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Since filing for divorce from ex-husband Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) in 2021, Kim Kardashian has mostly kept quiet about the couple’s relationship, how they are co-parenting their four children and whatever feelings she might have about West’s repeated public meltdowns in which he spouts hate-filled antisemitic invective for days on end.
But in Thursday’s (Feb. 13) episode of The Kardashians, Kim opened up a bit about what may have caused the dissolution of the couple’s marriage while bonding with sister Khloé about her own marital issues. After having an emotional reunion with her ex-husband, retired NBA player Lamar Odom, after nine years apart, Khloé said she got married “too quickly” to Odom.
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Though their marriage lasted only five tumultuous years, Khloé said she “wouldn’t change a thing” about marrying the man she called the “love of my life,” lamenting that if it weren’t for Odom’s well-publicized struggles with substance use they might still be together. “I know I picked the right person at that time,” she told Kim and their mother, Kris Jenner, in the episode.
Kim seemed to relate to the sentiment, seemingly referencing her struggles with West, saying, “That’s the hardest part. I’ve been there. When you don’t foresee something happening that really changes a person’s personality and then they’re not the same person and you can’t ever get that person back, but you can’t live with the new person. I get it.”
Kim had more to say in a confessional segment, adding, “It’s tougher when you don’t want your marriage to end off of personal reasons but circumstances change that force your marriage to end. When you weren’t planning on that and that’s not really the outcome you want but there’s no other option, I think it makes it harder to get over.”
While the SKIMS founder never specifically named West in the episode of the Hulu series, it appeared as if she was referencing their relationship, which ended with Kardashian stating in a petition to be considered legally single in early 2022 that Ye was “creating emotional distress” by sharing “misinformation” about their private family matters.
While the reality star was open to talking about what she said at the time was West’s struggle with bipolar disorder during their relationship, the rapper recently claimed that his now-wife, Bianca Censori, has told him that he was mis-diagnosed and is likely on the autism spectrum.
Kardashian’s comments on the show — which is taped months before the episodes air — came just a few days after West deleted his X account following a four-day spree of virulently antisemitic posts in which he declared once again “I’m a Nazi” and “I love Hitler,” before briefly offering a shirt emblazoned with a Nazi swastika for sale on his Yeezy site.
The offensive posts have once again caused serious professional fall-out for West, who has been criticized for spreading hate speech by the ADL and fellow artists, as well as being dropped by his booking agent and hit with a lawsuit by a Jewish staffer who alleged that he compared himself to Hitler and threatened her because she is Jewish.
In the ever-evolving world of music asset trading, Influence Media Partners early on broke away from the initial frenzy over evergreen rock music classics to pursue a riskier strategy: acquiring contemporary music catalogs, including hip-hop. One of its biggest deals was the 2022 acquisition of Future’s publishing catalog, which consists of 612 songs composed from 2004 to 2020.
Last year, Influence Media, which is backed by BlackRock and Warner Music Group (WMG), expanded its operations with the founding of SLANG, a label and music publishing operation. While the music company has signed publishing deals and separate joint ventures with Future and DJ Khaled that allows them to sign songwriters to publishing deals, its label is betting on such developing acts as hip-hop artists Camper, RX YP and TruththeBull — a sector of the business that usually does not attract institutional investors.
Rene McLean founded Influence Media in 2019 with his wife and business partner, Lylette Pizarro McLean, a former music industry marketing executive, and Lynn Hazan, a former CFO for Epic and RED. He grew up in New York just before hip-hop music and culture were becoming mainstream in the early 1990s. “What do you do when you’re 18 in New York City?” he says. “You start clubbing. I got drawn into nightlife and music, and I loved hip-hop and did break dancing and graffiti and all that stuff.” Even though he was the son of jazz musician Rene McLean Sr. and the grandson of renowned jazz saxophonist-composer Jackie McLean, “I didn’t want to be a musician or in the music business,” he recalls. “But then something went off in my head.”
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“I like to keep meaningful books and collectibles I’ve picked up throughout my career to remember where I come from.”
Carl Chisolm
After landing a promotion position at Virgin Records, followed by similar jobs at RCA — where he worked with Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan — and Elektra, McLean formed Mixshow Marketing and Promotion company The RPM Group before founding Influence Media.
What led you to found Influence Media?
At that point in time, I had created a conference, a trade magazine, and, through the conference, we were doing a lot of brand work. That’s when Lylette Pizarro entered my life. We had gotten corporate clients to sponsor the conference, so we went out and created our own boutique agency, which wound up having a bunch of Fortune 500 clients like PepsiCo, LVMH and Verizon. We did everything from sponsorship to endorsement deals to strategy work, and that led us to think if we’re going to really get back into the nuts and bolts of the music business, the only way to really be impactful was to create Influence Media. By then, streaming had come on, and we saw the future. So we raised money and acquired three catalogs, which we then sold to Tempo.
After selling those catalogs, you got $750 million in funding from BlackRock and WMG and bought more catalogs — Future, Blake Shelton and Enrique Iglesias. Why start SLANG?
Lylette and I felt that, outside of acquiring and investing in these catalogs, there was an opportunity to build a label and a publishing company. I’ve always looked for the white space. We’re not just finance folks; we come from the music business.
Is WMG a partner in the label? Are you using them for distribution and publishing administration?
Yes, SLANG is a part of Influence and Warner is one of our strategic partners in Influence.
“My son painted these art pieces,” McLean says. “I love the color that they add to the office.”
Carl Chisolm
Who is doing the A&R and signing the artists to the label?
I’ve done all the signings to date, but we’re going to bring in a head of A&R. We now have a staff of about eight. But it’s been very boutique in the way I’ve been looking at these acts. We really want to develop these acts properly and break them solidly. And it seems like it’s really going in the right direction.
In looking at your roster, the bigger names are Will Smith and The Underachievers.
Will Smith is a distribution deal. But we’re highly involved in all the marketing and everything else. We work closely with Will’s camp. They’ve been great partners. And we just had our first No. 1 gospel record with him. So that’s wonderful right there.
I would classify the rest of your roster as developing artists, like Camper and RX YP.
Camper is incredible. He is a Grammy-nominated R&B producer, and he’s done a lot of things with H.E.R., Daniel Caesar and Coco Jones. RX YP is a rapper from Atlanta, very street. We also have, like you mentioned earlier, The Underachievers, who were originally signed to RPM and we picked them back up. They have a project coming out soon. They’re doing something with the clothing designer Kid Super. We’ve got TruththeBull, which is a true artist development story in the making. His debut mixtape is coming out in April, and his most recent single debuted [at No. 28 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50]. We’re really excited about that project.
“Blake Shelton signed this guitar. We have been working with him on the Influence Media side since 2022, and we are honored to work with such a luminary.”
Carl Chisolm
You have eight albums by developing acts either out already or coming out this year. With such a small staff, does SLANG have the bandwidth to try to break that many acts?
But they are not all coming at the same time. Some of them, like RX YP, are releasing things later in the year. The focus right now is on TruththeBull, Leaf, Isaia Huron and Camper. When you are working with developing acts, there are no days off, so it’s constant development, building and building. And if things are going in the right direction, then you just keep fueling it to keep it going. But then certain acts are just very creative on their own, so we lean on their creativity and just amplify it. Some acts require heavy lifting and then there’s some light lifting.
Why start a publishing division?
In my mind, it goes hand in hand with the label. The great thing about the publishing side of things is that you can step in at a more accelerated [pace]. We’ve had three No. 1s in the last six months courtesy of our relationship with Future. We also publish Lil Durk and, I love this one, RaiNao. It’s pronounced “right now,” and she’s currently on Bad Bunny’s album. It’s getting huge exposure. She’s working on her new project. We’re excited about her, as we are about our friend DJ Khaled. We are currently his publisher, too.
In addition to a publishing deal with Future, you have partnered with him on other business. What does that entail?
We also have a joint venture with him regarding signing writers. The same thing with DJ Khaled. We get vertically involved with a lot of artists that we work with. For instance, with Future we secured [a deal for] him to be the face of Grand Marnier, which just started rolling out. And we helped Visa organize their first large event at the Louvre and secure Post Malone [for it]. We had RaiNao perform at the Louvre with Post. That’s an example of how we see the world.
“I was drawn to this chess board because it reminds me of my hometown, the best city in the world, NYC,” he says.
Carl Chisolm
How are these deals structured?
It depends. Some of the [artists] are signed directly to us; some of them are [joint ventures]. There’s the distribution deal [with Smith]. We have the ability to be flexible.
Earlier, you indicated that SLANG is funded by Influence Media, which primarily invested in contemporary, established artists. SLANG works with developing artists, a sector of the business that institutional investors typically don’t fund. Does SLANG have the same investors as Influence? How much funding does it have?
Same investors. I am not going to disclose [financing], but you know Influence is well funded. There’s no lack of capital needs. But you have to look at it right. Most companies that start with too much money usually don’t win because, when you have access, you can be very undisciplined. We’re very conscious of the mindset and how we allocate what we spend and invest in. It’s really about discipline and focus. That’s what got us to where we’re at.
This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly set to strike a deal with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to the tune of $400 million. President Trump is putting a fleet of armored Tesla Cybertrucks on order, prompting many online to call out the hypocrisy of DOGE and the White House.
As spotted on Drop Site, it appears that the State Department, now headed by Marco Rubio, was in line to receive the fleet of armored Tesla Cybertrucks with a value of $400 million and is slated to take place in the fourth quarter of the year for a period of five years. The outlet notes that the forecasted purchase was modified on Dec. 13 of last year, ahead of when Trump was officially sworn in last month.
Drop Site added that the plan was set in motion by President Joe Biden’s administration, with the aim of transforming the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s fleet of over 3,000 armored vehicles into all-electric, zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
After reports of the deal went wide, including outlets such as MSBNC and NPR, speculation pointed to the Cybertruck as the vehicle of choice after the word “Tesla” was seen in the State Department document. However, that word was removed Wednesday evening, prompting some to think that there is trickery afoot.
Elon Musk is currently spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, which has aimed efforts to cut government overspending. Critics of Musk and DOGE have aimed their concerns about the raging conflict of interest should Musk’s company retain the contract despite his pledge to cut the country’s deficit by trillions.
Cybertruck owners have recently been the target of vandalism and ridicule after Musk’s public alignment with Trump. Some owners are saying they’re being targeted while viral clips online show the vehicle marked with insults and taking surface damage.
On X, the reaction to the reports that Tesla could potentially earn $400 in government contracts for a fleet of decked-out Cybertrucks has garnered some passionate responses. We’ve got those listed below.
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Photo: Getty
This analysis is part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter Machine Learnings. Sign up for Machine Learnings, and other Billboard newsletters for free here.
Have you heard about our lord and savior, Shrimp Jesus?
Last year, a viral photo of Jesus made out of shrimp went viral on Facebook — and while it might seem obvious to you and me that generative AI was behind this bizarre combination, plenty of boomers still thought it was real.
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Bizarre AI images like these have become part of an exponentially growing problem on social media sites, where they are rarely labeled as AI and are so eye grabbing that they draw the attention of users, and the algorithm along with them. That means less time and space for the posts from friends, family and human creators that you want to see on your feed. Of course, AI makes some valuable creations, too, but let’s be honest, how many images of crustacean-encrusted Jesus are really necessary?
This has led to a term called the “Dead Internet Theory” — the idea that AI-generated material will eventually flood the internet so thoroughly that nothing human can be found. And guess what? The same so-called “AI Slop” phenomenon is growing fast in the music business, too, as quickly-generated AI songs flood DSPs. (Dead Streamer Theory? Ha. Ha.) According to CISAC and PMP, this could put 24% of music creators’ revenues at risk by 2028 — so it seems like the right time for streaming services to create policies around AI material. But exactly how they should take action remains unclear.
In January, French streaming service Deezer took its first step toward a solution by launching an AI detection tool that will flag whatever it deems fully AI generated, tag it as such and remove it from algorithmic recommendations. Surprisingly, the company claims the tool found that about 10% of the tracks uploaded to its service every day are fully AI generated.
I thought Deezer’s announcement sounded like a great solution: AI music can remain for those who want to listen to it, can still earn royalties, but won’t be pushed in users’ faces, giving human-made content a little head start. I wondered why other companies hadn’t also followed suit. After speaking to multiple AI experts, however, it seems many of today’s AI detection tools generally still leave something to be desired. “There’s a lot of false positives,” one AI expert, who has tested out a variety of detectors on the market, says.
The fear for some streamers is that a bad AI detection tool could open up the possibility of human-made songs getting accidentally caught up in a whirlwind of AI issues, and become a huge headache for the staff who would have to review the inevitable complaints from users. And really, when you get down to it, how can the naked ear definitively tell the difference between human-generated and AI-generated music?
This is not to say that Deezer’s proprietary AI music detector isn’t great — it sounds like a step in the right direction — but the newness and skepticism that surrounds this AI detection technology is clearly a reason why other streaming services have been reluctant to try it themselves.
Still, protecting against the negative use-cases of AI music, like spamming, streaming fraud and deepfaking, are a focus for many streaming services today, even though almost all of the policies in place to date are not specific to AI.
It’s also too soon to tell what the appetite is for AI music. As long as the song is good, will it really matter where it came from? It’s possible this is a moment that we’ll look back on with a laugh. Maybe future generations won’t discriminate between fully AI, partially AI or fully human works. A good song is a good song.
But we aren’t there yet. The US Copyright Office just issued a new directive affirming that fully AI generated works are ineligible for copyright protection. For streaming services, this technically means, like all other public domain works, that the service doesn’t need to pay royalties on it. But so far, most platforms have continued to just pay out on anything that’s up on the site — copyright protected or not.
Except for SoundCloud, a platform that’s always marched to the beat of its own drum. It has a policy which “prohibit[s] the monetization of songs and content that are exclusively generated through AI, encouraging creators to use AI as a tool rather than a replacement of human creation,” a company spokesperson says.
In general, most streaming services do not have specific policies, but Spotify, YouTube Music and others have implemented procedures for users to report impersonations of likenesses and voices, a major risk posed by (but not unique to) AI. This closely resembles the method for requesting a takedown on the grounds of copyright infringement — but it has limits.
Takedowns for copyright infringement are required by law, but some streamers voluntarily offer rights holders takedowns for the impersonation of one’s voice or likeness. To date, there is still no federal protection for these so-called “publicity rights,” so platforms are largely doing these takedowns as a show of goodwill.
YouTube Music has focused more than perhaps any other streaming service on curbing deepfake impersonations. According to a company blog post, YouTube has developed “new synthetic-singing identification technology within Content ID that will allow partners to automatically detect and manage AI-generated content on YouTube that simulates their singing voices,” adding another layer of defense for rights holders who are already kept busy policing their own copyrights across the internet.
Another concern with the proliferation of AI music on streaming services is that it can enable streaming fraud. In September, federal prosecutors indicted a North Carolina musician for allegedly using AI to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then using the AI tracks to earn more than $10 million in fraudulent streaming royalties. By spreading out fake streams over a large number of tracks, quickly made by AI, fraudsters can more easily evade detection.
Spotify is working on that. Whether the songs are AI or human-made, the streamer now has gates to prevent spamming the platform with massive amounts of uploads. It’s not AI-specific, but it’s a policy that impacts the bad actors who use AI for this purpose.
SoundCloud also has a solution: The service believes its fan-powered royalties system also reduces fraud. “Fan-powered royalties tie royalties directly to the contributions made by real listeners,” a company blog post reads. “Fan-powered royalties are attributable only to listeners’ subscription revenue and ads consumed, then distributed among only the artists listeners streamed that month. No pooled royalties means bots have little influence, which leads to more money being paid out on legitimate fan activity.” Again, not AI-specific, but it will have an impact on AI uploaders with bad motives.
So, what’s next? Continuing to develop better AI detection and attribution tools, anticipating future issues with AI — like AI agents employed for streaming fraud operations — and fighting for better publicity rights protections. It’s a thorny situation, and we haven’t even gotten into the philosophical debate of defining the line between fully AI generated and partially AI generated songs. But one thing is certain — this will continue to pose challenges to the streaming status quo for years to come.
Madonna fans are getting something better than chocolates or roses for Valentine’s Day this year: the promise of new music. On Instagram Thursday (Feb. 13) — just one day before the day of love — the superstar shared a video slideshow of photos showing off her recent time in the studio. In some pictures, she […]
Brandon Lake’s “That’s Who I Praise” continues its domination on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart (dated Feb. 15) as it reigns for a 10th week. It drew 5.2 million in audience Jan. 31-Feb. 6, according to Luminate.
The song ties for the longest rule of the decade. Housefires and JWLKRS’ “I Thank God,” featuring Blake Wiggins and Ryan Ellis, began its 10-week stay at No. 1 in December 2023.
Meanwhile, Lake has a stake in one of the songs tied for second place. Elevation Worship’s “Praise” —— featuring Lake, Chris Brown and Chandler Moore — ruled for nine frames beginning last May; Katy Nichole’s “In Jesus’ Name (God of Possible)” started its own nine-week No. 1 run in April 2022.
Since the Christian Airplay survey launched in June 2003, the longest-leading No. 1 overall is MercyMe’s “Word of God Speak,” which dominated for 23 weeks starting that August.
The 34-year-old Lake, from Charleston, S.C., co-authored “That’s Who I Praise” with Steven Furtick, Benjamin William Hastings, Zac Lawson and Micah Nichols, the lattermost of whom also produced it. It became Lake’s fourth Christian Airplay chart-topper.
“I’m completely blown away,” Lake beamed to Billboard when the single hit No. 1 on the multimetric Hot Christian Songs chart in October. “To hear that this song is connecting with so many hearts out there is humbling and just unreal.”
Dewand’s First No. 1
On Gospel Airplay, Jevon Dewand’s rookie single, “Without You,” featuring Zacardi Cortez, Gasner the Artist and Jazze Pha, climbs 3-1 (up 12% in plays).
The Atlanta-based Dewand co-wrote and co-produced the song. It’s is the lead single from his same-named album, released last June.
“Without You” becomes the first Gospel Airplay leader for Dewand, Gasner the Artist and Jazze Pha, while veteran Cortez banks his seventh No. 1.
The song marks the first freshman entry to lead Gospel Airplay since Will Smith’s turn toward the genre with “You Can Make It,” featuring Fridayy and Sunday Service, led for a week in December. It became the first No. 1 for all three acts.
Over the past year or so, Jelly Roll has been open about his dedication to working to transform his health. Last year, he ran his first 5K, taking part in Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer’s 2 Bears 5K.
Now, the country star is gearing up to run his second 5K race in May in Tampa, Fla, and he’s intent on helping others who also want to change their health for the better. The “Halfway to Hell” singer told fans on Instagram Feb. 11 that he is launching Jelly Roll’s Losers Run Club as he gears up for the race.
In the video, he also told fans just how much his poor health was impacting his daily life, and how that inspired him to want to change.
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“A little bit over a year ago, I literally struggled to walk down my hill to the mailbox, y’all. I mean, it was really bad,” Jelly Roll said in the video. “And I’d let myself get to the point of being absolutely just disgusted with myself. I was just sick and tired of it, and I was like, ‘Man, I’m gonna figure this out. And about the time I was trying to find something to motivate me, I saw that Tom Segura had teased doing a 5K By May, and I knew right then that if there was ever a place that I was gonna feel safe trying to do my first 5K, it was going to be at the 2 Bears 5K.”
As he launches Jelly Roll’s Losers Run Club, the star said he’s launching a Facebook group, and has teamed with the Strava app to help others train for the race and stay motivated. Jelly Roll’s trainer Ian Larios will be helping people who take part with lifestyle, nutrition and exercise coaching. Meanwhile, ultramarathoner Matthew Johnson put together two plan options — one for beginners, as well as an intermediate plan — for partakers to train for the race.
“Matthew Johnson has the fastest time running across the state of Texas,” Jelly Roll said in the video. “This man is an absolute machine. I love everything about him, the fact that he is dedicating the next 12 weeks of his life to try and help me and a bunch of people like myself to run in a 5K.”
“What we are trying to inspire here is just change and belief and community,” Jelly Roll summarized of the group’s mission. “Somewhere where you can go and feel judgment-free when you’re trying to figure this thing out. I know how rough it was at first and how embarrassed I was to just be sucking snot and air every time I walked down the driveway. But it felt so good to have friends and people behind me, telling me I was doing the right thing. … I believe that we can create huge change right here. I believe a huge group of people can come together right here and encourage each other to become what they always dreamed they could be.”
Watch Jelly Roll announce his Losers Run Club below:
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Whether it’s her career or scorching hot sauce, Lady Gaga isn’t a quitter. And after conquering the Wings of Death on a new episode of Hot Ones posted Thursday (Feb. 13), the superstar got deep about the times she pushed through the urge to “walk away” from her career.
After conducting a life- and career-spanning interview with Gaga about her music, technique and rise from struggling New York City club performer to global icon — all the while the “Rain on Me” singer took bites of increasingly spicy chicken like a champ — host Sean Evans had just one more question for his latest guest to close out the interview. “What’s the closest you’ve ever come to walking away?” he asked.
“That is an incredibly deep question to ask me in this panic mode,” Gaga replied, blinking through the pain of the lingering, peppery heat.
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“I missed the community that I had in New York, and that was really hard,” she continued, reflecting on her days as a performer at Manhattan venues such as The Slipper Room. “There were definitely times where I felt like maybe I should walk away.”
“I know for sure that I never would,” the musician added. “I would definitely say that I was tested, and I always didn’t give up. And I’m still doing it, so it must mean I want to do it.”
Gaga’s stint on Hot Ones comes just a few weeks ahead of her highly anticipated seventh studio album, Mayhem, which arrives March 7. Following singles “Disease” and Bruno Mars duet “Die With a Smile” — which is currently on its fifth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the A Star Is Born actress shared a third single, “Abracadabra,” during the 2025 Grammys broadcast Feb. 2.
Speaking of the Grammys, Gaga and the Silk Sonic star also took home some new hardware at the ceremony, winning best pop duo/group performance for “Die With a Smile.” The win marked Gaga’s 14th total — meaning she’s come a long way since the early days of her career when she may have wanted to throw in the towel. Reflecting more on how she got her start, Gaga also confessed to Evans that she used to call booking reps for venues pretending to be her own manager. “I’d be like, ‘She is so hot right now,’” she recalled, laughing.
Watch Lady Gaga’s Hot Ones episode above.
Want to ruin a friendship? Just tell your bestie that you don’t like the person they’re dating.
Most people learn that lesson the hard way somewhere in their teens or 20s. And Broken Bow artist Lanie Gardner, by writing “Buzzkill” about a guy’s difficult girlfriend, has discovered that saying it in a song can create the same negative outcome.
“I guess he still had some sort of feelings for this girl, so before it ever came out, it ended a friendship with him,” Gardner recalls.
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Oddly enough, the guy misread the song’s story. “Once he left that girl, the new girl – he thought it was about her,” Gardner continues. “When he left that [new] girl, it kind of revived a friendship. But it was just funny how that song has caused some ripples in real life.”
“Buzzkill” is the product of a writing session on Jan. 30, 2024, at the East Nashville home of writer-producers Katie Cecil and Chris Ganoudis. It was only the second time they’d collaborated; their first co-write had produced an emotionally dramatic piece, and they wanted to explore something different in their follow-up session. As they settled in with conversation, Gardner confessed her annoyance about a woman whose attachment to another friend had become an intrusion on her crew.
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“Literally, we would all be having fun, you know, out and drinking, and she would come around and she would start fights and mess with him the whole day,” Gardner says. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, what a buzzkill.’”
Gardner hadn’t intended to build a song around the situation, but when she introduced that “buzzkill” phrase into the conversation, it made an immediate impression. “I was like, ‘Let me write that down,’” Cecil says. “You know, sometimes you kind of catch the title in the middle of someone’s venting session.”
The scenario had comedic possibilities, so Ganoudis developed a fast-paced mix of acoustic guitar rhythms and programmed 808 bass drum. It felt a little like rockabilly and a lot like the energy of KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” and the track set an atmosphere that encouraged cheeky observation. The woman is portrayed derisively in the song’s opening salvos as a “Barbie doll, show stopper, beauty queen” and a condescending “Miss Hollywood takin’ over Tennessee.” Cecil and Ganoudis relocated from California about four years ago, and exaggerating about the women in the story came naturally.
“For lyrical purposes, you kind of have to make things the most dramatic version of themselves, to make it fun to sing and to drive the point home,” Cecil says. “So we were comparing this girl to the most insufferable L.A.-type girl you might come across who’s moved to Nashville but clearly just doesn’t fit in.”
Unlike Gardner and the “Buzzkill” woman, Gardner and Cecil worked well together, hunkering down on the song’s spirited lyrics. Ganoudis pulled on headphones and focused on the track separately, building the verses in a minor key and the chorus in a parallel major.
“You can’t sing the verse melodies over the chorus, or chorus melodies over the verse,” Ganoudis says.That brighter-sounding chorus allowed for more acerbic talk, and the protagonist insists on giving her friend an honest assessment of his girl: “They ain’t gonna say it but you bet your ass I will/ Yeah, buddy, she’s a buzzkill.”
“It’s not good to hate on people,” Gardner observes, “but it’s sometimes good to maybe call certain actions out.”
When they finished writing “Buzzkill,” Ganoudis supplied a track with plenty of energy, created by a spare number of instruments. But those sounds were routinely fattened, making the day’s production sound larger. “I’m really kind of minimalist in in my approach a lot of the times,” Ganoudis notes. “It’s just maximizing each one of those parts, so having less parts that do more, so that the bass is saturated in a way to make it take up the room that I want it to take up.”
Gardner laid down a vocal for it, caught up in the story’s surly sarcasm. “We did go back in and tighten some things up, but we were just such in a zone with ‘Buzzkill’ the day we wrote it, we didn’t have to recut the vocals again,” Gardner says.
Ganoudis took his time finishing the demo, turning it on Feb. 12 once he felt it was good enough to compete with anything else Gardner might be considering.
“When the labels are hearing it and the management’s hearing it, that’s a reflection of what we do,” Cecil explains. “That’s always good to get it sounding where we feel super confident that it will be a contender for a release.”
Ganoudis filled “Buzzkill” out further, playing nearly all the instruments on his own, while creating a framework with some intentional, built-in contrast.
“It’s kind of like a middle-up, middle-down approach,” he says. “The middle-down frequency spectrum of the track is pretty pop, you know. It’s got 808, it’s got a sample kick [drum] – like, there’s no live drummer on this thing. But then the top up is pretty honky tonk. That’s all live, you know. There’s no programming on the top up, with the guitars, and there’s some steel and all that.”
Ganoudis hired guitarist Gideon Boley to rip a fierce solo in the middle of the production, and Gardner returned to stack some tight harmonies on top of her original vocal. She threw in a bundle of ad-libs, too, including an off-the-cuff “one more for the people in the back” that adds to the glibness of the performance.
“That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of the song,” Cecil says. “I was like, ‘We gotta put that in there.’”SiriusXM picked it up, German choreographer Sascha Wolf developed a linedance for it, and Jonathan Craig produced a pool-hall video, released Feb. 3, that plays up the out-of-place snobbery of the buzzkill girlfriend. And just in case country broadcasters decide “Buzzkill” can aid their undying desire for more uptempo singles, Ganoudis fashioned a radio edit that replaces the “ass” reference in the chorus with a sneaky “whoop!”
Meanwhile, the friendship that “Buzzkill” killed appears to have survived, in part because the friend’s second relationship did not.
“All of a sudden,” Gardner says with a laugh, “we’re friends again.”
The Penske Media Corporation (PMC) announced its expansive slate of experiences and concerts at this year’s SXSW festival on Thursday (Feb. 13). The lineup of activations from PMC’s iconic brands — Billboard, Rolling Stone, Deadline, Variety, SHE Media, Sportico and The American Pavilion — will include panel discussion, concerts, fireside chats and must-see experiences during the annual conference and festival that will take place in Austin, TX this year from March 7-15.
The festivities will kick off on March 7-9 with Deadline‘s Deadline Studio and the On the Go with Deadline social activation at the Thompson Hotel, with to-be-announced talent stopping by for on-camera interviews and solo and group portraits.
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SHE Media will also set up house from March 7-9 for its Co-Lab event at 304 E. 3rd Street for a series of conversations about women’s holistic health featuring women’s health advocates, actors, comedians and specialists including: Chelsea Handler, Naomi Watts, Christy Turlington Burns, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, Tamsen Fadal, Scott Galloway, Stacy London, Emma Lovewell and Sophia Bush, among others.
Variety will host a live podcast taping with partner YouTube on March 8 with Hot Ones host Sean Evans and Variety Awards Editor Clayton Davis, followed by a March 9 screening and cocktail reception for the documentary Reef Builders: The Unlikely Partnership Restoring Coral and a panel discussion with actor Auli’i Cravalho, director/producer Stephen Shearman and others.
Sportico will host the two-day Sportico House (March 11-12) at Wanderlust Wine Co., which will feature top industry professionals dropping in for panels and live podcast tapings exploring the intersection of sports, media and business along with networking opportunities.
Rolling Stone will be back at SXSW for its third-annual Future of Music showcase presented by JBL, for a four-night (March 11-14) concert series featuring an as-yet-unannounced group of artists performing at ACL Live at the Moody Theater.
In addition, Billboard‘s THE STAGE at SXSW will return as well for three nights (March 13-15) of live performances at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park, with each night highlighting a different musical genre. The party will kick off with county singer Koe Wetzel on night one, followed by Música Mexicana stars Grupo Frontera on March 14 and a closing-night set from dance star John Summit.
The American Pavilion will return for year two of its Worldwide Student Program — which last year gave 12 students access to some influential industry events — expanding its scope in 2025 to six days of “thought leadership programming and expert discussions” from creators in the worlds of film and TV.
Billboard’s parent company PMC is the largest shareholder of SXSW and its brands are official media partners of SXSW.