Music
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On Aug. 2, Adele kicked off a 10-show run at Germany’s Munich Messe, playing the only concerts since the release of her 2021 album 30 other than her Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. In turn, her catalog is seeing gains in worldwide consumption, leading to several re-entries on the global charts.
Leading the pack, “Easy On Me,” from the album, returns to the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart (dated Aug. 17) at No. 128, while reappearing on the Billboard Global 200 at No. 170. Then, the trio of chart-topping smashes from 2011’s 21: “Someone Like You” at Nos. 144 and 178, respectively, “Rolling In the Deep” at Nos. 149 and 200, and “Set Fire To the Rain” at No. 152 on Global Excl. U.S.
In total, Adele’s catalog generated 142.4 million official streams worldwide in the week ending Aug. 8, according to Luminate, up 29% from the previous frame, and sold 6,000 downloads (up 65%). Sales particularly surged outside the U.S., up 113% compared to a domestic bump of 19%. Still, video footage from her Germany residency went wide, sparking a 23% U.S. increase in streams, not far behind the 31% boost internationally.
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Of her four charting tracks, “Someone Like You” achieves the biggest percentage gains in both metrics, up 73% in sales and 33% in streams. In doing so, it leapfrogs the other 21 singles.
Beyond the 200-position charts, 25’s “Love In the Dark” is up 47% in streams (to 9.2 million) and 214% in sales, making it the week’s most popular song from the 2015 album despite not being one of the set’s four promoted singles. It’s one of six 25 tracks performed during her Munich shows.
Adele’s residency continues through Aug. 31, likely spurring continued chart activity throughout the month.
Charlamagne Tha God is in the running for dad of the year after pulling off the ultimate surprise for his daughter’s Sweet 16 party. He also now owes Cardi B a huge favor after The Breakfast Club co-host had the Bronx rapper pull up to the party back in June. Explore See latest videos, charts […]
Following the release of the music video for a remix featuring its namesake, Jordan Adetunji’s “Kehlani” jumps to No. 1 for the first time on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart dated Aug. 17.
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The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity from Aug. 5-11. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
“Kehlani” becomes the fourth straight new No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50. After a 10-week reign by Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” Blood Orange’s “Champagne Coast” rose to the top of the July 27 list, followed by Clairo’s “Juna” (Aug. 3) and Sevdaliza, Pabllo Vittar and Yseult’s “Alibi” (Aug. 10) before “Kehlani.”
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“Kehlani” initially debuted on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 in June. It spent two weeks in the top 10 in early summer and began to rebound in August. By ruling in its 10th week on the chart, the song holds the mark for longest wait between debut and hitting No. 1 since the ranking began in September 2023.
Its initial virality was accompanied by a dance trend, one that continues with the release of the remix, which adds Kehlani on vocals (it came out June 20, and its music video followed Aug. 2).
“I broke the simulation,” reads Adetunji’s TikTok upload announcing the video on July 30 while Kehlani lip-synchs to the tune.
“Kehlani” concurrently hits a new peak on the Billboard Hot 100 dated Aug. 17, zooming 53-26 with 13 million official U.S. streams, 8.2 million radio audience impressions and 1,000 downloads in the week ending Aug. 8, according to Luminate.
The rest of the top four on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 is made up of previous No. 1s, as “Kehlani” is followed by the aforementioned “Alibi,” “Champagne Coast” and “Million Dollar Baby” at Nos. 2-4, respectively. Charli XCX’s “Apple,” which had reached a new peak of No. 3 on the Aug. 10 survey, falls to No. 5.
Lower in the top 10, one song hits a new peak while another reaches the region for the first time. Alphaville’s “Forever Young” lifts 10-7, while Hanumankind and Kalmi’s “Big Dawgs” jumps 33-10.
“Forever Young” was a No. 65 hit for Alphaville in 1988. It’s mostly been used in videos and trends about nostalgia, from creators remembering when they were younger to edits recalling people who have since passed away.
The song reached the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts for the first time in August. It reaches new peaks of No. 74 on the latter and No. 112 on the former as of the Aug. 17 tallies. In the U.S., it enjoyed a boost of 11% in streams to 2.2 million in the week ending Aug. 8.
“Big Dawgs,” meanwhile, hits the top 10 of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 for the first time as the track continues to explode across many platforms, particularly TikTok and YouTube thanks to its viral music video. Many top-performing TikTok uploads featuring the Indian rapper’s song are reacting to the music video, while others emulate Hanumankind’s dancing in the clip.
It concurrently debuts at No. 24 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart dated Aug. 17 with 12.1 million streams, up 58%. The song also zooms 57-31 on the Hot 100.
One must travel all the way down to No. 34 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 to find the week’s biggest debut. That distinction belongs to The Sundays’ “Life Goes On.” Originally released as part of the CD single for the since-disbanded group’s 1997 single “Cry,” the track was given a digital release for the first time on Aug. 3. While some recent TikTok uploads featuring the song had decried how it wasn’t available on most streaming services previously, others follow a trend that follows the prompt “they hate when [you/we] serve.”
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
It’s a cruel summer indeed for Taylor Swift‘s new wax figure, which has garnered not-so-positive reviews from fans after the Panoptikum Wax Museum unveiled the attraction earlier this week. Located in Hamburg, Germany, the pop star’s latest wax reincarnation was inspired by her 2019 iHeart Radio Music Awards look and features a replica of the […]
Willie Nelson will release his 153rd album, Last Leaf on the Tree, on Nov. 1. The Legacy Recordings LP features a mix of the country icon’s interpretations of songs by Tom Waits, Keith Richards, Beck, the Flaming Lips, Neil Young, and Nina Simone, among others, as well as a handful of tracks written by the singer and his son, Micah Nelson, who also produced the album.
The first single from the collection is a cover of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf,” a melancholy meditation from Waits’ 2011 Bad As Me album about the autumn of life that speaks to the 91-year-old country icon’s legendarily indefatigable spirit and boundless energy well into his six decade as a performer. “I’m the last leaf on the tree/ The autumn took the rest/ But they won’t take me/ I’m the last leaf on the tree,” Nelson sings in a hushed voice over his signature nylon string guitar strumming in the song that confronts the vicissitudes of aging.
The collection, Nelson’s 76th solo studio album, marks the first time Micah — who performs and produces under the name Particle Kid — has produced one of his dad’s albums, though they have appeared together on family LPs such as 2017’s Willie and the Boys and 2021’s The Willie Nelson Family.
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“It’s an approach that I really love and have used a lot over the years — just throwing the clay down and stepping back, then maybe adding a little more, and then maybe shaving down here, and kind of building the tracks that way,” said Micah, 34, who said he used a “sculptor’s approach” to working on the album on which he played more than a dozen instruments, including guitar, piano and “sticks and branches, logs and dead leaves” according to a press release.
Micah also created the album’s cover illustration and made the animation for the “Last Leaf” video, as well as illustrating the album cover and creating the animation for the “Last Leaf” video along with his wife, Alexandra Dascalu Nelson; in addition to digital, CD and LP versions, Nelson’s webstore will also sell an exclusive, limited-edition version with a lithograph created by Micah.
The choice of “Last Leaf” was fitting according to Micah Nelson, as his dad has not shied away from addressing the unstoppable march of time before as well as facing his own mortality via a series of health scares, including on the title track of his 2018 album Last Man Standing, on which he lamented watching “my pals check out.” Micah said, “there are little side-quests, but that became the through-line — facing death with grace.”
That vibe makes sense given such song selections as Warren Zevon’s bittersweet ode to everlasting love “Keep Me In Your Heart,” as well as another haunting Waits song, “House Where Nobody Lives” and the Lips’ joyful meditation on the preciousness of life, “Do You Realize??” Another track that fits the theme of the fading of the light was chosen by Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, jazz giant Nina Simone’s 1967 song “Come Ye.”
In addition to the Nelsons and Raphael, the album also features guest musicians Daniel Lanois on pedal steel, former Doors drummer John Densmore and Senegalese percussionist Magatte Sow.
Listen to Nelson’s “Last Leaf on the Tree” and see the album’s track list below.
[embedded content]
Last Leaf on the Tree track list:
1. “Last Leaf” (written by Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan)
2. “If It Wasn’t Broken” (written by Sydney Lyndella Ward)
3. “Lost Cause” (written by Beck David Hansen)
4. “Come Ye” (written by Nina Simone)
5. “Keep Me In Your Heart” (written by Warren Zevon & Jorge Calderon)
6. “Robbed Blind” (written by Keith Richards)
7. “House Where Nobody Lives” (written by Tom Waits)
8. “Are You Ready For The Country?” (written by Neil Young)
9. “Do You Realize??” (written by Wayne Coyne/Steven Drozd/Michael Ivins/David Fridmann)
10. “Wheels” (written by Micah Nelson)
11. “Broken Arrow” (written by Neil Young)
12. “Color Of Sound” (written by Willie Nelson & Micah Nelson)
13. “The Ghost” (written by Willie Nelson)
They say if you can remember the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair from 1969, you probably weren’t there. But some of the musicians who played the festival beg to differ.
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Fifty-five years later, the performers’ memories are clear as mud — well, make that about mud, as most of them well recall the rain-soaked wallow that was Max Yasgur’s farm during those “Days of Peace & Music” from Aug. 15-18, 1969. Some of braver ones even slogged their way onto the grounds to experience Woodstock from their fans’ point of view. And they certainly remember being flown into the site by helicopter as well as the late-running performance schedule and a backstage area where most were warned not to consume anything that wasn’t in sealed bottles or packages — unless they wanted to be on another kind of trip than they one they’d taken to get there.
Ten Years After drummer Ric Lee has good reason to be clear in his recollections; not only is it a significant chapter in his 2019 memoir From Headstocks To Woodstock, but on Friday (Aug. 16) the group releases Woodstock 1969, its entire six-song performance from Sunday, Aug. 17, 1969 — including a rendition of Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl” that had to be restarted when Alvin Lee’s guitar was out of tune. It was a ferocious hour on stage for the British blues-rock band, and the epic version of “I’m Going Home” — immortalized in the Woodstock concert documentary that came out the following year — elevated the quartet’s fortunes during the ensuing decade.
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“Crikey, we played as well as we could under the circumstances, I think,” Lee, the younger brother of late Ten Years After guitarist Alvin Lee, tells Billboard. “And ‘I’m Going Home,’ you can see it in the movie. When we went to see it a year later at a cinema on Wilshire Boulevard…a lot of the other acts were there, and when ‘I’m Going Home’ played everybody in the theater gave us a standing ovation, which was incredible from our peers. Alvin and I talked about it a few times; we wondered what it would have bene like if, for example, ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ had been used instead of ‘I’m Going Home’ — although it’s very different to speculate about those things.”
Lee says TYA was not aware of how significant Woodstock would be leading up to the festival. The group was on the road in the U.S. and was even resistant to adding it to the schedule, but its agent, the late Frank Barsalona, persisted. “Chris Wright, our manager, kept turning it down,” Lee says. “Frank kept saying, ‘You really ought to get on this. This is gonna be a big festival.’ He finally said, ‘Look, Janis (Joplin) has signed, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are gonna do it and (Jimi) Hendrix is doing it, so you’d be crazy not to do it.’ Finally Chris caved in, and we did it.”
That meant flying to New York at “some daft time” after a show the previous night in St. Louis, then taking cars to the Holiday Inn, aka “Tranquility Base,” in nearby Goshen, N.Y., where the musicians were lodging. “Janis and her band were in the room, a bunch of other people,” says Lee, who was traveling with his first wife. “I had a carry-on bag with me, a rucksack; I put that down on the floor (in the lobby) and was gonna use that as a pillow and get some sleep, but then they said, ‘You’ve got to go to the site.’” TYA was pushed off its initial helicopter site by Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, but the next one got the band to the site on time to watch Joe Cocker perform — and also to be warned “don’t eat anything that’s not been cooked ’cause we got hepatitis breaking out.” The musicians sheltered in trailers during the Sunday afternoon rainstorm that pushed TYA’s slot into the evening.
Despite the “Schoolgirl” snafu (the aborted attempt is also included on the Woodstock 1969 album), Lee says TYA was satisfied with its performance but was more than ready to get out of Bethel, N.Y. — which was an adventure in itself. Though the roads were blocked by cars abandoned by concert goers, Lee found a limousine driver who was ready to get out of Dodge, too. “We found a state trooper who was very helpful,” Lee recalls. “We said, ‘Can you find us a way out of here?’ ‘I can, but you’ve got to be very careful. You’re going to be driving between the tents, so you have to be careful not to hit the ropes — and there are people sleeping between the tents, so you’ve got to be careful not to run them over.’ So we did that and got out of there.”
The restaurant at Tranquility Base was closed, however, so the by-then famished band found a late-night diner down the road. “The waitress said, ‘What would you like?’ We said, ‘Everything!’” Lee says with a laugh. “So she went away and came back with food. Then we had to jump back in the limousines and leg it down to New York. When we got there they’d sold our rooms ’cause we were so late, so we managed to find another hotel that could put us up, then the next day we drove down to Baltimore to get back on our tour.”
It was a lot to go through, but like many of its Woodstock peers, TYA has no regrets about being part of the experience. “Especially when the film came out, we were suddenly on the world stage, and we started playing in Japan and all sorts of other places,” says Lee, who’s planning to publish an updated edition of his memoir. “Our U.K. and European audiences got larger. There was a definite shift that was the result of playing (at Woodstock).”
Seen, Felt, Touched, Healed
While The Who were already enjoying Stateside popularity when they brought the rock opera Tommy to Woodstock, Pete Townshend — who was also cajoled into accepting the gig — felt a boost from the festival and the film, too.
“I would have preferred not to have done it,” Townshend told us some years ago, “but it did actually cement our career in America. And then the film came out and it re-cemented it. Tommy was finished; it had sold maybe a million and a half copies. Woodstock put it back on the charts, and then the film came out and Tommy sold another four million copies. It was a huge part of our career, and I was very grateful we were there.”
But, Townshend added, “I can’t say I enjoyed it. It was chaos, wasn’t it? It was completely nuts. What was going on off the stage was just beyond comprehension — stretchers and dead bodies and people throwing up and people having bad trips. And all they could say was, ‘Isn’t this fantastic?! Isn’t this beautiful?!’ I thought the whole of America had gone mad at that moment.”
The Who frontman Roger Daltrey, meanwhile, remembers a scene that “was muddy, smell, but great to see old friends.” Fifty-five years later, however, he has a different perspective on what made Woodstock great.
‘”I’ve always felt that the stars of Woodstock were the audience, never the bands,” he explains. “It was the audience that created a wave that…To me it was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, even though casualty-wise it got worse. But it was start of making the government realize that you’re gonna have to get to grips with this, ’cause they’re gonna have a rebellion on their hands. It was the Woodstock audience that did not, not the bands.”
Souls Sacrificed
Carlos Santana echoes Daltrey’s feelings about Woodstock’s impact beyond the music. The band that bore his surname was one of the unquestioned highlights of the festival, with a fiery, reputation-making Saturday performance that preceded the release of its debut album by a week — and also translated well to film with a galvanizing rendition of “Soul Sacrifice.”
“Woodstock is a spiritual frequency, a spiritual event,” says Santana, who’s used footage and sound from the film during his own shows for quite some time. “When you think of Jesus walking around on the mountain, passing out gluten-free bread and mercury-free fish — people made Woodstock sort of like that kind of event. It’s out of time. Woodstock was not a commercial, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola event. It was three days of unity, harmony, oneness to bring awareness to equality, fairness and justice. The people at Woodstock, if you look at them, they’re hippies who believe in something different than the corrupt corporations of religions and politicians. We believed then and we believe now that peace is possible in our lifetime, on this planet. That’s why Woodstock is still relevant. We still need peace.”
Santana, who also performed at Woodstock ’94, recalls arriving at the site and seeing the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia “already playing his guitar on the hill, with this beautiful, blissful smile on his face.” As for the crowd, he remembers “an ocean of flesh and hair and teeth and arms and eyes. Woodstock was like a living ocean of people. Then you could just feel the sound, which had a different kind of reverberation when it bounced of the people and came back to you.”‘
Long Time Gone
The four members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were admittedly nervous when they finally took the stage at 3 a.m. Monday for only their second performance as a quartet — including both acoustic and electric sets. As David Crosby noted years ago, “Everybody we knew or cared about in the music industry was there. They were heroes to us — The Band and Hendrix and The Who…They were all standing behind us in a circle, like, ‘OK, you’re the new kids on the block. Show us.’” Stills, in fact, told the crowd that the group was “scared sh-tless.”
Graham Nash concurred more recently that, “Stephen was pretty nervous that night, but I thought we did well. I didn’t give a sh-t how many people were there; I had already been through that with the Hollies for six or seven years before I had ever met David or Stephen. My fondest memory was playing ‘Guinnevere’ with David, just his guitar and the two voices trying to reach however many thousands of people were there.” Another good memory, he adds, was that “the first thing we did was go to John Sebastian’s tent and get high on weed. (Woodstock) was a brilliant piece of work. It should not have happened as well as it did, and I think that (co-producer) Michael Lang really put his all into it and pulled it off. It was a wonderful idea, and it came off really well.”
Brotherly Love
Edgar Winter got to experience Woodstock “from both sides,” as a performer and a fan. The former was playing three songs with his older brother Johnny Winter and his band on Sunday at midnight, after The Band. But Winter, who had yet to release his first solo album and launch his band White Trash, also spent time in the field, checking out the other performers.
“I loved Hendrix,” Winter reports. “I loved Sly. I loved Richie Havens, Crosby, Stills & Nash. Janis, of course; we knew her from back home (in Texas). There was so much great music. It was just an amazing diversity of music; I enjoy festivals that are organized like that as opposed to the ones that say, ‘OK, we’re gonna get three blues guitar players.…’”
Winter also recalls that, “There was no real schedule. It was just organized confusion, like whoever they could find that was capable of getting on stage and doing a performance was next. That was crazy.”
Winter also credits his own time on the Woodstock stage as putting his career into motion in earnest. “Johnny was the guy who had the ambition and the drive, much more than me,” Winter says. “I had been more interested in jazz and classical, but he had decided he was gonna be a star at a very early age. After Woodstock, that indelible moment of being on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of people, this endless ease of humanity, that made me realize music can be so much more than just my personal world. It can reach out and transcend so many boundaries and bring people together. That’s when I thought about being an artist, writing songs and doing something in popular music, and the rest is history.”
Chayanne strides into a rehearsal space at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami, dressed in black from head to toe — tight pants and shirt, crisp blazer, formal leather shoes — and warmly embraces his manager, his assistant, his creative director. He then extends his hand to greet the photographer waiting for a cover shoot. “Nice to meet you,” he says with a broad smile. “I’m Chayanne.”
“I think we all know who you are here,” I say lightly, but Chayanne stops and turns to look at me.
“No,” he tells me without reproach, his smile intact and his voice firm. “My dad taught me that no matter where you are, you say hello and introduce yourself. You can’t assume people know who you are.”
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And just like that, this encounter becomes another among a long list of anecdotes about Elmer Figueroa Arce, better known as Chayanne. The artist who goes out to dinner and gets up multiple times to greet his fans. The performer who’s first to arrive at rehearsals and the last to leave. The star who greets housekeepers by name and dances with them in the hallways. The guy who runs in the mornings, alone.
“He is an exemplary father, an exemplary husband; good-looking, tall; he dances; he’s the perfect man,” says Henry Cárdenas, CEO of Cárdenas Marketing Network, which has produced Chayanne’s tours for decades, including his upcoming global arena trek. “He’s been a guy untainted by scandal. [Chayanne has been married to Marilisa Maronesse for over 30 years and has two children with her: Lorenzo and Isadora, the latter also a singer.] I’ve known him for years. I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and what you see is who he is. He’s the guy who interrupts his golf game to take a photo with a fan.”
Today, at this studio in Miami, Chayanne reveals yet another facet of himself: that of the impeccable perfectionist who, at 56 years old — and looking 15 years younger — is preparing to start the longest tour of his career.
The Bailemos Otra Vez (Let’s Dance Again) tour, which takes its name from the hit album released last year, begins Aug. 21 at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif. It will stop in 40 arenas in 39 cities in North America, ending in Miami on Dec. 15, and then continue to Latin America and Spain.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
“You’re backstage, you haven’t come out, they dim the lights, and everyone starts shouting, ‘Chayanne, Chayanne!’” he replies when I ask how he stays motivated after so many years of performing. He closes his eyes for a moment.
“It’s awesome. Because it’s been many years, but it’s an inexplicable feeling … I started at 10 years old, and I just turned 56. I say it calmly and with joy, because I feel so good, and I have lived the stages of my life with passion, with joy, with emotion. And I have also grown professionally, personally. All of that has shaped the person you have in front of you, but also the people who are going to see the show. Because I didn’t do this alone. They all grew up with me too.”
Talking to Chayanne feels a little like talking to a close friend, albeit a super handsome, super charismatic one who also happens to be among the most revered Latin artists in the world.
Today, we’re chatting in front of a rehearsal stage, designed to exactly replicate his tour set, where he has been practicing seven hours a day for the past six weeks. This interview break is an anomaly, because when Chayanne is in tour prep mode, he shuts down everything else — though he has been preparing for this for decades.
Chayanne began his professional music career at the age of 10. As a member of Puerto Rican boy band Los Chicos, he played stadiums, traveled on private planes and celebrated birthdays in hotels with cakes sent by fans.
But it was later, when he signed with Sony as a solo artist, that he became a true international star. The name Chayanne, which sounds like a stage moniker, is actually his given name (his mother was a fan of 1950s TV show Cheyenne), although it’s not on his birth certificate.
“As a kid, they called me ‘Chancito,’” Chayanne says. “People who really loved me — my mom, my grandma — called me Chancito. You know, the diminutive we use when we’re little. Fortunately, the ‘ito’ eventually dropped out and it became just Chayanne.”
Today, more than 40 years later, Chayanne has accumulated a catalog of hits that includes more than 49 entries and 29 top 10s on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, a record surpassed only by Enrique Iglesias and Luis Miguel among male artists.
In 2023, Chayanne released Bailemos Otra Vez, his first studio album in nine years (on Sony, his longtime label), which debuted in August in the top 10 of the Top Latin Albums chart, his 15th album to do so — making him only the second artist in history (the other is the late Rocío Dúrcal) to achieve a top 10 on the chart in every decade from the 1980s until now.
Simultaneously, Chayanne’s single “Bailando Bachata” became his seventh No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart, where he has already placed 35 songs. The track was No. 1 for 15 weeks, marking a resounding return for Chayanne, who hadn’t had a No. 1 on that chart in 16 years.
And yet, Chayanne hadn’t gone anywhere. During the heyday of reggaetón in the early 2000s, his pop sound — a mix of heartfelt ballads and uptempo dance fare — endured, and his tours continued to be enormous and constant. The last one, in 2019, grossed $28.3 million and sold 311,000 tickets across 49 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore, becoming the second most successful Latin tour of that year, after Luis Miguel.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
Plenty of legacy Latin artists tour regularly and sell massive amounts of tickets: Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Alejandro Fernández and Ana Gabriel, to name just a few. But Chayanne’s fan base, made up largely of women ages 50 and older, is particularly loyal, at least in part, Cárdenas says, because Chayanne’s career has been devoid of scandals. “We Latinos tend to support those idols of ours that have been ‘clean.’ There’s no dirt on Chayanne.”
It also partly explains why Chayanne’s music endures. Beyond their catchiness as hit pop songs, “Tiempo de Vals” and “Yo Te Amo,” for example, are still favorites at quinceañeras and weddings, respectively, passed down from mother to daughter, with multiple generations going together to Chayanne’s shows.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Chayanne was forced to cancel his Desde El Alma tour after 113 shows, with all of South America still left to play. There was a silver lining: With a clear schedule, he finally had time to think about an album.
“Chayanne is an artist who focuses on one project at a time, and if he’s in tour mode, everything is dedicated to the tour,” says Patty Vega, his manager of 30 years. And although he hadn’t released new music prior to the trek, “it didn’t mean he wasn’t listening to material or wasn’t doing his homework. Everything was being finessed.”
“When you release an album, you’re always thinking about what’s going into the tour, because touring is part of my life,” Chayanne says. “Performing live for fans is what I’ve enjoyed most in my career. In other words, the tour was planned; we just didn’t know when it was going to happen. A tour demands dedication. You know you’ll need months of rehearsal, exercise, new eating habits. It’s a responsibility.”
The Bailemos Otra Vez tour, like all Chayanne treks, was conceived as an invitation to take a tour of his career. However, because it will promote his new album and follows five years away from the road, as well as a pandemic, the name took on new meaning.
The process began more than a year ago, when Chayanne sequestered himself to review his setlists from over the years, including the order of songs, arrangements, mood boards and stage production for each.
“Chayanne has an extremely extensive catalog. Getting things out of the setlist isn’t easy,” says Cheche Alara, the renowned music producer (Annie Lennox, Camila Cabello, Natalia Lafourcade) who has served as musical director for Chayanne on four of his tours over the past 10 years. He began working on the Bailemos Otra Vez tour months ago, adding five songs from the album to Chayanne’s classic repertoire.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
From a musical point of view, Alara says that this time around “our vision is different. It’s very rare that we do something the same from tour to tour.” Asked to sum up the tour’s concept in a single word, he replies: “Gratitude.”
Chayanne “wants to thank his fans who have been with him for a long time,” Alara says. “He is not only an extraordinary artist but a very beloved artist, and the more you work with him, the more you realize that it’s not a facade.”
And he’s beloved for far more than his artistry. When I ask if at any point in his career, especially after he scored his first big hits, someone sat him down and explained what success entailed and how to behave in the face of it, he looks at me with surprise.
“That’s what I call values, principles,” he says. “That comes from before, from when I was a kid. It’s everything that I try to transmit and have tried to transmit at home with my children. In my career, I always felt support from my parents. From my dad, a home, food, respect. And from my mom, the romantic part: music, parties, the ‘Come, let’s dance.’ It’s been a beautiful balance. But it all came from my childhood.”
From the beginning of his career, for example, Chayanne made it his mission to go to every Latin country in which his music was released and promoted, visiting every major city and each essential music person in it. “It was going to Venezuela and saying hello, to Argentina, to Puerto Rico, Mexico. It meant shaking hands with every label employee, every radio station owner, every promoter.”
That philosophy extends to his daily life today. Although Chayanne keeps his personal life just that, he embraces his role as a public figure with gusto.
Beyond being accessible to fans when he’s out and about, since the pandemic, Chayanne has become an avid social media devotee. A few weeks ago, he even posted a shirtless photo of himself in his bathing trunks on Instagram that generated commotion among his 10 million followers, with nearly a half-million likes and thousands of comments.
“I have a problem, Chayanne used to be my dad. Now, I want him to be the father of my children,” wrote one fan. “Patrimony of humanity!” wrote another. “What a beautifully-done piece.” “The most beautiful man in all Latin America!” The list goes on and on.
“Oh, my God. Let me cover myself!” he says with a laugh. “OK, yes, I read some of the comments,” he admits. “Some were very cute, very lovely. Like, ‘If you’re going to take off your shirt, why stop there?’ I mean, really,” he says, blushing a bit.
How about his daughter, Isadora, I ask. What did she think of posting that photo?
“She took it!” he says, laughing.
Chayanne photographed on July 18, 2024 at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
Chayanne keeps those fans in mind when planning a tour. “Chayanne thinks about the audience and the fans first. It’s not about what he wants to do but about what the audience wants,” says Nancy O’Meara, Chayanne’s choreographer and creative director of 27 years.
Choreography in particular is essential to a Chayanne tour. He’s an accomplished dancer and participates in all numbers alongside the eight dancers (four men and four women from all over the world) who O’Meara trains at her Los Angeles studio.
The entire team then moved to Miami to rehearse with Chayanne every day, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., here at Blue Dolphin Studios, where he keeps a keen eye on all details of the performance.
“He always rehearses as if he were in front of a live audience,” says O’Meara, who has also worked with John Legend and Charlie Puth. “I don’t know anyone else who has such a level of detail.”
At 56, he can still sing and dance for almost three hours nightly — and on this tour, he’ll do just that for 18 months. His stamina in part comes from the discipline he’s developed since childhood, but at his age, his lifestyle matters as well. An athlete who loves golf and water sports and runs daily (“because I like it — I’m not running away from anything!” he says with a laugh), he has also been doing Pilates for the past three years, “because it stretches my body and strengthens my muscles and that’s what I need.”
He’s quick to joke that he keeps expectations for himself within reason. “What I can’t do, I’m not going to do,” he says, laughing. “But [what] I will say is, it’s a dynamic show.”
Chayanne is not high maintenance on the road. His needs are, for a touring superstar, fairly basic: good transportation (a private plane is standard), a gym (he’ll take weights to his room to work out there) and a good bed, “because after the show what I want is to take a shower and go to sleep.” Perhaps he’ll also indulge in a nice meal: “I like to eat well.”
Before every show, he’ll do a meet-and-greet, take photos with fans and, finally, get a little alone time. But that’s not what he ultimately craves.
“I’m restless, like a lion. I can’t wait to start,” he says, his eyes lighting up. “Look,” he adds, pointing to his leg, which is bouncing excitedly. “I pray and hope that everything goes well, that people enjoy themselves. I pray to my mom, to God.
“And then you go out on that stage and all that love that’s coming at you, you can’t describe it. I literally see my life flash before my eyes, because it has been my life. It is a whole life that I have dedicated to music.”
Chayanne strides into a rehearsal space at Blue Dolphin Studios in Miami, dressed in black from head to toe — tight pants and shirt, crisp blazer, formal leather shoes — and warmly embraces his manager, his assistant, his creative director. He then extends his hand to greet the photographer waiting for a cover shoot. “Nice […]
When we think about the first Woodstock Music and Art Fair we think about the hippies. The mud. The brown acid. The helicopters. The chaos that became a utopia and a definitive statement for the ideals of the 60s counterculture.
And, oh yeah, the music.
The artists — three days of ’em — were, of course, the primary draw to the festival, and Woodstock boasted a lineup of formidable names, some of which were already historic, others that were on their way there and some who would use the festival to launch their careers. “We wanted the biggest and the best, and we worked hard to get them,” the late Woodstock producer Michael Lang told us in 2009, while preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary. He acknowledged that it took a minute for the festival to be viewed seriously by booking agents and managers, but once Creedence Clearwater Revival signed on, interest was stoked and the gets became easier.
Thirty-three bands played in total, and there was even an impressive list of could’ve-beens: Lang made a run at the Beatles, for instance, but could only get John Lennon to offer a basically non-existent Plastic Ono Band, which wound up making its debut a month later at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. Bob Dylan was invited but never showed. The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors, The Moody Blues, The Guess Who, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Love were among acts that turned down offers. The Jeff Beck Group canceled its slated performance after breaking up shortly before it. Iron Butterfly attempted to change the day it would perform at the last minute and never made it to the site.
But nobody at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. was complaining about what they did get to hear.
“I guess by Saturday, when everybody had arrived or everybody who was gonna get there arrived, we knew that this was gonna be a historic moment,” Lang said. “Nobody ever thought about or how it would resonate, but we knew that this was extraordinary. I knew that we were all freaks and there were many of us out there and we were disbursed around the country and around the world really, so it was like a gathering of the tribes if you will.”
Through the Academy Award-winning 1970 documentary and an array of music releases — both individual titles and multi-disc compilations, including the Woodstock Back to the Garden — 50th Anniversary Experience in 2019 — we’ve come to know their sets well, which has kept a little whiff of The Garden fresh during the ensuing decades. They demonstrate that even amidst turbulent conditions, there were amazing — and also, again, historic — performances all the way through the extra, unplanned Monday morning.
With Woodstock turning 55 on Aug. 15, these are our picks for the 20 most iconic sets on that fateful weekend…
John Sebastian
Cash Cobain has recruited a massive crew to help him on his new single, “Problem,” a nearly eight-minute posse cut featuring 14 MCs that dropped on Wednesday (August 14) in the lead-up to the release of the buzzing Bronx rapper’s upcoming album. The woozy sexy drill track whose visualizer video features footage of Cash and […]