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Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” ties Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine” for the second-longest rule in the history of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart, while the lower half of the top 10 dated Nov. 16 features new blood, paced by Beyoncé‘s “Diva.”
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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 from Nov. 4-10. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
With its sixth week at No. 1 (all consecutive), “Maps” takes over sole possession of the second-longest streak at No. 1 since the chart began in September 2023 (“My Love Mine All Mine,” which also led for six weeks overall, reigned for a pair of three-week periods). Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” with its 10-weeks-in-a-row streak, holds the all-time mark.
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“Maps,” released on Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 debut album Fever to Tell, remains driven by a pair of TikTok trends, one a dance challenge and the other using a filter where the user’s facial features are removed and then cascade back down onto their face. One of the utilized sounds is a sped-up version of the song.
For the fourth week in a row, “Maps,” Alphaville’s “Forever Young” and Akon’s “Akon’s Beautiful Day” rank as the chart’s top three, in that order. While No. 3 remains the latter’s peak, “Forever Young” reached No. 1 for a week in October.
From there, the ranking’s top 10 is far less static. Tyler, the Creator’s “Like Him,” featuring Lola Young,” breaks into the top five for the first time, lifting 6-4 in its second week. The song from the rapper’s new album Chromakopia (which tops the Billboard 200 for a second week, as previously reported) rises thanks to another week of the “do I look like him” trend, with creators using the clip to showcase complicated father-child relationships (fictional or real), comparisons to athletes and people past and present, and more.
“Like Him” jumps 10% to 13.7 million official U.S. streams in the week ending Nov. 7, according to Luminate. Concurrently, it vaults 45-29 on the multimetric Billboard Hot 100.
Aphex Twin’s “QKThr” rounds out the top five of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 (up 10-5, one spot away from its No. 4 best), while Beyoncé’s “Diva” follows at No. 6, its first time in the top 10. “Diva,” from the 2008 album I Am…Sasha Fierce, reached No. 19 on the Hot 100 back in 2009.
“Diva” has found new life on TikTok in 2024 via a trend where creators show off their diva-like behavior. It jumps 17% to 2.3 million streams in the Nov. 1-7 tracking week.
Two other songs appear in the TikTok Billboard Top 50’s top 10 for the first time: Gracie Abrams’ “That’s So True” at No. 8, and the live version of Michael Prince’s “Finesse,” featuring Koncept P, at No. 9.
Abrams’ “That’s So True,” released Oct. 18 on the deluxe version of her The Secret of Us album, has gone viral since, paced by lip-synching trends. It zooms to 18.9 million streams, up 26%, in the latest tracking week, good for a 25-13 rise on the Hot 100.
“Finesse,” meanwhile, was released in May on Prince’s Limitless – A Trap Symphony, with its recent gains tied to a trend using the song’s “do you not get the concept?” lyric, generally a two-person dance trend with one person mimicking playing a violin. It earned 437,000 streams in the tracking week ending Nov. 7, up 67%.
And returning to the top 10 after an 11-month respite is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which shoots 17-7. It spend eight weeks in the top 10 during last holiday season, from the charts dated Nov. 18, 2023, to Jan. 6, 2024, sitting at No. 1 those final two frames.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” paces holiday-related content on the latest tally, ahead of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” (No. 13, up from No. 48) and Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (a re-entry at No. 22).
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.
Ice Spice is now a playable character in Fortnite as part of Battle Royale’s Chapter 2 Remix. The Bronx rapper turned Shark Island into Ice Isle on Thursday (Nov. 14) as the abandoned shopping mall map takes on a nostalgic Y2K! theme. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and […]
Bluesky smiling at Lizzo, nothing but Bluesky does she see. As countless former X users have been flocking to the alternative social media platform following the results of the 2024 election, the “About Damn Time” hitmaker revealed Wednesday (Nov. 13) that she’s also made the switch — and shared why. Posting a mirror selfie showing […]
Celine Dion continued her slow re-emergence after a nearly two-year break from the public eye due to her battle with the debilitating Stiff-Person Syndrome to perform a dazzling two-song set on Wednesday (Nov. 13) at the “1001 Seasons of ELIE SAAB” event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The celebration of the Lebanese designer’s 45-year fashion career found Dion, 56, taking the stage among a parade of statuesque models while wearing a flowing pale pink floor-length sequined gown with a billowing cape and her hair pulled back in a bun. Dion walked slowly down a set of winding stairs at the back of the stage as a series of veiled models wearing similarly floor-sweeping glittery dresses paved her way.
After the models slow-sashayed out of her way, Dion commanded the stage, performing her titanic 1994 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “The Power of Love” as the stage behind her flashed with digital waves of golden light. Her signature power vocals sounding undiminished, Dion belted out the tune to the accompaniment of a piano and an orchestral track, punctuating the soaring lines with her trademark dramatic hand gestures in a performance that left no doubt that, despite her health struggles, the singer is still in full command of her unparalleled instrument.
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As if further proof were needed, Dion hit a series of extended notes with such force at the end that even she seemed pleasantly surprised and pleased, striking a defiant, forceful pose before bringing her hands up over her heart as the room burst into applause. Dion didn’t take much time to linger in the moment, as a polyrhythmic beat quickly bubbled up, accented by sprightly horns to set up the night’s big finale.
Clapping and bouncing in place as she encouraged the crowd to put their hands together, Dion then busted another fan favorite, 2002’s “I’m Alive,” as the final group of models walked by, with some extending their hands to greet the pop superstar. Moving around with ease and smiling broadly, Dion seemed energized by the group of white-clad dancers who joined her, shimmying her hips near the end and spreading her arms wide as a gospel choir rose up behind her singing the song’s inspiring chorus.
The singer put her hand over her heart, turned her back to the audience and then slowly spun around for a final hip-swiveling dance and a dramatic flourish, shooting her right hand over her head before accepting a pair of cheek kisses from the night’s honoree.
The night also featured sets from Jennifer Lopez (performing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and her hits “Waiting For Tonight,” “On the Floor” and “Let’s Get Loud”) Camila Cabello, Nancy Arjam and Amr Diab.
The Wednesday mini-set was just Dion’s second performance since her lauded comeback at the opening ceremony of this summer’s 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, followed by a surprise set at the City of Hope’s 2024 Spirit of Life Gala in Los Angeles in October. Dion has largely been out of the public eye since Dec. 2022, when she revealed her Stiff-Person Syndrome diagnosis; the rare neurological disorder can cause uncontrolled muscle spasms that make it hard to move, with Dion saying that sometimes they were so intense that they caused broken ribs.
The singer was forced to postpone all of her 2023 and 2024 tour dates as a result, a painful decision she chronicled in this year’s Prime Video documentary I Am: Celine Dion.
Watch Dion’s performance below.
Nearly a decade after the release of his 2016 album Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars, and four decades after he turned the Nashville establishment on its head with his distinct brand of West coast honky-tonk, punk and rockabilly, Dwight Yoakam isn’t erecting creative boundaries anytime soon.
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His new album Brighter Days, out Friday (Nov. 15), was forged by years of life shifts, both personal and professional, and finds him moving ahead musically with a new set of inspirations. In March 2020, he wed photographer Emily Joyce and in August of that year, the couple welcomed their first child, son Dalton Loren. Meanwhile, like the rest of the world, Yoakam and his family weathered the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
His devotion to family is threaded through songs on the album, including the realistically romantic “I Spell Love,” and the title track “Brighter Days,” which developed from a tender moment with his son Dalton, whom Yoakam gave a co-writing credit on the song.
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“He had a little Fender Telecaster-shaped ukulele he would wear,” Yoakam recalls. “He came bouncing in the room one day and said, ‘Get your guitar.’ I picked it up and he would attempt to answer what I would play and I looked at him and said, ‘You know what? The future is you,’ and I started singing ‘Brighter Days,’ and he kind of sang it back to me. I came up with the first verse just watching him and singing and having him sing back to me.”
The new album also comes after Yoakam parted ways with Warner Records, instead releasing the album on his own label Via Records, in partnership with Thirty Tigers.
“Everything had changed at Warner Brothers where I’d been the last couple of studio albums and we were kind of in flux,” Yoakam tells Billboard. “I left and wasn’t sure where we were going to do the next record. After the chaos of 2020 and 2021, David [Macias] at Thirty Tigers approached me and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing a record here?’ And I said yes.”
Brighter Days also finds Yoakam with more co-writing credits on the project, unlike many previous albums which have featured mostly his solo writes. As the world was still reeling from the pandemic, Yoakam found himself collaborating with California native and fellow hit country songwriter Jeffrey Steele (“What Hurts the Most,” “These Days”) on Zoom co-writes, ultimately crafting six of the album’s songs together, including “California Sky” and “I’ll Pay the Price.”
“I don’t co-write a lot. The first one was a very auspicious beginning, with Roger Miller in 1990. Most albums, probably 70% or 80% is my own solo writing,” Yoakam says, adding, “We had such fun discussing [Steele’s] relationship to all things California music. He was raised in the Valley and his dad owned a garage blocks away from the famous Palomino Club, so he grew up in the shadow of that. ’I’ll Pay the Price’ was a bit of an homage to the late ‘60s, early ‘70s when Linda Ronstadt put her first band together.”
The project wraps in covers of Cake’s “Bound Away,” “Time Between” from the Byrds, and The Carter Family staple “Keep on the Sunny Side.”
“If you think about what brought California’s version of country music, it was the Dust Bowl. It was another mass event in the 1930s and it drove hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to relocate to California from the Great Plains. And the Great Depression, so you had two events, driving this displacement of large segments of our society to California and they brought their version of their colloquial musical expressions…It’s a winding story, but all of these tracks are connected in various ways,” he says.
His willingness to filter a range of sounds and inspirations through his own musical lens is what led Yoakam to his breakthrough in the mid-1980s. He first tried his luck in Nashville, coming up against roadblocks due to his retro-progressive musical style. He decamped to California, refining his music and further soaking in the influence of Bakersfield and Buck Owens. In 1984, Yoakam independent project Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. caught the attention of label execs, and he signed with Reprise Records. He re-released the project, earning acclaim with songs including a super-charged version of Johnny Horton’s “Honky-Tonk Man,” as well as the project’s title track.
Subsequent albums would yield success including top 10 Billboard Hot Country Songs hits with “Little Sister,” and “Please, Please Baby.” Three of his albums, 1986’s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., 1987’s Hillbilly Deluxe and 1988’s Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. The two-time Grammy Award winner was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.
Yoakam finished recording Brighter Days in 2023. Just as he and his team were gearing up for its release, Yoakam got an unexpected invitation from Teas native Post Malone, known for his swirl of pop songs such as 2019’s “Circles” and “Sunflower,” to collaborate.
When they were planning their collaboration performance of Yoakam’s “Little Ways” during the Stagecoach country music festival earlier this year, Post Malone asked if he could join Yoakam on his album. Yoakam and Post Malone’s friendship stretches back to 2018, when Post Malone joined Yoakam for an episode of Yoakam’s SiriusXM Greater Bakersfield show, where they performed songs including Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down.”
“I had literally just finished the album a week and a half earlier, and I was unaware that he had done the F-1 Trillion album at that time,” Yoakam says. “I knew he was doing stage shows and I knew something was afoot about duets he was doing, but I didn’t know how extensively what it was all about.”
Yoakam had already been toying with a song idea, and quickly wrote the Western swing- soaked “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom),” and adjusted the album’s releases schedule to accommodate the Posty collaboration. It turns out Post Malone was working on not only his country-leaning F-1 Trillion, but collaborating with another superstar.
“We delayed the release of the album by about six months,” Yoakam says. “I didn’t realize Post came in [to record his vocal] between days of shooting the video he did with Taylor Swift [“Fortnight”] . We rescheduled the album release because we decided it was something we wanted to put on the album.”
Outside of music, Yoakam is known for a plethora of creative pursuits, notably his film and television career, which has included roles in Sling Blade and Wedding Crashers. His Sling Blade co-star Billy Bob Thornton “has agreed to work on a series I wrote, called ‘A Thousand Miles From Nowhere’ — it’s not about the song, though it sort of is. It’s a period piece that takes place in the 1870s. So that’s afoot, and there are a couple of film roles I’ve been approached about that we are seeing if they make sense to do.”
But currently, as evidenced by Brighter Days, Yoakam has set about crafting an album for those seeking an emotional uplift, as he was when he wrote the title track.
“I thought, ‘When the fog of all this rises, brightness is what we’re hoping for — the brighter days,” Yoakam says.
When Toronto-based entertainment and hospitality magnate Charles Khabouth heard that Taylor Swift would be bringing her record-breaking Eras Tour to the city he’s called home for more than 50 years, he knew immediately what to do.
“I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate,” Khabouth, the founder/CEO of INK Entertainment, which operates a series of hotels, bars and restaurants and produces live events in the city, says, laughing. “I’ve been around 43 years in this business; I’ve never seen this hype in my life around anything. We do, I don’t know, 200, 300 live shows ourselves every year. We’ve had everybody in the city from the Stones to Madonna to Prince. This got much bigger support from everybody than ever possible.”
The city of Toronto is about to play host to one of the most significant events — culturally and economically — of the past two years, as Swift and her legion of fans descend upon the city for six nights across two weekends (Nov. 14-16, 21-23), the penultimate stop on a tour that has spanned two years and five continents and changed the fortunes of several cities along the way. And Toronto — known as a savvy, cosmopolitan city in its own right, though one that has at times had to fight to be considered in the same category as cultural capitals such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago — has risen to the occasion.
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On Nov. 4, the city of Toronto and Rogers Communications renamed Blue Jay Way — the street in front of the Rogers Centre that is usually home to its hometown Major League Baseball team and extends from Nathan Phillips Square to the venue — as Taylor Swift Way, complete with 22 ceremonial street signs that will be auctioned in support of the Daily Bread Food Bank after the run is over. (Rogers is also matching donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank up to $113,000 — a nod to Swift’s favorite number, 13.)
And that’s just the opening enchantment that the city would eventually roll out. Since then, the city has announced a poetry-inspired pre-concert initiative overseen by Toronto Poet Laureate Lillian Allen, while other announcements have included the Toronto’s Version: Taylgate ’24 event, which is expected to draw some 60,000 people; an Eras! Eras! Eras! performance by the singing group Choir! Choir! Choir!; and a 13-site scavenger hunt tied to different songs from Swift’s catalog spread across the city, among many other things. There are Eras-themed city tours, dance parties, drag and trivia nights and pop-up shops around the city, plus giveaways from a slew of businesses. Destination Toronto — the tourism bureau for Canada’s biggest city — expects some $282 million in economic impact from Swift’s two-week mini-residency, including $152 million in direct spending, 93% of which is expected to come from tourists flocking to Toronto — an astronomical uplift for the city’s local businesses.
“We’ve seen the entire city getting caught up in the action — from a Taylgate party at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to Taylor-themed hotel rooms and special menus at restaurants around the city,” says Kathy Motton, Destination Toronto’s senior manager of communications. “Major events like Taylor Swift bring visitor spending into Toronto, and that spending circulates long after visitors return home impacting a broad set of businesses. The obvious positive benefit is for hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses, but that benefit also extends to businesses that are indirectly impacted by visitor spending.”
And many of those establishments have met the moment by overhauling their own properties to cater to the estimated 500,000 tourists flooding into the area.
“We’ve got so much happening on property,” says Liza McWilliams, director of marketing at the 1 Hotel Toronto, which transformed its Flora lobby lounge into the Folklore Lounge for the next two weeks, complete with a moss-covered piano, tapestries hanging on the wall with lyrics from Swift’s Folklore album and daily acoustic performances open to guests and the public. They also partnered with the Little Words Project, the original word-based friendship bracelet company, which is doing a pop-up shop in the 1 Hotel’s lobby for the first time in Canada. “I think it’s just really fun to be that much more creative and to dream up some really amazing things that kind of stay with the guests for a longer time,” McWilliams says. “Other than the [Toronto International] Film Festival, I would say we’ve never really been this specific when it comes to an actual city event.”
“This is like preparing for Toronto’s Super Bowl,” says Aaron Harrison, general manager of the Bisha Hotel, a short walk from the Rogers Centre. The Bisha also redesigned its entire lobby space (it went Reputation era), while the common spaces on each of its seven hotel floors are also getting era-themed makeovers, one suite has been entirely rebranded The Taylor (which had been running around $4,000 per night if you could snag it), and the hotel will be offering friendship bracelets, a glitter station and themed food and drinks for guests, among other things, in its Lover Lounge. “We wanted Bisha Hotel to feel like the ultimate fan headquarters,” Harrison adds.
In downtown Toronto, it’s almost more difficult to find a bar or restaurant that hasn’t leaned into Taylor-mania than one that has. (Talk about champagne problems.) The night before the shows kicked off, on Nov. 13, the iconic space needle was flashing rainbow colors in honor of Swift, and bartenders and restaurant staff were all talking about the influx of people in town for the shows. Streets are closed off, the city has dedicated websites aimed at helping both tourists and locals alike navigate the area, and Rogers spent $8 million to upgrade the 5G wireless service at the Rogers Centre ahead of the concerts.
Of the more than half-dozen people who spoke with Billboard for this story, almost all equated the preparations for the Eras Tour to those that go into the build up to TIFF — one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, held in the city each September — but all said the Eras Tour hype went beyond even that. Some hospitality officials and locals are looking at it as a test run for the FIFA World Cup, which will stage six matches in the city in the summer of 2026, and as helping to prove that Toronto can accommodate, and with aplomb, the types of huge events that are often staged in the great cities of the world, ones that invite people to fly in from all over the globe.
There is one thing, however, that nobody is particularly looking forward to: “It’s going to be hell on earth in a sense of the traffic and the amount of people,” Khabouth says, laughing again. (He’s planning to ride his scooter through downtown “with a smile on my face” on the days of each show to avoid driving.) “But it’s a happy moment for all of us in Toronto, to have that energy, that vibe. It’s a concert that’s very positive, you’re gonna see a lot of happy faces, people excited. It’s a very good opportunity for Toronto to stand out and say, ‘Hey, we can play with the big boys.’”
Israel’s Netta Barzilai has not found it easy to create during the 13 months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on her homeland and the ensuing war. But a brand new single, “Big Love,” brings the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest winner’s thoughts and emotions into focus.
“My job, my calling, is to bring people together over light and enhance the light in them,” Netta tells Billboard via Zoom from her apartment in Jaffa, an ancient port city near Tel Aviv. “I believe that music and art, especially in dark times, is important to any free world. It’s important for people to consume and create.”
Yet, she adds, “I felt this year I’m in no mood to create. The war isn’t something inspiring. It’s the darkest part of humanity. This year I’ve witnessed pain in amounts and in magnitude that I could not function. I tried, but I could not write. I’m a very happy person, and I tried all the mechanisms that I know that make me happy and they didn’t work. Usually when I walk in a studio and create it feels like the right thing, and every time I walked in the studio (after Oct. 7), it didn’t.”
With the uncharacteristically ethereal and moody “Big Love” – out now on S-Curve Records — Netta found a way to address her circumstances, acknowledging the situation and declaring in its chorus that, “This world may crumble but I’m by your side, with a big love.”
“This is a song that was written with friends out of desperation,” explains Netta, who composed the track with producer Theron “Neff-u” Feemster, Paul Duncan and Avshalom Ariel. “It’s for me to feel stronger and for me to just let myself know that this is my answer to the darkness growing inside — of all of us. War and conflict have always been part of human nature…and it’s soul-crushing. And in order for us to fight it we have to create light. (The song) is very personal, and it’s the little that I can do just to put it out there. But it is what it is.”
The sentiments of “Big Love,” Netta adds, aren’t limited to one side of the conflict or the other. “It’s to anyone who needs it. In my song I say if I had the moon and stars I would get them for you. If I could sing and stop the war, I would do it for you, if it could be that easy. It might sound cliché, but I really believe that making music is a calling, and I don’t think you have control over who finds power in it and who finds comfort in it. I hope whoever needs comfort anywhere finds comfort and light in this.”
On Oct. 7, Netta was slated to open for Bruno Mars in Tel Aviv and film a video during the show; those plans were scuttled, of course, and in the wake of the attack she found herself in the wrenching position of helping to take care of children whose families were tending to the dead and injured, as well as singing at funerals. Netta also scratched plans for a world tour and an English language album she had recorded and returned to Israel full-time — “I needed to be here,” she says — and released a Hebrew album, Hakol Alai (All On Me). She appeared as a contestant on the 10th season of Rokdim Im Kokhavim, Israel’s Dancing With the Stars, and also performed at a May rally in Tel Aviv calling for the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
Netta also watched this year’s Eurovision, which was marked by protests over Israel’s involvement, while contestant Eden Golan faced threats and harassment throughout the competition.
“I felt really bad for her,” Netta says. “I thought she was a champ dealing with so much hate. When a girl stands on stage and she sings and so many people are trying to bring her down…I think it ruined Eurovision. Eurovision is supposed to be about having a safe space for art and a safe space for people to unite and be brought together. Eurovision is supposed to be the answer to, yes, there are geographical debates and politicians have their wars, but this should be the place to show them that we can talk and we can understand. It was very, very sad.”
Netta says her own situation in Israel right now is safe, which she considers “a gift.” She’s not yet sure if “Big Love” will rekindle her muse, but she’s confident that whatever comes next will have a similar purpose.
“I find small hopes,” she says. “As goofy and as funny and as colorful as my music has always been, it’s always been about love, and it’s always been about light. I’m so sad the world isn’t a perfect place. It crushes me. I really wish it was different, but…it is so complex. But I believe in humans. I believe they can restore and rebuild. I have to.”
KATSEYE are turning up the girl power. The group’s single “Flame” is featured on the upcoming soundtrack for Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs the Underworld, and was officially released on Thursday (Nov. 14). The song, which will also be the animated series’ theme song, is included in a new teaser for the show, starring and executive […]
It’s only been a handful of years since singer-songwriter and Oregon native Max McNown was inspired to pursue a music career in earnest thanks to a stranger he met while strumming his guitar on the San Clemente Pier in California. Since then, he’s topped Billboard’s emerging artists chart and seen his song “A Lot More Free” rise to No. 29 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
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The song, which highlighted his raspy, conversational vocal, was the centerpiece of his debut album, Wandering, which released in April. In the process, that song, along with followups such as “Love Me Back,” have placed McNown squarely in the ranks of acoustic-driven, folk-country artists such as Wyatt Flores and Sam Barber.
Named as Billboard’s Country Rookie of the Month for November, McNown will launch 2025 with a new full-fledged album, the nine-song set Night Diving, out Jan. 24, 2025, Billboard can reveal.
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As with songs his fans have come to know, such as “A Lot More Free,” the new music centers on his poetic, observational writing style, while adding polish to his personally-crafted songs. The upcoming album will include songs such as his new release “Better Me for You,” his recent outing “Hotel Bible,” and a collaboration with Hailey Whitters on “Roses and Wolves.”
Though McNown says he always harbored hopes of being a singer, he says, “It was kind of a pipe dream. I never thought I’d pursue it. Realistically, I wanted to do something in architecture or business management, but it wasn’t until I was 21 that I even took a step toward music.”
After graduating high school at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, McNown began working at a coffee company while taking university courses online. Within months, he found himself feeling burnt out and restless. “It was all kind of building up. One day, I decided I needed to change up the scene and try something new,” he says.
Armed with a guitar his father gave him, McNown set off for California. He again worked for a coffee shop, and a co-worker encouraged him to play guitar down by the San Clemente Pier. As he was singing through songs such as Tyler Childers’ “Lady May,” a stranger came up to him and introduced McNown to Zach Bryan’s music.
“She showed me three songs, and one of them was ‘Get Out Alive,’” he explains. “I loved it and loved his voice. He did sound very similar to my tone, and it gave me so much courage because my whole life I’d been trying to sing pop songs from Shawn Mendes or Justin Bieber and my voice sounded nothing like them. I was like, ‘Okay, if he can do this with guitar and poetry, maybe I can, too.’”
Now based in Nashville, McNown spoke with Billboard about the success of “A Lot More Free,” his upcoming album, collaborating with country artist Hailey Whitters and his musical ambitions.
How are you handling the success of “A Lot More Free” and adapting to a career in music?
It’s completely life changing. It’s like everything on the exterior feels like it’s just spinning everything. We’re hitting all the different points that we need to hit in our journey. I’m just so extremely grateful and I’m definitely prioritizing keeping my foundation strong and humility in that department.
“A Lot More Free” took off about a year after the song released. What spurred that?
When “A Lot More Free” first released, I remember the first video I made for it. I was with my sister at the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. She filmed scenes of me walking in front of the gorge and I said, ‘What if this became a travel song?’ That breakdown in the song of the harmonica and the instruments, just the feel it created started resonating with people, and they started creating their own videos of traveling to their favorite places. I saw the momentum, so I started to create compilation videos of their videos.
I would post those and say, ‘Oh, thirty-three videos have been made, thank you so much.’ Then the next day, maybe 400 videos have been made and I would make compilation videos of those and thank people for making them. It snowballed and that was the beginning of the first round of growth.
When views [eventually] started falling a bit, we put out a video of me singing the song — that second massive growth that happened was linking song to artist. I saw this massive influx of followers on TikTok and Instagram — we went from 90,000 Instagram followers to like 950,000 in a matter of under two months. We saw the difference in concert as well — at first, I would play an entire show and at the end I would play the song and you could hear the murmurs, like, ‘Oh, I love this song. Is he covering this song?,’ but after all the social media growth, on the [10-show fall] Canadian tour, people were singing the words and they knew it was me singing it.
On the new album, you team with Hailey Whitters on the song “Roses and Wolves.” How did she come to be part of the project?
I’ve been a fan on Hailey for forever. Evan Honer did a collaboration [“Fighting For”] with her and Hailey has a very distinct, pretty country voice, but she went into this register that I hadn’t really heard from her before on that collaboration, and I was like, ‘Man, I’m dying to know what she would sound like on Roses and Wolves, specifically that song. And she is just such a credible country singer.
I think part of my journey has been trying to shake the TikTok kid stigma that a lot of people will have, but I like to think that what’s coming is greater than a ‘flash-in-the-pan TikTok kid.’ To have Hailey come on to this song with her beautiful voice – I also heard from a lot of people in my camp who are connected to her, and everyone loves Hailey. So we reached out, and she said “yes” to the song. We actually just filmed some content for it and she’s the sweetest, sweetest human being.
You also circle back to another song that fans have related to, “Freezing in November,” which was inspired in part by your brother’s battle with cancer. How is it different revisiting this song on the new album?
When I wrote “Freezing in November” initially, I had no vocal training, no vocal experience, and the song was just a simple melody that stayed consistent. I been playing shows and over time I’ve started to alternate between different melodies at each show, to find a different way of driving home the emotion I want to get across. I started belting out the second verse, in the second chorus and I can just feel the different vocal capability. So to re-sing it, I feel like I did it justice the second time around.
What drives you, creatively?
I definitely prioritize writing. The lyrics are the most important thing in my music. I’m maybe not the best instrumentalist, and so I rely on lyrics anyway. The music that I’ve always loved has always been lyric centric. It’s always been about the story that you’re telling and the emotion that it’s invoking. And so yeah, lyrics and poetry are definitely where I start with all my music.
What is your favorite concert you have ever been to?
NF, which is maybe out of left field. On the topic of honest lyricism, there’s not many better than NF. I was a huge fan in high school, so to see him in person, it’s the only time in my life where I’ve seen somebody—and I had some nosebleed seats—but I watched him walk out on the stage and to see someone you adore and deeply respect, to see them there and think, ‘He’s in the same room. He’s a real human being.’ That’s crazy.
What is your go-to album that you can always listen to?
Forever by Noah Kahan. Just sonically, the instruments and the feeling…my songs are very heavily influenced by that album. Artists like Noah, Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers gave me that launchpad courage. These are basically guys with guitars, writing beautiful poetry over four chords.
When you are on the road, what is your favorite road snack?
You can never go wrong with a Snickers. If I’m a little hungry, but don’t need a full meal, that’s my go-to.
11/14/2024
Hearing your name called even once is a thrill, but repeating is the ultimate goal.
11/14/2024