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No manager wants to say no to their artist. But this time, the situation demanded it. “You’re blowing your f–king money,” the manager told her client. “This is money you’re not going to have to promote your music.”
The expense under discussion wasn’t a private jet, a non-fungible token or some new cryptocurrency, but glam — a catch-all term that encompasses the services of hairstylists, makeup artists and nail technicians. The rising artist wanted to hire her favorite celebrity hairstylist for a two-day video shoot, which would cost $12,000 in services alone, in addition to business-class travel for the hairstylist and the hairstylist’s assistant, plus the hairstylist’s agent’s fees. The label’s video budget was $10,000 to $15,000, not including travel, and the difference would come out of the artist’s pocket. The manager stood firm: “We’re not doing that for your hair.”
Still, she sympathized with her artist’s anxiety. “Everything is so visible now,” the manager says, noting that fans expect artists — and in particular, young women — to always look the part of the perfectly put-together pop star, whether at an awards show or on TikTok. “You’re always being compared. And there’s all these photos all the time, and then when they don’t look good, the internet loves to talk about that. It’s just really unfair.”
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As the world reopened after COVID-19, public appearances for artists increased — even more so than before the pandemic, according to the many artist managers and publicists interviewed for this story — and with that, the need for professional glam. To control costs, artists’ teams must negotiate constantly with their clients about when (and when not) to use it.
“When I first started in this business in the ’90s, nobody got B-roll of anything,” says one Nashville-based business manager. “ ‘What are you talking about, B-roll? They’re doing radio interviews. Y’all don’t need any B-roll.’ But that’s part of the process [now], so you can’t walk out and not be camera-perfect every time. Because the second they are, everybody attacks them on social media.”
Glam professionals have mixed feelings about this increased demand. Some say pay was better in the 1990s, others that their rates have always been — and remain — low, and many state that they are still recovering financially from the total halt in work during the pandemic. But a handful have capitalized on explosive social media followings and their work with a few popular clients to transform themselves from invaluable members of the backstage team into celebrities in their own right who can demand $5,000 to $10,000 a day for their services.
“This is, for me, the biggest hurdle to developing female artists today,” the manager says. “It’s just killing me because we can’t [sign and develop] girls because of crippling glam costs.”
Not all glam professionals are so cost-prohibitive. “That’s like the 1%,” says hairstylist and men’s groomer Laura Costa, whose clients have included Daniel Caesar, 50 Cent and d4vd. “People who are getting these astronomical rates are just the very small percentage of hairstylists and makeup artists that are working with huge-selling artists like Mariah Carey. I don’t want people to think that we’re out here making $10,000 a day to put ChapStick on someone. Because that’s not the norm.”
The norm for someone like Costa, who has been in the business since 2012, is $500 for a men’s “do-and-go”: meeting clients where they are, doing their hair or makeup and leaving. The average do-and-go lasts two hours, and then Costa is off to another appointment. “I’ll work for the entire day, and people think, ‘Oh, my God, that’s great money for the day.’ But I have to give my agent 20% of it, I have to pay all my taxes, I have to pay for all my equipment.”
A do-and-go allows glam artists to squeeze more clients into a day, but running from job to job can be taxing. “I think it’s the worst thing that has happened to the industry,” says makeup artist Colby Smith, who has worked with Icona Pop, Tove Lo, Charli XCX, Zara Larsson and Alanis Morissette, among others, during his 17-year career. “My do-and-go today is from 12:30 to 2:30, so they’re paying me not for half a day and not for the full day. The whole concept of do-and-go is to get us for a quarter rate.” Sources say day rates typically range from $1,000 to $2,000, while a do-and-go pays anywhere from $300 to $800. “It’s a new industry standard that has brought pricing down and the use of us down,” Smith explains.
The do-and-go is often booked for artists who are spending a whole day making different types of content, like social media posts or TV appearances. Some artist team members say labels favor cramming everything into one day and opting for a do-and-go — rather than hiring the glam team for the full day — to cut costs. If an opportunity does not fit in the scheduled day, the artist must turn it down.
For some up-and-coming artists, doing their own glam is preferable to a missed opportunity. According to one publicist with clients in the pop space, established artists may decline to appear even on social media without full glam, but newer acts understand that they must stick to a budget or stay home.
Country artist Megan Moroney, who scored her first top 10 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums and Hot Country Songs charts in May, tends to handle her own hair and makeup except for special occasions. “Right now, it’s mainly just for big shows that are streamed or obviously awards shows or bigger events, I have glam,” says the 26-year-old singer-songwriter, who is signed to Sony Music Nashville/Columbia Records. “I wish I could have my glam girls all the time because it definitely looks a little bit different when I do it,” she admits.
Moroney’s glam team includes makeup artist Paige Szupello and hairstylist Jessica Miller, the expert behind Moroney’s signature hair pouf. “She said she wants to be known by her silhouette, so we have the pouf that we do on her,” Miller says. “And you know, that’s iconic. People are recognizing that pouf now.”
“Jessica really is the only person that knows how to do it,” Moroney says. “She could probably do it with her eyes closed. I have had people fill in sometimes if she wasn’t available, and it was an epic fail.” Having a consistent glam team puts Moroney at ease ahead of performances, not only because Szupello and Miller know her face and hair so well and are able to always create an on-brand look, but also because she feels comfortable around them. “They definitely know way too much about my life,” she says. “When you find people that are really talented at what they do, it just makes it more enjoyable if you also like them and are friends with them.”
Those friendships can also sometimes lead to business complications. “That’s where it gets messy with a lot of these glam teams,” says one glam professional. “When they get too close, they think that they can ask for crazy numbers, and they’ll get it because it’s like, ‘Well, I’m your best friend. Are you going to fire me because I’m asking you for money?’ ”
On the other hand, informal relationships between artists and glam teams can blur job descriptions in ways that overtax glam professionals. “They need someone in their camp that they can actually trust,” says Robear Landeros, whose clients include Kat Graham, Jennifer Hudson and a number of Bravo’s Real Housewives stars. “I become publicist, I become manager, I become security guard, I become stylist. It goes beyond the glam of it all. I don’t think the common person understands like, ‘Oh, my God, they charge so much,’ or ‘Oh, my God, why does it cost this?’ It’s so much more than just beauty.”
For business managers, the cost of glam also goes beyond beauty. “I think the travel is a huge part of it,” says Kristin Lee, founder and managing director of business management company KLBM. “Having to fly people, pay for their cars, give them per diems when they’re on the ground — that stuff has doubled from a few years ago.” To reduce costs, Lee tells her clients to use local hairstylists and makeup artists rather than fly glam teams to different cities. She has also put glam professionals on flat retainers when a client has a particularly active month, since it is often cheaper than a day rate.
Lee estimates that her female clients — who span genres, though she has had an uptick lately in Miami-based Latin artists — spend about $100,000 annually on glam, but it does not make them inherently more expensive than her male clients. “They all find ways to spend a lot of money,” she says dryly, though, she adds, “I fully believe in the ‘pink tax.’ The guys are spending money on luxury [by] choice, as opposed to what my clients consider a necessity for going out and looking and feeling a certain way — which costs a lot of money. Everything is more expensive as a woman.”
Belva Anakwenze of Abacus Financial Business Management says her clients — most of whom are Los Angeles-based R&B and hip-hop artists — spend around $30,000 on glam in an active quarter, and though it can be much higher than that, the cost typically accounts for less than 3% of an artist’s expenses. “Glam is a very small percent for our clients’ overall budgets,” she says.
Anakwenze has tough conversations with her clients about going with less expensive, less familiar glam teams to save money, but sometimes such decisions are not so simple. “With people of color, it’s even more difficult because not everyone knows how to effectively style their hair or makeup, and so they do become very loyal,” she says. “But sometimes the loyalty ends up saving us money, in that they don’t really increase their fees. They’ll go up incrementally, but if they’re charging a new client $1,000, they may charge my client, an existing client, $500.”
For others, loyalty comes at a higher cost. Sally Velazquez, founder and president of Empower Business Management, explains that once her clients lock in their regular glam teams, those hairstylists and makeup artists post photos of their work with them on social media and build their own fan bases. “Their prices start to increase based on their demand, which makes sense. But that demand sometimes happens because our clients gave these people a shot,” she says. “We see a year later, now that same makeup artist that was charging $100 wants $750. And now, the issue is the client built a rapport with this person, they like working with this person. I’m a person that definitely wants to make sure that we value whoever we’re working with, but sometimes it gets to the point where you’re like, ‘Hey, maybe we only use this makeup artist for big things like the Grammys and not use them for every day.’ That’s the way we try to manage the costs.”
Velazquez acknowledges that inflation and cost-of-living increases play a role in the rising rates but also points to travel and accommodation, as well as unexpected expenses. “As the makeup artist becomes very famous, it’s almost like working with another artist,” she says. “It’s not just their fee anymore. It’s also just the little things that they need. You know how artists have their own riders? Now makeup [artists], hairstylists have their own riders as well.”
Everyone — from artists’ business managers to the glam professionals they’re hiring — is looking out for their own bottom line. “We are running a business, everybody’s running a business, and very few artists end up actually profitable,” says a publicist whose client spent $600,000 on a recent TV appearance, a large portion of which went not to hair or makeup but styling. “It’s not like we’re just trying to save money. It’s that you’re trying not to hemorrhage money. And you’re trying not to spend stupid money, and that’s where it becomes stupid money.”
One label source who has worked with Latin artists for decades says that sometimes even what seems like “stupid money” is worth it in the end. “When I was working for a label, I would pay this hairstylist $5,000 a day,” the source recalls. “The artist had like an inch of hair, and he was constantly telling him, ‘Oh, my God, you are so handsome today. And you really look great. And I see that your face is super fresh.’ All those things that the artist needs so desperately, constantly. When you tell that to an artist, if you’re the manager or if you’re the label, they think that you say it because you want him to hurry up and go onstage.”
While getting the look right is a glam team’s primary job, those in the field are keenly aware of this additional expectation. “I understand when they say, monetarily, we’re a massive expense, because I know we are,” says one glam professional. “But you really can’t put a price on having us around when we make the day run smoother. I’ve been on Nicki Minaj music videos. I’ve been on Cardi B music videos. I’ve been on Mariah Carey music videos. I’ve been on Katy Perry music videos. All of these f–king music videos would not get made without their goddamn glam teams. These women would not feel confident enough or happy enough. And I have literally seen some of these big, big A-list talent walk off set because the vibe wasn’t right.”
The source from the Latin world agrees. “It’s important to find the right people. The glam people, their assignment really is to make the artist happy. I was going to say they are expensive — but now I realize that they are super cheap.”
Glam Rock Stars
Get to know some of the top hair and makeup pros with major artist (and social media) followings.
Jesus Guerrero
HairstylistInstagram followers: 598,000Clients: Dua Lipa, Katy Perry, Rosalía
Perry’s bob-to-bangs transformation, Rosalía’s 2023 Latin Grammys tresses and Kylie Jenner’s “wet look” all have one thing in common: Guerrero’s comb. The hair guru’s versatility allows him to go from taming Christina Aguilera’s platinum waves one day to weaving Kali Uchis’ hair into a butterfly sculpture for her Red Moon in Venus album cover the next.
Ursula Stephen
HairstylistInstagram followers: 125,000Clients: Zendaya, Ciara, Mary J. Blige
Beyond heading her own salon, veteran stylist Stephen has crafted showstopping styles for everyone from Rihanna to Serena Williams, Ariana DeBose and Yara Shahidi. Many of her most memorable looks have been worn on the Met Gala carpet: Zendaya’s auburn Joan of Arc crop in 2018? That was all Stephen, as was Rih’s faux-hawk swoop in 2009.
Tokyo Stylez
HairstylistInstagram followers: 1.5 millionClients: Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Victoria Monét
Tokyo Stylez is behind the wigs of more stars than one would believe — in fact, she’s so good, it’s often difficult to tell whether her clients are sporting one of her pieces or a dye job. She’s responsible for some of the past few years’ most iconic hair moments, from Cardi B’s bright yellow pixie cut on the Invasion of Privacy cover to Megan Thee Stallion’s pink ’do on Saturday Night Live in January.
Rokael Lizama
Makeup artistInstagram followers: 306,000Clients: Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez
When he’s not working as Beyoncé’s on-the-road Renaissance tour makeup artist, Lizama creates nude-glam looks for Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Scherzinger, Demi Lovato, Normani, the Kardashian sisters and more. After working on campaigns for other major beauty brands, he started his own self-titled makeup line with a specialty in fake lashes.
Priscilla Ono
Makeup artistInstagram followers: 894,000Clients: Rihanna, Latto, Kali Uchis
Rihanna wouldn’t trust just anyone to paint her face — but Ono is no ordinary beauty expert. Not only is she the global makeup artist of the singer’s billion-dollar Fenty Beauty brand, but she also brushed on Rih’s Super Bowl halftime show and Academy Awards looks in 2023.
Patrick Ta
Makeup artistInstagram followers: 3.6 millionClients: Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello, Halsey
Ta opened his first salon when he was just 18. By showcasing his wearable glam looks on social media, he built a client base that now includes Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Anitta, Hailee Steinfeld and Ayra Starr — and in 2019, he launched an eponymous cosmetics line that was picked up by Sephora. —HANNAH DAILEY
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
My big struggle is deciding whether I care more about being the biggest artist I can be commercially or being critically sound,” Charli XCX says. “Then sometimes I land in this place of not caring about either of those things.”
For most of her decade-plus career as both a songwriter for other pop stars (Gwen Stefani, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez) and a beloved solo performer herself, Charli has managed to strike an enviable balance between the two pop poles she has just described. The 31-year-old British artist has made inescapable hits like her 2014 Iggy Azalea collaboration, “Fancy,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and more sonically experimental pop — including her celebrated pairings with SOPHIE, with whom Charli pioneered hyperpop — while establishing herself as a tastemaker with a track record for working with cutting-edge artists like Yaeji, Rina Sawayama and Caroline Polachek before the industry fully catches on.
Tough, playful and whip-smart, her track “Speed Drive” from the Barbie soundtrack is classic Charli and also her biggest commercial success since 2014’s “Boom Clap.” Now she’s gearing up for her sixth studio album, BRAT. (On Wednesday, Charli posted on social media to expect the album this summer.)
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The follow-up to 2022’s Crash is, she says, a club record evoking the illegal London rave scene where she started performing “when I was 14 or 15,” produced from a tight collection of sounds to create “this unique minimalism that is very loud and bold.”
“Loud and bold” could well describe the entire career of Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Powerhouse honoree. As she chats over Zoom (wearing a white hoodie and a single gold star sticker on her chin) she’s characteristically frank, admitting she finds the time between albums challenging — “probably the reason why I eventually won’t be a musician.” But for now, with a new one finished, she’s gearing up for her life to return to a pop star pace.
YSL jacket and scarf, David Yurman earrings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Beaufille jacket and skirt, Abra shoes.
Joelle Grace Taylor
What’s the concept of the new album?
This album is very direct. I’m over the idea of metaphor and flowery lyricism and not saying exactly what I think, the way I would say it to a friend in a text message. This record is all the things I would talk about with my friends, said exactly how I would say them. It’s in ways very aggressive and confrontational, but also very conversational and personal. And not in that boring way where artists are like, “This is my most personal record.” To me, it feels like listening to a conversation with a friend.
Do you feel like you’re in a unique position to showcase ideas and sounds from the club world to more mainstream audiences?
I think I’ve had a pretty big impact on popular music; I won’t lie. But it feels weird even saying that in a subtle way in this interview, to be honest. I don’t think it has ever been [my or my collaborators’] intention to transport elements of club or underground music to a wider audience; I think we’ve just been instinctual. There’s a spontaneity within my music that feels off the cuff, blunt and at the same time outlandish. It’s just this fearlessness, too. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I see it when I write in sessions for other people or with people that I don’t really write much with. It’s like … I don’t follow a rulebook of how to write a song.
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Joelle Grace Taylor
For Crash, you intentionally stepped into the role of a major-label pop star, like cosplay. Is the new album’s direct approach a reaction to that?
It’s definitely related. The pendulum always swings for me. I think a good artist always has to re-form, reformulate and reclothe themselves, quite literally. You’re right, Crash was about me being signed to a major label [Asylum Records UK/Warner Music UK] and feeling like I’d never played that traditional, stereotypical major-label pop star game. I wanted to play this satirical role, so I was hypersexualizing myself, taking songs other people had written for me and using an A&R person for the first time in my career.
This record is the polar opposite. It’s not collaborative. It’s not me playing a character. It’s direct and honest. I really tried not to write love songs or songs about my romantic relationship. [She got engaged to The 1975’s George Daniel in late 2023.] There are a couple, but generally speaking, I wanted it to feel more gossipy, so it is a reaction to Crash. I’m quite a reactionary person.
You’ve written with and for a lot of other women. Has that been intentional?
There are a couple of songs I’ve written that have been for male artists, but it’s not a conscious decision. It just happened like that. I honestly don’t know that I would be able to write from a male perspective.
YSL jacket and scarf, Diesel skirt and shoes, David Yurman earrings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Charli XCX photographed on November 27, 2023 in Los Angeles. Beaufille jacket.
Joelle Grace Taylor
You’re receiving the Powerhouse award. What’s your relationship with power?
Some days you wake up and feel very powerful, or empowered, or in control, or confident, or whatever positive words that are related to power or a woman in power. But some days you wake up and feel worthless and small and insecure and not good enough. I don’t think that’s specific to me or my industry; I think that’s just human nature. It’s impossible to feel powerful all the time. For me, at least, that would feel like a lie.
There’s also a lot of power in vulnerability. This is cheesy, but I think when I’m most honest and true to myself, that makes me feel most powerful. Sometimes that upsets people, whether that’s people I work with or my fans or my family. There’s always someone to upset. You just have to ask if it would feel like a sacrifice to not make this decision the way you want to make it. That’s what I ask myself.
Are there specific moments in your career when you stepped into a greater level of power?
When I started working with [producer] A. G. Cook, when I started working with SOPHIE, there was this kinship and understanding that made me feel very powerful because I felt like we were on this unspoken journey together that not many other people could be on.
And then working with my friends — not weird Los Angeles friends that I’ve picked up at parties, but my friends I’ve had since I was 11. That feels powerful because there’s a level of grounding. To them, I’m not this person who is a pop star. I am their friend Charli who was once not very cool.
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Victoria Monét looked in the mirror five years ago, she saw a successful songwriter whose growing list of estimable credits included co-writes on two of Ariana Grande’s biggest hits, “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings.” What Monét, then 30, didn’t see was a successful solo artist — a goal she had been tirelessly pursuing since 2009.
“It was a very difficult, uphill battle trying to get people to understand there’s a duality to me, that my relevance wasn’t only based on my proximity to somebody else,” Monét recalls. “Interview after interview, questions were snuck in about the artists I worked with. I just wanted to be a stand-alone artist with my own reputation.”
Monét’s long-held dream finally became reality with the 2023 release of her RCA debut studio album, Jaguar II. Her breakthrough single, “On My Mama,” and two earlier album singles, “Smoke” (with Lucky Daye) and “Party Girls” (with Buju Banton), created what she calls a “snowball effect” — and validated her solo artistry, not only in terms of chart position, different interview questions and her first headlining tour, but also in the form of golden hardware.
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At the Grammys in February, Monét — who entered with seven nominations, including record of the year and best R&B song — won best new artist, as well as the statuettes for best R&B album and best engineered album, non-classical. Her best traditional R&B performance nod — for “Hollywood,” featuring Earth, Wind & Fire and her toddler daughter, Hazel Monét — was record-breaking in its own right, making Hazel the youngest-ever Grammy nominee.
Roberto Cavalli dress, Paumé Los Angeles ring, Elisheva & Constance earrings, choker and bracelet.
Sami Drasin
Oude Waag dress and Paumé Los Angeles earrings.
Sami Drasin
But Monét’s three wins — her first triumphs after three prior nods for her work with Grande and R&B duo Chloe x Halle — represent another pivotal moment for the Atlanta-born, Sacramento, Calif.-raised singer-songwriter, who began pursuing a solo career when she moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to audition for a girl group under development by Grammy-winning producer Rodney Jerkins. Monét got the job and the group signed a Motown contract, though it was later dropped without releasing any music.
That setback, however, yielded the start of a friendship with future Grammy- and Academy Award-winning songwriter-producer D’Mile and pushed Monét to focus on the songwriting she had dabbled in while growing up in Sacramento. Shouting out D’Mile as a key supporter and mentor (“He let me and the girl group live in his place”), Monét worked with him on music she had begun recording on the side as an independent artist while she racked up writing credits with acts such as Travis Scott, Blackpink, Fifth Harmony and fellow rising R&B singer and new Grammy winner Coco Jones.
“It’s very hard to ask somebody to invest their time when you don’t have a label to push it through, a production or video budget,” Monét says. “But D’Mile was like, ‘I don’t care about that. I think you’re talented and love your voice … We got this.’ ”
Monét, who didn’t have a manager at that time (“Even when I opened for Ariana on tour in 2016, I did hotel bookings and routing”), found another kindred spirit when she met manager Rachelle Jean-Louis in 2018. “She has been my ride-or-die,” Monét says. “She saw things when no one else saw them.”
Jean-Louis, a former label executive and music supervisor, first crossed paths with Monét while working as the latter, placing Monét’s collaboration with RCA artist Lucky Daye, “Little More Time,” on HBO’s Insecure. “We’re mirrors of each other,” Jean-Louis says. “We both love music, are hard workers and passionate about what we do. Victoria’s melodies and the layering of her vocals reminded me a lot of early Marvin [Gaye] and Janet [Jackson], which was something I hadn’t heard currently at that time. And then hearing she wrote all of her songs … that’s a rare form of artistry that I’ve always admired.”
Oude Waag dress and Paumé Los Angeles earrings.
Sami Drasin
Music fans got their first taste of Monét’s solo work through four EPs she released between 2014 and 2018. While none of those projects charted, they featured Monét’s ’70s-influenced modern soul that began generating word-of-mouth buzz for the indie artist. But on her Jaguar EP, released in August 2020, the singer emphasized another side of herself.
“I had to learn how to survive,” Monét said during a Grammy Museum Q&A in December when comparing the music industry to a jungle. “The jaguar symbolized my journey up to that point.”
Her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist was in 2019, when “Monopoly,” a song she co-wrote and was featured on with Grande, cracked the chart at No. 69. The week before, Monét had reached No. 16 on the Emerging Artists list.
With the August 2023 release of sequel Jaguar II, which delivers a sonically mesmerizing mix of ’70s retro soul, dancehall and Southern rap — and, like Jaguar, was executive-produced by Monét, D’Mile and Jean-Louis — Monét hit her stride. The album debuted at No. 6 on Top R&B Albums and No. 22 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Meanwhile, “On My Mama,” which samples Texas rapper Chalie Boy’s 2009 track, “I Look Good,” peaked at No. 4 on Hot R&B Songs, while spending 24 consecutive weeks in the top 10. Since the first tracking week of 2023 (from Dec. 29, 2022, to Feb. 1, 2024), Monét’s songs as an artist have generated 342.6 million official on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
“Because songwriters are writing for other artists, it’s really easy to hear their songs but think of the artist they wrote for instead,” Jean-Louis says. “But with the music that Victoria’s making, you can’t do that. The only person you hear when you listen to Victoria Monét’s music is her.”
Victoria Monét photographed on January 16, 2024 at Cricket Ranch in Los Angeles.
Sami Drasin
Paumé Los Angeles ring, Elisheva & Constance earrings, choker and bracelet.
Sami Drasin
With Jean-Louis and a predominately female core team handling both her business and creative plus strong support from RCA (“It has been a real joy to collaborate with a [label] team that really sees me; RCA changed that narrative for me”) — the newly minted three-time Grammy winner is looking ahead to festival performances at Coachella and Governors Ball, along with the deluxe version of Jaguar II.
But, reflecting on her hard work, setbacks and wins thus far, Monét says it all makes her cherish her recognition as Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Rising Star even more.
“I prefer it this way rather than [achieving] fame quickly or being given to me on a silver platter,” she explains. “I know I have a great foundation and legs to stand on because everything I built was brick by brick. A career takes an excellent amount of patience.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s Friday night in Las Vegas, and Voltaire, the intimate art deco-meets-Studio 54 new performance venue within the Venetian, has transformed into an extremely lit gay club. Beneath countless sparkling disco and glass balls, the crowd of 1,000 dances to the DJ’s mix of a who’s who of dance–pop — Jessie Ware, Spice Girls, ABBA, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s recently revived “Murder on the Dancefloor.” Intermittently, elastic-limbed burlesque artists enter to striptease, dance and execute feats of dazzling flexibility. This is Voltaire’s Belle de Nuit “preshow.” And it’s just the warmup to the main event.
“It’s almost time for Kylie Minooooogue!” the evening’s MC declares. “Yeah, that’s right — Mother is coming!”
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The screams become truly deafening when, roughly 10 minutes later, the curtain opens to reveal the diminutive 55-year-old Australian pop star clad entirely in metallic gold. She launches into “Your Disco Needs You,” a rousing track from her 2000 album, Light Years: “Let’s dance through all our fears, war is over for a bit,” she sings. “The whole world should be moving, do your part, cure a lonely heart!”
For the next 70 minutes, Minogue follows her own command, belting songs from her three decades-and-counting career that have united listeners with their infectious dance-pop melodies and lyrics that, whether ebullient or bittersweet, are always anchored by a deep, sincere sense of joy. She shimmies to her cover of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “The Loco-Motion,” one of her earliest hits from 1987 (and still her highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at No. 3); she rises above the stage in a flowing red cape like some disco high priestess to sing her seductive current smash, and her biggest in the United States in more than 20 years, “Padam Padam.” She’s a consummate pop diva, stomping down the stage’s catwalk and striking poses — until each song ends. Then, she simply becomes Kylie: giggling, kicking up her stiletto heels in a happy dance and, at one point, speaking into her water bottle when she mistakes it for a microphone.
These two sides of Minogue — the glamorous, charismatic performer who has somehow also remained deeply relatable — have helped her to maintain a remarkably consistent yet organically evolving career amid the shifting waters of the music industry. “A feeling you get from Kylie’s music is that from an artistic point of view, she enjoys her place in pop culture. She doesn’t challenge it or try to run away from it — she looks to innovate herself and develop within that space,” says Stuart Price, the British electronic music producer who executive-produced Minogue’s pivotal 2010 album, Aphrodite. “And it’s infectious to see someone enjoying being themselves. There’s an openness there that creates a connection between Kylie and her fans.”
Richard Wilbraham dress, Magda Butrym jacket, Saint Laurent boots and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Much of that core fan base feels connected to Minogue because they actually grew up with her. They met her as the feisty teenager Charlene on Australian soap opera Neighbours; followed her first era of pop stardom in the late ’80s as one of the flagship teen idols from the Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) “hit factory” that also produced Rick Astley and Bananarama; watched her break out of that mold in the ’90s on British label Deconstruction, exploring more experimental dance-pop on 1997’s Impossible Princess; and embraced her evolution into global star in the 2000s, especially in the United States, with the release of 2001’s Fever, her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 (No. 3), which yielded “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” the song with a hypnotic “la-la-la” chorus that was a self-fulfilling prophecy and propelled it to No. 7 on the Hot 100.
Over all those years, Minogue has stayed both impressively prolific and commercially viable. Eleven of her albums — including her last nine studio releases dating back to Fever — reached the Billboard 200, and 10 appeared on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, including Disco, a highlight of the dance-pop renaissance of 2020 that went to No. 1 on the latter. She has notched seven Hot 100 and five Mainstream Top 40 Airplay hits. It helps, of course, that her songs tend to “help people to smile and forget their daily problems for a bit as only a good piece of dance-pop music can do,” as disco legend Gloria Gaynor puts it. (She joined Minogue for “Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” on an expanded rerelease of Disco.) But her releases also always feel fresh, genuine and intentional. “Every time she delivers an album, to her it’s like the first,” says Jamie Nelson, senior vp of new recordings U.K. at BMG, Minogue’s label, who is also her longtime A&R executive. “There’s nothing lazy or dialed-in about it.”
Minogue has long been considered pop royalty in the United Kingdom (she’s about to receive the BRIT Awards’ Global Icon honor), Europe and Australia, where she’s the highest-selling female solo artist born in the country of all time; still, her U.S. audience has never quite reached that level. But she has remained popular — and at the front of pop culture consciousness — for long enough that while her older fans stateside remain loyal, younger ones continue to discover her. And that happened in a big way last June, when she released one very unusually titled single and experienced the kind of bona fide U.S. breakthrough that few artists manage in their mid-50s.
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“Padam Padam” — an onomatopoeia for the sound of a heartbeat — went viral on TikTok, with everyone from actress Suki Waterhouse to employees of the British art supply chain Hobbycraft making videos with it; to date, videos using “Padam Padam” have been viewed over 1.3 billion times on the platform. Simultaneously, “padam” became part of the pop lexicon, thanks in large part to Minogue’s LGBTQ+ fans who encouraged use of it as a noun, verb, exclamation or really any part of speech that called for it.
The song was such a runaway hit that, Minogue says, BMG delayed releasing Tension’s title track as a second single, “because ‘Padam’ just kept… Padaming.” With that momentum, Tension became her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 since 2010 (peaking at No. 21) and her second Top Dance/Electronic Albums No. 1. “Padam Padam,” which is now her second-most-streamed song in the United States after “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” became her first Mainstream Top 40 Airplay hit since 2004, her highest-peaking (No. 32) since 2003 and just garnered Minogue her second Grammy Award — the inaugural win in the new best pop dance recording category and her first since “Come Into My World” took home best dance recording two decades ago.
Now, with the Tension train still going strong (Xtension, an album of extended dance mixes, arrived in September) and her Vegas residency a coveted ticket, Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Icon is energized and determined to make the most of this moment. “I told someone at my label: It’s happening now. There’s no snoozing,” Minogue says firmly. “I am wildly inspired right now. I’m at a point in my life where I know it’s not eternal. I just want to maximize this brilliant wave. If you’re not out paddling for when that wave comes along, you’ve got no hope.” And, she promises, she paddles — constantly.
The afternoon following the show in late January, Minogue is in her favorite sweats, sipping tea in the empty Voltaire space and looking surprisingly awake. She doesn’t go onstage each night until after 11, and a two-show weekend renders her “kind of the amoeba version of myself,” she admits, crumpling her tiny 5-foot frame up, amoeba-style. “I’ll have a momentary internal dialogue with myself like, ‘OK, try to go a bit cruise control tonight?’ But it doesn’t work.”
Autopilot has never been Minogue’s thing. When she started out with Stock Aitken Waterman, she found the hit factory’s way of doing things a natural fit — “It’s like working on a TV show: ‘Here’s the script, you know what to do, here’s some direction, do it’ ” — but once her four-year contract ended in 1992, “I was gone. I’m a curious person, and I wanted to do more.” She had observed how the trio of songwriters of SAW worked, seen the craft and diligence it took to create “that song” — but becoming one herself? “That took a bit of haggling,” she says. “It wasn’t easy to make that segue.”
Tony Ward Couture dress and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Thanks to signing with Deconstruction, and particularly her second album with the label, 1997’s Impossible Princess, Minogue escaped the “normalness” of the SAW starlet image, Price recalls, and public perception of her started to shift to “Kylie the Artist.” When he met her around 2009 — a match made by her label at the time, Parlophone, where she had moved in 1999 — Price saw up close one way in which her soap opera training had benefited that artistry.
“She was able to so consistently deliver great performance after great performance,” he recalls — a skill, Minogue matter-of-factly told him, she supposed might come from the days when she would drive to set with a script she had just received and memorize her lines at traffic lights. “Her memory and recall is incredible, and it was the same when we were writing things together,” Price continues. “If she came up with a melody, it was just there — we could go eat a meal, then she’d bring it straight back up.”
“There’s probably a misconception out there that she’s not a traditional songwriter, but she’s phenomenal,” BMG’s Nelson says. “She’s got a belief that the song is God. She’ll really scrutinize her own music in comparison to outside songs, and anything that’s not up to scratch will get dismissed.” Minogue’s collaborators describe her as a fount of fully formed ideas. “The last three albums I’ve done with her, she has been coming up with whole ideas on her phone,” says Richard “Biff” Stannard, who co-wrote the 2002 hit “Love at First Sight” and, more recently, seven Tension tracks with Minogue. “She’s really confident to say, ‘I’ve got this melody that’s bugging me, I’ve got to get it out.’ It’s proper songwriter stuff.”
Oscar de la Renta dress and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
That said, Minogue has never been precious about accepting material from other writers — “Padam Padam” was co-written by Norwegian singer-songwriter Ina Wroldsen and producer Lostboy — and she relishes figuring out not just whether a song presented to her is a likely hit, but a hit for her. “Songs like ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ and ‘Padam,’ I can’t reply fast enough,” she says. “Not only is it an amazing song, but it and me… it’s like, ‘I can do this!’ If someone else performed ‘Padam’ it could’ve been great, but it would have been different.” Lately, she has been spending time in Los Angeles (her home base is Melbourne), working with two entirely new collaborators she won’t reveal quite yet, other than to say she has long wanted to work with them. “I was on cloud nine for like the next couple of days” after their most recent sessions, she says, grinning.
But since 2020, Minogue has also become a lot more independent in the studio: By necessity, amid pandemic isolation, she taught herself Logic and other essential tools of production. “It’s so liberating,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of uncomfortable moments [in the studio]. No one would have known because I just pretended my way through it. But to have my own mic and do it on my own time? It’s amazing. I could go for hours.”
Minogue’s manager, Polly Bhowmik of A&P Artist Management, says Minogue’s infatuation with studio tech has gone so far that “there is now very much ‘studio engineer Kylie’ as well as artist Kylie.” (Minogue has vocal engineering credits on much of Disco and Tension.) At Stannard’s suggestion, I ask about her personal mic collection (“She’s really geeky about microphones now”), and she quivers with excitement describing her current favorite. “It’s a Telefunken 251, and it’s beautiful,” she gushes. “It’s more to carry, but it’s like graduating to the big leagues.”
Her new studio skill set has been both empowering and freeing (she can now record herself and work on music from her Vegas hotel room, for instance), as well as impressive to her collaborators. “She’s actually useful in the studio!” exclaims singer-songwriter Sia, who co-executive-produced Minogue’s 2014 album, Kiss Me Once, and just released the duet bop “Dance Alone” with her. “She’s actually good at her job. And I would say she’s one of the most prolific idea generators of all the artists I’ve worked with.”
Richard Wilbraham dress, Magda Butrym jacket, Saint Laurent boots and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
It has also helped her to achieve more vocal precision. “She’s very forensic about getting her vocals exactly how she’s happy with, and this has given her that ability,” Stannard says. On Tension, the strikingly wide range of Minogue’s voice — she goes from a sultry purr to full belt to stratospheric whistle tones, and at one point even raps — is on full display. The confidence she now has in her voice took time, Minogue says, and voice lessons starting in 2001 taught her techniques that have helped her preserve and develop it.
“Maturing as a person and my voice maturing too, add to that these past two years of self-recording — [my process] is becoming more vacuum-sealed, and that’s so pleasing to me,” Minogue says. “And to accept that I don’t have that big voice, but being proud I have my voice, and really owning that? That has again taken a long time. But I can adapt and be many voices, just like my [visual] presentation. I’m chameleon-like,” she concludes, satisfied. “That is who I am.”
The morning after her “Padam Padam” Grammy win in early February, Minogue still seems to be wrapping her head around what happened.
“I don’t think I’ve touched down yet,” she admits over the phone. She wore a bright “Padam red” gown; she marveled at Miley Cyrus’ hair (“Amazing. She absolutely smashed it”); she sat with Karol G at the ceremony (“I don’t assume anyone knows who I am, but she’d been on my radar for the last year”); she finally met fellow Aussie Troye Sivan. She was embraced by fans new and old, including Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa, who invited Minogue to appear in her Studio 2054 pandemic-time livestream and, shortly after, featured on a remix of Minogue’s Disco track “Real Groove.”
As for the award itself: “It’s a big win for longevity — let’s put it that way,” Minogue says. It’s also concrete proof to both Minogue and her team that she has, as Sia puts it, “broken her glass ceiling” in the United States. “I’ve had this kind of to-and-fro thing with America,” Minogue reflects. “I was the ‘Loco-Motion’ girl for a long time, then I was the ‘la-la-la’ girl, and I guess I’m ‘Padam’ now. But now that we’ve got streaming, the algorithms will take you to discover more of my music.”
Kylie Minogue photographed on January 27, 2024 at Voltaire in Las Vegas. Tony Ward Couture dress, Christian Louboutin shoes and David Yurman jewelry.
Austin Hargrave
Nelson says BMG has seen “an uplift on the catalog” since the Vegas residency began in November (it runs through early May), but is careful to note that it’s the culmination of a gradual increase in listenership — beyond the devoted core fan base that already buys multiple vinyl and cassette versions of Minogue’s records — over the past few years. “We are firmly seeing a new audience embracing Kylie,” Bhowmik says, pointing out that 60% of “Padam Padam” and Tension streams have come from listeners under 35 and that her audience on TikTok has grown 43% since the song’s release.
And that expanded audience includes the U.S. market, where Minogue hasn’t done a major tour since 2011’s spectacular Aphrodite trek. Considering the momentum behind her now and the fact that the pandemic prevented her from touring Disco, the time seems ripe for a major Minogue tour hitting America — and indeed, UTA just signed her for representation in the United States and Canada. Bhowmik says that with “more opportunities and accolades than ever before,” there are plans for her to perform across the United States and internationally “in the not-too-distant future.”
It’s a rebirth for Minogue — but really just the latest of many she has had throughout her career. “It’s a continuation, not a comeback,” Price says. “Everything from [Tension], it’s just a short steppingstone away from every other hit she has had. They all sound like innovative pop records made in the year they were released that are ahead of their time. And what they all have in common is that Kylie fever.”
That ineffable Kylie essence is always present regardless of whether Minogue wrote on a song or not. It’s the fizzy effervescence that makes “Love at First Sight” a euphoric dance party starter. It’s the very adult, subtle magnetism that makes songs like “Hands” and “Tension” sexy rather than ridiculous. And above all, it’s the true joy — the kind that’s all the more meaningful because you’ve known sadness, too — that suffuses every moment of anthems like Aphrodite’s “All the Lovers,” Disco’s “Say Something” or Tension’s “Hold On to Now.”
“Joy can come from a dark place,” Minogue says. “But if someone’s able to feel that joy and they might not have felt it this morning? It’s a moment of release. I want the audience to feel…” She searches for the right word, waving her hands excitedly, and then just exclaims: “Feel! I’m a conduit for all the emotions.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Kicking off the new year in style, Coldplay leads Billboard’s Top Tours chart for January. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Chris Martin and company grossed $58.8 million and sold 417,000 tickets during the month, essentially doubling its closest competition.
January is traditionally the slowest month of the year, with Elton John and Tool crowning lists in 2020 and 2022, respectively, with less than $20 million each. John himself set a high mark in 2023 with $40.9 million, and now Coldplay improves upon that by 44%. This year’s top 30 tours grossed a collective $271 million, up 75% from last January’s total.
This marks the third time that Coldplay has been No. 1 on Top Tours, having crowned lists in March 2023 and July 2022. The band achieved its hat-trick with eight shows in Asia. Including another two dates in early February and eight shows in November, the latest leg of the Music of the Spheres tour earned $143.3 million.
Coldplay’s January shows break down to two at the Philippine Arena in Manila and six at Singapore’s National Stadium. The latter batch grossed $43.4 million and sold 321,000 tickets, leading Top Boxscores by a margin of 2.8-to-1.
While the phrase “world tour” often translates to the U.S., Canada and western Europe, Coldplay has taken its time to travel the globe. The Music of the Spheres Tour launched in March 2022 and has included three legs in Latin America, two in the U.S. and Canada, two in Europe, and now 18 shows in Asia. More dates in Europe and Oceania await in 2024.
In all, Coldplay’s massive global trek has sold 7.7 million tickets. Only Ed Sheeran’s Divide (÷) tour (2017-19) has sold more, at 8.9 million. With 43 shows scheduled between June and September, Coldplay would need to average about 28,000 tickets per show — less than half of the tour’s global average so far — to close the gap and become the bestselling tour in Boxscore history.
Speaking of Sheeran, he sits at No. 2 on January’s Top Tours chart with Asian concerts of his own. He grossed $31.7 million and sold 194,000 tickets over six dates, with five more in February to count toward next month’s recap.
Sheeran grossed $11.6 million over two nights in Osaka and another $10.6 million from a double-header in Dubai. Similar to Coldplay, his dates in Asia are part of a global endeavor, following legs in Europe, Oceania and North America.
Not only do both acts rub shoulders atop the all-time tally, they wrestle on the opposite end of the top 10. Sheeran’s The Mathematics Tour has now grossed $556.4 million and sold 5.8 million tickets since its April 2022 debut, squeezing into the top 10 highest grossing tours of all time. Collateral damage, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour (2016-17) dips to No. 11, just as the British rock band encroaches on Sheeran’s prior tour at the all-time summit.
At No. 3 on Top Tours, Madonna brought in $31.2 million from a string of arena dates in January. That leaves her just $500,000 away from Sheeran’s runner-up spot, held back by a margin of less than 2%. All of Madonna’s 11 January dates appear on Top Boxscores, spotlighted by her three shows at Madison Square Garden. Those grossed $10.3 million from 41,200 tickets sold.
Now at $121 million, The Celebration Tour is Madonna’s sixth to cross the nine-digit threshold. Only The Rolling Stones (nine) and U2 (seven) have more. Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles also have six $100 million tours to their names.
Madonna has 32 shows left to report in the U.S., plus five in Mexico City. When all is said and done, The Celebration Tour will likely become her third to gross $200 million or more, behind stadium runs Sticky & Sweet Tour ($407.7 million; 2008-09) and the MDNA tour ($305.2 million; 2012).
K-pop offers bright spots in the top 10, with SEVENTEEN at No. 4 with $19.6 million and ENHYPEN at No. 7 with $13 million. Each group played batches of shows in Asia, just like Coldplay and Sheeran. With restrictive weather in the U.S. and Europe, stadiums in southern Asia and Australia are often pillars of early-in-the-year box office.
Comedians make their mark on Top Tours as well, with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Peter Kay, Kevin Hart, Jo Koy and Brett Goldstein all ranking between Nos. 14-20.
Though not without significant highlights, the Top Tours chart embraces the winter doldrums of years past, delivering the lowest top-30 gross since last January. John Mulaney and NieR Orchestra close out the top 30 under $1 million, matching 2023’s two sub-million earners. February marks the stage returns of Blink-182, Karol G and P!nk, while introducing new tours from Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo.
A version of this story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Hi, everybody. My name is Karol G. I am from Medellín, Colombia. This is my first time at the Grammys, and this is my first time holding my own Grammy.”
To her tens of millions of fans and followers (68.2 million on Instagram alone) watching February’s Grammys telecast, that humble introduction from the winner of this year’s award for best música urbana album wasn’t surprising — Karol G’s openness and honesty, along with the personal nature of her music, are a big part of what has endeared her to so many. Still, the award felt a bit superfluous.
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At 33, Karol G just wrapped an extraordinary year in which she became the first woman (and second artist ever) to top the Billboard 200 with an all-Spanish-language album (Mañana Será Bonito, for which she won that Grammy); the top female Latin artist on Billboard’s year-end charts (behind only Bad Bunny and Peso Pluma); and the winner of album of the year at November’s Latin Grammys, as well as urban album of the year — the first woman to win the latter.
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Karol is also the first Latina (and still one of only a few women) to headline a global stadium tour and the highest-grossing Latin touring artist of 2023 by far: According to Billboard Boxscore, she grossed $155.3 million and sold 925,000 tickets from 20 shows, placing at No. 11 on Billboard’s all-genre year-end Top Tours chart. The only women who fared better on the list were Beyoncé and P!nk, who played 55 and 37 shows, respectively. (Taylor Swift did not report her 2023 touring numbers.)
And yet the artist born Carolina Giraldo still feels she has something to prove. “I’m certain many people still don’t know me and don’t know what I’ve done,” she says. So at the Grammys, “I wanted to make it clear, because I have so many projects planned, that I want them to know I’m working to accomplish far bigger things.”
And as Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Woman of the Year — the first artist who records only in Spanish to receive the honor — Karol says she’s even more motivated to maintain her stunning upward trajectory. “It’s so meaningful and inspiring to get an award that’s not only ‘woman of this or that category’ but ‘Woman of the Year.’ I feel a huge responsibility to make the year on par with the title,” she says. (Karol’s sister Jessica Giraldo, an attorney who co-manages her with Noah Assad and Raymond Acosta of Habibi Entertainment, is on Billboard’s Women in Music executive list this year.)
Karol’s journey to the top of the charts has been slow and steady over the past decade. But in 2022, it accelerated (and went beyond language barriers) with her $trip Love U.S. arena tour, which grossed $72.2 million and sold 424,000 tickets. That helped send Mañana Será Bonito to a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 in February 2023, which, in turn, led to her first stadium tour and the release of a second album, Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season), which debuted at No. 3 in August.
Since the very beginning of 2024, Karol says she has “literally made music every day,” working with collaborators including longtime go-to producer Ovy on the Drums, who often meets up with her on the road and will be traveling with her during the Latin American leg of her tour. That kicked off Feb. 8 with the first of three sold-out dates at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca (80,000 seats per night, according to promoter OCESA). Karol will play 24 stadium dates in Latin America (most were already sold out at press time) before moving on to 16 arenas and stadiums in Europe, including three dates at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid.
“The fact that she headlined predominantly theaters in 2021, then arenas in 2022, then jumped to stadiums in 2023 is unprecedented for any genre,” Jbeau Lewis, Karol’s touring agent and partner at UTA, told Billboard last year. “It’s easy to talk about Karol as a leader in Latin music, but based on the success she has had, especially this year, she should be spoken about in the same breath as Taylor or Beyoncé.”
Balenciaga jacket, Intimissimi underwear, Replika Vintage shoes.
Vijat Mohindra
Karol is acutely aware that as her global audience grows, the stakes for what she does next keep rising. “I started this year with a completely different mindset,” she says. “Although this may sound like a beauty queen reply, the place I’m at right now is one of huge responsibility, and it demands that I’m very aware of what surrounds me so I don’t make missteps.”
To prepare, she took some time off over the winter holidays — an effort toward “working enormously on my mental state, black belt level,” she says with a laugh. “I’m very clear about my plans, my vision of the future and the order in which I want to release [music] and express myself.”
For a Colombian who grew up in Medellín in the aftermath of cartel leader Pablo Escobar’s death, when the country was consumed by drug warfare, that sense of responsibility is especially personal and profound. “My father always told us: ‘We have an obligation to give back — not what’s left over but what’s right,’ ” she says. That idea inspired her in 2021 to launch the Con Cora foundation, which supports women in vulnerable situations through actions in education and the arts.
“When I take the stage in a stadium, one of the reasons I cry is because I know one day this will all be over; I’ll be home remembering the time I was No. 1,” she says. “That’s life. But what I will have is a school I built, or a project we launched [through the foundation]. Today, and in 10 years and in 50 years, lives will change thanks to something we built.”
In the meantime, even as she tours, Karol is putting out singles and remains “very open to experimenting with new sounds,” as is clear on “Contigo,” her recently released song with Tiësto. “I’m feeling very proud because I’m working. I’m really rising to the challenge, and I have to push forward, push forward,” she says. “I may be a very important Latin artist, but I still have the whole world ahead of me.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
In December 2021, when Michelle Jubelirer became Capitol Music Group chair/CEO — and Capitol’s first female chief executive in its 80-plus-year history — she didn’t take much time to dwell on her historic accomplishment: She had a flailing company to save.
“The challenges [I inherited] were plentiful,” Jubelirer admits. CMG faced a falling market share, staff turnover, pandemic challenges and an unwieldy artist roster. “The truth is,” she says, “a lot of change happened in a short period of time.”
Many believed Jubelirer, then CMG’s COO, was destined for Capitol’s top job the year prior. By that time, her résumé already included a stint at a white-shoe law firm, years in legal affairs at Sony and nearly a decade as an artist lawyer for acts like Nas, Pharrell Williams and Frank Ocean — plus almost a decade in Capitol’s top ranks. When her longtime mentor, Steve Barnett, stepped down as CMG chair/CEO at the end of 2020, Jubelirer seemed to some to be a natural choice to replace him. But Universal Music Group (UMG) chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge handed the role to Capitol Records president Jeff Vaughn instead. (In the shift, Jubelirer was elevated to CMG president/COO.) When Vaughn assumed his new role, the company was already on shaky ground; under his leadership, it continued to falter.
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After less than a year as CEO, Vaughn left the company, and Jubelirer was elevated to the post. With her guidance, the label group’s fortunes quickly started to change. At a time when minting new superstars is harder than ever, the company won a bidding war (alongside 10K Projects) in fall 2022 for Ice Spice, who would become the defining breakout star of 2023. It also topped the Billboard Hot 100 with queer anthem “Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, worked with Universal Music Enterprises to bring back The Beatles with the artificial intelligence-powered single “Now and Then,” achieved TikTok virality with Doechii’s “Block Boy (What It Is)” (in a new partnership with Top Dawg Entertainment) and reinvigorated the art of the music video — which has declined in popularity in recent years — with Troye Sivan’s creative clips for “Rush,” “One of Your Girls” and “Got Me Started.”
Those successes didn’t insulate CMG from impact amid UMG’s widespread restructuring in 2024, though. On Feb. 1 — shortly after Jubelirer’s interview for this story — UMG revealed much of its plan: Its frontline label system would be split beneath one East Coast executive (Republic’s Monte Lipman) and one West Coast executive (Interscope’s John Janick), Grainge explained in a letter to staff. The restructure would have moved Jubelirer, who was reporting directly to Grainge, under Janick. Six days later, Jubelirer wrote a heartfelt message to her staff announcing her exit, effective immediately.
“When I joined Capitol, I made a stringent promise to myself,” Jubelirer said in a Feb. 2 speech at an Entertainment Law Initiative event in Los Angeles. “The day I stopped changing the record company more than it was changing me would be the day I would walk away.”
As she finalizes the details of her exit from UMG, Jubelirer declined to discuss her future plans — or Capitol’s. But whether she stays in the label business, goes into management or does something else entirely, her impact on Capitol and its artists is clear. “She’s the fiercest when it comes to protecting artists,” says Jody Gerson, chair/CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) and Jubelirer’s longtime friend. “She’s not afraid to fight for what she believes is right.”
“I’m so honored to have worked with such a great woman and boss like Michelle,” Ice Spice says. “She always believed in me and supported my vision from the very beginning. I’m so grateful for her and all that she has done.”
Jubelirer with her son, Stone.
Yuri Hasegawa
What are some of your biggest wins over the last two years?
First and foremost, I think the biggest win is the incredible team. And what we’ve been able to do in two short years, I think it’s the fastest turnaround of a record label. And quite frankly, we’ve been able to sign a diverse roster of artists and modernize the label while prioritizing artists and ensuring that each artist gets uniquely what they need.
How do you balance Capitol’s storied history and what you want it to represent today?
Given that it has been in existence for 80-plus years, it wasn’t lost on me that I was the first woman chair/CEO. And that’s not a great fact, let’s admit, for all women. But the reality is the grandeur of the company and its [previous] artists’ paths are not the focus. The focus is the new, fresh artists that we are breaking day in and day out.
How has your background at Capitol helped you as chair/CEO?
It’s kind of funny: I think I’ve been leading the company all along in my 11-plus years here. [When I became CEO], I knew all of our team, I knew all of the artists. That really helped. But first and foremost, the most educational piece for me was before I got to Capitol, when I was an attorney. In my heart of hearts — no matter what my title is or where I work — I am an artist advocate at my core. That’s who I am. That’s the thought I bring every single day to my job.
What was your first move as CEO to course-correct Capitol?
The three primary pillars I worked on were signing a diverse group of artists, ensuring that the company was reorganized in a way for artists to interact with labels in the way that fans interact with artists and ensuring that artists were prioritized in a way that was right for them specifically.
Capitol Records/10K Projects signee Ice Spice was one of 2023’s biggest breakout stars. What sets her apart?
There’s no question about it: She is the breakout artist of 2023. I don’t think anyone could argue otherwise. And getting into business with her [has been] incredibly exciting and motivating. Ice is a girl’s girl, and she surrounded herself with strong women and signed with strong women. I’m just one of them. She signed with [UMPG’s] Jody Gerson on the publishing side. She has made the right choices in her career every step of the way, from her look to her flow to her collaborations. She knows exactly who she is, and she’s unwavering about it.
What is the key to label success today? You’ve had new successes in the last year while many labels have struggled to break any artists.
Ultimately, everything is about the artist and the team of people. We have those both in spades. I mean, it was incredible to see the fact that we were the No. 1 TikTok label for 2023. Who would have thought that a year or two ago for Capitol Music Group?
Did you always dream of being a record-label CEO?
My dad died when I was 3 years old. I watched my mother struggle to figure out how to take care of our family. Music got me through all of the hard times. Unlike our artists, however, I had zero talent, and I knew it from a young age. (Laughs.) I wasn’t getting into music based on any talent that I had.
My father was a lawyer, and I knew that financially I needed a way to take care of myself. So I went to law school, graduated with a lot of debt and became a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at a big white-shoe law firm in Manhattan. If you know anything about me, you know that I am not the conservative type; I often wear a “F–k you” belt. I didn’t really fit in at the white-shoe law firm, but I had a plan to go into the music industry.
As soon as I paid off my loans, I got a job as a lawyer at Sony Music. I was there for two years, and I did not love being a cog. I had been in New York City for 10 years at that time and was ready to try Los Angeles. I was also dating a guy in Los Angeles, and that was part of the reason that I moved — as I tell you that, I see the feminism seeping outside of my body, but that’s true.
When I got to L.A., I called all the lawyers I had negotiated against who were artists’ attorneys and met Peter Paterno. I got a job working for him [at the firm now known as King Holmes Paterno & Soriano] and told him that for one year I would service his clients, and then I would have all my own clients after that.
While that may seem like bravado, that came to fruition. I became a partner there after three years and practiced law there for nine years, representing artists. Then I met Steve Barnett, who was co-head of Columbia Records at the time. We negotiated against each other in a deal for Odd Future and Tyler, The Creator. He said, “You pantsed me in that deal, you pantsed Columbia in that deal. If I ever go somewhere else, you’re going to be my first hire.” And it happened. I was his first hire [when he became CMG CEO].
Yuri Hasegawa
How did he convince you to move to the label side?
I always dreamed of running a record label from when I was 12 years old. I didn’t know if it would ever happen because, quite frankly, I absolutely love representing artists and the artists that I had. When Steve approached me, believe me, I put him through the wringer. I asked him every hard-hitting question I could as I decided whether I could still be myself and be an artist advocate within the system.
Ultimately, I chose to make the transition for two reasons. No. 1: I felt like now, more than ever, artists and record labels need to partner with each other. And you need an artist advocate within the label in order for an artist to feel truly comfortable and at home. No. 2: I felt like I could make a bigger change at a record label than I could make being an artist attorney.
In your career, have you faced adversity or discrimination that your male counterparts haven’t?
Since I entered the music industry as a lawyer, I’ve been afforded a shield that many women in the music industry don’t have. Because of that I have been protected from a lot — because, quite frankly, people are afraid of lawyers.
But the reality is, when I started as a lawyer, I didn’t have that shield. In one of my first annual reviews at [my first law firm], I was wearing a white shirt. I’m someone who always wears black, and the partner giving me my review took his water bottle [and] sprayed it on me. You can imagine what he could see. Then he said, “All right, we’re ready for your review now.” At the time, I folded my arms and just plodded on and let him give me his review. I did nothing about it. I beat myself up to this day that I did nothing about it because I’m sure he then did that to multiple women after me. Now I will not be quiet when things like that happen around me.
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
As the five members of NewJeans file gracefully down the stairs at their Billboard photo shoot in Seoul, they greet me with bright smiles and genuine greetings of “Nice to meet you.” Just a few days prior, the exploding K-pop girl group won artist of the year and song of the year at both the Melon Music Awards and MAMA Awards, two of South Korea’s most prestigious music prizes — and just two of the roughly 10 awards shows they attended and performed at in the country this past December and early January. Yet despite the hectic schedule of winter awards season there, they exude warmth and enthusiasm.
That infectious energy has endeared the women of NewJeans — Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein, who range in age from 16 to 19 — to fans both in South Korea and worldwide. Since debuting in July 2022, NewJeans has swiftly ascended to the top of the K-pop pantheon. Six of its eight released singles have reached No. 1 or No. 2 on South Korea’s dominant streaming measure, the Circle Digital Chart. The act has made inroads on several Billboard charts as well, including three top 10 hits on the Global 200 and four on the Global Excl. U.S. chart, five entries on the Billboard Hot 100 and six top 10s on World Digital Song Sales (the highest-reaching was “Super Shy,” peaking at No. 2 last July). The group’s songs have gained 931.6 million official U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
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Along the way, NewJeans has smashed expectations in K-pop, helping lead a new era of female influence in a genre long dominated by male groups. While it was once accepted industry wisdom that only boy bands could build a core fandom and widespread commercial success (selling both albums and concert tickets), NewJeans is part of a girl-group generation that has done both, shifting the paradigm of what achievement entails for young female groups. And NewJeans has done so under the guidance of an equally innovative leader: It’s the first act to debut under ADOR (All Doors One Room), led by founder and CEO Min Hee Jin, the rare woman leading a K-pop label and management company.
About a decade ago — when this writer started working in K-pop as a producer — it sounded very differently. Record labels emphasized melody, dynamic vocal range and cohesive track arrangements, while dance performance was simply considered support for a song. Over time, the music trended toward bombastic anthems well-suited to choreography, and so-called “easy listening” songs (those preferred by the South Korean general public, who of late have not been K-pop’s core audience) tended to get lost. But NewJeans has proved that strong performances and easy listening need not be mutually exclusive. And as Billboard’s Women in Music Group of the Year says in person in Seoul, the act is just getting started.
Danielle
Ssam Kim
Haerin
Ssam Kim
How did it feel to win artist of the year and song of the year at the Melon Music Awards and MAMA Awards?
Hanni: It was really surreal to win such big awards. Honestly, for us, when it comes to these types of awards shows, we are just excited to be there. Just to be invited is an honor. We never expected [to win]. We really are just thankful for everyone who has put in a lot of hard work toward our content and music and all the people that really enjoyed it, so I think it just makes it more fun.
Danielle: I agree with Hanni. There are so many people that put in so much effort and hard work into what we do, and we are just so honored that so many people are enjoying it just as much as we are enjoying it. Sharing that happiness and positive energy through our music is such an honor in itself.
You have a small discography but so many big songs like “Ditto,” which won song of the year at the Melon and MAMA awards. Which did you expect to become as big as they did?
Danielle: When our CEO has a new song and she’s prepared to make a new album, she gets us all in her studio and we listen to all the songs together. I remember the first time we heard the songs for our album Get Up, we were just blown away. Because we truly were just like, “This is so us! This is so NewJeans.” When I first heard “Ditto,” I felt a connection to it — I guess I felt if people hear this, I want them to feel they’re healed in some way. So to know that people out there are receiving somewhat of a positive energy, it’s really amazing. Every time we release new music, we wonder if people are going to enjoy it just as much as we do. To see people out there jamming to our songs, it puts a really big smile on our faces.
Hanni
Ssam Kim
From left: NewJeans’ Minji, Danielle, Haerin, Hanni and Hyein photographed on December 4, 2023 at Seongbuk Songjae in Seoul.
Ssam Kim
Traditionally, men have run the K-pop industry, and ADOR was notably founded by a woman. What was it like training under a CEO who has that shared perspective?
Danielle: I can’t imagine what it would be like if it wasn’t for our CEO, Min Hee Jin. We are so close to her, and we feel such a strong connection to her. After a conversation with her, we’d just be inspired and learn so much. When we go overseas and stuff, she’d take us out shopping and we’d have dinner together, and we’d spend hours and hours laughing and talking about what happened and how we’ve been and telling stories.
Hyein: She is very consistent. She’s always wondering about us and worrying about us. She’s very friendly and reaches out [to us] first, which helps us feel really comfortable around her. She gives us advice like a mother would. She’s not just a great CEO but a great human being in general.
Historically, core fandoms have been harder for women to achieve in K-pop. But in the last few years that has completely changed, and NewJeans is at the forefront of that. Why do you think you’ve been able to capture that?
Minji: It may have to do with the fact that the K-pop market became a lot bigger. That’s one of the reasons why we started with so much attention and love from the general public. We never really set a specific [goal], but rather aimed to put on a performance that we love with songs that we love. I think this probably helped our fans love us from early on.
Haerin: I agree with Minji. I think it’s also because there are so many channels we can use to communicate with our fans and the public.
Hyein
Ssam Kim
Minji
Ssam Kim
I think NewJeans has changed how music sounds in K-pop, with a trend toward returning to easy listening music. Do you agree?
Danielle: Music itself is always changing. But before we debuted, our CEO told us that she wanted to do something new, something fresh and different. But with that, she wanted it to be, no matter who you are, no matter what age or gender, you can listen to it and enjoy it. So I think with that came the easy listening music. We didn’t really think, “Oh, we’re going to change music, that’s crazy.” (All laugh.) We just wanted to try something new and fun.
You’ve accomplished so much in a short time. Where do you want to go from here?
Haerin: I want our songs to move people. My goal is not only to have songs that are emotional but also to share the emotions with people onstage and through our music.
Minji: I have similar thoughts to Haerin, but I want our music to be remembered for a long time. For example, I want people to think of last winter when they hear “Ditto.”
Danielle: Besides music and performing, I just want to become someone who stays true to myself and is always open-hearted and open-minded and modest and tries really hard because there are so many things I want to do and so many places I want to go. I want to experience a lot and learn a lot and just enjoy the time being with the [NewJeans] members.
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
As Billboard publishes its 136th volume throughout 2024, stay in the know on the magazine’s print schedule for the year, along with each issue’s corresponding theme. This is an updating post, so be sure to check back for any changes.
Issue Date: Jan. 27, 2024Theme: The Billboard Power 100
Issue Date: Feb. 10, 2024Theme: Sports
Issue Date: March 2, 2024Theme: Women in Music
Issue Date: March 9, 2024Theme: SXSW
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Issue Date: March 30, 2024Theme: Environment*This issue will include Top Music Lawyers
Issue Date: April 20, 2024*This issue will include International Power Players
Issue Date: May 11, 2024Theme: Country Power Players
Issue Date: June 1, 2024Theme: Branding*This issue will include 40 Under 40
Issue Date: June 8, 2024Theme: Indie*This issue will include Indie Power Players
Issue Date: June 22, 2024Theme: Pride/Black Music Month
Issue Date: July 13, 2024Theme: Jazz
Issue Date: Aug. 3, 2024Theme: R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players
Issue Date: Aug. 24, 2024Theme: Fall Music Preview
Issue Date: Sept. 21, 2024Theme: Latin Music Week
Issue Date: Oct. 5, 2024 (Double Issue)Theme: Grammy Preview/Producers
Issue Date: Oct. 26, 2024Theme: Touring*This issue will include Top Music Business Schools
Issue Date: Nov. 16, 2024Theme: BBMAs*This issue will include Top Music Business Managers
Issue Date: Dec. 7, 2024Theme: No. 1’s and Year in Music
Issue Date: Dec. 14, 2024Theme: Grammy Voter Guide
The nominees for best original song and score discuss soundtracking, and defining, a movie’s biggest moments.
Songs
Two tracks from Barbie are competing for best original song at the 2024 Academy Awards. The Greta Gerwig blockbuster is the first film to have two best song nominees since La La Land seven years ago. Plus: Oscar perennial Diane Warren was nominated for best original song for the 15th time — a benchmark that only five other songwriters have reached.
“I’m Just Ken”Barbie (Warner Bros.)Music and lyrics by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt
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Five years after winning for “Shallow” from A Star Is Born, Ronson and Wyatt are back with this comic highlight from the year’s top box-office hit.
What direction did you get from Barbie director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach?
Mark Ronson: They’re like, “If we’re going to have something for Barbie, then we need something that speaks from Ken’s point of view.” That’s the amazing thing about this film: It definitely is a story driven by women. But there is this wonderful little offshoot of this story of Ken — somebody who’s not as smart or as enlightened as Barbie trying to find their self-worth and value. So I just had an idea [of] what the song should be. And then when we saw the first marketing campaign, like, “She’s everything, he’s just Ken,” we were like, “Wow, they’re really doubling down on this song.”
You and Andrew Wyatt co-wrote another song that was vying for a nomination, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” but Oscar rules state that no more than two songs from a film can be nominated. Is that bittersweet?
Ronson: It is because Dua’s song is still the biggest song from the soundtrack and Dua was really the first artist of anywhere near her stature that committed to the film. It really set the bar for what the whole soundtrack could be. So Dua definitely deserves all the credit for that, and it would have been lovely to have her as well.
“It Never Went Away”American Symphony (Netflix)Music and lyrics by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson
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Batiste, who won the best original score Oscar in 2021 for Soul, stars in this moving documentary about his composing a symphony and receiving 11 Grammy nominations while dealing with his wife’s recurring leukemia. Semisonic’s Wilson has previously written with Adele, Taylor Swift and The Chicks.
Did you originally write this as a lullaby to your wife, Suleika?
Jon Batiste: Yes. She is a best-selling author and couldn’t put pen to paper because the medication blurred her vision badly, so she began to paint and I began to write lullabies. These lullabies were meant for her to go to sleep easier and have peace in the hospital. They were never meant to be released publicly. One of the themes of our relationship is creativity as an act of survival.
Why did you bring in Dan Wilson to co-write?
Batiste: His ability to sit with artists in their most personal and vulnerable moments and not usurp or influence the authenticity of the expression. I like to have a mirror — I felt that collaboration space would be sacred.
Dan, Jon obviously felt you were a kindred spirit.
Dan Wilson: When “Closing Time” was coming out, my first daughter was in the hospital the entire year … I felt I could understand what it’s like to have your most glorious musical successes accompanied by personal difficulty.
“What Was I Made For?”Barbie (Warner Bros.)Music and lyrics by Billie Eilish, FINNEAS
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This is the sibling duo’s second nomination following a nod and ultimate win in 2022 with their sweeping James Bond track, “No Time To Die.” “What Was I Made For?” was made with a specific purpose in mind: to become a pinnacle song in the Barbie film. The hit also won song of the year at the Grammys.
How did this nomination feel different from your first?
FINNEAS: Because we were on tour last time, this has been our first time attending the Critics Choice Awards and the [Golden] Globes. So this whole season I’ve been buzzing more.
How do TV and film awards shows compare to a music awards show?
FINNEAS: I do joke that when you go to the Grammys, they’re like, “One minute back from commercial,” and everyone’s up and talking and climbing over chairs. And you’re at the Oscars and they’re like, “30 seconds,” and everyone’s already in their seat waiting silently. It’s a room full of people with a real understanding of being live.
How did you balance this song being so specific to Barbie yet so universally felt?
FINNEAS: The goal is always to do that: to write something about the human experience. And the way that you do that is to examine the humanity of the character, however far-fetched and fantastical the story is … We haven’t all been Barbies, but the first time anything good [or] bad happens to you, you go through it with this naiveté. We were trying to write about how devastating it is to feel anything for the first time.
“The Fire Inside”Flamin’ Hot (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)Music and lyrics by Diane Warren
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The title of Warren’s latest Oscar contender — her seventh in a row — can be interpreted two ways. On one level, it refers to the burning sensation one would get from eating too many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (the snack food concocted by the movie’s subject, Richard Montañez). But that “fire inside” can also refer to inner drive, something Warren has in abundance.
I like the title’s double meaning.
Diane Warren: The song’s really about passion. As I was writing it, I’m thinking, “I’m like that, too.” I’m the person always having to convince people and fight for what I believe in. I’ve always been a self-starter. I’m pretty persistent. This is kind of my theme song, too, I have to say.
Of your 15 nominated songs, 10 — including this one — scored the film’s only nomination.
Warren: I am always the little underdog, which I love. Maybe it’s weird for some people to see me as that, but I have to fight for a lot of stuff. Even with this song, I kind of did this on my own. It was the only Disney song that got through [to a nomination]. They had some pretty big movies — The Little Mermaid and Wish — that they spent a lot of money on. And this little song got through.
“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)”Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)Music and lyrics by Scott George
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George has already made history, becoming the first Native American to land an Oscar nomination for best original song with the Osage Tribal Singers for “Wahzhazhe,” a celebratory song that soundtracks the film’s final scene.
You’ve said your life is defined by music. What song defines this moment now?
Scott George: That’s kind of why we made [this song]. We didn’t want [it to] just be for the movie. Because that, to us, felt like a death sentence. So our intention was to create something that they could use in a movie, but we could also use later to honor our people in celebration.
What was the biggest challenge throughout this process?
George: Trying to submit [the song] to the Oscars. None of our music is written down. It’s all held on to by memory. But one of the submission requirements was that it would be in a written form. And I just happen to know a person that took that on several years back as part of his education … And so he used that recorder that you got to take home in elementary school to find all the notes and write it all out. Within three to four days, he had it finished, and we got it submitted in time.
Clockwise from top: Robbie Robertson, Margot Robbie and Rhea Perlman in Barbie, Scott George and Ludwig Göransson.
Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; John Phillips/Getty Images; Stephen Lovekin/Variety; Lara Cornell/Warner Bos./Courtesy Everett Collection
Scores
John Williams received his 49th Oscar nomination for best original score, and his 54th overall, which pulls him closer to Walt Disney’s all-time record of 59 nods for an individual. Robbie Robertson, who died in August, is the first composer to be posthumously nominated in this category since Bernard Herrmann was cited 47 years ago for both Obsession and Taxi Driver.
American FictionLaura Karpman (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Karpman, a Primetime Emmy winner in 2020 who is up for her first Oscar for the score to the Cord Jefferson-directed satirical tale, says the nomination is “a validation on so many levels.”
Was it a given that the score would be jazz-oriented since Jeffrey Wright’s character is named Thelonious and nicknamed “Monk”?
Laura Karpman: It was a mandate because of the obvious reference to Monk, but it goes deeper than that. There’s something jazzy about the interplay between the cast members. It’s fast, it’s smart, it’s talky. It works. It’s not just that it was “Monk.” It felt like the right vibe in terms of the rhythms of the action.
You were scoring The Marvels at the same time. Did that creep into this score at all?
Karpman: There’s a really amazing young [flutist], Elena Pinderhughes, and I had the idea of using her for the sound of the villain in The Marvels and I thought, “How perfect. Let’s use a flute as one of the lead instruments in American Fiction.”
The score, including the two main themes, “Monk’s Theme” and “Family Theme,” was composed on your father’s newly restored piano, which you had just gotten back that day.
Karpman: It was the first time I played the piano since it had been restored. I was improvising and came up with the “Family Theme.” For sure, my dad came through that thing. It flowed out of the piano into my hands and back out again. It was weird.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyJohn Williams (Disney)
Williams, who lands his 54th total Oscar nomination, scored the fifth and last installment of the Indiana Jones series and will be vying for his sixth Oscar.
You previously said you may just do the movie’s themes. What made you change your mind and do the entire film?
John Williams: When I saw the film, I loved both Harrison [Ford] and Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] so much that I became proprietary and didn’t want anybody else to write music for them. Their performances were simply so good that I couldn’t resist.
“Helena’s Theme” is timeless. How did that piece come about?
Williams: The film is set in the 1960s, and Phoebe inspired me to recall the movie sirens of the ’30s and ’40s such as Lauren Bacall and Lana Turner. Helena was a woman who smoked, drank, gambled and had countless adventures, all the while looking breathtakingly beautiful, just like the great femme fatales of yesteryear.
This was your fifth Indiana Jones movie. How did it feel knowing this would be the final chapter?
Williams: I’ve always loved Harrison in all the films he has made, and I’ve been particularly privileged to accompany so many of them with music, among them Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Presumed Innocent and Sabrina. It has always been an honor working with such a great actor, and I have both my friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to thank for this great opportunity.
Poor ThingsJerskin Fendrix (Searchlight Pictures)
Musician Fendrix had never worked on a film prior to Poor Things — and director Yorgos Lanthimos had never worked on a film with a composer. And yet, both emerged better for it, as the film’s score earned Fendrix his first Oscar nod.
How did you find out about your nomination?
Jerskin Fendrix: I was by myself in the countryside. I’d gone back to my home to do some recording, and then I had a look and then a lot of people called me. And then my mom came home from work, and [we] had some nice champagne. It was great.
This was a surprising opportunity. How did you prepare?
Fendrix: We didn’t want any references. This had to be a really unique world, very special and exclusive to itself. I deliberately didn’t watch anything for quite a while and didn’t think about other film scores or any other music — I tried to have a look around and see what was already in my head.
You started composing just off the script, is that right?
Fendrix: I also had this very big, 200-page document of all the concept artworks: the set and costume designs and what the sky was going to look like and so on. So I had a good sense of how exuberant and how kaleidoscopic the whole thing looked. And that was very important for knowing what instruments I would choose, what textures I wanted, especially because up until this point, Yorgos’ films have been slightly more sober in their palette. So I was kind of surprised at how bright and insane everything looked. And I did ask, and he said that it’ll be pared down by the time we get to shooting — and it wasn’t.
From left: Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon, Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer and Emma Stone in Poor Things.
Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy; Melinda Sue Gordon; Atsushi Nishijima
Killers of the Flower MoonRobbie Robertson (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
This was the 12th and last Martin Scorsese film that Robertson worked on. Robertson, who died in August at age 80, is the first composer to be nominated in this category posthumously since Bernard Herrmann 47 years ago for both Obsession and Taxi Driver.
What did you have in mind for the score initially – what emotions did you want to evoke?
Martin Scorsese: Over the years, Robbie and I had figured out how to communicate with each other — we found a common language. For the scene with the oil gusher, I told Robbie that I wanted a gusher of sound, and that’s what he delivered. For the scene where Lily gets into Leo’s cab for the first time, I said that I wanted something dangerous and fleshy, and he gave me something dangerous and fleshy — and in so doing, he gave us a rhythm and a texture that became the heartbeat of the whole picture.
How does this nomination honor Robbie’s legacy?
Scorsese: I know that Killers of the Flower Moon meant a great deal to Robbie, for many reasons. I suppose we both realized that it might be our last chance to collaborate on a picture. And then there was the fact that it was a story set in the world of the First Nations, reflecting one of the worst chapters in the long history of suffering, injustice, real tragedy. As Robbie grew older, his Mohawk and Cayuga heritage became more and more important to him. Because of our friendship, along with other more personal reasons, it became important to me, too, that we work together on a project that dealt with that terrible history and at the same time brought indigenous culture itself, in this case Osage culture, to cinematic life, so to speak. So for us, on many levels, it was a culmination. Robbie’s score is one of the most beautiful in the history of movies.
As for his greater legacy as an artist, his entire body of work speaks for itself. He was a giant. He still is.
OppenheimerLudwig Göransson (Universal)
Göransson, who won this category in 2019 for Black Panther, has already taken home a Golden Globe and a Grammy for his often tense score for Christopher Nolan’s epic about the primary creator of the atomic bomb.
Had you and Nolan developed a shorthand from working previously on his 2020 film, Tenet?
Ludwig Göransson: We were able to enter this film on speed 10, which was needed because there’s a lot to go through. I started writing music based on the script and talking about the characters and the feelings. We were creating our sound world before we started shooting the film.
Your wife, Serena McKinney, plays violin on the score.
Göransson: When the main theme came together, a big part of that was her performance of the melody on the violin, how intimate and fragile that sounded. When I sent that to Chris, the performance really resonated with him and with me, too, so [it] was a huge turning point.
You approached this through J. Robert Oppenheimer’s eyes. How heavy was that for you?
Göransson: It’s a very complex character, and he goes through some very interesting but also at times very dark places. To try to get those emotions out definitely was very challenging.
This story originally appeared in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.