State Champ Radio Pop
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The first week of June is ending with an impressive variety of major music releases, with hitmakers such as Sabrina Carpenter, Mariah Carey and Ed Sheeran all dropping new tracks. Both S.C. and M.C. released songs dedicated to the types of partners they’re attracted to, but with decisively different attitudes. Marking her first piece of […]
Over the past two-ish years, BLINKs have definitely missed seeing their favorite lovesick girls together. But this summer, the ladies of BLACKPINK will finally be a unit once more, with ROSÉ, LISA, JENNIE and JISOO set to return with a world tour and new music after taking time off to pursue solo projects. And, much […]
This week, Jon Bellion returned to center stage after years of remaining behind the scenes: the veteran songwriter-producer released Father Figure, his first album in seven years and a poignant reflection on fatherhood, including his relationship with his own father and his experiences as a dad of three. A deeply personal project that includes a picture of his parents on the album cover and a voicemail from his uncle on the track list, Father Figure also demonstrates Bellion’s status as a gifted collaborator, with Luke Combs, Pharrell Williams and Jon Batiste lending their voices to his story.
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Bellion — who has contributed to hits by Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and Miley Cyrus, and recently co-helmed “Friend of Mine,” Rihanna’s first new single in three years — says that he’s not playing a “numbers game” with the album, and that the metric of success he’d like to reach with Father Figure is more abstract. “If my album can give you one more day, then I’m cool with that — that’s the goal,” he tells Billboard. “To give a listener another day of inspiration? I could live with that.”
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Yet along with its emotional power, Father Figure also offers a fresh industry blueprint, as the rare project in which its credited co-writers will receive a percentage of master royalties, or “points,” on the album. Bellion worked alongside the artists that comprise Beautiful Mind Projects — his management, publishing and label company — including studio whizzes Pete Nappi, Tenroc and Elkan, all of whom also contributed to Rihanna’s “Friend of Mine.”
Bellion says that the decision to provide points to his fellow songwriters was the result of his own “frustrations of being a songwriter and being paid dirt — morally paid dirt — for 10 years. I don’t want to hear people talking about, ‘Oh, he’s made money and he’s successful, so he can’t talk about how songwriters get paid dirt.’ … If you write an entire song with a group of people, and there’s $10 and they only pay you 25 cents, there’s moral injustice there.
“If it’s $10 million and they only pay you $250,000, there’s moral injustice there,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter the way you microscopically change that — it’s an insane thing to say. I’ve always been vocal about that, and I don’t care what people’s perception of that is, because songwriters get paid f—king dirt.”
After self-funding Father Figure, Bellion admits that he does have “a new perspective and a new appreciation for what the label is doing,” but still believes that there’s a way for record labels to allocate less money toward promotional efforts and more towards creative collaborators. To that end, Bellion says that he decided to focus his promotional campaign less on short-form content, and more on proper music videos for four songs from the album — including the title track, which received a moving visual on Friday (June 6).
Bellion says that the album rollout has been an invaluable learning process. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” he says. “I’m understanding the workings of the label, and stumbling through it. And even if I come out losing money — which I think I will on this album — but still getting the writers paid at least a point or two, and giving them the courage to go into the next meeting to say ‘Well, John did it!’ … Someone has to be the guy to be like, ‘I don’t really know how to make my money back while giving out a ton of points if I’m funding the thing myself, but I’m gonna have to jump into the world to put my money where my mouth is.’ I don’t know if this is gonna work out, but at least I tried to do the thing.”
As Bellion gears up to promote Father Figure from the stage — he’ll perform a sold-out intimate show at SOB’s in New York, and headline Forest Hills Stadium on Aug. 23 — he hopes that his unique standing in the industry will turn his gambit with the album into a successful model.
“I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum,” he says. “I’ve been on the label side, I’ve been on the publisher side, I’ve been on the writer side, and I’ve been on the artist side. So there’s more of a holistic angle, and I can try to bring everything in closer, to get to a better place, possibly.
“I’m not trailblazing,” Bellion continues. “I’m gonna go to Capitol Hill and dedicate my life to — I’m not saying that. But putting my money where my mouth is, where it actually counts? It’s a good place to start.”
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Sabrina Carpenter torches a former flame, Lil Wayne continues to surprise, and Addison Rae makes a grand debut. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Sabrina Carpenter, “Manchild”
Although Sabrina Carpenter still has multiple hits from her Short n’ Sweet era hanging around radio, she’s returned more quickly than expected to eviscerate an ex: “Manchild,” which Carpenter created with her collaborative cohorts Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff, functions as a colorful, country-tinged bookend to her No. 1 hit “Please Please Please,” allowing the pop star to take down the man she begged to not embarrass her with lines like, “Why so sexy if so dumb?”
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Lil Wayne, Tha Carter VI
Hip-hop may have changed around Lil Wayne since he kicked off his mega-selling Carter series more than 20 years ago, but Weezy accounts for that evolution on Tha Carter VI — which features relatively new stars like Jelly Roll and BigXThaPlug — while also remaining a singular voice in popular music, capable of warbling a Weezer hit (“Island Holiday”), placing his voice next to Andrea Bocelli’s (“Maria”), and, of course, stringing together gonzo rhymes for minutes on end.
Addison Rae, Addison
It’s time for the doubters of Addison Rae’s musical chops to be bid adieu: on debut album Addison, the former influencer turns in a tour de force of personality and pop know-how, breathing each syllable and gliding over every synth riff with enough detail to give the listener a glimpse inside her world, and the confidence to sell her artistic vision.
Turnstile, Never Enough
Even though Turnstile represents one of the biggest hardcore breakthroughs of the past decade, their long-awaited new album Never Enough is not a hardcore project — instead, the Baltimore quintet experiment with horns, synths, song lengths and sonic textures on the follow-up to 2021’s Glow On, although the head-banging hooks remain immediate enough to satisfy longtime listeners.
Mariah Carey, “Type Dangerous”
As she’s returned to the top of the Hot 100 for multiple years in a row with her holiday classic “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey has concurrently tinkered with her traditional approach to rhythmic pop, and “Type Dangerous,” a sultry new R&B single that samples Eric B. & Rakim’s “Eric B. Is President,” finds the legend continuing to innovate instead of resting on her laurels.
Ed Sheeran, “Sapphire”
Ed Sheeran continues to explore different musical cultures on “Sapphire,” a free-spirited new anthem that, like recent single “Azizam,” looks east for inspiration: with backing vocals and sitar from Indian superstar Arijit Singh, the song doubles down on the growing trend of South Asian production reaching Europe and North America, in the name of a type of love without geographical boundaries.
KATSEYE feat. Ice Spice, “Gnarly (Remix)”
KATSEYE’s recent single “Gnarly” leapt off the speakers with an irresistible audacity upon its release, and now that the song has gone viral for the global girl group, Ice Spice has gleefully hopped aboard to compare herself to LeBron James in his rookie year and sneak in some brand promotion (“No soda, the ceiling is Starry!”).
Editor’s Pick: Little Simz, Lotus
The creation of Little Simz’s excellent new album Lotus may have been tumultuous — ““I got to a point where I lost my sense of purpose,” the British rapper recently told Billboard — but the result is on par with her 2021 breakthrough Sometimes I Might Be Introvert in terms of lyrical dexterity, and with even more luxurious production — these grooves, combined with Simz’s nimble delivery, are worth sinking into for hours.
The first part of the new Billy Joel documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, premiered at the Tribeca Festival in New York on Wednesday and it featured a section about one of the most difficult periods in the 76-year-old singer’s life. According to People, the film co-directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin delves into a dark incident early in Joel’s career when he attempted suicide two times after having an affair with a former bandmate’s wife.
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“Bill and I spent a lot of time together,” Elizabeth Weber says in the documentary about the affair she had with Joel when he was in his 20s and she was married to the singer’s best friend and Atila bandmate drummer Jon Small. She says in the film that the affair was a “slow build” until Small, who had a son with Weber, suspected something was going on and Joel fessed up to the affair, telling him, “I’m in love with your wife.”
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Joel — who did not attend the premiere after cancelling a summer run of shows due to a recent diagnosis of the brain condition normal pressure hydrocephalus — says in the film that he felt “very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker. I was just in love with a woman and I got punched in the nose which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I was very upset.”
The brawl marked the end of Atila and the pair’s friendship, with Weber leaving Small — and later reconnecting with Joel, to whom she was married from 1973-1982 — and the singer spiraling into a dark period of drink and depression. “I had no place to live. I was sleeping in laundromats and I was depressed I think to the point of almost being psychotic,” Joel says in the film. “So I figured, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to live anymore.’ I was just in a lot of pain and it was sort of like why hang out, tomorrow is going to be just like today is and today sucks. So, I just thought I’d end it all.”
Joel’s sister, Judy Molinari, was a medical assistant at the time and she gave him some sleeping pills to help him get some rest. “But Billy decided that he was going to take all of them… he was in a coma for days and days and days,” she says: “I went to go see him in the hospital, and he was laying there white as a sheet. I thought that I’d killed him.”
The singer said he was “very selfish” at the time and recalled waking up in the hospital determined to end his life again. Molinari said her brother drank a bottle of the furniture cleaner Lemon Pledge, with Small driving him to the hospital after that attempt. “Even though our friendship was blowing up, John saved my life,” he says of his former bandmate.
“He never really said anything to me, the only practical answer I can give as to why Billy took it so hard was because he loved me that much and that it killed him to hurt me that much. Eventually I forgave him,” Small says in the movie. Joel later wrote the song “Tomorrow Is Today” for his 1971 Cold Spring Harbor album, in which he delves into his despondent feelings at the time. “Oh my I’m goin’ to the river/ Gonna take a ride and the lord will deliver me/ Made my bed, I’m gonna lie in it/ If you don’t come, sure gonna die in it,” he sings on the track.
At Wednesday’s premiere, Lacy shared a message with the audience from Joel in which she said “He will be back. Billy wishes he were here tonight, and he asked us to convey his greetings to you all. He said ‘getting old sucks, but it’s still preferable to getting cremated.’” Billy Joel: And So It Goes will stream on HBO in July.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
Charli xcx had a very special guest for her Primavera Sound set in Barcelona at the Parc del Fòrum on Thursday night (June 5). On opening night of the festival, Chappell Roan shocked the crowd when she showed up to expertly do the viral “Apple” dance during Charli’s set (watch the moment below). Chappell, wearing […]
KATSEYE says it’s going to be a “Gnarly” Summer, especially with Ice Spice on the new remix that dropped Friday (June 6). “Oh my god, this song’s so lit,” KATSEYE quoted the song’s lyrics on Instagram underneath the remix’s gnarly cover art featuring an anonymous hand ready to cut into a double decker sandwich. The […]
Addison Rae’s rise to main pop girl is equal parts master class and modern spectacle. Having started on TikTok, becoming one of the platform’s top users known for choreographing brief dances to catchy hits, Rae always had her sights set on a bigger stage — literally. In the past year, she’s performed onstage with Charli […]
One of the most musical shows on Broadway right now isn’t, in fact, a musical. Pop music has a tangible presence in, and is intrinsic to the fabric of, Kimberly Belflower’s play John Proctor Is the Villain. The story follows a group of girls from small-town Georgia who, amid the #MeToo era, are reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and starting to doubt that the titular protagonist is as morally upstanding as he’s often portrayed to be — just as a classmate and friend (played by Stranger Things star, and now Tony nominee, Sadie Sink) returns to town after a much gossiped-about absence. Concurrently, they decide to form a feminism club in an attempt to learn more about a subject the adults around them don’t seem to love addressing head-on. And from the bop-filled pre-show playlist (constructed meticulously by sound designer and composer Palmer Hefferan) to Hefferan’s original music woven throughout to the references to seminal female pop singer/songwriters like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez and Lorde written into (and crucial to) the plot, the pop music the girls love might as well be another character in the play.
“There’s something about music that is so connective — there’s just this language there that everyone understands,” says actor Fina Strazza, a Tony nominee for her portrayal of passionate overachiever and club founder Beth. “Even if you don’t know the song we’re referencing, you can see what it’s about and what it means to them.”
Chief among those songs is Lorde’s “Green Light,” which is referenced throughout the play before finally being played at its most cathartic moment (no further spoilers here!). Belflower — who calls it “a perfect song” — never considered any other in its place, which made its somewhat complex journey to approval especially anxiety-inducing. Songs are usually cleared off-Broadway on a production-by-production basis, but once John Proctor moved into wider publication and was clearly headed for Broadway, “We were like, ‘OK, we need to clear this song, like, forever,’” she explains, which entailed approaching Lorde’s publisher, UMPG. Belflower wrote an impassioned letter to Lorde, asking that it be passed to her personally — only to get a “no” as the first response from her team.
Sadie Sink and Amalia Yoo onstage.
Julieta Cervantes
“I had, like, a panic attack in the Whole Foods parking lot when my agent called to tell me,” she recalls now with a laugh. But two weeks later, a “yes” came through from the artist herself, saying she loved the letter (and that the initial “no” had just been due to a miscommunication between teams; while Lorde hasn’t seen the show yet, Belflower is hopeful that will change whenever she’s next in the city).
John Proctor Is the Villain — at the Booth Theater through Aug. 31 — is now the most Tony-nominated play on Broadway currently, with seven nods. In advance of the awards ceremony on Sunday (June 8), Belflower, Hefferan and Strazza spoke to Billboard about a few of its most prominent music moments and how they came to be.
Dayna Taymor and Kimberly Belflower on the first day of rehearsals for “John Proctor is the Villain.”
Jenny Anderson
Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”
aespa unleashed a molten teaser for their upcoming single “Dirty Work” on Wednesday (June 4). The 28-second clip keeps the actual sound of the song a secret until its release on June 27 at midnight EST/1 p.m. KST, but its animation promises that fans can expect whatever the K-pop girl group is cooking up with […]
