State Champ Radio Pop
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Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye recruits the original pop idol Madonna and Playboi Carti for their new single “Popular,” which dropped Friday (June 2). The single arrives ahead of The Idol Vol. 1 soundtrack, which is now available for pre-order here, as well as the Sam Levinson-directed HBO series, which is set to premiere this Sunday, […]
While ruminating on her nearly 10-year marriage and recent divorce for her new album, Kelly Clarkson turned to a pair of 2000s-era films to illustrate the difference between idealistic young love and oft-messy adult relationships.
“I hate love, and The Notebook lied,” she sings on the cheeky “I Hate Love,” the latest release from her 10th studio album Chemistry, out June 23. “It’s Complicated is more like what happens, so you can keep Gosling and I’ll take Steve Martin.”
“I feel like both exist,” Clarkson tells Billboard of the love stories from the 2004 Nicholas Sparks-based epic, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, and the 2009 Nancy Meyers rom-com, starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin — which she calls one of her “favorite movies.” “One is the beginning, when everything is bright and shiny, and It’s Complicated is more the reality,” says Clarkson, who pointed to the tug-of-war Streep’s character goes through with Baldwin’s philandering ex-husband (“She goes back, and she’s like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”) and Martin’s affable architect (“This is what you should be looking for and what you do deserve”).
Clarkson’s cinematic inspiration didn’t just impact the song’s lyrics: It also led to an unexpected instrumental cameo. While writing much of the new project in the early days of the pandemic, Clarkson had been watching Martin play his banjo in livestream videos to keep fans entertained during lockdown. She went to “I Hate Love” producer Jesse Shatkin with an idea: Let’s take this lyrical reference a step further and add Martin’s banjo to the anti-love song. “I was like, ‘I know that sounds crazy,’ ” Clarkson recalls. “Jesse was like, ‘I think it sounds rad.’ ”
Shatkin tells Billboard, “Within one or two connections, Kelly can get in touch with anybody” — and she had Martin locked in with one email. “I generally don’t ask because I get very nervous about bothering people,” Clarkson recalls, “but literally, within hours, I got an answer: ‘Oh my God, he’d love to, when are you recording it?’ ” Shatkin ventured to Martin’s house to record his part and encountered a very professional musician, as opposed to the frequent Saturday Night Live guest and film star he’d grown up with (“He did not do any stand-up for us,” Shatkin laughs). “We ultimately went in to do something that could have taken 15 minutes, and we spent a couple hours just kind of jamming on the song,” Shatkin recalls. “He was really, really amazing at banjo but also really, really cared about getting it right.”
The result, as Clarkson describes it, is “a pop-punk song with this really rock’n’roll banjo part.” Shatkin recalls Clarkson’s team wondering aloud during the making of the song: “Could banjo be on the radio?” That remains to be seen — but perhaps Martin could make his first return to the Billboard Hot 100 since the 1970s, when his “King Tut” (billed to Steve Martin and The Toot Uncommons) was a top 20 hit on the chart. “I just love the idea of things happening organically,” Clarkson says of the circuitous route she took to collaborating with Martin. “So many things had to happen in order for that to occur.”
For her part, Clarkson still hasn’t met Martin, but she’s hoping she can lure him to her Emmy-winning The Kelly Clarkson Show now that their song is out in the world. “My ideal moment is him coming on my show and then us performing it — but I’ll take just him coming on my show so we can talk and hang out so I can, like, meet him.”
A version of this article will appear in the June 3, 2023, issue of Billboard.
After much anticipation from fans over the past few months, Madison Beer took to Instagram on Thursday (June 1) to confirm that her sophomore album, Silence Between Songs, will be arriving on September 15. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “i can’t believe i’m finally saying this, […]
Haters may have tried to tear Lizzo down recently, but Beyoncé‘s music is here to help build her back up. In a vulnerable new TikTok, the “About Damn Time” singer showed fans how Bey’s most recent album, Renaissance, has been helping her rise above a particularly vicious wave of online vitriol.
“Today was one of those days where I was very angry, very angry at the world,” she told her followers Wednesday (May 31) after filming a series of clips from the treadmill, during which she worked up a sweat while jamming out to Renaissance. “Saw a lot of mean s–t about me on the internet, and I wanted to give up.”
The musician was likely referring to a recent incident in which a viral tweet used a video of her dancing onstage to body shame her, under which thousands of people proceeded to leave malicious, fatphobic comments about Lizzo’s appearance. In response, the Grammy winner posted that the bullies were “really starting to make me hate the world” and that she was “tired of explaining myself all the time.”
Though she mostly keeps her Twitter account locked on private, Lizzo also explained that hate posts still show up in her mentions and on her feed. “Y’all don’t know how close I be to giving up on everyone and quitting and enjoying my money and my man on a F–KING FARM…,” she tweeted Wednesday.
But thanks to Queen Bey, Lizzo is feeling a lot better now. “There are days where the hate outweighs the love so badly that I want to quit music and just disappear,” she said. “Then I reminded myself to get up, get out and get some sun. And I put on Renaissance.”
Lizzo went on to list some of her favorite lyrics from the album, which Bey dropped to critical acclaim last summer, and shared how they empower her to stay strong and remember that she is, per her own hit “Truth Hurts,” 100% that b-tch. “I’m gonna love on me, nobody can judge me but me,” she said, quoting Renaissance‘s “Church Girl.” “I was born free.”
The Yitty founder has long been a huge fan of Beyoncé, and has credited the “Break My Soul” singer with inspiring much of her own music. While accepting the 2023 Grammy Award for record of the year in February, she specifically shouted out Bey, who was watching proudly from the audience.
“You changed my life,” Lizzo told her from the stage. “Thank you so much. You clearly are the artist of our lives!”
See Lizzo’s TikTok below:
Last year, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift each added to their extensive collections of Hot 100 top 10 hits. This year, with the release of Forbes‘ America’s Richest Self-Made Women list, the three music titans are dominating yet another ranking. Rihanna leads the pack, landing at No. 20 with a “self-made score” of 10. Forbes […]
Billy Joel‘s epic, decade-long residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden had to end someday. And on Thursday (June 1) the 74-year-old piano man was joined by New York Mayor Eric Adams for a press conference announcing the beginning of that end.
After kicking off the run in January 2014, after nearly 150 shows and more than 1.6 million tickets sold, the final 10-show spree will kick-off on Oct. 20. “There’s only one thing that’s more New York than Billy Joel — and that’s a Billy Joel concert at MSG,” Mayor Adams said in a written statement before a gathering that also featured MSG CEO James Dolan. “For more than 50 years, Billy’s music has defined our city and brought us together. On behalf of 8.5 million New Yorkers, congratulations, Billy, on a historic run of sold-out shows at MSG, and thank you for a lifetime of bringing joy to us all.”
Dolan praised Joel for making MSG, and music industry history with the decade-long series of capacity shows. “150 sold out lifetime shows is a remarkable achievement, and speaks to Billy’s extraordinary talent, beloved catalog, and dedicated fanbase,” said Dolan in a statement. “Billy always has a home here at MSG even though the residency is coming to an end with his 150th lifetime performance.”
“If you google Billy Joel’s house, they showed Madison Square Garden, which is kind of cool,” Joel quipped during a press conference on Thursday. “I never found my bedroom though.” Dolan added that the residency “exceeded even our wildest dreams” and that a run of shows like Joel’s was “never gonna happen again.”
Joel’s residency was announced nearly a decade ago, in December 2013. After the first performance, in January 2014, the singer went on to set Madison Square Garden records: Most Lifetime Performances By Any Artist (136 shows) and Most Consecutive Performances (90 shows). Joel hasn’t released an album of fresh pop songs since 1993, but in 2018, he told The New York Times that his touring business “is bigger now than it was at the height of my recording career.”
In 2006 he set the venue record for most consecutive performances by an artist with 12 gigs in a row, which was celebrated with a Joel-12 banner getting raised to the building’s rafters. He began the residency in Jan. 2014 by playing one how a month as long as fans kept showing up. And they did, with Joel breaking his own 12-show record within a year, then hitting his 100th lifetime gig in July 2018, prompting then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to dub July 18, 2018 “Billy Joel Day.”
The idea for Joel’s residency was born after he was recovering from hip surgery. “I hadn’t really done a tour since 2010,” the singer told Billboard in 2014. “I played Jazzfest in New Orleans in 2012, a one-off in Australia at some bizarre festival in Sydney, I didn’t really start thinking about working again until I played at the 12-12-12 concert for Hurricane Sandy Relief at the Garden.”
Following that performance, Joel continued, “the Garden contacted my agent Dennis Arfa and said we’d like to do a series of shows with Billy Joel at the Garden. They didn’t refer to it as a franchise at first, it was a residency. I heard that and thought, ‘hmm, that’s kinda cool… all I gotta do is commute.’”
Fans were quick to snap up tickets. “I guess they looked at the ticket demand once it was announced and thought, ‘wait a minute, this guy can keep playing here for the rest of his natural life,’” Joel joked.
After the 100th performance in 2018, he told The New York Times he didn’t think he would keep the residency going long enough to play 200 shows. “I’m still exhausted from the other night, which didn’t used to happen,” Joel said. “I don’t think I’ll have the physical wherewithal to do it five years from now.”
“If I can’t do it as well I want to, I’ll take myself out of the lineup,” he added. “I love the game too much to not play it well.”
Tickets for the final MSG shows will go on sale to the general public beginning at 10 a.m. ET on June 9 through Ticketmaster and at the MSG box office the following day; click here for more information.
Here comes Ms. Jennie Kim. The 27-year-old BLACKPINK star had a shining moment at Chanel’s Métiers d’art Dakar Show Thursday (June 1) show in Tokyo, Japan, taking the stage to perform a cover of “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” Singing all alone on stage over a backing track, Jennie did justice to Ms. Lauryn Hill […]
Pride Month has officially arrived, and pop superstar Sam Smith is ready to help you celebrate with a new cover. On Thursday (June 1), Smith unveiled their cover of Christina Aguilera‘s 2002 anthem “Beautiful” exclusively on Amazon Music. Stripped down to focus on Smith’s sonorous vocal and a single guitar, the cover slowly grows, adding […]
One good f-bomb deserves another. Ed Sheeran posted a four-letter response to Lewis Capaldi on Wednesday (May 31) after the “Wish You the Best” singer took a dig at him during his headlining set at BBC Radio One’s Big Weekend in his native Scotland on Sunday. “I thought we were friends, Lewis. I thought we […]
Like Ted Lasso, Ed Sheeran is expert at shooting a laser-guided missile straight through your heart. On Wednesday (May 31) the the singer and the Apple TV+ series finally joined forces for a perfectly dramatic, tearjerker collab celebrating the finale of the pandemic breakout hit’s third season. The episode features a sweeping ballad written by […]
