Music News

Lorde’s Sister Indy Gets Into the Family Business With ‘Hometown’ Single

Indy, the younger sister of Lorde, announced her upcoming debut EP Threads on Thursday (Jan. 12) with the release of the new single “Hometown.”

The five-track project from the newcomer, born Indy Yelich O’Connor, will arrive Feb. 17 via TMWRK Records featuring the new single as well as previously released tracks “Killer” and “Threads.”

“Hometown” certainly owes a debt to her famous sister’s signature style on tracks like “Royals” and “Team,” what with its suburban setting and wistful production as Indy sings, “Nineteen and we haunted streets that we knew so well/ I cut my feet on the love and the lust I felt/ Stuck in the quiet of my hometown/ You’re wonderin’ if we’ll go back to bein’ friends/ I just stay quiet so you know now/ That if I could, you know I’d do it all again/ I gave you all of my midnights/ But baby, now that it’s daytime/ You are stuck in the quiet of my hometown/ I have to go now” with a familiar deep, throaty voice.

“‘Hometown’ is about the memories from my teen years in suburbia that I’ll never forget,” the pop upstart said in a statement. “This song is very nostalgic for me, as it makes me think of driving through the suburbs, taking the long way to go past an ex’s house, returning from the big city and staying at your parents’. Everybody has somebody from their past they hold close. Knowing you’ve outgrown this person, the first inklings of real love, innocence, the sadness of having to let them go.”

Lorde, meanwhile, spent the majority of 2022 on the road in support of her third studio album Solar Power. In a November newsletter to fans, she detailed the challenges of touring in a post-pandemic industry, writing, “Basically, for artists, promoters and crews, things are at an almost unprecedented level of difficulty. Let’s start with three years’ worth of shows happening in one. Add global economic downturn, and then add the totally understandable wariness for concertgoers around health risks.”

Stream Indy’s “Hometown” below.

The Kid LAROI Unveils ‘The First Time’ Album Trailer

The Kid LAROI introduced fans to his new musical era on Thursday (Jan. 12) with a trailer teasing his sophomore album, The First Time.

In the 30-second teaser, the 19-year-old star’s voice is heard over a series of vintage looking clips of everyday life, saying, “You never forget the first time. The first time you fall in love, the first time you get caught, the first time you feel shame, the first real kiss.”

Over the video, an upbeat new song is heard, presumably “The First Song,” which will be dropping on Thursday (Jan. 19). The album, meanwhile, doesn’t have an official release date but is “coming soon.” The upcoming release is a follow-up to LAROI’s 2020 debut, F*ck Love.

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LAROI has released a series of solo singles in 2022, following his breakthrough 2021 with smash collaborations “Stay” with Justin Bieber and “Without You” with Miley Cyrus. He dropped “Thousand Miles” in April 2022, and “Paris to Tokyo” with Fivio Foreign in July.

Watch The Kid LAROI’s The First Time trailer below

Kelsea Ballerini Reveals New Heartfirst Tour Dates

Kelsea Ballerini has added nine new concert dates to her Heartfirst Tour, beginning March 6 in Toronto, Ontario, and running through March 18 in Pittsburgh, Penn. The new dates include stops in Milwaukee, Detroit and Atlantic City. Opening for Ballerini will be Georgia Webster.

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Ballerini not only has her own headlining shows in the works for 2023, but she’s also opening for some key tours this year, including Kenny Chesney’s I Go Back Tour and The Judds: The Final Tour.

In September 2022, Ballerini released what is perhaps her most personal album to date with Subject to Change (via Black River Entertainment), including her current single, “If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too).”

The country star welcomed several female collaborators for the project, including Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, a co-writer on the album’s title “Subject to Change” and the tour’s namesake, “Heartfirst.” Alysa Vanderheym is also a co-producer on the project, and wrote “Heartfirst” with Fairchild and Ballerini. She also collaborated with Carly Pearce and Kelly Clarkson on the song “You’re Drunk, Go Home.”

“It’s interesting because in the conversation of, ‘Yes, we need more women in country music,’ what does that actually look like?” Ballerini previously told Billboard. “We need more female artists and collaborators but we also need more female opportunities throughout the whole chain of events, you know? I intentionally wanted to write with more women this time. For me, when you are making a record about emotions, when you connect with a woman creatively, you’re gonna be able to tap into that in a whole different way.”

See the full list of new tour dates below:

Lisa Marie Presley Hospitalized After Suffering Cardiac Arrest: Reports

Lisa Marie Presley has reportedly been hospitalized after suffering cardiac arrest at her home.

While there is no information surrounding her current condition, TMZ reported that paramedics performed CPR at her Calabasas house on Thursday (Jan. 12), regaining a pulse before she was transported to the hospital. The Hollywood Reporter also confirmed with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department that deputies responded to a call about “a female in her 50s” that suffered a cardiac arrest, though the spokesperson would not confirm if the woman was in fact Lisa Marie.

Billboard has reached out to Lisa Marie’s reps for more information.

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Just two days prior, the 54-year-old daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley attended the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards with her mother and Austin Butler, who portrayed her father in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, and ended up taking home the award for best actor in a drama motion picture.

“Thank you for opening your hearts, your memories, your home to me,” Butler told Lisa Marie and Priscilla during his acceptance speech. “Lisa Marie, Priscilla, I love you forever.”

“I really didn’t know what to do with myself after I saw it,” Lisa Marie told ET on the red carpet of the popular biopic. “I had to take, like, five days to process it because it was so incredible and so spot on and just so authentic that, yeah, I can’t even describe what it meant.”

She added that she was there “to support Austin and Baz and the film.”

Cris MJ & Standly Score First No. 1 on Billboard Argentina Hot 100 With Duki & Nicki Nicole Remix

Chileans Cris MJ and Standly cross off a career milestone with their first No. 1 on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100 chart (dated Jan. 7). “Marisola,” with Duki and Nicki Nicole, jumps 2-1 in its 19th week. It’s the longest trek to No. 1 since Rauw Alejandro and Camilo’s “Tattoo” took 21 weeks to land at the penthouse in July 2020.

Released via Stars Music Chile, “Marisola” sends Manuel Turizo’s “La Bachata” to the runner-up slot after its 15-week run at the summit. While Duki collects his fourth champ, Nicki Nicole claims her third No. 1.

Meanwhile, Luck Ra’s “Ya No Vuelvas,” featuring La K’Onga and Ke Personajes, ascends 5-3, as Rosalía’s “Despechá” falls 3-4.

Further, Argentine duo La T y La M, conformed by Tobías Medrano and Matías Rapen, notches its first top 10 with “Pa’ La Selección,” a cumbia in honor of Argentina’s national soccer team. The track surges 17-5 in its third week.

Elsewhere, Bizarrap and Duki’s “3 Estrellas En El Conjunto” takes the Hot Shot Debut of the week, at No. 39. While the former adds his 41st career entry, the latter secures his 39th.

Here’s a recap of the artists with the most entries on the chart since it begun in 2018:

  • 55, Bad Bunny
  • 49, J Balvin
  • 41, Bizarrap
  • 37, DuKi
  • 35, Anuel AA
  • 35, Maria Becerra
  • 35, Ozuna
  • 35, Rauw Alejandro

Further, Emilia notches the Greatest Gainer title as “La Chain” ascends 21 positions from No. 87 to No. 66.

Finally, Ke Personajes earns its third career entry as “Cómo Estás” bows at No. 92. 

Kelly Clarkson Brings the House Down With a Kellyoke Classic: Watch

Kelly Clarkson has risen through the ranks to become a queen of cover songs thanks to the opening segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show. But for the Thursday (Jan. 12) episode, the American Idol alum decided to switch things up and do a Kellyoke Classic — a performance of one of her own songs. This time, she gave her 2017 track “Didn’t I” a chance to shine on the daytime program.

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Soul was the name of the game for the first Kellyoke Classic of the year. The three-time Grammy winner, accompanied by her band Y’all, performed with her full range, belting with a full tone and hitting several vocal runs with ease.

“Baby, didn’t I?/ Didn’t I give you everything?/ You got the best of me, baby/ Baby, didn’t I/ Hear you crying on my shoulder?/ Beg and hold me ’til it’s over?/ When you’re lonely, just remember/ I gave you everything/ D-d-didn’t I?” Clarkson sang on the chorus.

“Didn’t I” was released on Clarkson’s 2017 album, Meaning of Life. Though the song — a deep cut from the record — did not hit any major charts, the album did reach the Billboard 200. Meaning of Life spent a total of 20 weeks on the all-genre tally and peaked at No. 2 three weeks after the album’s October release.

As for Clarkson’s traditional Kellyoke covers, she gave Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” a shot on Wednesday’s episode, and performed Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” and Ronnie Milsap’s “Lost in the Fifties Tonight” earlier this month.

Watch Clarkson perform “Didn’t I” above.

A Timeline of Cordae & Naomi Osaka’s Relationship

Congratulations are in order for Cordae and Naomi Osaka, who are expecting their first child together.

The 25-year-old pro tennis player shared the happy news via Twitter on Wednesday (Jan. 11), posting a photo of an ultrasound. “I realize that life is so short and I don’t take any moments for granted, every day is a new blessing and adventure,” she wrote. “I know that I have so much to look forward to in the future, one thing I’m looking forward to is for my kid to watch one of my matches and tell someone, ‘that’s my mom,’ haha.”

The athlete did not mention Cordae in her post, but the rapper’s rep confirmed to Billboard that he is indeed the father.

While the couple is about to embark on a new journey in their relationship, they’ve been romantically linked since 2019. We’ve compiled a full timeline of Cordae and Naomi Osaka’s relationship, which you can check out below.

Insomniac Events Announces New EDC Party Cruise — And Yes, It’s Called EDSea

Electric Daisy Carnival is hitting the high seas. On Thursday (Jan. 12), EDC producer Insomniac Events announced the launch of EDSea, a festival cruise that will set sail from Miami to the Bahamas on Nov. 4-8, 2023.

This seafaring spin-off expands the list of global EDC events, which includes the annual flagship festival EDC Las Vegas — returning to Sin City May 19-21 — along with EDCs in Mexico City and Orlando. (Previous EDCs have taken place in the U.K., Brazil, China, Puerto Rico and beyond.)

The lineup for the five-day rave cruise will be announced later this year, with cabin reservations becoming available during a pre-sale starting on Jan. 17. (If there are any cabins left, a general sale will begin on Jan. 27.)

The party will happen on Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Joy, which, according to the cruise company, can host roughly 3,800 guests. The ship will offer eight separate stages and music venues, along with a go-kart track, a waterpark and laser tag. The four-night bacchanal will embark from Miami and dock at both Nassau in the Bahamas and the country’s Great Stirrup Cay, a regular destination for such music-focused party cruises.

EDSea will technically be the second party cruise on Insomniac’s ever-robust event slate, with the company also producing Holy Ship! Created in 2012 by HARD events Founder Gary Richards, Insomniac gained full control of the event — which also cruised from the Miami area to the Bahamas — when Richards left HARD in 2018, as HARD was by that point controlled by Insomniac and its parent company, Live Nation.

After sending Holy Ship! to sea in 2018 and 2019, Insomniac shifted it to a on-land event — Holy Ship! Wrecked — in 2020-2022 at locations in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Insomniac tells Billboard that Holy Ship! Wrecked will remain on the company’s event roster.

Skrillex, Fred Again.. & Flowdan’s ‘Rumble’ Debuts on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs Chart

Skrillex, Fred again.. and Flowdan roar onto Billboard‘s multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart (dated Jan. 14) with “Rumble” (No. 15). The collab earned 653,000 U.S. streams in the Dec. 30-Jan. 5 tracking week, according to Luminate.

“Rumble” is the 37th chart appearance for Skillex, the 13th for Fred again.. and the second for Flowdan. It’s Skrillex’s 11th top 15 entry and the first since “En Mi Cuarto,” with Jhay Cortez (No. 8, August 2021). Skrillex has scored five top 10s, including one leader, “Where Are You Now,” with Diplo and Justin Bieber (for two weeks in 2015).

For Fred again.. and Flowdan, “Rumble” marks new career high peaks. Fred again..’s “Turn On the Lights Again..,” with Swedish House Mafia and featuring Future, reached No. 16 last August, and “Gassed Up,” by Zeds Dead x Subtronics, featuring Flowdan, hit No. 26 in January 2022.

Concurrently, “Rumble” arrives on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart at No. 13.

Additionally on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, SLANDER, Said the Sky and Alison Wonderland start at No. 18 with “Picture,” courtesy of 619,000 streams. The collab is SLANDER’s second-highest-charting song among 15, after “All You Need to Know,” with Gryffin and featuring Calle Lehmann (No. 12, 2019); it’s Said the Sky’s first time in the top 20 among four chart hits. For Alison Wonderland, “Picture” is her 13th appearance, tying “High,” featuring Trippie Redd, for her top position (2018).

Looking at the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, a third threesome of acts is making an impact with a third single-word-titled song, as VASSY, Bingo Players and Disco Fries improve after hitting the top 10 a week earlier with “Pieces” (9-8). The track is VASSY’s eighth top 10, Bingo Players’ second and Disco Fries’ third.

“We’ve worked with both Bingo Players and VASSY on previous collaborations, so once we heard about ‘Pieces’ coming together, we had to jump in!” Nick Ditri of Disco Fries tells Billboard. “It’s been awesome to work across the globe on a record like this. It was created in all of our respective studios, from Los Angeles to New York to the Netherlands. Feel-good, melodic dance music is always our sweet spot, and to see this record climb the chart so quickly has been proof that it’s still alive and well. We’re super grateful.”

“Pieces” pockets core-dance airplay on Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel, KMVQ-HD2 San Francisco and iHeartRadio’s Evolution, among other supporters. (The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on around 70 top 40-formatted reporters.)

Richie Hawtin to Travel Across North America Again to Educate Audiences About Underground Techno: Here Are the Dates

Ten years ago amidst the pandemonium of the U.S. EDM boom, Richie Hawtin read the room and realized not only that a legion of new electronic fans and artists were flocking to the scene, but that many of them had an extremely limited understanding of the origins of the genre or of sounds beyond the mainstage big room style that dominated the era.

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The Canadian techno pioneer took it upon himself to be a teacher, hitting the road on the 2012 and 2015 North American CNTRL tours, for which Hawtin hosted lectures and workshops on techno by day, and experiential learning sessions on the dancefloor of the club after dark.

It was in this era that many of the scene’s pioneers expressed their hope (and often their critiques), that U.S. audiences would mature beyond big room and discover the deeper sounds of house and techno, both of course genres made in America, largely among the Black artist communities of Detroit and Chicago.

A decade later, that vision has in many ways come true, with house, techno and tech-house supplanting EDM as the genres of choice among both new generations of dance fans and EDM fanatics who’ve been growing up with the sound for the last 10 years. So, too, has techno faced the same type of mass commercialization that rubbed so many scene pioneers the wrong way a decade ago.

To celebrate the gains of techno and to again educate audiences on the more underground realms of the now commercially popular sound, Hawtin is hitting the road for another educational tour this March. The run will hit eight cities in the U.S. and Canada, extolling the virtues and values of techno by presenting a collection of underground producers making some of the hardest, weirdest, most underground strains of the genre. Each warehouse show will happen in partnership with an independent promoter.

“TEN years have passed since the CNTRL tour, and it feels like we are now deep into a new sound of techno that has completely fused together the elements that we were witnessing back then,” Hawtin tells Billboard. “The huge explosion and popularity of EDM 10 years ago was exactly why we launched the CNTRL tour, going through North America by bus to reach and pollinate the ideals of techno through performances and talks.

“Now here we are, 10 years later,” he continues, “visiting underground warehouse events throughout the country with artists that have come straight out of those times — artists inspired by all types and styles of electronic music, but extremely focused and dedicated to the sound and ideals of techno.”

This From Our Minds – To Be Announced 2023 tour launches on March 10 in techno’s hometown of Detroit, before dipping into Canada and then coming back to the U.S. for shows in Las Vegas, San Francisco and beyond. Venues are yet to be announced. See the complete schedule below.

Joining Hawtin on the tour — which takes its name from Hawtin’s ‘90s label Plus 8 and its ‘From Our Minds to Yours’ slogan — will be a rotation of techno producers including Canada-based Barbosa, New York’s Jay York, Texans Decoder and Declan James, Phoenix-based Lindsey Herbert (who first encountered techno as an EDM fan on the CNTRL tour back in the day), San Francisco’s DJ Deep Pedi and the Guam-born, L.A.-based JIA. Each show will also of course include a set from Hawtin himself.

The tour has been created alongside Canada’s Genova Agencym, founded by Barbosa, Decoder, and fellow artist Garrett Finn (aka Rhyot), who in a joint statement say that “this tour is not just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us as artists and rising professionals to learn and grow, but a chance to inspire and lead the scene as a whole.”

Check out the dates below.

Richie Hawtin