Podcasts
On today’s (Nov. 20) episode of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century podcast, we reach No. 3 on our list with a pop super-duperstar who shined bright for 13 years of absolute pop world command, before ducking out to tend to her business and empire for most of the past decade. (Read our No. […]
When Sabrina Carpenter set up shop in Los Angeles for three dates of her Short n’ Sweet Tour, she brought out the big guns. There was Christina Aguilera. There was Jack Antonoff. And then there was Domingo. On the new Pop Shop Podcast, we welcome Billboard deputy editor Lyndsey Havens so she and Katie can […]
A few years ago, Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson had an idea for a band T-shirt with the song title of one of its most popular songs in the style of a satanic metal band. “It was all blood, and there were pentagrams, and it said ‘Follow You Down’ in old English script,” he tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “It was just blood and flames everywhere, and I loved it so much. I thought it was really funny and great.”
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The other four members of Gin Blossoms — a melodic rock band whose handful of lasting hits from the ‘90s alternative rock era have little in common with dark heavy metal — didn’t share Wilson’s enthusiasm, and the idea never got past the conception phase. Why the shirt didn’t get made helps explain how Wilson and his bandmates have kept Gin Blossoms going for 37 years: Wilson was outvoted.
“Part of what makes our band work is that everybody gets a vote,” says Wilson from his home in Arizona. “And despite the fact that I do more work than anybody else, my vote doesn’t count for any more. It wouldn’t work for us. If I made some power grab, that would be one of the things that could lead to the end of the band.”
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Formed in 1987 in Tempe, Ariz., Gin Blossoms first released an independent album, Dusted, before signing to MCA Records and releasing New Miserable Experience in 1992. The band’s catchy, melodic songs sounded drastically different than the heavier grunge sound that was capturing programmers’ attention at the time, but Gin Blossoms eventually found a welcome home at radio and MTV. Their breakout hit, “Hey Jealousy,” peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1993 and was equalled by “Found Out About You” the following year. A double-A side single with “Follow You Down” and “Til I Hear It From You,” and the 1996 album Congratulations I’m Sorry, peaked at Nos. 9 and 10 on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts, respectively.
A four-year breakup and three studio albums later, Gin Blossoms’ democratic approach to running the band has proven effective. They spent much of 2024 criss-crossing the country playing playing music venues, fairs and festivals. In August, the band hit the road with ‘90s compatriots Toad the Wet Sprocket and Vertical Horizon. In January, the band will board The ‘90s Cruise in Tampa, Fla., that will also feature Blues Traveler, Everclear, Lit and Lisa Loeb.
“I think there was a lot of sacrifices made by the everybody in the band to stay together,” says guitarist Jesse Valenzuela. “But at some after 20 years, you start to see it as maybe, I guess, this is my life’s work, and what are you supposed to do? You better make peace with your situation and try to be positive and be the best person you can be. Try to be helpful to others and be honest.”
“Punctuality,” Wilson adds. “Punctuality is important. You don’t make your bandmates wait for you. You want to keep a band together? Get to the airport on time.”
Listen to the entire interview with Robin Wilson and Jesse Valenzuela from Gin Blossoms in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Audible, Podbean or Everand.
Just how long can Shaboozey‘s breakout hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” stay at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100? So far, it’s scored 17 nonconsecutive weeks up top — the second-most in the chart’s history. And on the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are discussing whether the newly Grammy-nominated hit (song […]
When the 2025 Grammy nominations are unveiled on Friday, there’s a world where the year’s biggest pop stars dominate the storyline. Billboard awards editor Paul Grein has shared his final Big Four predictions ahead of Friday’s announcement, and he thinks pop women will lead the biggest categories, including Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured […]
Some ‘90s rock bands reunite for the paycheck of a festival appearance or an alternative rock package tour. The original members of Sixpence None the Richer got back together simply to make music again.
As singer Leigh Nash and guitarist Matt Slocum tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast, the band members’ lives happened to intersect again for the first time since 2002. The result, the group’s new Rosemary Hill EP, was released on Oct. 4 through Flatiron Recordings, and the band is currently on a U.S. tour that concludes in Los Angeles on Dec. 15.
“Leigh and I had started working on new music during the pandemic,” says Slocum. “Dale [Baker], who’s our drummer, started reaching out. He was coming into Nashville periodically, because he still works as a session musician here in town and in his hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and he tours a fair amount.”
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Before long, Nash, Slouch and Baker were talking about making music together over dinner. That conversation led Nash to reach out to bass player Justin Cary. “That ended up being very serendipitous,” says Slocum, “because he and his wife own a bakery in Albany, New York, and they had made the decision to close the bakery.” Nash called to ask Cary if he wanted to make music again, and “he was more than ready to jump in.”
Truth be told, Sixpence None the Richer never really went away. The band’s 1998 breakthrough hit “Kiss Me,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following year, was streamed 70 million times and played on radio nearly 48,000 times in the U.S. last year, according to Luminate. The song has consistently been featured in television shows, too —i ncluding a 2016 episode of The Simpsons —and most recently can be heard in BLACKPINK member Lisa’s new song “Moonlit Floor,” which uses an interpolation of “Kiss Me” and takes its title from the song’s lyrics (“Kiss me, beneath the milky twilight / Lead me out on the moonlit floor”).
Nash is hopeful “Moonlit Floor” helps the band reach new fans and introduces Rosemary Hill to a younger generation. “I have seen a pretty big uptick in people and followers on our social media platforms and and no doubt those are really young people. So, I’m excited to perhaps affect a brand new generation with the new music that we’re putting out. That would be an insane blessing.”
“It’s been really cool to see how it’s connected with people all over the world and has done this generational jump,” adds Slocum. That “Moonlit Floor” songwriters Ryan Williamson and Jessie Reyez chose to utilize “Kiss Me” “shows that it’s just timeless,” he says.
Listen to the entire interview with Leigh Nash and Matt Slocum to hear more about the writing and recording of the Rosemary Hill EP, performing again for the first time in more than a decade, covering The La’s “There She Goes” and meeting The La’s frontman Lee Mavers in London in 2015. You can listen in the embedded Spotify player below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
If you’re a disrespectful photographer or an overly personal fan planning to cross Chappell Roan‘s boundaries, we have one thing to say: Good luck, babe. The pop singer/songwriter has been making headlines for months for calling out bad behavior in the music industry, whether it’s her plea to fans to respect her space when she’s […]
When One Direction arrived in America in 2011, the five-member British boy band took the pop world by storm. More than a decade later, fans of the wildly popular group were devastated to learn of the death of Liam Payne last week at age 31. The four remaining members of the group — Harry Styles, […]
Stevie Nicks returned to Saturday Night Live over the weekend, performing on the show for the first time in 41 years and playing two songs: starting with her latest song “The Lighthouse” and ending with the 1981 classic “Edge of Seventeen.” On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie and Keith are chatting about the […]
To say that Colin Hay‘s musical career has been a long and winding road would be an understatement. In just over a decade, the Scottish-born musician went from an unknown musician playing folk clubs in Melbourne, Australia, to fronting early ‘80s hitmakers Men at Work, to languishing in Los Angeles after his solo record deal fell through.
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The “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” singer discovered that the fame from being part of a multi-platinum band didn’t easily transfer to a solo career. Men at Work broke up after — or during, depending on how you look at it — the recording of their 1985 album, Two Hearts. Hay regrouped and released solo albums for Columbia Records (1987’s Looking for Jack) and MCA Records (1990’s Wayfaring Sons). Disappointing sales caused MCA Records to drop Hay, leaving him without a record label, a manager or a booking agent. “No one was interested really in anything that I was doing,” he tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast.
People began to take notice of his solo work — slowly. In 1992, Hay was asked to play at a new Los Angeles venue, Largo, by its owner, Mark Flannigan. Hay took to the stage with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a body of work from three Men at Work albums and two solo albums. The shows were a hit with local audiences, and Hay became a frequent guest. “Largo was really instrumental” in building the next phase of his career, Hay says. “It’s like a home, really, where I could just be myself and play whatever I wanted to.”
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Nearly 40 years old at the time, Hay says he knew record labels weren’t interested in him despite having Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits in 1982 (“Who Can It be Now?”) and 1983 (“Down Under”) and an album, Business as Usual, that spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. So, Hay decided to set about finding his own audience and take the one-man show honed at Largo on the road. It was a big adjustment for a musician whose previous band dominated radio and MTV in the early ‘80s and won a best new artist Grammy in 1983. “Thirty years ago, there was hardly anyone there,” he says of those early solo shows. “There might be 30 people, 40 people. Not so very long before that I had been playing to, like, 150,000 people.”
Those early solo shows were a valuable step in creating a second career as a solo singer-songwriter. Initially facing small crowds of 30 or 40 people, Hay discovered that he had a knack for storytelling that captured the audience’s attention between songs. “I think people were a little embarrassed for me in the audience,” he says in a Scottish accent softened by his upbringing in Australia. “I could see this kind of quizzical look in their face, like, ‘Why is he doing this?’ And so I just started to talk to people because they were just there, you know? And so I just started to talk to them and tell them what had happened to me. And as I did that, I noticed that people leaned in a bit closer.”
A big break came in 2002 when Hay was featured in an episode of the television show Scrubs. Through a mutual friend, Hay met Zach Braff when the actor landed the starring role. “He said, ‘I’ll see if I can get some of your songs on the TV show,’” Hay recalls. “I didn’t think anything of it.” But Braff made good on his pledge by taking Hay’s music to show creator Bill Lawrence, who ended up writing an episode called “My Overkill” in which Hay performs the 1983 Men at Work hit “Overkill.” “That was very … that was a huge thing for me, especially playing live,” says Hay. “It had a big impact in terms of my live audiences, people who discovered me through watching that show.”
A year later, Hay was performing in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, a gig he held intermittently over the years and consistently since 2018. Hay was introduced to The Beatles as a child by his father, the owner of a music store in his native Scotland. After a decade rebuilding his career as a solo artist, Hay was sharing a stage with the Beatles’ drummer. “When you turn around you think, ‘Wow, I’m playing with Ringo!” Hay exclaims. “’He was in the f–king Beatles!’”
More than three decades later, Hay continues to entertain audiences with his solo acoustic shows filled with anecdotes and wry humor. The venues have grown considerably from sparsely filled clubs to crowded small theaters and performing arts centers. He also tours under the name Men at Work, although he is the lone original member. His vast catalog of solo albums haven’t been commercial successes, Hay points out, constant touring has been the key building his shows from 30 or 40 people in the early ’90s to 1,000 or so a night today.
“The success that I’ve really managed to achieve has just been through going out and playing live. So it’s a valuable thing for me. And also, I kind of treasure the audiences in a way because — people say that a lot — but really they kind of saved me in many ways. Because even when I first started to go out and play live in the early ’90s, people could sense my kind of slight sense of desperation about what the f–k is going on. And they would just encourage me [to] just keep going.”
Hay has indeed kept going. Nearly 50 years after Hay began to play at folks clubs in Melbourne, he says he’s in his natural state as a traveling, guitar-toting troubadour. “All I’m doing is trying to make sense of the time that I’ve got left and enjoy myself as much as I can — and also to hopefully give people a good night out,” Hay says. “I think that’s kind of a useful thing to do.”
To listen to the entire interview with Colin Hay, hit play on the embedded Spotify player, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Everand, Podbean or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts.