Music
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Shaboozey scores his first No. 1 in his first appearance on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” ascends to the top of the tally dated Aug. 3. It increased by 14% to 31.4 million audience impressions July 19-25, according to Luminate. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts […]
Ahead of Ice Spice’s Y2K! debut arrival, The Bronx princess joined Kai Cenat for a livestream in NYC from the back of a U-Haul truck on Thursday night (July 25). Cenat traded the penthouse for a large vehicle, but still got the job done. Ice Spice and her producer RIOTUSA joined the stream for about […]
New York City in 1978 was a very different place. The city had nearly gone bankrupt only three years earlier and it still felt uncertain, edgy and threatening. But it was exploding with musical creativity, from the Bowery to the Bronx.
For an ambitious young musician, Bronx-born and raised on Long Island, coming off the most successful album of his career, it was time to come in from the suburbs and claim the city as his own.
On Dec. 14, 1978, Billy Joel made his debut at Madison Square Garden.
Flash forward almost exactly 35 years to December 2013. That was when Joel, along with his longtime agent Dennis Arfa and Garden officials, came up with the audacious plan for the singer to perform a monthly residency at the arena — which would continue, he said then, “for as long as there’s demand.”
Onstage at the Garden on Thursday (July 25), Joel, 75, declared “It’s time.” In a joyous, raucous, moving night of music and memories, Billy Joel played his 150th show at Madison Square Garden and the finale of his unprecedented decade-long residency. He recalled the many milestones of his live career — one of the first acts to play Yankee Stadium and the “last play” at Shea Stadium; performing in Berlin before the Wall fell down, in the Soviet Union, in Havana, Cuba and at the Colosseum in Rome.
“But out of all of them,” said Joel, “this is the best!”
To be sure, the demand to see Joel at the Garden has never slackened; on Thursday the place was packed to the rafters — where, of course banners hang proclaiming Joel’s MSG records: most consecutive performances by any artist and most lifetime performances by any artist. Jimmy Fallon joined Joel to raise the new “150 Performances” banner Thursday night. (Axl Rose was Joel’s second guest, later in the evening).
Over the past decade, the Garden reports, Joel has sold more than 1.9 million tickets to these shows to fans from all 50 states and more than 120 countries. But make no mistake; this was a hometown crowd, cheering the local references in Joel’s powerhouse, customary show opener “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway).”
Here are 10 of the greatest moments from the finale of Joel’s MSG residency
Today I Am Your Champion — Still
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. sent a letter via email on Friday (July 26) to the Academy’s 12,000 voting members urging them to take their job as voting members seriously. The Subject Line: “Vote with Purpose This Grammy Season.”
“The trajectory of people’s careers and lives are altered by your choices,” Mason wrote in the letter obtained by Billboard. “As such, you owe it to your peers to vote intentionally, deliberately, with pride and with purpose.”
Mason added a personal aside to bring the point home. “Last Grammy season, I heard a Grammy voter say they hadn’t taken a specific artist seriously since a performance they saw more than 10 years ago. I was shocked and disturbed by that. There is no place in our organization for such bias, grudge-holding, or careless voting. It’s about the current year and the quality of the work, period!
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“There should be no other rationale for voting. If you are taking into account an artist’s older work, or their reputation, or race, or gender, what label they are on, who their manager is, how many friends participated in the project, or anything else like that, you’re not doing your job.”
Mason also implored Grammy voting members to start thinking about their choices now. “I hope that you begin prioritizing your responsibility now, and not wait until Grammy season is here.” The first-round voting period runs from Oct. 4-15. Final-round voting extends from Dec. 12 to Jan. 3, 2025.
Mason is wise to advise members to start thinking about their picks now. The Grammy entry list is long. This year, there will be 94 categories (same as last year). Many categories have large numbers of entries. On last year’s entry list, there were 615 candidates for record of the year, 476 for album of the year, 642 for song of the year and 405 for best new artist. To conscientiously wade through such long lists and thoughtfully make your selections would take hours. That is one reason that “brand name” artists – long-time Grammy favorites – often lead the nominations year after year. Mason is trying to get members to break that habit of just checking off names of artists who are top-of-mind.
On the line “The trajectory of people’s careers and lives are altered by your choices,” Mason linked to this Grammy.com post from May 1, which includes a section titled “What Is the True Value of a Grammy?” It gives more than a dozen examples of artists whose careers were boosted by Grammy wins.
The Academy’s tally of 12,000+ voting members doesn’t include the 3,000+ potential new voting members that it has invited as part of this year’s new member class. (It has also invited 900 professional (non-voting) members, for a total of 3,900+ new members.)
Here is Mason’s letter to voting members, in full:
Dear Grammy voters,
Normally you don’t hear from me about Grammy voting until our ballot is live but this year is different. I want to make sure you understand how critically important it is for you to vote, and to vote with intention and integrity.
We all know the Grammy is music’s most coveted award because it is an honor that comes from one’s peers. It’s not a popularity contest. The nominees and winners are not chosen by the critics, fans, or the staff of the Academy. They are chosen by you—the 12,000+ music creators who are the voting members of the Recording Academy.
You are the Grammy electorate. Your votes are tallied by Deloitte, and then announced publicly, celebrated, and recorded by history as the very best in music for that year. The trajectory of people’s careers and lives are altered by your choices. As such, you owe it to your peers to vote intentionally, deliberately, with pride and with purpose.
Last Grammy season, I heard a Grammy voter say they hadn’t taken a specific artist seriously since a performance they saw more than 10 years ago. I was shocked and disturbed by that. There is no place in our organization for such bias, grudge-holding, or careless voting. It’s about the current year and the quality of the work, period!
There should be no other rationale for voting. If you are taking into account an artist’s older work, or their reputation, or race, or gender, what label they are on, who their manager is, how many friends participated in the project, or anything else like that, you’re not doing your job. I know most of you already do but please, just listen to the music, and evaluate it! You are the reason the Grammy Award is so special.
Music is a force for good in the world. It changes moods, opens hearts and minds and unites the world. It moves us to act. And the Grammy is the way to honor the people who work so hard to make it. Next February, all across the globe, the people who make music and all the people who love music will be watching to see who the Grammy voters have chosen to honor. All eyes will be on you, on us.
I hope you view your vote as important. I hope that you begin prioritizing your responsibility now, and not wait until Grammy season is here. I hope that you evaluate the music carefully, and prepare yourself to vote with care and purpose, and that you encourage your fellow voting members to do the same. Your peers in music are counting on you.
Respectfully yours,
Harvey
The Foo Fighters came to play on a picture-perfect Thursday night (July 25) in Cincinnati on the latest date of their Everything or Nothing At All summer stadium tour. After rocking warm-ups from Wolfgang Van Halen’s WVH and Akron, OH-native Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders, the veteran band charged onto the stage at Great American Ball Park and got right to work with the one-two punch of “All My Life” and “No Son of Mine,” with the latter meandering through digressions into Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
The hit-packed set touched on all the classics that fans — lead singer/guitarist Dave Grohl kept shouting out the group’s “OG” day ones throughout the night — were there for, including “The Pretender,” “Breakout,” and “My Hero,” in addition to an extended band introduction bit that included various members flashing their style on covers of songs by the Beastie Boys, Ramones and Nine Inch Nails.
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But the moment that likely swelled the hearts of the crossover areas in the rock and roll/baseball Venn diagram was when lead guitarist Chris Shiflett came out for the encore wearing a red “Cincinnati Invented Hustle” t-shirt that he’d picked up that day to show his support for the city’s disgraced hit king.
The choice was even more apt considering that HBO dropped its new four-part documentary series about baseball’s all-time hits leader this week, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, which touches on Rose’s illustrious career, as well as the betting scandal that resulted in the former Cincinnati Reds player and manager’s lifetime ban from the game and the Baseball Hall of Fame; Rose’s nickname as a player was Charlie Hustle in reference to his tenacious style of play.
Shiflett made sure the fans who filled the Reds’ home stadium got a glimpse at his homage to their beloved, tarnished local legend, swinging his guitar to the side a few times during the emotional, roiling encore tribute to Grohl’s late educator mother, Virginia, “The Teacher” to make sure they got the wink-wink reference; check out fan footage of the song, and the shirt, here. The show also featured the band’s nightly tribute to late drummer Taylor Hawkins, “Aurora,” with Grohl noting that it was Taylor’s favorite Foo Fighters song.
The Rose shout-out was just one of a handful of nods to the band’s ties to the Buckeye state during the raucous show that ran for nearly three hours and found the band veering from near speed metal tempos to a touching solo acoustic segment in which Grohl strummed an acoustic guitar for a hushed “Under You.” Earlier in the show, Grohl noted that he’d grown up in Warren, OH before moving to Virginia, and also referenced the fact that bassist Nate Mendel’s wife is from the Queen City. “He married a Cincinnati girl,” Grohl said. “Fellas, if you want to find a good girl, you come to Cincinnati.”
Kesha definitely isn’t a fan of Sen. JD Vance, much less his recently resurfaced comments about the country being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
On her way inside LAX Thursday (July 25), a photographer asked the 37-year-old pop star for her thoughts on former president Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate — and she didn’t mince words. “Booooo! F–k that man,” she said, according to the video obtained by TMZ. “That’s all I have to say. F–k them all.”
Vance has been under fire this week thanks to an interview he gave Tucker Carlson in 2021, during which he said the U.S. is being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
“It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” the Ohio politician added at the time. “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
As for whether the Democratic party is actually full of child-free cat parents, Kesha quipped, “It is, b—h! And this is what it looks like, honey.”
The “Joyride” artist also agreed that Vance’s assessment is sexist before endorsing Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign on her way into the airport. “Absolutely!” she said when asked whether she was supporting the sitting VP. “We ride.”
Kesha isn’t the only public figure who’s spoken out against the senator’s comments, which have been thrust back into public discourse after Trump appointed Vance his VP pick earlier this month. Jennifer Aniston recently criticized the rhetoric on Instagram Stories, writing, “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day … I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Pete Buttigieg, one of the Democrats Vance name-checked in his comments on Carlson’s show, fired back on CNN this week. “The really sad thing is he said that after [my husband] Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” said the secretary of transportation, who is now Dad to two adopted kids. “He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”
Vance, however, doubled down on his point in an interview with Megyn Kelly Friday (July 26). “The simple point that I made is that having children … I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” he said. “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. This is about criticizing the Democratic party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll get some serious help from their significant others in the emotional video for their new team-up, “Lonely Road.” In the Sam Cahill-directed clip for the song that pays homage to John Denver’s iconic 1971 hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” KellyRoll — as they’ve dubbed themselves — are joined by MGK’s girlfriend, actress Megan Fox, and Jelly’s wife, Bunnie Xo, who both have prominent roles in the tear-in-your-beer storyline.
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KellyRoll play a pair of old pals struggling to provide for their families in the visual that opens with the duo clad in all black at a funeral before jumping to footage of the pair grinding away at an auto shop in matching tan jumpsuits. “I probably could’ve saved us/ But instead I let us crash/ Cuz I don’t trust no one to love me back,” MGK sings while strumming an acoustic guitar. “But she say I do/ And this is not the place for you.”
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As the past due notices continue to pile up, we see MGK kiss one-time fiancé Fox’s swelling belly and Jelly Roll standing in a field singing about using alcohol on the road to fill the hole of loneliness he feels when he’s thousands of miles from his love. “Will our home ever be the same/ I hear the devil wears Prada, but I couldn’t read the tags/ And your horns started showing when I see you mad,” he sings as he and Bunnie console each other after receiving a letter confirming an infertility diagnosis.
The storylines are particularly poignant and personal for both men, as Jelly revealed last month that Bunnie, 44, is undergoing IVF as they try to conceive their first child together and in November, mother of three Fox opened up about the “very difficult” miscarriage she suffered with MGK.
After the two couples share a quiet home meal together, MGK tries to rope Jelly into a scheme to make some quick money, a road the “Save Me” country star says he can’t go down anymore. Following one more shot of MGK kissing Fox’s stomach, the rapper-turned-rocker-turned-country crooner hops on his motorcycle and pulls off a bank heist that ends with his arrest as he’s kissing his love and their unborn child goodbye one last time.
Cut to eight month later and Jelly, Bunnie and Fox are all cooing over the baby, who MGK kisses through the glass in the prison visiting room.
The long and winding road to “Lonely Road” has taken more than two years, with MGK recently saying that the duo have been working on the track over “2 years, 8 different studios, 4 different countries, [and] changed the key 4 times.”
Watch the “Lonely Road” video below.
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Exactly one new sport will make its debut at the Paris Olympics: breaking, an evolution of the phenomenon of B-Boys whirling and spinning in the Bronx during the early days of hip-hop breakdancing in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s a complicated, difficult sport, and star athletes such as Canada’s Phil Wizard train to move just about every part of their bodies, improvising instantly to tracks and beats they have no idea are coming. “We were more culture, now we’re sports,” says Victor Montalvo, 30, one of the U.S. breaking team’s four members, by phone from Philadelphia, a few days before departing for Paris. “Breaking has evolved. It’s way different now.”
The breaking events, which kick off Aug. 9, involve one-on-one battles during which hip-hop DJs provide the beats and competitors take 60-second turns known as “throw downs.” They choose from three broad categories of moves: “top rock,” or standing dances; “freeze,” a halted position on heads or hands; and “down rock,” or flashy, acrobatic spins. In a competition last year, Jeffrey “B-Boy Jeffro” Louis, 29, now on the U.S. team, repeatedly twirled his body while upside-down, feet in the air – balancing himself alternately on his head, upper back and a single forearm.
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“His style is super-musical. He goes off feeling. He has a lot of character, showmanship, stage presence,” Montalvo says of his teammate. “He just brings it all to life.”
Breaking, the sport, took off in the early 2000s when Red Bull sponsored events such as Lords of the Floor, treating the competition not like an old-school throwback but a series of hyped-up wrestling or boxing matches. Back then, Montalvo was learning his moves on his driveway with a cousin, and Louis’ older brother, Kenny, was teaching him and another brother, Pierry, how to do it. Today, they’re two of the 16 B-Boys and 16 B-Girls who will battle for Olympic gold. They spoke with Billboard in separate interviews a week before today’s opening ceremony.
Jeffrey “B-Boy Jeffro” Louis
How familiar are you with the competition? Are you scouting?
We’ve been competing against these guys from the beginning of 2022, so we’re pretty much familiar with everybody. We know what everybody’s going to throw out and what they’re going to do. But everybody has a strategy, and we’re trying to strategize based on their strategy. It’s like a game of chess. At the end of the day, I know my moves. The judges might see my moves falling in a different category than what I believe my moves fall in — so you’re trying to understand the judging system, but you’re also trying to understand where you fall in that judging system, and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses within that judging system. It’s maintenance work right now.
What do you mean by maintenance?
Strength and conditioning. Doing physical therapy on my groin, because I had an injury a couple years ago, so I’m just trying to make sure I don’t strain it or injure myself. A lot of breakers are getting hurt because they’re overtraining and pushing themselves. It’s just getting into that mindset of don’t overdo it.
How does physical preparation for breaking compare to a traditional sport?
Everybody has their own style, so you want to train the way your dancing is performed. Some people live on their hands. They can walk, flip, spin — and stay on their hands the whole time. I’m more of a grounded person, so my training’s going to be different. I train through my fitness program, FitBreak, where I take breaking moves and combine it with traditional exercises.
How much do you study old-school hip-hop breakdancing?
I have to study everybody. If you’re involved in breaking, you have to go back. You have to know the history. There are a lot of moves back then that are not used right now. People might see it as “they’re basic,” but when you haven’t seen something in forever, and something reappears, people say, “That’s a classic move.”
Will your brothers be in Paris?
They’re part of my crew. Both aren’t able to make it, but one of them is — Sweet P. That’s [Pierry’s] breaker name. He was with me at the last qualifier in Budapest. He was there when I qualified to make the Olympics, and just having him there was such a boost. My personality shined more, my character shined, my mindset, feeling like I didn’t have to prove myself.
Any opponents you’re especially focused on?
Everybody’s high level. One person I would love to met in the competition would be Phil Wizard. Everybody’s saying this is the guy to beat. And my friend, Dany Dann, he’s from France, we just have one of the most natural connections whenever we battle.
What is your battle plan?
When I try to think of moves, it hinders my style. Going back to the beginning of how I started dancing — why I fell in love with breaking — it’s that freedom of movement. My goal in Paris is to get into that traditional Jeffro style of just moving and listening and connecting. When I’m that free, I’m unstoppable.
It’s like you’re describing a jazz musician improvising.
Yeah. You have to be able to connect with your whole surrounding, whether it’s the floor, the music, the DJs on set, the crowd. Because if you’re not, you can tell, there’s some unbalanced factor in your dancing. You have to have a conversation with your opponent through moves, and if you’re not doing that, then you’re just showcasing.
Victor Montalvo
How are you training for the Olympics?
For now, I’m simulating the battles. I’m doing a lot of breaking interval training, which requires 30-to-40-second rounds and 30-second rest.
Which competitors are you thinking about as you’re prepping?
There’s been a couple athletes that are in the same bracket as me, so I have to watch out for them. I’m just worrying about myself for now — bettering my style and moves and concepts.
How surprised have you been that breaking turned into an Olympic sport?
I feel like the whole community was shocked. We did not expect it. This was out of our heads. It was really cool, like, “This is a new goal we can achieve.” We’re stepping into the sports world. We’ve never had that opportunity to show the dance, and now we do. It’s really cool to see the positive reactions and the support we’re getting. There are a lot of people supporting me who haven’t seen breaking — or haven’t seen it since the ’80s.
Which members of your family are coming to Paris to watch you compete?
I have my cousin. He was the one who taught me breaking — my first ever power move, which was the windmill. From there, it never stopped. He’s coming to the event. He’s not going to be in Paris the entire time. He’s going to be there for my event, then heading back to the U.S.
Where do you get inspiration for your moves?
You see someone you look up to and you create your own path. It’s all about taking, but recreating. Most of the moves we’re doing are from tribal dances, martial arts. It’s a melting pot of inspirations.
What do you want viewers to know about this new Olympic sport?
We can’t repeat in our competition. Let’s say in figure skating, you have a full routine that you have to practice, and it’s like two minutes. In breaking, we have 15 full routines, 15 signatures that we rehearse, and we can’t repeat them. So once you do that one signature, you can’t repeat it the entire event. Because you get points taken off, you’ve always got to come up with new things each round. It’s all based off of improvising and adapting in the moment. You never know what’s going to happen.
How challenging is it to train for this type of improvisation?
Even with your moves rehearsed, you’ve got to have your moves in your head. You might forget [during] the third round, so you’ve got to adapt. It’s all like a mind game.
That sounds tough.
It’s just competing. I’ve been doing it for so many years — I’ve been competing internationally for 12 years, but in total, I’ve been competing for 18 years — and you just start understanding the formula and start having this muscle memory from all the dancing you’re doing. It comes alive without even thinking. It comes out of nowhere, like your body knows what to do.
Just like Britney Spears did in 2000, Halsey is pulling back the curtain on the dark side of fame with her new single “Lucky.”
The track — which samples the iconic pop star’s turn-of-the-millennium hit of the same name — dropped at midnight Friday (July 26), while theY2K-inspired music video directed by Gia Coppola arrived hours later. In the visual, the 29-year-old singer channels a Spears-like teen idol who, on one side of the coin, is revered by a little girl with posters of Halsey covering her bedroom walls.
On the other side, the “Without Me” singer’s character faces troubles in her relationship while receiving treatment for an illness, much like the real-life Halsey. In June, the musician revealed she’d been diagnosed with Lupus and a rare T-cell disorder two years prior. Last year, she split from partner Alev Aydin, with whom she shares 3-year-old son Ender.
“I shaved my head four times because I wanted to/ And then I did it one more time ’cause I got sick,” she sings on the track, which also interpolates Monica’s 1998 Billboard Hot 100-topper “Angel of Mine.” “I left the doctor’s office full of tears/ Became a single mom at my premiere/ And I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year/ And that’s the biggest lie of my career.”
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The video also finds Halsey modeling a crystal bodysuit to parallel Spears’ “Toxic” visual and smiling for paparazzi on a red carpet. She later removes the bright pink wig she’d been wearing throughout the visual to reveal a shaved head before sitting down to receive treatment through an IV. At the end, she symbolically sits next to the little girl who worships her, unaware of the full story, on a swing set.
“it was really challenging to incorporate so many conflicting emotions in just a few minutes,” Halsey wrote of the video on Instagram after it went live. “this campaign has been fun because I WANT to have fun, but I made lot of this art when I was suffering.”
Of her decision to pay tribute to Spears — who personally approved the “Lucky” sample, Halsey previously revealed — the “Closer” artist tweeted, “I remember the first time I heard her sing lucky and it hitting me at such a young age that I had no idea what her life was really like.”
“that feeling resonates with me so much still,” she added. “I found myself singing it when I started treatment and then I knew I had to do it 💕”
Watch Halsey’s raw “Lucky” music video above.
This week in dance music: Legendary dance vocalist Evelyn Thomas died at age 70; we trekked to Belgium for Tomorrowland and recapped its best moment and ten most played tracks; Anyma reported selling an incredible 100,000 tickets in less than 24 hours for his six sold out shows in Sphere in Las Vegas this December and Meduza shared the secrets of “Italian touch” for the latest cover of Billboard Italy.
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And we’ve got the goods, too. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Gordo, Diamante
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Think of Diamante, the debut album from Gordo, as the companion piece to Drake’s Honestly Nevermind, with Gordo producing that 2022 album and Drake featuring on two tracks on this new project by his longtime friend. The connective tissue extends well beyond credits, as Diamante picks up and in many ways extends Honestly Nevermind‘s underground house terrain, with its 16 tracks embodying simmering, sophisticated and in many cases sensual dancefloor music that folds in elements of reggaeton, pop, indie, jazz and hip-hop, altogether sounding like any given afterhours in Miami, Tulum, Berlin or Ibiza. The album features not just the two Drake collabs, but a crew of other guests including Fuerza Regida, T-Pain, Maluma, Nicki Nicole, Feid, Leon Bridges, &ME and Rampa of Keinemusik and Young Dolph.
Gordo is of course the producer formerly known as Carnage, with the Nicaraguan-American artist born Diamanté Blackmon abandoning the Carnage project in 2022, telling us that it was making him “miserable.” With Diamante, out via Ultra Records, he’s clearly found and gotten comfortable in a new, more mature groove. Blackmon spent four years making the project, and dedicates it to his grandmother and his other nearest and dearest.
“I called in every favor I could for this body of work….,” he writes. “It’s really really beautiful….I have never been so nervous in my life… I guess that’s a good sign??? To be honest with you all… I thought about calling it quits after I dropped this album…i felt a bit lost when I finished it because i couldn’t fathom something better than this… everything I’ve dreamed of is right here in this project… all of my dreams collab came true…so many talented people helped with this project… I’m so grateful… this isn’t a gordo album… it’s a diamante album… from carnage to gordo… it’s been a wild ride… i hope I make you guys proud.” — KATIE BAIN
Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding, “Free”
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After nabbing a No. 1 hit in the U.K. last year with “Miracle,” Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding return with what could be its successful sequel, “Free.” The Scottish producer has been rinsing the new track in his recent DJ sets, including one earlier this week at Ibiza mega-club Ushuaïa, where Goulding popped in for a live performance. Like its predecessor, “Free” is high in energy and steeped in ‘90s-era sounds, but it leaves the trance route in favor of euphoric piano house with cascading breaks and waves of warm, glowing synths. Goulding’s vocals float above, her gossamer timbre naturally capturing the song’s vulnerable but hopeful lyrics: “Eyes closed, holding on/ Alone no more/ I’m free when I’m with you.” —KRYSTAL RODRIGUEZ
Sophie, “Berlin Nightmare”
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Ahead of Sophie’s final album release, two new tracks from the late Scottish producer have emerged: “One More Time” featuring Popstar and “Berlin Nightmare” featuring Evita Manji. “Berlin Nightmare” is delightfully dark and grimy, with multiple synth lines squelching and skipping across unrelenting percussion, culminating in a last-second speedup that yanks you out of their trance. It evokes images of hazy warehouse parties, where in the dim-lit space the dancefloor looks like a single mass of writhing limbs, and dried puddles of spilled drinks occasionally glue your shoes to the concrete. The two tracks follow lead single “Reason Why,” released last month. Sophie is due out on September 27. — K.R.
Hayla, “Freefall”
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As one of current electronic music’s most in-demand vocalists, Hayla has been omnipresent on the dance floor and on the charts, logging recent collaborations with Kx5, John Summit and Kygo. High-profile as they may be, the British singer/songwriter is fierce all on her own as shown on her latest solo single “Freefall.” It’s an atmospheric yet hard-hitting affair, with rumbling and swirling synths echoing the duality of Hayla’s love conundrum, and her drawn-out chorus pulls you into a state of weightlessness.
“I wrote this song in L.A. about a year and a half ago with Carl Ryden,” says Hayla. “The track was one that I always loved and when we were thinking about what to put on the album this track really stuck out as a stand alone single release. This song’s story happens after the love has gone – when the realization hits that no matter how hard you try to make something work you can’t. The chorus however asks the question of gravitational pull … maybe in another time it would bring you back together.” “Freefall” is Hayla’s final single release ahead of her debut album, which is slated for a November release. — K.R.
Mochakk feat. VTSS “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099”
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Brazilian phenom Mochakk (of “Jealous” fame) further proves he’s got the goods to stay in it for the long haul with his latest, “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099.” The title track from of the producer’s new three-song EP, the nearly seven-minute clubland opus takes its time warming up, then shifts into high gear with the sound of an actual locomotive and a cascade of acid-soaked synths that capture the heady, warm, happily weird vibes of going for it in the club at 5 a.m. on the song’s namesake island.
A collaboration with producer/vocalist Vtss (whose Boys Noize collab “Steady Pace” was a 2023 favorite), “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099” is out via Circo Loco Records and comes from the first installment of a two part EP, with the second installment coming in September. Both are out via CircoLoco Records, the label birthed from Ibiza’s DC10 where Mochakk is a current resident. He’ll play his own Mochakk Calling event in São Paulo this Saturday, July 27, along with upcoming festivals including Lollapalooza, Osheaga and Hard Summer. — K.B.
Boys Noize, “Fvkvrvnd”
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Ahead of Hard Summer next weekend, the festival’s namesake label is setting the tone for the event with this, the latest from German fav Boys Noize. Clocking in at a throttling, threatening 148 BPM, the track is all kickdrum and relentless buzzaw bassline, adding up to a happily hectic, cathartically tough song that sounds like it’s got your head in a vice in the best kind of way. Naturally, Boys Noize plays Hard Summer on the first day of the August 3-4 festival in Los Angeles. — K.B.
David Guetta & Oliver Heldens feat. Fast Boy, “Chills (Feel My Love)”
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This past week has yielded something of a stylistic whiplash for Oliver Heldens. Last Friday, the Dutch producer released the dark and absolutely drilling single “Baddadan Bad” under his Hi-Lo alias, and today he teams up with David Guetta and Fast Boy on “Chills (Feel My Love),” an uplifting summer anthem that invites hands-in-the-air festival moments. The powerful combination of skyward builds, stadium-sized synths and Fast Boy’s impassioned vocals must sound like how it feels when you experience a love so strong that your heart threatens to burst out of your chest.
“Earlier last year, I was looking for some uplifting vocals, and Fast Boy sent me a few vocal demos,” Heldens says. “One of them, ‘Chills,’ really stood out to me, and I was immediately drawn to its emotional and melancholic vibes, so I started working on it. In the summer of 2023, I tested an early demo at some of my shows but felt it wasn’t totally right, so I went into the studio and kept re-working, and during a session in Amsterdam during ADE where I actually met Fast Boy for the first time, we got it to a place where it sounded so big and fresh! The new version reminded us a lot of some of David Guetta’s older hits, like ‘When Love Takes Over,’ so we had to send it to him. He loved it and put his touch on it, and we all finished it up together!” — K.R.