Music

05 Mar 2024

Hot 100 First-Timers: LE SSERAFIM Enters With ‘Easy’ From New EP

South Korean pop group LE SSERAFIM is officially a Billboard Hot 100-charting act thanks to the group’s new single, “Easy.”

Released Feb. 19 on its new five-track EP of the same name, the song debuts at No. 99 with 5.2 million official streams and 1,000 downloads sold in the U.S. in its first full tracking week (Feb. 23-29), according to Luminate.

The EP concurrently debuts at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 with 41,000 equivalent album units earned. Notably, as TWICE’s With YOU-th EP enters at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, this marks the first week that the top 10 has featured two all-women K-pop groups. Easy also starts at No. 2 on both the World Albums and Top Album Sales charts, while the title track surges to No. 6 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, marking the group’s second, and top charting, top 10.

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LE SSERAFIM, which is signed to Source Music/Geffen Records/IGA, notched its first Billboard chart entry on May 14, 2022, when “Fearless” debuted on Global Excl. U.S. and the Billboard Global 200 charts (at Nos. 74 and 155, respectively). The same week, it also opened at No. 14 on World Digital Song Sales. To date, the act has charted seven songs each on the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. and five on World Digital Song Sales.

The group has also tallied three entries on the World Albums chart: Antifragile (No. 1 in November 2022), Unforgiven (its debut full-length LP; No. 1 in May 2023) and now Easy.

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LE SSERAFIM, whose name is an anagram of the phrase “I’m fearless,” is comprised of members Kim Chae-won, Hong Eun-chae, Kazuha, Sakura and Huh Yun-jin.

05 Mar 2024

From Taylor Swift to Warhol’s Factory, Girl In Red Reveals What Inspired Her New Album

With the release of her 2021 debut album, if i could make it go quiet, alternative singer-songwriter girl in red blurred the line between contemplative songwriting and chaotic production, leaving the Norwegian artist born Marie Ulven with the challenging task of crafting an equally compelling follow-up. Yet I’m Doing It Again Baby! (out April 12 on Columbia Records) lives up to the difficult standard set for sophomore albums: Her songwriting cuts quicker to the core, while Matias Tellez’s production fuses even more influences.

Girl in red, 25, describes the album as an “elevated” version of her previous output. “It feels more creative,” she says, “more fun and more playful, and a little bit more confident. I’m not playing it safe, which is important … Everything is just getting pushed further.” She breaks down the inspirations that influenced I’m Doing It Again Baby!, from working alongside fellow pop superstars to refining her culinary tastes.

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Taylor Swift

While finishing her album in 2023, girl in red earned a coveted spot as one of the openers for Swift’s The Eras Tour. “It was like watching history being written in the moment — like, ‘I’m a part of history now,’” she recalls, still in awe. Opening five dates in June, she explains, was more than just a cool opportunity; it provided a career’s worth of educational experiences in less than a month. “I learned so much from watching Taylor’s shows and seeing how hard she works,” she recalls. “My new thing is I’ll ask myself, ‘What would Taylor do?,’ because I’m so inspired by her work ethic: ‘We’re not complaining, we’re just getting sh-t done.’”

Fine Dining

In the process of elevating her music, girl in red found that “my palate and my taste for food and drinks completely changed.” Embarking on gastronomic adventures at Michelin-star restaurants, and even studying to become a sommelier (“I have this delusion where I think I can be anything,” she jokes), the singer found herself taking on more complex topics in her music. “I think food is highly connected to everything you feel. So trying a bunch of really nice wines and nice foods gave me more depth to work with in production,” she explains. “I know that sounds really f–king pretentious, but it’s true!”

1960s New York

On the final track of the album, “*****,” girl in red pines for the art scene of 1960s Lower Manhattan, specifically Andy Warhol’s iconic studio The Factory: “Six out of six, I never miss, you’ve got to be delusional to be in the biz at The Factory,” she sings. The artist says reading Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, introduced her to the scene’s history and made her immediately yearn for the “electric” times she wasn’t alive for. “I just feel like we’re missing that energy now,” she says. “With Studio 54 and The Factory and all these amazing artists working together to produce great art — it’s just so cool. I wish we had more of that today.”

Cartier Watches 

“I had never thought about watches in my entire life,” Ulven says with a laugh. But when her longtime collaborator Matias Tellez started explaining his love of timepieces, the singer says she adopted the same obsession. She soon developed a specific infatuation with Cartier’s brand of stylish wristwear, and convinced Tellez to buy matching engraved gold watches to commemorate the album’s release. “It’s sort of about manifesting,” she says. “All these iconic people have worn these Cartier watches, and there’s something about wanting to wear something that iconic people wore.”

A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.

05 Mar 2024

Taylor Swift Urges Fans in Tennessee & 16 Other States to Vote in the Presidential Primaries

Taylor Swift is once again using her platform to encourage her millions of U.S. fans to vote. 

In a Tuesday (March 5) post on Instagram Stories, the 34-year-old pop star pointed out, “Today, March 5, is the Presidential Primary in Tennessee and 16 other states and territories.”  

“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” she continued. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”  

In addition to Swift’s home state, Tuesday finds Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont and Virginia holding primaries for the Republican party. All the same states, plus Utah, are having elections for the Democrat Party.  

“Whether you’re in Tennessee or somewhere else in the US, check your polling places and times,” Swift added, including a link to Vote.org. 

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The “Anti-Hero” singer has long been encouraging American Swifties to fulfill their civic duty using Vote.org, a non-profit, non-partisan voter registration organization that aims to increase election turnout and reach underserved and underrepresented voters. In November, she directed followers to the site ahead of Election Day in Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, quipping, “Voters gonna vote!” 

Since first breaking her silence on politics in 2018, Swift has had a proven impact on voter registration numbers. After she reminded fans to sign up on National Voter Registration Day in September, Vote.org reported a 22.5% increase in voter registrations compared to the year prior, with the site showing a 1,226% jump in participation just an hour after the pop star posted. 

“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” Swift wrote in  a 2018 Instagram post, in which she endorsed Tennessee’s Phil Bredesen for Senate. (He ended up losing to Marsha Blackburn, which inspired the singer to write her Miss Americana single “Only the Young” about her hope for young people to reclaim the political landscape in the face of such losses.) 

“I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG,” she continued at the time. “I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”    

05 Mar 2024

Gregg Alexander Reveals ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ Was Meant to Be New Radicals’ Debut Single

Gregg Alexander‘s music career could have taken a much different path had he not had a very bad night in Detroit 30 years ago. The reclusive singer/songwriter and leader of the New Radicals recently revealed that his band’s signature 1994 debut single, the up with (positive) people anthem “You Get What You Give,” almost didn’t make the grade thanks to an equally catchy song he ended up handing off.

“I had a moment of annoyance that I couldn’t go to the house clubs in Detroit. So he reached for the acoustic guitar in the back, channelling his emotion into a song beginning ‘It’s murder on the dancefloor, but you’d better not kill the groove,’” Alexander told the Guardian about a 1994 night when his old blue Ford Mustang wouldn’t start, depriving him of an evening of clubbing.

What he got instead, though, was the groove for “Murder on the Dancefloor,” the song that became a No. 2 hit for Sophie Ellis-Bextor in the UK and then hit the top 20 again this year after it was memorably used in the viral hit movie Saltburn. “You know how Paul McCartney originally sang about scrambled eggs in ‘Yesterday?;” Alexander said. “‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ wasn’t anything deep from my subconscious. It was just a dummy lyric that was kind of sung for fun, but then I couldn’t better it.”

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Alexander’s lost-to-time demo of the song has the same driving disco meter, but shot through with his signature keening vocals and his band’s eternal sunshine vibe, enhanced by a string section played on a keyboard. Alexander and the Radicals only released one album, 1998’s Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, which featured the equally bouncy “You Get What You Give,” which hit the top five in the U.K.

“I almost flipped a coin between the two songs,” Alexander, 53, told the Guardian. “The record company wanted something urgently and I didn’t have the time or the budget to finish both. I felt like ‘Murder’ was a monster but ‘You Get What You Give’ was a masterpiece. It was everything I’d always wanted to say inside five minutes.”

In a way, Alexander won on both accounts, since the co-write with Ellis-Bextor (Alexander also co-produced “Murder”) has now become as iconic as the New Radicals’ hit, which has more than 440 million Spotify plays to date. “A publisher told me that in January it [‘Murder’] was the most heard music on the planet,” Alexander said of the track for which he recorded a “master quality” demo at the time. “That’s just incredible.”

Just two years after writing the double dose of pop wonderment, Alexander disbanded the New Radicals and receded from the spotlight to focus on songwriting, penning a Grammy-winning track for Santana (2002’s “The Game of Love”), as well as writing and producing tracks for Enrique Iglesias, Rod Stewart, Hanson, Ronan Keating and S Club 7.

After moving to Notting Hill, England following the New Radicals’ break-up, Alexander’s demo got into the hands of Ellis-Bextor, at which point they finished the track together. “‘Murder’ was a song I always wanted the world to hear,” Alexander said, recalling that during sessions for the song he would walk down the halls at the studio and see people dancing along to “Murder,” which made him think they were on to something. “And when I met Sophie we embarked on a creative journey, the first of three or four Top 10 hits we had.”

The original demo also had the “I know, I know, I know” ad lib, which Alexander said he’d been told was a songwriting no-go. “I’d been told you can’t use the same words over and over because it’s too repetitive,” he said. “So I used ‘I know’ seven times.”

The reboot of “Murder” has also reconnected him with Ellis-Bextor, with Alexander realizing that sometimes things work out just as they were supposed to. “She’s so talented and humble but a great pop star. I think her genius, slightly deadpan delivery helped make it a hit,” he said. “Everything would have been different if I’d put out ‘Murder on the Dancefloor,’ but I feel that everything happened as it was meant to be.”

Listen to the “Murder on the Dancefloor” demo here (paywalled).

05 Mar 2024

Queen Latifah Returns to Host 2024 NAACP Image Awards

Queen Latifah will return to host the 2024 NAACP Image Awards, which are set to air live on Saturday (March 16) at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS. Latifah also hosted last year’s show. This year’s event will be held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where the show took place from 2006-13.

Latifah, 53, won a Grammy for best rap solo performance in 1995 for “U.N.I.T.Y.” and a Primetime Emmy in 2015 for outstanding television movie as an executive producer of the HBO movie Bessie, in which she portrayed blues legend Bessie Smith. She received an Oscar nomination in 2003 for best supporting actress for playing the fictional Matron “Mama” Morton in Chicago. Last year, she became one of the youngest recipients to date of the Kennedy Center Honors. She is the star and executive producer of The Equalizer, which is in its fourth season on CBS.

Poet, writer and activist Amanda Gorman, 25, best known for her poem “The Hill We Climb,” which she delivered at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration, will be honored with the Chairman’s Award during the live broadcast. The Chairman’s Award is awarded to individuals who demonstrate exemplary public service and use their platforms to create change. Past honorees from outside the realm of politics include Samuel L. Jackson, Ruby Dee, Danny Glover, Rev. James Lawson and Tyler Perry.

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Creative director and costume designer June Ambrose, 52, will receive the Vanguard Award at the NAACP Image Awards Fashion Show on Friday (March 15). Ambrose’s many accomplishments include costume designing for Hype Williams’ film Belly and styling such hip-hop icons as Missy Elliott and Jay-Z.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with groundbreaking megastar Queen Latifah and are elated to welcome her again as this year’s host!,” Connie Orlando, EVP specials, music programming and music strategy at BET, said in a statement. “We also look forward to honoring changemaker and poet Amanda Gorman and fashion icon June Ambrose for their tremendous impact on culture.”

The 55th NAACP Image Awards will premiere live on March 16 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS. NAACP will also recognize winners in non–televised Image Awards categories from March 11-13 on www.naacpimageawards.net, during the awards dinner on March 14 and aforementioned Fashion Show on March 15.

05 Mar 2024

Billboard Explains: Young Miko’s Impact on the Charts

Puerto Rican hitmaker Young Miko is set to be honored with the Impact award at the 2024 Billboard Women in Music event on Wednesday, March 6. Just ahead of the ceremony, Billboard takes a deep dive into Young Miko’s chart success, which includes two entries on the Billboard Hot 100.

The 25-year-old artist born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano Cardona has landed major collaborations with Bad Bunny and Feid, which have led her to score two Hot 100 hits: “Fina” with Bunny and the Feid-assisted “Classy 101.” The former peaked at No. 14 and the latter at No. 99. Elsewhere on the Billboard charts, she’s had four hits on Hot Latin Songs and three on Latin Airplay and five on the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. so far.

The rapid chart success came shortly after Young Miko burst into the scene with her debut album TRAP KITTY in 2022. Since then, she’s only doubled down on her promise to revolutionize the urbano scene as a queer artist. Most recently, Young Miko released her Bizarrap-produced BZRP “Music Sessions #58,” which has raked in more than 72 million views on YouTube in one month, and she co-starred on Karol G‘s “Contigo” music video.

The 2024 Billboard Women in Music ceremony will be held March 6 at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles, and will celebrate women who are making an impact across the music industry.

Other honorees include Billboard‘s Woman of the Year Karol G; Hitmaker award honoree Ice Spice, Visionary award honoree Marren Morris; Icon honoree Kylie Minogue; Powerhouse award winner Charli XCX; Rising Star honoree Victoria Monét; Group of the Year NewJeans; Breakthrough winner TEMS and the recipient of the new Global Force award, Luísa Sonza. The evening will be hosted by actor-producer Tracee Ellis Ross.

Billboard revealed the full slate of its 2024 Women in Music honorees, across the spectrum of music industry sectors, from record labels to publishing to touring on Feb. 29.

05 Mar 2024

Grammy Hall of Fame Returns Following 2-Year Hiatus With Some Big Changes

The Grammy Hall of Fame is set to return this year following a two-year hiatus in which the Academy reconsidered the Hall, which was formed in 1973 but has in recent years been overshadowed by the Library of Congress’ much newer National Recording Registry (which dates back to 2002).

The Recording Academy is making two major changes to the Hall of Fame. For one thing, it is going to be much more selective. For many years, approximately 25 recordings were inducted each year, making induction less special than the Academy originally intended. (In the early years, there were just five inductions each year.) As a result, there are currently 1,152 recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame. This year, the Hall will induct just 10 recordings – four albums and six singles.

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The Academy is also announcing the recipients with much more fanfare than in past years, where the announcement was little more than a press release. The Grammy Museum’s Grammy Hall of Fame Gala will be the first of what it envisions as an annual event. The inaugural gala and concert will be held on May 21 at the NOVO Theater in downtown Los Angeles. It will be preceded by a red carpet and VIP reception on the Ray Charles Terrace at the Grammy Museum.

The event will be produced by Ken Ehrlich, who served as producer or executive producer of the Grammy Awards for 40 years, along with Chantel Sausedo and Ron Basile. Producer and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes will serve as musical director. Phillinganes has won two Primetime Emmys for outstanding music direction, both for work on Ehrlich productions which saluted Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder, respectively – Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song: Joni Mitchell (2023) and Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life – An All-Star Grammy Salute (2015).

The Grammy Hall of Fame was established in 1973 to honor recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that were released prior to the advent of the Grammy Awards in 1958. The rules were soon changed to allow any recordings that are at least 25 years old. Inductees are selected annually by a committee of professionals drawn from all branches of the recording arts with final ratification by the Recording Academy’s national board of trustees.

This year’s 10 inductees, and information about tickets and performers at the concert, will be announced at a later date.

Here’s the full list of past inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

05 Mar 2024

Why This Spring Is Stacked With Major Pop Releases

Women are set to dominate a crowded March-April album slate with major releases from Ariana Grande to Taylor Swift.

Sound, Women in Music, Maggie Rogers, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, Taylor Swift

Clockwise from left: Maggie Rogers, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift.

Illustration by Mara Ocejo; Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; Christopher Polk for Variety; Kevin Mazur/WireImage; Katia Temkin; Kelly Christine Sutton; Graham Denholm/TAS24/Getty Images

Spring isn’t necessarily known as a big time for new album releases — but it will be in 2024.

After women took home all of the Big Four Grammy Awards in February (Taylor Swift won album of the year, a record-breaking fourth win, for Midnights; Billie Eilish won song of the year with the Barbie soundtrack song “What Was I Made For?”; Miley Cyrus won record of the year with her Billboard Hot 100 topper “Flowers”; and Victoria Monét won best new artist), they will continue to dominate the release calendar in March and beyond.

Across a six-week span, a coterie of music’s A-listers will deliver new — and highly anticipated — albums. Starting with Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine and on through to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, the flurry will keep listeners busy. And with impending releases from Dua Lipa, Normani and Billie Eilish — and potentially SZA’s Lana, a deluxe version of her Billboard 200-topping SOS album — still on the way, this succession is showing no sign of slowing down.

Surely, so much new music from major stars signals a packed touring season ahead. And though Grande told The Zach Sang Show in a recent interview she is “unsure” about hitting the road to support Eternal Sunshine, she will make a grand return to Saturday Night Live as the show’s musical guest on March 9. Meanwhile, Swift’s monumental The Eras Tour is set to continue through this December.

Below, Billboard breaks down the confirmed upcoming albums that will help us ease into the warmer months ahead.

05 Mar 2024

AIR to Perform ‘Moon Safari’ in Its Entirety During Fall North American Tour: ‘This Album Is a Little Bit Medicinal’

French electronic duo AIR will bring audiences to space this fall during a North American tour honoring the 25-year anniversary of their beloved 1998 debut, Moon Safari.

The pair, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, will play the album in its entirety during the 19-date tour, which starts Sept. 25 in Vancouver and ends Oct. 30 in Austin, Texas. See the complete schedule below.

Presale tickets go on sale March 7 at 10 a.m. local time, with general tickets on sale 10 a.m. local time on March 8. The tour will hit largely 2,000- to 5,000-capacity venues and follows AIR’s current sold-out European tour behind the anniversary. The tour announcement follows last Friday’s release of a demo version of Moon Safari‘s “New Stars in the Sky.”

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Released in January 1998, the album marked a breakout moment for the electronica genre and earned wide critical acclaim.

While making it, Godin says that “my obsession was to do something timeless, so I focused very hard not to put things in the music production that would date the album. And during the process, many times we felt we were visited by something magic, we felt blessed during some takes; and also when I was listening to the radio, I couldn’t figure how people were making hit singles. It was not in my skills so if you can’t make a hit, the best other option is to make a classic.”

“Before we decided to do this tour, we went to a rehearsal room for three days to see if it was technically possible to perform the entire album,” Godin continues, “and as soon as we started to play the first notes of ‘Kelly Watch the Stars’ or ‘La Femme d’Argent,’ we had a thrill.”

The tour will not feature Moon Safari vocalist Beth Hirsch, who helped forge the album’s dreamy, sexy atmosphere on “All I Need” and “You Make It Easy.” But Dunckel says the pair has “made some arrangements to deliver the soul of these tracks” through their use of a vocoder. “I think that the new arrangements are working on stage,” he continues. “We feel the singer singing without her singing.”

Reflecting on the album’s legacy, Godin says the soothing nature of the album is another reason it’s endured. “We are extremely blessed to have recorded this music, and to be able to share it with the audience so long after its release is a gift of life for us,” he says. “In these troubled times, it’s a nice time capsule from the last century when we were more innocent and optimistic.”

“I think this album is a little bit medicinal,” Dunckel adds. “It heals people’s wounds. Like the wounds I had at the time we made it. That’s what melancholic music does to you isn’t it? The melancholia into the music swallows the listener’s melancholia because the musician and the listener are talking to each other as in a therapy conversation or in a dream.”

Of the original tour behind the album, Dunckel recalls realizing the album “was really working when we toured in the U.S., and in Spain. People were really enjoying the shows and they were so happy to see us for real. I felt it in the audience voices.”

Air

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05 Mar 2024

Luke Hemmings Says ‘Shakes’ & New Album Era Are a ‘Window Into How I See Things’

Luke Hemmings is introducing his new album era with the introspective “Shakes,” and to celebrate, the 5 Seconds of Summer vocalist sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to discuss the writing process.

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“I already had a lot of ideas for the album from being on the road, a lot of it was written in hotels and planes and all the sad boy places,” he recalled with a laugh. “That’s where a lot of it came from. The chorus was written in New York, and I was experimenting with pitching my voice, which is why the chorus kind of sounds like me but has other layers of pitched vocals.”

He continued, “I listened to a lot of The Verve, Blur, M83 and Beach House, which is where a lot of the inspiration came from. A lot of how I write for this project is pretty chaotic, so I’ll write a piece here and then won’t write anything for the rest of it for nine months. It turned into a mish mash of a story but it still has that emotion and feeling.”

And no, the other three 5SOS members — Ashton Irwin, Calum Hood and Michael Clifford — have not heard the new music yet. “I try not to play it for too many people. The whole point is to try and stand on my own two feet, but I will play it for them, for sure,” Hemmings explained.

As for what he wants fans to learn from his upcoming music, the 27-year-old star revealed, “I’m a very private person online and socially, so I think these songs are very much a window into how I see things and how I see the world. It’s stepping into how I see things and I hope they resonate with it on a personal level.”

Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Luke Hemmings above.