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It was a very good night for Team Blake on The Voice on Tuesday night (Dec. 6). Country star Blake Shelton — who holds the record for the most wins (8) over the show’s 22 seasons — seems poised to usher one of his charges into the winner’s circle again during next week’s finale after three of his team members moved on.
Twitter couldn’t help but notice that the three white country singers from Shelton’s team — Bryce Leatherwood, Brayden Lape and bodie — were joined by another white performer, Team Camila Cabello’s Morgan Myles in the top four. The only non-white singer to make the cut in the top 5 was powerhouse vocalist Omar Jose Cardona, who was saved after landing in the bottom four, which “stunned” his coach John Legend; for the third time in her six seasons on the show, Gwen Stefani will not have a singer in the finals.
Cardona had to compete against Kim Cruse, Justin Aaron and Parijita Bastola for a spot in next week’s championship round, punching his ticket with a strong take on Lady Gaga’s “You and I.” The results had some on Twitter crying foul. “So the voice is really getting blatantly racist,” read one comment on Twitter, where a number of users complained about the poor representation from Legend’s team, which featured a number highly praised vocalists.
“I’m 100% disappointed!! #johnLegend has 3 of the best singer there & this is result,” said another. “If you wanna see how blatantly racist america is just watch #thevoice,” wrote one disgruntled viewer, with a similar sentiments coming in tweets that read, “America is clearly delusional, confused and oh, can’t forget racist” and “All the blacks and browns up for elimination when they are the best ones there? America is never beating the racism allegations. #TheVoice.”
A spokesperson for The Voice had not returned a request for comment at press time.
Yahoo! Entertainment‘s Lyndsey Parker wrote that “the optics were not good as Parijita, Kim, Justin, and Omar stood onstage learning the results, especially considering all the sheer talent among these four.”
It was a refrain heard throughout the Billboard offices in the first half of 2022: Where are the hits? The slow start for new entries really impacting the Billboard Hot 100 had us all looking left and looking right for the sort of songs we usually take for granted — the kind that slowly (or not-so-slowly) spread to all corners of the culture, connecting every kind of music fan and becoming unavoidable parts of a given year’s experience. With 2021’s biggest singles refusing to go away and this year’s listenership seemingly too spread out to elect new consensus hits to replace the incumbents, it was starting to look like we might go the whole calendar subsisting on nothing but reruns.
Luckily for us, the hits showed: first from some of pop’s biggest returning heroes, then from some artists taking the next step towards stardom, some longtime hitmakers we hadn’t heard from in a bit, and some new names we hope to be hearing a lot more from in the years to come. And of course, it wasn’t just the big songs that enraptured us in 2022; we found plenty of smaller favorites to save to our streaming playlists and inspire our vinyl orders in between those. But the year just wouldn’t have felt complete without those late-arriving, chart-crashing smashes, particularly since we ended up getting a handful who proved more than worthy of their position.
Here are our 100 favorite songs of 2022, a year that once again proved that no matter the time or context, pop music always finds a way. (Songs were considered eligible for the list if they either came out in 2022, were first released as an official single in 2022, or peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022 — though sorry, Stranger Things heads, we still couldn’t quite justify including “Running Up That Hill” or “Master of Puppets.”)
Journey‘s new manager, Mike Kobayashi, confirmed late Tuesday he was “just hired,” taking over from player-managers Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain after a roller-coaster year.
The classic-rock fixture sold 296,000 tickets and grossed $31.9 million on its 2022 arena tour, according to Billboard Boxscore, doubling the revenue pace of its previous headlining tour, in 2017, which grossed $31.7 million over 67 shows.
But the band ended 2022 with an internal squabble over an American Express card: Lead guitarist Schon sued keyboardist Cain last month for refusing to give Cain access to an account representing “millions in Journey funds”; Cain responded that Schon was “running up enormous personal charges” on the account.
The lawsuit, pending in California Superior Court, is one of several legal disputes involving Cain and Schon, one of the band’s founders, and other Journey members in recent years. In 2020, the two musicians sued drummer Steve Smith and bassist Ross Valory, accusing them of improperly trying to take control of the band name; Valory filed a counter-complaint, and the lawsuit ended with a 2021 settlement in which Smith and Valory left the band.
And after Schon and Cain trademarked names of many of the band’s hits, such as “Wheel In the Sky,” former frontman Steve Perry filed an action in U.S. Trademark Court in September to stop the process. Perry cited a long-running band partnership agreement that requires Schon and Cain to get his permission to make these kinds of trademark moves.
Kobayashi, who also manages fellow road warriors Def Leppard, did not respond to requests for further comment on his new position with Journey.
Journey hasn’t had a new hit in decades, but the band remains a top-tier touring act and occasionally scores high-profile synchs in shows like The Sopranos and, last spring, Stranger Things, the Netflix series that revived Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill” on the charts.
The audience at Sunday night’s (Dec. 4) Broadway opening of A Beautiful Noise: the Neil Diamond Musical showed up to hear their favorite hits from the legendary 81-year-old singer. But they went home with much more. According to CNN, Diamond surprised theatergoers when he popped up in the balcony during the curtain call to help lead the audience in a singalong of his beloved 1969 hit “Sweet Caroline.”
The singer, who retired from touring in 2018 after receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, sang the song’s opening lines before encouraging the packed house at the Broadhurst Theatre to join in on the iconic chorus as the house band played along. The pop-in at the jukebox musical that pays homage to his long, hit-filled musical career was New Yorker Diamond’s first appearance in his hometown since 2017 and one of the few times he’s appeared in public since his diagnosis.
According to People, before the surprise, Diamond walked the red carpet with his wife, Katie McNeil, and received a standing ovation from the audience upon entering the theater. While Diamond has kept a low profile since 2018, he did show up for a rare public appearance during a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park in June to sing “Caroline.”
Diamond stepped out during the 8th inning of the Red Sox’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals to deliver a rousing rendition of his 1969 hit; the singer had last performed at Fenway Park in 2013, just days after the Boston Marathon bombing. “Sweet Caroline” has been an 8th inning tradition at the ballpark since 1997. Standing alongside Diamond at Fenway was Broadway veteran Will Swenson, who plays the lead role in A Beautiful Noise.
Check out footage of the impromptu “Caroline” singalong below.
I don’t know who needs to hear this but Neil Diamond, who retired from performing five years ago because of Parkinsons, just had a Broadway show of him open and it at the opening night he did this pic.twitter.com/eJ02YUAzr5— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) December 6, 2022
Fox’s The Masked Singer will pay tribute to late actress Kirstie Alley on Wednesday night’s (Dec. 7) holiday-themed Masked Singer Seasonal Sing-a-Long Spectacular! special. According to Deadline, the homage will come just two days after the Emmy-winning star died after a private battle with colon cancer.
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Alley, 71, starred in season 7 of Masked Singer — also known as The Masked Singer: The Good, The Bad and the Cuddly — which aired in the spring of this year. The Cheers and Fat Actress alum only lasted on episode, performing Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” and Betty Everett/Cher’s “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss),” as well as a “cuddle duel” with teammate Space Bunny (Shaggy) on Meghan Trainor’s “Me Too.”
Tonight’s tribute will come with a card that will flash on-screen during the episode, which airs at 9 p.m. ET. The Masked run was Alley’s final TV appearance and after host Nick Cannon revealed her identity, the Dancing With the Stars and Celebrity Big Brother veteran told him why it was the perfect final reality TV run for her.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my career, but I’ve never gotten to be in the circus,” Alley said in her exit interview. “I have grandchildren, and they’re really young, so they are going to think this is good… I came on Masked Singer because about 10 years ago I realized I always had to keep mixing my career, mixing my life up, or it was going to get really mundane, it was going to get really boring fast. So I finally got up the nerve to do it.”
In addition to the many celebrity tributes to the beloved actress, Masked Singer panelist Ken Jeong offered some kind words, tweeting, “Rest in peace, Kirstie. #TheMaskedSinger.”
KPOP, which broke ground on Broadway for its casting and representation of Korean culture, is closing just a few weeks after opening at the Circle in the Square.
The musical, which originally premiered off-Broadway in 2017, will end its run on Dec. 11, the producers announced Tuesday (Dec. 6). Written by Jason Kim and directed by Teddy Bergman with music and lyrics by Helen Park and Max Vernon and choreography by Jennifer Weber, KPOP‘s closure follows 44 previews and 17 regular performances.
The final performance will feature a panel discussion celebrating and reflecting on AAPI representation on Broadway. Those panelists include David Henry Hwang, the first Asian American playwright to win a Tony; KPOP‘s Park the first Asian female composer in Broadway history; Korean playwright Hansol Jung; and actor Pun Bandhu. In support of that final performance, 200 complimentary tickets are being offered to AAPI community members and youth.
The show, which announced last week that a Broadway cast recording would release on Feb. 24, stars Luna, Julia Abueva, BoHyung, Major Curda, Jinwoo Jung, Jiho Kang, Amy Keum, James Kho, Marina Kondo, Eddy Lee, Joshua Lee, Jully Lee, Lina Rose Lee, Timothy H. Lee, Abraham Lim, Min, Kate Mina Lin, Aubie Merrylees, Patrick Park, Zachary Noah Piser, Kevin Woo and John Yi.
The story presents a behind-the-scenes look at various K-pop groups and a massive solo star who have come together to film for a special one-night-only concert. In the process, they find themselves unpacking both cultural and personal issues that threaten to dismantle one of the industry’s hottest labels and their sense of self as artists.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in early November, producer Joey Parnes acknowledged that the show had struggled to attract early audiences, saying that it has been challenging for producers to attract theatergoers to new or unknown work when some may still be nervous to return. “It’s not surprising that if they’re having to be discerning, they’re going to choose something that is more certain,” Parnes said.
Since it began previews in October, the new musical has often made less than $200,000 a week, ranking among the lowest-grossing in weekly industry tallies. Capacity has remained fairly healthy but alongside a low average weekly ticket price. The quick closing means KPOP will not be able to benefit from the traditional boost in ticket sales that comes around the holidays and for which many shows hold out for.
Beyond its box office, the musical’s presence on Broadway was historically significant, marking firsts in terms of its subject, its cast and creative team. As the first musical ever about Korean culture on Broadway, KPOP featured Korean representation in the creative team and onstage, including 18 Broadway debuts and only one non-Asian actor in the principal cast. It also featured lyrics for the songs and lines in Korean, with Park not only making history as a first for Asian women but joining just a handful of Asian composers to work on any Broadway show.
Earlier this week, producers Parnes and fellow producer Tim Forbes addressed these milestones while responding to a New York Times review of the show which both called an “insensitive and frankly offensive” take on the musical. In a lengthy Instagram statement addressing the critic Jesse Greene, along with the paper’s theater editor Nicole Herrington and chairman Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the duo addressed a “cultural insensitivity, underlying ignorance of and distaste for K-pop” present in the review, which they cited with a number of examples as statements that come “across as casual racism.”
They wrote that from the headline to the review itself, specific word choices about the script, choreography, costuming, lighting design and score — coupled with the review’s decision to leave out both audience reaction to the show’s Korean language elements and a lack of discussion about the performers themselves — denied the production’s K-pop performance elements “very legitimacy as part of a Broadway musical” and offered an “implicit assertion of traditional white cultural supremacy.”
“The job of theater critics is to dissect, analyze and ultimately judge work,” the producers’ statement concluded. “We also contend that they have a responsibility to meet a show on its own terms and to be informed enough to know what that even means. Above all, in these troubled times, they have an obligation to do so with cultural sensitivity and absolutely without the casual racist tropes Mr. Green wittingly or not perpetuates.”
In a statement shared with Playbill on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Times noted that after the open letter, the publication “quickly convened a discussion among editors and members of our standards department.” It found that the publication was “in agreement that Jesse’s review was fair” and disagreed “with the argument that Jesse’s criticism is somehow racist.”
This story originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
After launching the “Hanukkah Sessions” project during the pandemic, Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl and producer Greg Kurstin brought their festival of lights celebration to life on Monday night (Dec. 5) at Los Angeles’ famed club Largo with an all-star cast of supporters.
According to Variety, the show — presented by director Judd Apatow — at the 250-capacity club featured a long list of stars singing songs by Jewish artists, with Grohl playing drums and Kurstin on keyboards. The night started off with Apatow singing Blood Sweat and Tears’ “Spinning Wheel,” which was reportedly inspired by a karaoke night in Hawaii with Grohl’s family.
In the midst of a concerning rise in antisemitic incidents and hate speech in the U.S., proceeds from the night went to the Anti-Defamation League. P!nk was on hand, proudly proclaiming, “my name’s Alecia. I’m a Jew” as the intro to her performance of “Get This Party Started,” followed by Kurstin’s The Bird and the Bee collaborator Inara George singings 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love.”
Grohl’s 16-year-old daughter Violet strummed an acoustic guitar for Janis Ian’s “Edge of Seventeen,” with Beck performing his tune “E-Pro,” the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O singing her band’s “Heads Will Roll” and Jack Black ripping through Rush’s “The Spirit of Radio.” The night ended with Grohl on the mic singing Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” followed by an encore of David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo.”
The inaugural 2020 “Sessions” featured covers of songs by he Beastie Boys, Drake, Mountain, Peaches, Bob Dylan, Elastica, The Knack and the Velvet Underground, while last year’s edition brought eight crazy nights of covers, including a black metal take on Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You),” as well as the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana,” the Clash’s “Train in Vain,” Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Night,” Van Halen’s “Jump,” Amy Winehouse’s “Take the Box” and Billy Joel’s “Big Shot.”
BRISBANE, Australia — Australian dance music fans have two new charts to add to their weekly diet.
The fresh surveys, the Australian Dance Singles Chart, a countdown of the top 20 dance singles, and the Australian Dance Albums Chart, a tally of the top 10 dance albums, will publish each Friday starting this week.
Both charts will sit alongside ARIA’s other Australia-focused albums and singles charts, which include Australian Hip- Hop/R&B, Country, and Top 20 Singles and Albums, and more.
“ARIA is determined to find ways to showcase Australian music from all who create it, this is another step in the right direction as we endeavor to provide a transparent scoreboard for our industry and music fans alike to understand how local music is being streamed, purchased and engaged with,” explains the trade body’s CEO Annabelle Herd.
ARIA’s suite of charts are calculated with a combination of streams, physical and digital sales, with the exception of the ARIA Club Chart, which is based on reports by working DJs across Australia. None of those “official” tallies collate radio airplay information.
“It makes total sense to have Australian Dance Charts in addition to our regular Dance Charts, you only have to look at this year’s ARIA Awards featuring Rüfüs Du Sol, Luude and Flume to see that dance music plays such an important role in Australian music culture,” comments Herd.
“It represents many of our most-loved acts across the globe and countless DJs filling clubs across the country on a nightly basis. We’re determined to work with the dance music community to find ways to ensure established and up-and-coming producers are recognized for their contribution to this culture, and provide a greater spotlight as nightlife across Australia continues to recover.”
In June, the labels body and charts compiler rolled out its first new survey in three years — the New Release Chart, a weekly examination of the most popular new local and international singles on a four-month cycle. Earlier in the year, ARIA’s main charts began incorporating data on music consumption from YouTube.
Next year, 2023, marks the 40th anniversary of the ARIA Singles and Albums Charts.
Icehouse has canceled its upcoming performance at the Sydney Opera House as band leader Iva Davies battles with the “ongoing aftereffects” of COVID-19.
The ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted act postponed a pair of performances last month, part of the Great Southern Land 2022 – The Concert Series, due to ill health.
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First, a show Nov. 19 at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was put on ice, when Davies contracted the novel coronavirus.
“We have very strict protocols around our travel and performance schedule but somewhere I contracted COVID-19 despite all my vaccinations,” Davies said at the time.
“I am devastated to have to postpone the concert but the impact of the infection means that I am having difficulty breathing and certainly couldn’t manage to sing a full show.”
A week later, the ‘80s legends scrapped its concert Nov. 26 at Brisbane’s Riverstage.
“Despite getting good care from my doctor since I was diagnosed with COVID-19, my condition hasn’t improved,” Davies explained in a statement, issued Nov. 24. “As with so many other COVID sufferers, the effects of the infection are lasting a lot longer than I hoped. The difficulties I am having with breathing mean that I cannot sing for the duration of an Icehouse performance.”
Question marks lingered on whether Davies would be fit for next Monday’s (Dec. 12) performance at the forecourt of the iconic Sydney venue.
Then, on Wednesday (Dec. 7), Icehouse and promoter Live Nation announced the show would not go on.
“I am so very, very sorry to have had to cancel this show. Any of you who know my history will be aware of how special my relationship with the Opera House is,” Davies writes on a social post.“From the age of 14 I walked past it once a week to attend my oboe lessons at the Conservatorium when it was still a building site, little knowing that at 18 I would be playing in the orchestra in the new Opera Theatre for the first operas performed there.” He continues, “I performed on the Concert Hall stage as an oboist as well. I sang in two ballets that I composed for the Sydney Dance Company that opened in the Opera Theatre. And then, of course, there was the performance on the forecourt of the 25-minute extended piece ‘The Ghost of Time’ based on ‘Great Southern Land’ which led to the countdown into the new Millennium for Sydney.”
The Melbourne (Feb. 11, 2023) and Brisbane (Feb. 18, 2023) shows has been rescheduled. The Sydney show, however, is wiped out due to no alternative date being available, a statement confirms.
Icehouse is one of Australia’s post-punk gifts to the music world. Emerging fully-formed as Flowers, Davies and Co. dropped Icehouse in 1980, an album stacked with gems that haven’t lost any of their lustre, including “We Can Get Together,” “Walls” and “Can’t Help Myself.”
Davies adopted the band Icehouse and had an instant classic with the synth-powered album Primitive Man, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary. It’s lead track “Great Southern Land” is an unofficial anthem of this country, and “Hey Little Girl” cracked the U.K. top 20, peaking at No. 17 (album track “Street Café” charted at No. 62).
A U.S. breakthrough would come with the 1987 album Man of Colours, which yielded two top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – “Crazy” (No. 14) and “Electric Blue” (No. 7).
Icehouse was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.
LONDON — Less than a year after being appointed chief executive of the Association for Electronic Music, Silvia Montello is exiting the global trade body to become CEO of AIM, the London-based Association of Independent Music.
Montello takes up the new post on Jan. 31. She will succeed Paul Pacifico, who leaves AIM later this month to head up the Saudi Music Commission, where he will be responsible for developing and championing the music sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In April, the London-based Montello was appointed the first female CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM). The New York-headquartered non-profit organization, founded in 2013, represents the interests of over 250 electronic music companies across 25 countries.
Montello’s appointment as CEO of AIM — which represents more than 1,000 U.K. indie labels, artists and music companies, including Beggars Group, Domino, Warp and Ninja Tune — comes on the back of another strong year for independent labels and artists in the United Kingdom. According to labels trade body BPI, independently released music made up 29% of the U.K.’s recorded music market in the first 10 months of 2022, up from 27% for the whole of 2021 — when total recorded music sales reached £1.3 billion ($1.6 million) in the U.K. — and an increase of 30% from 2017, when independents claimed a 22% share.
Independently released albums that have topped the U.K. albums chart this year include Arctic Monkeys’ The Car, Wet Leg’s self-titled debut, Fontaines D.C.’s Skinty Fia and rapper Central Cee’s 23.
“The growth of the indie sector has been fantastic to see and what’s really exciting about it is the rise in grass roots independent artists who are self-releasing and creating their own teams and finding ways of being able to build their own fanbase,” Montello tells Billboard.
Despite the growth, it remains difficult for many DIY and independent artists to make a decent living from streaming alone, she says, echoing well-publicized discontent from the creator community over low returns from music streams.
In her new role as CEO of AIM, Montello — who has been an active member of the U.K. trade body for several years — says she will continue the organization’s push for an “equitable and fair” split of streaming revenues but will also focus on educating and training independent artists and businesses about how they can monetize their art in the fast-changing music ecosystem.
“Looking outside of the reliance on just the major streaming platforms is going to be more of a significant conversation and trend going forward,” she says, citing the metaverse, Web3 and growth of neighboring rights revenues as potential avenues for artists to maximize their future earning potential.
“We always need to be looking forward and making sure that we’re trying to anticipate where there may be new opportunities for our members, but also anticipate where there may be challenges arising and making sure that we’re up to speed with everything,” says Montello.
Prior to heading AFEM, Montello held senior executive roles at the U.K. arm of Universal Music Group, where she worked as director of catalog marketing between 2006 and 2010, and BMG, where, according to her LinkedIn profile, she served as group senior vp of recordings operations and integrations from 2014 to 2016. She was subsequently appointed senior vp of operations at the then-Kobalt-owned artist services company AWAL, a post she held from 2017 to 2020.
More recently, Montello held senior posts at music rights data platform Blokur and Audio Network, a U.K.-based creator and publisher of music for film, television and digital content. Since 2011, she has also acted as CEO of Voicebox Consulting, which has worked with music companies and charities that include BMG, PIAS and the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Montello co-founded and is director of #remarQabl, an electronic music label services and publishing company that champions female, LGBTQ+ and underrepresented artists, and is a trustee for U.K. charity Help Musicians.
In a press release announcing Montello’s appointment, AIM chair Nadia Khan called the executive a “fantastic leader” whose “extensive industry background, contact base, business development skills, passion for diversity and inclusion, and vision for the future bring renewed leadership to AIM.”
Association for Electronic Music co-founders Ben Turner and Kurosh Nasseri congratulated Montello on what they called a “landmark appointment” for both her and the genre of electronic music.
“It is amazing to see an organization as influential as AIM looking to our sector and actually to our own trade body AFEM for their next leader,” Turner and Nasseri say in a statement. They thanked Montello for “her valuable input into AFEM in her short time with us” and said the organization has begun the process of recruiting a new CEO to succeed her.
Montello says she looks forward to “really getting under the skin of AIM” and doing all that she can to make the independent music business flourish, help artists avoid burnout and add to the “richness and diversity” of music coming out of the United Kingdom.
“Because if we don’t have that from the independent sector, where a lot of the creativity comes from the grass roots, the margins and underrepresented groups who have got something to say,” she says, “then all music lovers are going to miss out.”
