State Champ Radio Music
Page: 210
05/29/2025
The Colombian star has made notable fashion statements throughout her career.
05/29/2025
Ten years ago today, on May 29, 2015, Jamie xx released his debut solo album, In Colour.
The 11-song project reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart, generating hits including “Gosh,” “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” and “Loud Places” and becoming a beloved LP of the era.
Billboard also celebrated the album upon its release, publishing a glowing review that identified the British producer’s ability to create a collage of ’90s U.K. rave culture that simultaneously acknowledged the rich history of this era while also sounding entirely fresh.
“Jamie xx is 26 years old, which means he was barely out of diapers during the heyday of ’90s U.K. rave culture, which provides the heart, soul and inspiration for his jaw-dropping solo debut, In Colour,” wrote Billboard contributor Garrett Kamps.
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The review continues to say that “The xx member (real name: Jamie Smith) reportedly combed through videos from the era on YouTube, experiencing it in a way that generations before him could not: all at once, chopped up, voyeuristically and set to the best music. This, conveniently, describes the rush of hearing In Colour, an ambitious collage of dance music’s most artistically exciting decade, assembled with maximum TLC by a visionary who inherited its legacy.
“Pockmarked by bits of dialogue from the era’s radio shows and documentaries,” Kamps continues, “the record leaves no doubt as to its source material, and Jamie xx is among other U.K. electronic-dance acts, such as Disclosure and Four Tet, that are tapping the genre’s past to forge its future. But no one has nailed it quite like this.”
Read the complete 2015 review here.
Speaking with Billboard last year upon the release of In Colour‘s long-awaited follow-up, In Waves, the artist said his country’s esteemed history with electronic music, combined with some good old fashioned homesickness, inspired the album’s tone.
“When I was making Colour, I was on tour [with The xx], and had been for seven or eight years nonstop,” he said. “I was really homesick, and I was dreaming up ideas about the U.K. and music in the U.K. and the dance scene there and everything that has happened since the ’80s in dance music in the U.K., which is a lot. It was sort of my fantasy version of U.K. dance music history. Because I was missing home, it made me feel more like I was at home, I guess.”
He also reflected on the differences within himself as he made two connected projects nine years apart, saying that while listening to In Colour while making In Waves, “I remember being really surprised by a lot of decisions I had made as a younger person, and remembering who the hell I was when I made those decisions.
“I guess I was drunk quite a lot of the time, having a lot of fun in my mid-20s,” he continued with a laugh while reflecting on the production process for In Colour. “It’s very painstaking, all these decisions you feel are so important. Then listening to them 10 years later or five years later, you can’t believe you made any of the decisions. And you think they’re wrong, or I would have made completely different decisions now, but I guess that’s a part of it.”
The dull, distant thud of munitions falling in Gaza is the only sound you hear in the parking lot in Re’im in southern Israel. It’s a world away from the thumping, joyous EDM beats that filled this same site more than two years ago as 3,000 ravers gathered under the stars for an all-night Nova Music Festival.The site is now a memorial to the 364 people killed by Hamas militants on Oct 7, 2023, eerily silent on a recent mid-May morning as friends, family and visitors quietly wandered among the hundreds of tributes to the slain attendees of the music festival. In addition to the scores killed and assaulted that day, 44 others were taken hostage in what became the deadliest attack in modern Israeli history.
The joyous rave kicked off the night before the shocking early morning raid by the al-Qassam Brigades that resulted in the killing of nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapping of more than 250. What was meant to be a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret — a time to stop and reflect, pray for rain and gather with friends and family — is now a heart-wrenching shrine to vibrant lives cut short.
“Daniel Goffman, 24 years old when he passed away. A child with a huge heart, endless generosity, and optimism, always willing to help and sacrifice himself for a friend,” reads one tribute featuring the image of a smiling young man giving a thumbs up. “He went to the Nova music festival with his partner, Daniela Petrenko, may she rest in peace, to celebrate the start of a new life, but they never returned.”
Among those attending the festival was Israel’s 2025 Eurovision Song Contest runner-up Yuval Raphael, who still bears shrapnel in her body from the attack. She has recalled hiding in a bomb shelter packed with 50 other people as Hamas gunmen repeatedly shot into the shelter and lobbed grenades. She survived after making a panicked call to her father, who counseled her to play dead and be quiet, a tactic that allowed her to be among the 11 people in the shelter who survived the onslaught.
In the middle of the sea of stories of lives cut short featuring tokens of memorial ranging from a charred DJ deck to a ghostly white statue mirrored on the ground by a hollow dirt reflection, is a massive star made up vibrant reproductions of the nation’s official flower, the red anemone (Kalanit). The flowers bloom at the festival site every February and the deeply symbolic gesture is a nod to the spilled blood of the victims, as well as a sign of resilience and hope. The official memorial funded by the non-profit Jewish National Fund has quickly become the JNF’s most-visited site, attracting nearly 7,000 visitors a day.
Visiting family for a wedding in Tel Aviv, I admittedly was not able to get a perspective on the dire situation in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s government continues to hammer the area with daily assaults in a conflict that has killed more than 53,000 people in the territory to date, according to Palestinian health authorities.
But what I did observe that day was a sea of moving tributes to dance music fans who gathered in the desert for an all-night celebration of renewal that turned into an early morning nightmare of automatic weapons fire and brutal assaults by Hamas militants who crashed through the border during the shocking surprise attack.
Just down the road was a kind of car graveyard, framed by five-story piles of charred, rusted vehicles attendees attempted to flee in that were destroyed in the attack. Scattered among the trashed cars with memorials to the victims were shot-up trucks driven by the marauders, some with large gun mounts in the bed.
Like the Nova memorial, the eerie site full of crushed and burnt cars and piles of mangled motorcycles features placards with QR codes that lead to the fuller stories of the victims. At the center is a destroyed car spilling over with a long trail of the red anemone sculptures. Atop the vehicle is a metal sculpture with the Hebrew word “V Ahavat,” which translates into “and love,” a common expression of affection.
The entire nation is laser-focused on returning the remaining hostages in Gaza — believed to number 58 men and women, half of whom are believed to be alive — with the two Nova memorials similarly plastered with stickers and banners honoring the captured and demanding their return. From the Ben Gurion airport arrival area to restaurant walls and roadside memorials, the stickers and posters bearing the faces of the captives are inescapable in the country now, along with massive banners reading “Bring Them Home.”
Just like the Nova site, the stickers and banners are daily testimonies to a grievous wound that feels impossible to ever heal from. But they are also a reminder of the vibrant stories of the lives that were lost and, hopefully, of those hostages who may yet return.
Check out a gallery of photos from the Nova site below.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
More than 5,000 people visit the Nova Memorial site every day, where they can wander among personalized tributes to the 364 killed by Hamas raiders on Oct. 7.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
Each tribute features lovingly written profiles of the Nova attendees’ lives, along with tokens memorializing them and clay recreations of the red anemone flowers that bloom in the area each February.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
In an adjacent grove, the families of the victims planted saplings in memory of their loved ones on the Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat last year, an annual arbor day-like celebration of trees.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The outside walls of a bomb shelter on the Nova site graffittied with the names of some of the dead and the acronymn “Hashem Ylkom Damo,” which translates to “May God avenge his/her blood” and a phrase reading “to win my brother.”
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
One of the bomb shelters on site at Nova where attendees fled during the attack. A guide said Hamas raiders repeatedly attempted to throw grenades into the packed concrete bunker during their assault.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A close-up of one of the cars destroyed during the raid, one of hundreds on display in a grim shrine just down the road from the Nova Festival site.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The memorial for attendee Shani Gabay, entitled “Shani Gabay’s Black Saturday,” feauturing a time-coded countdown of her attempt to escape, with links to photos and videos. It relates how the 25-year-old tried to run away from the assult and was declared missing for 17 days, until her body was discovered accidentally buried with another victim.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A memorial to an Israeli soccer player featuring scarves from the victim’s favorite football teams, including Maccabi Petah Tikva, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Beitar Jerusalem and Israel’s beloved Maccabi Tel Aviv FC. The collection of white stones are in keeping with a Jewish tradition of mourning, in which visitors leave a rock to mark a visit to a grave site.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A ghostly memorial to attendee Ziv Pepe Shapira, in which a tree has been planted in the middle of the “reflection” of a human torso on the ground.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The burnt remnants of a metal sign reading “Nova Tribe of Light” lies amid a pile of wreckage near the memorial for beloved trance DJ Matan “Kido” Elmalem (aka “DJ Kido”), 42, who played festivals all over the world. He was spinning an early-morning set on Oct. 7 as Hamas raiders descended on the festival.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
An enormous garden of clay anemone flower sculptures — including charred black versions at the center — spreads on the Nova memorial site. Anemones are the official flower of Israel and they bloom near the festival site every Feburary. A tribute to the blood of the victims as well as a sign of resilence and hope.
Bunnie XO and Jessie Murph just had a far-out conversation about their first times taking shrooms, with the former revealing she once tripped so hard, she thought she was Michael Jackson.
In a clip from a recent episode Dumb Blonde, the podcaster asked the 20-year-old singer-songwriter to recount giving the psychedelics a try just a few weeks prior at Coachella. “I took them right before y’all’s party, actually,” Murph said, referring to Bunnie and her famous husband, Jelly Roll.
“It was so great,” the “High Road” singer recalled. “I was always apprehensive to try them … because they say it can mentally get you in a weird place.”
“But I had the time of my life,” Murph added. “I just was smiling, it made me really happy. But I’m gonna try not to do them a lot.”
One of Bunnie’s experiences with the drug, however, was a lot less serene. “I thought I was Michael Jackson one time,” she told Murph as both of them laughed. “I was in the snow making snow angels and then I cooked, like, a five-course meal … I did a big dose and it was phenomenal — that’s when I thought I was Michael Jackson.”
“And then I did a microdose and s–t got weird,” Bunnie added. “I started thinking about my childhood.”
According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, shrooms — aka magic mushrooms — are consumed for their hallucinogenic effects caused by key ingredient psilocybin. The psychedelics can alter “a person’s thinking, sense of time and emotions,” an ideally pleasant experience that can sometimes lead to anxiety or paranoia instead.
Bunnie and Murph — who recently earned her highest peak to date on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Blue Strips” reaching No. 15 earlier in May — have been friends for a while. In 2023, the Alabama native teamed up with Jelly for a duet titled “Wild Ones,” reaching No. 7 on the Hot Country Songs chart, and all three of the stars recently walked the red carpet together at the Academy of Country Music Awards — where Murph’s piglet, Wilbur, stole the show.
In June 2024, Bunnie defended Murph against social media trolls who took issue with the latter being featured on Koe Wetzel’s “High Road,” which would reach No. 22 on the Hot 100. “All you grown ADULTS being mean to a beautiful 19-year-old girl who’s pursuing her dreams & has already accomplished so much in her career, more than some of y’all,” the social media star wrote at the time, sharing a video of herself hugging Murph on Instagram. “Don’t play w me or baby girl.”
Watch Bunnie and Murph discuss shrooms below.
Beéle was 12 years old when he discovered “Aye” by Nigerian-American artist Davido — a song he says immediately connected him with the Afrobeat genre.
“I felt the vibe and started writing notes and poems,” he tells Billboard. “It was my way of disconnecting from the world. I preferred doing that and practicing my guitar to going out and playing with my friends.”
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His native Barranquilla — located on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia, and which is also home to Shakira and Joe Arroyo — has also influenced the Latin Afrobeat and pop-dancehall sound he’s known for today.
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“I grew up in a family where salsa, champeta, and African music from the 80s and 90s were heavily influenced,” he explains. “I grew up surrounded by that culture and by a working-class neighborhood in Barranquilla, where I found my place over time. I understood that everything that made me proud of where I come from and the freedom to express myself perfectly reflects my personality and who I truly am.”
At 16, the artist born Brandon de Jesús López Orozco (Beéle is the pronunciation of his initials BL), released his debut single “Loco” under Hear This Music — a feel-good, suave Afrobeats groove backed by his deep, melodic vocals. Its remix, featuring Farruko, Natti Natasha, and Manuel Turizo — and released in the midst of the 2020 pandemic — earned the emerging act his first Billboard chart entry, reaching No. 18 on the Latin Digital Song Sales chart.
Since then, the Colombian artist has carved his sound path in the industry by teaming up with artists such as Feid, Rauw Alejandro, Myke Towers, Maluma and Piso 21. His 2023 collaboration with Sebastian Yatra and Manuel Turizo, “Vagabundo,” marked his first No. 1 hit on both the Latin Airplay and Latin Pop Airplay charts. This year, “Mi Refe” with Ovy on the Drums peaked at No. 8 on the Latin Rhythm Airplay chart and “La Plena (W Sound 05)” with W Sound and Ovy on the Drums gave him his first No. 1 on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100 chart.
“One day in the studio, I stopped, looked in the mirror to see who I was, and from there I said, I love this,” he expresses. “What I wanted to show the world is that beyond being an artist, I want them to feel what I feel. From then on, my career has been created by that musical and diverse explosion that defines me. All along, I’ve tried not to look like anyone else.”
Earlier this month, Beéle released his debut studio album Borondo (5020 Records), home to 26 tracks, including “Dios Me Oyó” with Marc Anthony. The set marked the artist’s debut on the Billboard album charts, bowing at No. 10 on Top Latin Albums and No. 4 on Top Latin Rhythm Albums on the lists dated May 31.
“My encounter with music has always been unexpected,” he says. “For me, music is a connection to my everyday life. I’ve had to live the way I live to be able to make the songs I’m making. I express myself. My heart speaks, my emotions speak, and they connect with the audience. I don’t just make music, I make art.”
Below, learn more about May’s Billboard Latin Artist on the Rise:
Name: Brandon de Jesús López Orozco
Age: 22
Recommended Song: “Mi Refe”
Biggest Accomplishment: “Since I started making music, I’ve achieved everything I’ve wanted, in my own way. My greatest achievement, truly, professionally speaking, has been making my first album, because I’ve always prayed for it and asked God that my music would connect with hearts the way his words connect with mine. I’ve been able to achieve something in this life that would make my children proud.”
What’s Next: “People think that after making this album, I’m going to stop for a while, but there are some really beautiful collaborations coming this summer. That way people can continue enjoying Beéle.”
The Grammy Museum announced the guest artists who will participate in this year’s Grammy Camp, which is expanding to Miami and New York, in addition to its flagship Los Angeles program.
Cimafunk, DARUMAS and GALE will be this year’s guest artists in Miami; Alexander Stewart, Aly & AJ, Daniel Seavey, D’Mile, India Shawn and Reneé Rapp will be guest artists in Los Angeles; and Braxton Cook, Chloe Flower, and Renée Elise Goldsberry will be guest artists in New York.
They will discuss their career paths and help students prepare for the music industry. The signature music industry camp for U.S. high school students will take place at the following locations:
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Art House Studios, Miami – June 8–14
Evergreen Enterprise Experience, Los Angeles – July 13–19
Engine Room Audio, New York – July 27–Aug. 2
“For more than 20 years, Grammy Camp has been a vital launching pad for high-school students chasing their dreams in music, providing a real-world glimpse into the industry and the journey that comes with it,” said Michael Sticka, president and CEO of the Grammy Museum, in a statement. “This summer, we’re thrilled to expand that mission even further, welcoming rising talent to our Grammy Camp community in Los Angeles, Miami and New York.”
Several of this year’s guest artists have won major awards. D’Mile is the only songwriter in Grammy history to win back-to-back awards for song of the year, for co-writing H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe” and Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open.” He also won an Oscar for co-writing “I Can’t Breathe” from Judas and the Black Messiah. Renée Elise Goldsberry won both a Grammy and a Tony for Hamilton. Darumas was nominated for at Latin Grammy for best new artist. Alexander Stewart was nominated for two Juno Awards this year.
The Grammy Museum also announced that 172 talented high-school students from 126 U.S. cities across 25 states have been selected as participants in this year’s program.
Now in its 21st year, Grammy Camp focuses on all aspects of commercial music and will feature various career tracks in all three locations: music business, instrumental performance, electronic music audio production, songwriting and vocal performance will be at each location. Each location will incorporate a curriculum tailored to its unique musical heritage, offering specialized tracks such as musical theater, screen scoring, music production with a DJ emphasis, and instrumental performance surrounding jazz music. Each track is taught by Grammy-winning and -nominated professionals, Recording Academy members, industry experts and notable guest artists, offering participants an exclusive glimpse into real-world music career pathways. Students are selected for one career track but have the opportunity to collaborate with all students.
Applications for Grammy Camp 2026 will be available online in September on its website.
The Clipse is back. Pusha T and No Malice officially announced the first Clipse album in more than 15 years on Thursday (May 29) with Let God Sort Em Out. The project is set to make it snow in the summertime with a July 11 release date. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See […]
Chris Stapleton‘s signature bluesy-rock guitar licks might be fiery, but his hot chicken order? Perhaps not so much. As part of a cover story for Billboard‘s Country Power Players issue, Stapleton and actor Josh Brolin spent time at the musician’s studio in Nashville, but also took time to eat at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, one […]
Country music has a long lineage of female familial acts, including The Carter Sisters, The Judds, SheDaisy, The Mandrell Sisters, The Pointer Sisters, Tigirlily Gold and Chapel Hart.
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Now, Georgia-born sister trio The Castellows is fast making its own modern mark on the genre, blending ethereal harmonies with acoustic-driven, rootsy instrumentation and lyrics informed by the siblings’ rural upbringing. The Balkcom sisters — lead singer/bassist and guitarist Lily, banjoist Powell and guitarist Ellie—will release their seven-song EP, Homecoming, Friday (May 30). The set builds upon their 2024 debut EP A Little Goes a Long Way and their three-song EP Alabama Stone, which also released that year.
The trio’s brand of folk-country comes at a time when roots-oriented sounds from artists such as Tyler Childers, Noah Kahan, Zach Bryan and Sam Barber are again in the limelight.
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“That’s just the kind of stuff we love — and if we had to do anything different, we probably wouldn’t be doing this,” Lily says.
The sisters, who were homeschooled, grew up on a cattle farm in rural Georgetown, Georgia and discovered their affinity for music early.
“Music was our extracurricular activity,” Ellie says. “I played piano first and we started picking up instruments. We were a glorified Mumford and Sons cover band. Lots of random folk songs, lots of Tyler Childers.”
They performed at churches and hometown events, but had no plans to pursue music professionally. While attending the University of Georgia, Ellie earned a degree in information management systems and Powell a degree in agriculture business.
Lily followed her dreams by earning a pilot’s license. “I had my pilot’s license when I was 17 and I was working on my instrument commercial [license] when I moved up to Nashville, but I’ve been flying since I was 16. I want my own plane one day,” she says.
They took on their great-grandmother’s maiden name as their group name, and in 2022 began posting covers of hits such as Tyler Halverson’s “Beer Garden Baby” and Childers’ “Universal Sound” on Instagram and TikTok. Labels soon came calling. They signed a deal with Warner Records and Warner Music Nashville in May 2023, then moved to Nashville in July of that year, signing with Luke Combs’ manager, Chris Kappy.
They have focused on songs that lean on imagery derived from their rural Georgia roots, such as on their debut song “No. 7 Road,” about strolling down the same dirt road their grandfather walked down, or the shimmering “Sheltered” from their new Homecoming EP.
“I feel like the way we grew up has had such an impact on our songs and what we write about,” Lily says. “We grew up homeschooled on a farm, so farm life and family are something that is so familiar to us. It’s something that we love and that we always want to write about, and it’s a lot of who we are and our identity. I love being able to tie our background in agriculture and the farm and where we come from with our music and our career.”
Along the way, they’ve also teamed with Wyatt Flores for the song “Sober Sundays,” and with Colby Acuff for “How Do I Feel Alive.” The Castellows co-wrote every song on the Homecoming EP, working with fellow writers Erik Dylan, Daniel Tashian and Casey Beathard, among others.
“We know how special this town is, with the writing community here,” Ellie says of Nashville. “It’s unlike any music town in the whole world. Just knowing the pool of talent here, we feel like we’ve become better writers by surrounding ourselves with top writers — kind of the whole iron-sharpens-iron thing. We just love the writing community here, and some of our sweetest friends are writers who we met when we first moved to town.”
Coming up, they will open for Thomas Rhett on his Better in Boots tour, in addition to spearheading their own The Homecoming Tour. “We actually have a tour bus for this upcoming Thomas Rhett tour, which is our first ever bus,” Ellie says.
The Castellows, Billboard’s May Country Rookie of the Month, open up about the Homecoming EP, recording with Flatland Cavalry and more below.
“Homecoming” is the title track. Why do you feel like that song encapsulates the feel of this EP?
Lily: We’ve been playing it live for almost two years now, so that song has really become part of our identity. To me, this project is songs about us being on tour, songs about the world and how you view the past, present and future. “Homecoming” captured it best. And it’s funny because the word “homecoming” is nowhere in the song “Homecoming.”
Why did you include your version of Patty Loveless’ “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am”?
Powell: You almost don’t even want to dare touch her work, because it’s just perfect as it is. But we were in our hometown shooting some videos in a silo, and I was like, “The acoustics here are really good. Do y’all want to try to sing a chorus of ‘You Don’t Even Know Who I Am’?” I feel like the first time we heard it in that silo, we were like, “Oh, this is meant to be sung with harmony.”
And there’s a male singing harmony under Patty in her version. It’s obviously beautiful, but I feel like with this song, it’s almost a bit more powerful when there’s three women singing it. And I feel like our generation hasn’t really heard this song, so we wanted to hopefully introduce it to younger people.
You also bring in Flatland Cavalry, whom you share a management company with, for “Place They Call Home.” What was it like working with them?
Ellie: That was one of the most special moments we’ve ever had, because [Powell] and I saw Flatland our freshman year of college, before we had ever even written our first song. We were the first ones in line, and we’ve been fans of them for so long. When we had the opportunity to write with [Flatland Cavalry frontman] Cleto Cordero — we were freaking out because we are such fans of them. We could have maybe just gotten Cleto on it, but it felt like the song had the Flatland Cavalry spirit in it, so we waited to line up everyone’s schedules so we could go to Austin and record it with all of them.
It’s been two years since you signed your label deal. What has been the best career advice you’ve gotten from other artists?
Lily: We are big fans of the Avett Brothers, and we ended up opening for them at their annual New Year’s Eve Show. When we met them, they were like, “Don’t take yourself too seriously” — which was good advice because as female artists, you can get caught up in how you look onstage and what you’re wearing. You can kind of break yourself down pretty easily, and at the end of the day, we’re playing music for a living and this is the music business. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
What is a song you wish you had written?
Lily: We have a playlist called “Songs I Wish I Had Written.” Some of the hotspots on it are “Russell County Line” by 49 Winchester, “Boulder to Birmingham” by Emmylou Harris, “Bluebird” by Miranda Lambert, “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young and Turnpike Troubadours’ “Diamonds and Gasoline.”
Who are the songwriters on your co-writing bucket list?
Ellie: We had a great write last week with a bucket-list writer. We wrote with Ashley Gorley. That was very cool. Writing with some of the legacy heroes like Robert Earl Keen or Steve Earle would be cool.
What is a book or podcast you are into right now?
Lily: I’m trying to read all of the Brontë Sisters books this year.
Powell: I’m reading the Count of Monte Cristo, but I have an Ag [agriculture] business degree, so I listen to Cattle Chat podcasts, too.
It was the Year of Hootie: With grunge tailing off, country getting huge and top 40 starting to drift to a mellower and rootsier middle, an unassuming group of good-time frat-rockers became the biggest thing in 1995 popular music. After the mid-1994 release of Cracked Rear View started to spread from the Carolinas to the rest of the country, Hootie & the Blowfish dominated 1995 from front to back, with three top 10 hits, a guest (sort-of) appearance on the year’s hottest TV show, over 10 million in sales and nearly as many annoying questions about the band’s name. But within a couple years, the band’s quick fall from pop stardom would prove just as dramatic and difficult-to-explain as its rise.
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On this week’s Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard managing editor Christine Werthman, a member of the Blowfish’s school since ’95, to talk about the band’s unquestioned peak year of pop stardom. We talk about the many cultural and musical factors that led to the Hootie takeover — and still how improbable the sheer size and scope of it ended up being — as well as why it ultimately wasn’t built to last, and whether the band deserves better than they got in terms of their legacy in both rock and pop music.
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And of course, along the way, we ask all the big questions about Hootie & the Blowfish’s year as the big men on the pop-rock campus: Why did so many critics love to hate on Hootie? Is “Hold My Hand” more anthemic or simplistic? Did the SportsCenter anchors in the “Only Wanna Be With You” video go a little too hard with the catchphrases? Was an invisible Hootie cameo worth more to a ’90s sitcom than another band actually showing up? And of course: What kind of career could Hootie & the Blowfish have had if they had just gone with a different band name a decade earlier?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from Hootie’s 1995, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org — and if you’re in the D.C. area this weekend (May 30-31), definitely check out Liberation Weekend, a music festival supporting trans rights with an incredible lineup of trans artists and allies.
