Music

11 Dec 2023

Kansas City Chiefs Owners Give Taylor Swift a Birthday Present

It was a very merry Swiftmas at the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Buffalo Bills game on Sunday night (Dec. 10).

Taylor Swift was supporting her boyfriend Travis Kelce at Arrowhead Stadium when Clark Hunt, who is a co-owner and CEO of the Chiefs, and his family surprised the “Anti-Hero” singer with a sweet gift, just days before her 34th birthday.

Clark’s daughter Ava shared a photo to Instagram, in which she’s seen smiling with the superstar, who has her arm wrapped around her fellow blonde while holding a stunning blue-and-purple wrapped present, which is addressed to Taylor from “The Hunt Family.”

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“Enchanted to meet you @taylorswift,” Ava captioned the post, which you can see here.

Swift, who was just named TIME‘s Person of the Year, confirmed to the public that she’s in a relationship with Kelce in her corresponding cover story interview, in which she referred to herself and Kelce being a “couple.”

“We actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple,” said Swift, talking about her first appearance at a Chiefs game in September. “I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

11 Dec 2023

What Mini-Residencies, And Major Stadium Shows, Taught Us About the Future of Dance Music

In February, Fred again.., Skrillex and Four Tet turned New York’s Madison Square Garden into a sweaty rave, performing a body-rattling five-hour show that had sold out in two minutes and, in some ways, set the tone for dance music in 2023. The demand proved the trio to be a perfect replacement for Frank Ocean as Coachella’s Sunday night headliner on its second weekend. And by October, Fred again.. had sold 42,300 tickets and grossed $2.9 million across a three-night residency in New York, according to Billboard Boxscore, later playing an eight-night run in Los Angeles.

“We been practising for monthssss to try n make this show a level up and to like really push ourselves to make it as musical and dynamic and LIVE as possible,” Fred again.. posted on Instagram.

Fred again.., now nominated for a best new artist Grammy, became a bigger star in 2023, but he was far from the only one cashing in on the post-pandemic return to live events. In June, future bass star Illenium played Denver’s Mile High Stadium, selling 47,300 tickets and grossing $3.9 million. Meanwhile, Beyoncé toured the globe on her dance album, Renaissance, selling 2.8 million tickets worldwide. And live electronic maestros ODESZA led the festival circuit, headlining Bonnaroo, Governors Ball and Outside Lands.

“There have been all these moments where I realized that electronic music from a live standpoint is in an incredibly healthy place,” says Lee Anderson, executive vp/managing executive at Wasserman, who represents electronic acts including Skrillex, Zedd and Disclosure. “It might be bigger than it has ever been, including the EDM boom.”


https://youtube.com/watch?v=dFfC92iBxNw&version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

This surge has origins in the pandemic, when dancefloors were vacant. Prior to 2020, dance shows had declined “from the late 2010s from a ticket-buying standpoint and on the live side,” Anderson says. This was the same era in which house music was replacing EDM as the mainstream dance genre of choice in the United States.

But as artists turned to livestreaming during lockdown, dance music became particularly accessible, given the ease of streaming DJ sets. The sound proliferated on Twitch and other platforms at the same time that a new generation of fans were coming of age — and when live events returned, they wanted to dance. “You had a whole new generation of kids that were like, ‘Oh, my God. What is this? I want to get out of the house and go,’ ” says Anderson.

The pent-up demand drove ticket sales at dance shows across the United States, and by 2022, Anderson says, “I was talking to people at Live Nation and AEG like, ‘The electronic stuff is selling really well.’ We looked at the data and realized this genre was heating back up.”

Contributing to the rise was the general expansion of the U.S. dance market. While there used to be roughly a dozen cities in which techno artists could play, Anderson says there are now 30. Beyond major markets like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, there are now thriving U.S. hubs for bass, commercial dance, trap, house and other styles in cities including Denver and Phoenix. (Anderson says that artists’ social engagement is the best indicator of where they’ll be able to sell tickets.) Meanwhile, festivals that were formerly booking three or four dance acts are now booking four times that many.

While the current dominance of house music has delivered greater levels of live success to veteran artists — Anderson cites Chicago legend Green Velvet as a prime example, saying he is “probably bigger than he has ever been” — fresh acts are also rising. After playing their first major shows earlier this year, San Diego bass producers ISOxo and Knock2 performed four sold-out shows at The Shrine in L.A. in November.

“Between the two of them, the highest-streamed song has about 13 million plays,” Anderson says. “These are not huge numbers, but they sold out 20,000 tickets in L.A. as fast as the cart could process transactions — and we had enough people in the queue that if the venue was available, we could have done another four [nights].”

Such residencies and one-offs are also indicative of the newly preferred style of touring for dance acts, with teams often putting on a small number of shows that feel special — and which fans are more likely to travel for — rather than grinding it out on the road. Illenium’s stadium show demonstrated the viability of this model (the act will play two more at SoFi Stadium in L.A. in February 2024), as did a set by FISHER and Chris Lake in October, when they shut down a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and drew 12,000 fans. (Anderson calls the show “one of the biggest stories in dance music this year.”) Pretty Lights’ comeback tour featured a series of short residencies, with 27 shows across nine venues. And on Dec. 16, John Summit will headline the 22,000-capacity BMO Stadium in L.A. — a type of show that Kx5 proved viable last December, when it played for 46,000 people at the L.A. Coliseum.

“When you had the [EDM bubble] era of, ‘Can it ever be that big again?,’ did you see electronic artists selling out stadiums as headline acts?” Anderson asks. “Because that’s happening today, and you’re going to see that continue happening. And that has never happened before. That’s new.”

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.

11 Dec 2023

Holiday Charity Dance Bash L.A. Gives Back Is Returning With a Secret ‘Mega Headliner’

The season of celebration and the season of giving are upon us, and the holiday dance-music party L.A. Gives Back is once again providing attendees with the opportunity to do both.

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Returning after a two year hiatus, the sixth iteration of the dance-focused fundraiser is happening on Dec. 20 at Catch One in Los Angeles. The lineup, as always, will be kept secret until the night of the party, but organizers promise “a confirmed mega headliner.” Past years have featured sets from Tokimonsta, Boys Noize, A-Trak, Louis the Child and Flying Lotus.

Some of L.A.’s best party promoters are curating the bash, with Brownies and Lemonade, Shrek Rave, HEAV3N, Electric Feels, Club 90s, Hack the Planet and Restless Nights all involved. Tickets start at $25 and are available now.

The party will be led by IHEARTCOMIX, with funds going toward organizations that work to assist the city’s unhoused population. Initially running from 2016 to 2020, the party was founded by IHEARTCOMIX in response to the city’s growing homeless crisis. In its first five years, L.A. Gives Back raised more than $200,000 for the nonprofits Downtown Women’s Center, My Friend’s Place and MásForMore. This year, the event will benefit these three organizations.

“It’s so cool that so many of L.A.’s top music curators and creative talent can come together and produce an event that draws attention to this huge crisis in our community,” said IHEARTCOMIX founder Franki Chan in a statement. “We hope that the event can showcase the wide diversity and collaborative nature that makes L.A. so special while raising the funds so desperately needed to address the issue.

“For IHEARTCOMIX, this is our holiday party,” Chan continued. “I feel strongly that Los Angeles is the best city in the world for music and creative energy. Over the almost 20 years that IHC has been around, we’ve seen this town change so much for the better. It’s not just the talent that is incredible, but the sense of community that makes it special and has drawn so many people here. However, the unplanned consequence of that growth has been the rise of the homeless population in L.A., and now in the aftermath of COVID-19, it’s even worse. It’s our responsibility to address this problem and fix it. As we grow, we must bring everyone up with us. Hopefully this event shows our city that we can stand as one to create positive change.”

A survey of L.A.’s homeless population earlier this year estimates that there are roughly 75,000 people in L.A. County living in shelters, tents, cars, fans, RVs or makeshift shelters.

LA Gives Back

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11 Dec 2023

Taylor Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer’ Is Now Her Longest-Leading Radio Songs Chart No. 1

As Christmas classics decorate the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” remains hot on radio – and becomes her sole longest-leading No. 1 on Billboard’s all-format Radio Songs chart.

“Cruel Summer” rules the Radio Songs ranking (dated Dec. 16) for a seventh week – one-upping Swift’s six-week command with “Blank Space” in 2014-15. The former rebounds to the top of the tally with 63.6 million in airplay audience Dec. 1-7, according to Luminate.

Here’s an updated look at Swift’s eight Radio Songs No. 1s, ranked by most weeks spent at the summit.

Title, Weeks at No. 1, Year(s):

  • “Cruel Summer,” seven (to-date), 2023
  • “Blank Space,” six, 2014-15
  • “Anti-Hero,” five, 2022-23
  • “Bad Blood” (feat. Kendrick Lamar), five, 2015
  • “Shake It Off,” four, 2014
  • “I Knew You Were Trouble.,” four, 2013
  • “Wildest Dreams,” two, 2015
  • “You Belong With Me,” two, 2009

“Cruel Summer,” which first hit No. 1 on the Radio Songs chart dated Oct. 7, was originally released on Swift’s 2019 Republic Records album Lover. The label began promoting it as a single in June, as Swift has performed it on her The Eras Tour, her first in which she’s been able to spotlight songs from Lover, which was released shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among other chart honors for “Cruel Summer”: It became Swift’s milestone 10th of 11 career No. 1s on the Hot 100, reigning for four weeks; her record-breaking 12th No. 1 on Pop Airplay, and her longest-leading hit (10 weeks); and her 11th No. 1 on Adult Pop Airplay, the most among soloists, and likewise her longest-leading title (14 weeks).

All charts dated Dec. 16 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, Dec. 12.

11 Dec 2023

R&B/Hip-Hop Fresh Picks of the Week: Usher and H.E.R., Nicki Minaj, Q Da Fool & More

As per usual, it’s been a busy week in the world of hip-hop and R&B. In the first full week of December, myriad artists got their announcements and releases out to avoid the Christmas lockdown in the coming weeks. On Sunday (Dec. 10), SZA celebrated the one-year anniversary of her blockbuster SOS album with the announcement of LANA, the forthcoming deluxe version of her nine-time Grammy-nominated sophomore studio album. Of course, the weekend’s most high-profile release was from none other than Nicki Minaj, who unleashed her long-awaited Pink Friday 2 — her fifth studio album and sequel to her 2010 Billboard 200-topping debut LP — on her birthday, Dec. 8.

Elsewhere in the hip-hop and R&B worlds, Cardi B confirmed that she is no longer with Offset, 2 Chainz is thankfully in stable condition after landing in an unfortunate car accident, and Will Smith rocked the house at the star-studded A Grammy Salute to 50 Years of Hip-Hop telecast.

With Fresh Picks, Billboard aims to highlight some of the best and most interesting new sounds across R&B and hip-hop. From Tokischa and Sexyy Red’s cross-genre collaboration to Usher and H.E.R.’s stunning Color Purple duet, get into these seven new picks and be sure to check out the rest of our recs in the Spotify playlist below.

Freshest Find: Usher & H.E.R., “Risk It All”

As the highly anticipated Color Purple movie musical draws nearer, the promotion for the flick’s two related soundtracks is kicking into high gear. Usher and H.E.R. started off the weekend — which ended in a pair of Golden Globe nods for lead actress Fantasia Barrino and supporting actress Danielle Brooks — with the release of “Risk It All,” their gorgeous new duet for The Color Purple (Music From and Inspired By), due Dec. 15. Co-written by Oscar winners H.E.R. and Jimmy Napes, Usher and the “Damage” singer harmonize beautifully across the ethereal piano-backed arrangement. “People are cryin’ for it, people are dyin’ for it/ Always the reason we still believe it/ Somethin’ that leaves us hurtin’ is worth it,” the pair croon.

Tokischa feat. Sexyy Red, “Daddy”

How do you cap off a breakout year that found you opening up for Drake and collaborating with Nicki Minaj? With an infectious cross-genre collaboration, of course! For the latest release in her string of fiery collaborations, Sexyy Red links up with Latin Grammy-nominated Dominican rapper Toksicha, for a sultry, sex-positive reggaeton-meets-house number that plays around with gender in the realm of kink. Across the thumping Yeti Beats- and El Guincho-helmed beat, Tokischa assumes the role of Sexyy’s sugar daddy as they trade hilarious verses, including some tongue-in-cheek bilingual lines from the “Pound Town” rapper herself.

Nicki Minaj, “Fallin 4 U”

Of course, the Queen scores herself a slot on this week’s round-up. Her gargantuan Pink Friday 2 LP — 22 tracks and counting — features several tracks for every side of her musical personality, but most pale in comparison to “Fallin 4 U.” Placed several songs deep into the album, “Fallin 4 U” is, in many ways, the defining synthesis of Minaj’s creative hallmark. There are her impassioned, high-octane, wordplay-laden bars, emotional Auto-Tuned ad-libs and hooks, a penchant for both the introspective and the braggadocious (often at the same time), and a healthy dose of melodrama via those background strings. If there’s any track on Pink Friday 2 that truly makes the album feel like a descendant of its predecessor, it’s this one.

SXMPRA feat. Juicy J, “Business Man”

New Zealand rapper SXMPRA combines his ominous underground phonk sound with that of ’90s Memphis rap pioneer Juicy J on the hard-hitting “Business Man.” The pair trade punchline-packed verses asserting their dominance at break-neck speed. “Stand and fight/ Folding chairs and/ Throwing them hands/ Would’ve been the best time of my life,” quips Juicy. The collaboration features production from Juicy J and HitKidd, who put out his own Renegade album this week.

James Fauntleroy, “Sleigh”

Holiday music seems to be a genre that knows no bounds given how its consumption only increases with each passing year. Four-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter James Fauntleroy took a daring stab at holiday originals by making his debut studio LP a Christmas album. A compilation of two previous holiday EPs featuring ten tracks, The Warmest Winter Ever is chock-full of steamy between-the-sheets anthems for the Christmas season. “Sleigh,” is one of the album’s instant standouts, with its waterfall of layered harmonies and cheeky Beyoncé shoutout: “She gon’ sleigh like Beyoncé.”

Tems, “Not An Angel”

For her latest release, Tems subverts the gospel-bent of her preceding “Me & U” single and opts for a rhythmic take on Biblical imagery, rejecting the role of being an “angel” or “savior” for someone who isn’t quite yet ready to be saved. “‘Cause I’m not an angel/ I’m just a girl that knows the truth/ And I couldn’t save you/ You couldn’t see what I’ve been through,” she croons sorrowfully over the Sarz co-produced Afrosoul beat.

Q Da Fool feat. Ot7 Quanny, “Rich Droppaz”

It’s a bit ironic that a link-up between a DMV rapper and a Philly rapper sounds so far removed from the dominant contemporary sound of either region, but it undoubtedly makes for a banger of a record. A slinking street anthem that coasts on both the duo’s chemistry and their individual charisma, “Rich Droppaz” finds the pairs trading hilarious bars like, “Yeah, I love the money, go me boo’d up/ I can’t do no Ella Mai, I ain’t ‘Boo’d Up.’” Unassuming but still urgent, “Rich Droppaz” is a promising lead into Q Da Fool’s forthcoming Art of Ambition album.

11 Dec 2023

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023: No. 9 — Doja Cat

For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 9, we remember the year in Doja Cat — a consistently challenging and successful pop star who rarely makes it easy for her fans, but continues to build one of the most vital and rewarding careers in 2020s pop.

When she entered 2023 with five Grammy nominations – off the back of a Post Malone collab, a late-stage Planet Her single and a hit from the Elvis soundtrack – Doja Cat knew something the rest of us didn’t quite yet get: We’re not getting rid of her anytime soon. After reaching top 40’s zenith with the frothy Planet Her two years prior (the album peaked at No. 2 and spawned five consecutive top 20 hits), Doja Cat spent 2023 setting fire to that pop-forward version of herself – and she still proved to be one of the year’s most dominant pop stars in the process. 

Before Doja attended the Grammys in a black latex gown that signaled a stark tonal and aesthetic shit from the pink and purple hues of Planet Her, she took on Paris Fashion Week while decked out in head-to-toe red body paint and 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals – an instantly viral moment that reaffirmed Doja’s singular wielding of fashion in her greater artist project and further proved the irrefutability of her star power. The punk and horror influences in her new wardrobe would soon reverberate through the rest of her 2023 – but, then again, those seeds were truly thrown when she shaved her head last summer:  an aesthetic decision that became a key symbol of the Scarlet era. 

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Year: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake

Doja’s first piece of new music came by way of an April “Kill Bill” remix, the year-defining hit single from Grammy-winning “Kiss Me More” duet partner SZA. Her Eminem-nodding guest verse used the song’s boom-bap-infused beat as a catalyst for Doja’s intentional repositioning as a rapper in the “traditional sense.” Her remix helped push “Kill Bill” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – although chart credit evaded her in this case – and primed fans for her new era.

Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat

Jacob Webster

Greatest Pop Stars, Doja Cat

Jacob Webster

She kicked off the following month at the MET Gala with a purr-fect ensemble inspired by the late Karl Lagerfeld’s pet cat, but that moment quickly gave way to Doja’s first major controversy of the year.  

“[Planet Her] and [Hot Pink] were cash-grabs and yall fell for it,” she wrote on Twitter (now X) on May 9. “Now [I] can go disappear somewhere and touch grass with my loved ones on an island while yall weep for mediocre pop.” Ironically, the hits from those albums helped Doja win the songwriter of the year award she accepted from the BMI Pop Awards that same day. After garnering legions of fans thanks to her pristine pop-rap bops, Doja seemed hellbent on obliterating that; large portions of her fan base were incredibly vocal in their objections to Doja’s remarks, but the tirade didn’t derail her year. 

“Attention,” the first taste of Scarlet, arrived on Jun. 16, earning a warm reception from critics, who lauded Doja’s focus on deft lyricism and her further exploration of those boom-bap influences. Fans greeted the song with a more middling reception; “Attention” spent just three weeks on the Hot 100 and peaked at No. 31. Doja went a bit quiet after “Attention,” but she came back with an even more contentious tirade the following month. “My fans don’t get to name themselves s–t,” she wrote on Threads. “If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f–king ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.” Once again intentionally antagonizing her fanbase, Doja found herself embroiled in a controversy that tested consumers’ patience with her, ultimately culminating in nearly 240,000 lost Instagram followers in under a week. 

Nonetheless, as she proved with her infamous career-threatening chat room controversy back in 2020, Doja Cat has nine lives – and maybe a few extra. The Grammy-winner quickly turned her fortunes around with “Paint the Town Red,” a bouncy Dionne Warwick-sampling track that became both her highest-debuting solo song and the first hip-hop song to top the Hot 100 in 2023. The song grew into a juggernaut on radio – it’s spent seven weeks atop both Pop and Rhythmic Airplay – and became ubiquitous on TikTok without the help of an over-arching dance challenge or trend, further cementing her as star that moves the culture, not one that happens to be buoyed by one of its myriad waves.  “Paint” topped the Hot 100 the same week Doja stole the MTV Video Music Awards with a three-song medley — “Paint,” “Attention,” and horrorcore-leaning promo single “Demons” — that reminded audiences of her performance prowess and gifted consumers the first look at Doja’s vision for Scarlet in a live setting. At the ceremony, “Attention” picked up a Moonperson – Doja’s fifth – for best art direction. 

Although Doja had fully fleshed out her Scarlet alter ego by the VMAs, she was still trying on different titles for the record. (Remember Hellmouth? First of All?) Moreover, the singles were a far cry from the “no more pop” and “French conceptual experimental country/bohemian fusion with the essence of bluegrass” descriptors she (sometimes jokingly) gave to fans. Nonetheless, Scarlet arrived in all of its jazz rap-meets-lo-fi-meets horrorcore glory on Sept. 20. Reviews were favorable, but unimpressive first week numbers (No. 4, 72,000 units earned) signaled that Doja couldn’t quite translate the success of “Paint the Town Red” to its parent LP. Fans were still showing up for her, but they didn’t quite love what she was dishing out, some of which included sporting an ill-received t-shirt featuring alt-right comedian Sam Hyde. 

As she did with Planet Her, Doja seems to be playing the long game with Scarlet. Her Ice Spice and Doechii-assisted headlining arena tour has been trekking across the U.S., and “Agora Hills,” an instant Scarlet standout – is already growing into the album’s second major hit, currently sitting at No. 24 on the Hot 100. With Scarlet, which ended 2023 as one of the Billboard staff’s 10 favorite albums of the year, Doja challenged both her fans and pop music at large more than any of her contemporaries. That fearlessness didn’t always pay off, but it did always keep her at the forefront of the conversation –  further cementing her as arguably the most consistent pop star of the 2020s, and one of only four artists to appear on all three Greatest Pop Star top 10 rankings Billboard has done this decade.

11 Dec 2023

Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ Leads Billboard Hot 100 for Second Week

Brenda Lee spends a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with her holiday standard “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” A week earlier, the song led the list for the first time – 65 years after its release – and became Lee’s third Hot 100 No. 1, and her first since 1960.

Lee – who celebrates a birthday today (Dec. 11), as she turns 79 years young – reminisced to Billboard on Dec. 4 about recording the carol, when she was 13, after learning of its ascent to No. 1 at last from Universal Music Group Nashville chair/CEO Cindy Mabe. “The producer cut the air way down in the studio,” Lee recalled. “He had a big Christmas tree and everyone was there – the Anita Kerr Singers and the ‘A-team’ [of Nashville studio musicians], as we called them. It was like a little touch of magic kind of sprinkled in, and it turned out to be magic. It really did.”

The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data, the lattermost metric reflecting purchases of physical singles and digital tracks from full-service digital music retailers; digital singles sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites are excluded from chart calculations. All charts (dated Dec. 16, 2023) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (Dec. 12). For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.

Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” on Decca/MCA Nashville/UMe, drew 41.3 million streams (up 18%) and 20.5 million radio airplay audience impressions (down 1%) and sold 6,000 downloads (up 109%) in the Dec. 1-7 tracking week, according to Luminate.

The single holds at No. 1 for a third total week atop the Streaming Songs chart, after it first ruled the last frame of the 2022 holiday season; rebounds to its No. 4 high, from No. 12, on Digital Song Sales; and keeps at No. 33 on Radio Songs, where it has hit a No. 17 best.

The song was originally recorded and released in 1958. Written by Johnny Marks and produced by Owen Bradley, it first hit the Hot 100 in December 1960 and reached an original No. 14 peak two weeks later. It went on to spend nine weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100 between December 2019 and last holiday season.

For its 65th anniversary this year, Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” received its first official video, featuring cameos from country stars Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood, Nov. 3. Plus, Lee performed it on NBC’s Christmas at the Opry, which aired Dec. 7. She has also joined TikTok, where she’s been sharing posts about the song and her career.

The song is just the third holiday No. 1 ever on the Hot 100, with all three now having led for multiple weeks. “The Chipmunk Song,” by The Chipmunks with David Seville, also from 1958, spent four weeks on top beginning that December, and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” released in 1994, has notched 12 weeks at No. 1, from its first scaling of the summit in December 2019 through last holiday season.

With another week at No. 1, Lee extends her record for the longest span of an artist topping the Hot 100: 63 years and five months, from her first week at No. 1 with “I’m Sorry” (July 18, 1960) through the latest list.

Plus, Lee, at 79 years of age as of today, expands by another week her mark as the senior-most artist to have ruled the Hot 100.

Meanwhile, Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” leads the multi-metric Holiday 100 chart, which uses the same methodology as the Hot 100, for a second week.

Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” repeats at No. 2 on the Hot 100, with across-the-board gains in streams (38.5 million, up 19%), airplay (24.1 million, up 12%) and sales (5,000, up 29%). With its 2019 triumph, Carey claimed her 19th Hot 100 No. 1, extending her record for the most among soloists and moving to within one of The Beatles’ overall record 20. The single also reigns as the No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Holiday 100 Songs retrospective.

Next up among holiday songs on the Hot 100, two carols return to their best ranks: Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (4-3), from 1957, and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” (5-4), from 1984.

Jack Harlow’s “Lovin on Me” slips 3-5 on the Hot 100, two weeks after it became his third No. 1. Still, the chart’s top nonholiday song wins the list’s top Airplay Gainer award for a second consecutive week (37.7 million, up 26%, as it becomes his third top 10 on Radio Songs, surging 17-10), while also increasing in streams (27.6 million, up 10%). It concurrently tops the multi-metric Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Rap Songs charts for a fourth week each.

Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” is steady at No. 6 on the Hot 100, with the 1964 nugget having hit a No. 4 high.

Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” holds at No. 7 on the Hot 100, following four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 beginning in October. It also rebounds for a seventh week atop Radio Songs (63.6 million, down 3%) – surpassing the six-week reign of “Blank Space” in 2014-15 as the sole longest-leading No. 1 of Swift’s eight career leaders on the airplay chart.

Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” originally released in 1963, lifts 10-8 on the Hot 100. The late singer now sports a record span of 64 years, two months and one week from his first week in the top 10 with “Lonely Street” in October 1959 through his latest frame. (Excluding holiday fare, The Beatles broke the record for the longest top 10 span last month: 59 years, nine months and three weeks, from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in 1964 to the debut of their newly-released single “Now and Then.”)

SZA’s “Snooze” keeps at No. 9 on the Hot 100’s top 10, after reaching No. 2, as it leads the multi-metric Hot R&B Songs chart for a 19th week. As noted Dec. 9, upon the one-year anniversary of the release of parent album SOS, “Snooze” is the only song to have appeared on the Hot 100 each week in 2023 to date.

Rounding out the Hot 100’s top 10, Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” descends 8-10, after it led for three nonconsecutive weeks beginning in September.

Again, for all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on Billboard’s social accounts, and all charts (dated Dec. 16), including the Hot 100 in its entirety, will refresh on Billboard.com tomorrow (Dec. 12).

Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.

11 Dec 2023

Nicki Minaj Announces Pink Friday 2 World Tour: See the Dates

Nicki Minaj is bringing Pink Friday 2 to a city near you.

Just days after the release of her latest studio album, the Queen of Rap has announced dates for a world tour in support of the Pink Friday sequel. Kicking off Friday, March 1, in Oakland, Calif., the three-month trek will find Minaj performing in arenas across the United States and Europe.

“BARBZZZ!!,” she announced on Instagram Monday (Dec. 11). “It’s time for the #GagCity TOUR. So excited to see you guys!! Presale this week and tickets available FRIDAY ??”

Also on the schedule are festival performances at Rolling Loud in Inglewood, Calif., and Dreamville Festival in Raleigh, N.C. Tickets for North American shows will be available starting with a Citi presale on Tuesday (Dec. 12), followed by a general onsale beginning at 9 a.m. local time on Friday (Dec. 15). More details are available on Minaj’s website.

As for the European dates, tickets are already available with artist presale access. The leg’s general onsale also starts at 9 a.m. local time on Friday.

Released Friday (Dec. 8) on Minaj’s 41st birthday, Pink Friday 2 marks the rapper’s first proper album since 2018’s Queen, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Fans including Kim Kardashian and North West have been passionately celebrating the 22-track set since it arrived, with many taking to social media to contribute artwork and lore to the Barbz fictional Gag City designed around the album.

See the dates for Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 Tour below:

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj

Courtesy Photo

11 Dec 2023

Best Country Songs of 2023: Staff List

This year’s picks for top 10 tracks include music from Lainey Wilson, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll, Tyler Childers and more.

Lainey Wilson

Lainey Wilson performs on stage during day two of CMA Fest 2023 at Nissan Stadium on June 9, 2023 in Nashville.

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

It’s been a banner year for country music. Streaming is up nearly 25% for the genre over last year, propelled by newly minted superstars Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs having banner years, artists like Lainey Wilson rising from newcomer to award-winning star and baby acts like Bailey Zimmerman, Nate Smith and Megan Moroney breaking through with chart toppers.

The success spread far beyond the country charts. Wallen’s “Last Night” spent 16 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, while three other country songs hit No. 1 on the chart, Jason Aldean’s controversial one-week leader “Try That in a Small Town,” Oliver Anthony Music’s two-weekNo. 1, the topical “Rich Men North of Richmond” and Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything,” featuring Kacey Musgraves. Since the Hot 100’s launch in 1958, only 1975 had more country No. 1s. That year five country songs hit the summit.

In total, 11 country songs reached the Hot 100’s top 10, including Combs’ “Fast Car,” which spent eight weeks at No. 2, becoming his top-charting song. In 2022 and 2021, only three country hits appeared in the top 10 each year.

While a few of the acts have been around for more than a decade, several didn’t put out their first single until fairly recently, which serves as a testament to the influx of great new talent coming into the genre as Wallen and Combs brought about a generational shift.

Below, Billboard counts down our 10 favorite country songs that came out this year. Some hit the top of the charts, others serve as great introductions to new talent. The songs delve into themes of heartbreak, healing and everything in between.

11 Dec 2023

What An Indie Supergroup Taught Us About The Future Of Rock

In a September interview with The New York Times, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner was asked why The Masters: Conversations With Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen, his book interviewing rock icons, didn’t include the perspectives of women or people of color. The media mogul responded bluntly: “None of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.” Condemnation came swiftly, even from the publication that Wenner had founded. Critics pointed to his comments as yet another example of the strident gatekeeping that has held rock music back, making it harder for anyone but straight white men to succeed.

Yet one of the biggest rock albums of 2023 has served as an antithesis to Wenner’s claim, as the indie-rock supergroup boygenius dominated the space this year. Formed by Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, the trio’s cult-favorite 2018 self-titled EP made an impact on the artists’ respective fans, leading to bigger gains for their subsequent solo albums and building even more anticipation for their long-awaited reunion this year.

Aptly titled The Record, the band’s first full-length debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and scored top spots on the Top Rock Albums and Adult Alternative Airplay charts. A sold-out arena tour, prominent Coachella slot, Saturday Night Live performance and six Grammy nominations followed. As Bridgers told Billboard earlier this year, “Sh-t keeps happening to us where you are then confronted with each other or other people being like, ‘How sick is that?!’ ”

The band’s big year stands in stark contrast to its introduction: While its debut EP earned rave reviews and a fervent fandom, the project never broke onto the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 24 on the Top Alternative Albums chart. Yet for Jeff Regan, senior director of music programming at SiriusXM and host of Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement, The Record was always destined to dominate the rock scene. “When you hear that this amazing [group] is getting ready to present new music, your ears perk up immediately,” he says. “With boygenius, you have three authentic artists who are bringing not just three fan bases together, but three distinct styles and bodies of work together.”

Regan is quick to point out that the band’s achievements in 2023 cannot simply be qualified as three previously successful artists uniting their fans. While Bridgers’ profile has exponentially grown since the group formed in 2018 — her 2020 album, Punisher, helped her earn a best new artist Grammy nomination and even secured her an opening slot on Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour — Regan says it’s the quality of boygenius’ output, and its fans’ appreciation for it, that made The Record such a standout hit. “A lot of the boygenius fans understand that we had to carve out the time for this,” Dacus told Billboard earlier this year. “People know this is a rarity and that there’s no guarantee that it’ll continue. Like, we will continue to be boygenius and be friends, but we also will get back to our own things.”

Focal single “Not Strong Enough” ruled the Adult Alternative Airplay chart for seven weeks. The song has since earned a Grammy nomination for record of the year ­— boygenius is the only band, and only rock artist, in the running this year.

Regan credits its success to the band’s eagerness to be vulnerable with its audience; throughout The Record, the three members of boygenius share a holistic view of their internal life, processing every emotion from grief to anger to joy.

“We all love a catchy song that grabs your ear and rattles around in there for a while, and those things come and go and that’s great,” Regan says. “With boygenius, there is this connection point with their fans and just a genuine approach to the music itself. They’re not doing this because they need to. They’re doing this because they found something in each other — and that is a very healthy thing for music.”

Boygenius is directly playing to a historically underserved market in the music business: the LGBTQ+ community. As Billboard reported in a 2022 study with Luminate, LGBTQ+ audiences regularly outspend their straight-identifying counterparts on music, including merchandise, live shows and especially physical sales. Of The Record’s first-week sales, a whopping 67% were vinyl purchases, helping score the group a No. 1 debut on Billboard’s Vinyl Albums chart. Beyond boygenius, Demi Lovato’s Revamped (which reimagined her biggest hits as rock epics) made a top 10 entry on the Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts, while queer-fronted rock group Greta Van Fleet notched its third No. 1 on Top Rock Albums with Starcatcher.

As Regan says, it’s about time that queer artists and queer fans begin taking up space in the genre. “I mean, shame on us, the alternative rock space, for taking so long to come around,” he says. “We’re supposed to be the ones on the cutting edge — we’re supposed to be the ones taking the sounds, the culture that historically would be on the fringe and bring them into the middle of the dancefloor. It sucks that it took all this time to do it, but when it’s done by artists like this, they get to hold up a mirror to the audience and say, ‘It’s safe. You can be yourself with us because we’re being ourselves with you.’ ”

Despite what self-proclaimed sentinels like Wenner might say, boygenius spent 2023 definitively showing that women and queer artists can be just as “articulate” and “intellectual” as any other straight, white, male master of rock music — and in this case, they can open the door for even more articulate, intellectual rock stars to come.

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.