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LANCO’s 2017 No. 1 single, “Greatest Love Story,” ends with the protagonist on one knee, pleading, “Baby, say yes to me.”
The band saw it as an indication of an obvious future for the couple in question, but the group’s fans didn’t always reach the same conclusion.
“It blows my mind how many people are like, ‘Did she say yes? What happened?’ ” lead singer and songwriter Brandon Lancaster says today. “I didn’t know that needed to be answered. She did say yes. And if you’re interested, if the last thing you ever heard was the story of this guy trying to navigate love, he’s back. She did say yes, and this is the next journey that they’re on.”
“This” is “We Grew Up Together,” a father’s celebration of the child he produced and of the changes that parenting inspired in him. Those changes range from cutting back on alcohol — “7:00 a.m. with a little whiskey hangover and two babies crying is rough,” multi-instrumentalist Jared Hampton says — to improving a spiritual life.
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“You definitely realize a new depth of need and a new depth of faith in God to help get you through those really tough times,” bassist Chandler Baldwin says. “It just unlocks a whole new level of our relationship with God.”
Appropriately, “We Grew Up Together” is the result of a songwriting collaboration between four of the five LANCO members and Cory Asbury, a Christian artist whose music has encompassed worship songs and country. The band had worked diligently on its second album — We’re Gonna Make It, released Jan. 17 by Riser House — but wanted to see what else might be possible for the project.
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“We were kind of done with the record, and I think we had a week before we were going to the studio to finish recording,” drummer Tripp Howell recalls. “We called him, like, ‘Hey, man, we got the songs for this record, but you want to try to get one more? Maybe there’s something magical out there.’ ”
Asbury, it turned out, unwittingly concocted the title for the song they’d hoped to find. Working at Hampton’s studio, they spent hours chasing another idea that never quite jelled. Lancaster and Asbury got involved in a conversation about their kids, and when Asbury mentioned that the oldest of his four children was around the legal driving age, Lancaster expressed surprise that Asbury had started having kids at an earlier age than the LANCO guys.
“We grew up together,” Asbury responded.
“All right,” Lancaster said. “That’s the song we’re writing.”
From there, the work went quickly as they attacked different parts of the song. “At any given time, people would be outside working on the chorus and the other people inside would be working on the verse,” Howell recalls. “I felt like this entire song was kind of piecing it together separately. I can remember Brandon walking out and coming back with half the chorus and being like, ‘What do y’all think about this?’ And it was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Let’s go.’ ”
The first two lines of that chorus — “You learned to walk/ I learned to walk in my faith” — set up the song’s central device, addressing the parallel ways in which father and child grew together. The core message — “God made you, you made me better” — appeared midway through that chorus, propelling the story toward the “grew up” hook.
“It’s this revelation that as someone is being born, there’s a new version of yourself that’s also being born,” Lancaster says. “There’s this process that’s happening with this new person coming in the world. You’re kind of becoming a new person as well.” They inserted a second parallel, based around “You learned to talk,” in the chorus, and employed a third — “You’ll learn to drive, I’ll drive you crazy” — for the bridge.
LANCO was set to fly out of Nashville that night, and the group was mentally exhausted after pushing through two songs, so there was some talk of waiting a day or two to develop a demo. But a couple of the guys feared they might forget it, so Hampton played acoustic guitar while Baldwin put down a vocal. The band turned in that recording to the Riser House A&R team, which forwarded it to producer Jared Conrad (Ian Munsick, Randall King) the night before the first of two days of recording sessions.
Conrad thought it was the best new song they had available, and he gave the group — including guitarist Tim Aven — his opinion during the first session on Aug. 30. As it happened, Asbury posted a piano/vocal video performance that same day and the public responded positively, reinforcing Conrad’s position. Conrad called steel guitarist Justin Schipper in to augment the band the next day at The Smoakstack, a studio loaded with guitars — and ceramic figures — in Nashville’s Berry Hill neighborhood.
“The [saying] ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ — everywhere you look, there’s some kind of trinket or statue that’s doing that,” Baldwin says. “Whether it’s monkeys doing it, or frogs, [owner Paul Moak] obviously collects them, because they’re everywhere. Like, the second day, I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of these.’ ”
Since they hadn’t had enough time to create an arrangement, they built it on the studio floor. Baldwin played acoustic guitar, Lancaster developed a melody for the opening instrumental riff, and Howell played a light train beat with brushes to propel the track forward. They loaded up the front end of the chorus with a bundle of instruments — most playing solid, long notes — to make the “We Grew Up Together” message bigger than the verses’ narrative.
“There’s a crazy amount of layers in the chorus,” Conrad says. “There’s maybe three different acoustic guitars, a mandolin, a banjo, two or three electrics and then three keyboards. But some of them are kind of keeping the rhythm. The banjo and mandolin are kind of moving stuff along.”
Roughly a week later, Lancaster cut his final vocal part at Conrad’s home studio, The Dining Room, though he struggled with it initially. They decided to move on to a different song, then came back at the end of the session to work again on “We Grew Up Together,” with Lancaster focused more on communicating the song’s emotion.
“He did two, maybe three passes,” Conrad remembers. “I don’t know what he tapped into, but it was just like this immediate energy shift of, ‘Oh, he’s just telling the story now. He’s not trying to sing it to us.’ ”
Riser House released “We Grew Up Together,” featuring Asbury on harmonies, to country radio on Jan. 27 through PlayMPE. It captures LANCO in a more adult phase than when “Greatest Love Story” won over listeners, but likely reflects changes in the audience just as much as in the band.
“It’s about where we’re at in life,” Hampton says. “Maybe that’s also where some of our fans are. Maybe they’ve kind of grown up with us and they’re also experiencing the same things that we’re experiencing. It’s those moments in between the chaos that these songs poke out and make an impact in people’s lives.”
Larry June and The Alchemist have been frequent collaborators over the years, but they brought an unlikely running mate into the mix, when joining forces with 2 Chainz earlier this month for Life Is Beautiful.
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The Atlanta native carved out his legacy throttling trap beats, but he felt right at home dicing Alc’s placid production with edifying raps. The 11-track LP provided a serene expedition, matching the project’s nautical sun-kissed cover art, and gave the trio an early rap album of the year contender in what serves as Chainz’ first endeavor since leaving Def Jam after two decades.
“I’m actually more comfortable rapping than doing trap music. I think it was just time for me to show n—as how ill I was. I be doing other stuff based on data,” he tells Billboard after hitting the gym for a workout. “It don’t even feel like a stretch, but I think the body of work surprised a lot of people.”
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The Drench God continues to flex: “But this what I do, cuz. I rap with the best of em. Every n—a in the industry, your favorite rapper in the industry, whoever you can name, I got on a track and done held my own.”
2 Chainz, Larry and Alc hit the stage for the first time together during All-Star Weekend in June’s hometown of San Francisco, which led to Chainz proclaiming to the crowd, “This what a Grammy sound like.” When the dust settles, he expects the “Colossal” trio to be in the mix at next year’s Grammys for LIB.
“For me, I think it feels special,” Chainz adds. “It feels like something different than I put out into the world. That’s what gives me the confidence and the hope to think we’ll be suited and booted at the Grammys next year.”
Alchemist chimes in: “Every joint just kept getting better. I wanted to do a five-pack, and then it was clear once we did a few of them, it was like, ‘We would be cheating them if we only gave them five.’”
Check out the rest of our interview with the Life Is Beautiful threesome, as they go deep on “intelligent trapping,” today’s rap landscape, playing the album early for NBA star Kevin Durant and more.
When I pulled up to the San Francisco show for All-Star Weekend, Chainz, you said, “This [is] what a Grammy sound like.” Was that a goal for this project?
2 Chainz: I don’t think it’s ever like a goal.
Larry June: It ain’t no expectations. It’s just great music. This what a Grammy sound like. This what great music sound like — real organic.
The Alchemist: We play to win every time. I don’t think the winner wins a Grammy, but we’re competitive at the end of the day. This album checks a lot of boxes. We’re on the court, regardless with everybody else at the end of the day.
Alc, how was it for you meshing these styles right here?
The Alchemist: They had already mixed the drinks on a couple of other records. They had done some joints. To me, they sounded great together. Once we agreed to do it from the first joint we did, it was like, “Yup, this is gonna work.” It wasn’t even a question. Maybe on paper the styles is kinda different, but the content is not far off. For me, as a producer, it was fun because both of ’em were real loose with it. Like, “Yo, send the joints.” And they were smacking s–t out the park.
Larry, I feel like we’re in a genre that lusts over materialism and abundance — how do you think your approach cut through, to be more relatable?
Larry June: It’s like tapping into our real lifestyles with what we do. We don’t really think too much about it. We might talk our s–t about watches, cars and s–t here and there. We also give them the real. The things that could happen if this don’t work. You gotta put in work. You gotta give ’em a little bit of both, where it’s not so much money this, girl this — you gotta show ’em both sides and who you really are. I think that separates me and Chainz.
Chainz, did you feel creatively reinvigorated in a way getting out of your comfort zone or finding a different type of zone?
2 Chainz: I’m actually more comfortable rapping than doing trap music. For the most part, I think my peers in the industry knew what I could do, but I don’t think the fans knew what I could do. I feel like it gets overlooked because a n—a do be living a solitude life with his family, with his wife. I didn’t have to spin no opps block and I think n—as be having it f–ked up. And they have me f–ked up too. It was a good time to give the n—-a and have his campaign together. Been through the lifestyle and all that, but look where we are. It was refreshing for me, because a n—a can talk stupid and act stupid, but ain’t nothing like giving them that intelligent trapper.
The Alchemist: Sometimes you gotta come out of nowhere and just drop 60 or 70 on ’em, just to remind ’em. He been doing that. I knew. To me, it’s funny to see people catch up, but that’s what we did.
Larry June: That’s the rap game for you, though. They don’t pay attention to the real s–t until it’s right in their face.
2 Chainz: N—as get in denial and s–t.
Larry June: They get in denial. Come on, this n—a came on Kanye’s s–t and did stupid digits. What is you talking about?
2 Chainz: Every Ye verse I get on, I smack it. Don’t matter who. Let’s talk about it. Any Drake verse, I done smacked it. Eminem, smacked it. Kendrick, smacked it, Drizzy Drake, smacked it. Big Sean, smacked it. Tunechi, smacked it. All the good rappers with the good stuff, I like to dance with those guys as well.
Chainz, it felt like you were going by Toni now on the project. It felt intentionally done. Is this a new space in your career?
2 Chainz: Well, you know I’m a businessman as I speak about often and a lot of businesses rebrand themselves. For me, I look at some of the top guys in the industry like a Jay-Z/Hov or however names he got. You could look at Ye/Yeezy/Kanye. A lot of artists find ways to rebrand themselves without changing who they are. Toni comes from, we call cocaine Toni in the city of Atlanta. So my old [spot] at 5540, we were all Toni’s. Everybody was Toni. We would call each other Black Toni, Big Toni. That s–t just kinda stuck with me, from the n—as that used to hustle and hang out with me. When they see me, they be like, “What’s up, Toni?”
Larry, how was it performing in your own city during All-Star Weekend?
Larry June: It was great. Me and Chainz’ energy on stage is like we’ve been doing it for years. It was dope being able to be up there with him and show my city it’s possible. Everything’s natural. Me, Chainz and Alc, we laugh the whole time we’re kicking it. It felt like I been doing this s–t with this n—a for a long time. I don’t feel that way about a lot of people. Al will tell you, I don’t be in the studio doing s–t. I be on the bike, taking walks and s–t, f–king with my son. I do not pop up nowhere.
From everyone that meet him from my mom, to my dad and my close friends, they say the same thing: He just a real down-to-earth, solid dude. It just feel good. People are gonna talk about this album forever. I can tell you that for sure.
A record I wanted to get into was “Generation,” if you can talk about how that came together. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a record as far as taking responsibility for some of the vices that have plagued younger rappers.
2 Chainz: Yeah, it was a different track than the rest of the tracks or even tracks I normally hear from Al. He’ll tell you when I go to ’em I be wanting what they do real good. Al like, “I can do this s–t too.” I was like, “Okay.” Al would take a day or two to send the beat over. I already had some beats on him and I told my engineer, Nolan, “What we got on him?” I had already did a demo too it, but I knew I could do it harder if I locked in and wanted to make it one for the project.
The “Generation” idea came from, we’ve all been young before, and some of the youth thinking they started [all of it], and we the generation that put it in them. It was kinda one of them OGs callings. It was taking responsibility, but also some OG calling. You in the videos with double-cups, you know how many times [we done that]? I don’t ever wanna show my guns, but do you know how many guns I have? Bruh, you ain’t the only one. We just smarter now. That was my approach for the record.
The Alchemist: I think it was left open to interpretation the way I took it. That’s why it was so dope to me. It could go either way. It could be like, “My bad.” Or could’ve been like, “Yeah, motherf–ker, we the ones that did this.” It’s left for you to interpret, and that’s the dopest art to me. That’s why I thought it was fresh. That’s why we used the line before where the lady was talking to set it up.
Larry June: I think it shows a lot of growth too. Seeing someone that comes from that generation and overcame all that and doing way better. Owning multiple businesses and teaching the youth something else. When you young, you go through s–t and I feel like when you make it out the streets that’s a real gangsta. When you survive all that s–t and tell your kids all those stories, “We the generation. We was the one out there. Y’all new n—as on the internet. We was really moving.” When you living proof you still out here, and I’m being a father, opening up these businesses. It was still fun too.
Was there anything that you surprised each other with that you didn’t know about each other before while finishing the album or records were coming in?
Larry June: For me, it’s seeing how humble Chainz is. He’s really outside and showing up, no matter how big he is. He’s pulling up anywhere. It just felt like me. I’m the same way… when you see me, I’m the same person that you met 20 years ago type s–t. It was dope meeting him, how he’s so down-to-earth. Everybody say the same s–t.
The Alchemist: For me, I got a lot of people I work with all the time. This was really me and Chainz’ first time getting to put records together. For me, it’s so dope [to see] his pockets he rhymes in, where he rhymes his words, his punchlines are completely unique to any artist I’ve ever worked with. It was fun to me, because it was a whole different sauce. Even how he came in on “Epiphany.” He was rapping in different ways [than anyone who’s] ever approached my production. Chainz kind of led the pack, inspiring both of us to step it up. Larry was going crazy, doing s–t I never seen him do. Steel sharpens steel. The respect was there. It’s fun to work with someone who’s a perfectionist on that level.
2 Chainz: With Larry, I was already a fan, and try to put people on Larry. I remember being in Chicago or some s–t, and I ran into Cedric the Entertainer, and I ran into other comedians outside and they were smoking, [asking me] “Ay, what you listening to, 2 Chainz?” I told them, “Y’all need to get on Larry.” I made Cedric the Entertainer go [check that out]. My DJ put me on [Larry] and Preemo.
I’ll be in Miami in the club, and a n—a get tired of hearing the same s–t. Most DJs — anybody can DJ these days. They just playing a playlist. Dealing with Larry, and knowing how he move with the infrastructure — he got a great f–king team. A n—a like us just need people on the team that play their role real good and we could be the biggest and the best. We got the ambition. I saw that he got some great guys around him.
Al is so legendary. Al’s learning as I go. There be songs I been knew, but didn’t know Al had something to do with it. I meet all type of people. I just had a meeting in L.A. last week, and they mentioned the first rap group you been in. N—as like, “I went to school with Alc.” You know about his first rap group? So f–king legendary, man. I just love that s–t, man.
I gave [Kevin Durant] the album first. He came to Atlanta and I took him to my club. I told him, “I’m doing an album with Larry and Alchemist.” This boy go straight on, “That boy Alc hard, boy. You heard ’em rap. White boy!” This is KD. He gives me a whole run down — Beverly Hills, California. A whole rundown. But I ask Al, if you think you a East Coast or West Coast producer. This n—a KD ran that down. “He really like L.A. — he going crazy on me.” That was really cool to be a part of. A walking legend who’s still on his humble s–t and trying to grow and all that. This project was for maturity. It sounds like some mature s–t, but even the process and the people involved. Motivational s–t.
Alc, for you coming off “Meet the Grahams” and this project, do you feel like the spotlight’s been a little different on you?
2 Chainz: I told that n—a he gonna be pop, f–king with me. He gonna be on Taylor Swift’s new s–t with Travis Kelce in the video. Al’s gonna be doing the beat on Taylor’s new s–t. He out of here.
The Alchemist: My new manager is Bantonio, if you need to call me. I’m super blessed, and thankful for even having people’s attention. There’s a million people out there getting busy. I’m tied in with the greats. I keep my head down and stay cooking. I’m on the floor. Everyone who knows me, 7:30 in the morning, I’m right here making the beat. I’m still in it and I could have this reach. If I didn’t have access to people like Chainz, Larry and all my other friends, I would just be a guy with beats.
I feel blessed to have my friends and still have juice. I rush to the studio after the kids get up and go to school. I wanna keep the ball rolling. That’s how this album came about. I’m lucky to have good friends, and the results are projects like Life Is Beautiful.
What would you say your message to the rap game is with this project?
Larry June: Be yourself, man. Stay healthy. Stand on business, man. We talking real s–t that wasn’t necessarily cool to rap about. We talking about dropping our kids off at school and drinking a smoothie. And still hit the trap and bust dow if we need to. I hope this can help the next generation not feel like they have to be stuck in a box and one particular way. Do them. I think me and Chainz finna keep going. Life Is Beautiful. Just waking up every day, and being able to do it. No matter what you’re going through in life.
2 Chainz: Stay true, stay organic. We definitely gonna keep going. It feels good to have the people. I don’t even follow a lot of blogs, but this s–t is so [Kendrick Lamar] and Drake-driven. These n—as ain’t even said nothing. Every day it’s bloggers talking and yelling like we ain’t put out some real smoke and fire. “He should do that” — man you n—as sound like d–k smoking a– n—-s. We just put a project that the people [are championing]. Not no n—a getting paid to sit and talk to the chat or whatever them f–k them lame a– n—-s got going on. We got real people. This s–t affecting somebody’s life different. Hoe s–t with these bots, and I’m learning every day that they paying n—as to stream all these n—as. D–k smoking a— n—-s. We gonna see ’em.
Not so much the bloggers — y’all keep blogging, that’s how you get paid to feed your family. But as far as the artists, who I’m not calling d–k smokers, we gonna see them n—-s at the Grammys, because we put our heart into something that we really love.
Usher is set to deliver the keynote address at Emory University’s 180th commencement this spring when the R&B legend takes the podium at the graduation on May 12. During the ceremony, Usher will also receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Emory University. “I have spent my life following my spark — my […]
As might be expected from a project titled Nothing with a two-part “Hell Suite,” the third album from revered psych-dance outfit Darkside deals with some heavy themes. But, as guitarist Dave Harrington explains, “you can at once have the feeling of ‘we’re living in hell’ – and the funky catharsis of music.”
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Such is the dichotomy that drives Darkside’s first album in four years, a record that mirrors the uneasy state of the world today, while responding to it with some of the most vibrant material of the group’s decade-plus career.
Four years ago, Darkside returned with Spiral, its second album, and first since its seminal 2013 debut, Psychic. Now, propelled by the expansion from duo to trio with the addition of drummer Tlacael Esparza, the group is back again, in just half the time – and will embark on its first North American tour in a decade this March.
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Harrington and Jaar formed Darkside in the early ’10s, and have known Esparza for about that long: For years, Esparza played around Brooklyn in various bands led by Harrington, and in 2014, he toured Mexico with Jaar. But it was a series of gigs in Amsterdam, years later in October 2019, that catalyzed Darkside’s eventual growth into a trio. Harrington, Jaar, Esparza and the saxophonist Will Epstein had convened in the Netherlands for an all-improv residency as Bladerunner and, Esparza says, “every night, we would talk about shapes and sounds and colors and ideas, and then we’d go and play something.”
While Spiral wouldn’t be released until summer 2021, it was already mostly completed by those Dutch shows – but when Harrington and Jaar began contemplating what came after for Darkside, in the studio or on the road, it was natural to give Esparza a call. In September 2022, almost exactly eight years since Darkside had played a gig, it returned to the stage, now with Esparza in tow, with two L.A. shows — which it followed with a 2023 European tour. To introduce its new lineup to fans who hadn’t caught those concerts, Darkside released Live in Spiral House, a collection culled from summer 2022 rehearsal sessions, in 2023.
“Tlacael joining Darkside changed the band’s DNA completely,” Jaar tells Billboard by email. “Playing with him was incredibly inspiring and exciting, and we almost immediately got the idea to make the next record by applying what we learned at Spiral House in L.A. and during the first tour we did as a trio in Europe in 2023.”
With “Tlacael in the mix, we just hit a stride,” Harrington says. “We just started working on [Nothing] because we were on tour and we had some days off, and rather than sit around or go to the museum or something, we set up camp in a recording studio. We love making music together, and when we had the opportunity for the three of us to be in the same place at the same time, we jumped at the opportunity to keep making music.”
But with its members spread across the globe – Harrington in L.A., Esparza in New York, and Jaar overseas in London – those fortuitous alignments of time and place weren’t particularly common. Nothing‘s sessions totaled about three weeks, but took place over about a year, in Paris and Los Angeles. But it’s the band’s “unconventional ways,” Harrington says, that drive it creatively.
While other groups might hole up at a studio for weeks or months at a time when making an album, Darkside’s process is “one of always having this time to go back to our own musical worlds, develop things, get curious about new things and then show up again as a band,” says Harrington, calling that “certainly the story of this record, and maybe the story of all three records.”
With Nothing, Jaar and Harrington both applied the extra-Darkside projects they pursued after Spiral. In 2023, Jaar released Intiha, an abstract collaboration with the composer Ali Sethi, and last year, the Chilean-American producer released Piedras 1 & 2, two ambitious LPs tackling Chilean history and Palestinian erasure. Meanwhile, in 2021, Harrington – who begins our Zoom call noodling on a trumpet in his studio, before revealing his “SCARLET > FIRE” sweatshirt, a reference to a famed Grateful Dead song pairing – formed the mildly meta jam band Taper’s Choice with bassist Alex Bleeker (Real Estate), drummer Chris Tomson (Vampire Weekend) and keyboardist Zach Tenorio (Arc Iris). Taper’s Choice has toured regularly since, and jam luminaries like Phish’s Mike Gordon and ’60s Dead member Tom Constanten have sat in with them.
It follows, then, that on Nothing, Darkside has increased both its lyrical depth and jam quotient. At one point in our conversation, Esparza praises a particularly sunny moment in album standout “Are You Tired? (Keep On Singing)” as “the most Jerry [Garcia] part of the record,” and when previewing Darkside’s upcoming shows, Harrington says its 2013 track “Freak, Go Home” has become “almost our ‘Dark Star,’” referencing the song the Grateful Dead would often expand well over the half-hour mark. “Sometimes, when we’re really on one, it’ll turn into a 30- or 40-minute excursion,” he says with excitement. “When we play it live, it barely sounds like the riff – I mean, just barely.”
The deep history between Darkside’s three members, not to mention some of their musical inspirations – Harrington cites his and Esparza’s shared affinity for the jazz drummer Brian Blade and legendary kraut-rockers Can – made its turn toward jamming more or less inevitable. Knowing each other for so long, “you’re used to talking, you’re used to hanging out, you know what they like to eat – and then you go to play music and that’s all kind of in there,” Harrington says. (The philosophy extends to Darkside’s lighting director, who Esparza says “is an improviser as well” and responds to the band in real-time.)
But despite Darkside’s increasingly improvisational bent, Nothing is also another step forward for Jaar’s singing and lyricism – although, he notes, “I’m not a singer. Nor a lyricist, strictly speaking. I’m first and foremost a music producer.” In Darkside sessions, “The vocal elements arrive as drum parts or guitar riffs do and they are often collaged and worked on like we work on percussion. That being said, sometimes, rarely, an inspiration comes and I’ll play the part of singer, but it always involves a lot of acting, it’s a character.”
On Nothing, where Jaar ends and this character begins is ambiguous – but the album’s bold declarations, from “I did it for the time of my life and the thrill! I did it for the money! I did it for the rush!” (“SNC”) to “Look at the window, it’s hell out there” (“Hell Suite (Part II)”) are more categorical.
“We live in hell,” Esparza says as he surveys the album’s themes, “but we can experience the joy and serenity and happiness of being with our loved ones and living life. I think that that’s felt throughout the record.”
“The U.S.A. is the single most dangerous country in the history of this planet, and it’s currently led by the head honcho of a global white supremacist terror ring,” Jaar warns. But, he adds, “this hellish landscape has been made by human hands, and so it can be unmade by human hands too. If I have optimism, it’s in that.”
JENNIE knows fans can hardly wait one more week for her debut solo album, Ruby, so she’s tiding them over with a sampler video posted Thursday (Feb. 27) on her socials. Featuring the BLACKPINK band member starring in multiple different visual concepts ranging from rosy-soft floral to powerful queenlike edginess, the trailer gives brief, out-of-order […]
Kip Moore is gearing up for a year filled with new beginnings, including the launch of two tours, a fresh label home at Virgin Music Group, and the release of his sixth studio album, Solitary Tracks, out Friday (Feb. 28).
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In preparation, Moore has taken his annual trip to rejuvenate in Maui, a place he’s found respite since 2014. “I’ll come out here to surf for a month or so and relax,” Moore tells Billboard via phone.
Just over a decade ago, Moore broke through with his debut hit, “Something ‘Bout a Truck,” which spent two weeks atop Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. He would earn four more Country Airplay top 5 hits, including “More Girls Like You” and “Last Shot.” Since then, Moore has veered increasingly creative with his sound and projects, refining the grizzled, heartland rock sound that has become part of his signature creative palette.
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After Moore parted ways with UMG imprint MCA Nashville in 2024, he says he recorded the first nine songs on the album independently. Solitary Tracks was intended to encompass just 13 songs, but given the lack of time constraints, he kept creating and recording — resulting in a 23-song span, split over four parts, encompassing rock (“Live Here to Work,” “Love and War”), pared-back singer-songwriter tracks (“Forever is a Lie”), muscular folk-rock (“Learning as I Go”) and old-school country (“Alley Cat”). Throughout, he touches on themes of introspection, maturity, romance, isolation, cherishing freedom and embracing life shifts.
Moore co-produced the album with The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, with additional production by Oscar Charles and Jay Joyce. Moore has been insistent on letting the music itself signal when to embark on an album cycle.
“I wrote ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Livin’ Side’ back-to-back. I write every morning, but I don’t know I’m in an album cycle until something clicks. When I wrote those two songs within 24 hours of each other, I knew I had something to say. I compiled these songs and I had four months left to turn it in,” he says. “They were like, ‘You don’t have to turn an album in until October,’ so I kept writing. So, with sides C and D, all the extra songs just became this eclectic mix. It’s kind of all over the place, and that’s what I like about it.”“Live Here to Work” — with its opening anthem of a lyric, “F–k that, I don’t live here to work” –feels like a modern version of the 1977 Johnny Paycheck hit “Take This Job and Shove It.”
“It’s a lot of fun to play at shows, I can tell you that much. I always feel a little bad if I see a couple of young kids in the crowd, but I just step on the gas anyway,” Moore says, noting that the song was inspired by overhearing the grumblings of some construction workers near his home. “One of them said, ‘The hell with that. I don’t live here to work,’ and I thought, ‘Well, f–k, we’ll be a little more emphatic. I ended up writing around that. I’d done those kinds of constructions jobs before.”
Moore co-wrote nearly every song on the album, with the exception of the moody, swaggering “Bad Spot,” a solo write from Casey Beathard, who also contributed to seven other songs on Solitary Tracks.
“It felt like everything I wanted to say at that particular time in my life, and it felt so cohesive, and I loved the hook,” Moore says. “We wrote a lot [of songs] at my house on the East Coast, and he’s never the type of guy who’s going to try to push his own music on you — but I asked if he had written anything he would want me to hear, and he suggested ‘Bad Spot.’ It was automatic for me. It was too good of a song not to record.”
Back in mid-2017, for his third album Slowheart, Moore pledged to help songwriters, many of whom have been severely hurt by the switch from an album to a singles and streaming economy, by paying an annual bonus to writers who contributed songs to his albums that weren’t selected as radio singles. He is considering doing that again with this project.
“I’ve been thinking about going back to it on this record,” Moore says. “When I did that the first time around, my hope was that it would create a little trickle effect with other artists, but that’s not what happened. My whole hope was if we were all kind of tipping out these songwriters, that if someone has a cut with me and a cut with a Keith Urban or another artist, there’s three artists all tipping him $5,000—well, $15,000 ends up being a big difference in yearly income.”
He adds, “I realized [that] because the streaming pay is so f–ked, what it’s done is it’s made writers not just focus on writing the best song that day; it’s made writers only thing about a single for radio, and that’s detrimental to the writing process. If they’re doing the right thing and paying these songwriters the right way, the songs will only get better. But I don’t see that happening without it just becoming a law in Congress driving that force. I can’t see anybody letting go of their lion’s share.”
Compounding the problem is hit songs sounding homogenous, as many new artists chase a sound similar to massive hitmakers such as Zach Bryan’s roots-rock sound, or Morgan Wallen’s brand of pop-country.
“That’s just a phenomenon on its own, and I also knew it would create 10,000 Zach Bryan wannabes,” Moore says. “With anything that pops, you get too many artists [following] that don’t know who they are to begin with. I mean, right now, you’ve got four Morgan Wallens on the radio,” he says. “It waters down the format. Nobody’s going to do it better than Morgan Wallen, so it’s all going to be 2.0, but the crazy thing is they get rewarded and get tons of airplay. Back in the ‘80s, I can’t imagine there being someone that sounded just like Tom Petty [on the radio] at the height of Tom Petty, or someone sounding like Bruce Springsteen or Prince at the height of their careers. Variety has always been key. I love that Zach Top has popped, but I don’t want to hear 10 other clones trying to sound like Zach Top.”
The Georgia native has been particularly successful in perhaps an even more challenging endeavor: building up an international fanbase. That focus on international markets sparked when he saw how audiences reacted to his Up All Night album when he played the UK country music festival C2C in 2015.
“I was the opening act and we saw in two markets where we had the highest merch and CD sales,” he recalls. “You have to keep engaging it. Last year, we did two shows in Germany. This year, we’re doing three. We’re doing two new markets. And it’s tough because it costs so much to go over there, but it’s worth it in the long run.”
Moore has toured New Zealand and the Netherlands, while Wimpie van der Sandt, CEO of Bok Radio, helped bring Moore’s music to South Africa, producing the inaugural Cape Town Country Music Festival, held in October, which Moore co-headlined with Zac Brown Band. Moore’s dedication to international touring earned him the Country Music Association’s 2024 international artist achievement award. Moore still has his sights set on performing in markets including Brazil, Mexico and Spain.
Moore says that focus on delivering internationally was a key reason he chose to align with Virgin Music Group, rather than sign with another Nashville-based label. Though labels came calling immediately after he left MCA Nashville, he spent five months making his decision.
“The whole time I wanted to at least get a distributor, because I don’t want to fool with that—that’s a headache, and even almost every independent artist has a label doing distribution,” he says. “So I knew I wanted to team up with a label, but I needed the right thing.
“[I needed] someone who understood the international capacity, and that is where Virgin came in,” he continues. “They had foot soldiers all over the place, so they wanted to pour gas on the international thing — which, the Nashville labels are not as focused on that.”
This spring, Moore will launch the Solitary Tracks World Tour, which will visit Sweden, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the U.K. In June, he’ll return stateside to team with longtime friend, surfing buddy and fellow musician Billy Currington for a run of U.S. shows in states including Florida, California, Virginia and Texas.
“He comes to Maui around the same time I do, and we’ve surfed together for several years,” Moore says. “Billy and I are both very solitary walkers through this life, and I think we share a bit of a kindred spirit. Billy was one of the first people to take me on tour when the Up All Night record came out and I did a tour with him in 2012 or so. I still to this day say he has one of the purest country voices in the world. When he’s doing pure country music, there ain’t a whole lot of people that do it better than him.”
Back in 2011 Katy Perry mused about finding a “futuristic lover” with “different DNA” on the song “E.T.” The pop star might finally get her chance to have an intergalactic encounter when she suits up with an all-female crew for the next civilian space flight on Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket.
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The company announced on Thursday (Feb. 27) that its 11th human space flight, NS-31, will blast off into the cosmos this spring with a six-person team that will also feature CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, as well as Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez.
According to a release, Sanchez, an author, licensed helicopter pilot and Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, will lead the team of explorers “on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come.”
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Perry is gearing up for her global Lifetimes tour, which is slated to kick off on April 23 in Mexico City. At press time it was unknown if the Blue Origin flight will take place before that extensive outing hits the road, keeping the pop star on stages in Mexico, North America, Australia and Europe through a Nov. 11 gig in Madrid. It was also unknown at press time how much prep the civilian astronauts will have to go through to prepare for the flight.
Blue Origin said that the NS-31 crew will also host former NASA rocket scientist, global STEM advocate and Bahamian-American aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, as well as bioastronautics research scientist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen — the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman astronaut — and Kerianne Flynn, entrepreneur and producer of the films This Changes Everything and 2024’s LILLY, which told the story of fair-pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter.
Though at press time Perry did not appear to have commented on her impending trip to space on her socials, King, 70, announced her blast off on CBS Mornings, telling viewers, “I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time. It’s like how I felt about to deliver a baby… I thought I wanted to open myself up to new adventures and step out of my comfort zone.” The TV presenter who has long joked about her fascination with space flight, also noted that she’d consulted with her two adult children and lifelong bestie and business partner Oprah Winfrey before signing up for the flight.
“Once Kirby and Will and Oprah was fine with it, I was fine,” King said. “I thought Oprah would say no, no. She said, ‘I think if you don’t do it, when they all come back and you had the opportunity to do it, you will be kicking yourself.’ She’s right.”
To date, Blue Origin’s human flight program has sent 52 people above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles above Earth on its phallus-shaped rockets, with crews that have included Star Trek star William Shatner, as well as company founder Bezos and his brother, Mark Bezos.
The spring flight will be host the first all-female crew since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963.
See the CBS announcement below.
The 37th annual Premio Lo Nuestro ceremony, which aired Feb. 20, logged a record 543 million engagements across television, social, digital and ViX, according to TelevisaUnivision. The three-hour show (from 8-11 p.m. ET) reached 4.2 million total viewers across Univision, UniMás, and Galavisión, and delivered year-over-year audience growth among total viewers (+3% to 2.1 million).
Furthermore, this year’s Premio Lo Nuestro — hosted by Thalia, Laura Pausini and Alejandra Espinoza — was the No. 1 program on broadcast television in primetime with more adult (ages 18-34) viewers than the primetime line-ups on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The CW. It also finished as the highest-rated program on all of television during the entire day with U.S. Hispanics across all key demographics, according to the Nielsen ratings report.
On social media, Premio Lo Nuestro logged 4.8 million total interactions across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube combined, making it the No. 1 most social program of the entire day, regardless of language, for the 9th straight year.
With performances by Thalia, Natti Natasha, Xavi, Will Smith, Marc Anthony, among many others, the night also included a special tribute to the late Paquita la del Barrio, who died days before the awards show. La India, Alejandro Fernández and Manuel Alejandro all received special honors throughout the night.
Shakira was the top winner taking home six trophies, including album of the year for Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran and pop female artist of the year. The Colombian star was closely followed by Carín León, who took home five awards, and Karol G and Camilo, each with four. See the complete list of winners here.
In 2025, artists from the indie and pop worlds collaborate and co-mingle regularly enough that it’s almost hard to remember a time when it was ever really that novel. But earlier this century, indie and pop were still isolated enough that in 2009, when Solange took her sister Beyoncé and Bey’s husband Jay-Z to a […]
Sabrina Carpenter‘s tour just got less short and a lot sweeter. On Thursday (Feb. 27), the pop star announced that she’s circling back to North America for a slew of extra dates on her ongoing Short n’ Sweet trek, kicking off this fall. In an Instagram post sharing the new shows, Carpenter wrote, “you asked […]