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Niall Horan has now had two of his former One Direction bandmates support him on tour this year, with Liam Payne attending the Irish singer-songwriter’s show in Argentina on Wednesday (Oct. 2). Just a little over a month after Harry Styles made headlines for viewing Horan’s August concert in Manchester, fans spotted the “Teardrops” singer […]
Shawn Mendes is leveling with his audience about where he stands with Camila Cabello, as well as his thoughts on the recent uptick in gossip regarding their former romance and breakup.
The conversation first started in late September, when the “Stitches” singer-songwriter opened up on the Jay Shetty Podcast about how he and the C,XOXO artist have been “preserving [their] private little fire of love for each other” despite breaking up in 2023, two years after they first ended their romance in 2021. A couple days later, a fan commented, “they don’t play about each other” on a tweet quoting his podcast interview — and Mendes retweeted the comment and agreed, “no we don’t” on Wednesday (Oct. 2).
A couple hours after that, he came back online to clarify why he engaged with the comment in the first place. “i guess to be honest it came from a place of being a little annoyed with all the projection over the last few months about us,” Mendes wrote, referring to Cabello. “I’m usually pretty good at just watching all the ‘noise’ go by but lately it’s been kinda bugging me 🤷🏻♂️ feeling human i guess.”
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In a follow-up tweet, Mendes added, “yeah part of me knows quoting a tweet and saying that is gunna start a little spin up and i guess to be honest part of me just wanted to address it and actually have a real honest relationship with you guys about how it feels from my side.”
The “Mercy” artist didn’t specify in his posts, but much “noise” has indeed been made about his and Cabello’s relationship this year — particularly as it relates to Sabrina Carpenter. Following his first breakup from Cabello, Mendes was rumored to be dating the “Espresso” singer in early 2023, shortly after which he got back together with the “Havana” vocalist. Their rekindled romance only appeared to last a few months after that, and Cabello later confirmed that they’d split once again on Call Her Daddy.
Many fans have since speculated that Carpenter sings about the situation on her Billboard 200-topping new album Short n’ Sweet, particularly the track “Coincidence.” “What a surprise, your phone just died/ Your car drove itself from L.A. to her thighs/ Palm Springs looks nice, but who’s by your side?/ Damn it, she looks kinda like the girl you outgrew,” reads the song’s lyrics. “What a coincidence/ Oh wow, you just broke up again.”
No matter what, though, Mendes says that he and Cabello put in the work to stay on good terms. “I’ll be the first to text her, she’ll be the first to text me,” he added on Jay Shetty’s show Sept. 30, noting that the exes maintain “immense honesty” and “over-communication” to this day. “As long as we’re good, all the noise is just noise.”
See Mendes’ tweets below.
here we go i can do that ♥️i guess to be honest it came from a place of being a little annoyed with all the projection over the last few months about us. I’m usually pretty good at just watching all the “noise” go by but lately it’s been kinda bugging me 🤷🏻♂️ feeling human i… https://t.co/Kl7vcey8gl— Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) October 2, 2024
and yeah part of me knows quoting a tweet and saying that is gunna start a little spin up and i guess to be honest part of me just wanted to address it and actually have a real honest relationship with you guys about how it feels from my side. I also would love to know how it…— Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) October 2, 2024
After rolling out the first slate of international dates in support of her upcoming Tension II album last month, Australian pop superstar Kylie Minogue announced the North American leg of the outing on Thursday (Oct. 3). The 2025 Tension Tour is slated to kick off on March 29 with a gig at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto and take the “Padam Padam” singer to Montreal, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Denver before winding down with a May 2 show at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Tickets for Minogue’s biggest tour since 2011 will kick off with an American Express presale for card members on Oct. 8 at 10 a.m. local time (through Oct. 10 at 10 p.m. local time), followed by an artist presale starting on Oct. 9 at 10 a.m., which fans can sign up for now here. The general public onsale will begin at 10 a.m. local on Oct. 11.
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“I am beyond excited to announce the TENSION TOUR 2025. I can’t wait to share beautiful and wild moments with fans all over the world, celebrating the Tension era and more! It’s been an exhilarating ride so far and now, get ready for your close up because I will be calling Lights, Camera, Action … and there will be a whole lot of Padaming!,” Minogue said in a statement.
The 13-track Tension II album, led by the first single “Lights Camera Action,” was released last month, featuring the previously-released dance song “Edge of Saturday Night” with The Blessed Madonna as well as collaborations with Orville Peck, Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo, and Sia.
The North American dates will follow on the heels of the Australian leg that launches with a Feb. 15 show at Perth’s RAC Arena, marking her first home country gig in five years.
Check out the dates for the 2025 North American Tension Tour below.
March 29 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
March 30 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
April 2 – Chicago, IL @ Allstate Arena
April 4 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
April 8 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
April 9 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
April 11 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
April 13 – Orlando, FL @ Kia Center
April 14 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
April 17 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
April 19 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
April 22 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
April 25 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
April 26 – Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum
April 29 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
May 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
Kesha is most definitely not ready to make nice. The “Only Love Can Save Us Now” singer detailed what she described as a scorched earth plan to shake up the music industry’s old guard in a new ELLE magazine profile in which she warned that anyone with “deep, dark secrets” better be ready for a reckoning.
“I don’t believe you can create if you’re not feeling safe,” she told the magazine in detailing a new digital platform she’s working on with help from people in the tech industry that she said will prioritize artist’s safety. “The old guard, they’re falling. The old way of doing everything with secrecy — there’s no future there. So, like, those of you with deep, dark secrets, you better f–king run.”
Her warning to those traditional gatekeepers pulls no punches: “The music industry should be f–king terrified of me,” she said. “Because I’m about to make some major moves and shift this s–t. I really want to dismantle it piece by piece and shine light into every corner. I hope my legacy is making sure it never happens to anybody ever again.”
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Kesha extracted herself from a contract with Dr. Luke following a 2023 settlement in her long-running civil lawsuit against the producer born Lukasz Gottwald over her claims of infliction of emotional distress, sexual harassment and assault; Luke denied the claims and reached a settlement with Kesha to dismiss his defamation suit against her last year, with both parties denying any misconduct.
She has since formed her own independent label, Kesha Records, which she said is the first big step in taking back her musical voice after signing with Luke in 2005 when she was 18. “I’m free and it feels good,” she said, noting that she has a reminder on her phone that reads “you’re free.” Kesha is now fully in charge of her music and free to work with any producers and writers she wants, a situation that led to the release of her recent single, the A.G. Cook (Charli XCX) and Zhone (Slayyyter)-produced “Joyride,” a bouncing, horn-spiked party record on which she sings, “Rev my engine til you make it purr/ Keep it kinky, but I come first/ Beep-beep b–ch, I’m outside/ Get in loser, for the joyride.”
Not for nothing, Kesha said “Joyride” was birthed both after the settlement of her Luke suit as well as in the wake of a break-up with someone she felt was “in it for the wrong reasons and was a bit of a starf–ker,” and whose loyalty she assessed in the most Kesha way possible. “I decided to test that theory and took one of my friends instead of him to Taylor Swift’s party. He came over the next day and broke up with me,” she said.
At this point she hasn’t come up with a title for the follow-up to her raw, 2023 fifth studio album, the not-to-subtly titled Gag Order, which marked her final release through RCA Records and Luke’s Kemosabe Records. The words that keep coming to mind as she ponders a name for it are also pointed and telling: freedom, safety, joy.
“This record is my little wild child,” she said, describing Gag Order as a way to give voice to her more painful emotions. “I was really vulnerable. Now I’m really trying to make way for the bad b–ch. I’m giving her the moment — because we need the space to have all the emotions safely. I capture the empowered emotions, so that I can listen back to it when I’m not feeling that way.”
Psyched to be “100 percent in control of everything now,” Kesha said her new music mogul era is allowing her to do all the things: “ideating the song, writing the song, singing the song, comping the song, coproducing the song, marketing the song, designing what I’m wearing for the song.”
As evidenced by the bubbly playful vibe of her recent social media posts, Kesha is leaning into the meaning of her name in Russian (“innocent joy”) because, as she said, “my soul needs this album. I need to reclaim my joy. Because I fought so f–king hard for it.”
She also loves the fact that her fortitude and defiant spirit have clearly helped empower a new generation of strident female pop stars who are embracing their authenticity. “I do have a sense of feeling protective of young women in music. I really hope my joy can stand for others to know that it’s available to them and to not give up,” she said of the singers she often DMs to offer herself up for advice or a kind sounding board. “I enjoy feeling my power, which hasn’t been available to me for a really long time, and I’d love to give that gift to others if I can.”
She specifically shouts out Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp, referring to the latter as the “most genuinely cool, calm, unbothered, iconic pop girlie.” Kesha invited Rapp to perform with her in Brooklyn in Nov. 2023 and Rapp returned the favor at April’s Coachella Festival, where Kesha performed her Billboard Hot 100 topper “Tik Tok,” which pointedly featured a revised line dissing embattled hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was indicted on sex trafficking charges last month amid a dozen lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment; Diddy has denied the charges.
Though Roan drew attention for playing to what was described as the biggest daytime crowd in Lollapalooza history this summer, Kesha said she could sense the stress the “Hot To Go” singer was likely feeling during a moment many saw as a dream scenario.
“Kesha was so lovely to me after my Lollapalooza set,” Roan told the magazine. “Because with that huge of a crowd, maybe only five other people there understood what that’s like. Kesha came to talk to me after, and it felt like a big sister was helping me through it. Me and Reneé were crying because we felt like we were seen in a way we never had been before. Kesha has always stood up for women and what she believes in and that’s very inspiring.”
“I try not to listen to pop radio, ever,” Amy Allen proclaims as she scrolls through Spotify on her phone. The singer-songwriter is recapping her recent listening: She has been on a Vince Gill kick; she always has The Cardigans in rotation; she recently discovered Donna Summer’s 1974 single “Lady of the Night”; she’s a fan of indie star Adrianne Lenker of the band Big Thief. Allen goes for early-morning runs on the boardwalks of Venice Beach in Los Angeles near her home, and while she used to soundtrack them with a classic rock playlist, for the past six months she has been blasting ABBA’s greatest hits, starting each morning jogging to “Dancing Queen” and “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).”
Allen has plenty of pop radio classics in her queue — but new pop is never in the mix. “It’s a very concerted effort I make to not do that, and to try to be influenced by things that I love and not what’s current,” Allen explains, “because what’s current now is not going to be current by the time anything I write comes out.”
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Whether she hears today’s biggest hits or not, Allen is now the one doing the influencing when it comes to the shape of current pop. After years of bouncing around the industry and absorbing sonic ideas, the 32-year-old from a small town in Maine has found her niche in studio sessions with superstars, braiding her appreciation of dense lyricism and 2000s bubblegum — “I’ve always loved a big pop chorus and I’ve always loved intricate storytelling,” she says — into an ability to create hits perfectly suited for the TikTok era, but likely to last long beyond it.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, which spent three weeks atop the Billboard 200 following its August release, has been Allen’s highest-profile win as a co-writer to date, with three smash singles (“Espresso,” “Taste” and Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Please Please Please”) full of idiosyncratic one-liners that have helped augment Carpenter’s inventive wit and transform her into an arena headliner. Yet Allen’s studio résumé preceding that breakthrough — credits on songs by Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Timberlake, Jonas Brothers, Maren Morris, Koe Wetzel and Niall Horan over the past 18 months alone — underline her status as a collaborator who helps A-listers at all stages of their careers land the right level of emotional punch and unlock the viral-ready turns of phrase that will transform a song into not only a hit, but a cultural moment.
“She knows how to articulate feelings in a way that most writers would envy,” says Tate McRae, who tapped Allen for the majority of her 2023 album, Think Later, including its slippery rhythmic-pop hit “Greedy,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. “I feel incredibly lucky to have written my last album with Amy, and I sincerely look forward to all that is to come together in the future.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Two years after landing her first songwriter of the year, non-classical nomination at the Grammy Awards (she was one of the inaugural nominees for the relatively new honor), Allen seems like a shoo-in to get a nod for the 2025 ceremony — and potentially become the first woman to take home the prize — thanks to the whirlwind success of her past year. Yet her manager, Gabz Landman, points out that, even if Allen is now hitting critical mass, she was a force in the songwriting world years before she was nabbing headlines, now six years removed from co-writing her first Hot 100 No. 1, Halsey’s “Without Me,” and two years after winning an album of the year Grammy for contributing to Harry Styles’ Harry’s House.
“She was an athlete growing up and still runs marathons, and I think a big part of her writing career is this incredible stamina,” says Landman, who’s also a vp of A&R at Warner Chappell Music. “Amy doesn’t quantify or feel proud of things based on chart metrics. She gets contacted by many people to collaborate, and it’s always about whether she’s inspired by [an opportunity] more than ‘What is this person’s standing in the music industry?’ ”
That outlook helps explain why, days after Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet gave Allen a dozen new Hot 100 writing credits, she independently released a self-titled solo album of her own: a 12-song set full of quiet arrangements and understated melodies that sound as far removed from top 40 as possible. The project is the opposite of an iron-hot cash grab — Allen says that some of its songs date back to six years ago, before her songwriting career took off, and they were too meaningful to leave unreleased.
“One of the reasons why I love Amy is because I really see the both-ness in her — she’s a songwriter and she’s a solo artist,” says Jack Antonoff, another studio whiz who also releases his own music with Bleachers. After Antonoff and Allen worked on four songs together for Short n’ Sweet, including “Please Please Please,” he invited her to open for Bleachers overseas during their summer tour. Allen will also support the band at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 4.
For Allen, her co-writing career and solo work represent two separate parts of her creativity and manifest through disparate processes. “When I’m writing with and for somebody else, I always start with the chorus — listening back to the great pop songs of the ’60s and ’70s through today, the chorus is the crux of the song,” she says. “When I’m writing by myself, I always start with the first verse and I just tell the story in a through line, start to finish. That helps me keep them separate, and it allows me to still keep falling in love with songwriting all the time.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Allen didn’t know which musical role she wanted to play when she was growing up in Windham, Maine: Her first experience performing was in her older sister’s band, which needed a bassist and tapped Allen, even though she was 9 and had never played the instrument. After kicking around the music scene in nearby Portland as a teenager, Allen went to nursing school at Boston College (“As a mistake,” she quips) before transferring to Berklee College of Music, despite not knowing any theory or even how to read sheet music.
“I was literally failing all of my classes,” Allen recalls, “but I could at least skate by in some of the songwriter classes. The class that helped me the most was actually this poetry class, where we studied great lyricists and poets. Something in my brain clicked about lyric writing, the cadence of rhymes and lines — the little things that might make people roll their eyes and be like, ‘Oh, that’s so songwriter-y.’ ”
After graduating, Allen fronted the pop-rock group Amy & The Engine, playing around New York in the mid-2010s before the band broke up and she committed to sharpening her skills as a solo writer. In late 2017, Allen was packing up for a West Coast move, and in her final New York session, she presented songwriter Micah Premnath with a melodic concept that had been stuck in her head — which, after some lyrical workshopping, morphed into “Back to You,” a top 20 hit for Selena Gomez. Soon after Allen touched down in Los Angeles, she linked with producer-songwriter Louis Bell to help make “Without Me,” then contributed to Styles’ “Adore You,” which turned into his first Pop Airplay chart-topper as a solo artist.
Allen’s transition from fledgling writer to hit-maker may have been sudden, but she had been studying the greats for a while. She grew up admiring Carole King, John Prine, Dolly Parton and Tom Petty, while also analyzing Max Martin’s pristinely crafted hits for Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. By the time she attended Berklee, Allen had started to identify her favorite studio minds and study their discographies. “I remember listening to my favorite pop songs, and Julia Michaels was behind all of them — it was like, ‘Who is this chick that is soundtracking my college years?’ ” she recalls with a laugh. Now Allen and Michaels share credits on five Short n’ Sweet tracks and sing background vocals together on the song “Coincidence.” (Allen also harmonizes with Carpenter on “Espresso.”)
Amy Allen photographed on August 20, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Like Michaels, Allen has developed a knack for taking straightforward lyrical phrases and contorting them until they stick in your cerebrum — think Carpenter declaring, “That’s that me, espresso,” or McRae exclaiming, “Obvious that you want me, but/I would want myself.” While Allen says she would probably have more 10-second hooks at the ready if she paid closer attention to TikTok, the majority of her biggest co-written choruses have resulted from actual conversations with artists — common ground discovered, then whittled down into universal refrains.
“Production trends turn over and change every six months, in my opinion,” she says. “But I think a great song, if it’s stripped down to guitar and piano, melody and lyric — it doesn’t change a ton.”
With Carpenter — whom Allen started working with for her last album, 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, contributing extra bite to tracks like “Vicious” and “Feather” — Allen has found a confidante and kindred spirit, unafraid to embrace a double entendre or, in the case of the “Please Please Please” chorus, a well-placed “motherf–ker.” Antonoff says that he, Allen and Carpenter knocked out three songs for Short n’ Sweet, including “Please Please Please,” in a single day together at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, often taking breaks to double over in laughter. “The depth of the d-ck jokes just goes on and on,” he says, “and then a song can happen randomly — that’s the magic of a studio space.”
Short n’ Sweet earned 1.2 million equivalent album units in just its first three weeks out, according to Luminate, with 11 of its 12 tracks reaching the Hot 100’s top 40. Allen says there are “so many reasons why I feel like I owe Sabrina my first-born child,” but the album’s commercial success isn’t the biggest one.
“Her musicality and personality blow me away every time that we work together,” she says of Carpenter, “but I’m also so grateful to her because I’ve never gotten to be part of every song on an album before. That’s so in line with what I grew up loving — digging in like that.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Landman notes that one sign of Allen’s growth is her increased involvement in major pop projects beyond a co-write or two: Along with all of Short n’ Sweet, she contributed to six songs on Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was, six on Wetzel’s 9 Lives and eight on McRae’s Think Later. Landman chalks that up to two reasons: She picked the right collaborators, and, post-pandemic and post-Zoom sessions, in-person studio hangs have let her personality shine. “She’s had a great rapport with so many artists that have turned into friendships,” Landman says. “And I think that people have noted [that] if you’re winning with somebody, keep doing what you’re doing.”
Allen is heeding that advice as she continues picking up co-writing projects and supporting her self-titled solo debut. Releasing an album under her own name has made her realize that the paths can coexist after previously thinking it impossible. “The last year-and-a-half has made it crystal clear in my brain that I only live once, so why do I have to pick?” she says.
Allen likens the balancing act to the way that any songwriter must find a happy medium between working at a breakneck pace and accruing enough life experiences to have something to write about. Amid a whirlwind professional year, “in terms of taking time off, I’ve done that more this year than any other year in my life,” Allen says. “And I’ve been writing my favorite songs I’ve ever written.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The back room of New York City’s Heaven Can Wait doesn’t usually have a name, but on a breezy September evening, it has become the “Chaos Room.”
Red streamers, moody lighting and torn-out pieces of notebook paper with the words “I’M YOUR GIRL” scrawled across them adorn the walls. And sitting on a small side table is a portable Studebaker CD player, with a set of instructions set to its side.
“‘I’m really excited to share this project with you all, hope you love it,’” Orla Gartland reads aloud, giggling to herself as she arrives at the final sentence. “‘Please don’t take the CDs.’ God, I hope they read that part.”
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Gartland has good reason to feel protective over the disc — on it is the entirety of her sophomore album, Everybody Needs a Hero (out Oct. 4 via New Friends). She’s invited an intimate group of her stateside fans to come listen to the project and watch her perform stripped-down versions of a few of its tracks. Before the cozy club’s doors even opened, the Irish singer-songwriter had already greeted some of the attendees queued up outside.
“They are so cute,” she says. “Someone made a badge of my face! I was like, ‘Oh my God, you really put that in your badge machine?’ I respect it.”‘
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It’s an auspicious moment for the 29-year-old: since sharing her first cover on YouTube back in the late 2000s, Gartland has spent the last decade-and-change steadily growing a dedicated online following. With a penchant for confessional lyrics speaking directly to the generational experience of growing up online, she’s developed a reputation for her DIY approach to crafting emotionally arresting pop songs.
There’s still much of that homemade spirit present on Everybody Needs a Hero — Gartland is listed as a writer and co-producer on each of the album’s 12 tracks. But the LP trades in the quieter sensibilities of a young woman singing acoustic songs in her bedroom for bold, bombastic pieces of production. Blaring guitars and clashing drums are paired, and piercing synths turn up the volume on Gartland’s alt-pop, making for a dynamic project exploring the inherent chaos of romance.
“When I was younger, I dealt with a lot of imposter syndrome, where [I] felt inferior in certain spaces. This time, I was willing to take up more space, willing to commit to things, whether it was a guitar tone or a vocal,” she explains. “I was ready to push myself, and be a bit more indulgent; now I just love the drama more and apologize less.”
Where her critically acclaimed debut album Woman on the Internet leaned into softer, more detached songs about the trials and tribulations of twenty-something life, Gartland aimed to make the entirety of her second album revolve around one of her last long-term relationships, tracking all of its complexity in a single LP. As she explains, “I wanted the good, the bad and the very ugly.”
With that approach came an understanding of what Gartland felt was missing in a lot of pop music: nuance. “I think some pop music has a tendency to dumb things down, to be honest. It’s either ‘I love you,’ or ‘I want to break up with you,’ or ‘I’m so much better without you,’” she says. “My experience is so much more mushy and conflicted than that, and I’m much more interested in that as an idea. All of these feelings can co-exist, they do not cancel each other out.”
Throughout the 12-song LP, Gartland deftly handles themes of baggage (“Late to the Party”), self-doubt (“Backseat Driver”), manic decision-making (“Three Words Away”), being the messy one in the relationship (“Little Chaos”) and much more. When constructing the tracklist, she says that she thought about the “seasons” of a relationship, from the “reluctance and excitement” of spring, all the way through to the “humbling moments of embracing the darkness” in winter.
That thematic approach marks a pointed departure from Gartland’s past work. Starting in 2009, Gartland — then a 14-year-old living Drumcondra, a Northern suburb of Dublin — started posting cover songs to YouTube. Armed with only with a guitar, a camera and her distinct voice, Gartland covered everyone from Natalie Imbruglia and Fleetwood Mac to Lorde and Charli XCX before graduating to releases of her original songs.
Where most people look back on their earliest days on the internet with utter embarrassment, Gartland feels a sense of pride. Sure, there are some old videos that make her cringe (“I really thought everyone needed to hear my Nelly Furtado cover,” she winces), but she acknowledges that her time spent as a self-described “YouTube girlie” molded her into the artist she is now.
“At one point I really resented the YouTube stigma — I was worried that I wasn’t going to be taken seriously,” she says. “But I realized that, at least with putting music online, you are the master of your own destiny. It’s not like going on The Voice or American Idol; those shows are great for the right kinds of artists, but you have so little autonomy in how you are presented. I feel very grateful, even more so in hindsight, that it’s been a slow, steady marathon, not a sprint. I feel so lucky to have been in control.”
Moving to London at age 18, Gartland began to pursue her artistry professionally in what she lovingly refers to as the “garage years” of her career. “If you think about the trope of a band practicing in their garage, that’s what that was,” she says. “You get to have your garage years before you get to play your first live show. But when you grow up on YouTube, your garage years are online and readily available for everyone to see, which can be weird!”
During that time, Gartland met and befriended Lauren Aquilina, a fellow artist with a YouTube following looking to find a career in the music business. Aquilina would go on to live with Gartland for five years while breaking into the music industry as a sought-after songwriter, working with artists including Demi Lovato, Rina Sawayama, LE SSERAFIM, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and others.
Despite their shared aspirations, Gartland says that before she began working on Everybody Needs a Hero, she never wrote with her former roommate. “I have never been more nervous to ask anyone to write a song with me, because the closeness can make it harder,” she says. “It actually turned out to be just the most effortless thing in the world — you skip the whole ‘getting acquainted’ phase, where this person just knows your humor, they know the chords that you like. You get to feel very heard.”
Orla Gartland
Finnegan Travers
As Gartland began releasing a string of singles and EPs in the mid-2010s, she decided to start a Patreon for her fans, creating a curated community where experimentation was encouraged. For the last seven years, Gartland has been releasing one demo per month to her loyal subscribers, a move she says proved to be the most beneficial collaboration of her career.
“Sometimes [the feedback from fans] is like, ‘This is great,’ and other times it’s like, ‘The second verse could be better,’” she explains. “I’m up for their critiques, because those are the people that I want to come to shows. I want them to feel like they’re a part of the process.”
While the development of an engaged fan community has been crucial to the rising singer-songwriter’s success, Gartland admits that audience growth was something she rarely found herself strategizing about. What sets her fandom apart, she says, is the importance she places on the people who already follow her.
“I have a strong sense of what the people who already listen to my music want. I care about them the most,” she explains. “If I manage to catch some passing traffic and it grows a little bit, then great. But I think my response is to listen to the audience I have.”
Gartland experienced the highs of finding viral success in 2022, when her song “Why Am I Like This?” received a prominent sync on the first season of Netflix’s Heartstopper, soundtracking an episode-closing scene in which main character Nick (Kit Connor) begins to question his sexuality. The song quickly picked up steam online, earning Gartland her first entry on a Billboard chart when the track peaked at No. 4 on the Top TV Songs chart in April 2022.
But Gartland still flinches at the idea of the immediate, viral fame that apps like TikTok can occasionally provide to artists. “I’ve had a couple friends who had big surges of attention in one way or another, and it seems like that can be really hard,” she says.
Though the singer has a steady presence on the app, she says that she tries to keep the social media facets of her job at an arm’s length. “You cannot be an independent artist and be above doing a few TikToks,” she says with a sigh. “Even though I grew up online to a degree, some of it feels like work. Some of it I really have to motivate myself to do. But, I see [TikTok] as a useful tool more than anything else.”
As she considers the role of TikTok in the modern music business, Gartland mimes a U-shape in front of her face. “I see the whole album cycle as a horseshoe. The bits that I love are at the top,” she says, pointing to the upper prongs of the invisible arc. “That’s writing, recording and being in the studio on one side, and then touring at the end once everyone’s heard it.” Her fingers then follow the horseshoe down to its lowest curve. “It’s everything in between that feels difficult — filming myself miming a song I’ve listened to one million times can get very annoying.”
After spending 2023 working with her friends Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown in the glam-pop supergroup FIZZ, Gartland had a renewed taste for the dramatic. Working in a band proved to be an important learning experience for Gartland, and a welcome break from the pure ego of a solo career.
“With my own music, there’s this very direct ownership to it all. You have nothing to hide behind, and you’re thinking about yourself a lot, which feels very odd,” she explains. “There was something really fun about FIZZ — the goal was literally to just have fun and be theatrical, be camp. There was almost a cockiness to it that feels so much easier. The otherness of it made it much easier to lean in.”
While she reached one end of the horseshoe with FIZZ in 2023 — the group played multiple festivals and embarked on a 7-date U.K. tour — Gartland found herself at the other end in her solo career. Teaming up with Aquilina, her longtime co-producer Tom Stafford and FIZZ co-producer Peter Miles, Gartland began to craft her sophomore opus.
On the album’s closing, cathartic title track, Gartland arrives at something of a thesis statement. Over loud, fuzzy guitars, Gartland narrates a story of trying and failing to look brave in front of her ex, finally crumbling and asking for support as they navigate their breakup. “Honey, I don’t have much time/ My parachute has come untied/ I need you to hold me/ Stroke my hair and tell me it’ll be alright,” Gartland sings on the emotionally raw chorus.
“I’d been thinking a lot about superheroes at the time — not in the Marvel sense, but in the sense that I observe in myself and in a lot of my female friends this want to do it all,” she explains of the song. “This wanting to be a great friend to everyone, and to be good with your family, and thriving in your career and everything else. I liked the idea of the self-appointed hero; this slightly manic girl trying to do it all, and saving everyone but herself.”
As an artist who spent much of her creative life showing others what “doing it yourself” can look like, Gartland acknowledges that the “self-appointed hero” can easily serve as a stand-in for herself. But as she looks ahead in her career, the singer says she’s not interested in becoming pop music’s new champion, especially if that means signing to a major label. Thanks to the work of artists like Taylor Swift, Gartland says she doesn’t feel the pressure to sign anywhere offering her anything less than ideal terms.
“I think in a post-Taylor’s Version world, the signal-boosting of what it actually means to own your own masters, what it means to be locked into a record contract, to be shelved — all of this jargon is out there now, and it’s really good for artists,” she says. “You’re seeing it happen now with RAYE, where there are all of these artists who are really proudly independent and thriving, and I’m just really happy to see it.”
That same concept, she says, applies to the trajectory of Gartland’s future career aspirations. “I would much rather have a slow rise at a glacial, snail’s pace, as long as it’s heading in the right direction and it’s sticking around,” she offers. “If I can do it on my own terms, then that’s f–king excellent.”
Four women have been there for Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez and Travis Kelce on their respective rises to superstardom over the years, and they aren’t their agents, managers or publicists. They’re their moms.
Tina Knowles, Maggie Baird, Mandy Teefey and Donna Kelce got a rare moment in the spotlight on Thursday (Oct. 3) with the publication of Glamour‘s new Women of the Year cover story, which features all four of the women posing together. In a group discussion, the quartet opened up about the best and worst parts of parenting kids who become globally famous, from watching their children perform in front of thousands of people to feeling limited on when and where they can go without being bombarded by fans and paparazzi.
At one point, Knowles and Teefey — moms to Bey and the Wizards of Waverly Place alum, respectively — bonded over making sure their daughters didn’t turn into divas despite finding fame as teenagers.
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“We had some moments where I was like, ‘Listen, they can pick up their own suitcases,’” Knowles recalled of the “Break My Soul” singer. “’You look people in the eye, say hello, don’t turn into a diva. That’s not going to work here.’ You have to teach your kids that … because everybody’s trying to handle everything for them and kissing their butts sometimes. And I am like, ‘No, no, no, you’re not helpless.’”
Teefey had a similar story about Gomez. “She was getting out of the trailer, and there was an umbrella, and they were holding it for her, and then they were bringing her food and all this stuff,” the producer told the other three moms. “I was like, ‘She can hold her own umbrella.’ She needs to learn how to pump her own gas in her car. She needs to be a person first.”
Baird — mom to the “Bad Guy” musician as well as producer Finneas — and NFL matriarch Kelce also found common ground when talking about their family’s home lives pre-fame. “My husband and I are working class actors,” Support + Feed founder Baird said. “We eked out a meager living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome. But the industry is primarily people like us or even people not even like us who couldn’t even do that. So when all of this happened to our kids, we’d never been on that side of it.”
“It was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby,’” Baird added of the internet’s past response to finding out she was an actress. “And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of Friends because I was about to lose my health insurance?’”
“I was a commercial banker for a bank in several different states,” said Kelce, who shares both Travis and retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce with ex-husband Ed Kelce. “I was a major breadwinner in the family… My husband and I knew that our marriage was not working, but we stayed together for the kids. Ours was a very friendly relationship. So, we could do that and make sure that their life was normal as possible.”
The interview comes as the Kansas City Chiefs tight end is at peak levels of fame, thanks in large part to his romance with Taylor Swift. The same could be said for Bey, Gomez and Eilish as well, with the Destiny’s Child star garnering Grammy buzz for her latest Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter, the Rare Beauty founder recently crossing into billionaire status and the “Happier Than Ever” artist embarking on a global arena tour over the weekend.
After the Glamour cover story came out, Gomez shared it on her Instagram Story and wrote, “Congratulations mommy.”
See Knowles, Baird, Teefey and Donna Kelce on the cover of Glamour below.
Lana Del Rey has not said much about her wedding to Jeremy Dufrene last week, but in a comment on an Instagram post on Wednesday (Oct. 2) the singer appeared to confirm that the alligator tour operator is the only one for her. In comments on a video of the couple sitting side-by-side on the […]
Paul McCartney uncorked the live debut of what has been billed as the “final” Beatles song, 2023’s “Now and Then,” during the marathon kick-off of the South American leg of his Got Back tour in Montevideo, Uruguay on Tuesday (Oct. 1). Sitting at a piano as the AI-assisted Peter Jackson-directed video for the song unspooled […]
Warning: the following story includes references to sexual assault.
Joe Jonas is the latest artist to remove a lyric referencing disgraced Bad Boy Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs amid the latter’s escalating sexual abuse scandal. Fan-shot footage of a Jonas Brothers show at LDLC Arena in Lyon, France last Saturday appeared to show Jonas eliding Combs’ name in a lyric from his DNCE side band’s 2015 hit “Cake By the Ocean.”
The original lyric went: “Walk for me, baby/ I’ll be Diddy, you’ll be Naomi, woah-oh.” But in the clips from last weekend, Jonas seemed to omit Diddy’s name and just mention supermodel Naomi Campbell. The move is the latest example of a musician deleting a lyrical nod to Combs, coming on the heels of Kesha’s move to excise a key lyric in her 2009 song “Tik Tok” earlier this year.
After tweaking the lyrics during a spot on Reneé Rapp’s Coachella festival set in April to proclaim “f–k P. Diddy,” Kesha announced in May that she would only perform the new lyrics going forward in light of the horrific allegations against Combs, which have landed the once high-flying music and fashion mogul behind bars on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud, coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution.
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In the original song, Kesha sang “Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.” Asked in May by TMZ if the change was permanent, Kesha said, “Yes, it will be [permanent]. The fans should learn it for my upcoming [shows]. I want to hear it louder than ever. I stand by that.”
Combs has been denied bail twice in the case, leaving him behind bars until the start of his trial on charges that could land the once formidable 54-year-old star in prison for the rest of his life; Combs has denied all the charges.
Just this week, a lawyer in Houston threatened to file civil sexual abuse lawsuits on behalf of more than 120 people alleging abuse dating back to 1991, including 25 allegedly involving minors who claim they were allegedly assaulted by Combs. Attorney Tony Buzbee said more than 3,000 individuals have contacted his office so far, with the lawyer saying that he plans to start filing the cases within the month.
Combs attorney Erica Wolff strongly denied the allegations from Buzbee, saying, “As Mr. Combs’ legal team has emphasized, he cannot address every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus. That said, Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors. He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.”
Once one of the most powerful and influential figures in music, Combs was indicted by federal prosecutors last month on multiple charges that allege he was the figurehead of a massive criminal operation for decades aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” To date, 12 victims have filed civil sexual abuse cases against Combs over the past year.
“For decades, Sean Combs … abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment. “To do so, Combs relied on the employees, resources and the influence of his multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled.”
Last week, Combs was hit with yet another civil lawsuit alleging that he repeatedly drugged and sexually assaulted an unnamed model over a four-year period — from 2020 until earlier this year. The details in those claims closely match the allegations made by federal prosecutors in their sweeping indictment that included details of “elaborate and produced,” drug-fueled “freak off” sexual performances between the victims and male sex workers during which Combs would masturbate.
Watch the Jonas lyric change below.
https://www.tiktok.com/@dncejonas/video/7420367716428582176?lang=en
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).