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Carole King is perhaps one of the most famous Taylor Swift fans in the world, and the iconic singer-songwriter joined the kickoff call for the Swifties for Kamala coalition on Tuesday night (Aug. 27).
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“I am a Swiftie, and Taylor and I are actually friends. We have had conversations backstage and I see her as sort of my musical and songwriting granddaughter. We have a lovely relationship, and I’m so proud of her,” King told the thousands of listeners who tuned into the livestream, noting that her favorite song of Swift’s is “Shake It Off” from 1989.
“I’m excited about Kamala, because so many people are excited about Kamala, and I have met her. I admire her and the stars lined up, and Joe Biden did a really gracious, hard thing to do, and I’m so proud of him,” King continued. “But this is about you. I know you have your ways of communicating and social networking and organizing.”
King then encouraged Swifties to become in-person volunteers, and take part in door knocking and phone calling to rally voters. “I’ve been a political activist years. I’ve been a caller, I’ve been a door knocker, even as a famous person,” she explained, before giving the livestream tips on how to be a good door knocker. “I’m telling you all this because if any of you are thinking of volunteering to be door knockers or phone callers, but you’re a little nervous about what you might say, please believe me, you will be working with an organizer who will give you steps,” she said. “Don’t be afraid, because there is nothing to lose and everything to gain. […] There is too much at stake.”
To conclude, King shared that because Swift helped induct her into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 by performing the legend’s classic, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” she will return the favor. She then delivered a “surprise song” for the Swifties for Kamala by briefly singing the chorus of “Shake It Off.” “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/ And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate/ Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake/ I shake it off, I shake it off,” she mused.
Swift has yet to endorse anyone in the 2024 presidential race between Trump and Harris. She is not affiliated with the group — which describes themselves as a “coalition of Swifties ready to mobilize Taylor Swift fans to help get Democratic candidates elected up and down the ballot” — but Swifties for Kamala have noted that the “I Can Do It With the Broken Heart” singer is “always welcome to show up to our party.”
Elsewhere in the Swifties for Kamala kickoff event, Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke to the group, noting that her two favorite Taylor Swift songs are “Karma” and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) (10 Minute Version).” “What I love best about Swifties, you are resilient and you know how to take on bullies,” the politician explained. “You know how to be your most authentic, most joyful selves. You come together hand-to-hand, friendship bracelets on your wrists and you overcome pretty much anything that life throws at you. The Kamala Harris campaign is standing up for what’s right in the face of bullies like Donald Trump.”
She continued, “With Kamala Harris, it’s all very different. Under a Kamala Harris presidency, our future is bright. Kamala will sign abortion protections into law. She’ll take on big corporations that are screwing you over. I’m looking at you Ticketmaster on this one, and she will help level the playing field for all people. So here’s the deal. We’ve got 70 days until the election, and I’m just going to be blunt, it is going to be a tough fight ahead. We have a lot to do, and dang, there are only 24 hours in a day, or 144 ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)’s. But here’s the thing, just like you’ve done every time before, we will push this boulder up the hill, and we will win in November. So with that, I am looking forward to the era of the first woman president. So please get in the fight, knock on doors, make phone calls, and let’s elect Kamala Harris the next President of the United States. Swifties, you can get this done.”
Watch the full Swifties for Kamala kickoff call below.
“Die With a Smile,” which enters the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 3 this week, is the 14th collaboration involving Lady Gaga and/or Bruno Mars to reach the top 10 on Billboard’s flagship singles chart. The honor roll of their past collabs includes an Oscar winner for best original song (“Shallow” by Gaga & Bradley […]
Representation matters, and Chrissy Teigen got to see that firsthand when her eight-year-old daughter, Luna, met Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the White House this summer. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “I’m still glowing from this moment when my Luna (in her adorable […]
Flau’jae [Johnson], who’s about to start her junior season as an LSU Tiger and currently has the most lucrative NIL deals in women’s college basketball, just dropped a video with both her head coach and Lil Wayne. If you told us 10 years ago that a current college basketball player would be doing songs with Weezy and had her coach all up in her music videos, we’d call you crazy, but that’s the landscape for today’s NCAA athlete.
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Directed by Terrius Mykel, the video starts off with LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey drawing up a play for Flau’jae and her LSU teammates in a huddle. She proceeds to go off and even shouts out her pops, late rapper Camoflauge while holding her 2023 National Championship trophy as Wayne stands next to her. “And I just won a natty, did it for my daddy/ They seein’ my face, man, I’m in the paper/ Man, I’m one of them ones, you see thе trophy/ You don’t gotta respond if you really know me,” she raps.
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The track appeared on her Best of Both Worlds EP that she released earlier this month in June and she greatly appreciated that Wayne, her teammates, and her coach were able to show up for the video. In a press release, she had nice things to say about them all.
Of Wayne, she said:“Working with Lil Wayne on the ‘Came Out A Beast’ video was a dream come true. He’s a legend in the game, and being able to collaborate with him on this track was surreal. The energy on set was incredible, and we both brought that fire to the video. This is just the beginning, and I’m excited for everyone to see what we’ve created.”
Of her LSU women’s basketball teammates, she said:“Having my teammates in the ‘Came Out A Beast’ video was a real moment for me. We’re all grinding together on and off the court, so bringing them into this part of my life felt natural. It’s cool to show that connection in a different way, outside of basketball. I’m really thankful they were a part of this moment with me.”
Of her head coach Kim Mulke, she said:“Having Coach Mulkey in the ‘Came Out A Beast’ video was special. She’s always been in my corner, both on and off the court, pushing me to be my best. Her support means everything to me, so it was amazing to have her be part of this moment. It just shows how much she believes in all of us, not just as players, but as individuals with our own dreams.”
Flau’jae can make the case that she’s the best athlete rapper out right now.
Lizzo is feeling good as hell about her mental health progress.
In an Instagram post Tuesday (Aug. 27), the 36-year-old hitmaker shared a video comparing a three-year-old clip of herself with what she looks like now. “I wasn’t gonna post this on IG but 2021 me would be soooo proud of 2024 me,” she wrote in her caption.
“And I’m NOT only talking about my body,” Lizzo continued. “If yall only KNEWWWW what I’ve done for my mental & emotional health in the last year…”
The “About Damn Time” musician went on to give fans a small teaser: “wheeeew don’t worry imma write a album about it.”
The post comes two days after Lizzo revealed that she’s taking a “gap year.” “Protecting my peace,” she added at the time, sharing a video of herself standing on a porch, serenely feeling rain fall on her skin.
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With that in mind, fans will likely have to be patient while waiting for the star’s next album, which will follow 2022’s Special. The project reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the Billboard Hot 100-topping hit “About Damn Time,” which won record of the year at the 2023 Grammys.
A few months after that, three of the musician’s former tour dancers filed a lawsuit against her, alleging sexual misconduct and hostile work conditions. Lizzo denied the accusations, calling them “sensationalized stories,” and the lawsuit was put on hold in March pending appeals.
The Yitty founder has since been open about struggling with her mental health, at one point telling fans that she was quitting. “I’m constantly up against lies being told about me for clout & views… being the butt of the joke every single time because of how I look… my character being picked apart by people who don’t know me and disrespecting my name,” she added in March. “I didn’t sign up for this s— — I QUIT.”
She later clarified that she only meant she was quitting “giving any negative energy attention,” and by May, things seemed to be looking up. “I’m the happiest I’ve been in 10 months,” Lizzo wrote on Instagram. “The strange thing about depression is you don’t know you’re in it until you’re out of it. I’m definitely not all the way as carefree as I used to be. But the dark cloud that followed me every day is finally clearing up. My smile reaches my eyes again and that’s a win.”
See Lizzo’s post below.
Five-time Country Airplay No. 1 hitmaker Scotty McCreery was one song into his set at the Colorado State Fair at the Big R Arena in Pueblo, Colo., over the weekend when he had to stop his set to have an unruly attendee removed from the crowd. McCreery was performing “It Matters to Her” when he […]
“Drugs You Should Try It” has long been a fan favorite of Travis Scott followers, and the Days Before Rodeo gem finally has an official music video more than a decade after its original 2014 release. La Flame released the trippy “Drugs You Should Try It” visual on Tuesday (Aug. 18) after DBR came to […]
When Dave Stewart released his autobiographical album Ebony McQueen back in 2022, he promised there would be more to the story — like, a story, told on film. Now it’s lights, camera, action time.
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Under the auspices of his Dave Stewart Entertainment, the Eurythmics co-founder has announced an early 2025 production start for the Ebony McQueen film, which will be set and filmed in Stewart’s hometown of Sunderland in northeast England. It will be directed by BAFTA Award winner Shekhar Kapur (2022’s What’s Love Got to Do With It?, 1998’s Elizabeth) from a script written by Stewart, Lorne Campbell, Selma Dimitrijevic and Peter Souter. It stars Sharon D. Clarke — who was also part of Stewart’s Ghost the Musical, in the title role — and Sunderland singer-songwriter Tom A. Smith as the aspiring musician guided by the spectral McQueen’s presence.
“The kernel of this idea I had very early on in (the album), and it stayed in my head,” Stewart tells Billboard via Zoom from his home studio in Nashville. “As I was writing the songs there were all these concepts or ideas or imaginings. On the album, obviously it’s me singing all the songs but in the film, it’ll be the character, and I always had that in my head.”
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The Ebony McQueen story comes directly out of Stewart’s youth, from when he was an aspiring football (soccer here in the States) player laid low by a broken knee. The silver lining, and his savior, was music.
“It’s a time in my life when it was a total disaster,” Stewart recalls. “My mum had left my dad and he was depressed and my brother had gone away from college and I was alone with my broken knee. And this amazing intervention happened where a postman came with a box from my older cousin in Memphis…with two pairs of corduroy jeans and these blues albums — Robert Johnson, people like that. I had never listened to music but I was so bored and fed up, and my dad had made a little homemade record player in his workshop. So I put (the records) on and it was one of those boom! moments where in one hour everything went from gloom and doom to ‘What the hell is this?!’ How do I do this?!’ I never looked back.”
Ebony McQueen isn’t Stewart’s first foray into film. He’d directed music videos for Eurythmics and others and made his feature directorial debut with the black comedy Honest in 2000. He won a Golden Globe Award in 2005 for “Old Habits Die Hard,” a collaboration with Mick Jagger, for the Alfie remake. Prior to all that, and more on-point, he was a principle figure in producing the 1991 documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, which is also at the heart of his desire to make Ebony McQueen.
“It was a very slow process,” Stewart says of the project’s gestation. “During Covid I had quite a bit of time to develop and think about the whole thing, and it became more and more like a movie than something for the stage.” Co-producer David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love, The Father) is a BAFTA and Academy Award winner (and also from Sunderland), while Stewart met director Kapur during 1994 in India, when they had neighboring hotel rooms and Kapur heard Stewart working on music through the walls.
“We got on like a house on fire then,” Stewart says, “and he invited me and my wife to a screening of Elizabeth, so I met him again then. Twenty-odd years later we’re suddenly doing this movie together. So it started to become like a great, very small group of people rather than sitting in a room with loads of writers at Paramount or somewhere, and some executives chipping in. This is a very homemade, indie group of people who all have the same feeling about how this should be.”
Stewart has no plans to appear in Ebony McQueen himself, not even in a cameo à la Alfred Hitchcock or Stan Lee. “It’s a very short snapshot of a period in my teenage life, probably six months, and it stays in that world so there’s no need to have me, now, in it,” he notes. He is, however, writing new music for the production, including score music with A.R. Rahman — who was a bandmate in the short-lived SuperHeavy project with Jagger, Joss Stone and Damian Marley — as well as some fresh songs.
“As the script develops and changes, you need bits of songs and melodies to fit this scene or in that spot,” Stewart says. “I love creating these melodies that can also fit in this other song later on, because that’s where you write something where the worlds are colliding and coming together. So you can have a theme for Sunderland on the river but you can also use it for a character. It’s a tool that can help tell the story.”
Firm dates as well as distribution plans are still being worked out for Ebony McQueen, while Stewart remains involved in other projects; he co-produced Daryl Hall’s latest album, D, and has toured since 2023 with a Eurythmics songbook show featuring an all-female band. Who To Love, a multimedia collaboration with Italy’s Mokadelic and actress Greta Scarano, premiered at the Rome Festival last October, and he’s been busy with Artificial Intelligence experiments in the recording studio.
“I’m getting at this amazing stage of my life where I’m not winding down. I’m winding up into a world where it’s going to be more and more adventurous with AI and things you can do now with sound and light and…sound and vision, as Bowie would say,” Stewart notes. “You can do incredible things now, in all sorts of venues. I know a lot of people are going nuts about AI, for valid reasons, but it’s not like people can make it go away. I remember when drum machines came out and there was an uproar from the musicians’ union — and drummers — and now it’s just part of everything. Or when the labels were all panicking about the Internet. It doesn’t matter how hard you try and resist it; once it’s already there it’s there, and it’s just something you have to work with — and hopefully for the better.”
Carole King is officially joining the Swifties for Kamala kickoff call, according to event organizers.
“We wouldn’t be Swifties for Kamala without Midnights Mayhem,” political director April Glick Pulito wrote in an email to attendees, according to Variety. “With that… We are so incredibly excited to announce our special, surprise guest 4x Grammy winner, singer-songwriter and a Swiftie for Kamala… Carole King!”
The call will take place on Tuesday night (Aug. 27) at 7 p.m. ET. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Ed Markey; Rep. Chris Deluzio and Rep. Becca Balint; North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton; and Swifties for Kamala team members Irene Kim, Emerald Medrano, Annie Wu Henry, April Glick Pulito, Emma Coleman and Lexa Hayes are all set to speak at the kickoff event.
While Taylor Swift herself is not affiliated with the group — which describes themselves as a “coalition of Swifties ready to mobilize Taylor Swift fans to help get Democratic candidates elected up and down the ballot” — they note that the “I Can Do It With the Broken Heart” singer is “always welcome to show up to our party.”
Swift has yet to endorse anyone in the 2024 presidential race between Trump and Harris. She endorsed Biden in 2020, and also took aim at Trump during the George Floyd protests that same year, slamming Trump’s response to the unrest.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’???” Swift wrote in reference to a comment from Trump that many took as a potential threat to protesters following the killing of unarmed Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. “We will vote you out in November.”
Meanwhile, many other musicians have stepped up to the plate to endorse Harris, including Megan Thee Stallion, John Legend, Pink and Stevie Wonder — each of whom has performed at various campaign events — as well as Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, Demi Lovato, Quavo, Bon Iver, Barbra Streisand and more.
Post Malone donned a cowboy hat and dominated the charts: on this week’s Billboard 200 (dated Aug. 31), new album F-1 Trillion blasts in at No. 1 with 250,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 22, according to Luminate. F-1 Trillion marks Post Malone’s third career No. 1 album, but notably, the full-length is a full-on country project that sounds far removed from his last two chart-toppers.
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A slew of country greats helped Post Malone with the project — several of which score debuts alongside Posty on this week’s Hot 100, where 18 songs from F-1 Trillion bow, including every collaboration. “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen remains at the head of the pack, though, logging another week at No. 2 on the Hot 100, after previously spending six nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1.
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What’s the secret behind Post Malone’s country switch-up? And what genre should he explore next? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. F-1 Trillion debuts with 250,000 equivalent album units — more than twice as many as the debut total for last year’s Austin album (113,000), although a far cry from 2019’s Hollywood’s Bleeding (489,000). On a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling about this debut if you’re Post?
Jessica Nicholson: An 8. With this being his first official foray into the country genre (he’s posted covers of country songs online over the past several years), this is a great accomplishment, especially given that the solo tracks on his Long Bed extension of the album lean into elements of Texas swing, honky tonk and 2000s country, rather than only the rock and hip-hop-inflected country of his Morgan Wallen collab. Still, one would think the numbers would be a bit higher, given the slate of big-name collaborations proliferating the album.
Jason Lipshutz: A 9. Simply put, Post Malone got his groove back with F-1 Trillion, following a pair of albums that produced some solid hits but didn’t do enough to iterate on his earlier success. This country album was boosted by a big hit in “I Had Some Help,” but a debut of 250,000 equivalent album units indicates that Posty’s country change-up conjured interest beyond its lead single — fans wanted to explore this new side of his artistry, and he scored one of the biggest debuts of 2024. Maybe he never returns to the commercial peak of his Hollywood’s Bleeding numbers, but the performance of F-1 Trillion suggests that Post Malone’s time in the spotlight will persist well past that peak.
Katie Atkinson: 10. He went outside his typical lane, assembled The Avengers of country music, and came in to release week with a six-week Hot 100 No. 1 lead single. Honestly, what’s not to be happy about? This country pivot has been received with open arms by the music-buying public, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Post’s country era extends beyond one album.
Lyndsey Havens: You could say I’d be feeling… 1 trillion out of 10. Metrics aside, this is an artistic project that Texas native Post Malone has wanted to make for most of his career. And yes, while he collaborated with superstars and legends alike on Hollywood’s Bleeding, helping the pop-rock-rap album score such an impressive first-week debut, you could argue the features on F-1 mean a bit more. To have almost every heavy hitter across country music – including the queen herself, Dolly Parton – was surely the best stamp of approval Post could desire. Even more so than his first foray into the genre debuting at No. 1, Post made an album that the country community not only rallied behind wanted to be a part of. And that is well worth celebrating.
Melinda Newman: An 8. A No. 1 album is a No. 1 album, no matter what the sales/streaming numbers are. And after missing the mark with both Austin and 2022’s Twelve Carat Toothache, Post has to be happy to reach the summit again, even if, to paraphrase a popular song, he had some help. At the same time, there has to be a nagging twinge of doubt questioning if he can hit No. 1 as a solo artist, though the popularity of F-1 Trillion will undoubtedly propel his solo numbers. Plus, all the tracks charted on the Hot 100, thanks to streaming. He’s got to be thrilled by that.
2. With F-1 Trillion becoming Post Malone’s first No. 1 album since 2019 and “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen leading the Hot 100 for six total weeks, are you surprised that his country pivot has been as successful as its chart rankings indicate?
Jessica Nicholson: No. He has made a strong showing of connecting with both the Nashville industry and with country music fans. His album includes collaborations with a range of country artists, highlighting his respect for the genre by including both modern-day hitmakers like Lainey Wilson, Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, but also legends including Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Jr. He wrote with Nashville writers for the album, and has showed up at nearly every Nashville country music venue possible, from the Grand Ole Opry to the Bluebird Café. But he’s also connected with fans through appearances at Stagecoach and his recent Marathon Music Works show — and for the country music audience, that intentionality in connecting with fans still goes a long way.
Jason Lipshutz: Not if you actually listened to “I Had Some Help,” and heard how naturally Post’s voice adapted to a country-pop sound alongside a Nashville superstar like Wallen. The ease with which he entered that lane suggested that he could maintain that stance for a full country album, especially one where he’d be flanked by established genre stars. And sure enough, F-1 Trillion is rife with guest stars that Posty can play off of, as well as a handful of solo tracks that were saved for the deluxe edition of the album. It was a foolproof formula for this project, and I’m not surprised that listeners have embraced it.
Katie Atkinson: Absolutely not. I remember assigning a story back in 2021 about all the times Post had “gone country.” It’s quaint to look back at that list, because the genre lines are so very blurred now – especially with a borderless artist like Post Malone – that all his country moments were so obviously inherent to him then and now. I mean, he’s from Texas, for starters. But the smartest thing he did with his first country outing is to get more than a dozen of the genre’s biggest stars to collaborate with him and co-sign his Nashville bona fides. Like, are you going to say this man isn’t country – because he has face tattoos, because he’s made rap music, etc., etc. – when Hank Williams Jr. says he is?
Lyndsey Havens: Not at all. The one thing I have learned from my years as a Post Malone fan is that he can’t really surprise us – he’s shown his range from the start. Take his debut album Stoney, a project on which his breakout hip-hop hit “White Iverson” fits perfectly alongside a warbly acoustic ballad like “Feeling Whitney” (in which he sings of putting on “a little Dwight” Yoakam). Plus, the first and only video Post has uploaded to the YouTube account created under his birth name, Austin Post, is a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.” But more than any one genre, the thing that most foreshadowed Post’s pivot to country is his songwriting. And now, after years of honing those chops and building a network of Nashville’s hottest names, it’s no wonder he’s having such success.
Melinda Newman: Not at all. Country is having a moment (which many of us hope becomes a movement), and Post Malone has now become part of that. His timing was perfect, but if you talk to anyone in Nashville who worked with him, he put in the work. He spent months in Nashville working with top songwriters and immersing himself in the scene, popping up at local clubs to play. Plus, as a Texas boy, he grew up on country (among other genres), and folks in Nashville talk about how he is a country music jukebox. He is steeped in the stuff.
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3. “I Had Some Help” is still going strong at No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart, although plenty of F-1 Trillion tracks debut on this week’s chart. Which song from the album do you think has the highest potential as a follow-up hit to “Help”?
Jessica Nicholson: His Blake Shelton collaboration “Pour Me a Drink” is currently not far behind on the Hot 100, at No. 13. The song is also in the top 15 on the Country Airplay chart and is directly behind “I Had Some Help” on the Hot Country Songs chart, sitting at No. 3. Elsewhere, he recently released a video with Luke Combs for their collab “A Guy For That,” and that track is at No. 7 on the Hot Country Songs chart. However, his album also includes the Jelly Roll collab “Losers,” which could be primed to dominate as well.
Jason Lipshutz: “California Sober” with Chris Stapleton debuted at No. 34 on this week’s Hot 100, and I could see that reaching a higher peak in due time — that song is an absolute blast to yell along to in a windows-down situation, as Post Malone and Stapleton let their harmonies rip into the plucked guitar strings. Stapleton hasn’t had a true pop crossover moment in a minute, and “California Sober” might be his ticket to the Hot 100’s upper reaches. Get these two together on an awards show stage, pronto!
Katie Atkinson: The gritty opening track “Wrong Ones” with Tim McGraw has my vote for the chorus alone: “I’m just lookin’ for the right one/ But them wrong ones keep lookin’ at me.” That needs to be on country radio, stat. While McGraw has been making country music for 30 years now, 15 of his top 20 Hot Country Songs hits are from the last decade and he’s due for another.
Lyndsey Havens: While previous pop-leaning country singles like “Pour Me a Drink” or “Guy For That” feel like obvious picks, I’m rooting for the dizzying “California Sober” with Chris Stapleton. But then, there’s the downtrodden anthem “Losers” with Jelly Roll, who is no stranger to the Hot 100 himself… With so many songs to choose from, it’s still a toss-up for me which one will raise its hand next.
Melinda Newman: Both “Pour Me A Drink” with Blake Shelton and “Guy For That” with Luke Combs are already getting some airplay at country radio, and if you’re going with what fits right in with what else is on country radio right now in terms of tempo, I’d pick “Devil I’ve Been,” featuring ERNEST, or “Nosedive,” since he hasn’t had a ballad as a single yet and Lainey Wilson is so hot. However, I’d love to see “California Sober” with Chris Stapleton have a shot at radio. We placed it at No. 1 on our ranking of the album’s tracks, because it’s a fun rave-up where they both sound like they’re having a blast. Does it sound like most of what’s playing on radio right now? No, it does not. It’s a little more freewheeling and doesn’t have a structured chorus, but it sure sounds great in the car with the windows down.
4. Post Malone collaborates with over a dozen country artists on F-1 Trillion — but which one that isn’t on the album would you still love to hear him team up with someday?
Jessica Nicholson: He’s proven he knows his way around Texas swing and honky tonk, anthems thanks to songs on his F-1 Trillion: Long Bed deluxe project, thanks to songs like “Back to Texas” and “Who Needs You.” Adding his fellow Texans Miranda Lambert or “King George” Strait to a track would be superb.
Jason Lipshutz: Let’s go with Sam Hunt, a hook maestro who’s long been adept at nudging his country style into different sonic territories. Imagine Post Malone contributing verse to a soothing, snappy country anthem akin to “Body Like a Back Road” — pretty intriguing, right?
Katie Atkinson: I’m stunned that his fellow Texan Kacey Musgraves isn’t on this album, so I’m going to need that collab on the next one. Her syrupy-sweet vocals next to his gravelly vibrato would be the perfect yin and yang.
Lyndsey Havens: Right now, in this moment, I have to say Shaboozey. I think the two of them would emerge with an absolute smash that perfectly blends their voices and effortlessly fuses country and Americana with a hint of hip-hop.
Melinda Newman: Without a doubt, fellow Texan George Strait. I’m curious if they tried and it didn’t work out timing-wise or it just wasn’t George’s thing. It would also be a blast to hear him and Garth Brooks do a duet.
5. If you could offer Post Malone some advice on his next studio project — either continue exploring country music, return to rap, or try something new entirely — what would you tell him?
Jessica Nicholson: I think further exploring country music and cementing his place in the genre beyond one album would be a smart move, especially given the track record of artists such as Kenny Rogers, Conway Twitty, and Darius Rucker who have found longevity within the country genre after having previous indie-pop sounds. Additionally, the breadth of sounds under country’s present-day umbrella makes some modern country hits sound not that far removed from Post’s own indie-pop hits. Perhaps even a hybrid project of country songs and his more rock stylings wouldn’t be out of the question, a la HARDY’s The Mockingbird & The Crow.
Jason Lipshutz: I might go with the “try something new entirely,” simply because Post Malone has already mined hip-hop and country music to great success, and has demonstrated a chameleonic ability to blend into the scene around him. What other sounds could be conquer? Could Posty link up with his pal Andrew Watt for a full-blown rock opus, or crank out a pop classic alongside Max Martin? If Post Malone made a jazz album, or a metal album… they would be surprisingly good, right? He is one of the smarter shape-shifting popular artists of our time, and I would never want Posty to do anything other than chase his muse.
Katie Atkinson: Do whatever you want! This is a man of multitudes who is clearly a natural fit in a lot of different worlds, and I just want to be along for the ride wherever the chameleon shows up next.
Lyndsey Havens: I have long begged for Post to release a folk album as Austin Post. His Dylan cover has lived in my head rent-free for a decade, and whether he chooses to release a project of covers in the same lane or continue to explore a folk-pop sound like his labelmate Noah Kahan, with whom he has collaborated on a remix of “Dial Drunk,” I’d be happy with whatever direction he chooses. Fortunately, with an artist like Post, nothing ever seems off the table – especially if you can also play beer pong on it.
Melinda Newman: I’d be curious to see where he goes if he keeps exploring country. The nine songs he released the next day after F-1 Trillion’s release, under F-1 Trillion: Long Bed, are way more traditionally country than the duets on F-1 Trillion, both stylistically and in instrumentation. He’s got a fine voice for country (though it seems that no style is beyond his vocal capabilities). What happens if he keeps leaning in that direction?