Pop
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This Saturday (Oct. 14) marks 40 years since one of the greatest debut albums of all time introduced the world to the, well, unusual talents of a Brooklyn singer-songwriter. With the Oct. 14, 1983 release of She’s So Unusual, Cyndi Lauper announced she had arrived — and pop music would never quite be the same. […]
PinkPantheress announced her highly anticipated debut album Heaven Knows on Thursday (Oct. 12), and it’s slated to arrive Nov. 10. “What an intense insane moment ! my first album is coming out and you know i love a pun so it’s called ‘heaven knows’, out on november 10th. this album is an accumulation of music […]
Taylor Swift hosted the world premiere of her record-breaking Eras Tour concert film Wednesday (Oct. 11), joining fans and fellow stars in viewing the first-ever screenings of her bestselling global trek caught on camera. The event took place at AMC theaters at The Grove in Los Angeles, where multiple rooms of people enjoyed synchronous showings of the […]
Sir Rod Stewart has turned down what could likely have been one of his biggest career paydays ever as a symbol of protest against what he said was the repressive policies of the Saudi Arabian government. “I’m grateful that I have a choice whether or not to perform in Saudi Arabia,” the singer wrote in an Instagram message on Thursday (Oct. 12).
“So many citizens there have extremely limited choices — women, the LGBTQ community, the press,” it continued. “I’d like my choice not to go… to shine a light on the injustices there and ignite positive change.” It was unknown at press time what Stewart, 78, was being offered to play in the kingdom where members of the LGBTQ+ community do not have state-recognized rights and where same-sex sexual activity is illegal and punishable by up to life imprisonment.
Human Rights Watch reported earlier this year that despite talk of reforms for women in the nation, “authorities continue to implement a male guardianship system requiring women to obtain male guardian permission to get married, leave prison, or obtain some forms of sexual and reproductive healthcare.”
While Sir Rod turned down the gig — at press time a spokesperson for the singer had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the details of his decision — the Kingdom has hosted other Western pop stars in recent years, including Bruno Mars, David Guetta, Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas and Iggy Azalea, among others. In 2019, Nicki Minaj pulled out of the Jeddah World Festival in Saudi Arabia in support of LBGTQ and women’s rights while Chris Brown, Janet Jackson, Future, 50 Cent and others agreed to play the event in the country whose morality police once frequently raided venues playing loud music.
In a statement to People magazine a spokesperson for Stewart added, “Sir Rod Stewart has once again turned down one of the most lucrative concert offers of his career to perform in Saudi Arabia. Sighting his ‘moral compass in making the decision,’ Stewart chose to refuse the offer over the kingdom’s long history of human rights abuses, including discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ people, and of silencing its critics.” Stewart also said in 2022 that he had turned down a chance to more than $1 million payday to play a show in the Gulf state of Qatar, which also has a history of human rights and labor abuses and discrimination against women and the LGBTQ community.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to polish the Kingdom’s profile for many years by opening its first movie theaters and announcing an end to its ban on women driving. Those reforms have not expanded to a free and open press, however, as evidence by the savage 2018 murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents close to the crown prince in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which the Saudi government reportedly attempted to cover up by destroying evidence and denying involvement.
See Stewart’s message below.
“Are you guys doing something?” Taylor Swift asked the members of *NSYNC on Sept. 12 while onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, where the reunited boy band had just arrived to shrieks and presented Swift the best pop trophy. “I need to know what it is!” *NSYNC was back, and even pop’s biggest superstar was amped.
Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone demurred at the time, but soon after the VMAs, *NSYNC announced “Better Place,” its first new song together in over two decades. The shimmering, falsetto-heavy disco-pop track was created for Trolls Band Together, the third installment in the hit animated film series in which Timberlake voices a main character, Branch, and has contributed hits to each of the first two Trolls movies.
“My excitement started way back in the early part of the year,” says Gina Shay, the producer/music supervisor for the films. That was when Timberlake sent her a demo of “Better Place,” designed to follow his Billboard Hot 100-topping smash “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from the original Trolls film in 2016 and his SZA collaboration, “The Other Side,” from 2020’s Trolls World Tour.
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Shortly after sending the demo, Timberlake texted Shay that he felt inspired to reunite *NSYNC to record “Better Place.” “It was like dynamite was going off inside my brain,” Shay says. After all, *NSYNC — whose four studio albums have sold 27.9 million copies, according to Luminate, and scored turn-of-the-century smashes like “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” — hadn’t released music together since 2002.
And while Trolls Band Together focuses on a boy band reunion, Shay says that the plot had been locked in long before any talk of an *NSYNC comeback. “The movie’s story has been solid for about four years,” she says, “so it was just that perfect confluence of a song to reunite *NSYNC and to carry the narrative.”
Although Shay says that coordinating all five members’ schedules with their individual teams “took a little time to sort through,” “Better Place” came together rather seamlessly once the quintet was fully on board. After *NSYNC announced its reunion at the VMAs and unveiled “Better Place” on Sept. 29, Shay hopes that the song will become ubiquitous prior to the Nov. 17 release of Trolls Band Together — but however high it climbs, she’s glad that the film franchise could play a role in the reformation of a pop behemoth like *NSYNC.
“I’m so glad we were able to do this for the fans,” she says. “It has been a mix of love, pandemonium and wish fulfillment.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
There’s probably very few people in the world that could leave Taylor Swift starstruck, but you best believe Beyoncé is one of them. Two of the world’s biggest pop stars — and 2023’s hugest touring artists — met up at the premiere of the “Anti-Hero” singer’s Eras Tour film premiere Wednesday (Oct. 11), after which Swift took to Instagram to rave about the 32-time Grammy winner.
“I’m so glad I’ll never know what my life would’ve been like without @beyonce‘s influence,” she wrote, sharing a gif of her and Bey posing in movie theater seats, playfully tossing pop corn at the cameras. “The way she’s taught me and every artist out here to break rules and defy industry norms.”
“Her generosity of spirit,” Swift continued. “Her resilience and versatility. She’s been a guiding light throughout my career and the fact that she showed up tonight was like an actual fairytale. 😇🙏🥹”
Fans in person and online were stunned when Queen Bey appeared at the Los Angeles premiere of Swift’s film, which compiled footage from the “Karma” musician’s three-hour Eras shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., earlier this year. The two posed for photos on the red carpet as well as inside the theater, where Swift watched the film surrounded by a handpicked group of superfans.
Before the viewing, she stopped by each Swiftie-filled theater at L.A.’s The Grove theater to give a speech. “I’ve always had fun doing this,” Swift said. “I can’t believe I get to do music as a career. That’s crazy. I’ve always had so much fun doing it. I’ve never had this much fun in my life as I have had on The Eras Tour. It is far and away just the most electric experience of my life.”
The 33-year-old singer-songwriter wrapped up the first legs U.S. and Mexico legs of her bestselling trek in August, and is now taking a short break from touring before she picks back up in November with dates in Argentina and Brazil. Beyoncé also recently tied a bow on her blockbuster Renaissance Tour, playing a finale show in Kansas City on Oct. 1 after five months of shows in Europe and North America.
And while their public appearances together are rare, Swift and Sasha Fierce go way back. Perhaps their most famous crossover was in 2009, when Bey stood up for Swift at the VMAs after Kanye West famously interrupted the “Maroon” singer’s acceptance speech. Since then, they’ve remained in touch and have been guests at each other‘s birthday parties.
Check out Swift’s post singing Beyoncé’s praises below:
Christina Aguilera and Latto are cooking something up. And according to a series of teases over the past few days it sounds delicious. “Y’all ready for something new?” Latto asks in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday in which Aguilera can be heard hitting one of her signature sky-high notes in the […]
After pushing back the launch of her eagerly anticipated career-spanning Celebration Tour due to a health scare earlier this year, Madonna is set to kick off the outing at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday (Oct. 14).
And according to the tour‘s musical director, Stuart Price, fans can expect more than 40 songs from across her four-decade career, plus some special surprises that will nod to the pop icon’s legendary impact on pop culture. “A greatest hit doesn’t have to be a song,” Price told BBC News. “It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video, or a statement.”
So whether your jam is “Material Girl,” “La Isla Bonita,” “Ray of Light,” “Frozen,” “Live To Tell” or “Into the Groove,” Price said there will be something for everyone, including archival footage and studio recordings that will help tell the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s story in what he described as “a documentary through her vast career.”
The O2 launch will be the first of six shows at the venue, where Price noted fans will not see a band on stage for the first time since the beginning of Madonna’s career. “There are live musicians that perform at different parts of the show,” he explained. “But what we realized is that the original recordings are our stars. Those things can’t be replicated and can’t be recreated, so we decided just to embrace that.”
Price said honing the set list was a “big” challenge given Madonna’s decades of hits — including 50 No. 1s on Billboard‘s Dance Club Songs chart — so many of the big ones will be played in full, while others will be interpolated into other songs and some will be used as “bridges” between acts. Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 Confessions On a Dance Floor album and has been music director on three of her previous world tours, added that there will be around 25 songs performed in full, with elements of 20 others appearing in “some form.”
The show will also employ Madonna’s original multi-track recordings, including a vocal take Price said includes the sound of a “car going by in the background,” and, cryptically, a “solo from a guitarist who’s no longer with us.”
The long-awaited beginning of the tour comes nearly five months after Madonna was rushed to the hospital in June after being found unconscious in her New York apartment due to a “serious bacterial infection.” The hospitalization resulted in the tour being pushed back from July to October, with the North American dates — which were originally slated to kick off the run on July 15 in Vancouver — delayed until later this year. The North American dates are now slated to kick off on Dec. 13 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and run through an April 24 gig at Palacio De Los Deportes in Mexico City.
“The person that is going to take the stage looks incredible, sounds incredible, performs incredible,” said Price of the 65-year-old singer he noted has “fully” recovered. In fact, he said the legendarily detail-oriented star used the three-month delay to further tweak and dial-in the show.
“Madonna has very high expectations of how much hard work people will put into something,” Stuart said. “It’s very uncompromising – but she’s equally as hard on herself. So when she took a break, that pause created an opportunity to further enhance the show. And I’m sure the opportunity [for her] to focus on being 100% well was greatly received as well.”
He described the story line as reflecting the arc of Madonna’s career, “from being a young woman in New York and learning the scene, all the way through to motherhood, spiritual awakenings, and all the ups and downs. The storyline was just really, really compelling.” If that sounds similar to a since-shelved biopic that was to star Julia Garner, Price said that’s no coincidence since Madonna is expert at cross-pollinating ideas from different projects.
“In this case there’d been consideration about doing a biopic [which gave] this tour the potential for having a documentary aspect to it as well,” he said, which explains why the show will incorporate news footage, classic costumes and videos.
Check out Madonna’s tease of the tour launch below.
Taylor Swift is energized and loving life right now, when, to be fair, others in her position would be on the lookout for an extended beach getaway.
Swift’s ongoing The Eras Tour has completed its first lap of North American stadiums, and will return to the road from next month, beginning with a visit to Brazil followed by a full international schedule in 2024.
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Not one to waste a moment of precious time, the pop superstar has moved forward The Eras Tour Concert Film, and was on hand for the world premiere at The Grove in Los Angeles on Wednesday (Oct. 11), where she delivered a three-minute speech and gave shoutouts to her band, dancers, and, of course, Swifties.
“I’ve always had fun doing this. I can’t believe I get to do music as a career. That’s crazy,” she said at the top. “I’ve always had so much fun doing it. I’ve never had this much fun in my life as I have had on The Eras Tour. It is far and away just the most electric experience of my life.”
Guests in the room included celebrities Rachel Zegler, Maren Morris, Simu Liu, Julia Garner and Adam Sandler, according to The Hollywood Reporter, as well as Swift’s mother Andrea.
Every person in the theater “has been hand selected and handpicked and invited to this night because you’ve shown some type of extra support for this tour,” she explained, “and I appreciate that more than you could possibly know.”
And what type of characters pique TayTay’s interest? “I’m always looking out for people with elevated levels of passion, incredible senses of humor on the internet, attention to detail. These things are very important to me.”
The Eras Tour movie rolls out Thursday, and is already a hit. According to a press release from AMC Theatres, her film has broken all existing records for single-day advance ticket sales revenue in the chain’s 103-year history with $26 million in the first 24 hours of on-sale.
The tour itself has been a box office juggernaut. Billboard’s North American projection nearly doubled earlier expectations at $591 million, just one piece of a 146-date mega-tour spanning five continents.
“We did this show rain or shine, in sickness and in health, no matter what was going on in our lives,” she told guest at the L.A. premiere, “and we did it with a grin on our face because what greeted us on the other side.”
Watch Swift address her fans at the world premiere below.
Swifties won’t have to wait until the end of the week to watch Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated Eras Tour concert film, as the superstar revealed on Wednesday (Oct. 11) that the movie will be hitting theaters a day early. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “PREMIERE DAY,” Swift […]