Music

07 Feb 2024

Kelly Rowland Gave Jay-Z Props For Grammys Shout-Out to Beyoncé’s Album of the Year Snubs: ‘Couldn’t Be More Proud of Him’

Kelly Rowland is on team Jay-Z. The Destiny’s Child member and solo star spoke to ET at the red carpet L.A. premiere of the Bob Marley biopic One Love, where she was asked about Jay’s surprise comments castigating the Recording Academy for never awarding wife Beyoncé an album of the year Grammy.

“Shawn Carter [Jay-Z’s real name] is one of the greatest men I know and his words ring so loud to me,” Rowland said. “I couldn’t be more proud of him.” While accepting his Dr. Dre Global Impact Award at Sunday’s Grammys, Jay surprise pivoted to a love/hate sidebar about Bey, who was sitting in the audience at the Crypto.com Arena.

“I’m just saying, we want y’all to get it right. We love y’all; we love y’all; we want you to get it right, or at least get it close to right, and obviously it’s subjective … because it’s music and it’s opinion-based, but some things — I don’t want to embarrass this young lady,” he said referring to Beyoncè. “But she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year, so even by your own metrics that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys and never won an album of the year. That doesn’t work.”

Rowland added, “I’m just really happy for a lot of things that he said. I think that he made a lot of artists feel very seen and very heard in those minutes that he took on stage.”

For the record, Beyoncé has a record 32 Grammy wins on her resumé, but she has never won the coveted album of the year award. “I feel like she is an icon… and that’s for a reason — it’s because she starts trends,” Rowland told ET. “She is innovative, her thoughts are big and bright and she just jumps for them and does it. I think that her albums are a reflection of that, and it should be really celebrated in that way.”

Rowland added that she wasn’t just saying that because Bey is her “sister,” but because “it’s the truth. I’ve seen the blood, sweat and tears that she puts into these projects, and her thoughts and her heart and her passion and her soul.”

07 Feb 2024

Ariana Grande Reveals 3 More Song Titles From ‘Eternal Sunshine’ Tracklist & Alternate Cover

Though her new album is still a month away, Ariana Grande is giving fans a small pocketful of sunshine in advance.

The 30-year-old pop star shared the titles of three new songs on Eternal Sunshine Wednesday (Feb. 7) via Instagram Reels. After previously announcing that the first song on the tracklist is called “Intro (End of the World)” and the fifth is the album’s title track, she’s now added the following to the fray: Track 2, simply titled “Bye”; Track 6, “Supernatural”; and Track 10, “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love).”  

Grande also shared the sixth of her seven planned Eternal Sunshine covers, this one being a grid of 12 red-tinted photos of the star. “here to deliver some Eternal Sunshine tracklist tea and album cover six of seven,” she captioned the post. “we wanted to give you a few different options that capture the emotional ups and downs of this album.”

The “Positions” singer also confirmed that each Eternal Sunshine vinyl will include one of two different lyric booklets plus a selection of exclusive photos. Her seventh LP arrives March 8, marking her first proper release since 2020’s Positions.

And while it seems Grande plans to continue unveiling new song titles leading up to Eternal Sunshine‘s release, she won’t be releasing any of them until the album itself is out. “As hard as it is to resist the urge to share another song or single with you all asap, I would really love for you to experience the album in full this time,” she announced on Instagram Stories on Monday (Feb. 5).

“There will of course be more singles off of this project once it is out (and we may have a little surprise or two up our sleeves to hold you over until then so don’t you worry) but waiting a little longer for you to be able to listen fully through first really is my ideal way for you all experience this body of work,” she added at the time.

Fans did already get a taste of the 13-track project in January, when Grande dropped lead single “Yes, And?” The house-inspired dance tune debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the Victorious alum’s eighth time reigning atop the chart. 

See her latest announcement below.

07 Feb 2024

Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ Leads LyricFind Charts After 2024 Grammys Performance

Multiple songs performed at the 2024 Grammy Awards reach Billboard’s LyricFind U.S. and Global charts dated Feb. 10, paced by Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which reaches No. 1 on both rankings.

The LyricFind Global and LyricFind U.S. charts rank the fastest momentum-gaining tracks in lyric-search queries and usages globally and in the U.S., respectively, provided by LyricFind. The Global chart includes queries from all countries, including the U.S. The company is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics, with data provided by more than 5,000 publishers and utilized by more than 100 services, including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, SoundHound and iHeartRadio.

“Fast Car” was performed on the Grammys telecast Feb. 4 as a duet between Chapman and Luke Combs; the latter covered the song in 2023. It was the first time the pair had performed the song together.

According to LyricFind, “Fast Car” earned a 6,171% increase in lyric searches and usages in the U.S. following the ceremony, plus a similarly sizable 6,084% bump globally.

More gains on the Billboard charts are in “Fast Car”’s future – both Chapman’s original and Combs’ rendition. The Billboard charts dated Feb. 17 will cover streaming, sales and airplay activity for Feb. 2-8.

Behind “Fast Car” comes Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” which appears on the LyricFind U.S. survey at No. 2. Like Chapman, who rarely performs publicly, Mitchell was a unique addition to the Grammys broadcast; she had never performed during the ceremony before 2024, and has performed sparingly in recent years due to health issues.

The performance of “Both Sides Now” found Mitchell joined by a bevy of musicians on backing vocals and instrumentation, including Brandi Carlile, Lucius, Allison Russell and more.

“Both Sides Now” scored a boost of 3,465% in lyric searches and usages in the U.S., according to LyricFind. The song also appears on the Global ranking at No. 3.

A third song performed during the ceremony, Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” rises 25-20 on the Global chart via a 153% increase. The tune from the Barbie soundtrack was also a big winner at the Grammys, scoring the nod for song of the year (plus best song written for visual media during the pre-telecast).

Other Grammy-related appearances on the latest LyricFind rankings include Paramore’s “This Is Why” at No. 8 on U.S. (and No. 18 on Global) and Dua Lipa’s “Houdini” at No. 9 on Global. “This Is Why” won the award for best alternative music performance, while Lipa performed “Houdini” during the broadcast.

07 Feb 2024

Watch North West Rap in Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign’s ‘Talking/Once Again’ Music Video

North West is officially a rap star after appearing in dad Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s music video for “Talking/Once Again.”

Ye and North hold down “Talking” while Ty and his daughter, Jailynn Griffin, twin in the “Once Again” portion. Kanye unleashed the visual to his Instagram and X accounts on Wednesday morning (Feb. 7), with the Feb. 9 release date of his and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures album fast-approaching.

Directed by the D’innocenzo brothers, North raps while getting her hair braided and matches with her father, rocking black threads in the clip that features the earworm of a chorus she debuted at December’s Vultures rave in Miami.

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“It’s your bestie, Miss, Miss Westie/ Don’t tryna test me/ It’s gonna get messy/ It’s gonna get messy/ Just, just bless me, bless me,” she raps. In January, Miss Westie and Kanye hinted at her music video debut, as she suggested a treatment that included her driving a Lamborghini to Nobu Malibu and fending off paparazzi.

Ty Dolla $ign takes the baton and gazes at his daughter, Jailynn, before delivering a candid verse about her growing up and hoping he’s raised her correctly.

“How much to stop my daughter from growing? I just can’t take it now/ ‘Cause she just doing all the s–t I did when I was her age/ I don’t know how I’m gonna tell her, but her dad’s just afraid/ Of her choices, know that I’ve been through it/ I just hope I haven’t been the wrong influence,” he warbles.

Kanye gets his croon on and takes the clip across the finish line: “Once again the clouds are gathering to release what they held in.” The final visual is of Ty Dolla $ign’s daughter adorably resting her head on her dad’s shoulder while looking into the camera.

Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign are slated to host another Vultures listening party for volume one of their joint album on Thursday night (Feb. 8) in Ye’s hometown of Chicago at the United Center. Tickets for the event allegedly sold out in seven minutes.

The much-delayed project is scheduled to land on streaming services at some point on Friday (Feb. 9). Vultures will mark the first project for West since his string of hate speech and antisemitic remarks, which resulted in companies such as Adidas and Def Jam distancing themselves from the 46-year-old.

Watch the “Talking/Once Again” music video below.

07 Feb 2024

‘Big Foot’ Spotted in Top 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Chart

As the dust settled on a whirlwind week for Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion and the rappers’ millions of fans, both acts can claim a new hit to their catalogs. Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss” launches at No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts for her third champ on each, while Minaj’s “Big Foot” opens at No. 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

For “Hiss,” the spitfire track registered 29.2 million first-week streams, 2.9 million radio airplay audience impressions and 104,000 downloads sold in the tracking week of Jan. 26-Feb. 1, according to Luminate. The song’s profile grew throughout the week, largely due to controversy surrounding the lyric “These h–s don’t be mad at Megan, these h–s mad at Megan’s Law.”

Many commenters interpreted the line to refer to Minaj and her husband, Kenneth Petty, who was convicted of an attempted rape in 1995 and is required to register as a sex offender. (Megan’s Law is a 1996 federal law mandating public disclosure about convicted and registered sex offenders).

In response, Minaj fired off a series of tweets about her former “Hot Girl Summer” collaborator, culminating in the “Big Foot” release on Jan. 29. Due to the Monday drop, the song only accrued four days of activity for the standard Friday-Thursday tracking week. Still, “Big Foot” captured 10.6 million official U.S. streams in that period and 37,000 sales downloads, with 588,000 in radio airplay audience – notably, unlike “Hiss,” “Big Foot” is not being promoted as a radio single.

With “Big Foot,” Minaj secures her 46th top 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. She remains in second place for the most among women, behind Aretha Franklin’s 52 titles and in sixth place on the overall count.

Elsewhere, “Big Foot” starts at No. 8 on Hot Rap Songs and No. 23 on the all-genre Hot 100.

07 Feb 2024

Taylor Swift Reveals When She Started Working on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Taylor Swift is back on the road for her global Eras Tour, and soon, she’ll be adding a new “era” to the mix: The Tortured Poets Department, her 11th album which she announced during her best pop vocal acceptance speech at the 2024 Grammys.

And at her returning show in Japan on Wednesday (Feb. 7), she revealed exactly how long she’s been crafting her April 19-slated record. “I’ve been working on Tortured Poets since right after I turned in Midnights,” Swift shared at Tokyo Dome, adding, “You turn in albums months in advance.” 

“I’ve been working on it for about two years,” she continued. “I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour and when it was perfect — in my opinion when it’s good enough for you — I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it. Soon we’ll get to experience that together.” 

Fans were shocked Sunday (Feb. 4) when the 34-year-old pop star, while accepting the first of two Grammys she would earn that night for her fall 2022 album Midnights, revealed the title and release date of Tortured Poets on the Crypto.com Arena stage before immediately sharing its cover art on Instagram. But according to Swift, the album’s announcement would have come this week no matter what — even if she hadn’t won either best pop vocal or album of the year at the awards show. 

In fact, the “Anti-Hero” singer said she’d planned to drop the news at Wednesday’s concert had she not taken home any golden gramophones a few nights prior. “Luckily enough that ended up happening,” she told the crowd, thanking fans for indirectly securing Midnights‘ AOTY win. “My backup plan was I was gonna do it tonight in Tokyo.” 

“I’m over the moon about the fact that you guys care about my music, it still blows my mind,” she concluded. “Everyone’s like, ‘Why do you make so many albums?’ I’m like, ‘Man, because I love it. I love it so much.’ I’m having fun, leave me alone.” 

Swift has three nights left at Tokyo Dome this week before she’s expected to fly back to the States to support boyfriend Travis Kelce at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, where the Kansas City Chiefs will face off against the San Francisco 49ers. The next week, she’ll embark on the Australian leg of the Eras Tour before doing a string of Singapore shows early March. 

This week of Eras shows also means four nights’ worth of new surprise songs, which, at Wednesday’s show, were “Dear Reader” and “Holy Ground.” 

See clips from Swift’s comeback Eras Tour show in Tokyo below. 

07 Feb 2024

Watch Celine Dion’s Soulful, Impromptu Singalong With Sonyae Elise Backstage at the 2024 Grammy Awards

Celine Dion couldn’t help breaking out into song at Sunday night’s 2024 Grammy Awards. Though the pop superstar has not performed in public since her 2022 reveal of a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome, after a surprise appearance during the broadcast to present the evening’s final award — Taylor Swift’s record-breaking fourth album of the year trophy — the Canadian siren proved she hasn’t lost a note in a backstage video.

The clip posted by R&B singer Sonyae Elise, 26, on Tuesday captured the two vocalists doing a soulful duet amid the behind-the-scenes activity, with Elise clearly savoring the opportunity to harmonize and ad-lib as she and Dion, 55, took turns crooning the line “ain’t no tellin’ the world.”

“Highlights of an ICONIC night [champagne flute emoji] So inspired & proud of my girls,” Elise captioned the video montage. The video also featured footage of the 2021 Grammy nominee hanging backstage and goofing around with SZA and Victoria Monét and filming Swift accepting her best pop vocal album Grammy for Midnights before surprise-announcing her upcoming The Tortured Poets Department album. The montage also included a clip of Dion singing to a delighted Stevie Wonder backstage.

Dion revealed in Dec. 2022 that she had been diagnosed with the rare neurological disorder that can cause uncontrolled muscle spasms that make it difficult to move. The “Power of Love” singer then postponed all of her planned 2023 tour dates — before canceling the outing — and retreated from the public eye amid a difficult period in which her sister, Claudette, revealed that the star had “no control” of her muscles.

During her onstage appearance and backstage videos from the Grammys, though, Dion showed no signs of weakness or difficulty singing. Before the Grammy pop-in, Dion was most recently seen in public at an NHL game in November in Las Vegas to support her hometown team, the Montreal Canadiens.

Watch Elise’s video below.

07 Feb 2024

Hot 100 First-Timers: Conner Smith Debuts With Country Hit ‘Creek Will Rise’

Singer-songwriter and Nashville native Conner Smith reaches the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time with his single “Creek Will Rise.”

Released in February 2023 on Valory Records, the track debuts at No. 89 on the Feb. 10-dated chart with 14.4 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 2%) and 3.3 million official U.S. streams (up 177%) Jan. 26-Feb. 1, according to Luminate.

The song’s profile was boosted by the Jan. 26 release of his debut full-length, Smoky Mountains. The 12-song set, which includes “Creek Will Rise,” debuts at No. 42 on Top Country Albums with 6,000 equivalent album units earned in its opening week.

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“Creek Will Rise” also holds at its No. 14 high on Country Airplay and jumps 31-23 for a new best on the multimetric Hot Country Songs chart.

Previously, the 23-year-old charted two tracks on Country Airplay: “Learn From It” (No. 38 peak, 2021) and “Take It Slow” (No. 52, 2023). He scored his first overall chart appearance in October 2021, when “I Hate Alabama” debuted and peaked at No. 21 on Country Digital Song Sales after going viral on TikTok. The song surged after the third-ranked University of Georgia defeated top-seeded University of Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Jan. 10, 2022, giving Georgia its first trophy since the 1980 season. The timely lyrics, “I hate Alabama/ I hate crimson red/ I hate how they yell ‘Roll Tide’ when I got a Braves hat on my head” were particularly prescient.

That breakthrough helped Smith ink a deal with Big Machine’s Valory imprint. In January 2022, Billboard named him Country Rookie of the Month. “The Lord’s timing is perfect and that was true with [“I Hate Alabama”]. We put out this song on a Friday and the very next day, Alabama lost in football for the first time in two years,” Smith told Billboard at the time. “That is what made the song explode. So now anytime Alabama is playing, the song gets some love.”

Smith is the first Valory signee to debut on the Hot 100 in 2024. Three songs on the label entered in 2023: Justin Moore and Priscilla Block’s “You, Me, & Whiskey” (No. 37 peak), Thomas Rhett’s “Mamaw’s House” featuring Morgan Wallen (No. 55), and Rhett’s “Angels Don’t Always Have Wings” (No. 69).

07 Feb 2024

Hot 100 First-Timers: Rich Amiri Debuts With Breakthrough Single ‘One Call’

Rich Amiri banks his first career entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (dated Feb. 10), as his breakthrough single “One Call” debuts at No. 79.

Released in November on Internet Money Records/10K Projects, the track opens on the strength of its streaming sum: 6.8 million official U.S. streams (up 44%) in the Jan. 26-Feb. 1 tracking week, according to Luminate. It also bounds 45-33 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, which uses the same streaming-, airplay- and sales-based methodology as the Hot 100.

The song appears on Rich Amiri’s latest LP, Ghetto Fabulous, also released in November. TikTok has been a factor in the song’s growth, as the track has been used in over 350,000 clips on the platform to date. The song soundtracks one growing trend involving creators comparing themselves to lovestruck TV/film characters when asked about their crushes. The virality of the song sparked its debut at No. 17 on the Feb. 3-dated TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart.

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“I don’t trust a soul, I don’t trust nobody,” the 19-year-old raps in the self-empowering track. “Extra green up in my pocket look like spinach/I put gold all in my mouth, I hate the dentist.”

Rich Amiri hails from Randolph, Mass., in the South Shore area outside Boston. He has released two additional LPs: For the Better in 2022 and Evolution in March 2023. On the latter album, he collaborated with Lil Tecca on the track “Poppin.” He first began releasing music on streaming services in 2019.

Thanks to “One Call,” Rich Amiri also jumps 28-22 for a new high on the Emerging Artists chart.

07 Feb 2024

Stars at Clive Davis’ 2024 Pre-Grammy Gala

Front row, from left: Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Victoria Monét, The Isley Brothers’ Ernie and Ronald Isley, Keyshia Cole, Clive Davis, Dionne Warwick and Rickey Minor. Back row, from left: Lainey Wilson, Andrew Wyatt, Harvey Mason Jr., Mark Ronson, Maluma, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, Noah Kahan, Jelly Roll, Josh Groban, The War and Treaty’s Michael Trotter Jr., Green Day’s Tré Cool, The War and Treaty’s Tanya Trotter, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Andra Day and Green Day’s Mike Dirnt photographed on February 3, 2024 at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sami Drasin