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Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift made fire when they teamed up for their new collaboration, “Us” — literally.
Abrams sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to discuss how the songwriting session for her The Secret of Us track led to Swift putting out a fire in her apartment after an all-nighter. “It’s dramatic. We almost burned her house down. Literally. […] We went to dinner and we drank a lot of alcohol and we were talking about our lives, and then we were talking about our albums, and she was in the middle of Tortured Poets and I was in the middle of [The Secret of Us],” the 24-year-old singer recalled. “We were just getting so excited talking about all of it. And she was like, we have to go back to the house and I want to play you the songs and blah, blah, blah. So we went back to her house and we opened a bottle of wine and we went song for song in the kitchen, and we were being like theatre kids, standing and running around the center island. It was so funny. The whole time I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. This is crazy.’”
She continued, “At this point, it’s like two in the morning and we, off the back of playing song for song for song for song, for I don’t know how long, we were listening through sketches that Aaron [Desnner] had sent us and the guitar part for “Us” came on, and immediately we ran to the piano, and we had no plan to make any [song], but it felt just like a Nashville writing session. We sat at the piano, just found the key, and then wrote the whole song from two to six AM. We filmed the whole thing, not because we were like, ‘We need to film this,’ but we just needed to get it all down, whatever. It was so full body, it was dramatic but it was so much fun.”
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Of the fire, Abrams recalled that she heard a “crack” from the other room, which Swift thought was her cat. “We finished the bridge and we went into the kitchen to get probably wine, and there was a bonfire on her center island. Truly a huge ball of flame. There had been a candle that we had lit when we got home, and it was so hot that it burst. And the base of the candle was this wooden, like a tree trunk kind of a thing,” she shared. “I don’t know how she knew where this was, but she runs and grabs a fire extinguisher and for minutes is trying to get it to work and it won’t work. And I was just like, I’m crying, but I had had a similar problem earlier. I had weirdly had a candle burst and I learned that if you put water on it because wax, oil and water…. Anyways, eventually she put it out. Extinguished it.”
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She continued, “We both had crazy chest coughs for weeks after because the whole kitchen was covered in smoke. ‘Us’ came from that night. That was a really good night. No one got hurt. We actually both got burned from the wax and all that stuff. It was gnarly, but it was funny.”
Last week, Abrams took to Instagram to share a video of the duo playfully creating the song, calling the evening “some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.” She also included a video of Swift extinguishing an apartment fire. “Now we know how to use a fire extinguisher. I love you,” Abrams wrote.
The 24-year-old Abrams spent the summer opening for Swift’s The Eras Tour, a role she’ll reprise on select dates in North America later this fall. She’ll head out on her very own headlining tour of theater-sized venues across the United States, starting Sept. 5 in Portland.
The Secret of Us features the previously-released tracks “Risk” and “Close to You,” which debuted at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it’s the followup to Abrams’ debut record Good Riddance, which arrived February 2023, peaking at No. 52 on the Billboard 200.
Watch the full interview below.
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It’s a circus out there! Corey Feldman has dropped a colorful ’80s inspired music video for his latest single, “The Joke,” and Billboard is premiering the visual directed by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst.
“‘The Joke’ is more than just a song — it’s a statement. For years, I’ve faced criticism from those who want to undermine my dedication to music. This single is my way of reclaiming the narrative and showing that my commitment to my art is unshakeable,” Feldman tells Billboard. “Fred and I have a long history of working together. We originally recorded ‘Seamless’ as a feature in 2016 on my Angelic 2 The Core album, which will be re-released digitally on July 4th weekend. We co-wrote and co-produced that song, but working with Fred Durst as a director on the music video has been an incredible experience. He had a clear concept in mind and I relinquished the creative to him, and although it wasn’t how I saw it, his version surprised me and delivers the laughs. I can’t wait for my fans to see the energy and vision we’ve brought to life”
The video kicks off with actor-singer on stage bouncing around to circus music, his dancers and band behind him, everyone dressed in the decade’s brightest duds. The tune then takes a creepy turn as Feldman laughs like a maniac before the band — complete with headbands and hair inspired by the likes of Robert Smith and Alice Cooper — begins to jam.
The video slows down during the bridge, when The Lost Boys actor rips open his multicolored tracksuit’s jacket to reveal the Goonies T-shirt underneath, paying homage to the 1985 Steven Spielberg-directed classic in which he starred as he sings, “Maybe there are times, I second guess myself/ The pain outweighs the wealth?/ Maybe it is time, to crawl back in my shell, contemplate farewell?/ Well …”
A familiar “hee hee!” is heard as the former child star covers his eyes, then re-emerges dressed as his late friend Michael Jackson. “Let’s give ’em hell!” Feldman sings as he busts out some moves by the King of Pop.
The Limp Bizkit frontman makes a cameo at the end, clapping as the video ends and Feldman — still dressed as Jackson — joins him on the set. “Fantastic!” the rocker praises, but the actor has a few concerns about the video they just filmed.
“Listen, I love that you’re directing this. I think it’s gonna be amazing; everything looks great,” Feldman starts before gesturing to his sequined Michael Jackson outfit. “I really don’t know about this whole thing, though.”
The rocker assuages his fears by saying, “Brother, look at me. It’s not going in the video.” Guess “The Joke” is on Feldman!
Ahead of the video’s premiere on Billboard.com, the singer-actor performed the song on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast and talked to the host about his music and influences. “I grew up studying from Michael. I learned from Michael,” he shared. “So a lot of the stuff I design musically … has gotta have that same kind of drive, it’s gotta have that thing that makes me dance, that makes me want to move so that it comes alive when I perform it.”
Watch the music video for “The Joke” above, and check out Corey Feldman when he joins Limp Bizkit on the Loserville tour, which kicks off July 16 in Somerset, Wis.
Dave Grohl has been a longtime fan of Taylor Swift, but a recent comment he made hasn’t sat well with Swifties. The Foo Fighters rocker seemingly took a jab at Swift’s Eras Tour while performing at London Stadium on Saturday (June 22), which happened to take place at the same time as the pop superstar’s nearby […]
Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” is the newly minted biggest song in the world, as it rises to No. 1 in its second week on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts.
The track becomes Carpenter’s second leader on each list, dethroning her first on each ranking, “Espresso,” which a week earlier ascended to the Global 200 summit and logged a fifth week atop Global Excl. U.S.
Carpenter is just the second artist to notch new Global 200 No. 1s in consecutive weeks, after Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” and “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From the Vault]” reached the top spot in back-to-back frames in November 2023.
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Elsewhere, Trueno earns his first Global Excl. U.S. top 10 with “Real Gangsta Love.”
The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
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“Please Please Please” crowns the Global 200, lifting from No. 2, with 119.2 million streams (up 14%) and 9,000 sold (down 10%) worldwide June 14-20.
The song by the Quakertown, Pa.-born singer-songwriter-actress was released June 7, alongside its official video, and she performed it during her set at New York’s Governors Ball the following day. On June 18, acoustic, a cappella, instrumental, sped up and slowed down versions of the single were released. On June 20, Carpenter announced her 29-date Short n’ Sweet Tour, set to start Sept. 23 in Columbus, Ohio. Her album Short n’ Sweet, featuring both “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” is due Aug. 23.
“Espresso” dips to No. 2 on the Global 200 as Carpenter becomes the first woman to hold the chart’s top two spots in consecutive weeks. Among all acts, she joins only Peso Pluma, who achieved the feat for two weeks in June 2023.
Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” rises 4-3 for a new Global 200 high; Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” lifts 5-4 for a new best; and Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” rebounds 7-5 after it spent two weeks at No. 1 earlier in June.
On Global Excl. U.S., “Please Please Please” vaults 5-1 with 69 million streams (up 26%) and 2,000 sold (down 11%) outside the U.S. June 14-20.
“Espresso” ranks at No. 2 on Global Excl. U.S. – making Carpenter the first solo woman to claim the chart’s top two spots simultaneously. Among all acts, Jung Kook (two weeks in 2023), BLACKPINK (one, 2022) and BTS (one, 2020) have also earned such a double-up.
Carpenter is also the first solo woman to place at Nos. 1 and 2 on both the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. concurrently. Overall, Jung Kook (“Standing Next to You,” “Seven,” featuring Latto; Nov. 18, 2023) and BLACKPINK (“Shut Down,” “Pink Venom,” Oct. 1, 2022) previously made such a mark in the charts’ top two ranks simultaneously.
Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” wings 4-3 for a new Global Excl. U.S. high; FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” drops to No. 4 from its No. 3 peak; and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” bumps 6-5 following eight weeks at No. 1 beginning in February.
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Plus, Trueno scores his first Global Excl. U.S. top 10 as “Real Gangsta Love” soars 26-10 with 41.5 million streams (up 43%) outside the U.S. The track by the Argentinian singer and rapper rules four tallies in Billboard’s Hits of the World menu (Bolivia Songs, Ecuador Songs, Peru Songs and Spain Songs) for a second week each and has hit the top five on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated June 29, 2024) will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, June 25. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Summer officially kicked off a few days ago, and it feels impossible to consider that this time last year, espresso was simply a coffee-brewing method and post-dinner option. At the start of spring, none of us were me espresso — were we ever so young?
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But then, Sabrina Carpenter went on the type of months-long run that turns an artist into a superstar. Over the past couple months, she played Coachella; performed on the season finale of Saturday Night Live; announced a tour that will make her an arena headliner, after playing opening act to Taylor Swift’s Eras stadium shows just a few months earlier; snagged a top spot at a major U.S. festival, Outside Lands; made her runway debut at Vogue World; hung out on- and off-camera with her movie star boyfriend, Barry Keoghan; and received countless celebrity co-signs as the cool new kid to join their ranks.
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After years of Disney-approved studio albums and a gradual reinvention into an adult pop singer-songwriter, the 25-year-old has scooped up several wins reserved for undeniable A-listers in a short amount of time. Of course, “Espresso,” the buoyant single that Carpenter released in early April, helped caffeinate her career. A top 10 mainstay on the Hot 100 since its release, “Espresso” has not only become a defining pop hit of 2024, but got meme’d ad nauseam, sending “me espresso” into the cultural lexicon as other superstars warbled its best parts in viral tribute. As “Espresso” spends another week in the Hot 100’s top 5, it shows no signs of slowing down.
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“Espresso” is Carpenter’s mainstream breakthrough — but it isn’t her first No. 1 hit. That honor is reserved for “Please Please Please,” Carpenter’s follow-up single, which climbs to the top spot after debuting at No. 2 last week. It’s an unexpected development following weeks of “Espresso” ubiquity, but for Carpenter, it’s an even more impressive crowning achievement.
“Please Please Please” may contain some typical characteristics of a modern smash — Jack Antonoff produced it, after all, and co-wrote the song with Carpenter and regular hit-maker Amy Allen. Its buzzy music video co-stars Keoghan, in a bit of action-packed celebrity interplay that has racked up 34 million YouTube views. Yet the studio pedigree and must-see visuals don’t mask its idiosyncrasies. The biggest song in America is a sly, low-key, downright weird single; “Please Please Please” doesn’t boast the instant catchiness of “Espresso,” but instead provides an even stronger jolt of Carpenter’s singular persona.
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Pivoting away from the confident synth-pop bounce of “Espresso,” Carpenter treats “Please Please Please” like a country-tinged confessional. She speak-sings about past and present errors in judgment over muted guitar and drum taps in the verses. When the hook hits, Carpenter pleads in high-definition, harmonizing with herself in a way that somehow splits the difference between a disco anthem and folksy ballad.
By the time Carpenter’s register dips in the second half of the chorus and she gurgles the threat, “I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherf–ker,” she’s obviously upended any expectations of an “Espresso” rehash — but also, she’s remained as playful and off-kilter as she sounded when she sang “I’m working laaaate / ‘Cuz I’m a singerrrrr.” Carpenter possesses a wry sense of humor that helped define the songwriting on her great 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send, and after injecting her eccentricities into “Espresso,” “Please Please Please” amplifies them. Her personal and musical quirks can be felt in every line, hook and ad-lib, and they turn “Please Please Please” into a song that no other artist could deliver in quite the same way.
The immediate success of “Please Please Please” — which debuted at No. 2 on the Hot 100 last week after quickly becoming a streaming juggernaut, then overtook Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” in its second frame — confirms the breadth of Carpenter’s newfound popularity. After “Espresso” became her first career top 20 on the Hot 100, Carpenter quickly followed it with a song that was a sonic departure but a spiritual relative, and revealed more about what type of pop star she wants to be.
Maybe “Espresso” eventually hits No. 1 and stands as the bigger hit for Carpenter, or maybe its success was simply prelude for a less traditional smash. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, pop listeners are clearly invested in Carpenter beyond her breakout hit’s ultra-catchy refrain and have latched onto the personality that helped power these two hits.
Now, we’re likely about to experience a summer full of two tonally disparate Carpenter singles racking up millions of streams and numerous weeks in the top 10 of the Hot 100. At the end of it, we’ll get a new Carpenter full-length, Short n’ Sweet — after a first half of 2024 full of big-name album releases, it could dominate the cultural conversation during a relatively quiet third quarter. Carpenter commanded the spring thanks to “Espresso”; “Please Please Please” may have set her up for a whole lot more winning seasons.
Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” rises to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, a week after it debuted at No. 2. It becomes the first leader on the list for the pop singer-songwriter and actress.
The song, on Island Records and promoted to radio by Republic Records, drew 50.9 million official streams (up 1%) – Carpenter’s best career streaming week for a song – and 3.2 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 502%) and sold 7,000 (down 10%) in the United States in the June 14-20 tracking week, according to Luminate.
The single spends a second week at No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart and holds at No. 7 in its second frame on Digital Song Sales. (It’s as yet bubbling under the Radio Songs chart.)
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“Please Please Please” was released June 7, alongside its official video starring Carpenter’s significant other, Oscar-nominated Barry Keoghan, and she performed it during her set at New York’s Governors Ball the following day. On June 18, acoustic, a cappella, instrumental, sped-up and slowed-down versions of the song were released. On June 20, Carpenter announced her 29-date Short n’ Sweet Tour, set to start Sept. 23 in Columbus, Ohio. (She opened on the South American run of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour in August-November 2023 and rejoined Swift this February-March for dates in Australia and Singapore.)
The track, along with “Espresso,” at No. 4 on the Hot 100 a week after reaching No. 3, introduces Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet, due Aug. 23.
The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data, the lattermost metric reflecting purchases of physical singles and digital tracks from full-service digital music retailers; digital singles sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites are excluded from chart calculations. All charts (dated June 29, 2024) will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, June 25. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Below is a deeper look at Carpenter’s coronation and the rest of the latest Hot 100’s top 10.
Carpenter’s First Hot 100 No. 1
Please, please, please give fans more! Sabrina Carpenter stunned when she made her runway debut at the Vogue World 2024: Paris on Sunday (June 23). The “Espresso” singer added a jolt of joie de vivre she walked the fashion event held at the Place Vendôme. Dressed in a red-and-white striped bathing suit with a matching […]
There’s nothing fancy about this request. Charli XCX is asking fans to be civil when it comes to Taylor Swift after the “Boom Clap” singer’s sold-out Partygirl DJ set Friday (June 21) at Club Zig in Sao Paolo, Brazil. After seeing online that attendees at the show were chanting “Taylor is dead,” the Grammy nominee […]
Every composer hopes their music outlives them – and Henry Mancini’s music certainly has. Thirty years after Mancini died of pancreatic cancer at the too-young age of 70, his music came to life in a star-studded, season-opening concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The event, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Mancini’s birth (the actual date was […]
Taylor Swift‘s Wembley Stadium show got silly Sunday night (June 23) when Travis Kelce made an unexpected appearance on the London stage during the singer’s Tortured Poets Department set. Plus, the tour date marked the live debut of Swift’s newest song.
The couple had some fun at the third of a trio of Swift’s concerts at Wembley this weekend. Kelce, after watching the show among friends, family and celebrities all three evenings in London, made his Eras Tour stage debut at the start of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” The Kansas City Chiefs tight end carried an exhausted Swift to the couch on set in the over-the-top final act of her Tortured Poets extravaganza.
The audience whooped in surprise at the sight of the NFL player on Swift’s stage; he’s been spotted at a handful of Eras concerts, but usually as a VIP spectator who’s trading friendship bracelets or vibing to songs like “Blank Space,” “Karma” and “So High School.” Among those watching at Wembley Sunday night was Paul McCartney.
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Kelce played along with Swift’s dancers, in character to get the star ready to “fake it ’til you make it” for the crowd and smile, “even when you wanna die” — as the song goes.
“I was grinnin’ like I’m winnin’/ I was hittin’ my marks/ ‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart,” Swift sings on the pop track with a cheeky chorus: “I’m so depressed, I act like it’s my birthday every day/ I’m so obsessed with him, but he avoids me like the plague/ I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art/ You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart.”
When The Tortured Poets Department era of the show ended, the pop star began her acoustic set, which typically features one guitar and one piano performance of songs she hasn’t ever, or doesn’t often, play live. Lately, she’s been presenting many of her surprise song picks as mashups.
On Sunday, she told the stadium that “if you know the words to this one, you get extra credit points ‘cause it’s only been out for like two days.”
“It’s my friend Gracie’s,” she added, speaking of Gracie Abrams, who just released the album The Secret of Us, which includes a duet with Swift. (The night they wrote the duet “us.” will be hard to forget, as the songwriting session wound up in flames: a candle caused a small kitchen fire that Swift managed to put out herself with a fire extinguisher.)
Swift performed “us.” live for the first time, beginning on guitar and joined by Abrams on piano when she arrived on stage alongside her.
“I just love this girl so much,” Swift said at one point.
She also praised her as a collaborator: “Writing with her, she’s just so badass. That’s a writer.”
The two hugged as the song concluded, and then Swift offered London a medley of some 1989-era fan favorites: “Out of the Woods,” “Is It Over Now?” and “Clean.”
Check out clips of all of those unique moments from Sunday’s show at Wembley Stadium below.
Watch Travis Kelce carry Taylor Swift on the stage for the “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” bit:
Watch Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams perform ‘Us’ together, plus Swift on piano for a mashup of “Out of the Woods,” “Is It Over Now?” and “Clean.”