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19 Dec 2022

Ukraine Reveals Its 2023 Eurovision Song Contest Act From a Kyiv Bomb Shelter

Ukraine has become one of the first countries to select which musical act will represent it in next year’s Eurovision contest, but even that joyous moment is marked by the impact of ongoing war with Russia. After a nearly four-hour showdown during which a handful of finalists performed songs for consideration, electronic music duo TVORCHI was chosen as the Eastern nation’s official competitors — all of which took place from a bomb shelter in Kyiv.

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The selection showcase, known as Vidbir, was livestreamed online from an underground metro station, which has been used as a bomb shelter since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to BBC and Eurovision. It was converted into a performance space for the show, which aired Saturday (Dec. 17).

“We did everything possible to hold this Vidbir in full swing, and once again unite Ukrainians around this important choice for the biggest music stage in Europe,” Ukraine’s head of delegation at Eurovision Oksana Skybinska told BBC. “The decision to go underground was the first one taken. It made us feel sure that the show itself could go on uninterrupted because no matter if we have air raid alerts the work could continue.”

TVORCHI’s Andrii Hutsuliak and Jimoh Augustus Kehinde performed their song “Heart of Steel” for their Vidbir entry, backed by dancers wearing gold gas masks and a visual effects screen divided into four quadrants. “Don’t care what you say, don’t care how you feel,” sang Kehinde, dressed in a gold jumpsuit. “Get out of my way ’cause I got a heart of steel.”

Near the end of the show, the pair stood alongside their fellow competitors onstage and listened as host Timur Miroshnychenko announced that they would be the ones to move on to the international Eurovision song contest, where they’ll battle against acts from 36 other countries.

Now that the duo is officially headed to Eurovision — scheduled to take place in May 2023 in Liverpool — TVORCHI has some big shoes to fill. At last year’s contest, Ukrainian’s Kalush Orchestra was victorious, winning for its hip-hop song “Stefania.”

Watch TVORCHI’s winning performance of “Heart of Steel” below:

19 Dec 2022

The 15 Best Hip-Hop Songs of 2022

Hip-hop experienced twists and turns throughout 2022.

Once the ball dropped, Gunna ignited the flame with his club-ready single “Pushin P’,” which made the 16th letter in the alphabet top-tier on social media. Also, no one expected the Memphis rookie GloRilla to cause tremors in the genre with her earthshaking anthems “FNF” and “Tomorrow 2.” Her surplus of hits allowed men and women to get loud and rowdy together as they chanted her lyrics with gusto.

And when we weren’t in a partying mood, we received doses of high-octane lyricism and thoughtfulness from our most well-spoken MCs. Kendrick Lamar’s precision and innate ability to connect with listeners remains second to none, as proven on “Rich Spirit” and “N95,” while Jay-Z’s agile wordplay continues to be at a hall-of-fame level after rattling off an impressive 80-bar melee on DJ Khaled’s Grammy-nominated “God Did.” Vince Staples — who delivered a top-five effort on Billboard’s Best 20 Hip-Hop Albums of 2022 — doled out quality records as well, whether it was the DJ Mustard-anchored single “Magic” or the criminally underappreciated gem “When Sparks Fly.”

The quality of hip-hop records in 2022 came from all walks of life and different sectors of the map, keeping us engaged, intrigued and hungry for more. Can 2023 carry the same momentum and “big energy”? Only time will tell; until then, check out Billboard’s Best Hip-Hop Songs of 2022 below.

19 Dec 2022

Maren Morris, Janelle Monáe & More Are Ready to Serve Guest Judge Realness on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’

While RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s set of 16 new racers start their engines, the guest judging panel is ready to declare the best drag queen the winner.

On Monday (Dec. 19), RuPaul’s Drag Race officially unveiled its new slate of celebrity guest judges for the season 15. Alongside previously announced premiere guest judge Ariana Grande, Ru will be joined on the judges panel by stars including Maren Morris, Janelle Monáe, Hayley Kiyoko, Orville Peck, Ali Wong, Amandla Stenberg, Harvey Guillén, Julia Garner and Megan Statler. Meanwhile, beloved past guest judge Ts Madison has been upped to become a rotating member of the permanent judges’ panel, alongside Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews and Carson Kressley.

To celebrate the big announcement, Drag Race also unveiled the first official trailer for season 15, giving fans their long-awaited first look inside the workroom. Throughout the new trailer, the 16 new queens enter the work room and begin to compete in what looks to be a series of fan-favorite challenges (including a photoshoot mini-challenge as well as a talent variety show) before serving their looks on the runway.

The new slate of guest judges and trailer come on the heels of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s move to MTV after spending four years on the Viacom sister channel VH1. Season 15 also boasts more queens on a single season than ever before, now competing for the highest cash prize on a main season of the show — $200,000.

RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 premieres Friday, Jan. 6, at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Check out the official first trailer above.

19 Dec 2022

Watch Matty Healy Get a Tattoo During The 1975 Concert

Always one to make a statement, The 1975‘s Matty Healy once again made waves for his onstage actions during a concert. This time, he got a tattoo in front of concertgoers.

During the band’s Kentucky stop of its At Their Very Best Tour on Dec. 16, the vocalist took a break during the set and had a tattoo artist come on stage — not to join him in song, but lay down his latest ink. In fan-captured video, Healy’s tattoo session is soundtracked by dramatic classical music, and fans look onward in bewilderment. The tattoo, written in simple letters, reads “I’m a Man.”

Perhaps fans in attendance of The 1975’s now know to expect memorable moments from Healy while he performs on tour. In November, the vocalist kissed a fan onstage during “Robbers,” later extending his affections and kissing fellow bandmate Ross MacDonald. In previous stops during the North American trek, Healy made waves for eating raw meat onstage.

The 1975’s Pittsburgh concert on Dec. 17 marked the end of the tour’s North American leg. The band — which also consists of members Adam Hann and George Daniel — are going on a short break for the holidays and will head back out on the road in the new year starting on Jan. 8, making a series of stops across the United Kingdom before heading to South America, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia later in the year.

See fan captured moments from Healy’s tattoo moment below.

19 Dec 2022

Charlie Gracie, Early Rocker Known For ‘Butterfly,’ Dies at 86

Charlie Gracie, an early rockabilly singer and guitarist who influenced a generation of 1960s rock stars has died at 86. The news of his passing on Dec. 16 was confirmed by ABKCO Records, which is home to the catalog of Cameo Records, the Philadelphia label that Gracie recorded his biggest hits for; at press time no cause of death was announced.

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The South Philadelphia native born Charles Antony Graci on May 14, 1936 who was discovered by Cadillac Records owner Graham Prince after the then 15-year-old singer performed on a local radio show, leading to a series of early singles (“Rockin’ ‘n’ Rollin’,” “Boogie Woogie Blues,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”) and a deal with Cameo, which released his breakthrough 1957 Billboard No. 1 pop chart hit and signature tune, the rockabilly burner “Butterfly.”

The song led to tours with Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and Eddie Cochran, as well as a starring role in the 1957 musical romance Jamboree as himself. The hits continued apace, with late 1950s charting tracks including “Fabulous,” “Ninety-Nine Ways” and “Cool Baby,” charting in the U.S. and England, where Gracie would take his place as an early influence on a generation of soon-to-be global superstars.

According to the artist’s bio, “Charlie’s star burned even brighter in Great Britain where he became the first solo American artist to bring rock & roll to the English concert stage. Preceded only by Bill Haley and the Comets, Charlie headlined London’s Palladium and Hippodrome — receiving outstanding receptions from the press and public.”

As a testament to his enduring influence, in 2011 ABKCO Records released For the Love of Charlie!, an all-star compilation produced by Al Kooper and featuring such fans as Graham Nash and Herman’s Hermits singer Peter Noone. Paul McCartney covered Gracie’s “Butterfly” follow-up single, “Fabulous,” in 1999 on his Run Devil Run early rock covers album, 30 years after Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page recorded his own version with Zep bassist John Paul Jones and guitarist Albert Lee, among others.

Following his run on Cameo, Gracie cycled through a series of smaller label homes and kept touring for the next 50+ years, including opening a handful of dates for Van Morrison on his 2000 U.S. West coast tour and releasing his last album, Angel on My Shoulder, in 2015. Gracie was also the subject of a PBS documentary, Fabulous!, in 2007.

Listen to 1957’s “Butterfly” below.

19 Dec 2022

Carry That Crate: Paul McCartney ‘7” Singles’ Box Set Tells Story of Post-Beatles Career, Warts & All

The new Paul McCartney box set includes more than 50 years of singles – 65 re-creations of previous 7-inch releases and 15 new ones, plus a book – in a wood crate that comes with straps to make it easier to lift. Have silly love songs ever weighed so much? It’s the ultimate way to preserve, and sell, a music format that was originally intended to be disposable.  

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All told, The 7” Singles Box makes a solid case for McCartney as the auteur of the three-minute pop song. In The Beatles, McCartney helped remake the album as an ambitious art form – but he remains devoted enough to singles to keep a jukebox in his London office. By some measures, he’s the most successful singles artist of all time: The Beatles are No. 1 on Billboard’s ranking of the top-charting Hot 100 acts of all time and McCartney is No. 13 as a solo artist (including his work with Wings). When it came out, “Mull of Kintyre” was the best-selling single in U.K. history – and it may not even be one of the dozen best songs here. 

Appropriately for its focus on singles, this set offers a refreshingly warts-and-all picture of McCartney’s post-Beatles career. (McCartney owns the rights to his solo recordings, so the decision was his, and it’s a good one.) At a time when most of his ’60s and ’70s peers are editing their legacies, McCartney includes everything, from the sublime (“Band on the Run,” “My Brave Face,” a live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” and much more) to the silly (“Ode to a Koala Bear;” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” the bass-heavy B-side of “Wonderful Christmastime”).

Paul Mccartney box set

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The dig against McCartney is that he often didn’t live up to his genius, but maybe he just wasn’t always in the mood. Part of the point of Wings was that making music in the shadow of The Beatles was freighted by the kind of expectations that make it hard to make great pop singles. John Lennon and George Harrison both began their solo careers making music that was arguably more adventurous, but both of them also eventually got back to basics. McCartney certainly wasn’t afraid to be ambitious: One of these singles, previously unreleased as such, features the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Another is “We All Stand Together,” from the movie Rupert and the Frog Song. You get the sense that he got a kick out of both of them. So will many listeners. 

More than any other major artist, McCartney proved that pop music could be both artistically ambitious and awfully silly – sometimes even both at once – and succeed on its own terms either way. Not all of these songs were received well when they were released, but many deserve another listen – especially as singles. So does the music McCartney continues to make. As big as this box is, “it doesn’t include my latest single,” McCartney writes in the foreword, “because I haven’t written that one yet.”

19 Dec 2022

The 25 Best Latin Albums of 2022: Staff Picks

In 2022, Spanish-language music comprised a big chunk of what was being streamed beyond just Spanish-speaking countries and households. This year, Latin – which is defined as music predominantly sung in Spanish – saw a continued steady growth in the U.S. market and across the globe.

Latin’s big year was led by Bad Bunny’s game-changing release Un Verano Sin Ti, which is (of course) included in our 25 favorite Latin albums of this year. The 23-track genre-hopping set became the first all-Spanish album to be ranked No. 1 on the Billboard 200 year-end albums chart, and it also earned the first-ever Grammy nomination for album of the year for an all-Spanish release.  

Genre-blurring albums were a trend this year. Perhaps the most experimental was Rosalía’s Motomami, which is impossible to box into one particular style or genre. Instead, the 16-track set, which won album of the year at the Latin Grammys, was an invitation into the Spaniard’s global-spanning inspiration. She isn’t afraid to go on an exploratory journey where jazz and reggaeton can coexist in one song.  

That experimental nature was also found in Mexican music albums such as Eslabon Armado’s history-making Nostalgia and Ivan Cornejo’s Dañado. The faces of a new generation of regional Mexican acts, these artists may be labeled as sierreño artists but, at their core, they’re fusing their songs with the sounds (rock, alternative, pop) that inspired them growing up as a Mexican-American kid in the U.S. There was also Natalia Lafourcade’s masterpiece De Todas Las Flores, Romeo Santos’ third installment of his La Formula series and Jorge Drexler’s poignant Tinta y Tiempo.  

Here are our 25 favorite Latin albums from this year, in alphabetical order.  

19 Dec 2022

Revered Nashville Venue Exit/In Gets New Talent Buyer Under AJ Capital Partners

AJ Capital Partners, the new owners of revered Nashville music venue Exit/In, have named a new talent buyer for the iconic entertainment hub and plan to re-open the shuttered venue as early as this Spring after it temporarily closed in late November.

Though there had been local speculation and concern that AJ Capital would turn to a large promoter such as Live Nation to book the 51-year old independent venue, the new owners are utilizing an in-house team with Dan Merker serving as Exit/In’s lead talent buyer. Merker, who oversees talent buying for all AJ Capital properties, has previously worked at Outback Presents, HUKA Entertainment and Tortuga Music Festival.

“We are honored to carry on the legacy of this iconic venue and raise the bar for both the fan and artist experience,” Merker said in a statement to Billboard. ‘We look forward to announcing 2023 shows soon and as the calendar will reflect, restoring Exit/In as a welcoming place for artists that span all genres and everyone within our community.”

After moving their headquarters from Chicago to Nashville in 2020, AJ Capital Partners in July 2021 acquired the beloved Exit/In, located at 2208 Elliston Place, as well as the adjacent Hurry Back bar, for $6.45 million from Anthony Rentals (representing property owners the Nash and Anthony families). AJ Capital says they plan to continue Hurry Back as a restaurant/bar concept. A representative for the Nash and Anthony families declined to speak for this story. AJ Capital Partners officially take over operations of Exit/In on Jan. 1, 2023.

In addition to the Graduate Hotel chain, AJ Capital owns and developed the buildings that house two current music industry entities: Live Nation’s Nashville office in the Nashville Warehouse Co., and newly opened Nashville headquarters for the Academy of Country Music, both in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood.

AJ Capital Partners also owns the Memphis, Tennessee venue Minglewood Hall. Other venues in AJ Capital Partners’ portfolio include New Orleans’ Joy Theater, The Senate in Columbia, S.C., Houston’s White Oak Music Hall, and Iron City in Birmingham, Ala. AJ Capital also has plans for a 4,500-capacity music venue in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston area.

“The Exit/In has been Nashville’s music forum for 51 years, under the stewardship of more than two dozen operators over that time,” Tim Ryan, Principal focused on live music venues, boutique hotels and other experiential real estate, AJ Capital Partners, told Billboard via a statement. “Ultimately, the venue’s history, legacy and soul belong to Nashville. As the next stewards in line, we’re committed to doing whatever is necessary to restore her to good health and set the stage for another legendary half-century and beyond. AJ’s track record of restoring and reviving historic spaces speaks for itself, both here in Nashville and across our portfolio.”

After AJ Capital takes over the venue’s operations on Jan. 1, 2023, it plans to renovate the Exit/In’s bathrooms and green room. Updates will also include refreshing of the building’s west-facing outer wall, which previously showcased a mural featuring artists who have performed at Exit/In. The mural has since been painted over.

Since opening in 1971 with a performance by Jimmy Buffett, the bare-bones, 500-person capacity Exit/In has been one of the city’s most enduring and popular venues, and a mainstay of Nashville’s rock music scene, hosting a diverse slate of artists, including Billy Joel, Etta James, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Muddy Waters, Jason and the Scorchers, R.E.M and more. On the back cover of The Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta, Sting is seen wearing an Exit/In shirt. Episodes of the CMT series Western Beat with Billy Block — which grew out of Block’s Western Beat Roots Revival — were taped at Exit/In beginning in 2000.

In 2021, AJ Capital filed a request to designate the Exit/In as a historical landmark, and historic overlays were approved for a section of the property.

The switchover in ownership has not been without controversy as the most recent operator, Chris Cobb, had been passionately opposed to the change. Cobb, whose name had grown synonymous with the venue, has been an integral part of Exit/In for 18 years. In 2012, he partnered with Josh Billue to oversee Exit/In, and became its sole operator since 2019 until the last show under his watch on Nov. 23.

In February, as Exit/In went on the block, Chris Cobb and his wife Telisha, partnered with Grubb Properties’ Live Venues Recovery Fund, an entity that helps club operators become owners, to try to buy the property. The Cobbs also launched a GoFundMe campaign that reached its initial $200,000 goal, ultimately raising more than $271,000, but were unsuccessful in buying the club. Cobb pledged to donate the money raised to the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and to Music Venue Alliance (MVAN). Cobb was unavailable for comment by press time.

In April 2021 Cobb also filed trademark applications for the name “Exit/In Nashville’s Music Forum,” as well as “Exit/In Nashville Music Forum Fifty Years and Counting 50,” which were subsequently opposed by AJ Capital in October of this year. The opposition filing from AJ Capital contended that according to license agreements, tenants were granted a limited license to use the name Exit/In on the leased premises only, and that the landlord “at all times shall retain sole and exclusive ownership and right to the name Exit/In subject only to the limited license granted herein.”

There is no word on when the patent office will hand down its decision.

The Exit/In has long served as the anchor for the geographic area dubbed The Rock Block, which over the decades has included The End, Elliston Place Soda Shop, Obie’s Pizza and The Gold Rush. The Rock Block was commemorated with a historical marker in 2020.

Ned Horton, whose The Horton Group operated Exit/In from 1998 through 2001, says, “Real estate in Nashville has been going through the roof, home neighborhoods are changing and in rapid fashion. So to be beholden to a landlord in running a business does have its limitations from time to time. AJ controls its destiny by owning the building and the land. But it does seem like the new owners are well-intentioned and have the capital to do somethings that others maybe couldn’t in the past.”

Rick Whetsel, who operated Exit/In from 2003-2006, says, “It’s really exciting to have an owner with deep pockets. As caretakers or stewards of Exit/In, we’ve always kind of financed things out of our own pockets. Taking care of upgrades and fixing various things, we tended to kind of put off repairs or kick things down the road a bit. It’s nice that someone has the money and capital they have to take care of the building and put it on the path to a good future. The Exit/In is such an important part of not just the music industry, but the city of Nashville. There’s such a sense of history and you can feel that energy when you are in there.”

“Change is not always a bad thing,” Whetsel added. “Financial security is a wonderful thing. It’s nice to know that the place will be here and able to operate as a venue for a long time. The stewardship of Exit/In, they realize it is a big deal. You have to go out there and build bridges and become part of the community and they are. It’s amazing the work that myself, Chris Cobb, Josh Billue, and others in the past couple of decades have been able to do, to get the Exit/In on the right path. The Exit/In has always been here and it needs to stay here.”

19 Dec 2022

These Two Former Billboard Staffers Produced One of Rap’s Biggest Christmas Hits

Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how two former Billboard staffers produced the holiday hit “Christmas Rappin’” for then-up-and-coming rapper Kurtis Blow, originally ran in 2019. Since then, in 2020, Robert Ford passed away.

One groundbreaking Christmas hit didn’t just make the Billboard charts — it was produced by two former employees. In 1979, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford left the magazine to produce “Christmas Rappin’ ” for an up-and-coming rapper named Kurtis Blow. Released on Mercury Records, the single went gold, and Blow became the first rapper to sign a major-label deal.

At Billboard, Moore was an ad salesman who sometimes wrote music reviews, and Ford was a production manager who also wrote a column about R&B. They both knew that hip-hop represented the future of music — Public Enemy’s Chuck D has cited a 1978 article by Ford as one of the first mentions of the genre in a national publication. Even so, they didn’t get any interest from A&R executives in New York, so they took “Chrismas Rappin’ ” to Chicago-based Mercury Records, where John Stainze, a recent transfer from the label’s U.K. office to its West Coast operations, convinced Mercury that the song would recoup its costs (about $6,000, remembers Moore) in the United Kingdom alone.

“Christmas Rappin’ ” — a song “ ’bout a red-suited dude with a friendly attitude” — wasn’t originally intended to be a Christmas tune. Moore, who wrote the lyrics, decided to give it a holiday theme because labels like songs they can sell every December. “Christmas Rappin’ ” turned out to be one: It peaked at No. 53 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart in 1995 and at No. 35 on Hot Rap Songs in 1999.

“It took Mercury forever to realize how big it was,” says Moore, who with Ford went on to produce Blow’s landmark “The Breaks” and work with the R&B group Full Force. “I’m sitting here staring at my gold record that should be platinum.”

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.

19 Dec 2022

How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Became a Christmas Hit Decades After Its Release

Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” came to be considered a holiday song, originally ran in 2019. The story of the song is recounted in the recent documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” with its ambiguous, imagistic lyrics about sex and spirituality, was once described by Jeff Buckley, perhaps the song’s most famous interpreter, as “the hallelujah of the orgasm.” So how did an a cappella version by Pentatonix get to No. 21 on the Billboard Holiday 100 in 2018 — after peaking on that chart at No. 2 in 2016?

It’s just the latest twist in the ongoing story of what may be the world’s least likely standard, which originally appeared on Cohen’s 1984 album, Various Positions. The song only became iconic two decades ago, after John Cale’s version was used on the Shrek soundtrack and Buckley’s version appeared in a video VH1 made in tribute to Sept. 11 rescue workers. Around that time, it also began to be used in religious services, its Old Testament imagery and chanted one-word chorus offering a solemnity that seemed to fit weddings, funerals and various occasions in between.

Written by Cohen — a Jewish Buddhist — the song was first associated with Christmas in 2010, when Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle included it on her 2010 holiday album, The Gift, which hit No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. In 2015, violinist-singer Lindsey Stirling released a version that reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 21 on the Holiday 100 the following year; that same year, German superstar Helene Fischer included the song on her hit album Weihnachten.

Since 2016, however, the most popular version of “Hallelujah” on streaming services by far has been Pentatonix’s, which has been streamed 346 million times in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. “When people hear it,” the group’s Scott Hoying told Billboard in 2018 about the song’s staying power, “they feel something.”

Alan Light is the author of The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah.”

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.