State Champ Radio magazine
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By the time Hootie & The Blowfish released their Atlantic Records debut, Cracked Rear View, on July 5, 1994, the band had already been together for more than eight years. Singer Darius Rucker and guitarist Mark Bryan met while attending the University of South Carolina and began gigging as a cover band called The Wolf Brothers. They were joined by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Brantley Smith, who was eventually replaced by Jim “Soni” Sonefeld. And Hootie & The Blowfish was born.
During the height of the grunge movement, Atlantic Records A&R executive Tim Sommer signed the quartet, which had already built a strong regional following for its jangly, harmony-filled pop rock songs and Rucker’s rich baritone. But the label’s expectations for the album were low.
“The only people [at Atlantic] championing us at the time were Tim and [Atlantic’s then-president] Danny Goldberg,” Rucker recalls. “One guy actually said that if they put Cracked Rear View out, they’d be the laughingstocks of the music business. Grunge was king, and nobody was looking for this pop/rock band out of South Carolina.”
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But Cracked Rear View surpassed all expectations — and then some, to put it mildly. Bolstered by the singalong, uplifting first single, “Hold My Hand,” the album bounced into the top spot on the Billboard 200 five times and has been certified 21 times platinum by the RIAA, signifying sales of more than 21 million units in the United States. The album, which took its name from a lyric in a John Hiatt song, is the highest-certified debut album of all time, according to RIAA data.
Thirty years later, to mark the anniversary of Cracked Rear View, Hootie & The Blowfish are staging the Summer Camp With Trucks Tour on a bill with Collective Soul and Edwin McCain.
Today, Bryan and Rucker fondly remember making the album with producer Don Gehman (R.E.M., John Mellencamp), whom they still work with; their favorite moment at the 1996 Grammy Awards; and where they were when the album first went to No. 1.
A promotional photo used on the band’s flyers in the early ’90s.
Courtesy of Hootie & the Blowfish
You started as a cover band, The Wolf Brothers. When did you start writing your own songs?
Mark Bryan: We were having fun doing the acoustic covers in the meantime, just the two of us. But I think we were always dreaming a little bigger, for sure. Then as Hootie, when we were in school, we started writing, but it was nothing we would want to share with you. (Laughs.)
Darius Rucker: We had decided that we wanted to make a change and [do] mostly originals. So when Brantley [Smith] left and with [Jim “Soni” Sonefeld] coming in, he made it an easy transition. We had written a couple of songs, but when Soni came in, we really started writing.
Soni came in with “Hold My Hand,” right?
Rucker: He played that the day he auditioned for us. He walked out of the room and I told the other guys, “He’s in the band!”
There were certain songwriters and acts you adored, like Radney Foster and R.E.M. How did they influence your sound?
Rucker: There’s always such a country element, and all of that comes from Radney Foster and [Bill] Lloyd. That jangly guitar we use definitely comes from R.E.M. [member] Peter Buck’s guitar with the jingle. It was rock’n’roll but it wasn’t metal. It was something we could do.
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Who is an act people would be surprised to know influenced the band?
Rucker: We listened to a lot of rap along with those country songs. Digital Underground and De La Soul and those bands. They influenced us in a big way. We still do [Digital Underground’s] “Freaks of the Industry.”
Why are the songs on the album credited to all four band members?
Bryan: We’ve split our publishing right down the middle from the very beginning. Nobody knew whose songs were going to be the hits. Our attorney was smart, and he was inspired by R.E.M. Not only did they inspire us musically, but they inspired us on the business side as well because they did the same thing. That fit with the way we were writing together anyway because everybody was bringing stuff in.
Despite the low expectations, the album took off. When did you realize you had a hit?
Bryan: Right when “Hold My Hand” hit, we realized our sound was connecting. Then it was “Let Her Cry,” “I Only Want To Be With You” and “Time.” A lot of times, it’s really hard for the artist, manager and label to decide what’s the right song for the [next] single. The funny thing about Cracked Rear View is there was never any question. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
Where were you when the album went to No. 1 for the first of its five times?
Rucker: We were on the road, and it had been moving [up the charts] so much, we were waiting for it to go to No. 1. Then you get that phone call that you’re finally the No. 1 record in the country. It was like, “Great. Let’s go play a show!” When you have so many naysayers and then you have the No. 1 record, it’s a pretty great feeling. You’re not [considered] cool, but you’re selling half a million albums a week.
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The melodies are so upbeat and jangly that it was easy to overlook a lot of the darkness or messages in the lyrics. For example, “Drowning” is about racism. Did you feel some people didn’t understand what you were saying?
Rucker: One hundred percent. I still don’t. “Hold My Hand” was a protest song. That’s a song about “Why are we hating each other?” You’ve got “Drowning,” and “Not Even the Trees” is such a dark song. “Let Her Cry” is a dark song. I think some people were caught up in “Hold My Hand” and “I Only Want To Be With You” and they didn’t look any deeper than that.
Bryan: I think Darius was very overt with “Drowning,” but that wasn’t our intention on a lot of our songs. It was more of that subtle approach to that, which is just treating each other right. I think there were other lyrics, here and there, where he was telling you about how he was feeling as a Black man in America at the time. It would have been nice if people caught up more on that. And I think from our end, too, with the fame that we got, we maybe had a responsibility to write into that a little more, and I don’t know if we ever resolved that.
For the 30th anniversary, do you wish people would give it a deeper listen?
Rucker: We wish they would but they won’t, and the thing that really matters to us is 23 million records sold [worldwide]. Success is the best revenge. Say what you want. Don’t put us on the ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We still have one of the top 10-selling records of all time.
Does the lack of recognition from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bother you?
Rucker: If we didn’t get in, that’s fine. But you really mean to tell us that we don’t even deserve to be on the ballot?
When was the last time you listened to Cracked Rear View from start to finish?
Rucker: 1994. I’m not one to listen to records after I put them out. Ever. I don’t really love to hear me sing, to be honest with you.
Bryan: When we played it in Mexico last April. We played it from start to finish.
A performance in Raleigh, N.C., during the 2019 Group Therapy Tour.
Todd & Chris Owyoung
In a shocking twist at the 1996 American Music Awards, Garth Brooks won favorite artist. He left the award on the podium, saying he didn’t deserve it and said backstage that you did.
Rucker: That’s one of the greatest, classiest things I’ve ever seen. When Garth did that, it just said so much to us about what we were doing for music. Every time I tell that story and he’s around, he says, “You know where our award is, Darius? On the mantel!” (Laughs.)
The next month, you won Grammys for best new artist and best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals. What do you remember from that night?
Rucker: We figured they had to give us best new artist because we sold so many records. But the second one, we thought [TLC’s] “Waterfalls” was going to win everything. KISS, in makeup for the first time since 1979, and Tupac [Shakur] walk out to present this category. We had just won best new artist and they rush us back to our seats. We’re drunk. We sit down and then Tupac says, “My boys, Hootie & The Blowfish.” That was unbelievable.
So “my boys” meant as much as the Grammy?
Rucker: Exactly! And KISS meant so much to all of us.
Bryan: I can’t physically remember being on the stage with KISS and Tupac. It was so much bigger than me that I almost blocked it out. Isn’t that crazy? It was so overwhelming that I didn’t embrace the moment maybe the way I would have now.
Thirty years later, what do you think is the album’s legacy?
Bryan: It seems to resonate in people’s lives in a very big way. Those stories like [it’s] their wedding song or they say, “It got me through my father’s death,” always keep coming back up to us, and it never gets old. What a great full-circle way as a songwriter to know that you’ve connected with people. As a songwriter and musician, you can’t ask for more. It’s such a dream come true to have made an album that has connected on such a level with people like that.
This story originally appeared in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Before R&B-leaning singer Tommy Richman vaulted into the mainstream conversation, he recorded music in his mom’s basement. An ardent supporter of her son’s career, she’d often tell him her favorite songs — but oddly enough, his breakthrough hit hardly cracks the list. “‘Million Dollar Baby,’ that’s the one everybody likes?” Richman playfully teases during our Zoom conversation in late May, mirroring his mom’s reaction. “She likes a lot of older songs way more and [other] stuff off the album, too.” But while his parents may not be captivated by the ‘80s funk-inspired track, the rest of the country has been infatuated, giving him a steady top-5 Billboard Hot 100 hit.
A native of Woodbridge, Va., Richman, 24, grew up listening to 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. Though the small town near the nation’s capital lacked an active music scene, he earned some of his musical sensibilities from his father, a drum teacher. And despite many residents working government jobs, his musical aspirations trumped the idea of a traditional 9-to-5 career. He self-released the somber single “Pleasantville” on YouTube as a freshman in college; then, he spammed various YouTube pages linking to it and urging listeners to “be brutally honest with the last song I posted.”
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The positive feedback he received online encouraged Richman to chase music as a full-time career, and in 2022, he met Darren Xu, COO of Brent Faiyaz’s imprint, ISO Supremacy, and his now-manager. Before long, Xu felt Richman was ready to take the next step and connected him with Faiyaz. By last August, the two artists were in business as well, with Richman signing a record deal with ISO Supremacy in partnership with PULSE Music Group. He also joined Faiyaz on his F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland Tour that summer, and in October, they collaborated on Faiyaz’ Larger Than Life album standout “Upset” alongside FELIX!, which reached No. 12 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart.
“[My team] values me as a person,” Richman says. “A lot of people look at you as an object: ‘We have to stay around this guy because he makes good songs.’ This sh-t wouldn’t have really transpired like that if we didn’t get along as people.”
He adds that “Drake reached out super early when I put out [2023 single] ‘Last Nite.’” And as the A-list cosigns began to accumulate, Richman’s confidence grew. He released two grooving singles in 2024 before his breakthrough, first with “Soulcrusher” and then “Selfish.” On April 13, Richman uploaded a teaser of another track — what would ultimately become “Million Dollar Baby” — to social media, shot in a grainy VHS style and featuring the artist and his friends dancing to the beat in the studio. It went viral, garnering over 12.5 million views on TikTok alone, as his falsetto in the infectious chorus quickly struck a chord with fans: “Cause I want to make it so badly/I’m a million dollar baby, don’t at me,” he sings.
“It was the combination of the sound of the VHS camera, the vibe of the people in the studio, how short the snippet was and how in your face the audio was,” says Richman. “The audio is really loud. I compare the audio to my other TikToks, and the one snippet is in your face. I think that’s why it caught on.”
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He followed it with a few more clips, and according to PULSE Music Group vp of marketing Sara Ahmed, they made the decision to drop the song just four days before its ultimate April 26 release. Richman turned in the master recording at 1:00 a.m. on April 23. “I built him a rollout [plan to] build into the hype of the song,” she says. “We didn’t have much lead time to [create] a campaign.”
Nevertheless, “Million Dollar Baby” had a seismic debut, netting 38 million official U.S. streams in its first full tracking week (April 26-May 2), according to Luminate. It entered at No. 2 on the Hot 100, and atop Billboard’s Streaming Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot R&B Songs charts — a particularly notable feat given the track was released amid the vicious hip-hop battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Lamar’s “Euphoria” arrived as “Million Dollar Baby” was gaining momentum; in the same weekend as its release, Drake’s “Family Matters” and Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” dropped, elevating the culture-defining feud. But even as the heavyweights threatened to stymy his opening week numbers, Richman remained unfazed.
“It was a blessing, low-key,” Richman relays. “I was reading a lot of comments like, ‘Damn, this is like the worst time to drop your song.’ It was kind of funny. A lot of people looked at us like we were the palate cleanse.”
“There’s nothing out there like this,” Ahmed adds. “I think people are looking for something new, exciting and different, and Tommy is it. This great song coupled with sharp strategy and Tommy’s determination really carried the song through — and we have barely scratched the surface.”
Gustavo Soriano
In five weeks on the Hot 100, “Million Dollar Baby” has remained a fixture in the top 10, and according to Richman, the song’s music video will arrive ahead of summer. As for a potential remix, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up. “There’s no remix, man,” he says. “A couple people [have reached out]. It’s cool, but for the integrity of the track, let’s keep it by itself.”
As Richman savors his newfound success, he’s already chipping away at his debut album, Coyote. Though he doesn’t have a release date, Richman believes his project will showcase his artistry beyond being a one-hit wonder.
“This is a big record, but this s–t doesn’t define me,” he says. “I’m using this as ‘We’re here. We arrived.’ Not as ‘We made it!’ This is the start of a run.”
A version of this story will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Artificial Intelligence is one of the buzziest — and most rapidly changing — areas of the music business today. A year after the fake-Drake song signaled the technology’s potential applications (and dangers), industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill, like RIAA’s Tom Clees, are working to create guard rails to protect musicians — and maybe even get them paid.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs like Soundful’s Diaa El All and BandLab’s Meng Ru Kuok (who oversees the platform as founder and CEO of its parent company, Caldecott Music Group) are showing naysayers that AI can enhance human creativity rather than just replacing it. Technology and policy experts alike have promoted the use of ethical training data and partnered with groups like Fairly Trained and the Human Artistry Coalition to set a positive example for other entrants into the AI realm.
What is your biggest career moment with AI?
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Diaa El All: I’m proud of starting our product Soundful Collabs. We found a way to do it with the artists’ participation in an ethical way and that we’re not infringing on any of their actual copyrighted music. With Collabs, we make custom AI models that understand someone’s production techniques and allow fans to create beats inspired by those techniques.
Meng Ru Kuok: Being the first creation platform to support the Human Artistry Coalition was a meaningful one. We put our necks out there as a tech company where people would expect us to actually be against regulation of AI. We don’t think of ourselves as a tech company. We’re a music company that represents and helps creators. Protecting them in the future is so important to us.
Tom Clees: I’ve been extremely proud to see that our ideas are coming through in legislation like the No AI Fraud Act in the House [and] the No Fakes Act in the Senate.
The term “AI” represents all kinds of products and companies. What do you consider the biggest misconception around the technology?
Clees: There are so many people who work on these issues on Capitol Hill who have only ever been told that it’s impossible to train these AI platforms and do it while respecting copyright and doing it fairly, or that it couldn’t ever work at scale. (To El All and Kuok.) A lot of them don’t know enough about what you guys are doing in AI. We need to get [you both] to Washington now.
Kuok: One of the misconceptions that I educate [others about] the most, which is counterintuitive to the AI conversation, is that AI is the only way to empower people. AI is going to have a fundamental impact, but we’re taking for granted that people have access to laptops, to studio equipment, to afford guitars — but most places in the world, that isn’t the case. There are billions of people who still don’t have access to making music.
El All: A lot of companies say, “It can’t be done that way.” But there is a way to make technological advancement while protecting the artists’ rights. Meng has done it, we’ve done it, there’s a bunch of other platforms who have, too. AI is a solution, but not for everything. It’s supposed to be the human plus the technology that equals the outcome. We’re here to augment human creativity and give you another tool for your toolbox.
What predictions do you have for the future of AI and music?
Clees: I see a world where so many more people are becoming creators. They are empowered by the technologies that you guys have created. I see the relationship between the artist and fan becoming so much more collaborative.
Kuok: I’m very optimistic that everything’s going to be OK, despite obviously the need for daily pessimism to [inspire the] push for the right regulation and policy around AI. I do believe that there’s going to be even better music made in the future because you’re empowering people who didn’t necessarily have some functionality or tools. In a world where there’s so much distribution and so much content, it enhances the need for differentiation more, so that people will actually stand up and rise to the top or get even better at what they do. It’s a more competitive environment, which is scary … but I think you’re going to see successful musicians from every corner of the world.
El All: I predict that AI tools will help bring fans closer to the artists and producers they look up to. It will give accessibility to more people to be creative. If we give them access to more tools like Soundful and BandLab and protect them also, we could create a completely new creative generation.
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Republic Records offered Tyler Arnold a full-time assistant role five months into his six-month internship with the label in 2014, taking it was “a no-brainer” — even if it meant dropping out of Northeastern University one year before graduating. “This is my dream,” Arnold recalls thinking. “I have to go for it.”
Arnold quickly became an A&R executive extraordinaire: His first signing to the label, in 2015, was a young Post Malone (“I signed him on my 23rd birthday,” Arnold recalls); his second was superproducer Metro Boomin in late 2016. By 2020, Arnold was Republic’s executive vp of A&R. “I really loved discovering music in high school and college, finding new artists and seeing them grow,” he says. “I also wanted to work really closely with the artists, and I felt like A&R, if you do it right, there’s such a personal connection that you can build.”
Today, the fast-rising executive is applying that same mentality as president of Mercury Records, the Republic division that relaunched in April 2022 with major names like Post and Noah Kahan and strategic partnerships with Big Loud (Morgan Wallen) and Imperial Music (Bo Burnham). And though Arnold says he wasn’t sure he was ready to head a label, “I wanted to grow as an executive.” (Along with Republic co-founders Monte and Avery Lipman, Arnold credits Big Loud partner/CEO Seth England for encouraging him to take his current role.)
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Given Republic’s existing infrastructure, Arnold, 31, says he didn’t have to worry as much about key departments like radio, commerce and international. As a result, he and GM Ben Adelson (a fellow Republic vet) had runway to try something new. “I asked a lot of my artists what they felt was missing, or I asked managers who had artists at other labels, and tried to create solutions to what the modern record label might look like,” Arnold says. “We really dove into creating a label that is fully led by A&R, creative and marketing.”
Tyler Arnold
Michael Tyrone Delaney
In just two years, Mercury has become an undeniable force. In its first year alone, the label scored a major success with Kahan’s Stick Season; the album’s extended deluxe version, Stick Season (Forever), featured artists including Kacey Musgraves, Hozier and Post. By the end of 2023, Kahan had secured a best new artist Grammy nomination. Meanwhile, Wallen’s 2023 album, One Thing at a Time, finished as the No. 1 year-end Billboard 200 album; in March, Big Loud announced a multiyear distribution deal with Mercury Records/Republic for all releases, including artists like HARDY and ERNEST.
As for Post, the star has already released a pair of projects on Mercury (2022’s twelve carat toothache and 2023’s Austin) and is teasing a third on the way — a country album. In April, he made his Stagecoach debut, performing a set of country covers, and the following night, he joined headliner Wallen to unveil their much-anticipated duet, “I Had Some Help”; the song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its May release, marking Post’s sixth topper on the chart (and Wallen’s second). (The single is the latest in an impressive 2024 collaborative run for Post, who has already appeared on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department; the latter’s “Fortnight” scored him another Hot 100 No. 1.) “It has been a dream of mine for Post and Morgan to work together for years,” Arnold says, “and to see that come to fruition, it was truly a goose bumps moment.
“When we make a commitment to an artist, we’re hoping we work with them for the next 10 to 15 years and beyond,” he continues. “That’s the goal for us. It’s not knocking off hit songs. It’s building real careers.”
It’s also building lifelong bonds: Post welcomed his daughter two years ago, and Arnold recently became a first-time father. “We swap photos and videos and we definitely talk about it,” Arnold says. “My relationship with [Post] is one of the most special things I’ve gotten out of my career, just because of how far we’ve come and how close we still are — and continue to get. I think it’s rare to have that continuity.
“At the end of the day, I’m still an A&R,” he adds. “It reflects how we want to build Mercury. We’ve been lucky to work with some of the biggest and most influential artists over the last decade across all genres, and we want to extend that. [This role] allows me to still be a kid in a candy store, but also have more autonomy.”
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s a sunny May afternoon in Miami’s lush Coral Gables neighborhood, and Camila Cabello greets me at her family’s one-story home accompanied by a small menagerie: four dogs — including her golden retriever, Tarzan, and German shepherd, Thunder — along with her rescued cockatoo, Percy.
Cabello is home “to recharge” amid a hectic few days that included time in California and will soon take her to New York for the Met Gala. But today, with her messy pigtails, Daisy Duke shorts and silver flip-flops, Cabello looks more like a college girl on break than a major pop star about to release her fourth solo album — a fearless artistic statement coming June 28 titled C,XOXO. Her father washes the driveway, her mother offers me cafecito, and her aunt plays with the dogs.
Cabello will receive the Global Impact award at Billboard’s Latin Women in Music, produced by and airing on Telemundo on June 9.
“Let’s go to lunch — I’ll drive!” Cabello exclaims as she grabs her tote. The 27-year-old got her license just two years ago and learned to drive during the pandemic; as we hop into her white Tesla — nicknamed “Tessie” — she admits that getting behind the wheel (with a good album or podcast on the stereo) is her favorite form of stress relief. She takes us to Pura Vida, one of her favorite local health spots, where we sit down outside with summer chicken bowls. “Girl, it’s this Met Gala coming up… I can’t wait to stuff my face after,” she jokes.
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With her still fairly new platinum blonde tresses (a fresh ’do she debuted on social media in February), Cabello largely goes incognito; some passersby seem to recognize her but are perhaps too shy to approach. Just one screams, “Camila, I love you!” — a reminder that while Cabello might periodically crash at her parents’ house, she’s still a global superstar. But while she jokes that her new look has the side benefit of granting her some anonymity in public, she explains that it has a deeper meaning.
“The voice that I found with my new album has this big baddie energy vibe,” she explains animatedly. “Part of that spirit is taking risks, not giving a f–k and doing whatever you want. I think the blonde was me staying true to that feeling. With the hair, it was like, ‘How do I tell people, visually, that this is my new era?’ Sometimes you need the physicality to let them know, ‘Oh, this is a new thing, a new character.’ ”
CD1974 courtesy of Retail Pharmacy top, SHAY earrings and rings.
Erica Hernández
On March 27, Cabello unleashed the first taste of what C,XOXO might bring: the Playboi Carti-featuring “I Luv It,” co-produced by Spanish hit-maker El Guincho (Rosalía) and Jasper Harris (Jack Harlow, Doja Cat). “I Luv It” samples Gucci Mane (“Lemonade”), interpolates a 2011 Rihanna loosie (“Cockiness [Love It]”) — and has a hyperpop aesthetic that marked a significant departure from the more conventional pop (and more recently Latin-influenced) sound that made Cabello a household name, first as a member of Fifth Harmony, then as a solo artist.
The unexpected track was also significant for another reason: It was Cabello’s first Interscope Records release after leaving Epic Records, her label home of nearly a decade where she had been since Fifth Harmony’s debut and released her first three solo albums — Camila, Romance and Familia — between 2018 and 2022.
Reactions to “I Luv It” on social media were mixed, and the song debuted and peaked at No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still, the song (and its somewhat unhinged vibes) piqued interest in Cabello’s next musical chapter. “The unpredictability of it is so different for me,” she says. “It’s such a kick-the-door-down moment, sonically, that it makes me feel strong and powerful. At least for me, in this stage of my life, it would feel so unfulfilling to just have a song that was big but felt like something that I’ve already done before. That brings me no joy. I would rather have a song that’s weird and be new territory to me.”
While the strangeness of “I Luv It” encapsulates Cabello’s new era, it was a different track that truly set the tone for the C,XOXO sessions. “At first, we played around with different genres, trying to find the sonic world the album lives in,” she explains. “ ‘Chanel No. 5’ really cracked open the album. For me, as a writer, that was the voice I wanted for the album: coy, cheeky and kind of devious.”
Gucci jacket, SHAY earrings, Harlot Hands rings.
Erica Hernández
On “Chanel No. 5,” Cabello sings between trippy piano interludes, her falsetto distorted, about being a “cute girl with a sick mind.” At one point she even raps — she has recently taken inspiration from “c–ty, cocky girl rap” like Flo Milli and Baby Tate, she explains.
“We realized we hit this key transition in the process,” says Harris, who co-produced the album, of the track. “That’s the first song we knew was very C,XOXO, and creating every song forward, we would ask if it felt as true as ‘Chanel.’ It was our north star.” (“Chanel No. 5” will be released pre-album drop as a fan track.)
Cabello, El Guincho and Harris devoted most of 2023 to working on the album — in New York, Los Angeles and the Bahamas but primarily Miami — and along the way, she had another creative epiphany: Her previous sets all had a why, a when and a who at their center, but never a where. C,XOXO would: It’s a love letter to Miami.
Cabello wasn’t always a Miami girl, but her journey here — a city full of sounds and culture enriched by immigrants — was a big part of what ultimately made her one.
Born in Havana, Cuba, she moved to Mexico City with her parents at age 6 and ultimately arrived in Miami with her mother (her father joined almost two years later). Her mom, who had been an architect in Cuba, worked in the shoe department at Marshalls; her dad washed cars at Dolphin Mall. Today, they run a successful contracting company called Soka Construction (named after Camila and her younger sister, Sofia).
In ninth grade, Cabello auditioned for The X Factor, where she eventually joined contestants Ally Brooke, Normani, Lauren Jauregui and Dinah Jane to form Fifth Harmony. With Cabello in the fold, the girl group — one of the most commercially successful ever — went platinum with its first two albums, in 2015 and 2016, and notched a top five Hot 100 hit with the Ty Dolla $ign-featuring “Work From Home.”
Erica Hernández
Amid Fifth Harmony’s success, Cabello started exploring opportunities outside the group. In 2015, she teamed with Shawn Mendes for “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which cracked the top 20 of the Hot 100; the following year, she released “Bad Things” with Machine Gun Kelly, which went to No. 4. In December 2016, Fifth Harmony announced Cabello’s departure from the group on social media. “After 4 and a half years of being together, we have been informed via her representatives that Camila has decided to leave Fifth Harmony,” the other four members stated. “We wish her well.”
Cabello quickly flourished on her own: Her first three solo albums all reached the top 10 of the Billboard 200, and she has logged 21 Hot 100 entries as a solo artist, plus picked up two Latin Grammys. All the while, she continued notching star collaborations, like “Hey Ma,” an early-2017 teamup with Pitbull and J Balvin from the Fate of the Furious soundtrack. But her solo career really took off in August of that year with the Young Thug-featuring “Havana,” which climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100 the following January. Her second Hot 100 chart-topper followed two years later: the steamy duet “Señorita” alongside Mendes, with whom she was in a much-photographed, two-year relationship.
Still, Cabello hasn’t yet delivered her lasting, full-length statement — the one that strongly defines her creative ethos and is entirely her own. Her latest album, 2022’s Familia, scored a top 40 hit with the Ed Sheeran-featuring “Bam Bam,” but it was Cabello’s lowest-charting solo project. (Her feature film Cinderella the previous year — a splashy starring role that could’ve further boosted her profile — received, at best, middling reviews.) In September 2022, Cabello left Epic to sign with Interscope — home to young stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, who have become some of the biggest names in pop music by unapologetically establishing strong musical identities. With C,XOXO, Cabello is poised to potentially do the same.
“This was the first time she had the chance to decide on her own record label,” says Cabello’s longtime manager, Roger Gold of Gold Music Management. “[Epic was] wonderful and super supportive, but there’s a difference between being signed to a label without your own selection process and making decisions and then really getting to do that for the first time. It was a big deal for her to find people who deeply wanted to work with her, respected her and understood her. [Interscope] truly makes us feel like we’re the only artist on the label sometimes.”
“She’s the kind of artist who doesn’t compromise,” says Michelle An, Interscope Geffen A&M president and head of creative strategy. “It sounded like Camila wanted a label team that really gets into the weeds of everything. What are the big looks with the [digital service provider] partners? What is the strategy with radio? How are we implementing it internationally? She’s the boss of the boardroom, and she can tell us how she feels and how she wants to market. She’s really embracing the fact that she has a big team that operates like a boutique.”
No Sesso dress, SHAY earrings.
Erica Hernández
That level of label support, Gold says, allowed Cabello to treat C,XOXO as the kind of creative departure she had never explored before. “She’s feeling very confident in her womanhood, owning her own power,” he says, “and feeling like this is her time to bravely say the things she wants to say.” It may have been a sonic jolt and, to some fans, an outlier, but “I Luv It” was no red herring.
On C,XOXO, Cabello’s musical hallmarks remain — her hypnotic falsetto, her vulnerable ballads, her heartfelt songwriting — but in an entirely different sonic context that now blends hip-hop, Afrobeats, R&B, reggaetón and electronic music. They’re the sounds of Miami itself, vividly evoking the scenes of the city: driving past the clubs on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach or through bustling, artsy Wynwood on a busy weekend.
“So much of the inspiration for this album was driving, listening to music, rolling the windows down and hearing what people in the city are listening to,” Cabello says. “The voice she was using as a writer felt very much like the city itself,” El Guincho adds. “I thought it was a very interesting angle to have Camila represent her city strongly in a pop album context, which are usually very displaced and decentralized.”
Because the album was made almost entirely in Miami, Cabello says she looked at the city “with binoculars and extra-close attention. Sonically, it feels like it’s a Miami art piece.” For her palette, Cabello drew on a diverse group of collaborators to add unique colors, including Carti, Lil Nas X, The-Dream, fellow Floridians City Girls and BLP Kosher — and, most notably, Drake. That much-discussed (and paparazzi-snapped) jet ski adventure Drake and Cabello took in the Turks and Caicos Islands last year? They were finishing up a track together.
“He’s the f–king GOAT, so it felt like shooting for the stars,” Cabello recalls of initially approaching the Canadian rapper by sliding into his Instagram DMs. “I showed him the album when I felt comfortable enough and he really liked it. [The feature] came out of a nontransactional place. He had this idea of a song called ‘Hot Uptown,’ and it just felt like I was in the city. I was in Miami.”
ABLONDI dress
Erica Hernández
The flirtatious, Caribbean-infused track (which until their Turks meetup was, according to Harris, the only album cut created with a remote collaborator) isn’t Drake’s only C,XOXO appearance. On the nearly two-minute-long interlude “Uuugly,” sequenced immediately after “Hot Uptown,” he sings over soft synth beats and Cabello’s ghostly backing vocals. According to Harris, the interlude was Drake’s idea: “He wanted to do one more thing for the album.”
“Why does he have his own song? Because selfishly, I just want to hear Drake on my own album,” Cabello says with a laugh. “I love that for me — it’s like that rebellious mood. Who says I can’t do that? It’s Drake talking his sh-t.”
Another ballsy move for Cabello: This is the first time she has written all her lyrics and lyrical melodies for an album, taking full responsibility for the ideas and concepts behind them. “She’s fast, curious, has great instincts for melody, is strong with her opinions but also open for them to be challenged. She’s pretty much a freestyler with great first takes,” El Guincho says. The producer “really believed in me to take on the writing,” Cabello says. “That felt good and important to me. It makes me feel different when the whole body of work is purer, my thoughts and my taste in words. I think that’s why it sounds so cohesive, because it really feels like me.”
Today, at Pura Vida, Cabello pulls out her phone and opens a Pinterest board she created last fall. It has movie stills from Spring Breakers, girls wearing balaclava masks, long manicured nails, BMX bikes, photos of the city at night — all conjuring the quintessential DGAF Miami girl energy that Cabello telegraphs on the cover of C,XOXO, which features the sweaty-haired star with heavily mascaraed, just-out-the-club lashes, licking an electric blue lollipop, her tongue stained with its fluorescent color.
“She had specific memories of Miami and growing up there,” An says. “She described driving through the tunnels, with [their] very specific yellow lighting that you don’t see anywhere else. She described a specific hue of blue at the beaches and was focused on blue hour. The blonde hair was also a big deal. The party culture. She spent a lot of time trying to get us to understand the visual world of Miami.”
Erica Hernández
As she honed the album’s voice and vision, Cabello started dressing differently, always wearing lip gloss, fully embracing her bold new persona. “It was important for me on this album to feel that way,” she explains. “Pop music is so uncomplicated — it’s very one-toned. In a weird way, this album shows these chaotic, sometimes toxic scenarios, and I think we as humans are like that — we’re messy, complicated, super twisted.”
“There’s a lot of people that want you to be formulaic in this business,” Gold says. “There’s pressure in general to not rock the boat too much: If something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Camila is not that type of artist.”
With C,XOXO finished, Cabello has some time to unwind and focus on herself. She finally started watching Breaking Bad; she’s currently into cold plunges; and she’s maximizing the time that she spends in chancletas (flip-flops).
“It’s when I feel the freest. I just want my toes to be free,” she confesses with a smirk. “I hate heels, I hate sneakers, I just want to be in chancletas all the time. This is actually the first time that I’ve gone to an interview in chancletas, and I feel that this album has given me the permission to do that.”
C,XOXO also allowed her to embrace her personal relationships. Simply being able to hang out with her friends at home enriched the creative process, she says: “That energy of being with your friends and that girl gang vibe felt so sick to me.”
That vibe particularly comes through on “Dade County Dreaming,” the final track she recorded for C,XOXO. Inspired by its namesake county, the collaboration with Miami hip-hop duo City Girls (who Cabello connected with through her sound engineer) captures the essence of both the album and who Cabello is today: a city girl herself, having fun and living life. The hard-hitting track — with its ’90s freestyle undertones, haunting piano lines and geographic name drops — was, Cabello says, “the missing piece on the album [because] City Girls represent Miami so hard.”
Erica Hernández
Just weeks ahead of releasing C,XOXO, Cabello tells me she doesn’t have any expectations. “Many things can happen, and they are out of my control,” she says. But she’s ready to face the feedback with the clarity and maturity she has cultivated in the 12 years since her Fifth Harmony debut.
“[When I was starting out], I wish I knew that not everybody is going to like me, and it has nothing to do with me,” she admits. “That affected me a lot in the beginning. When you’re that young all you want is acceptance and love, and you can’t understand when people don’t like you. You take it so personally, and it makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Once you get older, you realize that people’s reactions have nothing to do with you, and you don’t have to take it so personally and be affected by it. I’m way more at peace with it today.”
On an ordinary day, she’ll go to the beach, read a book, invite her friends to her condo in Sunny Isles for dinner, sip a Bacardi and sparkling water, put on a cute outfit and go dancing at Swan, a chic Euro-style spot in the luxurious Miami Design District, or Dirty Rabbit, an edgy Wynwood dance club. After a night out, she’ll make a mandatory stop at the 24-hour Pinecrest Bakery for some croquetas. Even if she’s tired, she pushes herself to go out and won’t hold back from dancing with a cute guy if she feels a vibe. “I’m living the Sex and the City life, but Miami,” she says with a laugh. But really, it’s the C,XOXO life.
“To me, it’s about going out more, going to more parties and just being a bit more fearless and rebellious,” she muses. “Before, I would go out and not care about what I looked like. If I felt kind of ugly, it was whatever — but now, I always want to feel pretty for myself. It’s about really enjoying life, and I always think to myself, that’s what sensuality is all about. It’s a sensory thing: enjoying the food you eat, enjoying putting on a few outfits in the mirror, enjoying the senses of being alive. It’s about taking in that baddie energy.”
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Good Neighbours’ “Home” has been one of the biggest viral success stories of 2024 so far. Here’s how the duo made it happen.
Foundation
Before they were Good Neighbours, Scott Verrill and Oli Fox were literal neighbors in an East London studio space last year, intrigued by each other’s solo work bleeding through the metal windows. “We could constantly hear what each of us was playing,” Fox recalls, “and on a spare morning, we did a bit of free writing together.”
Those sessions hinged on shared influences — Verrill and Fox both draw from late-2000s indie–pop mainstays like MGMT and Passion Pit — and “Keep It Up,” one of the first songs the duo wrote together with its booming drums and yelped vocal hooks, formed a mission statement of sorts while the pair worked through demos in late 2023.
Discovery
In January, Good Neighbours recorded the oversize chorus of “Home,” a bleeding-heart, whistle-packed anthem, and decided to float the refrain on TikTok without finishing the rest of the song. “It started out pretty quickly — a few thousand plays — and we got excited and said, ‘If it hits 25,000, we’ll get a pint!’ ” Fox says.
Within a few hours, the “Home” clip had crossed the 1 million mark, and major labels were reaching out to the duo’s manager, Joe Etchells of Various Artists, who signed the act in September 2023. “Home” was quickly fleshed out to a full song, debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in February and has earned 77 million streams through April 25, according to Luminate. Instead of grabbing that celebratory drink, Verrill and Fox got their worlds upended: “We’re constantly looking at each other and going, ‘This is insane,’ ” Fox says.
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Future
Last week, Good Neighbours announced a global joint venture with Capitol Records and Polydor Records. And after lining up headlining shows in the United Kingdom and Europe for the spring and festival gigs for the summer, Good Neighbours released “Keep It Up” in April as their second single and are finishing more material to be released later this year.
“We wrote a bunch of new demos in January, and we’ve got like 10 from last year — some of which are probably better than ‘Home,’ which is really nice,” Fox says. Still, after recording separately for years before joining forces, Verrill and Fox understand how rare a breakthrough like “Home” can be in the modern music industry. “The whole thing has been such a happy accident,” Verrill says. “We’re still trying to process it.”
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With Sparkling gold cowboy boots that double as disco balls, a corner dedicated to Dolly Parton and vintage storefront signage that recalls the spirit of Westerns filmed in Pioneertown, Calif., it’s easy to see why someone at the country music-inspired Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles would want to document all of its intricacies. Yet the owners of the multifaceted entertainment venue would prefer that guests abstain.
When Ten Five Hospitality managing partner Dan Daley and his team opened the rooftop bar in December 2021, they envisioned a location where guests could stay in the moment. “It was this pullback to an era when not everything was viewed through the medium of a screen,” Daley says. “We wanted the exact opposite of that manufactured feeling when you get into another space and feel like, ‘This feels fake because it’s almost too perfect.’ ”
The interior of Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles.
Desert 5 Spot
In June, Desert 5 Spot will open a roughly 200-capacity second location, traveling cross-country to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. The venue will bring with it much of its style, such as the hand-selected furniture from antique sales and thrift shops across the West, various forms of its Boho desert-inspired chic and the affably named Dolly’s Corner. Like its predecessor, Desert 5 Spot N.Y. will prioritize the live-music experience with performances from rising artists, DJ sets and an in-house band — though plenty of established country and rock’n’roll talents are bound to show up. (In L.A., Kane Brown, Green Day, Dasha and Noah Cyrus have all performed, while others including Lainey Wilson and John Mayer have swung by the venue.) Plus, it’ll offer an array of weekly programming featuring line dancing and two-stepping classes, tarot card reading, a vintage trading post and more. Daley adds that there will be a regular Sunday-night party exclusive to the Williamsburg location, though keeps specifics under wraps. As for food and drinks: “L.A.-approved tacos,” he says with a grin. “We’re going to sling some of the best tacos in New York.”
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The venue’s East Coast debut follows a year in which the top song and album were both country releases (Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and One Thing at a Time, respectively). The genre’s popularity has sustained in 2024, with pop stars like Beyoncé, Post Malone and Lana Del Rey either releasing blockbuster country projects or teasing forthcoming efforts. Daley expects the venue to embody the aura that has fueled the trend. “The ethos of country music is rawness, it’s authentic; it’s messy, but it’s real emotion,” he says. “I think that’s why the genre is speaking to all different types of people now. It’s part of this cultural reversal in terms of, ‘Let’s get back to real human connection,’ which at the end of the day is what country music is really about.”
Daley reveals the partners are eyeing other markets and considering further expansion, but the focus now is on New York. Still, it hasn’t precluded them from growing in other ways: At the Stagecoach festival in April, Desert 5 Spot hosted a pop-up featuring performances from Shaboozey and Nikki Lane over the weekend and attracting attendees including Leon Bridges, Diplo and Del Rey. But as the brand continues to grow, Daley stresses that its core message to guests remains the same. “Our goal is for you to [leave] our venue and say, ‘That was one of the best times in a really long time.’ ”
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“We were pretty prepared for this moment,” says Shaboozey, lounging on the floor of a Los Angeles recording studio. While putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going (due out May 31), the fast-rising country artist is — perhaps for the first time — reflecting on how he arrived at this point in his career. Not only has the buzzy 29-year-old been working in music for nearly a decade, but a recent assist from Beyoncé helped spark a career-shifting breakout moment of his own.
After appearing as a featured guest on a pair of songs on the icon’s chart-topping and record-breaking Cowboy Carter (“Spaghettii” with Linda Martell and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin”), Shaboozey released a solo single: the jaunty country-rap anthem “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which interpolates J-Kwon’s 2004 smash “Tipsy” — and, just three weeks later, broke records of its own.
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Even though his Bey-assisted breakout was unveiled first, Shaboozey suspects his solo track was the reason he was featured on Cowboy Carter at all. “Someone at Parkwood or in Beyoncé’s camp heard [“A Bar Song”] from me playing it live and was like, ‘We have to bring him in the studio,’ ” Shaboozey recalls. “Then the Beyoncé [album] came out, and we were like, ‘Oh, it’s time. Drop it.’ ”
After rising from No. 6 to rule Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart dated May 4, Shaboozey and Beyoncé became the first Black artists to score back-to-back leaders in the chart’s 66-year history with “Texas Hold ’Em” and “A Bar Song.” His hit also debuted atop the all-genre Digital Song Sales list and has peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his first solo entry on the chart. “A Bar Song” has also exploded on TikTok (soundtracking more than 150,000 posts in a few weeks) and has collected 64.9 million official on-demand streams through April 25, according to Luminate.
“I had been wanting to flip a 2000s song for a while,” Shaboozey says, noting Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up” was also in the running. “I just said, ‘Everybody at the bar getting tipsy,’ and then we were like, ‘Oh, sh-t!’ The producer picked up the guitar and started playing the chords, and then we started writing, just having fun and being creative.”
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
According to Shaboozey, J-Kwon is “more excited” about the song than he is. The two have been texting ever since the first sample clearance request, during which the St. Louis rapper assured Shaboozey that his song was “outta here.” (Upon its release in 2004, J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100.) “Feeling like you did the song you’re flipping justice and then getting that co-sign, not everybody gets that,” Shaboozey gushes.
An artist who cartwheels across country, hip-hop, rock and R&B, Shaboozey is a product of the melting pot that is Virginia. Born Collins Chibueze in the northern part of the state to Nigerian parents, his earliest musical memory is listening to Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” along with a healthy dose of Kenny Rogers and Garth Brooks that his father would play. In 2015, Shaboozey experienced his first viral moment with “Jeff Gordon,” an independently released piano-inflected trap banger he says was “a whole moment in DMV music” that he conceived after sourcing a Gordon racing jacket and delving into NASCAR’s fashion aesthetics. Two years later, another quasi-viral song, “Winning Streak,” helped Shaboozey score a record deal with Republic, which released his 2018 debut album, Lady Wrangler.
In 2020, he scored a manager in Abas Pauti, whom he met through mutual friends. “After talking through our lives and hearing the music,” Pauti recalls, “I knew that I needed to be around and support in any way I could.” (Shaboozey is now co-managed by Range Media’s Jared Cotter.) Shaboozey released his second album, 2022’s Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die, on indie label EMPIRE, saying his team there has “been down for the ride… it’s like a family.”
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Since Cowboys Live Forever, Shaboozey has enjoyed a string of wins that set the stage for his breakout 2024. Late last year, he released “Let It Burn,” the lead single from Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. It quickly gained ample traction online, even drawing attention from Timbaland and Diplo. And it was during those early months of his album campaign that Shaboozey received what became a life-changing call: a request to co-write with Beyoncé. “What I loved about [the] Beyoncé album is the inspiration and the influence that she had are probably the same as mine,” he says. “We’re studyingthe same things.”
Evocative follow-up track “Annabelle” maintained momentum while Shaboozey’s live performance of “Vegas” for music discovery platform COLORS, posted in March just weeks before Cowboy Carter arrived, has since amassed 1.3 million YouTube views.
Now, as he finishes his third album — which he teases will include “crazy surprises featurewise” — while also opening on tour for pop artist Jessie Murph, Shaboozey is a front-runner to dominate the summer. But he’s already thinking well beyond this moment. Ahead, he hopes to share one other thing with Queen Bey: “I want the Grammy.”
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The War and Treaty will make you believe.
Whether playing to industry insiders at Clive Davis’ exclusive Grammy Awards preparty, attendees at the Country Music Association Awards or Newport Jazz festivalgoers, precedent suggests just about everyone in any given audience will be on their feet by the time the husband-and-wife act finish one of their explosive, emotive, genre-bending and deeply spiritual sets.
“The fans will walk up to us afterward and say, ‘I don’t know what I just experienced, but something happened to me while I was listening to you,’ ” says Tanya Trotter, the duo’s better half. Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) CEO Cindy Mabe became one of those fans the first time she saw The War and Treaty, in 2022. “I was filming them and crying all at the same time,” she remembers. “I went home just talking about this band.” That same day, Mabe signed the act to its first major-label deal. Since then, this year’s Country Power Players Groundbreaker has continued broadening the genre with riveting and endless exuberance — even if country radio has yet to catch on.
Both Michael, 42, and Tanya, 50, started singing in church before they hit double digits; Michael has a video of himself singing “If Anybody Asks You Who I Am” standing on the congregation’s organ bench at just 3 years old. Those early experiences translated into a lifelong love of music-making and performing for both, though their path to The War and Treaty was far from linear. Tanya (née Blount) had a modest solo career in the 1990s following a cameo in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit singing alongside Lauryn Hill, including one track that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994; Cleveland native Michael dabbled in rapping, influenced by the success of local heroes Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, before eventually enlisting in the Army in 2003. While serving two tours in Iraq, he composed songs for his fallen comrades, even winning a “Military Idol” contest.
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The couple met shortly after Michael had returned stateside — fittingly, at an arts festival where he was trying to launch a solo career. Tanya had long since stepped away from music and was working as a worship leader; the couple married and had a son, Legend (yes, named for John), in 2011. They didn’t realize the potency of their combined voices until several years later, though, while recording a demo of a song Michael had written for Tanya’s brother. A friend heard it and practically demanded they keep making music together.
Tonya and Michael Trotter photographed on April 15, 2024 at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Robby Klein
That off-the-cuff duet in 2014 opened their eyes to a world of musical possibilities, but their path forward wasn’t easy or clear-cut. Michael still struggles with PTSD — at times so severely that he has said he contemplated suicide — and the couple also faced homelessness. Musically, they first found a home in Americana: In 2018, Thirty Tigers distributed their second album, Healing Tide, which featured a collaboration with Emmylou Harris, and they have won three Americana Music Awards. As the duo’s star kept rising, major country labels came calling, leading to the pair’s UMGN signing and subsequent major-label debut, 2023’s Lover’s Game, produced by Dave Cobb.
This past year, The War and Treaty were one of two country acts nominated in the Grammys’ best new artist category; the other was Jelly Roll, whom the Trotters consider a peer in making the genre more inclusive. “The space we occupied was really important,” Michael says. “The two artists representing the genre were not representative of that genre at all, if we’re being completely transparent. You got Jelly Roll, a tatted-face rapper who can sing a little bit, and Mike and Tanya, these Black, overweight, gospel-trained singers. Country music is actively trying to attack the narrative it has created, and I’m proud to be part of that change.”
Though they are self-described outliers on the still-too-homogeneous Music Row, the Trotters say their Nashville peers have strongly supported them. It started with Dierks Bentley — who invited them to join him onstage for their first country awards show performance in 2021 and included them on a live album shortly thereafter — and continued with Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton, for whom the duo will open three dates in May. Zach Bryan asked the Trotters to sing with him on his self-titled album after hearing them at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards, converted just like all the rest. The resulting song, “Hey Driver,” reached No. 14 on the Hot 100 — The War and Treaty’s highest chart entry to date — and the act will open Bryan’s three-night Los Angeles arena run in June, inevitably earning even more new fans.
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Michael and Tanya are relentlessly positive, but they won’t ignore the obvious. “How about Mickey Guyton?” Michael says. “It all begins with her saying, ‘This is what country music looks like, too.’ ” With Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter shining a new spotlight on country music’s long history of racial exclusion, the duo readily acknowledges the work that remains to correct that past. (Beyoncé reached out to the Trotters after Cowboy Carter’s release but did not seek to collaborate with them.) “Have we experienced it?” Tanya asks. “Of course we have. Do we see it in the crowds? Of course we do.”
But they insist on pushing forward. “We’ve been sort of a healing balm, and I won’t allow anyone to take that away from Tanya and I,” Michael says. “We’ve been taken out on the road not to check a box, but literally because we’ve impacted some of the most powerful artists in our genre today.”
“My purpose is to really broaden what country music is and has always been,” UMGN’s Mabe says. “Finding them was like finding a needle in a haystack. They are an evolution of a format… Absolutely, we will eventually end up [bringing them to] country radio.”
That impact has been made because of the way Michael and Tanya translate their gospel bona fides into potent, generous and agnostic performances. “When you think of a gospel sound, you’re thinking of that sense of urgency — regardless of what my message is,” Michael says. “That sense that I need you to understand what I’m saying, that’s what we’re after. When somebody taps into that good truth, it just comes out with that roar and that fire.” There’s no scorched earth in the Trotters’ wake, though, just the one thing they’re interested in evangelizing: love.
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Nate Smith is hunkered down in a Nashville studio working on his forthcoming second album — but the rising country-rocker can’t help but revisit his past. This is the same studio, he says, where he recordedhis independently released debut EP, 2020’s Reckless, which included his breakout hit, “Wildfire.” When the longing, twangy song went viral on TikTok, it helped Smith score management, publishing and record deals. But that almost never happened.
“I was able to record that because my sister’s husband loaned me $4,000 and we made a little investment deal,” recalls Smith over Zoom, eyes widening in lingering astonishment. “They took a huge risk… But they were able to make enough to put a down payment on their house from [my music].”
During his wildly successful past few years, Smith, 38, has hit numerous milestones: He released his self-titled debut album in April 2023, kicked off his biggest headlining tour yet at the start of 2024 and topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with “World on Fire” for 10 weeks in February, tying Morgan Wallen — for whom he’s currently opening stadiums — for the longest-leading No. 1 in the chart’s history. But despite all that, Smith is mostly just happy to “have a stable job” now. “I paid my car off yesterday. From music!” he exclaims. “I can pay my rent and I can buy Christmas presents. That, to me, is making it.”
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Smith learned to play guitar at 13 and became a worship leader at 16 in his hometown of Paradise, Calif., and as a young adult, he became a certified nursing assistant. But at 23, Smith moved to Nashville to fully pursue music. He scored a record deal with powerhouse Christian company Word Records and a publishing deal with Centricity Music, but without much success, so he moved back to Paradise in 2011.
He may have stayed, too, had it not been for the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Smith and his family survived 2018’s Butte County Camp Fire, but he lost his home. “If I had stayed in that apartment another hour, I wouldn’t have lived,” he says. Two years later, Smith packed his car with his remaining belongings and headed out to Nashville for a second time — now with nothing left to lose.
Nate Smith
Emily Dorio
The Camp Fire prompted Smith to write “Wildfire,” about how a love interest can generate a less-destructive kind of heat. Smith’s managers, The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk and Simon Tikhman, recall receiving the song early in the pandemic and soon after requesting a Zoom meeting with the unknown artist. “He had this bushy, wide-eyed personality of a guy who you know has been told ‘no’ every single step of the way and suddenly had a little momentum,” Tikhman says. “We just kind of fell in love with the guy and were flying to Nashville a week later to meet with him.” By summer 2020, The Core signed Smith to a management deal. A Sony/ATV publishing deal soon followed, as did a Sony Music Nashville record deal in 2021.
“If you look at an artist like Nate and his tough road to get where he is today, that’s the country story,” Tikhman continues. “They call Nashville the ‘10-year town…’ It has been a 20-year town for Nate.” Adds Zaruk: “The music business is so hard. To see that it can work and to see it happen to someone not in their 20s… He is an example of how hard work pays off.”
Today, Smith’s work ethic and his own strain of rock-infused country have helped him collect two Country Airplay No. 1s. An alt-rock disciple, he has injected edge into Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” revitalized Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” and often played Foo Fighters’ “My Hero,” which he calls his “ultimate favorite” song, during his live sets. Smith is also an EDM and pop fan; he recently met Marshmello and would love to collaborate. Sustained radio success, paired with growing mainstream interest in country music, has, Smith figures, provided him with “a lot of leverage.”
“We’re a little hillbilly genre over here, but [pop stars are] wanting to be a part of it, and Beyoncé coming in and some other folks… it’s exploding the genre,” he says. “They’re still trickling in; Post [Malone] hasn’t put his album out yet. There’s an opportunity right now… it’s definitely the time to go DM your favorite pop star.”
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Meanwhile, Smith and his management are working overtime to translate his current moment into a lasting career. “You can text Chief at 3 a.m., and he’s going to get back to you,” he says with a smile. “It’s kind of sickening, but we’re all like that.” He recently started a new protein-heavy diet and has given up drinking — for now. “The name of the game is don’t get sick and have endurance and be in shape,” Smith says. “This is an athletic thing, and I didn’t realize that… I love to party, but it’s just slowing me down.”
When Smith worries about losing momentum, his team reminds him where he was just a few years ago. “They always bring my perspective back,” he says, recalling Zaruk’s advice: “You were surviving before, working paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet. Now you’re living — we get to live.” Smith holds his freshly tattooed forearm to the camera, showing off some new ink that’s still healing: “Live. Don’t Exist.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
