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At midnight, Ariana Grande made her grand return to music with the assertive new single “Yes, And?”
Released as the lead track for her forthcoming seventh album, the boundary-setting song makes clear that the pop star is too busy living her “authentic life,” as she sings, to be concerned with what others are saying.
In the just-released music video, Grande doubles down. As shown in the teaser clip, a handful of critics are seen entering an industrial-looking warehouse — and with plenty of opinions in hand. “You know, I think I liked her better when her ponytail was a few centimeters higher,” says one. “I mean, who cares if she’s happy? I don’t want happy. I want Ari,” quips another.
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As they’re about to walk into the room in which they will see what Ariana has to present, an earlier group is seen walking out sweaty and in awe. As the next group takes their seats (under a heat lamp, no less, perhaps a nod to the kind of heated spotlight Grande lives under), the camera pans to a series of stone sculptures before landing on one of the pop star front and center.
And much to viewers’ satisfaction, as the music begins, the immobile figures shatter — and out struts Ari.
Wearing a ballet-inspired outfit and character shoes, she completes her look with a hat that pays homage to legends like Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul — and the nod doesn’t end there. The clip, directed by Christian Breslauer, seems to take inspiration from Abdul’s visual for her own “Cold Hearted Snake,” leaning deeper into the late-’80s energy of the song itself.
By the video’s end, Grande assumes the position her statue was in at the start — and just as she hits the exact pose, she’s turned back to stone. The potential takeaways are plentiful: Is it a commentary on fragility or strength? Is it a reminder that rough exteriors are built upon hardship as a means of protection?
There’s really only one certainty: No matter how the message is perceived, Grande doesn’t really care. She knows what it means to her.
Watch the “Yes, And?” video below.
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Jimmy Fallon and Meghan Trainor are unwrapping a brand-new music video for their festive Christmas duet “Wrap Me Up,” and Billboard is sharing an exclusive first look at the holly jolly clip. In the video, Fallon and Trainor are dressed in their best red-and-green outfits, as the Tonight Show host asks the pop star what […]
Following the release of Sabrina Carpenter’s blood-filled “Feather” music video on Halloween, a Catholic priest who allowed a scene from the clip to be filmed inside a Brooklyn church has been relieved of his administrative duties, according to the New York Times.
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In the video, the 24-year-old pop star facilitates the death of a series of obnoxious men, who relentlessly hit on her throughout the video. The cat-callers meet their karma by getting run over by a truck; fighting each other to death; and getting choked by the tie in an elevator shaft. At the end of the clip, Carpenter dances around a church at the men’s funerals, wearing a short black tulle dress and veil and posing with religious items at the alter, including a coffin that reads “RIP B—-.”
That last scene was filmed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Annunciation Parish in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Following the music video’s release, Bishop Robert J. Brennan told the Catholic News Agency he is “appalled at what was filmed at Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Brooklyn,” noting that “The parish did not follow diocesan policy regarding the filming on Church property, which includes a review of the scenes and script.”
The pastor, Msgr. Jamie J. Gigantiello, was subsequently relieved of his administrative duties overseeing the church, per New York Times. In an apology posted to the church’s Facebook page, Gigantiello revealed that he approved the filming in September after not finding anything negative about Carpenter online in an “effort to further strengthen the bonds between the young creative artists who make up a large part of this community.” He also told NYT that he was presented the video shoot idea as a funeral scene, but the result in the music video was “not what was initially presented to me.”
Billboard has reached out to Carpenter’s team for comment.
“Feather” is the latest song off Carpenter’s July 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send to get the music video treatment, following “Nonsense,” “Because I Liked a Boy,” “Fast Times” and “Skinny Dipping.” Upon its release, the album debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, marking the rising pop star’s highest peak on the chart to date.
Watch the music video below.
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With a full day to absorb the melancholy strains of the final Beatles song, “Now and Then,” fans had ample time to prepare for the accompanying video directed by Oscar-winner Peter Jackson.
So when the official high-tech sentimental journey dropped on Friday morning (Nov. 3), you could almost hear the nostalgic global sigh at Jackson’s contribution to the final chapter in rock’s most epic tale. The four-and-a-half minute video opens with some guitar tuning and footage of a cassette being pushed into a tape machine as drummer Ringo Starr takes his place behind the kit and bassist/singer Paul McCartney readies his pick.
Once an unseen hand presses play, viewers are magically transported back to the final Beatles recording session in 1995, where McCartney, Starr and guitarist/singer George Harrison began the process of rediscovering a decades-old song demo’d by late bandmate John Lennon. As Lennon’s keening vocals rise up, Jackson juxtaposes a profile shot of Lennon staring out at the sunset with a floating image of the young Beatles goofing around in their prime.
In a release describing the video prior to release, Jackson promised that it would take fans on a “poignant and humorous” journey that invited viewers to celebrate the band’s timeless and enduring love for one another.
Conjuring an image Beatles fans could only dream of, Jackson does that that by sliding a shot of a current-day McCartney in the studio laying down his backing vocals into frame, as he appears to stare across the universe at the ghostly Lennon shadow. The video then cycles through a series of then-and-now pictures and videos of the band in their salad days and a sure-to-be-talked-about sequence in which archival shots of Lennon and Harrison are spliced in aside present-day McCartney and Starr in a recording session.
“Now and Then” is the final song written by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr, and it was finished by living members McCartney and Starr more than 40 years after the group began work on it.
A master of studio tech, the Lord of the Rings director aims to recapture the energy, love and spirit of the group by placing a young Macca next to the now-octogenarian rock icon watching a string section lay down their parts, as a young Harrison goofs around over his left shoulder. Starr plays drums alongside his youthful self and a number of shots find Lennon doing silly dances in a variety of scenarios amid a cascade of previously unseen photos and videos of the band members as children and at the peak of their global pop powers.
In his statement before the video’s release, Jackson described worrying that there was no footage of Lennon’s original late 1970’s home recording of the song’s demon with just voice and piano (and a TV blaring the the background) and none of living members finishing the song last year. Jackson said he was ready to walk away before McCartney and Starr sent him footage of their sessions, with the Beatles’ Apple Corps then stepping in to provide more than 14 hours of long-forgotten film shot during a 1995 session featuring the pair, and late guitarist/singer Harrison in the studio working on the song; Lennon was killed by a deranged fan in 1980 outside his New York apartment building — where the song was demo’d — and Harrison died in 2001.
Jackson also got help from Lennon’s son, singer Sean Ono Lennon, and Harrison’s widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani, who found some unseen home video to add to the project. The band’s original drummer, Pete Best, also offered up some of the earliest film of the band performing in their leather suits that had never been seen before.
With that footage in hand, Jackson — who was also behind the acclaimed 2021 The Beatles: Get Back miniseries — set out to make a project that would “bring a few tears to the eye. The video is complimented by a 12-minute Now and Then — The Last Beatles Song documentary written by Oliver Murray that dropped on Wednesday.
Watch Jackson’s “Now and Then” video below.
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Jung Kook is days away from stepping into his own as a pop soloist, so who better to channel in his upcoming music video than the King of Pop? Ahead of the release of his debut solo album Golden, the BTS star shared a music video teaser for one of the upcoming project’s singles, “Standing […]
In her new music video, Sabrina Carpenter cheerfully facilitates the deaths of several obnoxious men. But don’t worry, it weighs heavily on her mind after the fact — as heavy as a feather, that is.
Posted on Halloween, Carpenter’s “Feather” music video is fittingly bloody. As the 24-year-old singer nonchalantly listens to music in her headphones, lifts weights and rides an elevator, men who catcall, mansplain and take inappropriate photos are met with instant karma. The cat-callers are run over by a truck; the fitness know-it-alls fight each other to death; and the predatory photographer gets his blood squeezed out of him in an elevator shaft — thanks to Carpenter, who jams his tie in the doors as they close without a second thought.
“I feel so much lighter like a feather with you off my mind,” she sings as she gleefully frolics around a church, presumably at the men’s collective funeral.
“Feather” is the latest song off Carpenter’s July 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send to get the music video treatment, following “Nonsense,” “Because I Liked a Boy,” “Fast Times” and “Skinny Dipping.” Upon its release, the album debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, marking the rising pop star’s highest peak on the chart to date.
Much like “Nonsense,” which became Carpenter’s second ever entry on the Billboard Hot 100 in January months after its initial release, “Feather” started gaining traction this year due to it being a major fan favorite on Emails. The former Disney Channel actress addressed this on Instagram Stories prior to the new music video’s release, writing, “You guys showed ‘feather’ so much love we had to make a video.”
The project comes about two weeks after Carpenter performed “Feather” for Spotify Singles, for which she also turned in a cover of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.” “Well she nailed it,” Swift later praised Carpenter, one of several openers for the “Anti-Hero” singer on her Eras Tour.
Watch the “Feather” music video above.
A video for “Now and Then,” which has been described as the “last Beatles song,” is scheduled to premiere on Friday (Nov. 3) at 10 a.m. ET., 24 hours after the track’s release on Thursday (Nov. 2). The clip was directed by Peter Jackson and is described in a release as a “poignant and humorous” visual that “invites viewers to celebrate The Beatles’ timeless and enduring love for one another with John, Paul, George and Ringo as they create the last Beatles song; the video will premiere on the Beatles YouTube channel.
“Now and Then,” which will be released by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe, is the final song written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and it was finished by living members McCartney and Starr more than 40 years after the group began work on it. The double A-side single will also include a touching throwback with the inclusion of the band’s 1962 debut single, “Love Me Do,” featuring the original cover art shot by Ed Ruscha. Both songs have been mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos.
The “Now and Then” video is Jackson’s first foray into music video production and in a statement, the director behind the acclaimed 2021 The Beatles: Get Back miniseries said when Apple first approached him with the gig he was initially reluctant to say yes. “I thought my next few months would be a hell of a lot more fun if that tricky task was somebody else’s problem, and I could be like any other Beatles fan, enjoying the night-before-Christmas anticipation as the release of a new Beatles song and music video approached – in 1995, l loved the childlike excitement I felt as the release of ‘Free As A Bird’ was inching closer,” he said of the 1995 Beatles song that began as a 1977 Lennon home demo that was completed by McCartney, Harrison and Starr.
“I could have that experience once again – all I had to do was say no to The Beatles. To be honest, just thinking about the responsibility of having to make a music video worthy of the last song The Beatles will ever release produced a collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with,” the director continued. “My lifelong love of The Beatles collided into a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down. This created intense insecurity in me because I’d never made a music video before, and was not able to imagine how I could even begin to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years ago, had never actually performed the song, and had half of its members no longer with us.”
But, as Jackson kept trying to think of new reasons to turn down the gig — to this day, he said, he still has never, technically, agreed to the job — he told Apple that the lack of “suitable footage” was worrisome because the project would require tapping into rare and unseen film of the Fab Four, not much of which is out there.
“Nothing at all seemed to exist showing Paul, George and Ringo working on ‘Now And Then’ in 1995 … There’s not much footage of John in the mid-seventies when he wrote the demo … I grizzled about the lack of unseen Beatles footage from the ’60s … And they didn’t even shoot any footage showing Paul and Ringo working on the song last year,” he said of his tortured thought process.
“A Beatles music video must have great Beatles footage at its core. There’s no way actors or CGI Beatles should be used,” Jackson continued. “Every shot of The Beatles needed to be genuine. By now I really had no idea how anyone could make a ‘Now And Then’ music video if they didn’t have decent footage to work with, and this was far from being a lame excuse. My fear and insecurity now had solid reasons why they should prevail and allow me to say no without looking too much like a chicken.”
But Jackson also knew the Beatles don’t take no for an answer once they set their minds to something, which might explain why they didn’t wait for him to decline before forging ahead. Jackson said he found himself “swept along” as McCartney and Starr addressed his worries and shot some footage of themselves that they sent to him. In addition, Apple dug up more than 14 hours of long-forgotten film shot during the 1995 sessions, including several hours of McCartney, Harrison and Starr working on the last song.
In addition, Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Harrison’s widow, Olivia, found some “great unseen home movie footage” that they shared with him. “To cap things off, a few precious seconds of The Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of The Beatles and never seen before, was kindly supplied by Pete Best,” Jackson revealed of the contribution from the band’s original drummer. “Watching this footage completely changed the situation – I could see how a music video could be made. Actually, I found it far easier if I thought of it as making a short movie, so that’s what I did… My lack of confidence with music videos didn’t matter anymore if I wasn’t making one. Even so, I still had no solid vision for what this short film should be – so I turned to the song for guidance.”
Jackson described separating Lennon’s voice on the demo tape a year ago, with producer Giles Martin cooking up an early mix of the single last year that the director loved and which he’s listened to more than 50 times since. After doing a deep-dive into the song looking for ideas and inspiration for the short film, Jackson said the more he listened the more the shape of the visual began to take form, “without any conscious effort from me.”
Working with his Get Back editor, Jabez Olssen, Jackson started pulling together “little fragments, sliding pictures and music around in different ways until things began to click in.” The idea, he said, was to create a short film that would “bring a few tears to the eye,” though he began to realize that generating emotion using only archival footage was “tricky” at best.
“Fortunately, the simple power of this beautiful song did a lot of the work for us, and we finished the first 30 or 40 secs of the film fairly quickly,” Jackson said, admitting that finding an appropriate ending that could “adequately sum up the enormity of The Beatles’ legacy” proved daunting. If not impossible.
“Their contribution to the world is too immense, and their wondrous gift of music has become part of our DNA and now defies description,” he said. “I realised we needed the imagination of every viewer to do what we couldn’t, and have each viewer create their own personal moment of farewell to The Beatles – but we had to gently steer everyone to that place. I had some vague ideas, but didn’t really know how to achieve this.”
Jackson said he got lucky because Harrison’s son, musician Dhani Harrison, happened to be visiting Jackson’s home country of New Zealand at the time, and after discussing the proposed ending with him, “his [Harrison’s] eyes immediately filled with tears — so that is the way we went.”
The middle section aimed to capture the band’s legendarily silly side using a collection of unseen outtakes where the Beatles are “relaxed, funny and rather candid.”
The video will be accompanied by a 12-minute Now and Then — The Last Beatles Song documentary written by Oliver Murray, due out on Wednesday (Nov. 1). The doc will tell the story behind the track and feature exclusive footage and commentary from McCartney, Starr and Harrison, as well as Sean Ono Lennon and director Jackson.
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As one of Hip-Hop’s greatest talents, Jay-Z hasn’t always batted 100% when it comes to his videos. He admits it is hard for him to watch some of his older visuals.
HipHopDX is reporting that the Brooklyn, New York, native recently spoke to Complex about Hype Williams’ indelible contribution to the culture as a legendary music director. The music site spoke to many of Hype’s most noted collaborators including Missy Elliot, DJ Khaled and Jay-Z. Hov detailed some of his memorable shoots with the film producer. While recalling all their great work the “Dead Presidents” rapper went on to admit that he wasn’t the easiest rapper to work with when it came to bringing his songs to life.
“Hype definitely has a vision for what he wants to see. So he’d be like, ‘Yo, blow the smoke right here and this is gonna be crazy, it’s going to be bananas!’ he explained. “But I don’t know if I was coachable as far as a performance at that time. I don’t know if anyone could coach me, you know, because I was so guarded. I think about the early videos that I have and I listen to myself talking and it’s kind of hard for me to watch. That’s not even how I speak.”
Jay-Z also discussed “Sunshine,” a video that his core fanbase at the time deemed a crossover attempt to grab some of Bad Boy Entertainment’s light. He said the original idea for the shoot was even more grand than the final product. “And then he said the number, and I think it was, like, $1.8 million or something. And I was like, ‘Hype, come on, bro.’ Like I got mad at him. Like are you trying to play me? You think I’m dumb?” he recalled.
“So to fit the budget we stripped the idea down. And I learned a valuable lesson from that. Either I’m going to trust Hype’s vision or I’m going to go with another idea,” he added. “I remember receiving criticism from that video, but I think because of Reasonable Doubt, everyone had this different sort of expectation for me. I’m not going to say it was great. It’s a good song and I just think people didn’t want that from me at the time.”
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You can read the rest of Jay-Z’s interview where he denied he was originally supposed to have DMX’s role in Belly and more here.
Blink-182 go full method in the video for their One More Time… (Oct. 20) single “Dance With Me” that dropped on Thursday (Oct. 5). The latest single from the pop-punk trio’s reunion album finds Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker dressing up in their finest Ramones cosplay outfits to channel the spirit of the punk godfathers in a clip directed by the Malloys that mostly recreates the brudders’ classic visual for their song “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
“The video serves as a love letter to the Ramones and finds the guys paying homage to one of their favorite iconic bands that came before them,” reads a description of the visual that opens with a clueless interviewer introducing the band and then asking, “what the hell is punk? And is it punk that I said hell?”
Channeling the Forest Hills, Queens-bred eff you attitude of their favorite band — while wearing Ramones-appropriate shag wigs, sunglasses and leather jackets — the guys offer sincerely annoyed answers before busting into a Ramones cosplay in which they recreate the band’s chaotic “Sedated” video.
As in the Ramones clip, the “Dance With Me” video finds the trio sitting glumly at a kitchen table as a whirlwind of crazy action swirls around them, with dozens of random dancers, brides, construction workers, doctors, cheerleaders, little kids and random weirdos running in and out of frame.
“Ole, ole, ole, ole, yeah we’re doin’ in it all night long/ Ole, ole, ole, ole, yeah we’re doing it all night long,” they sing on the raucous pop-punk tune’s chorus. The second set-up re-creates the legendarily grimy interior of the Ramones’ musical mecca, New York’s late lamented CBGB punk club, with drummer Travis Barker smashing his kit in front of a wall of graffiti and band posters while wearing a “Disco Sucks” t-shirt.
Guitarist/singer Tom DeLonge plays the hybrid part of lanky singer Joey Ramone and guitarist Johnny, while Mark Hoppus performs a more sedate take on bombastic bassist Dee Dee as a crowd of bespoke punks dance along to the galloping track. The trio also recreate the iconic low-budge brick wall album cover photo from the Ramones’ 1976 self-titled debut in the video.
Blink’s first album by the core trio in 11 years is due out on Oct. 20. The 17-song effort, produced by Barker, has already been advanced by the singles “Edging,” “More Than You Know” and the wistful title track ballad.
Watch the “Dance With Me” video below.
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Amy Winehouse has finally reached the YouTube billion views club. The Grammy-winning late soul/R&B star who tragically died at 27 of alcohol poisoning in 2011 is now part of that elite society thanks to her 2007 “Back to Black” visual crossing the nine zero mark. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest […]