Pop Shop
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Morgan Wallen‘s “Last Night” is currently spending its 14th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — but does it have a shot at the 19-week record currently held by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus? On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, we’re talking about the seemingly unstoppable […]
We always knew Taylor Swift was a mastermind, but she really outdid herself with the music video for her Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) “From the Vault” track “I Can See You.” Late Friday, Swift surprised Eras Tour concertgoers in Kansas City when she was joined onstage by the top-secret cast from the new visual: 2011 […]
It had been more than two years since we’d heard new music from Olivia Rodrigo, but that all changed first thing Friday when she released “Vampire,” the lead single from her Sept. 8-scheduled sophomore album GUTS. In a tight, under-four-minute package, the melodramatic new song transitions from a “Drivers License”-style piano ballad to a My […]
On Kelly Clarkson’s just-released 10th studio album Chemistry, the song “Rock Hudson” tells the tale of a silver-screen love story that turned out to be all Hollywood smoke and mirrors. The first line of the song: “You were my Rock Hudson/ It was real but it wasn’t.”
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“I thought I found my Rock Hudson,” Clarkson tells Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast about her eight-year marriage to Brandon Blackstock that ended in a 2021 divorce. (Clarkson’s full podcast interview will air on Tuesday’s Pop Shop episode next week.) “I never thought that even existed, if I’m being honest with you. I thought that was total bullsh–. So I didn’t even think that was real.”
Clarkson says Hudson — an Academy Award-nominated actor who was one of the most popular leading men of the late ’50s — became her “movie guy” after watching him opposite Doris Day in the 1959 romantic comedy Pillow Talk when she was a kid. “I fell in love with him.”
As she re-examined her ill-fated marriage for the new album, Clarkson realized that the early days “kind of played out like a movie. Like how we met, how we ended up together, things we had in common — like childhood things. We grew up in the same town and didn’t know each other … it just felt like a movie. And it felt too good to be true — which, OK, it was, but that was the reference.”
What she wasn’t expecting after co-writing “Rock Hudson” with producer Jesse Shatkin was that the song could be interpreted another way: While Hudson portrayed a dashing ladies’ man onscreen, the actor was privately a gay man who kept his sexuality under wraps to maintain his Hollywood career, even marrying his agent’s secretary in the ’50s to keep up the illusion. He died of AIDS in 1985 at age 59.
Clarkson says that piece of Hudson’s identity didn’t inspire the song.
“That can be misleading,” Clarkson tells Billboard. “It’s not referencing Rock’s life, like his personal life and what he was, unfortunately, having to hide from the public. … My producer [Shatkin] didn’t have a clue about [Hudson’s] story at all, and I wasn’t even thinking about that. And it was funny, because somebody at the label [Atlantic Records], I think, is the first person who was like, ‘So, Kelly…’ I was like, ‘Oh no!’ It’s just about having that movie life that people think that you have that’s so perfect, and it’s not [perfect] behind closed doors.”
Elsewhere on “Rock Hudson,” Clarkson references her 2016 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “Piece by Piece,” an emotional song she wrote in tribute to her then-husband Blackstock. “By the way, piece by piece, I found out my hero’s me,” Clarkson confidently sings on the new song.
Listen to “Rock Hudson” below, and hear Clarkson’s full interview with Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast on Tuesday, June 27.
–Additional reporting by Keith Caulfield
Thanks to The Weeknd’s new song “Popular,” Madonna is back where she’s been many times before: on the Billboard Hot 100. “Popular” (also featuring Playboi Carti) from the new HBO series The Idol lands at No. 43 on this week’s Hot 100 — Madonna’s highest-charting song in more than a decade, since “Give Me All […]
Olivia Rodrigo had one of the splashiest arrivals in recent pop history, with her eight-week Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Drivers License” and her five-week Billboard 200 No. 1 album Sour culminating in her best new artist win at the 2022 Grammys. We haven’t heard any new music from Rodrigo since she released her blockbuster debut […]
Three hours or bust! On their ambitious new tours, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are setting the bar impossibly high for treks to come, playing three-hour (or longer!) concerts that each cover more than 3 dozen songs from their respective catalogs. Rock fans have come to expect marathon concerts from the likes of Bruce Springsteen or […]
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.)
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.)
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.