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Hidden up a wooded hill in the sprawling backyard of his suburban Los Angeles estate, Dijon “Mustard” McFarlane is on the tennis court, perfecting his forehand.
“I’m an extremist,” the 34-year-old producer explains as he warms up his top spin. “I play every day, sometimes two times a day.” The L.A.-born musician, who shot to prominence at 21 when he produced Tyga’s 2011 hit “Rack City,” beckons his coach to serve again. After some rallying, Mustard slices a ball that nearly hits the Billboard cameraman kneeling beneath him, trying to get a close-up shot. “Oh, sorry! Man, you’re brave for sitting there,” Mustard says.
“I play, too; it’s cool,” the photographer replies, unfazed.
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“Aight, you’re one of us,” Mustard says with a grin, pointing at the man with his racket. For a second, it feels like the sportier version of a knighting ceremony.
He may still be polishing his tennis game, but after more than a decade of making hip-hop hits, Mustard scored an indisputable ace this year, reaching his highest career peak to date as the beat-maker behind Kendrick Lamar’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Not Like Us” — the biggest hit in Lamar’s spring beef with Drake. On the track, which cemented Lamar’s victory in the court of public opinion, the Pulitzer Prize winner is at his most venomous, using Mustard’s pop earworm of an instrumental as a Trojan horse for accusing Drake of being an Atlanta “colonizer” who steals sounds from local rappers and to resurface the serious allegations of Drake’s supposed predilection for underage girls.
But for such a hate-fueled anthem, “Not Like Us” also proved to be a uniting force for the world of West Coast hip-hop — unity by way of a common enemy. “When I was growing up, I watched 2Pac, ‘California Love,’ Dr. Dre, Snoop, the Death Row days,” says Mustard, who was born and raised in L.A.’s Crenshaw neighborhood. “It’s like being a part of that again, but in this day and age.”
The release of “Not Like Us” did plenty to galvanize the West Coast scene on its own, but Lamar further cemented its place in hip-hop history when he hosted The Pop Out — Ken & Friends, a Juneteenth concert at the L.A.-area Kia Forum. It was a show that was so sacred to L.A. natives that rival gangsters danced and sang to “Not Like Us” practically hand in hand onstage. To warm everyone up, Lamar enlisted Mustard to DJ a bevy of hits. But before literally popping out from under the stage, Mustard, a lifelong DJ typically confident in front of crowds, found himself on the verge of a panic attack. “I was nervous as s–t,” he confesses. “It just didn’t feel real.”
Aaron Sinclair
It was a full-circle moment for the producer, whose wide-ranging résumé — encompassing rap, R&B, EDM and pop — also includes hits like 2 Chainz’ “I’m Different,” Jeremih and YG’s “Don’t Tell ’Em,” Tinashe’s “2 On,” Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up,” Lil Dicky and Chris Brown’s “Freaky Friday” and Rihanna’s “Needed Me.” “When I was a teenager, I’d write with YG in Inglewood [Calif.]. He used to live right across the street [from The Forum]. I made ‘Rack City’ across the street from there,” says Mustard, shaking his head in disbelief.
To start his set, Mustard walked up to his turntables, appearing calm and collected, even though he secretly wasn’t. After he fiddled with the knobs, the audio of a viral TikTok began: “The real takeaway from the Drake and Kendrick beef,” the voice of TikToker @lolaokola said, “is that it’s time for a DJ Mustard renaissance.” The crowd began to roar as the audio continued: “When every song on the radio was on a Mustard beat, we were a proper country. It was happier times. The closest we have ever been to true unity.”
After “Rack City” became a smash in 2012, the artist-producer then known as DJ Mustard seemed unstoppable. There was something about his simple formula of “a bassline, clap and it’s over… maybe an 808,” as he puts it, plus that catchy producer tag “Mustard on the beat, hoe!” that attracted pop purists and hip-hop heads alike, making his work go off both at the club and on the radio.
“Being a DJ, being in front of people and parties, I know what makes people move,” Mustard tells me between volleys with his coach. Every element of a Mustard track is done with clear intention to propel the song, not to clutter it. “I always used to tell Ty [Dolla $ign], ‘Man, you’re so musical, bro, but that s–t does not matter if they can’t hear what’s going on,’ ” Mustard recalls. “Simplicity is key for me and bridging the gap between that and the real musical s–t — but it still needs to be ratchet enough to be fun, too.”
Aaron Sinclair
He learned to use turntables from one of the best: his uncle and father figure, Tyrei “DJ Tee” Lacy, an L.A. DJ who frequently soundtracked parties for Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and other local legends. Later in the day, I follow Mustard to Lacy’s restaurant, the District by GS on Crenshaw Boulevard. “This is where they got into it in Boyz n the Hood!” exclaims Mustard, gesturing to the street in front of the restaurant.
As he walks through the staff entrance and the kitchen, he daps up each person, his diamond-encrusted chain with a Jesus Christ pendant swinging as he moves. He sits down in a corner booth, and Lacy comes to join him. Mustard orders the usual: fried catfish. “Mustard as a child is the same as Mustard as an adult,” Lacy says. “He always cared about his craft — always.”
When Mustard was growing up, Lacy would often bring him along to his DJ gigs. One time, when he brought his nephew to a party in the Pacific Palisades, he had an ulterior motive. “I actually had [intentionally] double-booked myself,” Lacy says. “ ‘Don’t leave me,’ Mustard said. But I was like, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right. Just play that and play this, and you got it.’ ” Three hours later, he got a call from Mustard: “Come get me! The party was so cracking, they busted all the windows!”
From then on, music always paid the bills for Mustard, and he became the hottest DJ at Dorsey High School in Crenshaw. Within a few years, he would be one of the hottest producers in the world.
Amid the height of his early success, Mustard remembers a conversation he had with another radio-defining producer: Timbaland. “We were talking about the music industry,” he recalls. “He’s just like, ‘I want you to know, man, you’re not going to always be hot.’ ” Even though Mustard says he never let his ego get out of hand during those first years of success — his mother made sure of that — the caveat felt unfathomable at the time.
By the end of 2014, just two years after the peak of “Rack City,” Mustard seemingly had it all: 23 Hot 100 producer credits already, a new mansion on a hill outside the city, beautiful jewelry, even his own line of DJ Mustard mustard bottles. (Actually, he regrets that last one: “That was not an ‘I made it’ moment; that was a dumbass moment.”) Still, Timbaland warned him, “There’s going to be a time when nobody picks up your [calls] — soak this all in, and when that time comes, save your money… don’t panic,’ ” Mustard recalls. “And then it became a thing. And I was just like, ‘Ah, this is what [Tim] was talking about,’ and thank God I was ready for it.”
Mustard photographed September 16, 2024 at Johnnie’s Pastrami in Culver City, Calif.
Aaron Sinclair
As the decade wore on, his number of Hot 100-charting songs each year declined, from notching 14 in 2014 alone to between one and five each subsequent year. Still, a colder period for Mustard was better than what most musicians can ever dream of. And as time wore on, Mustard made the conscious choice to evolve. He focused on developing himself as not just a producer, but an artist in his own right. He started his own record label, 10 Summers, which launched the career of Grammy-winning R&B singer Ella Mai.
“I think with any producer, the ultimate goal is to break an artist. I believe that’s the hardest thing for a producer to do… I’m always for the challenge,” he says. It’s certainly something he has proved an aptitude for time and again, producing career-breakthrough tracks for artists like Mai, Tinashe, YG, Tyga and Roddy Ricch.
“You can’t be hot forever,” Mustard explains. “Even the best in the game… You have to reinvent yourself. And that’s what I did.”
Every hip-hop fan remembers where they were when “Not Like Us” dropped. Released the day after two other Lamar dis tracks, “6:16 in LA” and “Meet the Grahams,” no one saw it coming — not even the beat’s producers.
Mustard, for his part, was “on [my] way to a baby shower. Somebody sent me a message, and I was just like, ‘Oh, s–t,’ and then I hung up in their face, and I was just playing it over and over.” When he arrived at the baby shower, he could already hear the neighbors blasting it from over the fence.
Fellow “Not Like Us” beat-maker Sean Momberger was getting his car towed by AAA after a flat tire. “My friend texted me that Kendrick had dropped again,” he says. “I clicked on the link and heard our beat, and I was just shocked. I FaceTimed Mustard, and we were yelling and laughing.”
Mustard and Momberger were never in the studio with Lamar (or Sounwave, the song’s third credited producer and a longtime collaborator of the rapper) to make “Not Like Us.” The song started with Momberger sending Mustard some sample ideas and Mustard doing what he does best — “infectious” and “catchy” production with “a simplistic beauty driven by bouncy drums and West Coast undertone,” as Momberger describes it. But while the track stays true to the Mustard sound everyone knows, it also embodies how he has iterated it over the years to be fuller and more sample-driven.
Mustard texted it, along with about six other beats, to Lamar — who said nothing but reacted with a “heart.” Though he wasn’t in the room with Lamar this time, he had been in the studio with him before, years ago. Once, he says, Terrace Martin, a core musician on Lamar’s 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, took him to one of that project’s sessions. “I remember seeing that s–t and being like, ‘Whoa, that’s a lot going on.’ With me and YG [Mustard’s most frequent collaborator], we didn’t have that many musicians around. That was my first time seeing s–t like that. Thundercat was there, Sounwave was there. Terrace was there… I knew [that album] was going to be some crazy s–t, but I didn’t know it would be like that.”
Though he couldn’t have predicted the impact To Pimp a Butterfly would have on culture, Mustard says he has a good intuition for hit records. “I don’t want to say I’m always right, but I’m pretty much on the money,” he notes. Mai agrees: “Mustard’s greatest strength is his ear.”
Aaron Sinclair
For all his success producing radio-ready singles, however, one-off collaborations don’t move Mustard like they used to. “I can do stuff like ‘Not Like Us’ every day,” he says. “I can do that with my eyes closed… In my next phase, I’m not doing singles,” he insists, though he does admit he would do “Not Like Us” again “100,000 times” without hesitation. “I’ll do [a single for an artist] if I can have the whole album or the majority of the album, but other than that, I don’t get anything out of that.”
It’s why he dropped his own album, Faith of a Mustard Seed, this summer, which features Ricch, Travis Scott (whose “Parking Lot” with Mustard went to No. 17 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart), Ty Dolla $ign, Future, Young Thug and more hip-hop heavyweights. Mustard reckons the album (named after a suggestion by his late friend Nipsey Hussle) took him five years to perfect — the equivalent of a lifetime in popular music, especially hip-hop. During that time, rap went from being constantly atop the Hot 100 to weeks, months and even a whole year passing without a rap No. 1. Top players like Thug and Gunna went to jail; Nipsey, Young Dolph and Takeoff died; Ye went rogue. New faces like Yeat and 4batz popularized new styles; Afrobeats and reggaetón seeped into the American rap mainstream.
Still, Mustard believes Faith of a Mustard Seed warranted the wait. “There’s nothing on that album that I feel like in 10 years I’ll say, ‘Damn, I wish I did that better,’ ” he says. “I hope it teaches kids that you can take your time and do the right thing. You don’t have to rush it out. I think [the industry] today is just so fast-paced.”
Mustard hopes the perfectionism that drove both Faith of a Mustard Seed and “Not Like Us,” including Lamar’s own multifaceted bars, will encourage artists to “really rap now… I think now it’s opened the door for … the real rappers that love rap music and lyrics and the double, triple, quadruple entendres and all that s–t cool again.”
Aaron Sinclair
And he’s hoping — or rather, manifesting, sometime between waking up and hitting the tennis court — that this dedication to his craft will yield a Grammy next year. “I definitely speak it into existence every morning,” he says with a laugh. “The highest reward we can get as musicians is a Grammy. I know that people talk like it’s not a thing, but it actually is. It’s like Jayson Tatum right now saying, ‘I don’t want to win the NBA Finals.’ Like, if that’s the case, then go play at Venice Beach.”
Regardless of whether he takes home a trophy on Feb. 2, he knows he has something monumental to look forward to precisely a week later, when Lamar headlines the Super Bowl halftime show — where “Not Like Us” will no doubt get its biggest showcase yet. “Of course I’m going,” he says. “I’m going to go and be in a box and watch… I just can’t wait… I might shed a tear!”
Yet despite surreal moments like that, Mustard says his life is “still the same” as it always was. “I don’t take no for an answer. I’m persistent. Every day, I’m doing something that has to do with the journey of trying to get to where I’m trying to go. At this point, I don’t know how far I can go. I don’t think there’s a limit. I’ve always been like that. That’s how I got ‘Rack City’ — just waking up every day, making beats… and hoping.”
This story also appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It was a historic trip to the Grammy stage for Taylor Swift on Feb. 4, when she accepted her second and final award of the evening: album of the year, for her 2022 blockbuster set, Midnights. The win was her fourth in the category, breaking her out of a four-way tie and leaving her alone in the record books as the performing artist with the most album of the year wins in Grammy history. But by that point in the evening, Swift had already ensured that her fans were thinking more about the future — and perhaps AOTY trophy No. 5.
“I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years — which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19,” Swift had revealed two hours earlier while accepting her first award of the night (best pop vocal album). “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department.”
A year after that announcement, Swift may indeed end up making more treks to the Crypto.com Arena stage thanks to the record-breaking Poets. While Midnights bowed with a jaw-dropping 1.6 million first-week units upon its October 2022 release (according to Luminate) and topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks — setting off the historic, globe-trotting Year of Taylor that followed in 2023 — it paled in comparison with Poets, which debuted with over 2.6 million units and spent a whopping 15 weeks atop the Billboard 200. Given that Swift has secured AOTY nominations for each of her three brand-new albums released this decade (including two wins, for Midnights and 2020’s folklore, of her four career total), Poets seems a lock for one of the eight AOTY slots at the 2025 ceremony.
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Whether Swift will win, however, is another question entirely — in part because of a remarkably strong and high-profile slate of likely competitors, including one particularly legendary perennial AOTY bridesmaid. But perhaps the most interesting question of all: After four AOTY wins, already unmatched in Grammy history, how much more does Swift really have to gain by adding another such statue to her collection?
While Swift has already triumphed among some strong fields this decade, it’s likely that the category’s 2025 slate of nominees — with its expected mix of huge critical and commercial successes from veteran A-listers and emergent superstars — will be the most formidable she has faced yet. Alex Tear, vp of music programming at SiriusXM and Pandora, mentions Billie Eilish (Hit Me Hard and Soft), Chappell Roan (The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess) and Sabrina Carpenter (Short n’ Sweet) as strong contenders for the marquee award, calling Carpenter “a force” in particular. “It’s really going to be a highly competitive year,” he says.
Still, the narrative surrounding the AOTY race will likely boil down to two names: Swift and Beyoncé, whose Billboard 200-topping country and Americana pivot, Cowboy Carter, will almost certainly also vie for the prize. Cowboy did only a fraction of Poets’ flabbergasting first-week numbers — though at press time, it still had the year’s second-highest debut total, at 375,000 units — but it received widespread acclaim, as well as immense media attention for its genre explorations and for the music history Beyoncé illuminated on it.
And of course, Carter’s candidacy comes with extra intrigue, given that Beyoncé — one of the most celebrated album artists of her era — has still never won album of the year, despite her four career nods for it (and record 32 total Grammy wins).
One longtime Recording Academy member who considers both Swift’s and Beyoncé’s new albums worthy contenders calls the latter “the prohibitive favorite” due to her careerlong shutout in the category. “I think that there’s a feeling in the industry, which was certainly encouraged via last year’s Grammys” — when her husband, Jay-Z, called attention to her AOTY shutout in a televised speech — “that [Beyoncé] has been overlooked for too long,” the member says.
Swift may well have less at stake in this year’s AOTY race than her storied competitor. In fact, because Swift is at the overall height of her career success and exposure (and therefore at risk of generating a backlash), it’s worth considering whether she stands to lose more than she does to gain by netting a fifth trophy, especially over a competitor with such a strong case — and such a strong sentimental pull for so many.
And public perception about a potential Swift victory could be colored by her own philosophy about the Grammys and awards shows in general. “She looks at record-making as a competitive sport in a way that other artists don’t,” the academy member says. “Other artists are competitive and would like to win Grammys, but she really, like, thinks about that stuff going in [to recording her albums].”
Swift has admitted as much over the years. In 2015, she explained in a Grammy Pro interview that when her Red lost AOTY in 2014 (to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories), it set in motion her plan to make a more cohesive pop album with 1989, which won the award two years later: “You have a few options when you don’t win an award — you can decide, ‘Oh, they’re wrong…’ [or] you can say, ‘Maybe they’re right,’ ” she said. Similarly, her 2020 documentary, Miss Americana, captured her reaction when her 1989 follow-up, 2017’s Reputation, failed to garner even a nomination in the category: “I just need to make a better record.” (Two albums later, she would win the category again in 2021 for the stylistic left turn folklore.)
Competitiveness, of course, doesn’t equate to outright making Grammy bait, Tear points out — noting that it seems to have inspired Swift to grow artistically, while at the same time, “we’ve grown into her evolving as a person and the choices that she wants to make as an artist… The projects of late are not chasing where the puck is going — it’s already there.”
And though the Recording Academy member gives Beyoncé the edge in this particular race, it simply makes sense to them that the biggest pop star on the planet should be one of the favorites every time she’s in the mix.
“Look, [Swift] is the most popular recording artist on earth, and therefore she’s likely to win more often than not,” the member says, citing the famous Muhammad Ali quote, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” And Swift “can do it, God bless her. She should keep doing it. Maybe she’ll win album of the year several more times.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Instead of doing her homework one day after school, the multihyphenate born Atia Boggs used her time for a different assignment. She had just bought Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and recalls coming home, sitting down and writing all the lyrics on flash cards. “That’s when I realized how important a good song was and how substance matters,” says Boggs, now 37 and known as the songwriter–producer INK. “And that really inspired me in a whole new way… I learned how to create my own path.”
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She taught herself guitar and started street performing, walking “miles on miles” from downtown Atlanta to the residential Buckhead neighborhood “playing for pennies.” Without any music industry connections, INK sought a mentor online, searching for her favorite songwriters such as James Fauntleroy, with whom she became Facebook friends in the late 2000s. “He was a mentor for me in the very beginning,” she says. “That gave me the confidence to say, ‘I can do this.’ ” Her first big break came in 2019, after she had co-produced and co-written Chris Brown’s song “Don’t Check on Me,” which featured Justin Bieber — and Brown decided it should feature INK, too. “It gave me so much exposure and another boost of confidence to have a superstar say, ‘Hey, we’re going to introduce you to the world.’ That was one of the moments that led to the unstoppable train I’m on now.”
This year has proved to be INK’s biggest, and busiest, yet — but she teases 2025 will be even crazier, as she’s working on her own music and a documentary while continuing to collaborate with music’s upper echelon.
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Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
“Beyoncé was definitely a catalyst for the freight train to keep going,” says INK, who started working with Bey before COVID-19 hit on Cowboy Carter tracks including “Ameriican Requiem” and “16 Carriages.” INK recalls how, in 2019, they met at Roc Nation’s Grammys week brunch: “We have an inside joke because I went up to her and said, ‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I’m going to be writing your next album.’ And she giggled and said, ‘What’s your name?’ We just hit it off.” Soon after, INK was working with producer Ricky Reed, who introduced her to Beyoncé’s A&R executives. “They said, ‘We would love to have you be on this journey with us from the start.’ And five years later, Cowboy Carter was delivered.”
INK was friends with Lopez’s A&R executive long before he had the gig. So when it was time to assemble a team for Lopez’s personal album This Is Me… Now, he told INK, “You’re the first person I thought of for this.” INK most loved how “there’s not a session that happens without [Lopez]… I remember one time, she was like, ‘Hey, pull up today, but I’m going to send you a different address.’ And it’s the movie set [for Atlas]. We’re recording parts from the album in her trailer, and she comes in covered in blood, wet, cuts, bruises all over her body. And then she’s on the mic recording the song that we just wrote in her trailer. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it just showed the work ethic.”
Latto, “Look What You Did”
INK has long worked with Latto’s producer, Go Grizzly, another Atlanta native, but she had yet to work with the “Big Energy” rapper herself until this year. As INK recalls, she and Grizzly were working in Paris when they “cooked up the beat” that became “Look What You Did,” off the rapper’s third full-length album, Sugar Honey Iced Tea. “We did a beat in the studio, and then he was like, ‘Yo, you already know we have to get Latto on this.’ She heard it, she loved it and snapped.” INK had previously worked with Mariah the Scientist, who featured on “Look What You Did,” earlier this year when she guested on 21 Savage’s American Dream album. “So the dots connected,” she says.
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
This year, acclaimed producer Jack Antonoff has had a direct hand in abetting artistic evolution at different levels of stardom — helping a longtime collaborator, Taylor Swift, shape-shift while staying on top of the pop world, as well as a rising artist, Sabrina Carpenter, secure her place on the A-list. For the latter, Antonoff produced […]
“People call it Brat Summer — it should be called ‘artist development summer,’ ” Jack Antonoff jokes on a mid-September afternoon, sitting on the rooftop of New York’s Electric Lady Studios and reflecting on the past few months in pop music. Charli XCX, whose brat album helped define the season, is an old friend of Antonoff’s — they co-headlined a 2015 tour called Charli and Jack Do America — and he points out that her 2024 success speaks to a larger movement of artists creating their own mainstream niches instead of latching on to trends.
“Sabrina [Carpenter], Charli and Chappell Roan — the three of them have had this shared experience of artists who have been crystallizing, and that’s where you get gems,” Antonoff says of a trio of pop talents who have dominated recent cultural discourse. “And that’s the story of being an artist. That’s true artist development. And it doesn’t matter where we are in tech or streaming or anything — the only way to win is to create your own language.”
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This year, Antonoff has had a direct hand in abetting artistic evolution at different levels of stardom — helping a longtime collaborator, Taylor Swift, shape-shift while staying on top of the pop world, as well as a rising artist, Carpenter, secure her place on the A-list. For the latter, Antonoff produced and co-wrote four songs on Carpenter’s new album, Short n’ Sweet — including her first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, “Please Please Please” — allowing the pop singer’s sardonic tics to shine on her way to arena-headliner status.
“No one deserves it more,” Antonoff says of the former Disney Channel star, who has released six albums by the age of 25. “Sabrina’s been quietly growing, and her albums have been getting more awesome, and she’s been honing her sound and performances. It’s not like she just popped onto the scene — this has been a decade of grinding toward it.”
During the week that Short n’ Sweet was released in August, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department — on which Antonoff contributed to 16 songs across both of its volumes — spent its 15th week atop the Billboard 200, the longest run at No. 1 of any Swift project. Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department on the night of the 2024 Grammys, where previous full-length Midnights was awarded album of the year and she set the record for the most career wins in the category.
Amy Lombard
This year, Antonoff’s work with Swift and Carpenter — along with the self-titled fourth album from his long-running band, Bleachers, which arrived in March — could help him notch his sixth consecutive Grammy nomination for a producer of the year, non-classical, a category that he has won the past three years. If Antonoff takes home the trophy at the 2025 ceremony, he would set a record as the only four-peat in the 50-year history of the award.
“It would be a really [nice] resolve to a really special period,” says Antonoff’s manager, Jamie Oborne. “If it’s based on the work alone and the broad spectrum of work, I can’t imagine anyone else winning.”
Instead of functioning as a victory lap for Swift, The Tortured Poets Department was emotionally unguarded and knowingly messy, dividing critics and inspiring immediate fan devotion on its way to the biggest first-week debut of her career. “The best bodies of work are when people drill into the most personal, the most if-you-know-you-know kind of stuff,” Antonoff says. “I think the depth of [Tortured Poets Department] was surprising to people because I think people are constantly surprised when artists continue to be artists. You see so many people take the wrong turn and pander and become terrified of what they could lose. That’s the recipe for all the worst music, and I can only relate to people who don’t give a f–k. That next body of work — it doesn’t matter how big your audience is, it either comes from the depths of you or it doesn’t. And I love that album so much because the whole thing is so remarkably vulnerable.”
That ethos helps explain why, in the midst of a record-setting run as a pop studio whiz, Antonoff keeps pushing his creativity into unfamiliar areas. After producing the April soundtrack to the Apple TV+ fashion drama The New Look, which included Antonoff pals like Lana Del Rey and The 1975 covering early-20th-century songs, he also signed on to provide original music for a Broadway revival of Romeo + Juliet, which began previews in late September. More recently, he unveiled early plans for his Public Studios initiative, which, with the help of The Ally Coalition, will build studios in LGBTQ+ youth shelters and create a network of engineers to help train those interested in production — free of charge.
Jack Antonoff photographed September 10, 2024 at Electric Lady Studios in New York.
Amy Lombard
Antonoff also deconstructed the first Bleachers album, 2014’s Strange Desire, for a 10th-anniversary rework dubbed A Stranger Desired, released in September. And amid all of the projects, he foremost describes 2024 as “a touring year,” having led Bleachers on a global trek that will culminate with a headlining gig at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 4.
He admits that he gets asked about his schedule by the people around him — friends curious about his balancing act and why he hasn’t zeroed in on the more successful pieces of his artistry. “My hunger to make things hasn’t changed since I was like 14,” Antonoff says with a chuckle, “but the context for people has changed.” When asked about the idea of winning four consecutive Grammys for producer of the year, Antonoff returns to the idea of artist development — that even when he’s receiving what he describes as “a huge honor,” his priority remains “protecting that zone” that allows him to grow as an artist and person.
“I really don’t let anything get in the way of that,” Antonoff says. “I keep my head down and I go back to work.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Even with all the pop greats and breakout stars likely to be involved in the Grammys in February 2025, one icon seems certain to garner outsize attention: Beyoncé, who is both the winningest artist in the show’s history and a perennial cause célèbre for having never received the marquee Grammy, album of the year.
Bey’s presence on Music’s Biggest Night will be particularly fascinating, since her acclaimed country-Americana pivot set, Cowboy Carter, is at the center of a number of questions about genre — namely, who gets to decide what does and doesn’t constitute country music. Whether Cowboy Carter, its singles and its collaborators are recognized within the country categories will be a major subplot of the awards — one that got even thicker when Beyoncé was shut out entirely from the recently announced nominations for the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards.
But of course, the biggest Grammys question with Beyoncé remains: Will this finally be the year that she wins album of the year? The Recording Academy is under more pressure than ever over the answer, particularly after Jay-Z took the Grammys to task in a speech at the 2024 awards for having never bestowed its most prestigious honor upon his wife.
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Here, four Billboard staffers discuss the most pressing questions concerning Cowboy Carter and the Grammys it hopes to lasso in February.
Will there be a “Beyoncé effect” at the Grammys — recognition for the Black country artists she spotlights on Cowboy Carter?
Paul Grein (Awards Editor): “Blackbiird,” featuring Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy, and/or “Spaghettii,” featuring Linda Martell and Shaboozey, could be nominated for best country duo/group performance. The latter would give a nod to Martell, who in 1969 became the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry. And Shaboozey is very likely to be nominated for best new artist and record of the year; “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has done so phenomenally well, it stands on its own.
Gail Mitchell (Executive Director, R&B/Hip-Hop): With Shaboozey — who guests on two Cowboy Carter tracks — recently notching his 12th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” we’re already seeing the Beyoncé effect. It’s no surprise that he’s poised to score a nomination or two in the country categories and perhaps a best new artist or song and/or record of the year nod. I’m not sure the effect will extend to Grammy recognition for Cowboy Carter’s other featured Black country artists. However, there’s no discounting the heightened visibility that comes with a Beyoncé co-sign: Featured artists Martell, Spencer, Adell, Roberts, Kennedy and Willie Jones all gained significant catalog boosts after the album’s March release.
Melinda Newman (Executive Editor, West Coast/Nashville): Is this like the butterfly effect, where the ripples caused by Cowboy Carter may reverberate and cause seismic shifts down the line? The only artist likely to see any recognition is Shaboozey — and he probably would have gotten it without his Cowboy Carter appearance, given the massive success of “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” though Beyoncé’s seal of approval certainly doesn’t hurt. Besides Spencer, whose January album didn’t get the attention it deserved, most of the wonderfully talented Black women on “Blackbiird” didn’t release anything that popped during this year’s Grammy eligibility period.
Andrew Unterberger (Deputy Editor): I think somewhat unquestionably we will see major recognition for Shaboozey, who was introduced to much of mainstream America through his pair of Cowboy Carter guest appearances — but who also went on to have a bigger solo hit than anything on Cowboy Carter this year with his double-digit-week Hot 100 No. 1, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” The other guest artists on the album will likely not be major contenders in the same way — best new artist nominations for Spencer and Adell are certainly both possible, but it’s a crowded field there this year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see both shut out.
At the last Grammys ceremony, Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z, accepted the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award with a speech in which he noted that she “has more Grammys than anyone and never won album of the year,” adding that “even by [the Recording Academy’s] own metrics… that doesn’t work.” Is it likely that academy members will remember his words when they vote — and will that help or hurt her chances?
Grein: Jay calling out the Grammys, right there on the Grammy stage, was a moment of high drama. It’ll be remembered — and I believe it will help her cause. Some context that Jay didn’t provide: Several other artists with large numbers of Grammys have never won album of the year, including Jay himself, with 24; Ye, also 24; Vince Gill, 22; and Bruce Springsteen, 20. And four other artists have equaled Bey’s 0-4 record as lead artists in album of the year — Ye; Kendrick Lamar; Lady Gaga, counting her second Tony Bennett collab; and Sting, counting one album with The Police. Also worth noting: The Grammys have gone out of their way to trumpet Bey’s record-setting accomplishments on the Grammy telecast, more than they have for any other artist. Bey is clearly due, even overdue, for an album of the year win. Jay’s comments put considerable pressure on voters to give her the award. Voters should be able to make these never-easy decisions without that kind of outside pressure, but here we are.
Mitchell: It’s been nearly a year since Jay-Z’s impactful comments, so I don’t think it’s likely they’ll be top of mind for most academy voters when they fill out their ballots. Voters are going to choose based on their perceptions of the project overall and its songs. Additionally, Cowboy Carter will be vying against a strong slate of contenders that will likely include Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift.
Newman: While some folks probably didn’t like being chastised that they weren’t voting “correctly,” a lot of voters likely weren’t even aware that Beyoncé had never won album of the year. Country voters are unlikely to nominate her over a core country artist, given how hard it is for country artists to get any recognition in the Big Four categories other than best new artist. If she does get nominated for album of the year, it will be because noncountry voters nominate her.
Unterberger: It did put the squeeze on them a little bit. While pop fans — and the Beyhive in particular — are more than familiar with the narratives around Beyoncé and her history of AOTY snubbery, members of the Recording Academy are more likely to get the message when one of the biggest recording artists in history publicly calls them out over it. But I don’t know if it’ll be enough to get Cowboy Carter over the top.
Beyoncé
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Some of the discourse surrounding Cowboy Carter upon its release had to do with whether this really was Beyoncé’s “country album” in the first place. How is the album likely to be treated categorywise, and should we expect the Nashville/country community to show its support on the ballot?
Grein: When the album was released, Beyoncé said, “This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” There probably will be discussion in the screening committee room about which genre album category it should compete in — best country album or best pop vocal album. There was discussion about whether her last album, Renaissance, should be slotted in best pop vocal album or best dance/electronic album. It was classified as dance/electronic and won. I suspect the academy will again follow Beyoncé’s wishes — whatever they may be — in making that call.
It’s not a good sign that the CMA passed over Cowboy Carter in its recently announced nominations, but it’s not necessarily fatal, either. The Chicks’ Taking the Long Way and its single “Not Ready To Make Nice” were passed over for CMA nods in 2006, but went on to win Grammys for album, record and song of the year, as well as two country-specific awards. And even if the Nashville/country community is mixed on Bey’s album, she can garner enough support from other sectors of the academy to win album of the year.
Mitchell: Can Beyoncé earn her fifth album of the year nomination as well as a ninth record of the year nod — a category she’s also never won — and fifth song of the year nomination? Yes, given that these are among the six general-field categories in which all eligible members can vote. But if that comes to pass, can she finally win the coveted album of the year? The optimist in me hopes so, considering Cowboy Carter’s commercial success — it was Beyoncé’s eighth Billboard 200 No. 1 — and the chart inroads it made — she’s the first Black woman to lead Top Country Albums. But what are supposed to truly count are Beyoncé’s artistic and cultural accomplishments — and that’s when the cynical realist in me says, “Hold on.” The album scored zero nominations for the upcoming CMA Awards. And there’s also past history: The academy’s country committee rejected Bey’s “Daddy Lessons” in 2016. It’s not a slam dunk that she will earn nods in the country categories. Bey’s team might even be considering submissions in the Americana categories. Despite concerted efforts in Nashville to level the country playing field, it remains an uphill push for women artists, especially women of color.
Newman: Beyoncé receiving no CMA Award nominations in some ways gives the country community permission to continue to ignore her work in country categories. Plus, given that voters are only allowed to vote in three fields, most noncountry voters aren’t going to spend a vote for her in the country categories. However, plenty of country voters are upset she was not nominated for any CMAs and very well may put her forward. Beyoncé herself said this was not a country album — but whether it’s nominated for best country album feels like it could go either way. Still, Cowboy Carter tracks like “Texas Hold ’Em” or her remake of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” have better shots at getting country nominations than the album itself.
Unterberger: If the CMA Awards are any indication, Bey might be in a little bit of trouble there. She didn’t receive a single nomination for this year’s awards, while Post Malone, another pop star interloper doing country this year — but one who promoted the set heavily in Nashville and recorded it with many of its biggest stars — secured four, which sent a pretty loud message about the embrace, or lack thereof, of Cowboy Carter in Music Row. I don’t necessarily see that message as racially motivated, but I think the country community has always been very insular and self-celebratory, and when an outsider comes along insistent on doing country their own way, without specifically enlisting the community’s active participation and support, they are quickly othered and often ultimately ignored. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zach Bryan gets shut out in the country categories this year, despite his consistent genre success, for similar reasons.
Cowboy Carter’s commercial performance and critical reception weren’t entirely parallel. How could both affect its nomination chances?
Grein: It did well enough both critically and commercially to be nominated. The album topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks and spawned three top 10 hits on the Hot 100 — the most from any of her albums since I Am… Sasha Fierce, which spawned four. If Cowboy Carter isn’t nominated, it won’t be because it didn’t do well enough.
Mitchell: Commercial performance isn’t supposed to be the main criteria for the peer-voted Grammys. And neither is critical reception, even though both undoubtedly factor somewhat in voter decisions. Cowboy Carter outpaced Renaissance commercially, 407,000 vs. 332,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate, during their respective biggest streaming weeks. But those doing the streaming aren’t necessarily doing the voting. While some country die-hards didn’t heartily welcome her stepping across the aisle, Cowboy Carter garnered praise like Renaissance and Lemonade before it. Those albums won Grammys in the dance and R&B fields, but none of their general-field nominations — including album of the year. Perhaps the tides will shift perceptibly this year in the wake of the academy recently inviting more than 3,000 music professionals — many of them young, women and/or people of color — to become voting members.
Newman: In recent years, Grammy voters have leaned into commercial albums more than they used to, even though these are awards for artistic merit, not commercial success. That may hurt Cowboy Carter, which got off to a strong commercial start — topping the Billboard 200, as well as Billboard’s Top Country Albums and Americana/Folk Albums charts — before dropping off quickly. Still, Cowboy Carter is seen as a culturally significant album and one that is an important, yet very palatable, lesson about the essential role of Black artists in country music’s history — which may carry some weight among voters.
Unterberger: They might not have been exactly parallel, but I think they were close enough. Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 with the year’s biggest non-Taylor Swift first week, and it generated a legitimate No. 1 hit in the culture-capturing “Texas Hold ’Em.” Neither had quite the commercial longevity her fans and supporters might’ve hoped for — “Texas Hold ’Em” fell off the Hot 100 after 20 weeks, and Cowboy Carter failed to generate a real second hit and is currently ranking in the lower half of the Billboard 200 — but both were successful enough that I don’t think any voter could look at Cowboy Carter and go, “Yeah, sure, it got good reviews, but did anyone actually listen to it?” It’s still one of the year’s major pop releases by any measure.
Cowboy Carter isn’t the only foray into country by an ostensibly “noncountry” artist eligible for big Grammy wins this year — there’s also Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion. Are Post and Bey likely to get the kind of Big Four attention that has eluded core country artists in recent years — and who are the artists who could get the same kind of consideration this year?
Grein: I’d be shocked if Beyoncé wasn’t up for album of the year. Post also has a very good chance at a nod. He’s been nominated three times in the category, and F-1 Trillion was a very successful departure for him. The country community appreciated that he put in the time to get to know them and their ways. The academy has been aggressive in recent years about expanding and diversifying its membership, but it hasn’t put that same energy into expanding its Nashville membership. That reflects in the voting. The last country album to be nominated for album of the year was Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour six years ago, which won. As it happens, Musgraves is vying for an album of the year nod again with this year’s Deeper Well. Chris Stapleton, who was nominated in 2015 for Traveller, could also be nominated this year with Higher. Lainey Wilson — the reigning Grammy winner for best country album, for her Bell Bottom Country — is another possibility, for Whirlwind. But that would make five country albums in the mix. We’ve never had more than one country album nominated in any one year. They’re not all going to make it.
Mitchell: It will be interesting to see how Post — a fellow country outlier who partnered with Beyoncé on Cowboy Carter’s “Levii’s Jeans” — fares in the Grammy derby. Judging by the reception and success he’s lassoed with several F-1 Trillion singles, including “I Had Some Help” with country superstar Morgan Wallen, Post has made a smooth transition into this new genre. So it’s not far-fetched that he’ll be competing against Beyoncé and Swift, with whom he partnered on her hit “Fortnight,” in the album, song and record of the year categories that have eluded core country artists. And Wallen could possibly earn another nod and his first Grammy win with “I Had Some Help.” As the genre continues to enjoy its mainstream renaissance, perhaps Wilson, Stapleton and other country stars will find themselves breaking out of the genre-specific corral and charging into the big show.
Newman: F-1 Trillion is a lock for a best country album contender, as is Stapleton’s Higher, and both could land in the final eight for the all-genre album of the year category, even though mainstream voters tend to ignore country. Cowboy Carter’s fate feels a bit fuzzy only because Bey, who has been nominated in this category four times before, faces such strong competition from the likes of Carpenter, Swift, Eilish, Roan and Grande.
Unterberger: I would expect to see both Beyoncé and Post scattered across the major categories — though Post may be hurt a little by his set’s signature hit, “I Had Some Help,” being a collaboration with Morgan Wallen, whose recent history of being ignored by the Grammys indicates his presence still makes the Recording Academy a little squeamish. Aside from them, Zach Bryan’s new The Great American Bar Scene didn’t quite get the attention last year’s self-titled set did, but its “Pink Skies” single has done very well and could be a fringe song of the year contender. If the academy is still willing to treat Megan Moroney as a new artist, she could certainly be a nominee for best new artist. And while he might be a long shot, I’m holding out hope that Luke Combs can parlay the Grammy attention he got last year for his “Fast Car” performance — alongside original artist Tracy Chapman — into a song of the year nod for the thunderous “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” from the highly successful Twisters: The Album.
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
A collaboration between Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga was always going to have lofty expectations, but when the two wrote and recorded “Die With a Smile” at the latter’s Los Angeles studio earlier this year, there was no talk of topping the charts. They only wanted to follow where the song was naturally taking them, remembers hit-making songwriter-producer Andrew Watt, who previously worked with Gaga on The Rolling Stones’ 2023 Hackey Diamonds track “Sweet Sounds of Heaven.”
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“This was a pure, organic thing that both these artists who respect each other so much wanted to do together,” says Watt, who helped with the hit alongside D’Mile and James Fauntleroy. “This was about the love of making great music.”
That desire led to a sweeping, cinematic duet that has spent multiple weeks atop the Billboard Global 200 and racked up 625 million on-demand official streams worldwide since its Aug. 16 release (through Sept. 26), according to Luminate.
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“Seeing people reacting positively to it and it hitting them in their soul… it’s special,” Watt says. “This is a ballad with all-live instruments made to the human heartbeat. It’s not a formulaic song.”
He adds that Gaga and Mars were in the studio together within 24 hours of agreeing to collaborate, with Mars bringing in the initial idea for the song’s haunting vibe. Gaga fleshed it out on piano with Mars on guitar — exactly as they appear in the song’s retro Western music video (minus the costumes) — and stayed overnight until it was perfect.
And while Watt says the session was a blur, he recalls a key component to that night: finding a melodic structure that let Mars and Gaga sound like co-lead vocalists rather than one person harmonizing with the other. “When Gaga put her voice on top of Bruno’s, that’s the moment I remember… hearing their two voices together, you get lost in it.”
It had the same effect on Mars’ concert crowd at L.A.’s Intuit Dome the night the song dropped in August. As Gaga stepped onstage for the duet’s live debut, Watt recalls watching the moment unfold: “It was this wow factor of ‘Holy crap, [they’re] like the Avengers of music.’ “
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
On a balmy recent August evening, Gustavo Dudamel strode onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl wearing a huge golden gauntlet on his left hand.
He wouldn’t get to use it. Dudamel is dramatic, but he’s no comic book villain; he’s the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he was there to conduct the orchestra for the world premiere of Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga Concert Experience. So instead of wielding the power of assorted Infinity Stones to change the world, Dudamel accepted the “vibranium baton” presented to him by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige (a reference to the fictional metal of the Marvel universe) and performed some magic of his own, conducting two-plus hours of raucous music from 25 different Marvel movies, backed by gigantic video screens with 3D projections, dancers, fireworks and thousands of screaming fans.
The whole thing looked more like a rock show than a symphony concert. Then again, Dudamel is the closest thing to a rock star the classical music world has.
After nearly two decades in Los Angeles, Dudamel hobnobs with the likes of Chris Martin and John Williams, is close friends with Frank Gehry (who designed the stunning Walt Disney Concert Hall, the L.A. Phil’s home that opened a little over 20 years ago) and counts Billie Eilish, Gwen Stefani, Ricky Martin and Carlos Vives among the dozens of pop world luminaries who’ve guested under his (non-vibranium) baton. He has won five Grammy Awards (including, this year, best orchestral performance for the L.A. Phil’s recording of composer Thomas Adès’ Dante) and placed nine albums at No. 1 on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums chart. His life is the subject of the documentary Viva Maestro! And, though never officially confirmed, he was clearly the inspiration behind the character of the free-thinking, mercurial Latin maestro played by Gael García Bernal in the Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle, in which he had a small role as a stage manager.
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In the span of just two weeks from the end of August to mid-September, Dudamel conducted Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg, Austria, and then flew to Los Angeles where, including the two Marvel shows, he led the L.A. Phil in nine concerts, conducting Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and Beethoven’s Ninth; dances by living Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra; Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and scenes from Bizet’s Carmen; plus two evenings of contemporary Latin music with Mexican pop/folk singer Natalia Lafourcade. It’s a staggering musical offering. All told, more than 100,000 people attended Dudamel’s nine summer concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with the L.A. Phil, which he will again conduct on Oct. 8 at the opening night of Carnegie Hall’s 2024-25 season in New York.
“He is unique in the classical music world because not only does he lead the orchestra and elevate the work of the L.A. Phil in terms of excellence, but he also connects the orchestra with different kinds of music, collaborating with artists [in other genres] with which we wouldn’t typically perform,” L.A. Phil president/CEO Kim Noltemy says. “The result is he brings orchestra music to so many different people. That is one unbelievably unique piece that makes Gustavo special.”
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For Dudamel, it’s part of a deep-rooted belief that music as an art, with purpose, supersedes specific forms and genres. “As an orchestral musician, you value the work of these pop artists, and likewise, pop acts have the opportunity to see that the academicism of the other side isn’t overwhelming, but rather, it’s the same thing in a different style,” he says. “Yes, there’s a fascinating technical complexity [to classical music]. But in the end, what matters is what you feel and what people perceive. We have to erase people’s fears regarding classical music. It may be intellectual in execution, but music’s power is spiritual.”
Not since Leonard Bernstein has a conductor done as much as Dudamel to make classical music accessible — or so thoroughly captured the public imagination. The two maestros share a not just persuasive but borderline evangelical approach to relentlessly promoting music as a “fundamental human right,” not just by broadening what qualifies as “classical” repertoire but also broadening the concept of the orchestra itself. Bernstein’s televised Young People’s Concerts were central to his efforts to expand classical music’s audience; Dudamel has worked to create youth orchestras worldwide. And then, of course, there’s the hair: Bernstein’s silky pompadour flung about wildly as he conducted, and while Dudamel’s signature curly brown mop is perhaps a little less springy than when he made his U.S. conducting debut with the L.A. Phil in 2005 and is now peppered with gray, it still pops and sways with the music.
It’s a visible reminder of the personal stamp he continues to leave in a world of relatively staid personalities, and undoubtedly a factor in his broad recognizability. Dudamel is one of the few faces in classical music known far beyond the space, no doubt one of many reasons the L.A. Phil will miss him when his last season as music and artistic director ends and he officially takes over the New York Philharmonic in its 2026-27 season as music and artistic director.
When he does, Dudamel will become the first Latino to helm the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, joining a pantheon of giants that includes Arturo Toscanini, Gustav Mahler and Bernstein himself. Expectations for his arrival are so heightened, says N.Y. Phil executive advisor and interim CEO Deborah Borda, that even though Dudamel will not formally join for another season, “we saw a record surge in subscription sales, as patrons are concerned they won’t be able to secure tickets once he starts.”
For Dudamel, being the first Latino to lead the N.Y. Phil long term is a matter of “immense pride. But I feel it doesn’t have to do with a race or a culture,” he says. Historically, he notes, the great symphony orchestras in the United States and beyond have been led mostly by European men who not only represented the music they performed, but also the European migration to this country and Latin America.
Dudamel’s story is completely different. The real triumph “is about where I come from,” he says. “I don’t come from a traditional music conservatory. I come from El Sistema de Orquestas, a program where you grow up playing music with your friends.”
It’s the morning after he has conducted Carnival of the Animals and Carmen, and Dudamel has joined me for coffee in an empty Hollywood Bowl meeting room. He has traded the formal white dinner jacket of the Marvel show for offstage casual — track pants, short-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers — and his trademark mix of impish humor (accentuated by his still-boyish dimples) and deep thoughtfulness. Born and raised in Venezuela, Dudamel learned English as an adult, and though it’s grammatically perfect — albeit with a clipped, precise accent — he prefers his native Spanish, which he speaks very quickly (as most Venezuelans do) and with the erudite lingo of an intellectual, often citing the likes of Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno or Mexican writer Octavio Paz.
Today, we’re talking not just about his new appointment and the legacy he’ll leave behind in L.A. as he begins to build another in New York, but also the legacy he grew up with — one that still defines him.
At 43, Dudamel is almost as old as El Sistema Nacional de Orquestas y Coros Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela (The National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children’s Choruses and Orchestras). Known simply as El Sistema, it was founded in 1975 by musician-economist José Antonio Abreu, who held several government appointments and built El Sistema as part of the government structure, guaranteeing its existence and funding regardless of who was in power.
El Sistema was created more than 20 years before the Hugo Chávez regime, built on the premise that music education should be free and accessible to all children, everywhere in the country. For Abreu, who died in 2018, the power of music was transformative, spiritual and lasting, particularly in a developing country rife with poverty. What started with a first rehearsal attended by 11 children eventually grew to 443 schools (each called a “nucleus” in Sistema terminology) and 1,700 satellite centers that teach over 1 million children in Venezuela’s 24 states, according to El Sistema’s official webpage.
Abreu’s philosophy — famously, he said that “a child who plays an instrument with a teacher is no longer poor; he is a child on the rise” — is one Dudamel not only espouses but assumes as his identity. He’s still the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and will tour Europe with it next year for El Sistema’s 50th anniversary. (The tour stops are connected to cities with which Dudamel has a personal history.) He has no plans to change his commitment to it. “I would give my life for the orchestra,” he states bluntly. “It gave me everything I’m living now, and that’s why I share it as much as I can.”
Gustavo Dudamel photographed September 3, 2024 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
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But in the last few years, throughout Venezuela’s many political government crises and now, after the contested July reelection of President Nicolás Maduro — who has been in power since 2013 and whose latest reelection has been widely disclaimed both domestically and internationally as rigged — Dudamel has sometimes been criticized by other Venezuelans abroad for not speaking out more against the government.
Some critics have suggested that Maduro has used Venezuela’s youth orchestra to his political advantage. Renowned Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero has long called it a propaganda tool; when Dudamel conducted the ensemble at Carnegie Hall days after Maduro’s reelection, Human Rights Foundation parked a truck outside the venue displaying the message “Maduro Stole The Election” and asking Dudamel, “How long will you continue to serve as Maduro’s puppet and henchman?” The organization explained on social media that it wanted “to remind the world of Maduro’s fraud and to call out Dudamel for engaging in shameless propaganda and providing cover for the Venezuelan dictator.”
But, Dudamel points out, he has not been silent. He has written New York Times and Los Angeles Times op-eds calling for an end to repression in Venezuela and speaking against the government’s plans to rewrite the nation’s constitution. In 2017, after Venezuelan government forces killed a young violinist during a protest, Dudamel published an open letter, writing, “Nothing justifies bloodshed. We must stop ignoring the just cry of the people suffocated by an intolerable crisis. I urgently call on the President of the Republic and the national government to rectify and listen to the voice of the Venezuelan people.”
“I am one voice,” he says today. “People think if I speak out everything is going to change, but that’s not the case. There needs to be radical change, and that will take a lot of time.
“We live in a world of immediacy, where there’s always pressure to say something,” he adds when I ask why he hasn’t spoken out more in the wake of July’s contested election. “When do people actually reflect before speaking? You have to consider the entire situation. El Sistema de Orquestas represents all Venezuela, not just a part of it… El Sistema is focused on the neediest communities. That’s the truth. Isn’t that a way to change the country, far more than shouting? So you have to be prudent because you’re part of that. I’m not an individual speaking as an individual because that’s not how I grew up. I grew up in an orchestra.”
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This was Dudamel’s mindset during his own first El Sistema experience. He started music lessons at a school in his native Barquisimeto, a quaint city of under 1 million people in northwestern Venezuela. This was the mid-’80s, still years before Chávez took power, but a decade into the existence of El Sistema, which by then was thriving.
“I was only 5 years old, but I remember it perfectly,” Dudamel recalls. “It was the home of Doña Doralisa de Medina. It was a tiny colonial house where Maestro Abreu studied as a child. Doralisa was no longer alive, but El Sistema was there. The house had a red gate with musical notes. I walked in down a passageway and then to a patio, and I heard Chopin on the piano, a trumpet, violins. I fell in love with that cacophony.”
El Sistema didn’t pluck Dudamel out of abject poverty. His father is a working salsa trombonist; his mother, a voice teacher. His uncle, a doctor, was also a gifted cuatro player who taught Dudamel how to play popular Venezuelan music: waltzes, tangos, boleros — what Dudamel calls his very essence.
Perhaps because music flowed through his family, Dudamel’s own studies were encouraged but never imposed. He started conducting by accident, when his youth orchestra’s conductor arrived late for rehearsal and Dudamel took the podium, almost as if it was a game.
While no one ever told him he would make it big, his talent would have been impossible to miss. Abreu took an early interest in him, becoming a mentor and moral compass. He’s still very much alive in Dudamel’s head — he constantly begins sentences with “El Maestro Abreu…” — as are his teachings: to think long term, to learn from mistakes, to see music as a social instrument. It was Abreu, after all, who urged Dudamel, then in his early 20s, to enter Germany’s prestigious Mahler Competition, for conducting works by the vaunted composer, in 2004. When he won, it changed his life, catapulting him from local star to global wunderkind.
Among the jurors was Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish composer and current San Francisco Symphony music director who was, at the time, music director of the L.A. Phil. “I was deeply impressed by the talent of this guy, but also, I felt he was such a good guy,” Salonen recalls. “I told him I wanted to invite him to L.A.” As he got to know Dudamel, he continues, “I became so convinced about him being my favorite person to take over in L.A. and become my successor, taking [the orchestra] in a different direction but keeping his curiosity and openness.” A mere three years later, Salonen’s wishes came true: the L.A. Phil — where Deborah Borda was then executive director — appointed Dudamel music director, effective with the 2009-10 season.
Dudamel’s personable demeanor and charismatic conducting style immediately enchanted L.A. audiences and the ensemble’s players alike — he is, after all, affectionately known as “The Dude” to both cohorts. But from the jump, his mission went far beyond the podium. “I was very young, and evidently there was a human and artistic connection with the orchestra and the administration,” he says. “But my first order of business was creating El Sistema here. That’s how YOLA began.”
YOLA is Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, the L.A. Phil’s music education program, that Dudamel created in 2007. It currently serves close to 1,700 young musicians across five sites in the city, providing them free instruments, intensive music instruction (up to 18 hours per week), academic support and leadership training. The program has inspired hundreds of versions around the world; in the United States alone, El Sistema USA serves 140 member programs, 6,000 teaching artists and 25,000 students. Dudamel also launched a mentorship program for young conductors in 2009 and now brings four each season to assist the L.A. Phil’s guest conductors.
But education and training are just part of the equation to “create identity and have people see themselves reflected in the [L.A.] Philharmonic,” Dudamel says. “Right or wrong, cultural artistic institutions are seen as elitist for many, especially those who don’t have resources. The adventure was to make of the [L.A.] Philharmonic an institution people could identify with.”
Dudamel began doing this gradually by being more experimental in his programming, adding more pop and jazz guest artists, bringing Hollywood into the mix (he has famously played multiple concerts of John Williams’ music, with Williams in attendance) and opening up the repertoire to new works and unexpected juxtapositions. A ticket buyer who might not want to hear a world-premiere commission might be lured in by Beethoven; one allergic to the idea of Beethoven might reconsider after seeing an orchestra perform with Ricky Martin.
“For me, it wasn’t only about building a good orchestra,” Dudamel says. “That already existed. But now we have one of the top orchestras in the world, respected as much for its technical level as for its proud acceptance of the repertoire and the way they perform it. This wasn’t ‘Oh, Gustavo, come in and do whatever you want.’ It was figuring out how to build it.” Dudamel had the Hollywood Bowl, Disney Hall and the orchestra. “All the elements were there,” he continues. “We just had to get the best out of them. And there’s still a lot to do.”
Gustavo Dudamel photographed September 3, 2024 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
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Dudamel conducted the L.A. Phil at the 2011 Latin Grammys and the 2019 Academy Awards. He led the orchestra alongside Billie Eilish and FINNEAS as part of the concert film experience Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, released on Disney+. And he performed at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with members of YOLA, alongside Coldplay, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars.
“His authentic, warm connection with audiences really changes how people feel when watching a concert. Audiences are so excited to see him, and there’s a buzz around him,” Noltemy says, noting that pandemic era aside, attendance and audience diversity at the L.A. Phil have increased while the average age of concertgoers has decreased. “He’s certainly not the only conductor who has increased attendance and brought diversity, but he did so in L.A., a city that is so spread out. His concerts at Disney Hall tend to be sold out.”
Those results have occurred even as Dudamel has made a huge effort to foster contemporary composition (typically not an old-school orchestra subscriber’s favorite programming), commissioning music from composers around the world. During his tenure at the L.A. Phil, the orchestra has premiered “at least 300 new works” written specifically for the ensemble, he says, including many from Latin America.
“Latin American repertoire has to stop being [perceived as] exotic,” he says. “It’s not about ‘Wow, we’re playing Latin American music!’ No. It’s the fair thing to do. And the only way to include it in the repertoire is playing it but at the level it deserves, making it part of the regular repertoire of any orchestra.” Case in point: Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, a Dudamel mentee who was just named Carnegie Hall’s composer-in-residence for the coming season. In July, Platoon released her first full album of orchestral works, Revolución Diamantina (performed by the L.A. Phil and conducted by Dudamel), which is being submitted for Grammy consideration.
Just how much of his approach with the L.A. Phil Dudamel will be able to replicate in New York remains to be seen; as he says, he has yet to formally arrive and experience the orchestra. But in recent months, he has been working with both orchestras to forge a connection between the two.
In April, when Dudamel conducted the N.Y. Phil’s Spring Gala at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, he featured rapper Common, former New York Yankee and classically trained guitarist Bernie Williams and student musicians from several New York music schools, performing a program that also included classical works by Villa-Lobos and Strauss, as well as a premiere commissioned by the N.Y. Phil and Bravo! Vail Music Festival.
It was the kind of bold, cross-genre programming that Dudamel delights in doing in L.A. and clearly wants to emphasize in New York. “It was something completely new and wonderful. For me, that’s the kind of thing that makes the music transcend beyond the sometimes strict academic and intellectual isolation that classical music represents,” he says. “We can develop a lot in terms of repertoire and go beyond Lincoln Center and connect more with the entire community.”
Gustavo Dudamel photographed September 3, 2024 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
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The N.Y. Phil, for example, is known for its massive annual free outdoor concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, which is always attended by no less than 50,000, and it also performs in all five boroughs during its annual Concerts in the Parks. But the L.A. Phil has the Hollywood Bowl, an outdoor venue that seats 18,000 and is the orchestra’s home for the entire summer. It’s a big difference that Dudamel would like to somehow bridge.
He also joins the N.Y. Phil after the 2022 reopening of Geffen Hall following a $550 million renovation that drastically improved its acoustics. He says the new venue did not factor into his decision to go to New York, “but it was very important, especially for the orchestra. It’s been a plus to elevate the morale. Now the orchestra is in the process of building its sound with the ‘instrument’ [that is the new hall].” Optimism is also high following the Sept. 20 finalization of a new labor contract that ensured 30% raises for the orchestra’s musicians over the next three years, bringing their base salary to $205,000.
Dudamel is also taking the reins of an institution that lately has had its share of highly publicized troubles. After just one year on the job, N.Y. Phil CEO Gary Ginstling stepped down in July amid rising tensions with the orchestra’s board, according to a New York Times report. And the orchestra’s public image has been tarnished after reports earlier this year resurfaced a 2010 sexual misconduct charge made against two of its musicians. Although charges were never filed against the two men, the controversy led to the musicians being put on leave; they then sued the N.Y. Phil for doing so.
As Dudamel is not yet officially the N.Y. Phil’s music director (for the 2025-26 season, he is music director designate), he won’t comment on administrative matters other than to acknowledge that “those are problems that need to be resolved.” And although the administration of the orchestra ultimately is not his purview, “Obviously the morale of the orchestra is my responsibility, and you have to keep that morale high, taking the best decisions and advocating for justice for everyone,” he says. “That’s essential. We’re not isolated from what happens around us.”
Whatever may have occurred before his tenure begins, Dudamel is without a doubt joining an orchestra that respects him as a conductor, whose musicians have a history and rapport with him. “There was an undeniable spontaneous connection between our musicians and Gustavo, so much so that he was literally their only choice to be our next music director,” Borda says. “Selling tickets is important, but we believe this is best accomplished when you have the right artistic leader.”
Dudamel is acutely aware of the expectations now surrounding him. “It’s a challenge, but life without challenge… it’s nothing!” he says with some relish. “But I’m not a savior here. I have nothing to save. What we have to do is build, and that’s not just up to me. We have a great team.” And after all, he’s Dudamel — and by now, he understands it comes with the territory.
“People want you to scream what they scream, but no. To me, change isn’t about screaming but about building things that last, as I learned from Maestro Abreu,” he says. “I sincerely believe artists should be symbols of unity … They must guarantee that cathartic, unifying space we all need — not just here or in Venezuela, but everywhere.”
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This fall, for example, Dudamel will lead the L.A. Phil in Mendelssohn’s music from A Midsummer’s Night Dream with his wife, Spanish actress María Valverde, providing narration — music by a German composer, written for the work of a British playwright who derived it from a Nordic story, now narrated in Spanish, conducted by a Venezuelan and performed by an American orchestra. Plus, the evening will feature the premiere of Ortiz’s new cello concerto.
“It’s the kind of thing you don’t even remark upon because it feels natural. But it’s a true reflection of diversity,” Dudamel says. “When you see all these elements come together, you realize, ‘Wow, this is powerful.’ ”
He speaks about this blend of so many seemingly disparate elements as if it’s destiny, or magic. But a moment like that — much like a career such as Dudamel’s — doesn’t occur by happenstance or without purpose.
“One thing about Gustavo I think needs to be said is that for someone who had a lot of success from very early on, he’s remarkable in that he never lost his center,” Salonen says. “He has never lost his ideals. He believes in music as a social cause, and he believes in music and the arts as a very central thing in keeping the fabric of society strong. And despite all the success and fame, he’s still the same guy I met all those years ago.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
After the breakthrough year she has had, Sabrina Carpenter is likely to contend in multiple categories when Grammy nominations are announced Nov. 8. Her latest studio project, Short n’ Sweet, is considered a shoo-in for a best pop vocal album nod and could potentially be up for album of the year. And she could even land a nomination for best new artist — despite Short n’ Sweet being her sixth full-length.
How can an artist who has released six albums be in the conversation for best new artist? Because, while the Grammys set a minimum number of releases an artist must have to qualify in this category (five singles/tracks or one album), there is no maximum. Instead, the Grammys’ rules and guidelines booklet says nominations for the honor hinge on when “the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence” — and it delegates that determination to a screening committee.
So Carpenter’s potential nomination comes down to whether the screening committee thinks she had achieved prominence as of Sept. 15, 2023, the last day of the previous eligibility year. At that point, the highest she had ever climbed on the Billboard Hot 100 was a decidedly decaf No. 48, for “Skin” in February 2021. She performed on the MTV Video Music Awards’ preshow on Sept. 12, 2023. (This year, by contrast, her medley of three hits that had each reached the top three on the Hot 100 was a highlight of the main show.)
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Megan Moroney is another not-quite-so-new artist whom the screening committee will likely discuss at length. She had a No. 30 hit on the Hot 100 in May 2023 with “Tennessee Orange,” and her popularity has continued to build since: In May 2024, she won new female artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
Other top contenders in the category this year, including Chappell Roan, Benson Boone, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims, Sexyy Red and Reneé Rapp, more clearly fit the best new artist criteria the Grammys outline.
The rules in this category have changed over the years as the Recording Academy has struggled to strike just the right balance: not too strict, not too lenient. In the past, the academy has sometimes disqualified artists for reasons that may now seem petty; take Whitney Houston, who had recorded a couple of duets prior to releasing her debut album and was therefore deemed ineligible, or singer-songwriter Richard Marx, who had contributed a song to a soundtrack. Other times, the academy has leaned too far in the other direction. Robert Goulet won in 1963, two years after he became a star in the Broadway musical Camelot. When Alessia Cara claimed the prize in 2018, it was nearly two years after her ballad “Here” hit the top five on the Hot 100.
Three past winners for best new artist — Crosby, Stills & Nash (who won in 1970), Jody Watley (1988) and Lauryn Hill (1999) — wouldn’t be eligible under today’s rules. David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were all already known for their work in previous groups, as were Watley (in Shalamar) and Hill (Fugees).
Perhaps the academy should have just named the award “best new or developing artist” or “best breakthrough artist” to skirt the issue of whether these talents were truly new, but given the marquee award’s notoriety, such a change is now unlikely. Voters are probably stuck with best new artist — along with the yearly debates over who should and shouldn’t qualify for it.
And if Carpenter isn’t just nominated but steps onto the stage on Grammy night to accept the award, well, it won’t be without precedent. In 2001, Shelby Lynne won the accolade — precisely six albums into her career.
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Sitting in her childhood bedroom and noodling on her guitar in February 2024, 24-year-old Gigi Perez was thinking about the scope of her songwriting. She’d been ruminating for a while on the idea of a frantic kind of love, and how to connect it to her lyricism. “When that person is so constant in your life, it’s kind of like you fall into it, and you have nothing else to grasp on to,” she tells Billboard. “It came from that desperate place.”
All of a sudden, a line popped into her head: “Kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor.” As she kept strumming and writing out new lines to add to the chorus of her growing song, the singer-songwriter realized she wasn’t the only one listening. “My door happened to be open, and my little sister walks by and says, ‘Oh, Gigi, that’s really awesome,’ ” she recalls.
And as the idea has moved from work in progress to completed product, it’s clear that the world feels the same way. After Perez began teasing the track in earnest on her TikTok in the spring, users quickly latched onto the hook, clamoring to hear a full version. They finally got to hear it on July 26, when Perez unveiled “Sailor Song,” a stirring, emotionally raw ballad that sees Perez turning her feelings of longing into a sweeping, queer-coded love song. The song debuted on the Aug. 31-dated Billboard Hot 100 at No. 98, and it has since spent six weeks on the chart, reaching a No. 46 high on the list dated Sept. 28.
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For Perez, the sudden, rapid success of “Sailor Song” feels like a culmination of all the work she’s put into her independent career — and one that enabled her to accept a record deal with Island Records in September. “I feel truly ready for this,” she says. “And I know exactly what I’m looking for.”
Perez walks Billboard through the writing process of “Sailor Song,” explains why she learned how to produce her own work and breaks down what it means to have a queer love song making waves in modern pop culture.
When did you first start working on “Sailor Song”? What was the original idea that led you to making this?
A lot of the process for me is typically just having my guitar and freestyling, and that’s mostly how the songs come — I was in that progression of writing, and I just said, “Kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor.” So, I kept going; I had the chorus done that night.
It really just stayed as a chorus for a while, and the lyrics had changed. There were certain little words that changed the meaning of what [the song] was. Once I had written the verses, I pulled a melody from another song I had written and put that into this song. It really is one of those things where it was a puzzle putting it together, but there wasn’t much resistance. Other times, in order to get something like that, you have to really dig for it.
I love a song that is good at creating imagery without having to explicitly spell out the imagery — the use of the sailor as an image almost makes the song feel mythical in scale, which is really effective.
There’s something about this thought — and I don’t know if it’s because I grew up by the water and spent so much time in my childhood at the beach — that little by little, these beach and sea and water themes just kept appearing in my songs. It’s really sweet because I was thinking, “How do you compile the things that are on your heart and that you want to say in a way that makes sense?” It wasn’t until “Sailor Song” that I looked back and was like, “There’s been a whole path being laid subconsciously,” which is very cool.
I was struck by the fact that your voice sounds like it’s in the distance on this track — what did your setup look like when recording and producing “Sailor Song”?
I went into this chapter of my life [feeling] in my soul like I hit a point where I wasn’t collaborating with people because I wanted to, but because I relied on it. There was a lack of expression on the production side, [but] I think things ended up falling together perfectly. I moved back home, and in the same way I taught myself the guitar, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and messaged the collaborators who I really admired to ask them questions about producing. It was a lot of throwing things at the wall and learning little things here and there. Like, how does EQ [equalization] really work? What is a compressor? I was allowed time to really experiment with production and recording. It makes me feel the same way that I felt when I was 17 — that’s something I keep coming back to: That first rush of recording, when I was just doing it with my high school band, and we were just uploading files on Spotify and SoundCloud.
As far as the recording and what happened, I use an SM7 [microphone], and I started doing this thing [while recording my voice] where I do three vocals and I pan [one] a little bit to the left, [one] a little bit to the right and one right in the middle. And then I threw in certain kinds of reverbs that give it a roomy kind of sound. I also have an amazing mixer, Matt Emonson, and he just takes it away from there. I just wanted something that felt really intimate and yet really big.
Once you started teasing this song on TikTok, it blew up and fans were itching to hear the full thing. What was that like for you to witness in real time?
I was really happy. I feel like I’d gotten to a certain point where I just started enjoying music again in a way that I truly felt like was honoring my happiness. That was the main principle that I felt through being independent and being able to work on music in a different way. And then when I saw that people were really enjoying it, I was like, “That’s so genuinely awesome.” It was a slow burn in terms of getting to where it’s gotten to now but to know that it was something that really pulled on people means everything to me.
One of the things in life that I’ve struggled with — and part of why I decided that I wanted to be an artist — is the feeling of loneliness that comes with the lie that no one understands you. I think about the artists that changed my life in that way, and one of the first gay projects that I had that with was Troye Sivan’s [2015 debut album] Blue Neighbourhood. That changed my life. I couldn’t even imagine that somebody could be there for me during a time when I couldn’t express or understand what I was feeling. I didn’t grow up in a space where that was something that existed, and if it did, it was very taboo. It’s so beautiful now that there’s so much media that really highlights the gay and queer experience. Kids need that. Actually, people in general, not just children. There are still people all around this world [who] live in an online world and escape through music. It’s very special to me that, in any capacity, I could be a part of that.
To that point, it feels like queer messaging in music is having a genuine moment this year where songs that are about queerness are hitting the charts in a major way. What is your reaction to that level of visibility in the mainstream?
I think we’re only scratching the surface right now. Representation is so, so important. It’s the thing that gives people the courage and the ability to dream that you can do whatever. You, as a person, can take up space. I think there’s an identity part of it, and then there’s just the actual human part of it, and those two things are very important to me. Every queer artist is going to share their story and their identity differently. I’m only one person, and my message is only going to connect [with] and reach the people that it’s meant to. That’s why I think it opens up the bridge [for other artists], and I’m really excited to see everything that’s happening in queer music.
You recently signed to Island Records — what has the transition from independent artist to being signed at a major looked like for you so far?
I feel so blessed. It’s been such a weirdly spiritual experience, in terms of things happening behind the scenes. It feels like this thing is really guided. I didn’t know a year ago that any of this would happen, and I think I had a very clear vision where I said, “I’m going to stay independent, and this is the way I’m going to do it.” The fact that that has changed [means] I’m so grateful for all of the experiences that I’ve had over the last few months to lead me to this moment. They’re going to be an amazing home.
A version of this story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.