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Three hip-hop-connected podcasts – 50 Years of Hip-Hop, Can You Dig It?: A Hip-Hop Origin Story with Chuck D and Questlove Supreme – are nominated for podcast of the year at the 2024 Ambie Awards.
The other nominees in that category are Embedded: Taking Cover, Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University, Ghost Story, Next Year in Moscow, Post Reports: The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop, Slow Burn: Becoming Justice Thomas and The Very Worst Thing that Could Possibly Happen. The latter podcast led all nominees with five nominations.
Questlove Supreme is also nominated for best music podcast at the 2024 iHeartPodcast Awards. Those nominations were announced on Feb. 7.
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The fourth annual Awards for Excellence in Audio (The Ambies) will take place on Tuesday, March 26 at the JW Marriott LA Live Los Angeles.
The ceremony will highlight 192 nominees across 27 categories with winners to be selected by voting members of The Podcast Academy (TPA), a not-for-profit professional membership organization that celebrates excellence in podcasting.
A Governors Award and an Impact Award will also be presented at the March 26 event. Eligible new members will be able to vote to determine this year’s winners if applications are submitted by Feb. 19. For more information about joining, go here.
“On behalf of The Podcast Academy, we congratulate all of this year’s remarkable nominees that have graced the podcasting world,” Donald Albright, chairperson of TPA said in a statement. “They embody the essence of excellence in audio storytelling, captivating audiences with their creativity, passion, and dedication.”
Here are the nominees in selected categories at the 2024 Ambie Awards.
Podcast of the year
50 Years of Hip-Hop
Can You Dig It?: A Hip-Hop Origin Story with Chuck D
Embedded: Taking Cover
Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University
Ghost Story
Next Year in Moscow
Questlove Supreme
Post Reports: The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop
Slow Burn: Becoming Justice Thomas
The Very Worst Thing that Could Possibly Happen
Best entertainment podcast (sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter)
50 Years of Hip-Hop
Creative Control
Films to Be Buried With Brett Goldstein
HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast
Movies vs. Capitalism
MUBI Podcast
Women of Marvel
Best interview podcast
Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union Podcast
Apple News in Conversation
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Questlove Supreme
The Skinny Confidential
Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Your Mama’s Kitchen
Best society and culture podcast
Can You Dig It?: A Hip-Hop Origin Story with Chuck D
Dear Alana,
Dynamite Doug
Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University
ROS Presents: Roughhousing
The Story Exchange
Weight For It
Best original score and music supervision
Calm it Down – Chad Lawson
Can You Dig It?: A Hip-Hop Origin Story with Chuck D – Bryan Master
Louder Than a Riot – Suzi Analogue, Kassa Overall, and Ramtin Arablouei
Next Year in Moscow
Othello – Lindsay Jones
The Cat in the Hat Cast – Jack Mitchell
The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen – Alex Kemp
When Usher was announced as the headliner back in September, we all knew the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show was going to be epic. What we couldn’t have possibly predicted is all the other epic music moments to go down on Sunday. From Beyoncé starring in a Verizon Super Bowl commercial and then surprise-dropping two […]
With nine Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits from 18 top 10s, Usher has no shortage of material to pick from when choosing the setlist for Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show. He’ll have his work cut out for him in trimming things down to a mere 13-minute set. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, […]
Mark Ronson has five nominations heading into Sunday’s Grammy Awards, all stemming from his work on the soundtrack and score for the Barbie film, including a Big Four nod for song of the year for co-writing Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night.” The wildest Grammy category he’s competing in has to be best song written for visual media, where four of the five nominees are all from Barbie.
It speaks to just how Greta Gerwig’s film dominated pop culture this past year. And on the new Grammy preview episode of the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, we inform Ronson that it’s actually the first time a single project has landed four songs in that category since its inception in 1988.
“I think my mom Googled that the day nominations came out. She was very proud,” Ronson tells the Pop Shop with a laugh (listen to his full interview below). “I didn’t know that, and the other thing is that the Grammy category is for film and TV, you know? And there’s so many great songs from TV shows, like I think of all the Only Murders in the Building songs and everything else — there was some real moments for songs. So yeah, it’s crazy that Barbie took up so many.”
The lone non-Barbie song in the category is Rihanna’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ballad “Lift Me Up.” “Rihanna can do anything she wants, so we can’t take anything for granted,” Ronson notes of their formidable competition on Sunday night.
Below, find highlights from our chat with Ronson, who’s also up for best original song at the Oscars on March 10 for “I’m Just Ken” with co-writer Andrew Wyatt — a prize Ronson won alongside Lady Gaga in 2019 for “Shallow” from A Star Is Born — and is already a seven-time Grammy winner, starting with his 2008 wins for producing Amy Winehouse’s landmark album Back to Black.
On being recognized at the Oscars again:
“Obviously in our field of music, we’d have to say the Grammys is the highest honor. What’s so crazy is that there’s this award [the Oscar] that’s sort of the most prestigious award in the world that gives out one award for music, so it’s so crazy. I don’t believe that it means that your song is better than somebody else’s song or any of that stuff, but of course it is amazing. We worked so hard on this film and for a long time and also on the score and everything because we loved it, not because we were like, ‘OK, we better get an Oscar nomination!’ But it is nice to be recognized for the work, for sure.”
On the Oscar rules allowing just two songs from a single film in the song category, so “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish and Finneas’ “What Was I Made For” made the cut, but Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” and others were left out:
“I don’t know how they even pick what the two are, but it is [bittersweet] because Dua’s song is still the biggest song from the soundtrack and Dua was really the first artist of anywhere near her stature that committed to the film. So it was almost like once we knew that we had a Dua song that was going to be in this big thing, it really set the bar for what the whole soundtrack could be. Dua … being like, ‘I’m down with this’ and writing this incredible song was what got us all excited, like, ‘Wow, this really could be something where this feels like this superstar level of musicians and singers and pop stars on it.’ So Dua definitely deserves all the credit for that, and you know it would have been lovely to have her as well. So it’s, you know, it is a shame.”
How Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World” accomplished the goal of including both Nicki and Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” on the soundtrack:
“We knew that with Nicki and her fans being called the Barbz and everything, as soon as I had been brought in for the soundtrack, I was like, ‘There’s no way in hell that we can have this soundtrack without a Nicki song on it.’ And then the fact that Ice [Spice] just became, like, her meteoric rise the entire time that we were even just working on the soundtrack from when we first got her involved, so yeah, it’s everywhere. … The two thoughts are like, ‘There’s no world in which we can’t have Nicki and that we can’t have some version of Aqua,’ you know? So we were always thinking, is it a cover? Is it an interesting flip? And then the Nicki and Ice [song] just came through with Riot[USA]’s beat and just handled the whole thing for us.”
On making the Christmas version of “I’m Just Ken” and whether he might make more music with Ryan Gosling:
“We definitely had a lot of fun, especially making the Christmas version that we did, because we had made that record and then I, the first one, I recorded a vocal with him. And then I probably hadn’t spoken to him for about a year till the movie was wrapping up. And I was like, ‘Hey, we finished the version actually, Slash is playing on it, I just want to make sure you’re happy with it before we mix it’. And he really loved it. And then we started to talk over the past couple of months, and we’re just talking about different kinds of music and things that he loved and [British singer/songwriter] Scott Walker and this stuff, and I was like, ‘Well, we should do a version of “Ken” that just does something a little different, like a different arrangement.’ Because, you know, there was a lot of talk like the ’80s power ballad and this, and I mean, it has all those things, but I think some of my pride as a songwriter, I wanted to prove that it wasn’t just that. So Ryan … he’s got amazing taste and great ideas, and he’s an extremely funny and talented musician and singer. So we made this version and then we started to hang, and definitely, I would love to make more music. You know, I think it would be great. And we’ve talked about it a little bit.”
On his first time at the Grammys:
“I was a seat filler [as a teenager] because I wanted to write about it. I wrote and reviewed concerts for my high school paper. My mom would only let me go to shows … if I could convince her it was something to do with school, so I got this job writing for the paper who definitely didn’t need a music reviewer. [Laughs] But I convinced them, and it was this paper called City News that was for high school kids, a bunch of different schools. So I got into the Grammys by being a seat filler. And I remember you’re sitting all over the place. At one point I was in front of Vanilla Ice. The other moment I was sitting next to that singer Alannah Myles who won that year for ‘Black Velvet.’ And then I went with my friend Rhymefest, a rapper who co-wrote [Kanye West’s] ‘Jesus Walks.’ I went with him as his plus-one in like 2003 or whenever that was, and then next time I went was for Amy.”
On his whirlwind first Grammys as a nominee in 2008 — and his Zoolander moment in the crowd:
“I remember it really well. I took my mom and I remember when they read my name for producer of the year, it was such a blur that it was like a movie. My friend Rich, my best friend, was nudging me and going, ‘They said your name! Go!’ I went up, and it was just so surreal. … Me and my mom were behind Tony Bennett at the main ceremony, and I think I was actually a little bit hungover because I was enjoying myself that weekend, my first time at the rodeo. And they came up to me before they announced record of the year, the cameras, they want to make sure, like, ‘Are you Mark Ronson?’ Just in case you win, they’ve got the camera on you. And so when they said, you know, ‘And the Grammy for record of the year goes to… “Rehab” for Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse!’ And so I got up to walk towards the stage, because I figured like, ‘So that’s why the guy’s filming me.’ And as I start to walk up the first few steps, this giant screen starts to get lowered and it’s Amy live from Camden to accept the award. And I suddenly realized like, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna look like such an idiot just standing there next to this screen.’ So I try to like subtly as possible reverse-step down the stairs in front of everybody in the Staples Center, and I kind of fell backwards and I just sat like at the feet of Amber Rose and Kanye for like 10 minutes while Amy spoke, and I just said, ‘Sorry, guys, I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.’ But it was, like, a very Zoolander moment.”
On writing a book about DJing at hip-hop clubs in the ’90s and how it’s inspiring his follow-up album to 2019’s Late Night Feelings:
“I’ve been writing a book about DJing, specifically about DJing in hip-hop clubs in the ’90s in New York City. And it’s a little bit about that time. It’s a mini-memoir, but it’s also about the art of DJing. And maybe some of that art is a little bit bygone now, because you don’t walk into places and see turntables and mixers everywhere. So it’s a bit about all those things, and just about a really great time, because it was this moment where Jay-Z and Biggie and Puff started to come out in downtown New York. And that suddenly changed the whole thing of where people wanted to be and where people wanted to hang out. And because I was their DJ, I had a front-row seat to it all in some ways. So I’m writing that book, and then I’m sure that the book will influence this record a little bit. I’m sure it’ll a little bit remind me of that era. But yeah, that’s where I’m at with it.”
Also on the podcast, we’ve got chart news on how Green Day scores its 12th top 10 charting album on the Billboard 200 with Saviors, nearly 30 years to the week after the band made their Billboard chart debut in 1994. Plus, how Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” makes a beautiful start on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart and how Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez and Sophie Ellis-Bextor all debut on the Pop Airplay chart with their latest hits. And since it’s our special Grammy Awards preview episode, we’re also reviewing the nominees in the six general field categories and highlighting who our very own awards editor, Paul Grein, along with his crack team of advisers on staff at Billboard, thinks will win in each of the categories.
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.)
Could a momentous Madonna reunion with two of her former longtime backing singers be in the works? This week, the Queen of Pop plays a trio of shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden for The Celebration Tour (Jan. 22, 23 and 29). And, perhaps not so coincidentally, Donna De Lory and Niki Haris – who were seen in the Madonna documentary Truth or Dare and in the iconic video for “Vogue” – are performing two of their own shows together just up the street from the Garden on Jan. 27-28.
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While the ladies have not worked together in years, could there be any plans for Madonna to drop by one of De Lory and Haris’ gigs at The Green Room 42, or for them to appear onstage with Madonna at The Garden?
Well, De Lory and Haris join the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast this week (listen to their chat, below) to discuss that possibility, and more.
“I have no right to give any information that is not completely confirmed as of this moment,” Haris very carefully tells the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast with a laugh. “With that said, we take joy wherever we can find it — if it’s on our stage, at Madison Square Garden, wherever the joy is. In [Madonna’s] living room. … The bottom line is, we’re in town. … We may just go grab a coffee together. Who knows?”
De Lory adds: “No matter what, we’re just gonna have a great time.”
For years, De Lory and Haris were behind Madonna — supporting the superstar on the road, during television performances on the Grammy Awards and MTV Video Music Awards, and singing on many of her albums and singles. The pair joined Madonna on four tours between 1987 and 2001, with De Lory continuing to perform on two more Madonna tours in 2004-06. Their voices can be heard on many Madonna recordings released from 1987-98, including the Like a Prayer, I’m Breathless and Erotica albums, and singles such as “Vogue,” “Cherish,” “Deeper and Deeper” and “Nothing Really Matters.”
So, with so much recording history behind them, would De Lory and Haris be open to recording with Madonna, on record and in the studio for a song, if the opportunity presented itself?
“I feel for myself,” De Lory says, “and I feel for Niki as well, we would love that. We would love that. And I know that the magic that was always there would be there. … It would be sweet if that happened. … We just all have a great blend and great energy, and that will always be there.”
“I’d love to just sit around a room,” Haris says, “have [Madonna] grab her guitar, Donna go to the keyboard, and let’s just do what we love to do. … God, we just like to sing together. I would rather just sing without an agenda. Just sing.”
While De Lory and Haris are best-known for backing Madonna for years, they’ve also had their own solo careers, and also provided backing vocals individually on albums from the likes of Belinda Carlisle, Whitney Houston, Santana and Selena. In 2016, the pair came together to work on their first album, the Two Friends EP, which was released in 2017. Since then they have continued to release stand-alone tracks, and have hopes of releasing further new material, perhaps setting up camp in Nashville to work with a producer/songwriter to collaborate on new music.
During our chat with De Lory and Haris, we also asked the women about why they think “Vogue” has endured through the year, and influenced such artists as Beyoncé (with the “Vogue”-infused Queens Remix of “Break My Soul”) and Ariana Grande (with her house-inspired “Vogue” cousin “Yes, And?”).
De Lory says: “I knew when we went in to do those vocals at that session, it was a fresh sound… the music was so powerful.” Haris says that we’re in a “society that now is celebrating voguing, celebrating being a drag queen, celebrating [drag] houses … you just have a bigger audience that’s being more accepted” and adds that “‘Vogue’ is such an infectious kind of energy… it’s celebratory.”
Also on the new edition of the Pop Shop Podcast, we’ve got chart news on the debut of Grande’s “Yes, And?” atop the Billboard Hot 100, and how 21 Savage and Kali Uchis make splashy debuts on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Plus, we’re discussing news of Billy Joel soon dropping his first pop single in years, a new Justin Timberlake album on the horizon, and the music-related nominees at the 2024 Academy Awards.
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.)
SiriusXM and Stitcher will not have to face a lawsuit from former Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek accusing them of reneging on a $700,000 podcast deal.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Broadbelt, in a tentative order issued on Friday, dismissed the suit, finding that the audio giant “did not enter into a contract” with the actor since they didn’t finalize the agreement.
Van Der Beek said he reached a deal over email with executives from SiriusXM to host 40 episodes in exchange for a $700,000 minimum guarantee and a 50 percent cut of the net ad revenue. He sued in 2022 after the company walked away from the agreement.
Ruling in favor of SiriusXM on summary judgment, the court concluded that the two sides aren’t bound by an April 2022 document outlining the terms of the deal. It pointed to the first page of the proposal, which states that it’s for “discussion purposes only, is not a binding commitment in any respect, and is not to be interpreted in any respect as a binding commitment to negotiate.”
There was extensive evidence presented to the court referencing the need to sign a definitive, longform agreement contemplated in the initial proposal. Included among them was an email from Stitcher’s Associate Director of Business Development Leah Reis-Dennis, who stated in an April 2022 email “we are ready to call terms officially closed and (finally!) get the longform started.”
Van Der Beek argued that the proposal constitutes a valid, binding contract because Reis-Dennis made various comments indicating that the terms were “closed.”
“However, in those emails, Reis-Dennis also stated that Defendants would be working to begin drafting the longform agreement or request that the longform be drafted,” stated the order, which noted that the actor’s transactional lawyer also discussed having to sign the document to lock down the deal.
Broadbelt also rejected arguments that SiriusXM should be bound by the April 2022 document because the company already started to fulfill some of its terms by beginning the process of hiring a senior producer and requesting Van Der Beek’s payroll information.
In a declaration to the court, Reis-Dennis testified that she requested “loanout info” in order to set up payments to the actor but clarified that she would pay him only “if that agreement was signed.”
The order explained, “Plaintiff has not presented any evidence or argument showing that Reis-Dennis’s request for information to set up payments in the future (1) is inconsistent with the earlier statements that the parties would be bound only upon the execution of a longform agreement, or (2) constitutes an outward manifestation that Defendants intended to be bound by the terms of the April 28 Proposal without such a longform agreement.”
Van Der Beek brought claims relating to breach of contract and sought damages exceeding the $700,000 agreement.
SiriusXM, which was represented by Jordan Susman of Nolan Heimann, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
The year in pop has officially kicked into high gear. On Friday, pop fans got a pair of new songs and videos from two Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers: Ariana Grande and Lil Nas X. Grande released the ’90s-pop-inspired “Yes, And?” alongside a music video that paid tribute to Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted,” while Nas dropped […]
Just how high can Sophie Ellis-Bextor dance up the Billboard Hot 100 with her resurgent, Saltburn-powered hit “Murder on the Dancefloor,” 20 years after the song’s initial release? On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking about the buzzy early-aughts song, which this week debuts at No. 98 on the Hot […]
Starting with his teenage days in the U.K. boy band Take That, Robbie Williams was thrust into the spotlight, with cameras following his every move. That constant presence of cameras offered the British pop superstar a unique opportunity: to sit down and revisit his decades as an entertainer, watching footage of himself over the years and his rollercoaster ride of a career, from the euphoric highs to the traumatic lows.
In a new interview with the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen in full below), Williams talks about the four-episode Netflix docuseries Robbie Williams — from director Joe Pearlman and Ridley Scott Associates — that finds the singer/songwriter sitting on his bed in his undies, watching his life back through eye-opening archival footage.
“When Netflix and Ridley Scott’s company come and say, ‘We’d like to do a documentary about you and have it be on the platform Netflix,’ you know, I’m an attention seeker by trade,” Williams says. “And I’m honored. What else would an attention seeker say other than: ‘Yes, please’”
Even though it was an easy yes for Williams, that doesn’t mean it was an easy process, with filming taking place over 25 straight days for up to six or seven hours a day. “Not many people on the planet have done anything like that, so there’s no support groups for, you know, a trauma watch,” he says. “But it was very interesting, sort of leaving the room each day and then going to get in bed with my wife and trying to explain how it feels. It’s only become therapeutic since it’s been released. It wasn’t therapeutic at the time. It was just, it was traumatic.”
One of the biggest takeaways from the film is how much Williams battled mental health issues over the years and how his struggles often fell on deaf ears.
“Mental health wasn’t really talked about,” he says. “And when I talked about it back then, I was derided for moaning or complaining. And that isolated me even more in a place of isolation and depression and anxiety and body dysmorphia. And agoraphobia. And all of the obias, you know, to then on top of that be told that you shouldn’t talk about it, because how dare you? It made it even worse.”
Williams’ biggest challenges came when he was touring the world, often taking frequent steroid shots just to survive the physical toll that performing took on his body — and then dealing with the aftermath of those drugs the next day. We asked him about artists like Taylor Swift taking that challenge a step further by playing three-hour-plus concerts, and he was flabbergasted at the length of those shows.
“Why would you do three-and-a-half-hour sets?” he asks. “Listen, I love Taylor Swift. But if you take Taylor out of the equation, and whoever — Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Taylor, whoever — why would you do that to yourself? And why would you do that to an audience?
“It’s mind-blowing that they’re able to do that, especially people in their 80s,” he adds. “But, you know, what do I want, as a fan? I want to hear all of the hits. And I want to be entertained for 90 minutes to 100 minutes. And then I want to go home happy. I haven’t got the attention to watch anything for three hours. If I look at a film that is now a two-and-a-half-hour, three-hour film, I don’t watch it. I haven’t got it in me.”
The Robbie Williams docuseries ends with Williams heading back out on the road for his XXV World Tour — which, along with a new greatest-hits collection, celebrates 25 years of his solo career and just wrapped last month — and the artist says he’s still coming to terms with life as a performer. “This tour that I’ve just done has been the most successful for me mentally and emotionally,” he says. “And I think that a great deal has to do with the fact that I can override or make friends with the anxiety. But I’m still not there. When it comes to touring. I don’t know how to not let it damage me in some sort of way. Now listen: It’s not complaining, because financially, it’s incredible. Emotionally, it’s incredible. Physically and mentally, it’s no wonder that people sort of end up in emergency rooms or rehab after tour or during tours. The toll that it takes out of you is still a phenomena that I’m trying to overcome.”
Our interview also addresses his new perspective as a father of four (“When my kids are 16 … I think there will be a stark realization of exactly what I should and shouldn’t have been going through at that particular moment,” he says of his Take That days), his life of relative anonymity in America (“I could be Bruce Wayne in Los Angeles and Batman in the rest of the world”) and his New Year’s resolutions heading into 2024.
Speaking of New Year’s resolutions, for the first Pop Shop Podcast of the year, Katie & Keith are also sharing some of our pop music resolutions, including our hopes for Dua Lipa, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Barbra Streisand and more.
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.)
When you’ve released nearly 100 holiday songs, as Pentatonix has, it’s no easy task having to narrow down that hefty list to a concise greatest hits album. But that’s just what the vocal group has done on its latest release, the 31-track The Greatest Christmas Hits.
“We put all the bangers” on the album, says the group’s Scott Hoying. And there’s “basically a whole new album [on Hits] as well, with eight new songs” added. In total, the album sports 23 previously released favorites plus eight new tunes. The set has found chart success on Billboard’s tallies, as it marked the act’s 10th top 10-charting effort on the Top Holiday Albums chart and its 12th top 20-charting set on the all-genre Billboard 200.
The vocal group (comprising Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstin Maldonado, Kevin Olusola and Matt Sallee) has supported the new album on the road with The Most Wonderful Tour of the Year, which wraps on Dec. 21 in Austin, Texas. Fans who missed the trek can tune in to The Most Wonderful Tour of the Year: Live From Orlando on Dec. 22, exclusively on Veeps.
With so many holiday albums in its discography, how does Pentatonix select songs when planning a new holiday project?
“Honestly, there’s only so many Christmas songs, and we’ve released 94 of them,” Hoying tells the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen to our interview, below). “So we do the ones that are popular that we haven’t done yet. But then also we like to get creative and do songs that are more wintry and have lyrics that involve the wintertime, like ‘Kiss From a Rose.’ I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of that as a holiday song, but in the pre-chorus it does say ‘when it snows,’ and we were like, ‘That sounds good to us!’ So we get creative like that.
“When curating [the songs on] The Greatest Christmas Hits … from so much touring and releasing so many albums, we’ve [done] subconscious internal research of what moves people and what moves us and what we love to sing, and what we feel would make the best soundtrack for people’s Christmas festivities and opening presents.”
Among the new songs on The Greatest Christmas Hits is the original song “Please Santa Please,” co-written by Karen Kosowski and Emma Lee along with the group’s Olusola and Maldonado. The song, which served as the lead single from the album, recently hit the top 10 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, landing the group its seventh top 10 hit.
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Classics They’ve Yet to Record: While Pentatonix has recorded nearly 100 holiday songs, there are still familiar favorites they haven’t put their spin on… yet. “I have this new obsession with ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas,’” Hoying says, “because I realized it’s one of the top streaming [and] selling Christmas songs of all time, in the top five or something, and we haven’t done that song yet, weirdly.”
“Or like ‘Silver Bells,’” Olusola adds. “We’ve never done that one either. There’s definitely songs we haven’t done, but you know we also have to pace ourselves, because there are only so many Christmas songs left. [Laughs] And we also want to get creative about how we go about Christmas songs.”
Looking to the future, Olusola says, “We’ve done pop Christmas albums, and so we’re thinking ‘are there different directions we can go that create a theme that allows for us to have a different feel on Christmas than we normally do?’ Which I think will be cool, so, I think we’re thinking about that right now, as we think about the future.”
A Dozen Years of Hits & a New Grammy Nom: 2023 marks the 12th consecutive year Pentatonix has released at least one new album, stretching back to its chart debut with PTX: Volume 1 in 2012. Through those years, the act has topped the Billboard 200 twice (with its self-titled full-length album and A Pentatonix Christmas) and won three Grammy Awards (among four nominations). The act scored its fifth Grammy nomination just last month for best traditional pop vocal album for its 2022 album Holidays Around the World. The set saw Pentatonix collaborate with a bevy of guest artists to highlight sounds and voices from all over the globe.
“We put so much heart and time and effort into this album,” Hoying says, “and we got to collaborate with the most iconic artists from all over the world. It was just such a beast to make … the logistics alone. It was such a creatively fulfilling project — to see it honored in this way [with a Grammy nomination] is really beautiful.”
“You never go into an album project thinking about Grammys,” Olusola adds. “You just want to make the best possible product that you feel speaks to your heart at that time and hopefully reaches people. … So I feel so thankful and honored and blessed that we could even have that opportunity to be recognized by the Recording Academy again.
‘Candy Cane Lane’ & Home for the Holidays: Pentatonix makes an appearance in the new holiday film Candy Cane Lane, starring Eddie Murphy, which premiered Dec. 1 on Prime Video. In the comedy, Pentatonix portray, naturally, carolers. But there’s magic afoot, and the group is seen mostly as enchanted miniature figurines in the film.
“The director [Reginald Hudlin] had been a fan of ours for a while,” Olusola says. “He gave us the premise of what he wanted us to do and we were in. … I don’t think we realized the magnitude of what we were creating. … It was really cool to see the end product. It was cool how they actually created us [as figures].”
“Because we’re figurines,” Hoying says, “it was a really easy process. We just went into the studio and sang these 10-second clips, knocked it out in a couple hours. But then we get to be in so much of the movie because we’re animated. It was a perfect scenario too, because we obviously would want to be on set and have our real likeness in the movie, and we got to do that at the end. So it was so special all around, and I’m just so happy it’s doing so well and people are loving it. The whole cast and crew and director and everyone were so kind and such good vibes. You just want good things to happen to good people, so it’s awesome to see it thriving.”
As families watch Candy Cane Lane during get-togethers this season, certainly many will also be playing holiday songs by Pentatonix around the house too. With so many households soundtracking their holidays with Pentatonix’s tunes, what does Pentatonix itself play around the house during the season?
“When I go home,” Hoying says, “my parents always put on Pentatonix, because they just are so excited that I’m home. I honestly listen to a lot of Pentatonix too during the holidays. But my go-to is a playlist of classic old songs from old Christmas movies, [like] Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. Anything that’s orchestral and one-track, mono. It really puts me in the Christmas spirit. If I’m looking at Christmas lights with [my husband] Mark or we’re driving around or something, we’ll put on the oldies.”
Olusola, too, has Pentatonix playing around the house at home, but for a different reason. “I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old and she’s obsessed with our band. Truly obsessed. She loves watching [the videos for] ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,’ ‘Please Santa Please,’ ‘12 Days of Christmas.’ She asks for it all the time during this time of the year. So in our house, it really is mainly Pentatonix during this time of the year. … I think also its kind of subliminally a way for her to stay in contact with dad, especially while he’s gone on tour. So I really love that. My wife has texted me so many times, where she goes, ‘She said, ‘I miss daddy, play Pentatonix.”‘ I love that. That really means something to me that I have such a close bond with her that she actually yearns for me, and so I’m very very thankful to be playing Pentatonix in our household because that keeps the connection.”
Also on the new edition of the Pop Shop Podcast, we’ve got chart news on how Nicki Minaj lands her third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, becoming the female rapper with the most chart-toppers in history, and how Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” jingles its way back to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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.)
