 (a compilation of her career later won a Grammy Award for best historical album), it was revealed she was indeed still alive. From there, Mabbott attempted to get in touch — to no avail — before discovering she was living as a recluse in Nashville. Shane eschewed the music industry for myriad reasons, from caring for the woman she regarded as her mother to avoiding the discrimination that had plagued her career from the start.
“Our first phone call lasted four hours,” says Mabbott, who recalls how Shane had an endless supply of vivid memories from her too-brief career — and was ready for a second chapter. “We spoke every week for over a year,” helping the two form a close bond. “She eventually said, ‘Let’s work on this documentary.’ ”
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Unfortunately, as plans were coalescing, Shane died in her sleep in February 2019. “Her death was all the more tragic because she was ready to come back,” Mabbott says. “She felt the timing of this was important to her and that her message had to be heard now more than ever.”
With that, the filmmakers tackled her journey with added vigor to piece together the puzzle of a remarkable life. Luckily, Shane had scrupulously preserved the artifacts of her career, from acetate recordings to homemade jewelry. Mabbott, who worked with Shane’s long-lost family and a music anthropologist to excavate her legacy, calls the treasure trove she left behind “a documentarian’s dream.”
The final product, which premiered at South by Southwest in March, tells a story the filmmakers hope will spur audiences to both reflect and feel inspired. As Rosenberg-Lee explains, “To have people watch the movie, feel connected to it and see that, ‘Wow, people like this have been around for a long time doing their thing…’ It’s very gratifying for sure.”
This story originally appeared in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
On a recent trip back to London, rising pop-rock artist Towa Bird visited the house she lived in during university — it’s where she started producing, writing songs and posting videos online — and felt a rare moment of pride upon returning there. “Standing back in that house, it sort of hit me: ‘I have come a long way,’ ” says Bird, 25. “Even though I don’t necessarily let myself believe that, I have.”
Bird’s career has been growing gradually since 2021, when she scored a major-label deal with Interscope and moved from London to Los Angeles. She gained recognition as the towering guitarist who could shred in Olivia Rodrigo’s 2022 Disney+ special, driving home 2 u. In 2023, she scored an opening slot on Reneé Rapp’s Snow Hard Feelings Tour and, in October, released breakout single “Drain Me!,” an electrifying alternative-rock hit about lust that appears on her debut album, American Hero, out June 28.
Growing up in Hong Kong and later London, the half-Filipino, half-English artist was raised on alternative and classic rock, identifying most with guitarists (her idols include Jimi Hendrix and Prince). “Hearing the way that guitarists would manipulate the instrument, making it sound just as strong and present as the lead vocal, I was attracted to that,” Bird says. By 12, she was learning how to play on her father’s old guitar, “which I think had like three strings on it,” she recalls. “But I definitely tried to make it functional.”
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Two years later, Bird formed her first band, The Glass Onions, and started performing at local Hong Kong dives. Yet, despite her early strides, Bird assures she wanted to be everything but a full-time artist — namely because she never felt empowered or allowed to be one at all. “I don’t think anyone in my family thought that [this] would be the case — including myself,” she says. “I thought it’d be a cute hobby.”
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She went on to attend Goldsmiths, University of London, but dropped out in 2020 just before the pandemic. Shortly after to pass the time, Bird started uploading videos of herself shredding over other artists’ songs on TikTok and soon “fell into” writing, producing and playing guitar for more emerging acts. Never feeling like she had “permission” — mostly from herself — to be an artist, Bird preferred working outside of the limelight. But what she didn’t expect was that through those sessions — many of which were done on Zoom late at night in London with artists in L.A. — she felt the authority she had always sought. “Just being in the scene and being seen was good,” she says.
Around the same time, Bird met music managers Jacob Epstein and Zack Morgenroth (of Lighthouse Management, whose clients include Rodrigo) “through the internet,” as she says, and signed with the pair. She figured a publishing deal would follow, but despite being “too scared to sing,” Epstein and Morgenroth were simultaneously setting up label meetings for Bird as an artist. The interest she received piqued her own, saying the encouragement and support from major labels “gave me a little kick up the ass” to focus on her own music. In 2021, she signed an artist deal with Interscope and moved to L.A.
Bird has since emerged as an urgent voice in rock music, whether through her singing or shredding. And most often, it’s both. She believes that in the last few years, there has been a groundswell of interest in live instruments again, especially among her generation. She credits the resurgence in part to her pal Rodrigo. “Olivia really opened doors for me,” Bird says, referring to the Disney+ special that earned her early praise and press. “It was really cool of her to see a young female artist and be like, ‘I want to highlight you.’ ”
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Last year, Bird had another peer (and labelmate) give her a boost when Rapp enlisted her to play guitar on “Tummy Hurts,” off Rapp’s debut album, Snow Angel. She then brought Bird on her 2023 tour, which allowed the singer-guitarist to meet her fans in person for the first time — and to spend time with singer-songwriter-producer Alexander 23, a fellow Rapp tourmate and friend of Bird’s whom she worked with on American Hero.
Across the album’s 13 tracks, Bird reflects on a range of relatable 20-something woes: raging over how expensive life is and the lacking U.S. health care system on “B.I.L.L.S.”; adjusting to life in L.A. and a career in music on “This Isn’t Me”; and feeling fearful about falling in love with a friend on “Sorry Sorry.”
“I was never like, ‘Oh, I’m going to write a gay song today,’ ” she says of her approach to writing. “It was just like, ‘I want to write a good song about love or sex,’ or whatever I was feeling. It’s funny how [my music has] been labeled as queer music or whatever people decide to label it as, but for me, I think it’s just good music — maybe.”
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True to form, Bird struggles to celebrate the victories she has had so far. She can’t even say the word “success” without using air quotes. She insists she’s trying to get better at acknowledging her wins along the way — which now include a slate of summer festival gigs — and already has an idea of how to celebrate her album’s release. “I’ll sit and listen to the full thing, front to back. And then probably cry and get aggressively drunk,” she says with a laugh.
But in spite of feeling “sh-t scared” about its release, Bird recognizes its importance. While she never felt like she had permission to land exactly where she has, with American Hero, she gives that runway to anyone who listens. “It’s something that I clearly still continue to lack,” Bird says. “I mean, what young woman will tell you that that [support is] something they received growing up? Probably none. Especially in this industry. So if I can help in any sort of way, even inadvertently, then that’s great.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
You won’t see Ty Dolla $ign’s name in the production credits for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” But without him, the song that this spring put an exclamation point on Lamar’s long-simmering beef with Drake — a jovial but menacing track primarily produced by Mustard, built around a pulsating set of strings — might very well not exist.
Long before Mustard became the top purveyor of Cali bounce, he was a friend and student of Ty’s. They both rolled with a crew called Pu$haz Ink that included artists across disciplines — rappers, singers, graffiti artists, producers and even a few gangsters for good measure. As part of the group’s in-house production squad, Ty would host the crew at his home while he cooked up beats for them. And while he toiled away, the young DJ Mustard steadily documented everything he saw, clocking Ty’s every move to see just how the magic was made. One night, the crew was having a party at a house in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills neighborhood when Mustard played the song “Scotty” by Atlanta snap group D4L; Ty still remembers how everyone went crazy and started dancing. He was blown away by the beat’s simplicity, which reminded him of the jerk music then growing in popularity in California.
The next morning, still inspired, Ty started making some new beats. One of his production partners, Chordz, gave him a record to sample that Ty slowed down and pitched perfectly to accentuate the 808s, hi-hat, a snare and a piano sound. The beat became “Toot It & Boot It,” the 2010 debut single for Ty’s Pu$haz Ink peer, the rapper YG — and Ty’s first hit record. But, more importantly, the beat laid the foundation for what became the de facto sound of the West Coast for the next decade, one that Mustard perfected and made his own.
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“Mustard [was] always in my ear like, ‘Yo, you got to stop, the sh-t is done, the sh-t is done, stop adding all that sh-t,’ ” Ty remembers today. “I guess it was irritating him so bad that he was like, ‘I’m finna do my own beats. Give me some sounds,’ ” he adds with a laugh. So he did. “The same sounds he’s using, I gave him years ago.”
Ty’s easygoing nature can mask his intense work ethic and deep musical knowledge. But that combination has helped him endure and soar in this industry for more than a decade. In addition to a solo career that has redefined the sound of R&B, he has worked with an astounding number of artists across genres, from 21 Savage to Fifth Harmony to Charli XCX to Post Malone.
“To me, he is someone who is such an ambidextrous player,” says Julie Greenwald, chair/CEO of Atlantic Music Group, where Ty is signed to Atlantic Records. “You could put him in any room, any studio environment, and the guy will always rise to the occasion of making great music. He’s so comfortable in his own skin and with what kind of contributor he is. Ty is that guy who makes great music on his own and makes great music with whoever you put him with.”
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That comfort is why Ty didn’t think twice about helping Mustard find his sound. “Mustard brought it to a whole ’nother level,” he says today over Zoom from his house in L.A. At 42, Ty still looks like the baby-faced crooner who first appeared back in 2010. His hair is longer, of course, and he’s a bit heftier, but he still loves blowing trees. As he’s talking, he preps a pile of spliffs to take with him as he runs errands; you get the feeling that Ty’s checklist before leaving the crib is, “Keys, phone, wallet, spliff.” “I tell people when it comes to music, people have already played every single line — there’s just different ways you can do it,” he says. “Mustard just brought it to a whole ’nother level. I’m super proud of what he’s doing, and we’re just setting it up for the next generation.”
These days, the artist born Tyrone William Griffin Jr. has a lot to be proud of. It has taken him a while, but 20 years after starting his first musical group, the R&B duo Ty & Kory, Ty has finally attained the one accolade that had thus far eluded him: a No. 1 as lead artist on the Billboard Hot 100. Earlier this year, his collaborative album with Ye, Vultures 1, topped the Billboard 200, and one of its songs, the uproarious “Carnival,” rose to the Hot 100’s top spot. It was a feat many believed wouldn’t or couldn’t happen — not because either artist lacked the ability to make a No. 1 album or single today (before 2024, Ye already had 10 Billboard 200 No. 1s and four Hot 100 chart-toppers to his name), but because, well, no one really understood why or how the project was happening in the first place.
By 2022, Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) had ostracized himself from nearly every industry of the many he had participated in, following a ceaseless series of offensive remarks and actions, both in person and on social media. He lost his lucrative sneaker deal with adidas after he made inappropriate sexual comments to employees and following a series of antisemitic remarks he made publicly. He lost his longtime deal with Def Jam Records and Universal Music Group, and high fashion brands like Balenciaga, which Ye once helped find success in the hip-hop world, cut ties with him. The usual Ye redemption cycle — which has historically involved him doing something public and widely considered offensive, then releasing a remarkable piece of art that makes much of the public all but forget the offense — would not work this time. Despite making a public apology on Instagram for his harmful antisemitic comments, it seemed as if Ye had finally crossed the Rubicon and become radioactive.
So when news broke last fall that Ye and Ty were dropping an album together, many fans were perplexed. But the pair’s alignment made sense in multiple ways. The two had worked together many times before: Ty wrote and lent vocals to songs on 2016’s The Life of Pablo (“Real Friends” and “Fade”) and produced and sang on its 2018 follow-up, Ye. Historically, Ye has relied on someone else to help him bring a project across the finish line — Rick Rubin famously helped him assemble what became Yeezus in 2013, and most recently, Mike Dean has been his go-to homestretch guy. On Big Boy’s Neighborhood, a popular L.A.-based radio morning show, Ye explained why Ty was that essential player for Vultures 1. “Mike Dean was the kind of person that you can hand him something and he’ll hand you a finished product back. That’s how Ty is,” he said. “You can give him something, even a murmur, and he’ll bring it back with the words, he can fix all the notes on it, he can bring in the drums, the music.” Today, Ty agrees with his collaborator’s assessment. “I remember Thundercat’s dad [drummer Ron Bruner Sr.] telling me one time that he used to teach his son to be a master of one thing instead of trying to do all the things,” he says. “But what I feel like I was the master at was completing songs — whatever [their] f–king genre.”
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As for the why of Vultures 1 — why Ty, a low-key, affable guy who seemingly gets along with everyone, would align himself with someone as caustic as Ye — as Ty sees it, the answer is pretty simple.
“Ye is the best artist of this generation, besides me, and I don’t give a f–k about what people were talking about. I know my n—. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met,” he says. Ty also shrugs off the notion that he might have feared the album would perform poorly because everyone else thought Ye’s musical career was over. “Just with my analysis of how it goes with him, he goes all the way to the top. And something may happen and he’ll say [something people find offensive] — and then people [get] right back, you know. Because this sh-t is undeniable.”
The “how” of Vultures 1 is a bit more complicated.
Coming off his 2023 single “Motion,” a Chris Brown-featuring track heavily inspired by South African amapiano music, Ty wanted his next album to reflect the sounds he has loved while traveling. When Ty ran into Ye at a club in Tokyo in the spring of 2023, he was just starting work on the project, and he asked Ye to executive-produce. Ye agreed, and the two started working on music together the very next day. Ye’s involvement moved the music away from the Black diasporic and house and club influences that Ty was experimenting with — and marked the genesis of Vultures 1.
Ty already had a bunch of songs in the can that he says he started right where we’re sitting a few weeks before our Zoom, in his studio in downtown Hollywood. He has had this space for just about a year, and a remodeling is ongoing; the only signs that a major hit-maker owns the spot are the vintage cars parked in the back in various states of restoration and the collection of rare synths and keyboards usually housed in the main studio.
Despite its current appearance, this is where Ty feels most at home creating. The freedom he has here led to the experimentation that yielded “Burn” — probably the warmest, most soulful track on Vultures 1. “The ‘Burn’ that I brought [Ye] was a completely different song. It had a whole different beat. A whole different direction,” Ty remembers. “He took it, loved it, stripped it down, redid the beat, and we got ‘Burn’ — and it’s the second-biggest streaming song on Vultures.”
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That’s pretty much how the entire album went: Ty would bring Ye a track, and the two would then deconstruct it and build it back up — a laborious, time-intensive undertaking, especially amid the globe-trotting the two did while making the project. Largely at Ye’s behest, Vultures 1 was recorded in Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In trademark Ye fashion — he famously recorded Watch the Throne with Jay-Z between European castles and the Mercer hotel in New York — the duo set up in wildly varying locales at each stop.
“Japan was hotel rooms, Italy was hotel rooms. Then we got Sting to let us use his [Italian] villa,” Ty says. “At first we were just recording in the living room, recording by the pool, setting up recording equipment out there, and then we found out that there’s an actual recording studio there,” he adds with a laugh. In Dubai, Ye and Ty took over an empty building in a hotel complex and built a bunch of makeshift studios throughout it. That’s where they made “Do it,” the YG and Nipsey Hussle-featuring track that sounds like a baroque strip club anthem. “It’s a very expensive album, I will say that,” Ty admits. “It would make for a crazy documentary.” (Ty has footage of some of the songs being made, but probably not enough for a movie, he allows.)
The Ye and Ty world tour of sorts was, Ty says now, nothing new for him: “I’ve always done that. All of my songs; all of my albums — traveling everywhere, laptop, mic, speakers. I’ve done music that way ever since you could make music that way.” But he got his start much more traditionally. Born in South Central L.A., Ty was raised in a musical home. His father, Tyrone Griffin Sr., was a session musician who played all over L.A., sitting in with acts ranging from rap royalty (2Pac and Snoop Dogg) to R&B rising stars (Immature) and the legendary funk band Lakeside (best known for the 1981 hit “Fantastic Voyage,” sampled by Coolio on his track of the same name).
Griffin Sr. and Ty’s mother, a real estate agent, separated when Ty was young, and he stayed with his mom while his older brother went to live with his dad — but Sr. left a lasting impression on Jr., who had started fiddling with his dad’s instruments before he could talk and later amassed his own collection at his mom’s place. (Today, Ty can play a multitude of instruments by ear, including the drums, keyboard and guitar.) When Ty started making beats as a 12-year-old, he would use two cassette tapes to make his own loops. Realizing that method’s inefficiency, Griffin Sr. bought his son his first MPC and set him on his way.
Listening to the ambrosial blend of ’90s R&B, G-Funk and rap that constitutes Ty’s solo catalog today, it’s easy to hear his musical DNA and the complementary influences of his funk musician dad and the gangsta rap that dominated the airwaves of his youth. Both powered Ty’s fresh vision for what popular Black music could be.
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In the early 2000s, Ty worked to fine-tune that vision — and the world got its first glimpse of what he had in mind with Free TC, his 2015 debut studio album dedicated to his incarcerated brother, Jabreal Muhammad. (The project’s title references Muhammad, nicknamed Big TC, who has been serving a life sentence since 2004 for a murder he says he didn’t commit.) At the time, most fans knew Ty from “Toot It & Boot It” and his Beach House mixtapes and EP, which birthed his first top 40 hit, “Paranoid.”
Those songs were good and catchy but belied Ty’s true musical dexterity, revealed more wholly on Free TC. Thanks to his songwriting and production résumé by that point, Ty was able to call on a stunning list of heavy-hitter guest stars for his debut — Lamar, Ye, Future, Brandy, Wiz Khalifa and Babyface, among many others. Combining classic R&B melodies and styles with modern rap energy, he melded the two worlds in a way few had successfully done before. Think Future, if he could sing traditionally well, produce and play instruments, and you start to scratch the surface of Ty’s capabilities.
“[When we signed Ty in 2012] R&B was in kind of an uncool space. He was, like, bringing it into the future with his songwriting, with his production, with his melodies, the way he was approaching songs,” recalls former Atlantic A&R executive Shawn Barron, who signed Ty to the label after hearing some of his early music. “It was just all so new. And I feel like really he’s the forefather of the R&B that we hear today.”
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In person, Ty is usually humble. When prodded about his influence over modern R&B, he impishly acknowledges some similarities between what he has done and the R&B currently dominating the charts. But when it comes to his love of the genre, he’s unabashed.
“I love R&B. You see outside [the studio], I got my 1964 Chevy Impala on chrome spokes. When I’m in that I’m listening to old R&B — you know, love songs and that vibe that just fits the car because it’s the time,” he says, putting his spliff down to indicate how much he means what he says. He’s just as fulsome when it comes to giving props to R&B’s newer stars. “I love SZA. Chris Brown is a legend — he’s like, The One. I love Bryson Tiller and what he just dropped. Brent [Faiyaz] is hard. There’s so many people I can name… Coco Jones, as far as like, the new ones coming out. Yeah, she’s killing it. Tyla. There’s a lot of dope R&B right now.”
He trails off a bit and then blurts out one more name: “Leon Thomas!” A 30-year-old, New York-raised singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, Thomas earned a modicum of fame as a kid actor on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. A former member of the Rascals songwriting and producing crew, Thomas went on to write and produce for Babyface, Drake and Ye. But his biggest placement came in 2022 when he co-wrote SZA’s “Snooze,” the song that would win him his first Grammy. And if it’s up to Ty, Thomas will become a household name soon: He’s the first signee to Ty’s label, EZMNY Records.
“When he took a liking to my music, one thing I noticed is that he always respected what I did as a live musician and never really wanted to change me into something quote unquote more palatable. He really respected who I was truly as a human being and as an artist,” Thomas says. “We’re doing our best to garner the best numbers we can get. But I love the fact that he’s investing in someone like myself who’s really focused on doing my best to make art and to stay true to being a musician.”
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Making the music that inspires the next generation of R&B artists is one thing; taking charge of the career of one of that generation’s most promising artists is another entirely, especially for someone like Ty who has made a career out of following his own creative north star and rarely having to make tough compromises. But Barron, Ty’s partner in EZMNY, believes he’s actually the perfect person to lead a label. The two started EZMNY in 2022 as a place to showcase what they consider to be real music. “I just want to find the best artists on the planet,” Ty explains. “To me, it’s like, ‘OK, popularity is one thing, all that sh-t that a lot of people look for, how many streams did they do? How many followers do they have?’ [But] I wasn’t worried about that. Because I know that’s not what it takes. That’s one thing to figure out. But you got to be good in order to last now.”
“Ty’s a great artist, and I feel like he knows certain things that it took for him to get where he needed to be on certain things that I don’t even know,” Barron says. “I feel like he takes those thoughts and actions [on the artist side] and he brings them over to being a label executive. And he’s very artist-friendly. He’s able to describe and break down things that may be confusing to some people because he has been through it already.”
As he launched his own label and traveled the globe making an album with one of the most famous/infamous artists on the planet, Ty was also confronting personal news that seems to still surprise him: His 19-year-old daughter, Jailynn, aspires to follow in her father’s footsteps and make music, too. “She came to me the other day, and was like, ‘Dad, I want to record one record.’ I’m like, ‘What you want to do, rap or sing?’ She’s like, ‘I want to sing on my art.’ So she just made one song. It’s hard. And she’s going to keep on going.” He jokes that Ye’s oldest daughter, North, must have inspired Jailynn after North’s fan-favorite verse on Vultures 1’s “Back to Me.” “I’m like, ‘Wow, I really never heard you sing before.’ [Jailynn] really just never sung in front of me,” he recalls. “And she told me she didn’t want to do music. She was playing basketball.”
His own solo project — the one he intended to focus on when that first fateful meeting with Ye happened in Japan — will have to wait: Now he has a trilogy to finish. Today, in his main studio room, he plays music, some of which he says is from Vultures 2. As Ty tells it, the album is almost done and could be released any day now. (The album art features a masked Ty holding a portrait of his incarcerated brother, Muhammad.) As with Vultures 1, his label may well be among the last to find out, which Greenwald says isn’t a problem: “He has earned that right with us. When he calls to say, ‘I made a project, it’s coming out,’ we always say, ‘Listen, this is your name and we got you.’ ”
When asked about the rumors that he and Ye will circumvent streaming platforms and sell the album directly to fans, Ty replies, “Why not? Switch it up. He’s always got something up his sleeve. I always got some[thing] up my sleeve.” To Ty, the album’s distribution comes second to the music. He’ll let Ye worry about the marketing and distribution. His focus, as he works with an artist he believes has unlimited creative potential, is to get the rest of this trilogy out into the world — just like he has always done.
“We got all the songs. Basically, it’s just like, ‘How can we get it there? How can we go bigger than the first album?’ ” Ty says, clearly amped. He won’t say it explicitly, but it’s within reason that, as we’re speaking, he’s trying to piece together the puzzle that will become Vultures 2. After all, that’s why Ye — and everyone else — loves working with Ty. He can do anything and everything. But unless the album makes fans move and adds something new to music — something that has never been attempted before — then to him, it’s not done. “Certain people will probably expect you to just do the same exact sound,” he says. “But that sound’s already out.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Koe Wetzel may be one of 2024’s bigger breakout artists, but he’s certainly no rookie. The 31-year-old country-rock singer-songwriter has been releasing albums for nearly a decade, with a big sound that’s rooted in country but also mixes in plenty of alternative rock and Americana. His gritty (and sometimes uncomfortably personal) lyrics have helped him grow a sizable core audience. In 2022, he first made his presence felt on the Billboard charts with the anthemic “Creeps,” which reached the top 30 on Hot Country Songs and the top 15 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.
Now, Wetzel has reached the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with a song that integrates a new genre to his usual mix. “We kinda wanted it to have a little R&B feel,” he says of the soulful “Sweet Dreams,” which entered the Hot 100 at No. 47 on the chart dated June 1. “We had talked about just computer drums on it, off a beatpad. I said, ‘I think it would be really cool if we just set up a smaller kit, and tightened up the snare drum a little bit, and give it that pad sound.’ I think it really set the mood for that song a little bit more, to give it that R&B feel.”
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“Sweet Dreams” is Wetzel’s long-awaited first taste of Hot 100 success, but it likely won’t be his only for very long — “High Road,” a new duet with country and pop hitmaker Jessie Murph released a few weeks after, is expected to follow it onto next week’s Hot 100 (dated June 22). Both are set to be included on the ascendant country-rocker’s upcoming album 9 Lives, due for a July 19 release on Columbia, which will be followed by the Damn Near Normal World Tour, taking Wetzel all over the U.S. and then through Europe this late summer and autumn.
Below, Wetzel talks with Billboard about his breakout chart hit, the factors that led to his recent crossover success and the unexpected cover song he has planned for this album cycle.
How did “Sweet Dreams” first come together?
We were in the studio writing — actually, a different song — and it was going nowhere. So we stepped back, like, “Do we want to go a different direction?” I wrote in my notes, probably two weeks prior, “It’s hard to have sweet dreams when I’m such a nightmare.” And we had a guitar lick that we had put together a couple days before on the road while touring. We went in and the song pretty much wrote itself. It came out quick and easy.
When you say “We,” who were the other primary players on the song?
It was Gabe [Simon, co-writer/producer], and then it was [co-writer] Amy Allen — she had a huge influence on it. She does a lot more pop music, and it’s something that I’m not really used to, working with somebody that’s in the pop world. My guitar player Josh Serrato, coming up with the melody for it, and the lick on it. Man, it turned out really good.
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“Sweet Dreams” has many lyrical similarities to your last single before this one, “Damn Near Normal,” including themes of sleeplessness and self-medication. Were those songs either inspired by the same moment or come together at the same time?
Yeah, the mood was in the same realm — we wrote those songs probably 24 hours apart from each other. So we were still in that mood, kind of the same air of the song.
Is there anything you feel comfortable sharing about the personal meaning behind those songs?
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of my songs come from personal experiences, past relationships or [whatever]. This song wasn’t about a certain personal relationship, or a past relationship. It was just kind of multiple relationships — and then bouncing it off people who had had similar problems with relationships and then making it all come together.
When you heard the final product of the song for the first time, did you feel like, “This is going to be a song that takes me to a new level?”
I mean, we knew it was good. We didn’t really have a plan for it. It was so much different than the rest of the record, different from anything I’d done before. So I was excited to have that kind of sidestep genre from the country-rock stuff that I’m normally used to. When we first heard it for the first time, we were like, “Man, this is cool, this is a different sound for us.” We didn’t expect the people to dig into it the way that they did, but we’re glad that they did.
You’ve been building momentum step by step with your audience, getting a bigger foothold on streaming. Do you feel like this song having the immediate results that it has is more a matter of it being a different feel sonically than your other stuff, or is it just good timing?
I think the timing is just great right now, because like you said, with “Damn Near Normal” and the other songs that we teased, people were getting behind [everything] because I feel like it’s something that they’ve expected from me for a while. The last five albums have kind of had the same similar sound. So this is me kind of getting away from that and trying a new sound. I never wanted to have the exact same sound all the time. I think that the way that these songs are going in a different direction, and people having the response that they are — especially after what I’ve put out the last five records — it’s awesome.
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You talked about teasing new music. Is that something that comes natural for you, that sort of TikTok promotional aspect of it? Is that fun for you, or is it just, “This is the business, this is how we gotta get this stuff done”?
Yeah, for me, it’s not really [that fun]. This is the first time we’ve actually teased the whole record. But I mean, in this world today, with social media and the way TikTok and all that stuff’s working, man, it’s so vital to do it. It helps out so much. Times are changing, and it’s really cool to see.
The week after “Sweet Dreams” debuted, the biggest debut on the Hot 100 was “Pink Skies” by Zach Bryan. You guys aren’t necessarily doing the same thing, but do you feel like his success opened up more opportunities for guys working in your lane of alt-country, country-rock, whatever you want to call it?
Yeah, absolutely. Zach Bryan is, like you said, opening up a whole new world to country music, or whatever genre you want to call it. Because [listeners] go look at “Pink Skies,” they go look at “Something in the Orange,” whatever Zach’s done. And it sets them up for other artists that are in that kinda same sound. So all he’s doing is bringing more people into our world — it’s incredible for all of us.
Do you have any more plans for “Sweet Dreams” now that it’s out? Anything to keep it in the spotlight given its success?
No, I think we’ll let it have its own time. Especially when the record comes out, it’ll make a little bit more sense. It’s one of those songs that kind of rounds out the whole sound of the record. So I think we’ll just let it have its own day in the sun — and that’s why we put it out as a single. We didn’t want it to get overlooked in the record.
Anything fans can look forward to on the album or tour that they wouldn’t be expecting, or maybe wouldn’t be obvious from what you’ve done already?
We did an XXXTENTACION cover of “Depression & Obsession.” It’s going to be on the deluxe, after the record comes out. He was one of my favorite underground rap artists, and I always like to throw something kinda left field into my records. I put my own spin to it, and I’m really excited for people to hear it.
“Sweet Dreams” is a pretty well-traveled song title from music history. Do you have a favorite “Sweet Dreams” from the past, whether it’s Eurythmics or Patsy Cline or Beyoncé?
Ah, man. Any that come to mind, no, [not] right now. I thought I was the only one that thought of “Sweet Dreams”! And then, like you said, a lot of people were like, “Well, there’s this song, and that song…” I was like, “Sh-t. Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Did you come in when I was dressed like a sperm?”
Despite her wry tone, Annie Clark — the artist better known as St. Vincent — isn’t joking. Not quite an hour earlier, Clark was posing for her Billboard photo shoot in a hooded, ruffled cream mini-dress in front of a billowing blush-pink backdrop meant to evoke a different bit of human anatomy. (Let’s just say the setup was a spiritual descendant of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work.)
As St. Vincent, Clark conjures an enigmatic, opaque aura. But today, she’s in a frank, funny and freewheeling mood. She jests about the suggestive pictures of female models plastered on the walls around us (“Boner patrol, look out!”) and swerves easily from topics highbrow (abstract Russian painter Kazimir Malevich) to low (an off-and-on gamer, she was briefly obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Clark chose to soundtrack her shoot with David Bowie’s coke-fueled 1976 classic, Station to Station, and as we gush over it, the singer-songwriter gives her beige Prada jacket a little shake. “I do like to think this trench coat is giving ‘Dancing in the Street,’ ” she says, referencing the outrageously ’80s music video for Bowie and Mick Jagger’s hit cover. “Minus the cocaine.”
Much like Clark herself, St. Vincent’s Grammy Award-winning output — which has run the gamut from twee indie to ass-kicking art-rock to conceptual electropop — is an arresting mix of the intellect and the id. Her latest album, All Born Screaming, can be experienced as an atavistic staring contest with existence — or simply as a rippin’ alt-rock record.
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“It’s about life and death and love,” she explains. “And that’s it.” For the 41-year-old Clark, at least two of those topics are intrinsically linked to her own identity as a queer artist. “Every record I’ve ever made has been so personal about what’s going on in my life at any given time. I’m queer. I know how to code-switch. The idea of identity as performance has been very clear to me since I was a child.” Even so, Clark shuts down the suggestion that she adopted a mask or performative identity for the album: “I’m queer, I’m living in multitudes, but this record in particular is not about persona or deconstruction.”
Shushu/Tong dress and headpiece, Zhilyova gloves, BY FAR shoes.
Lenne Chai
Code-switching — changing one’s behavior to suit an uncomfortable environment — is nothing new for LGBTQ+ people. Even in the generally progressive-minded music community, Clark says the world queer musicians currently inhabit is “very different” than when she kicked off her recording career in 2006 with the three-song EP Paris Is Burning. “Which is one of those things which gives me a lot of hope,” she notes. “I know there are certain things in the world trending in a scary direction, but all in all, I’d rather live right now than any other time in history. We wouldn’t be having this conversation 60 years ago. I would be a nurse, I would be a secretary, or I would be a mother.”
When I suggest that 60 years ago, I would have been pushed into a heterosexual union and having same-sex dalliances on the down-low, she laughs and perks up. “Exactly! You would have a beautiful wife at home and would be getting your d–k sucked at the whatever. And you’d never know if it was a cop [trying to entrap you].”
As she references the hankie code (as early as the ’70s, gay men used different-colored bandannas to signify sexual preferences) and Hal Fischer’s 1977 photo book, Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men, it’s clear Clark knows her queer history. “People the world was hostile to developed these secret languages, secret codes, in order to communicate. I find that fascinating,” she says. “You’re very aware there’s a subterranean, subtext layer to everything that’s going on — and you have your antennae up at all times. That is erotic to me. But I’m glad that [I live in this era].”
As for the downside to LGBTQ+ culture going mainstream? “Well, if you’re safe for the TV screen, you also invite an aspect of grift [from the outside world],” she muses. “Which… I raise an eyebrow at.” To emphasize her point, she cocks her left brow; for a moment, she could pass for a hyperlogical Vulcan on Star Trek. “But there have been plenty of queer people in music. Even if the culture was saying no, there were always queer people in the arts. Please. We have built this.”
For a college dropout, Clark has done pretty well for herself. Born in Tulsa, Okla., she relocated to Texas as a child when her mother moved her and two older sisters to Dallas following her parents’ divorce. (Clark now has four brothers and four sisters from the combined families.) Her childhood obsession with the guitar, ignited by the 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips, became serious as she entered her teen years, and a stint as a roadie for her uncle’s jazz-folk duo, Tuck & Patti, gave Clark her first taste of the touring business.
Clark attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music but left after three years (though her parents didn’t find out until several years later, when they read it in the press). “Other people have real educations,” she says. “I had philosophy teachers who were like, ‘How is Kierkegaard like Bob Marley?’ ” She shakes her head, almost tenderly. “It’s not. It’s not and that’s fine.” (When I ask how a music school dropout seems to have an endless fount of cultural, historical and artistic references at her disposal, she laughs and asks, “Is that your way of saying, ‘It’s OK you never went to real college’?”)
After cutting herself loose from Berklee, Clark spent 2005 and 2006 on the road with the robe-rocking, symphonic indie outfit Polyphonic Spree, joining Sufjan Stevens’ touring band for a spell shortly thereafter. Her solo debut album, Marry Me, released in 2007 on Beggars Banquet, was a chamber-pop cauldron with notes of Stevens and Spree, but had a playful, wry sense of humor that indicated it was just the tip of the St. Vincent iceberg. (For one thing, the album takes its title from a running joke on Arrested Development — a fact that today causes Clark to rest her head on her fingertips in faux embarrassment before concluding, “It is a great show.”)
On her next release, Actor, Clark’s music developed a jagged, sardonic bite that brought her to the Billboard 200 for the first time (at No. 90). Her top 20 follow-up, the 2011 art-rock statement Strange Mercy, was tinged with pain, fury, self-doubt and confusion — and dispelled any lingering misconceptions that she was a holdover from the demure, precious indie pop of the ’00s. While Clark had always seemed like an artist with something to say, on Strange Mercy, she sounded like an artist who needed to say something.
“In order to get good, you have to go through a series of humbling and humiliating experiences,” she reflects. “On the other hand, you have to have this psychotic belief — an unreasonable belief, truly — that you are going to write songs and make music that is going to matter. And that’s a really crazy thought.” She pauses. “I have that thought — with plenty of self-loathing and self-laceration — but I also have this [feeling], ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to die.’ ”
Camilla and Marc shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves.
Lenne Chai
Among those who took notice of Clark’s creativity and drive was Talking Heads legend and fellow rock eccentric David Byrne. Their 2012 collaborative album, the funky, brass-heavy Love This Giant, netted Byrne his first top 40 entry outside Talking Heads on the Billboard 200.
“Annie is so many things all at once,” Byrne tells Billboard. “Beautiful, inventive, inscrutable — in the best way possible. I know her as someone warm and friendly, but as anyone listening to her music can hear, she’s got a dark side that as far as I know just has an outlet in her music. Would that all of us could do that.”
After a lengthy tour with Byrne — “I love playing shows. I’m up there, and truly, something else kicks in,” Clark emphasizes — she solidified her reputation as an art-rock auteur on her self-titled fourth album, the first of three on Loma Vista, in 2014. With a chromatic purple-blue-pink palette and a gray ’do teased to the heavens, Clark delivered the most stylistically cohesive St. Vincent album yet — and for the first time on wax, she sounded like she was having a blast. St. Vincent won Clark a Grammy for best alternative music album, kicking off an active streak of her collecting at least one Grammy per proper studio release since. In 2014, Clark also spoke publicly about her queerness for the first time, telling Rolling Stone, “I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity.”
With 2017’s Masseduction, Clark pivoted to electropop and paired it with neon-drenched, latex-heavy visuals, as well as some of her most personal songs yet. Co-produced by Jack Antonoff, the album (her first top 10 entry on the Billboard 200) expanded her creative circle to include a range of musicians such as Sounwave, Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Mike Elizondo, Pino Palladino and Cara Delevingne (the latter of whom Clark dated for a year and a half, briefly putting her in the tabloid spotlight). Masseduction singles “New York” and “Los Ageless” hit the Adult Alternative Airplay and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, and the title track won her the Grammy for best rock song. Not that she’s in it for the accolades: “I’m a musician because I’m obsessed with making music,” Clark states. “If I wasn’t, God knows, I don’t think it would be pretty.”
As her profile grew, Clark earned her first GLAAD Media Award nomination for outstanding music artist in 2018; that June, she unleashed “Fast Slow Disco,” a dancefloor remix of one of Masseduction’s tracks, along with a music video where she cavorted with a throng of leather-clad men making out with one another. “Happy Pride,” she tweeted. “It was sweet of these boys to let me crash their party.”
Fittingly, the tune’s title was inspired by a text message exchange with Wendy Melvoin, whose romantic relationship with Lisa Coleman in Prince’s backing band The Revolution provided sorely needed representation in the ’80s. “Annie’s a real artist. It’s always satisfying to be friends and compatriots with people that you have respect for,” Melvoin says. “She’s extremely talented,” Coleman agrees. “[She’s] a real musician that was so influenced by what we did, and she had a reverence for us. It was easy to return that because she is so good.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
By 2021’s Daddy’s Home, Clark had nothing left to prove, which might explain why the album — partially inspired by her father’s 2019 release from prison after he served time for a stock manipulation scheme — was her first where she looked backward for inspiration. (Then again, maybe she meant it literally when she titled her 2017-18 tour Fear the Future.) Steeped in ’70s rock, AM pop and queer camp, the album netted her another Grammy for best alternative music album and another GLAAD nomination for outstanding music artist. As a victory lap and era-appropriate tie-in, she supplemented her own headlining trek for the record with a stint opening for Roxy Music’s farewell tour.
Beyond Roxy Music and Byrne, Clark has amassed an enviable Rolodex of rock royalty. She performed alongside the surviving members of Nirvana at their 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony; produced Sleater-Kinney’s 2019 album, The Center Won’t Hold, and co-starred with the band’s Carrie Brownstein in the trippy 2020 mockumentary The Nowhere Inn; contributed to the 2021 remix album McCartney III Imagined (even getting a phone call from the Beatle himself); and feted Eurythmics at the duo’s 2022 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction, performing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Having worked with so many of her own musical heroes, she has also paid that forward, contributing to tracks by next-gen fans like Willow and Olivia Rodrigo.
“I’ve been a huge St. Vincent fan since I was a teenager. I think she’s such an inspiring artist and a wonderful person. I was so excited to bring her in to work on this song,” Rodrigo tells Billboard of co-writing “Obsessed” with Clark for the deluxe version of GUTS. “She added so many unique textures and sounds that I could’ve never thought of.”
Those inventive, meticulous methods stuck out to Willow when Clark guested on “Pain for Fun” from the former’s 2024 album, empathogen. “St. Vincent’s prodigious attention to detail is something that I have admired since hearing her for the first time at 12 years old,” Willow says. “To have had the opportunity to be in the same room with her, to witness and observe her process, is something that I will always hold close to my heart and something I will always refer back to for inspiration.”
“She’s an inspiration to me, but I can see [she is] to a lot of other singers and songwriters as well,” Byrne says. “And a somewhat underrated guitar goddess.” (Clark even has her own signature axe, a collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man, which Jack White played on Saturday Night Live in 2018 and Rodrigo trotted out on her tour this year.)
Another one of those singer-songwriters is, of course, Taylor Swift. Alongside Antonoff and Swift, Clark wrote (and played guitar on) “Cruel Summer” from 2019’s Lover. After years of fan campaigns and three subsequent studio albums, Swift finally released “Cruel Summer” as a single in 2023; it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks and has spent more time on the chart than any of her other hits, earning an astounding 1 billion official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
“I remain blown away by ‘Cruel Summer’ being the phenomenon that is it,” Clark says. “Not because it isn’t a great song. It’s indicative of the time we’re in, where a song from many albums ago, that wasn’t even a single at the time, the fans go, ‘No, this one — we pick this one.’ And then they march it up the charts. That’s completely a testament to her fan base being so powerful.”
While some critics and fans have described the rock-heavy, emotionally raw All Born Screaming as a return to form, the album also marks a few notable firsts for Clark. Though distributed by Virgin Music Group, it’s the inaugural release on her own label, Total Pleasure Records, which she calls “just a little cozy place for me.” She’s excited about plenty of young artists but shrugs off any label boss ambitions. “I never want to be the person who is like, ‘I’m so sorry, we can’t afford to pay for your video unless you shill for cat laxatives,’ ” she deadpans. “I’m not trying to be The Man to any talent that I love. It just means autonomy.”
Clark insists that “DIY till you die” is her guiding mantra on all fronts, from making music to mounting tours on a scalable level. “I more enjoy the creative side, but you have to be across all of it. It’s your career. You can’t just let someone tell you where you are going. And putting all those pieces together is fun for me.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
Perhaps more significantly, All Born Screaming is also the first of her own albums on which she is credited as sole producer (though she has co-produced more than half of her discography).
“I don’t think I could have made this record any other way. I don’t think I would have written these songs or explored this stuff without the solitude,” she says. “Around 2019 [I thought], ‘OK, I eventually just want to produce my own work.’ When I was making Daddy’s Home, I started making a plan for my engineer, Cian Riordan, to make my studio proper — to get more into the engineering side, hone my chops and build a playground for myself. But if I’m honest, the seed was planted earlier, because by the time I was 14 or 15 I was recording myself in my bedroom.” (Clark’s studio is in Los Angeles; she splits her time among New York, L.A. and Texas.)
A 2023 study of popular songs by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that just 3.4% of hits were produced by women in 2022, and Clark is still one of very few female producers finding success in the music business — with plenty more, she notes, deserving attention. “There are lots of women making their music DIY-style, and that is production,” she says. “My friend Cate Le Bon [who guests on All Born Screaming’s title track] is a great example of someone who produces herself and other people.” (The album also features drumming from Dave Grohl, Josh Freese and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa.)
When it comes to ways to increase LGBTQ+ inclusion in the industry, Clark is reluctant to provide any glib or easy answers. “The answer is, ‘Of course,’ but I can’t go, ‘If we only changed this policy.’ ” The Texas-raised Clark does not, however, hold back when asked about Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who she says is waging “an absolute war on women and reproductive rights. That dude sucks. He sucks. I hate that dude.” For a brief moment, she sounds like an exasperated teenager ranting about her high school principal, but soon regains her poise. “What I love about Texas is the toughness and the grit. You can’t be too highfalutin. With love, they’ll knock you down a peg.” She looks thoughtful. “I did run away when I was 18, but at the same time, if you asked me to name parts of my identity, ‘Texan’ would be up there.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins. CAMILLA AND MARC shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves, JW PEI shoes.
Lenne Chai
As an artist who has explored both identity and technology deeply, Clark is cautiously intrigued by the musical potential of artificial intelligence in the hands of artists. “The tool is as interesting as its holder,” she says, then flashes a mischievous half-smile. “In some ways, I’m more concerned about artists sounding like AI than I am [about] AI sounding like artists.”
Clark is far more troubled by a more established technology in the digital music era. “If you are a big pop artist, streaming is fine. But there is some music that reaches you very deeply but isn’t music that you put on every single day. I’m not going to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme every day. It’s one of the most pivotal records of my life, but I’m not going to stream it over and over,” she says. “Streaming incentivizes songs to be consumable over and over again. Now, certainly there’s great music you want to consume like that — but there’s a lot of music that’s excellent and doesn’t fall into that category. And those artists, because of streaming, are wilting on the vine.” (St. Vincent’s catalog has accumulated a respectable 394.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams.)
Aside from friends like Le Bon, there are plenty of modern artists who keep Clark jazzed about music’s future. “I love Rosalía,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “I saw her show last year. It was just art. It was so thoughtfully done. Post-modern choreography, flamenco. Just excellent.” All Born Screaming includes “Sweetest Fruit,” a tribute to the late trans artist SOPHIE, whom Clark deeply admired (though fan reaction to its literal lyrics was mixed). British rapper Little Simz is another favorite, and she lights up when talking about Willow. “She’s unbelievable. Her knowledge base and depth of reference is deep and varied. She’s pulling all these things together and making them her own, which is exactly what an artist should do.”
Whether speaking about her fellow artists, the music industry or her queer identity, Clark is animated and engaged; the only time she seems at a loss is when talking about how she fills her time that isn’t spent making music.
“I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Which is so boring,” she murmurs. “I work out. So boring.” Does she cook for herself? “Girl, no. Even playing Zelda, I would make dubious food.” Watch TV? “I will maybe watch something to fall asleep. I rewatched 30 Rock recently. I am obsessed with Girls5eva. It’s all the sensibility of 30 Rock, but with deep musical references. It makes me so happy.” Foster any unusual hobbies? “I walked into this bar across from Electric Lady [Studios in New York], but it was the wrong place — it was a coffee shop that turns into a knitting hour. I got the f–k out of there.”
After nearly two decades of making music professionally, Clark doesn’t seem fatigued or disenchanted by a business that often frustrates uncompromising creatives. If anything, she’s finding it easier to “trust in the process” with seven albums under her beloved trench’s belt. “There’s going to be speed bumps, and there’s going to be days when you don’t want to get out of bed. ‘Ugh, I can’t even face myself.’ And other days where you’re like, ‘Yeah, I am crushing it, wow!’ ”
Calling those polar mood swings “cancers to excise,” Clark says “it’s a miracle” she gets anything done. “The whole thing is chasing this feeling of being lit up and confused but excited at the same time,” she says. “It’s a bunch of people blowing into the same thing to make a balloon and, eventually, it rises. I don’t know how anything happens. I really don’t. The whole thing is mysterious. But I know if I focus on this little thing that I love, it will be OK.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday evening in Miami, and Ty Baisden is still taking care of business with an energy level that belies the hour.
“I’m a firm sleeper who gets my eight hours,” says Baisden, his Georgian drawl giving way to laughter. “But what I don’t do is the bulls–t. So subtract the bulls–t, and you’ve got a lot of time to work and a lot of time to rest.”
That philosophy has anchored Baisden since he broke into the business as a manager in 2008. During that time, the native Atlantan also closely observed successful creative/business partnerships including Disturbing Tha Peace Records with Ludacris and Chaka Zulu and Grand Hustle Records with T.I. and Jason Geter.
Given the tenuousness of most manager-artist relationships, Baisden wanted to apply that collaborative model to the right act. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to find an artist that will want to partner with me where they deal with all the creative and I deal with all the business. Then we can build a company together, and we’ll be protected because the company is our protection.’ ”
In 2014, he found an ideal artist-partner in Brent Faiyaz after discovering him on SoundCloud. “It wasn’t an easy thing,” Baisden recalls. “I had executives telling me, ‘Don’t partner with artists; that’s dumb.’ And I had artists thinking, ‘No, I’d rather do something with a major label.’ Brent was the first artist that really believed in the overall process of that kind of partnership.”
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Over the last nine years, the business alignment between Baisden’s firm COLTURE — an acronym that stands for Can Our Leverage Teach Us Real Equity — where he is head of ventures and innovation — and Faiyaz’s Lost Kids label has yielded several successes. Among them: Faiyaz’s 2020 EP, F–k the World, bowing at No. 20 on the Billboard 200, followed by his momentous No. 2 debut with second studio album Wasteland — against Bad Bunny’s multiweek No. 1 juggernaut Un Verano Sin Ti — in 2022.
Then in 2023, Faiyaz’s F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland Tour grossed $5.3 million and sold 68,000 tickets over 18 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Separately, in 2023, he launched his own creative agency, ISO Supremacy, in partnership with UnitedMasters. (Baisden is not involved.) ISO joined forces with PULSE Records in an artist development joint venture, and in May struck gold with genre-melding R&B singer Tommy Richman, whose “Million Dollar Baby” has spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Splitting his time between Atlanta and Miami with a 22-member staff, Baisden, 40, works alongside COLTURE co-founder and head of creative services Jayne Andrew and partner Paris “PK” Kirk. The three are also co-founders and equity partners in COLTURE Holdings, which houses the firm’s nonmusic-related businesses.
“I don’t manage artists,” Baisden says of the business he has built with Faiyaz. “The skin that I have in the game is seeing another Black man be successful in whatever they want to do.”
Devin Christopher
What COLTURE accomplishment stands out over the last 18 months?
Our company vertically integrated and built Brent’s [2023] tour from start to finish. Usually, management will hire out for everything to get done. I partnered with Wasserman Music’s Callender to route it and negotiate the deals. Meanwhile, I handled the entire budget. Jayne handled all the band details, creative direction and making sure Brent felt comfortable onstage while PK handled all the lifestyle and afterparty events. And we each split time going to the different [tour stops] and booking the buses, freight and travel.
That’s not the job of managers, but we’re not managers; we build businesses. To build a business, you’ve got to manage the budget so you can determine your margin. Brent’s tour profited because we controlled every single dollar that was spent. I just think that’s very loud. So many people go out on the road and don’t make money. The artist gets paid, but when it’s time to do your balance sheet, you come out in the red. Many times, when you have other people managing a big lift, you’re going to get blindly overcharged.
How does the COLTURE partnership with Faiyaz and Lost Kids work?
Christopher Brent Wood [Faiyaz’s birth name] and I are business partners. When Christopher turns into the artist Brent Faiyaz and I’m operating on the latter’s behalf, then my job title is manager, for which I get a percentage. That’s probably the best way I can put it. We’re 50/50 partners in Lost Kids, under which we have multiple businesses. That was basically our handshake to one another in the beginning. Those projects and his tours are the financial seeds for Brent and me to go out and make individual investments. Lost Kids gave Brent the opportunity to invest in ISO Supremacy with his high school friend Darren Xu, and now they’re having a huge success with Tommy Richman. Beyond music and publishing, our biggest investments under Lost Kids involve real estate in Atlanta and Dallas and more than 20 startup companies, including Athletic Greens, Therabody, Audio Shake and Seed. And the great thing is three of those four companies — Seed, Audio Shake and Athletic Greens — are led by women.
Lost Kids also sponsors annual initiatives on behalf of female executives and entrepreneurs.
We just finished our fourth annual Show You Off grant program, giving 12 women $10,000 grants each to run their own business or launch a new idea. One of the policies of the grant is to reward Black women that are from the DMV [Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia] area. This year was a heavy one with new ideas involving STEM companies, [artificial intelligence] technology, electric batteries, etc. Thus far, we’ve donated about half a million dollars or more to Black women-helmed businesses.
What additional clients and businesses are under the COLTURE umbrella?
On the producer side, we have Nascent, who’s just finishing his project, Don’t Grow Up Too Soon, that we’ll distribute independently; Jordan Waré and Dpat, who have both worked with Brent. We have a partnership with [podcast] Million Dollaz Worth of Game to help [former rapper/co-host Gillie Da Kid] build out a music division. We’re doing their artist N3wyrkla’s first rollout with Troy Carter’s Venice Music. We collaborate as well with [pop duo] Emotional Oranges on distribution and creative direction when needed. Then, in the same kind of partnership I have with Brent, there’s Canadian female artist Kalisway, who writes and produces funk and R&B. Lastly, we’re helping actor Malcolm Mays [Starz’s Raising Kanan] launch his music career to diversify his business.
What’s the biggest issue facing the independent community right now?
An indie company can put out a song and the song can blow up, but more than likely, the company doesn’t have sufficient infrastructure to make sure everybody’s paid fairly based on their contributions to the record that just changed their artist’s life. The artist and the label are going to get big checks, but the songwriters and producers are probably going to get paid a year or two later, depending on how savvy their manager is — if they even have a manager.
Where do you envision COLTURE three to five years from now?
We have a 10-year plan outlining that parent company COLTURE Holdings will be generating $100 million in revenue by 2030. That’s the goal. Over the next three years, we’re launching our full-fledged media department, including TV, film, podcasting and digital content. The sports division is developing, and we’re continuing our real estate operation. We’re basically building a community and a pipeline for disrupters who can either stay within our ecosystem or build their own businesses.
Additional reporting by Shira Brown.
This story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Jessica Berndt has worked in film/TV music for almost a decade, most recently as music supervisor with independent label Secretly Group. “I had a few items on [my] music supervision bucket list,” she says. “An A24 film was at the top.”
In 2021, that dream inched closer when A24 launched its own record label, A24 Music. The in-house entity partnered with Secretly Distribution to build its own catalog of musical intellectual property and ensure its releases appeared on streaming services and in record stores. While it’s rare for a film company to start its own label (excluding major conglomerates like Disney), A24 Music showed signs early on it could be the first successful independent filmmaker to bet on a label: To promote its 2016 Academy Award-winning best picture, Moonlight — which features an Oscar-nominated score by Nicholas Britell (Succession, The Big Short, If Beale Street Could Talk) — A24 hosted a live performance of its score in London.
Ever since, A24 has maintained a music focus across its projects, from 2021’s C’mon C’mon (scored by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner) to the upcoming MaXXXine (starring Moses Sumney and Halsey). And in May, Berndt was able to cross off that No. 1 goal from her bucket list with the release of trans horror film I Saw the TV Glow, for which she was co-music supervisor alongside Secretly Group founder Chris Swanson.
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Like Moonlight and others before it, I Saw the TV Glow leaned heavily on its soundtrack as a marketing tool, using its roster of featured artists to drum up anticipation among its target demographic months before release. Featuring a score by Alex G and original songs by a slate of indie-rock staples including Caroline Polachek, Jay Som and a title track from Phoebe Bridgers and Sloppy Jane (both of whom make cameos in the movie), Berndt says a catchy new song can drive as much advance interest in a film as a well-edited trailer.
While star-powered soundtracks have experienced a revival in the last decade — including for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Black Panther, The Lion King and Barbie — no one has done it in the indie space quite like A24. The company has expanded its brand as a film company into a formidable and growing music catalog, as well as a meaningful merchandise business and podcast network.
It’s that very strategy that enticed Jen Malone to work with the company as music supervisor on the hit HBO show Euphoria, which was a turning point for series co-producer A24 as a music-focused outfit. “Music can often be an afterthought in TV and film,” Malone says. “In Euphoria, we decided at the top that music was going to be like a character in the show, and A24 supported that the whole way through.”
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Euphoria spawned virality for a number of songs on its soundtrack and, in some cases, led to a streaming uptick of over 2,100%, according to Luminate, following a synch. Whether that was for Labrinth’s original score and songs for the show — two of which he and Euphoria star Zendaya performed at Coachella in 2023 (“All for Us” and “I’m Tired”) — or older licensed works like Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line,” Sinéad O’Connor’s “Drink Before the War” and DMX’s “Party Up,” Euphoria played a large role in igniting trends that would later perpetuate as popular sounds on TikTok.
A24 also creates extended Spotify playlists based on its soundtracks, as well as special-edition vinyl records, both of which continue to strengthen viewers’ relationship with a film long after the lights come on in the theater. On A24’s website, hot pink I Saw the TV Glow vinyl is for sale next to a myriad of other superfan offerings, from coffee-table books and posters to oddities like Marcel the Shell figurines, Everything Everywhere All at Once hot dog fingers and Hereditary-themed gingerbread kits.
And now, just a few years in, A24 Music is rolling out its most ambitious project yet: a star-studded set titled Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense arriving in July. It follows A24 remastering and rereleasing the band’s 1984 classic concert film, Stop Making Sense, last year.
And everyone seemingly did get involved with the album, which is just as stacked with major stars like Lorde, Paramore and Miley Cyrus as it is with indie breakouts like The Linda Lindas and Blondshell. “I feel like there’s a real sense of play permeating the entire project,” says Evan Whikeheart, head of label and shared services at Secretly Distribution. “It was a real joy to hear how all these artists from different musical backgrounds came together to interpret these songs.”
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Representatives close to A24 Music tell Billboard it’s still the early days of its exploration into music-focused programming but cite a desire to “attribute the success of A24 Music to all the incredible artists we work with.” (The company declined to be interviewed for the story.) Yet Talking Heads’ David Byrne says the A24 team is largely responsible for the tribute album’s success, saying that he was “absolutely hands off” with the process. “When I saw the list of artists who wanted to do it, I have to say I was pretty excited,” Byrne says. “I thought ‘Damn, this is going to be an amazing record.’
“It’s hard to imagine that yet another generation might connect with this film,” he continues. “We like to believe that life is short and art is long, but here, it is really happening.”
This story will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Myles Smith initially posted a teaser of what would become the soaring folk-pop hit “Stargazing” to his TikTok in early April, he had no idea what would become of it — both in terms of its overwhelming fan response, but more pressingly, how the then-still-unfinished preview would sound when it ultimately became a completed product.
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“As the song was gaining momentum, I was like, ‘Oh snap, I’m gonna have to finish this thing,’ ” Smith tells Billboard. A week after making that initial post, which featured him singing a stripped-down rendition of the song’s captivating hook over a simple acoustic guitar, Smith unveiled a studio demo of “Stargazing,” which he continued to use as a teaser — generating 80 million views across several videos — until its official release on May 10.
Soulful melodies, heartfelt lyrics and an online following of fans hungry for more made the perfect recipe for the 26-year-old Luton, England native’s debut on the Billboard charts. With 6.7 million official U.S. streams in its opening week, according to Luminate, the track became Smith’s first-ever Billboard Hot 100 entry at No. 77 on the chart dated May 26. And the song is continuing to heat up as summer rolls in — it reaches a new No. 51 high on this week’s list, boosting Smith into the top five on Billboard‘s Emerging Artists chart for the first time as well.
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As “Stargazing” continues to shine, Smith is taking it all in, without abandoning his go-to strategy: sharing glimpses of unfinished projects with fans along the way. In the past few weeks alone, Smith has already posted demos of the pop-infused folk ballad “Whispers” and the charming love song “Be Mine” to his TikTok. “It could be a ‘Stargazing’ part two,” he teases of the latter track. “You never know with these things. I was itching to get it out.”
Below, Smith opens up about the cosmic growth of “Stargazing,” balancing social media with mental health, his experience being on tour, his dream collaboration list and more.
Where did you get the idea for “Stargazing,” and how did it come together?
It was something that was birthed out of being with the people that I loved in a space that I loved. I was out in Malibu in L.A. [in January], my first time ever there, and distinctly different from where I grew up. I was with songwriter Jesse Fink and a songwriter-producer Peter Fenn, who I’ve collaborated with before. I just signed with my label [RCA Records], and I was like, “I want to write something that’s really warm, fun and happy.” I came up with the hook pretty instantaneously.
It was just us jumping around, about day five into writing — looking at each other with guitars and having the time of our lives. It came from the idea of the people that you love, the things that you love, always being present in your life, maybe in a way you don’t recognize or see. And then that coming into light later in the day, and that euphoric moment of realizing that. The whole song wasn’t finished on that day, but the embers of it definitely were. From the very moment that that melody was found, the warmth in the room was infectious.
Where did the “Stargazing” metaphor come from?
It jumped out of nowhere. It was getting late in Malibu, and we’re looking over at the ocean and the sun setting, and in that beautiful moment, I stood there and it was quite cathartic. I was like, “Damn, I’m doing the thing that I’ve really wanted to be doing while looking at this beautiful night sky setting.” We were like, “Oh snap, is this what it’s called?” We threw the word in and it found its life there.
How much did the initial recording change from the final product?
At the time, it was just really the hook and the bare bones of the verse and melody. I think that’s the exciting part of where we are now in music. Not everything has to be done, and not everything has to be perfect. In fact, the process of getting there was very much a reciprocal relationship between me and my fans. Watching them react to it, I was even more inspired to finish the song. We kept the bones of the demo in there, and we embellished it to bring it to studio standard. We wanted to not step too far away from the magic that had been created.
So when you posted that initial snippet on TikTok, you didn’t have the whole song done yet?
No, the whole song was not done by that point but it was something that we knew was special. “Solo” and “My Home” — my two songs before that — were a similar process. I just fell in love with the bare bones of the song. I’ve got this really itchy finger in which I can’t wait to put something out. I know for a lot of artists, it’s about putting out what’s perfect. But for me, there’s so much beauty in imperfection.
A big part of why I love the audience that I have is that they bear with me as I get through things and as I explore what something should sound like. Them being part of my creative process is integral to the music being what it is and to it connecting the way that it connects. I’m forever thankful to the feedback online. It really matters in that final mastering and finishing of any song that I make.
Has there been any reaction to its chart success from friends or family that stands out?
My mum was exactly like me, and was like, “Is this real? Are you being scammed?” [Laughs.] We got on FaceTime and I got about 50 texts from friends and family because my mum had gone mental on all the group chats. Especially here in the U.K., the reality of a U.K. artist being on the Billboard [charts] isn’t very big, so when you hear it, it does sound a little bit like a dream. Then it happened, and we were like, “Oh my word. We’re making waves across the pond.”
It’s so fulfilling and so inspiring, the fact that I’m able to do this, and follow so many great British artists. To have support across the water and feel like I have a home away from home has just been so humbling, and such a privilege of an experience. Charting on the Hot 100 has such a profound impact on an artist’s journey, to really gain confidence and validity in how they think and feel about their art and their music.
Do you have a favorite interaction or use of the song on TikTok?
The ones that really get me are the wedding ones. This is someone’s biggest day of their life to this point, potentially. And they’ve chosen my voice, a kid from a million miles away who grew up in a town that no one’s ever heard of, as their soundtrack. It stops me in my tracks every time that I see it, and it reminds me that the thing that we do as artists really does have an impact on people’s lives.
Sometimes on the internet, you can be so distracted by the things that don’t matter. When you’re pulled back into reality by those moments, it really amplifies the role of an artist — but also the beauty of the music industry and moving towards social media in a global perspective. I’m so lucky to be a part of a generation of artists who are doing that.
What is your current relationship with social media like?
My relationship is healthier than what it was. We naturally compare ourselves to people so much and look at people doing amazing things. For a long time, I took that as a reflection of what I wasn’t doing. That wasn’t great for me. But I started to use social media, for lack of a better word, in a more selfish way — like, “Hey, I want to use this as a tool to find my community, build relationships and network.” I started focusing on what was important to me, and it became such an incredible part of my artist journey.
Now I have a community that thinks, feels and expresses themselves in such similar ways and teaches me things about myself and the world that I didn’t know. I see it now as an opportunity to connect with people across the world.
You’re currently on tour in Europe. What’s that experience been like?
I did a mini-run of shows at the start of this year, and that was my first moment of bridging the gap between online and real life. It was such a surreal moment. Being on stage and being in cities I’ve never been and people singing lyrics back to me, it stopped me in my tracks every single night. This tour is that, just a little bit bigger. It’s still the exact same feeling. It feels like I’m living a dream. People ask me, “Is this normal yet?” For me, it’s not. I don’t ever want it to be normal.
The magic of living your dream and seeing it every night is what I think what music’s all about. To see people in real life, hear their stories and hardships and sing, laugh, cry in a room together is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’ve loved every moment of this tour. I can’t wait to go to the States and run it back.
What’s next for you after tour?
After tour I will be taking… I’m lying. I’m not gonna be taking a break. I don’t have time to take a break! I’m going to be straight back in the studio, writing and recording more music. The part I love about what I do, and the part about working with the people I work with and the label that I now call home at RCA, is that they really support my vision of being able to put out music, and not always having to wait.
Who are some of your dream collaborators?
I’m a huge Mumford & Sons stan. I love Noah Kahan — I think what he does is just unbelievable. I can’t think of someone who’s a better songwriter at this current stage. Hozier is a GOAT of GOATs. But if I had to pick an all-time dream, it’d be Chris Martin. I will forever be a Coldplay stan.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
About a decade into his career with Universal Music Group (UMG) — primarily heading A&R and working as a staff producer for Harvest Records — Tim Anderson had a front-row seat to the late-2010s vinyl boom. “It was still an archaic, dinosaur thing,” he recalls of how labels approached record pressing. He started to wonder why records were so hard to manufacture and had such long lead times — and what he could do about it.
By the time the pandemic hit, Anderson — who is also a songwriter-producer, composing for Suits and working with acts like Banks, Halsey and twenty one pilots — had left his major-label gig and had little interest in producing. Unsure of what to do next, his wife kept reminding him that music is what he knows best and suggested he tackle the vinyl issue that had plagued him years ago.
Twenty minutes later, Anderson made his first call to Scotty Coats, an old friend of his wife’s and Capitol Music Group’s one-time vinyl marketing manager. Coats immediately expressed his belief in the idea of a more sustainable approach to vinyl manufacturing. The call motivated Anderson — who doesn’t have an environmentalist background, admitting he gets confused trying to properly sort his recycling — to figure out how to make his vision a reality.
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He found a video online posted by Dutch company Green Vinyl Records, which detailed the development of an environmentally friendly alternative to record manufacturing that is free of polyvinyl chloride. “I’d been told my entire life that you needed the PVC to make a record sound great, and I just believed it,” Coats says. “Until Tim came along and inspired me to find a better way.”
“We saw it right when we met them that they had made something that could be this huge unlock,” Anderson recalls of GVR. He says the company needed a partner to help scale what it had built, and Good Neighbor was able to provide production contacts at many independent and major labels, especially in the United States. “They needed us and we needed them,” he says.
Soon after, Anderson met Reyna Bryan, president of innovative packaging company RCD, and in late 2023, he quietly launched Good Neighbor, a first-of-its-kind record-pressing company that manufactures fully recyclable discs, with Reyna as CEO and Coats as vp of sales and marketing. He later hired Coats’ friend and UMG manufacturing veteran Jonny O’Hara as vp of productions and operations. “As more people were stepping back into the world of vinyl, a lot of artists were like, ‘Is there a more eco-friendly alternative?’ ” O’Hara recalls. “There were better options coming online, but they were never to the same degree as Good Neighbor.”
“In my business of transforming supply chains, any opportunity to reduce carbon production or eliminate chemicals of concern from the process is a major win,” adds Bryan. “Good Neighbor achieves both.”
Key stakeholders of Good Neighbors, from left: Tim Anderson, Scotty Coats, Reyna Bryan and Jonny O’Hara.
Ryan Kontra
Instead of a traditional hydraulic press, which uses energy to heat up and cool down, GVR’s “futuristic-looking” machine (as O’Hara describes it) uses injection molding of polyethylene terephthalate (PET plastic), which reduces energy by 60% and increases manufacturing by three times. (GVR’s single press in the Netherlands, running three eight-hour shifts, has an estimated capacity of 1.2 million records a year.) A second press will arrive in the United States in mid-September. (Good Neighbor is currently raising money through the team’s pro-skater friends and music managers.)
GVR’s Pierre van Dongen and Harm Theunisse say they looked to the pressing process for CDs and DVDs as inspiration, noting how precise and adaptable it was. And while they say some research on trying this process with records was done in the 80s, it was never finished — until now. It took them six years to “perfect the development,” as they say, which included testing over 200 materials, optimizing molding and developing the direct to record label printer.
Coats and O’Hara are particularly excited about how this new process eliminates paper center labels that require high-heat baking in order to stick to PVC. Instead, Good Neighbor’s labels will be directly printed onto the PET plastic, allowing for individual customization of records — a sustainable step forward for exclusivity. Meanwhile, Anderson is thrilled that the machine is “material-agnostic,” meaning it can mold any material into a record, but Anderson says most don’t sound great — yet. The company is currently testing recycled bottles.
And while Anderson says he leaned on his “purist” friends for feedback on test pressings of the PET plastic and that no one pushed back on quality after listening, he still acknowledges that “audiophiles might not be our target consumer.” With Good Neighbor, he says, the goal isn’t to shame vinyl connoisseurs for their existing collections but to set a new precedent for sustainability in record production.
“If this industry keeps growing at this pace, it’s got to change … When the biggest artists in the world start selling millions and millions of these shrink-wrapped [vinyl], that’s when I was like, ‘This feels like something that would be fun to disrupt.’”A version of this article will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
For plenty of music’s most compelling artists, going independent doesn’t mean going small — it means reaping the myriad benefits of forgoing the major label route. Across genres, staying independent can ensure an artist has greater ownership over both their creativity and their intellectual property; the ability to pivot or react quickly when a song unexpectedly takes off; and the freedom to put together a team that truly has their best interests at heart. Of course, there are the more intangible upsides to staying indie too — above all, the feeling that when success happens, it’s truly earned.
Here, Billboard surveys some of the most compelling indie artists making music (and chart inroads) now about the challenges and benefits they’ve seen to independence and the advice they’d offer anyone considering it.
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The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Take mindful steps to get to know and understand your artist identity so that you can become something unique and genuine — whether it’s through vision boards, writing diaries or practicing adjacent forms of artistry to help you flesh out your identity as a musician. It has been instrumental to me in making sure I don’t lose my way.” —Paris Paloma (Nettwerk)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “You control the narrative, so don’t settle, and be bold. An artist working independently has the ability to reach their fans directly with no barriers to entry and to create their own culture. [Independence] also provides a comfortable space for an artist to discover who they are and run their business with full oversight of the costs. It’s incredibly important for anyone getting into this business to understand how it works, what you’re signing into and how your money is being spent.” —Josh Sanger, manager, Paris Paloma
Paris Paloma
Hoda Davaine/Dave Benett/Getty Images
“Freedom is the most important asset an artist can have, in many more ways than just artistic. If you’re serious about being independent and you know how to work it, it’s way better than signing with an established label. For example, I own my own publishing company. I own my touring company. The capability of reacting and not being on a part-semester plan or a year plan is priceless. The capacity of reaction is one of the biggest assets of being independent.” —Pepe Aguilar (Equinox Records, Machín Records)
One of the most challenging parts of being independent is…: “Being able to make connections with global artists who are represented by major labels for collaborations.” —Cris MJ (Stars Music Chile/Rimas Entertainment)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “[Take] responsibility as an artist, and form a good team that can support you in making the right decisions.” —Sergio Javier Ampuero Vergara, manager, Cris MJ
“If you’re grinding to get to your highest point of success and you started by yourself, it means more when you make it. The celebration when you make it is different because you get to say that you gave all of yourself to your dream, no matter who believed or didn’t.” —Lay Bankz (Artist Partner Group)
Lay Bankz
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One of the most challenging parts of being independent is…: “[When you’re] doing the same thing every day with what feels like no motion, and spending money. No one knows you, no one is there to help you, or believing in you — it’s just God, you, and your dreams.” —Kenney Blake, manager, Lay Bankz
“Being an independent artist means having total control over both your art and your business. This requires being an entrepreneur, taking all the risks and having no one to blame but yourself and your team. Make sure you have a good team. You can still yell at the label when you are the label, but you will be yelling in the mirror.
That said, where there is great risk there is great reward. The potential upside is tremendous when you own your own masters and publishing. Don’t let anyone ever convince you ‘independent’ is synonymous with ‘small’ or ‘broke.’ ” —Andrew McInnes, CEO, TMWRK Management; manager, Sturgill Simpson (High Top Mountain)
“We have been able to have full control of our music without having to encounter a lot of politics and red tape that other artists do. It has given us the ability to do what we love most in the way we feel is best, and it even allowed us the freedom to experiment with different sounds on our newest album, Jugando A Que No Pasa Nada.” —Grupo Frontera (Grupo Frontera)
Why is being independent important to you?: “It gives us the power of decision-making and accountability without relying on third parties. This autonomy allows us to act swiftly and adapt to changes in the market or consumer behavior. As a team we can identify shifts in consumption patterns and work towards addressing them on the same day, without needing to wait for approval or direction from a label. This freedom to maneuver quickly and make decisions on our own terms enables us to stay agile, innovative, and true to the artist vision.” —Lucas Barbosa, manager, Grupo Frontera
Grupo Frontera
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“Independence, to me, is having autonomy and ownership of your art. This makes me feel a closer connection to my audience because they know that what comes from me is from me.” —Laufey (AWAL)
Why is being independent important to you?: “So I can own my music and I can control my whole world more easily. Being able to work and keep my music in my possession [means] I can have everything in the future. That’s why I work with UnitedMasters.” —FloyyMenor (UnitedMasters)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Establish and maintain a clear budget. By implementing a detailed budgeting system early on, I was able to allocate funds effectively, ensuring that I always had enough money set aside for crucial aspects of my career. By tracking income and expenses diligently, artists can make informed decisions about where to invest their resources, ultimately leading to greater financial stability and long-term success.” —310babii (High IQ/EMPIRE)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Always ask ‘Why?’ The music business will make you pay for what you don’t know, and it’s your choice on how you choose to learn. If you do not educate yourself on what’s important for the longevity of your career and choose short-term gratification, you will end up paying for it in the long run.” —Jentry Salvatore, manager, 310babii
310babii
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“An indie artist has to have the understanding and knowledge to grasp that investing in their own career is crucial, whether in marketing, in making better content, in doing big tours and shows. An indie artist is one who makes decisions and pays for them from his own pocket.” —Fede Lauria, manager, Bizarrap (Dale Play Records)
The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “Maintaining creative control over the strategies and music that I create. [My song] ‘Daylight’ [had an] original release date scheduled for June, but I knew we had to get it out as soon as possible based on all the engagement we were building around it on socials. I called my manager and just told him we needed to get the song out, and the team made it happen. I think if I were signed to a [major] label, I wouldn’t have been able to make a last-minute change like that and the song wouldn’t have had as big of an impact.” —David Kushner (Miserable Man Music)
“I learned how to play in public. Taught myself how to play guitar and sing and write songs standing on street corners. If I were you, I wouldn’t sign any contracts, ever, if you don’t have to. Because it ain’t to your advantage. Unless they’re giving you a whole bunch of money — and even then, try and get the cash with a handshake. Let me put it to you like this: If you don’t know who the sucker in the deal is, it’s you.
Asking why being independent’s important is really beside the point. I didn’t set out to be independent. I was always seen as so confusing and so different that the people I was dying to do business with didn’t want me. The woman that discovered us, when she started realizing that I was going to be difficult to handle or tame, one afternoon in frustration, she threw her hands down on her desk and looked across at me and said, ‘Goddamn it, Charley Crockett. It’s a Coke and Pepsi world, and you are going to have to dance.’ She said my problem was that I just wanted to be Woody Guthrie and this was my one golden opportunity. Well, the only thing she was right about is I did want to be Woody Guthrie. Where we disagreed is, I don’t think you have one shot. You just have to keep rolling the dice.
At a certain point, I felt like I was out in the wilderness. And when you get far enough out there, the air is real good. You learn how to survive in it, and you just keep going. Don’t ever turn around.” —Charley Crockett (Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers)
Charley Crockett
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The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “You have to be persistent in selling your musical vision to find your fans and reach the masses. Being creative and trusting your instincts as an artist can help to level the playing field. And most importantly, don’t take no for an answer.” —Ken Levitan, Vector Management; manager, Charley Crockett
The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “I can work closely with my team and lead my projects, making sure my goals come to reality. At the end of the day, as the artist and mind of my project, that makes it easier for all to be on the same page.” —Junior H (Rancho Humilde)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Trust the process.” —Key Glock (Paper Route/EMPIRE)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Trust yourself, be authentic and see your artistic vision through. Continue to create the music that speaks to you that will resonate with your core audience, and don’t compromise for quick commercial success.” —Shaboozey (EMPIRE)
The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “Having the flexibility to move at your own pace. For example, if we want to release a record, we control that internally and can capitalize on any traction instantaneously — rather than having to get approvals from multiple parties. We live in a world where the consumer attention span is shorter than it’s ever been, so being able to strike while the iron is hot is ever so crucial to the success of an artist’s rollout.” —Abas Pauti, manager, Shaboozey
Shaboozey
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“It’s so important for an artist to be able to say yes or no without manipulation or punishment. I believe creative freedom is priceless. Art is beautiful. It is honest, it is therapy, it is healing, it is personal, and it is often disrupted and tainted by business minds and models looking to make a quick coin. While the independent route is not without its own risks [like] self-financing, I am truly grateful to be able to be in control of my life and my art.” —RAYE (Human Re Sources)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Being independent doesn’t mean working alone! It’s an old saying, but it takes a village and it really does. Your team is everything. I firmly believe getting that right is essential for success.” —Paul Keen, manager, RAYE
“Being an independent artist is one of the most empowering positions to be in. Independent artists feel the weight of responsibility for the future of their careers, which I think oftentimes leads to an increase in grit and work ethic.
I think I’ve realized the power and value of a team that’s aligned with the artist’s vision. A small but effective team around an independent artist and the right strategic partnerships can make a huge difference.” —JVKE (AWAL)
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Right now, artist culture is very anti-major label. The seed of this is obviously that traditional label deals have been very exploitative. However, I’m noticing that, among young artists, this culture is breeding a fear of engaging with anyone who might be able to help scale their projects. I was speaking with a really talented artist the other day and they were telling me how they’re drowning simply trying to keep up with content creation and writing new songs. Yet, five minutes earlier, they were telling me how they never respond to any music pros that hit them up on socials, because it’s stupid for an artist to have a manager or label partner and give away money when they can do it all on their own. I had to stop them and point out the contradiction.
The great news is, the sort of predatory deals that sparked this label conversation in the first place aren’t all that’s on the table anymore. There are companies out there that allow artists to retain ownership of their music and maintain creative control, while still offering help with all the tasks artists don’t have the time for or network to facilitate, and they’ll do it for a very justifiable portion of the profit that is fractions of what artists had to give away in the past.
If you just want to write songs in your bedroom and hopefully pay the bills, then you might be able to swing it on your own. If you want to go big, building the right team is the best investment an artist can make. There are no billion-dollar businesses that are run by one person alone.” —Ethan Curtis, Plush Management; manager, JVKE
JVKE
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The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “A personal connection with your team is paramount. As the industry continues to shift, having a team that you trust and can envision being in your life for the next two, five, 10, 15 years is crucial. Katie Crutchfield has always had a very specific vision for Waxahatchee. While it has certainly evolved over the years, having a group of a few core, trusted team members around her has been key to keeping Katie’s goals focused and achievable.” —Reynold Jaffe, Another Management Company; manager, Waxahatchee (Anti-)
The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “Being in control of your intellectual property, how you monetize it, release it and promote it. At the end of the day, you then own all of your own IP, to sell or continue working as you’d like to, on your own terms.” —Dean Wilson, manager, deadmau5 (mau5trap)
“For Djo, the most important aspect of releasing music is to allow for people to discover the songs and who is behind them on their own. By staying independent, he is under no pressure to rush his campaigns.” —Nick Stern, manager, Djo (AWAL)
Why is being independent important to you?: “Because being a musician means being a part of the music industry, it begins to entangle creativity and business — which can be incredibly difficult and painful for artists. Being independent, we are able to maintain creative control over the vast majority of what we do, and it’s something I would never consider giving up.” —Khruangbin’s Laura Lee Ochoa (Dead Oceans)
Laura Lee Ochoa
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The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “As an independent manager who represents independent artists, we are afforded autonomy both creatively and strategically since there is less pressure to hit markers of supposed success that are often informed by financial obligation versus artistry. The music must come first, in its most pure and passionate form. If you bet on yourself, you’re sure to win.” —Dawn White, You and Me, Inc.; manager, Khruangbin
The advice I’d offer any indie artist is…: “Surround yourself with a team that you trust and you know will put your career and the integrity of your music first. I couldn’t do anything I do without my team, from my label to management and beyond. From American Idol to moving to Nashville to being thrown headfirst into the unknown world of the music industry, I’m so grateful I had all of them there to guide me, my music and my career from the very beginning.” —Chayce Beckham (Wheelhouse/BBR Music Group)
The biggest benefit of being independent is…: “I loved being involved [at BBR Music Group] with a small group of passionate people who woke up every day with an ‘us against the world’ attitude. While they have had great successes with Jason Aldean, Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson, that same passion and drive remains.” —Clarence Spalding, manager, Jason Aldean
Who is “indie”?: The artists featured in this story meet the guidelines of Billboard’s Top Independent Albums chart, which includes labels distributed independently or through the indie division of a major-label group as well as labels that are independently owned and control their masters but are distributed directly through Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment or Warner Music Group.
This story will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.