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Lorde is giving fans a supercut of memories to look back on in celebration of Melodrama‘s six-year anniversary, from the anxiety-ridden days she spent writing lyrics for the 2017 album to the sage advice Taylor Swift gave her after its release.
“Apparently Melodrama is 6,” the pop star began a flurry of throwback photos and videos posted to her Instagram Story Friday (June 16), going on to share snaps from when she was 18 or 19 years old putting the album together.
In one picture, she eats breakfast during her longterm stay at the Park Hyatt hotel in New York City — where she made a majority of the album with producer Jack Antonoff — revealing at the time she had “truly no idea that it was an extremely expensive hotel and thus spent most of my [album] advance on hotel bills.”
“Lots of dramatic lyric writing sessions such as this,” she captioned another photo of her sitting with a laptop in an empty bathtub. “I was so anxious all the time, my heart was like a little bird’s.”
Upon its June 16, 2017 release, Melodrama debuted atop the Billboard 200 and sold an impressive 109,000 equivalent album units in its first week. Lorde’s debut record, however, not only spawned a nine-week No. 1 hit with “Royals,” but sold 129,000 copies in its first week.
It appears that 2017 Lorde was a little disappointed that Melodrama didn’t perform quite as well as its predecessor, based on a text conversation with none other than Taylor Swift. But the “Royals” singer’s longtime friend and role model was able to cheer her up with a piece of advice, which present-day Lorde remarked was “very kind and not wrong.”
“You will always be imagined in my mind in a rowboat with Annie Lennox floating down a river of cool cerebral ethereal dreams but don’t-f–k-with-me vibes all around you,” Swift wrote in her text to Lorde at the time, as seen in a screenshot posted by the latter artist. “And I don’t think first week record sales singularly define a legacy.”
The “Green Light” musician, who released her third album Solar Power in 2021, closed out her trip down memory lane with a tease at what’s to come. “Lots of love and see you …soon,” she wrote, sharing a recent photo of herself in the studio, recording vocals.
Revisit to Melodrama below.
If there’s one thing Joe Burrow has established in his four years leading the Cincinnati Bengals it’s that he’s unfathomably icy under pressure. Hence, the nickname “Joe Cool.” But when Sport Illustrated reported this week that the former No. 1 draft pick who has led a historic revitalization of the formerly moribund team was on […]
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, Doja Cat demands your “Attention,” Gunna contemplates a new reality, and Queens of the Stone roar back after too long away. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Doja Cat, “Attention”
Following a commercial run that has included a string of huge singles and an indelible mark on pop music, Doja Cat can go anywhere she wants — and on highly anticipated new single “Attention,” the multi-hyphenate flaunts her power by crashing sounds into one another and cutting off anyone trying to crash her party. After an intro that combines harp and finger-picked guitar, the melodies and rhythms of “Attention” snap into place, and Doja rattles off a pair of highly impressive rap verses; Doja had been teasing a more hip-hop-leaning project to follow 2021’s Planet Her, and here, she combines influences like Tyler, The Creator’s internal rhyming and Eminem’s wordplay into molten-lava bars about the balance of body image and artistic gravitas. “I am not afraid to finally say s–t with my chest,” Doja proclaims — a sentiment that “Attention” makes abundantly clear.
Gunna, A Gift & A Curse
In the spring of 2022, Gunna was riding high off of his DS4ever album and its standout single “Pushin P,” leading Young Stoner Life alongside Young Thug as a new hip-hop powerhouse. Soon after, YSL was the target of a sprawling RICO case, and Gunna was able to strike a plea deal last December after months behind bars — although many hip-hop fans perceived his release as an untrustworthy sign of cooperation with the authorities. Gunna unpacks his complex circumstances on the aptly named A Gift & A Curse, the formerly vibed-out rapper adopting a somber tone while reflecting on his journey and ultimately finding a semblance of peace in his craft on a compelling, guest-free project.
Queens of the Stone Age, In Times New Roman…
Six years after linking up with Mark Ronson and aiming to dance a little with 2017’s Villains, Queens of the Stone Age are back to what they do best: grand, crunchy rock, with the bluesy exterior and Josh Homme’s innate gift for hook-writing inviting a beer-hoisted boogie. In Times New Roman… follows a difficult period in Homme’s life that included a cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery, and the painful life experiences have been mined for a batch of snarling, self-produced songs –QOTSA hasn’t sounded this invigorated since 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, and Homme deserves credit for guiding this return to form.
Don Omar, Forever King
Don Omar has been a reggaetón pioneer long before the sound fought its way into the U.S. mainstream, and maintained his stature during a recording break following 2019’s The Last Album. With Forever King, however, Omar visits a variety of different sounds, from mambo to tropical to urban, expanding the contours of his reggaetón aesthetic while welcoming a slew of collaborators (Residente, Wisin, Nio Garcia and Maluma among them) and asserting his dominance within Latin music as a whole. Forever King plays out like the perfect type of album from a veteran artist: tasteful experimentation abounds, with plenty for longtime fans.
Read a full review and track ranking for the new Don Omar album.
Carly Pearce feat. Chris Stapleton, “We Don’t Fight Anymore”
“This song embodies a place that I think, if we are honest with ourselves, we’ve all felt at some point in a relationship,” Carly Pearce shared in a press release of her new Chris Stapleton collaboration, “We Don’t Fight Anymore.” “The distance that feels heartbreaking, yet you’re also indifferent.” Both country greats bring their A-game to this story of a relationship cold war, but Pearce and co-producers Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne nail the song’s atmosphere: an uncluttered country arrangement is marked by mournful fiddle and guitar, bubbling up as if to remind the voices of the fond memories before once again disappearing.
Asake, Work of Art
Fast-rising Nigerian artist Asake has delivered his second album, Work of Art, to lofty expectations: he’s touring North America in a few months, including a headlining show at Barclays Center in Brooklyn; collaborating with stars like Davido and Fireboy DML; and working with a handful of producers who know how to elevate artists on an international scale. Fortunately, Work of Art addresses the professional pressure with pure joy, a confident synthesis of different African music styles heavy of wide-reaching vocal harmonies and string flourishes, with a few clear hits (“Basquiat,” “Amapiano” with Olamide, “2:30”) headlining the potential breakthrough.
Editor’s Pick: Peggy Gou, “(It Goes Like) Nanana”
Need to physically shake off a long work week? “(It Goes Like) Nanana,” the first new track from dance auteur Peggy Gou in nearly two years, has arrived to inspire uninhibited movement with nods to classic house anthems, ‘90s jock jams and modern club sounds. Gou has long been capturing feelings of bliss, but “(It Goes Like) Nanana” is immediately one of the producer’s most self-contained and accessible singles to date; her first release on XL Recordings and the lead single of a long-awaited debut album, the song precedes an exciting artistic period, as well as a summer full of dance breaks.
Trent Reznor has spent 35 years making the most outrageously dissonant, elegant and dark rock possible. But, as it turns out, the Nine Inch Nails leader is not totally immune to the charms of a great pop song. On the latest edition of producer Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Reznor fessed up that not only has he learned to appreciate a well-crafted pop ditty, but, thanks to his kids, he’s actually been brought to tears by one of today’s biggest mainstream stars.
“For while, I kept them in a kind of hermetically sealed way from pop music. Because I think it sucks generally — I had thought that,” Reznor said of his kids with wife singer Mariqueen Maandig. Then, Reznor said, he heard his six-year-old daughter singing along to Dua Lipa recently and it gave him pause.
“She is so into it and it is so cool. Like this is her music, you know, this is her thing,” he said. “It really reminded me the art of writing a well-crafted song — I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track. Because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good.”
The Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe-winning songwriter then made a startling admission. “It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t know how to do that,” Reznor said. “When I’m trying to think of what to say, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now and all of that together becomes something that feels the stakes are higher.”
That’s why he said he prefers film scoring, which has become his second full-time job thanks to acclaimed work on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mank, The Social Network, Soul and Empire of Light, among others. “Sitting there and arranging stuff — I know what’s right… I don’t have to assess my thoughts on how I feel about a thing,” he told Rubin. “What it comes down to is I really enjoy weirdly working in service to something. It’s like cracking a code. It feels good to crack the code, whatever it is.”
As for the future of NIN, Reznor said because he has young kids at home he’s not really interested in “endlessly” touring any more and, frankly, given where he thinks the culture is now and the importance of music in it, “[it’s] a little defeating,” he said during the pair’s two-hour chat that ranged from the very beginnings of Reznor’s life and career in Cleveland through his thoughts on working with director David Fincher and his songwriting process.
“It feels to me in general, and I’m saying this as a 57-year-old man, music used to be the thing that, that was what I was doing when I, when I had time, I was listening to music,” Reznor said. “I wasn’t doing it in the background while I was doing five other things, and I wasn’t treating it kind of as a disposable commodity.”
Reznor also fessed up that he missed the attention music used to get, even from critics, who’s opinions he still doesn’t really care about. “But somebody heard it, it got validated in its own way culturally. Culturally, that feels askew,” he added. “Like I can’t think of any review I care about today that I even trust. I could write it before it comes out because it’s already written. In fact, ChatGPT could probably do a better job, you know? Or is currently doing the job. That makes for what I feel is a less fertile environment to put music out into –in the world of Nine Inch Nails.”
Listen to the full chat with Reznor below (Dua Lipa segment begins at 1:49:00).
06/16/2023
The entertainer turns 80 on Saturday. To mark the occasion, here are all 25 of his singles that made the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, fearlessly ranked by an OG Fanilow.
06/16/2023
Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne is stepping out to launch her solo career.
The British singer drops “Don’t Say Love,” her first solo number after 11 years with the award-winning, chart-topping pop act.
Produced by Jon Bellion and Pete Nappi, and co-written by Aldae, “Don’t Say Love” is a beats-heavy nugget with lashings of U.K. garage.
The single, through Warner Music, “is about no longer seeking external validation and regaining my confidence and sense of self in a world where I often felt misunderstood and unheard,” she explains.
It’s accompanied with an official music video, helmed by Emil Nava, which creatively captures Leigh-Anne’s transformation — out with the old, in with the new era. The video is a “visual representation of me finding my voice,” she continues. “I’m excited to continue to do so with my first love, music.”
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Little Mix capped a massive career with the 2021 Brit Award for best group, becoming the first girl group to win the category. “It’s not easy being a female in the U.K. pop industry,” Leigh-Anne said from the BRITs podium. “We’ve seen white male dominance, misogyny, sexism and lack of diversity. We’re proud of how we’ve stuck together, stood our ground, surrounded ourselves with strong women, and are now using our voices more than ever.”
Formed in 2011 on the U.K.’s X Factor, with an original lineup of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson, who split from the act in December 2020, Little Mix were major hitmakers in their homeland.
Prior to entering an extended hiatus in 2022, Little Mix racked up five U.K. No. 1 singles, and a best-selling album, 2016’s Glory Days. They’re the first girl group to log 100 weeks in the U.K. singles chart top 10, landing 19 titles in the top tier. Two of their albums 2012’s DNA (No. 4) and 2014’s Salute (No. 6) cracked the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Career record sales top 75 million, and the act have accumulated over 15 billion streams, according to Warner Music.
Stream “Don’t Say Love” below.
Life is non-stop right now for Jack River, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
The singer and songwriter (real name: Holly Rankin) has never been shy of piling on a heaving workload, which has included festival and events organizing, advocating for women in music, and rallying broadcasters and businesses in her homeland, Australia, to lift their game when it comes to supporting homegrown talent.
River recently took on life’s most challenging project — parenthood.
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Joining the club hasn’t changed her. Indeed, “it has magnified and re-ignited parts of my mind and spirit that have been sleeping, or out of view,” she tells Billboard. “It has uncovered a whole load of stamina, as every day is some kind of marathon, even if it’s a peaceful day – there is hardly any stopping. I am grateful for the way it has let me see the world again for the first time, suddenly flowers and lights and bubbles and leaves are magical and new again.”
Just prior to finding out she was expecting her first child, the Sydney-based creative got down to writing Endless Summer, her sophomore album which drops Friday (June 16). Endless Summer spans 10 songs, each of which captures completely different places on the emotional spectrum, River explains. The record is an oasis, she continues, something to retreat to amid the unfolding disaster that is climate change.
River’s homeland is at the frontline, with millions of her countrymen and women confronted by bushfire, drought and floods in recent years.
Endless Summer is inspired by activism, and sounds of the ‘60s and ‘70s when artists “were living through political turmoil but making escapist music,” she continues. Think the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell.
Its production and narrative “speaks to the endless summer we are living through – in our minds; the delusional holiday that pop culture seems to be living in,” she says, “and the physical endless summer we are entering as the climate crisis engulfs our future.”
Hailing from the NSW coastal hometown of Forster, River — a pirate name Rankin inherited in her teens — enjoyed a breakthrough with the indie-pop gem “Fool’s Gold,” from 2017. The song blew up on the triple j network, cracking the youth network’s annual Hottest 100 poll and establishing River as an elite talent.
Endless Summer is the followup to her debut LP Sugar Mountain, which followed in 2018, peaking at No. 11 on the ARIA Albums Chart and earning multiple award nominations, and the 2020 EP Stranger Heart.
The new collection features the previously-released cuts “Real Life,” “Nothing Has Changed,” “Lie In The Sun,” the title track “Endless Summer” with Genesis Owusu, and “Honey,” which she wrote with Matt Corby and Jarryd James, at the former’s studio Rainbow Valley.
As it finds its way into the world, “I want to walk a fine line between explaining what this album means to me and where it came from,” River notes, “and just letting people take the album and let it dissolve into their own lives for their own reasons.”
Endless Summer arrives via Nettwerk in North America and I Oh You, part of the Mushroom Group, in Australia.
Stream it below.
Looks like Troye Sivan has got a new celebrity crush, and he’s playfully made a plea to his followers on Thursday (June 15) to help reach out to him. While teasing his upcoming single “Rush,” the singer posted a thirst trap fan edit of Stray Kids‘ Hyunjin, in which the 23-year-old K-pop star is seen […]
For the second time, Taylor Swift earns a top 10 song on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.
The National’s “The Alcott,” on which Swift is a featured vocalist, bounds from No. 15 to No. 10 on the tally dated June 17.
Swift first reached the region in 2020 when “Exile,” featuring Bon Iver, peaked at No. 9. In between her two top 10s, she appeared on Adult Alternative Airplay with two tracks, first with the No. 18-peaking “Coney Island,” featuring The National (March 2021), and then via “Snow on the Beach,” featuring Lana Del Rey (No. 30 this January).
As for The National, “The Alcott” is the band’s sixth top 10 and third in a row, following the No. 6-peaking “Weird Goodbyes,” featuring Bon Iver (November 2022), and five-week ruler “Tropic Morning News” in March-April. The Matt Berninger-led act’s other top 10s are “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” (No. 1, two weeks, August 2017), “Day I Die” (No. 7, December 2017) and “You Had Your Soul With You” (No. 9, May 2019).
Concurrently, “The Alcott,” which Berninger and The National’s Aaron Dessner and Swift co-wrote, and which The National produced, jumps 45-40 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay list with 748,000 audience impressions, up 18%, June 2-8, according to Luminate.
Following its April 28 release, the song debuted at its No. 13 high on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated May 13.
“The Alcott” is the second single, following “Tropic Morning News,” from First Two Pages of Frankenstein, The National’s ninth studio album. The set debuted at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums survey dated May 13 and has earned 62,000 equivalent album units since its release.
Wham! is the latest group to get the documentary treatment. On Thursday (June 15), Netflix shared the first trailer for its upcoming film about the duo — consisting of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley — about their road to stardom and the success that followed throughout the ’80s. “We met when I was 11 and […]
