Podcasts
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Luke Combs made his Billboard Hot 100 debut back in 2017, but in the six years since, the country hitmaker isn’t likely to be called a “pop star.”
That all might change, thanks to his new cover of Tracy Chapman‘s 1988 classic “Fast Car,” which is featured on his latest album, Gettin’ Old, and marks his very first song to cross over to the pop and adult contemporary charts.
This week, “Fast Car” debuts on Pop Airplay at No. 39, Adult Pop Airplay at No. 40, and Adult Contemporary at No. 30 — marking the first time the country star has appeared on any of those charts. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking all about the song’s longevity. We even get a little help from Billboard‘s own Gary Trust — who manages the Hot 100, Pop Airplay, Adult Pop Airplay and Adult Contemporary charts — to ask why he thinks the song is catching on with pop radio.
Listen to the podcast here:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how SEVENTEEN, Eslabon Armado and Jack Harlow all debut in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and how Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” becomes the first song to concurrently be No. 1 on both the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and the Country Airplay chart. Plus, we’re talking all about Taylor Swift announcing Speak Now as her next re-recorded album, and big news across the pond this week with Beyoncé launching her Renaissance Tour in Sweden and the Eurovision Song Contest kicking off in the U.K.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
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Welcome back to New And Making Noise, your source for the hottest new artists making waves in music right now. In this episode, Memphis rapper and Young Dolph protégé, Key Glock, joins hosts Incognito, DJ Misses and A-Plus in the studio to talk about his latest album Glockoma 2 as he goes back on tour.
Fresh off the success of his album Glockoma 2, the first project he released since the tragic loss of his cousin and mentor Young Dolph, Glock is back on the road performing live with “bigger venues” and “more energy” than his last tour. “The energy is going to be there anyway, but we might cause a little earthquake,” he says.
Glock came up as a young artist under Dolph, the Memphis icon tragically lost to gun violence in his hometown in 2021.
The late rapper found success in creating music for his Memphis community and achieved mainstream success with chart-topping tracks like “Major” featuring Key Glock and “RNB” featuring Megan Thee Stallion. Dolph has collaborated with Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, O.T. Genasis and T.I.—all while operating his own independent record label Paper Route Empire (PRE).
Key Glock released his debut mixtape Glock Season in 2017 under PRE. Since his debut, the young artist released more projects including the first Glockoma mixtape and the Dum and Dummer joint album series that he made with Dolph.
Glock, who is still a PRE artist, is keeping the legacy of Dolph’s empire alive by setting his sights on future projects as he continues to perform and make music. “I ain’t got [the music] where I want it yet. I’m still on the music but I’m slowly but surely going to work onto other things,” Glock says.
The Memphis-born artist is not limiting himself to music. “I thought about [acting],” he says. “I’m still thinking about it.”
The young rapper also touches on the making of Glockoma 2, his favorite food, the music he’s currently listening to and his favorite piece of jewelry—his first PRE chain gifted to him by Dolph. “My first chain I ever got, my first PRE chain,” Glock says. “It was my first chain Dolph gave to me, so it’s probably my favorite chain.”
So far, the 25-year-old artist is in no rush to define his career. When asked, “What’s your proudest moment right now?” Glock candidly answers, “I ain’t got one yet.”
Listen to the full conversation with Key Glock below or here.
Joe Bonamassa is widely regarded to be one of the best blues musicians in the business. In 2019, a Guitar Player reader poll named him the top blues guitarist in the world — ahead of Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks and Buddy Guy. That respect has translated to a heavy touring schedule and a string of successful recordings. In April, Bonamassa reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart for an astounding 26th time with Tales of Time, a live recording of his 2021 album Time Clocks recorded last year at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.
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But the upstate New York native — a former child prodigy who opened for blues great B.B. King when he was just 12 years old — speaks with humility and admiration about his bandmates.
“[They’re] better than me — all of them,” he tells Billboard‘s Behind the Setlist podcast. Keyboard player Reese Winans “gets a standing ovation every night,” says Bonamassa before a recent concert in Charlotte, N.C. “He gets the biggest ovation of the night. He’s a living legend [who has] played with Stevie Ray [Vaughan] and Delbert McClinton. He’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee [as a member of Vaughan’s band, Double Trouble]. Every band has to have a Hall of Famer. He’s our’s.”
Guitarist Josh Smith is a “better player than I am,” he continues. “He’s killer.” He calls both drummer Lamar Carter (Raphael Sadie, Demi Lovato) and bass player Calvin Turner (Marc Broussard, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews) “amazing” musicians. Backup singers Jade MacRae and Danni D’Andrea, who have worked with Liam Gallagher and Prince, respectively, are “saints” for tolerating his singing voice, he says self-effacingly.
The great musicians tend to attract talented musicians to their touring bands. That gives Bonamassa a superb cast to help re-create his songs and transform the studio recordings for the live setting. “We have some fun with it,” he says. “Bring it up, bring it down. Like in the case of ‘Self-Inflicted Wounds,’ our great vocalist Jade MacRae takes a vocal solo at the very end and it brings the house down.”
Still, Bonamassa knows he’s the reason people buy tickets to his shows. “You’re never gonna see me go, ‘Well, I don’t really feel like playing guitar, and I’m just gonna let Josh take all the solos, or I’ll we’ll just we’ll just cut all the guitar, so I’m just gonna sing and play acoustic guitar.’ There will be a revolt, you know? There will be 2,500 people revolting tonight, leaving. And that’s because I know the audience. They want to hear a big guitar solo. So they want to they want to hear me shred over blues changes. And it’s something I get criticized for doing. But it’s also what people want to hear. I don’t question that.”
Bonamassa is currently on tour in Europe and will perform in Germany on May 5-6, Luxembourg on May 7 and France on May 10. He will play five dates in the U.K. from May 9-14 before returning to the U.S. to perform at the Capitol Theatre in Yakima, Wash., on May 26 and the Backroad Blues Festival with Kenny Wayne Sheppard in Bend, Ore., on May 27.
Listen to the entire interview with Bonamassa at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart, Amazon Music or Audible.
Jessie Ware had a straightforward goal with her new album That! Feels Good! (released April 28) – “The goal was to make people dance and make them feel sexy and romantic,” the pop singer-songwriter tells the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen to her full interview, below).
The new 10-track set, with production by Stuart Price and longtime collaborator James Ford, is a “delicious disco opus” and follows her warmly received 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure. The latter marked her highest-charting effort on the Official U.K. Albums chart (peaking at No. 3) and garnered Ware her first BRIT Award nomination for British album of the year.
“I wanted [the new album] to feel more live than What’s Your Pleasure?,” Ware continues, “but I still wanted there to be groove, and funk and soul dictating it – and elements of disco, of course. But to feel like a dance record, but a looser dance record, with a bit more color. That was the intention.”
So what’s changed for Ware in the nearly three years between What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good!? “I feel really centered and excited about putting music out,” she says. “I don’t kind of have that fear like I had before. What else has changed? The podcast [her hit show Table Manners, co-hosted with her mother Lennie Ware] has carried on. I’ve got another baby… I don’t know! I feel like a changed artist since the reception of What’s Your Pleasure?”
Ware will take That! Feels Good! on the road in the United States later this year, with a string of dates beginning in Chicago on Oct. 5. Before that, she’ll play the OUTLOUD @ WeHo Pride festival on June 2 in West Hollywood, Calif. in celebration of Pride Month.
Also on the new edition of the Pop Shop Podcast, we’ve got chart news on how Morgan Wallen continues to lead the Billboard 200 albums chart for an eighth week with One Thing at a Time, how Taylor Swift makes a splash on the list with a stunning 10 albums in the top 100 of the chart, and how for the first time ever, there are two regional Mexican songs in the top five (and 10!) of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
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It looks like NORE doesn’t want any podcast smoke. The Drink Champs co-host and rapper denies making fun of Cam’ron’s show on the Joe Budden Podcast.
As spotted on Complex, the Queens, New York native was almost caught in the crossfire between the Diplomats rapper and Joey Jumpoff. Last week Killa took to social media and posted a clip of the Drink Champs host talking rather greasy with Joe Budden about other rappers launching shows.
“You know what’s crazy? I’m looking at these rappers trying shows now—you know, rappers from our era—and they are so failing,” he said during the interview. “They doing sports shows, they doing comedy shows. They talkin’ about, ‘Yo, I’m up. I’m just doing this for fun.’ No, you are not!”
While N.O.R.E. did not put a name on the slander it was widely perceived that Cam was one of the “failed” rappers the two were poking fun at. Since then Killa’s sports show has gained incredible momentum and a cult following online. In an Instagram caption Cam’ron revealed that he is still cool with N.O. but referred to Joe Budden as a “crackhead”. This caused a rather spicy back and forth between Cam and Joe but it seems N.O.R.E. wants no parts of it.
“Me and you are friends from the 90s. You have my real life phone number. You hung out with me for days before you did Drink Champs just to make sure I was the same yalla that you know” N.O.R.E. wrote. “If you thought at any time I was going at you, Why would you go to the internet 1st?”
He also went on to say that he was not talking about Cam’ron in that “failed rappers” clip. “That footage from Joe Budden show is old footage. Ya show wasn’t created yet!!! I never saw a single footage of ya sh*t so there’s no way I could’ve been talking bout u !!!”
But under further investigation N.O.R.E.’s timing is way off. His appearance on the Joe Budden Podcast episode 600 was released in early February 2023 but Cam’ron had been promoting It Is What It Is on his Instagram since December of 2022. Cam has yet to respond to N.O.R.E.
It’s the end of an automotive era: As James Corden wraps up his eight-year stint as host of The Late Late Show on Thursday night, his friend Adele took one last musical ride with him for the final Carpool Karaoke this week.
Of course, Adele carpooled with Corden for the first time back in 2016, when she famously rapped Nicki Minaj’s chaotic verse from Kanye West’s “Monster.” And she’s not the only repeat rider either: Harry Styles has done two solo Carpool Karaokes plus one with his One Direction mates; Justin Bieber has taken three trips with Corden; Nick Jonas rode twice, with the Jonas Brothers and with Demi Lovato; and Camila Cabello took a trip with her Cinderella co-stars and by herself.
On the new episode of the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are reflecting on a near-decade of musical rides with pop superstars and sharing our personal favorites. Listen below:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how SZA’s “Kill Bill” finally reaches No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after patiently waiting for 17 weeks in the top 10, how Metallica rocks in with a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart with their first original album in seven years 72 Seasons — and scores the biggest week for any rock album in over three years — and how Ice Spice & Nicki Minaj bring “Princess Diana” to the charts, as the buzzy new track bows in the top 10 on the Hot 100.
We’re also recapping two wild weekends of Coachella and looking ahead to who might headline in 2024.
Nir Zicherman, the executive overseeing Spotify’s audiobooks expansion, is leaving the company at the start of October after more than four years as an executive at the audio giant.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zicherman — currently the the vp and global head of audiobooks at Spotify — said he is departing to return to his “entrepreneurial roots with a new project in the startup space.” Zicherman first joined Spotify in 2019 after the company acquired Anchor, the podcasting platform that Zicherman co-founded with Michael Mignano, as part of Spotify’s podcast product division. He was later tapped to oversee Spotify’s growing audiobooks business, which formally launched last September with an à la carte model but has faced setbacks in user adoption in part due to Apple’s App Store policies around in-app purchases.
“After a total of 9 years working across Spotify and Anchor, I’ve decided that it’s time for the next chapter in my career,” Zicherman, whose last day is Sept. 30, told THR in an email. “I’m extremely proud of the work the team has done, and now that we’ve successfully established a foundation, I’m excited about what’s next for audiobooks at Spotify — but I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and on a personal level, I’m excited to be getting back to the startup world. I felt that now was a good time to begin that transition, as the team at Spotify is set up well for success in our future work.”
As Spotify begins the search for Zicherman’s successor to lead the company’s audiobooks product strategy, Spotify’s vp business affairs, David Kaefer, will continue overseeing the business side of the audiobooks expansion.
Zicherman, whose upcoming departure was first reported by The Verge, is the latest in a string of podcast-adjacent executives at Spotify to leave. In the past year, those exits have included Courtney Holt, a major dealmaker for Spotify’s podcasting expansion; Mignano, the Anchor co-founder who left to become a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners; and Dawn Ostroff, the chief content and ad business officer.
In addition to Zicherman, upcoming executive departures include Max Cutler, the company’s top creator partnerships executive and founder of the Spotify-acquired podcast studio Parcast, who is set to leave in May. In announcing his decision to leave in February, Cutler told staff that he was similarly leaving Spotify to “return to [his] entrepreneurial roots” and launch his own venture, though has not yet shared additional details on that business.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
When Lauren Spencer Smith started crafting her new song “Fantasy,” she had a feeling that it could use an extra dose (or two) of girl power to really drive home its “teenage, angry feelings about a breakup.”
“I kind of knew that I wanted a collaboration, but it just sat in a folder for a while and I hadn’t reached out to anybody. I didn’t really know who or what exactly it was going to be,” Smith told Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast, chatting on a Zoom call alongside eventual collaborators GAYLE and Em Beihold.
“And then throughout like a couple months, me, GAYLE and Em met each other on so many different occasions and became friends and we had a group chat,” Smith added of the ongoing text thread they dubbed the “Powerpuff” chat. “And I’ve been a fan of GAYLE and Em forever. I always listened to their music since way before I met them. So after we had had a group chat for a while, and we were like kind of a little friend group, I was like, ‘I’m just gonna ask because these seem like the perfect girls to have like a woman-empowerment moment on this song.’”
And so she did, texting her very own Powerpuff Girls with the idea. “I, like, freaked out,” Beihold recalls. “I was laying down on my bed, and then Lauren texted and I like bolted right up and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she wants me to be on a song with her and GAYLE!’ And I was just super stoked because I love them and I love both of their music. And I just think it was such a fun opportunity. And also just going through all this together as friends is amazing. Because sometimes you do collabs with people that you don’t know too well and it’s fun, but to do it with people that you can just laugh with is amazing.”
“We only replied in all caps,” GAYLE adds. “We flipped out. So many exclamation points, like so, so much excitement.”
They also teamed up for an angsty music video, each starting out in their own scenes before coming together onscreen — including one perfect moment where they huddle together to yell the “OH, CONGRATULATIONS” line from the visceral chorus.
“When we were on set, I was like, ‘OK, if they asked me to be in a girl group tomorrow, I would say yes,’” Smith recalls.
Elsewhere in the interview, we discuss where each artist is in the process of making their debut full-length albums and about how well they relate to each other being young female pop stars who all broke out in the music industry in 2022 (Smith with “Fingers Crossed,” GAYLE with “ABCDEFU,” and Beihold with “Numb Little Bug”). Plus, GAYLE tells us all about hitting the road with Taylor Swift for her epic Eras Tour. “I’ve never really performed in a stadium before, so it’s such an honor and it’s definitely not something that I take lightly,” she says. “And so I’ve been trying my best to just do the best that I possibly can.”
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Drake’s “Search and Rescue” debuts at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his 68th top 10 hit, how a regional Mexican song is in the top 10 of the Hot 100 for the first time as Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola” jumps 17-10, and how both NF and Linkin Park make a splash in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Spotify is targeting radio broadcasters with its latest product update that will make it easier to convert radio shows into on-demand podcasts and offer a new source of ad revenue on existing content.
Beginning Thursday, Spotify’s “broadcast-to-podcast” technology will be fully integrated into Megaphone, the podcast ad tech and hosting platform that Spotify acquired in late 2020. The radio-to-podcast conversion technology itself comes from the Australian podcasting platform Whooshkaa, which was purchased by Spotify in 2021.
Using Megaphone, publishers will be able to input the URL to a live stream of their broadcasted content and automatically have a podcast created from that programming, according to Emma Vaughn, Spotify’s global head of advertising business development and partnerships. The “broadcast-to-podcast” tech will identify ad marker locations, giving publishers the opportunity to remove the ads that were originally aired on the live version of the program and dynamically insert new ad spots in their place, resulting in more revenue.
Companies using “broadcast to podcast” can continue to sell their own ad inventory or, in the near future, do so through the Spotify Audience Network, the audio giant’s ad marketplace.
“These publishers obviously have a ton of content that they create. The libraries are massive, [but] they don’t always have a full podcast operation that’s set up, [so] creating podcast-only content might not make sense for them,” Vaughn told The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s where ‘broadcast to podcast’ comes in because it’s seamless and allows them to join the ecosystem.”
As part of the initial rollout, publishers like Fox Corp. — which has an existing advertising and distribution deal with Megaphone for its Fox Audio Network — will use the conversion technology to create on-demand podcast versions of the broadcaster’s radio programming, though Vaughn said the goal is to attract publishers and broadcasters around the globe that “previously weren’t able to access Megaphone and access the podcast ecosystem.”
The executive also noted that converting radio programming into podcasts could give radio broadcasters a better chance at expanding their reach to Gen-Z listeners.
“More and more people are listening to content via these digital channels,” Vaughn said, “so it’s going to be able to bring some of this broadcast content that was maybe more isolated to a certain type of demographic to the Spotify demographic and to these young audiences that they haven’t been able to capture before.”
This story was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Coachella returns this weekend to Indio, Calif., with Bad Bunny, BLACKPINK and Frank Ocean headlining.
So what can we expect from the three-day festival? On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are looking ahead to what surprises might be in store from the stacked lineup. Could BLACKPINK bring out one of their many pop-star collaborators, like Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga or Dua Lipa? Might Bad Bunny call up one of this high-profile friends, like Drake, Cardi B or J Balvin?
Billboard will be on the ground covering all three days of weekend 1, and you can tune in live on YouTube to follow along with all the fun. Listen to the new Pop Shop Podcast below:
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Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Morgan Wallen is back at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with “Last Night” while he continues atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with One Thing at a Time. Melanie Martinez and Boygenius, meanwhile, debut in the top five on the Billboard 200 with their new albums. Plus, Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” hits a new high on the Hot 100, Lady Gaga is back in the top 10 on the Pop Airplay chart with her viral 2011 song “Bloody Mary,” and Depeche Mode reach the top 10 on the Alternative Airplay chart for the first time in over 25 years with their latest single “Ghosts Again.”
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)