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Want to ruin a friendship? Just tell your bestie that you don’t like the person they’re dating.
Most people learn that lesson the hard way somewhere in their teens or 20s. And Broken Bow artist Lanie Gardner, by writing “Buzzkill” about a guy’s difficult girlfriend, has discovered that saying it in a song can create the same negative outcome.
“I guess he still had some sort of feelings for this girl, so before it ever came out, it ended a friendship with him,” Gardner recalls.
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Oddly enough, the guy misread the song’s story. “Once he left that girl, the new girl – he thought it was about her,” Gardner continues. “When he left that [new] girl, it kind of revived a friendship. But it was just funny how that song has caused some ripples in real life.”
“Buzzkill” is the product of a writing session on Jan. 30, 2024, at the East Nashville home of writer-producers Katie Cecil and Chris Ganoudis. It was only the second time they’d collaborated; their first co-write had produced an emotionally dramatic piece, and they wanted to explore something different in their follow-up session. As they settled in with conversation, Gardner confessed her annoyance about a woman whose attachment to another friend had become an intrusion on her crew.
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“Literally, we would all be having fun, you know, out and drinking, and she would come around and she would start fights and mess with him the whole day,” Gardner says. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, what a buzzkill.’”
Gardner hadn’t intended to build a song around the situation, but when she introduced that “buzzkill” phrase into the conversation, it made an immediate impression. “I was like, ‘Let me write that down,’” Cecil says. “You know, sometimes you kind of catch the title in the middle of someone’s venting session.”
The scenario had comedic possibilities, so Ganoudis developed a fast-paced mix of acoustic guitar rhythms and programmed 808 bass drum. It felt a little like rockabilly and a lot like the energy of KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” and the track set an atmosphere that encouraged cheeky observation. The woman is portrayed derisively in the song’s opening salvos as a “Barbie doll, show stopper, beauty queen” and a condescending “Miss Hollywood takin’ over Tennessee.” Cecil and Ganoudis relocated from California about four years ago, and exaggerating about the women in the story came naturally.
“For lyrical purposes, you kind of have to make things the most dramatic version of themselves, to make it fun to sing and to drive the point home,” Cecil says. “So we were comparing this girl to the most insufferable L.A.-type girl you might come across who’s moved to Nashville but clearly just doesn’t fit in.”
Unlike Gardner and the “Buzzkill” woman, Gardner and Cecil worked well together, hunkering down on the song’s spirited lyrics. Ganoudis pulled on headphones and focused on the track separately, building the verses in a minor key and the chorus in a parallel major.
“You can’t sing the verse melodies over the chorus, or chorus melodies over the verse,” Ganoudis says.That brighter-sounding chorus allowed for more acerbic talk, and the protagonist insists on giving her friend an honest assessment of his girl: “They ain’t gonna say it but you bet your ass I will/ Yeah, buddy, she’s a buzzkill.”
“It’s not good to hate on people,” Gardner observes, “but it’s sometimes good to maybe call certain actions out.”
When they finished writing “Buzzkill,” Ganoudis supplied a track with plenty of energy, created by a spare number of instruments. But those sounds were routinely fattened, making the day’s production sound larger. “I’m really kind of minimalist in in my approach a lot of the times,” Ganoudis notes. “It’s just maximizing each one of those parts, so having less parts that do more, so that the bass is saturated in a way to make it take up the room that I want it to take up.”
Gardner laid down a vocal for it, caught up in the story’s surly sarcasm. “We did go back in and tighten some things up, but we were just such in a zone with ‘Buzzkill’ the day we wrote it, we didn’t have to recut the vocals again,” Gardner says.
Ganoudis took his time finishing the demo, turning it on Feb. 12 once he felt it was good enough to compete with anything else Gardner might be considering.
“When the labels are hearing it and the management’s hearing it, that’s a reflection of what we do,” Cecil explains. “That’s always good to get it sounding where we feel super confident that it will be a contender for a release.”
Ganoudis filled “Buzzkill” out further, playing nearly all the instruments on his own, while creating a framework with some intentional, built-in contrast.
“It’s kind of like a middle-up, middle-down approach,” he says. “The middle-down frequency spectrum of the track is pretty pop, you know. It’s got 808, it’s got a sample kick [drum] – like, there’s no live drummer on this thing. But then the top up is pretty honky tonk. That’s all live, you know. There’s no programming on the top up, with the guitars, and there’s some steel and all that.”
Ganoudis hired guitarist Gideon Boley to rip a fierce solo in the middle of the production, and Gardner returned to stack some tight harmonies on top of her original vocal. She threw in a bundle of ad-libs, too, including an off-the-cuff “one more for the people in the back” that adds to the glibness of the performance.
“That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of the song,” Cecil says. “I was like, ‘We gotta put that in there.’”SiriusXM picked it up, German choreographer Sascha Wolf developed a linedance for it, and Jonathan Craig produced a pool-hall video, released Feb. 3, that plays up the out-of-place snobbery of the buzzkill girlfriend. And just in case country broadcasters decide “Buzzkill” can aid their undying desire for more uptempo singles, Ganoudis fashioned a radio edit that replaces the “ass” reference in the chorus with a sneaky “whoop!”
Meanwhile, the friendship that “Buzzkill” killed appears to have survived, in part because the friend’s second relationship did not.
“All of a sudden,” Gardner says with a laugh, “we’re friends again.”
2 Chainz was one of the Atlanta artists Kendrick Lamar named in the third verse of “Not Like Us” who had worked with Drake in the past before proceeding to call him “not a colleague” but a “colonizer.” And now, the “Watch Out” rapper is sharing his thoughts on the mention.
Chainz stopped by The Breakfast Club on Wednesday (Feb. 12) with Larry June and The Alchemist in support of their Life Is Beautiful album, and Charlamagne Tha God asked the rapper formerly known as Tity Boi about Lamar name-dropping him on the Drake diss that arrived last May.
“I just think it was kind of like some wordplay, ’cause Drake and I got a song called ‘No Lie,’” said the rapper, who has teamed up with Drizzy in the past for other tracks, including “All Me,” “Big Amount,” “F–kin’ Problems” and more. “And so when he said he lied, it just felt like, I don’t know, but I didn’t take it as no kind of way. I don’t think he was taking a shot at me.”
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He continued: “I’ve heard all type of instances where somebody want me to say something back. I just think it was a moment where it was about Atlanta artists.”
On the Grammy-winning track, which went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 and break the record for most weeks atop the Hot Rap Songs chart, Lamar rhymes: “2 Chainz say you good, but he lied/ You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars/ No, you not a colleague, you a f—in’ colonizer.”
June, meanwhile, said he hasn’t heard “Not Like Us” in its entirety. “I never heard that full song,” he said. “I f–k with everybody. I just didn’t particularly hear that song fully. I heard a lot of it on Instagram and stuff like that. But I was doing the album with him at the time, so I wasn’t really listening to too much s–t like that.”
The Alchemist, who produced “Meet the Grahams,” expanded on how the diabolical Drake diss came to be, noting it was actually built around a gospel sample. “Yeah, that’s a gospel record. Yeah, the sample was,” he said. “I wanna be Switzerland really. Leave me out of it, but they end up making me the battleground … I had sent the record to Dot months before that happened and I heard it when everyone else heard it.”
Watch 2 Chainz, Larry June and The Alchemist talk about “Not Like Us” on The Breakfast Club below:
The producers of the 2025 NAACP Image Awards seem to understand that we could all use a laugh these days. Two days after announcing that comedian Dave Chappelle will receive the President’s Award during the awards show on Saturday, Feb. 22, they are coming back with the news that The Wayans family will be inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame.
Wayans family members include Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Damon Wayans Sr., Kim Wayans, Damon Wayans Jr., Damien Dante Wayans and Chaunté Wayans. Works created by Wayans family members include the Scary Movie film series, The Wayans Bros., In Living Color, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, White Chicks, My Wife and Kids, and Little Man.
The Hall of Fame Award is presented to individuals or groups who have been pioneers in their respective fields, and whose influence continues to shape their industry. The Wayans Family are the fifth recipients primarily known for comedy, following Richard Pryor (1996), Bill Cosby (2007), Eddie Murphy (2021) and Good Times star Esther Rolle (1987).
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The 56th NAACP Image Awards are set to air live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS. This year, the broadcast will be extended 30 minutes to 2.5 hours.
“For decades, the Wayans family has been at the forefront of comedy, breaking barriers and opening doors for waves of entertainers,” Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and CEO, said in a statement. “Their trailblazing work in television, film and stand-up has transcended pop culture and cemented their legacy. Recognizing their achievements with this induction is a celebration of a multi-generational legacy that continues to advance and uplift communities.”
“The Wayans family revolutionized comedy by blending cultural commentary and fearless humor,” added Connie Orlando, EVP of specials, music programming and music strategy at BET. “From In Living Color to blockbuster films, their influence spans generations, breaking barriers for Black entertainers and redefining mainstream comedy. Their ability to push boundaries while resonating with diverse audiences has left an undeniable mark on the industry.”
Keenen Ivory Wayans created the groundbreaking sketch comedy series In Living Color. That Fox series launched the careers of such Hollywood heavyweights as Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Lopez, while setting new standards for diverse storytelling. Wayans won a Primetime Emmy in 1990 as an executive producer of that series, which was voted outstanding variety music or comedy series. Wayans received six nominations for his work on that show. His brother Damon Wayans received four.
By visiting the NAACP Image Awards’ website, the public can vote to determine the winners in select categories. NAACP will recognize winners in non-televised categories virtually on Tuesday, Feb. 18, and Wednesday, Feb. 19, on its YouTube channel and at the 56th NAACP Image Awards Creative Honors Friday, Feb. 21.
Cynthia Erivo, Keke Palmer, Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Hart and Shannon Sharpe are competing for entertainer of the year. GloRilla received the most nominations in the music/recording categories, with six, followed by Doechii, Lamar and Usher, with four nods each. RCA Records received 11 nominations, the most among record labels.
Fetty Wap is back at No. 1 on a Billboard chart as “Again” jumps 8-1 to rule the TikTok Billboard Top 50 tally dated Feb. 15.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity accumulated Feb. 3-9. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
“Again” reigns a week after its debut, coinciding with its return to the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 41; the track had previously debuted at No. 33 on the Aug. 29, 2015-dated chart, a rank that currently stands as its peak.
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Its rise is thanks to a TikTok trend; more of a meme of sorts, the song is used in a variety of clips whose audio is altered as though one is listening to “Again” through JBL speakers 10 years ago.
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“Again” earned 12.2 million official U.S. streams in the week ending Feb. 6, good for a 154% gain and a re-entry on the Streaming Songs chart at No. 30. Catalog-wide gains for Fetty Wap also drives his self-titled 2015 album to No. 33 on the Billboard 200 with 19,000 equivalent album units, the set’s best rank since May 2016.
The entire top four of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 reaches a new peak on the Feb. 15 tally, some hitting the top five for the first time as a result. Leading the trio that follows “Again”: Aphex Twin’s “QKThr,” which jumps 9-2. Having previously enjoyed a best of No. 4 (Oct. 26, 2024), “QKThr” enjoyed a boost on TikTok in late 2024 via the “subtle foreshadowing” trend and is more recently utilized in clips describing some type of “core” alongside other viral usages.
Doechii’s “Denial Is a River” vaults into the top three, jumping 15-3 for its first time in the top 10. Though the song had found success on TikTok before the 2025 Grammy Awards (it debuted at No. 50 on the Jan. 11 ranking), it’s exploded in the days following the Feb. 2 ceremony, with one of the top-performing clips an upload from her performance at the show itself, plus a bevy of lip synchs, dances and more.
“Denial Is a River,” spurred by its TikTok success plus the buzz from its Grammy performance, leaps 55-27 on the Hot 100, sporting 13.8 million streams (up 66%), 7.8 million radio audience impressions (up 32%) and 2,000 downloads (up 346%).
Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove,” which reached a new peak of No. 6 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 dated Feb. 8, does two better on the Feb. 15 survey, rising 6-4 via a variety of dance videos, some following a specific trend and others highlighting their own moves to the song, which reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1981.
The week’s top debut on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 belongs to Lady Gaga, whose “Abracadabra” bows at No. 9. It’s Gaga’s second top 10 in two appearances, following the No. 3 peak of “Die With a Smile,” her duet with Bruno Mars, last September.
“Abracadabra” debuts after its Feb. 2 premiere, with Gaga herself sporting many of the top-performing uploads, from behind-the-scenes clips from its music video to a post showing off her Grammys trophy (she won for best pop duo/group performance for “Die With a Smile”). Other clips show users trying to re-create the video’s choreography or making up their own dance moves.
“Abracadabra” concurrently starts at No. 29 on the Hot 100 via 13.7 million streams, 1.4 million audience impressions and 1,000 downloads.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
“As the volume of digital distribution reaches new heights, a new Billboard chart will better detail how songs are competing in that emerging market,” read a story on page six of the Jan. 22, 2005, print issue, announcing the arrival of the Digital Song Sales chart.
Two weeks later — as we were fervently filling up our iPods with up to thousands of favorites, and taking music on-the-go more easily than ever before — paid downloads first contributed to the multimetric Billboard Hot 100.
Sales of songs had impacted the Hot 100 dating to the chart’s Aug. 4, 1958, start (then via retailers’ self-reported ranked lists. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, singles — which had evolved from 7-inch vinyl to cassettes and CDs — were disappearing from the marketplace, as labels began holding back song releases to entice consumers to buy (more expensive) full albums instead. The shift resulted in the Hot 100 in that period increasingly reflecting radio airplay reach.
The launch of the iTunes Store, among other digital retailers, brought single sales back, and by the mid-2000s, Billboard’s charts reflected the trend. For more than a decade beginning in the mid-2000s, the No. 1 sales hit each week regularly sold more than 100,000 downloads in the U.S., according to Luminate. In December 2015, Adele’s “Hello” ran up a weekly-record 1.1 million in digital sales.
While streaming has since taken over as the most accepted currency of on-demand song consumption — and vinyl, cassette and CD singles are again among consumer offerings — paid downloads remain a part of the Hot 100’s formula 20 years on.
As Billboard celebrates the top-performing artists, albums and songs of the first 25 years of the century since 2000, browse below, the acts with the most No. 1s on the Digital Song Sales chart in that span.
Plus, check out Top Artists of the 21st Century, Top Billboard 200 Albums of the 21st Century and Billboard’s Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century charts, as well as all coverage of Billboard’s 21st Century charts here.
Billboard’s Top Artists, Top Billboard 200 Albums and Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century recaps reflect performance on weekly charts dated Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 28, 2024. The Top Artists category ranks the best-performing acts in that span based on activity on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100. (Titles released prior to mid-1999 are excluded, although such entries that appeared on the Billboard 200 or Hot 100 in that span contribute to the calculation of the Top Artists chart.)
29, Taylor Swift
Drake and PartyNextDoor are here to spice up your Valentine’s Day. The OVO pairing shared the tracklist to their anticipated $ome $exy $ongs 4 U joint project on Thursday (Feb. 13), just a day before it hits streaming services. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The effort is […]
When it comes to making love songs, arguably no other genre has mastered that craft to the degree of R&B.
Its smooth melodic mix of jazz, blues and gospel rhythms, coupled with emotion-packing vocals, dates back to the ‘40s. Since then, the genre has undergone various iterations in its ongoing evolution — soul, funk, hip-hop, neo-soul, contemporary and alternative — while heavily influencing other genres along the way, such as rock n’ roll, country and pop.
Lyrical themes have run the gamut as well, from freedom, protest and pride to joy, pain and simply surviving. But when it comes to the subject of love in particular, R&B brims with colorful and insightful takes on every phase of that rollercoaster emotion: first encounter, between the sheets, courtship, break-up, make-up, marriage, divorce … then taking aim once again with the aid of Cupid’s arrow.
So in celebration of love and Valentine’s Day — and also in recognition of Black History Month — Billboard has compiled a chart-based tally of the Top 50 R&B Songs of All Time. Going back 60 years, the list encompasses the genre’s rich legacy of legendary solo singers and groups, as well as their contemporary counterparts delivering slow-burning ballads, bouncy bops and midtempo paeons to love. All of which are connected by one throughline: Love never goes out of style. And neither do these timeless gems.
Billboard’s Top 50 R&B Love Songs of All Time is based on weekly performance on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart from Jan. 30, 1965, (then the Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart) through Feb. 1, 2025. The tally is comprised of songs whose main theme revolves around romantic love versus love of self and others, heartbreak or strictly physical attraction. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at lower spots earning the least. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted differently to account for chart turnover rates during various periods.
Miguel, “Adorn”
After taking over Genesis frontman duties for the gone-solo Peter Gabriel in the mid-’70s, drummer-singer Phil Collins had gradually built up his popularity, his industry renown and his pop songwriting prowess over the course of a decade. He’d become a solo star after breaking off from his group in the early-’80s, but continued to gather momentum with the band as well, and also emerged as a go-to collaborator for much of the era’s pop and rock aristocracy. By 1985, it would all come together in one year that saw Collins absolutely flood the zone with hit singles, big collaborations, bigger performances, headline-capturing pop culture moments and even an acting turn on TV’s hottest primetime drama.
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On this Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we look back at Collins’ singular 1985, and examine how an unassuming, plain-looking drummer became one of the most ubiquitous pop stars of the MTV generation. Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Chris Molanphy of Slate and the Hit Parade podcast to talk all things Phil Collins, as Molanphy shares his memories of becoming a devout (if occasionally slightly abashed) Phil fan as a teen, and Unterberger explains how an unofficial New York-celebrated holiday — one coming up very soon on the calendar — expanded his own love for Phil as a young adult.
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We then dive all the way into the deep end on Collins’ 1985, which started with hits, peaked with hits and ended with even more hits — but in between, also included a gig on Miami Vice as Phil the Shill, appearances on both coasts’ Live Aid festivities (including with a quasi-reunited Led Zeppelin), and an Oscars snub so galling it still rankles the nice-guy pop star to this day. And of course, we do get into those hits, including the agony and the ecstasy of “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” the possibly purloined groove and confusing (in more ways than one) title of “Sussudio,” and the underappreciated knife-in-the-gut divorce rock of “Separate Lives.” We end with the unlikely question: Was Phil Collins actually the Greatest Pop Star of 1985?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most memorable moments of Phil’s 1985, 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 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
The Trevor Project
Halsey announced the dates for her upcoming spring/summer 2025 Halsey: For My Last Trick tour. The 32-city Live Nation-promoted outing in support of last year’s The Great Impersonator album is slated to kick off on May 10 at the Toyota Pavilion at Concord in Concord, CA and criss-cross the country for shows in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Dallas, Nashville, Tampa, Charlotte, Toronto, Chicago and St. Louis, before winding down on July 6 at the Yaamava’ Theater in Highland, CA.
They’ll have plenty of friends along as well, with Del Water Gap, The Warning, Evanescence, Alvvays, Hope Tala, Royel Otis, Sir Chloe, flowerlove, Magdalena Bay and Alemeda joining on select dates. On Thursday morning (Feb. 13), the singer released a playful, minute-long trailer for her first headlining tour in three years.
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It opens with a blue-haired Halsey hopping out of a golf cart as a harried assistant comments on the singer’s Smurf-colored locks and they respond, “I always said I’d be buried in this wig and, figured I probably should be.” The frenzied walk-and-talk then finds them rejecting a selection of black suits and enthusiastically greeting her hair and make-up person before making the executive guest list decision that Joe Jonas is not among the JoBros who will make the cut.
“Joe cannot come honey,” they say while making nice with an adorable grade school choir singer, only to walk away and whisper, “lose the kid, it’s way too sad.” She then spots her photo shoot set-up — an open coffin surrounded by three gigantic bouquets of flowers — dubbing it “perfect! It’s exactly how I pictured it,” before taking a phone call informing her that the whole thing has been called off.
Fans can sign up for the artist presale now through Monday (Feb. 17) at 11:59 p.m. ET here, with an artist presale kicking off on Feb. 19 at 10 a.m. through 10 p.m. local that day. More presales will run throughout the week in the lead-up to the general on-sale beginning on Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. local time here.
Check out the tour promo video and dates below.
Halsey
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Debut albums by Jay-Z, Luther Vandross and Big Star and breakthrough singles by Miami Sound Machine and Eddie Floyd are among the 13 recordings that were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame this year. This year’s additions (eight albums and five singles) meet the main requirements – they exhibit “qualitative or historical significance” and […]