State Champ Radio Pop
Page: 590
After previewing the trippy new track “Eat the Acid” earlier this month, Kesha posted a snippet of another new song on her Instagram Story on Thursday (March 30). And in keeping with the singer’s cards-on-the-table radical honesty songwriting vibe, it said the loud part out loud.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The snippet of the whispery ballad “Fine Line” finds the singer wondering how she can keep toeing the line and hold her tongue amid the madness. “There’s a fine line I’ve been walking/ I’m trying to balance, it’s exhausting/ This is where you f—ers pushed me,” she sings over a faint keyboard.
The pace picks up as her ire rises, singing, “Don’t be surprised if s–t gets ugly/ All the doctors and lawyers that cut the tongue out of my mouth/ I’ve been hiding my anger, but b—h, look at me now/ I’m at the top of the mountain with a gun in my head/ Am I bigger than Jesus, or better off dead?”
The chorus plays off a familiar trope, with a Kesha, twist, of course. “There’s a fine line between genius and crazy/ There’s a fine line between broken and breaking/ Whole life trying to change what they’re saying about me/ Sick of walking that fine line.”
The singer also re-previewed a song she dropped a snippet of earlier this month, the appropriately spacey, trippy “Eat the Acid.” Over quick-picked acoustic guitars, she sings, “I searched for answers all my life/ Dead in the dark, I saw the light/ I am the one that I’ve been fighting the whole time/ Hate has the place in the divine.”
The track then ramps up with a choir of angelic voices and a thrumming beat as the chorus kicks in: “You said don’t ever eat the acid/ If you don’t want to be changed like you changed me/ You said all the edges got so jagged/ Now everything you saw then can’t be unseen.”
The singer — whose official website features the bold-letter tease “Kesha is coming” — also posted a cryptic video on Instagram on Thursday in which she stands in the desert with her arms outstretched as a haunting instrumental plays behind her with the message, “You never know that you need something to believe in when you know it all.”
A spokesperson for Kesha could not be reached for comment at press time in response to Billboard‘s question about whether the songs are slated for the follow-up to her fourth studio album, 2020’s High Road.
See Kesha’s post below.
Miley Cyrus peacefully turned the other cheek after her “Rainbowland” duet with godmother Dolly Parton was pulled from the lineup of a spring concert at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In a series of posts on Wednesday night (March 29) from the singer’s Happy Hippie Foundation — a non-profit that supports the LGBTQ community and homeless youth — the group announced that they are making a donation to a worthy cause in honor of the Heyer students.
“To the inspiring first grade students at Heyer Elementary, keep being YOU. We believe in our Happy Hippie heart that you’ll be the ones to brush the judgment and fear aside and make all of us more understanding and accepting,” read a tweet from the organization. A follow-up revealed that in honor of the students’ “BRIGHT future,” HH has made a donation to the organization Pride and Less Prejudice, which provides LGBTQ-inclusive books to pre-K through 3rd grade classrooms to help students and teachers “read out loud, read out proud!”
Earlier this week, a language teacher at Heyer called out the school’s administration after “Rainbowland” was reportedly nixed from the spring concert after the school’s leaders determined it was “could be deemed controversial.” Spokespeople for the school and district did not return Billboard‘s request for comment at press time, but Waukesha Superintendent James Sebert emailed a statement to Wisconsin Public Radio in which he said, “the question was around whether the song was appropriate for the age and maturity level of the first-grade students.”
The Cyrus/Parton duet about acceptance appeared on Miley’s 2017 album Younger Now. “Living in Rainbowland/ Where you and I go hand in hand/ Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine/ All the hurt and the hate going on here/ We are rainbows, me and you/ Every color, every hue/ Let’s shine on through/ Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland,” they sing on the song.
After “Rainbowland” was axed, the school’s music teacher replaced it with the Muppets’ “Rainbow Connection,” which was also initially banned, but later accepted after pushback from parents and Waukesha’s Alliance for Education. The language teacher who spoke out about the song flap, Melissa Tempel, told WPR that the district did not offer any specific reason for the ban, suggesting that the only common thread between “those two songs was the world ‘rainbow.’”
In a third post, HH posted some of the lyrics along with the message, “When our founder @mileycyrus and her fairy godmother @dollyparton wrote these words together, they meant it.”
See the Happy Hippie tweets below.
In honor & celebration of your BRIGHT future Happy Hippie is making a donation to @lessprejudice to help make classrooms more inclusive! 💛💛💛— Happy Hippie Foundation (@happyhippiefdn) March 29, 2023
“We are rainbows, me and youEvery color, every hueLet’s shine on through… TOGETHER WE CAN START LIVING IN A RAINBOWLAND.”When our founder @mileycyrus and her fairy godmother @dollyparton wrote these words together, they meant it. pic.twitter.com/zRjTkcWttm— Happy Hippie Foundation (@happyhippiefdn) March 29, 2023
The fast-flying, all-world success of Stray Kids truly is oddinary.
The K-pop stars were one of the biggest acts on the planet in 2022, proof of which was confirmed in recent weeks by the IFPI, which ranked the singers at No. 7 in its top 10 chart for recording artists, ahead of Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran.
After blasting to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with Maxident (via JYP/Imperial/Republic Records), the group’s second leader, Stray Kids’ hit album went on to crack the year-end global top 10, ahead of LPs by BlackPink and Olivia Rodrigo.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The eight-strong South Korean group — Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin and I.N. — is hot, and they’re here.
The lads are currently stateside to make up the previously-postponed dates in Atlanta and Fort Worth as part of their Maniac World Tour, and hold their first-ever stadium concerts in the United States for a pair of shows at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium on March 31 and April 2.
But first, a late-night TV warmup. Stray Kids stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday night (March 29) for a tightly-choreographed performance of “Maniac,” lifted from the 2022 mini album ODDINARY, the band’s first leader on the all-genres Billboard 200.
Check it out below.
MAMAMOO introduced their first official sub-unit, MAMAMOO+, consisting of members Solar and Moonbyul, last August with a bouncy, modern R&B track “With You.” Seven months later, the duo unleashed their first EP with the release of Act 1, Scene 1 featuring exciting twists on what we typically expect from the popular K-pop girl group.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
With a name seemingly drawing inspiration from OTT streaming services like Disney+, Discovery+, and Paramount+, MAMAMOO+ tap into genres their mother group has worked with but brings exciting, experimental updates. New single “GGBB” (standing for “Good Girl Bad Boy”) showcases the doo-wop and pop inspirations that the group initially embraced at the start of their career via 2014 singles like “Piano Man” and “Mr. Ambiguous” but switches up production in the bridge for a glitchy, fierce and rhythmic breakdown section. Released last week ahead of the full EP, “Chico Malo” mixes traditional Korean instruments like the gayageum and daegeum with trap beats for an anthem displaying the confidence that has become a hallmark of MAMAMOO’s latest releases.
Both of MAMAMOO+’s music videos are fresh visual treats as well. For “GGBB,” Solar and Moonbyul lead a troupe of dancers through different scenes, costumes, and scenarios in a Broadway-like performance. The video ends with the cast taking a bow and the curtain closing, leaving viewers wanting more before the two pop back to wave and say bye to viewers. Meanwhile, in “Chico Malo,” Solar and Moonbyul are seen alongside singer Kim Junsu, a singer famous for Korea’s musical storytelling style of pansori, for an “Aniri” version of their video to spotlight the form of Korean traditional singing. The visual features intricate fan choreography, gayageum and daegeum instrumentalists, plus modernized versions of classic Korean outfits. As made clear from the videos, not only is MAMAMOO+ experimenting and expanding with their music but with their visual storytelling too.
Act 1, Scene 1 is the latest release from the MAMAMOO members ahead of their MY CON U.S. Tour. The group recently unveiled the massive arena venues for the nine dates through May and June.
More than a decade after being introduced to the world, Harry Styles‘ career continues to blossom. Since releasing his self-titled debut album in 2017, the singer has played sold-out shows around the world, won his first Grammy and even ventured into acting in feature films.
He’s admired not just for his angelic voice and infectious smile, but also for his heartfelt songwriting and passion for the message TPWK (Treat People With Kindness). Among his fans are major artists from various genres — Lizzo and BTS’ Jung Kook, for example — some of whom have even covered his songs.
Check out our roundup of some of the most notable covers of his tunes below:
Lizzo, “Adore You”
Lizzo surprised a Miami crowd in January 2020 when she brought Styles on stage to sing her feel-good banger “Juice.” A month later, she belted a sultry and soulful twist on his song “Adore You” for her BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge performance. What else did she bring to her cover that the original was missing? A flute solo, of course.
Watch it here.
Jung Kook, “Falling”
Jung Kook surprised ARMY when a passionate and piano-driven rendition of “Falling” dropped on BTS’ official YouTube channel in October 2019. This isn’t the first surprise cover drop from the boy band member, but his perfect harmonies on Styles’ emotional ballad had fans swooning.
Watch it here.
Sabrina Carpenter, “Late Night Talking”
Sabrina Carpenter took on Styles’ Harry’s House single with her honeyed, soft vocals, backed by drums and keys. She was so natural on the track, it’s like she wrote it herself.
Watch it here.
Kelly Clarkson, “Watermelon Sugar”
“Watermelon Sugar” is just one of dozens of songs Kelly Clarkson has covered on her talk show’s Kellyoke segment. With her classic runs and iconic gritty voice, she effortlessly sang the Billboard Hot 100 chart topper in October 2020, just a couple weeks after performing a different track from Fine Line, “Adore You.”
Kygo and Ellie Goulding, “Sign of the Times”
The duo behind “First Time” traded synth beats for acoustics with their rendition of “Sign of the Times.” Their BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge performance in May 2017 begins with just Goulding’s recognizable breathy tone, with Kygo on piano. It slowly builds from there, bringing in an acoustic guitar and backup vocals to the bridge before a somber out.
Watch it here.
Little Mix, “Falling”
A year before announcing their break, Little Mix gifted fans with an acoustic cover of “Falling” for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge in September 2020. Each member showed off their vocal abilities in solos throughout the verses, and came together in harmony for the chorus.
Watch it here.
Måneskin, “Kiwi”
Eurovision winners Måneskin go all out during their live rock shows, and since 2018, Styles’ “Kiwi” from his debut album would occasionally find its way into the group’s setlist. Their take on one of Styles’ most classically rock-sounding tracks is high energy, complete with the original song’s electric guitar solo.
There are no official videos or audio recordings of the cover online, but you can check out the band’s July 2019 take on “Kiwi” during their Milan show here.
Charlie Puth unveiled his new short film “That’s Not How This Works” on Wednesday (March 29) co-starring Sabrina Carpenter.
The six-minute mini-movie charts a fictitious relationship between the two pop sensations — from her gifting him with a gorgeous upright piano for his birthday and watching him blow out the candles on his cake to flirtatiously painting their apartment together and playfully debating whether he can boil a live crab to make a romantic dinner.
Yet the swooning highs, like telling each other “I love you” for the first time or playing a candlelit game of Operation, eventually give way to lows full of fighting (“I don’t care that you were flirting, I just want you to admit that you were”) and screaming, and as the relationship arc plays back in his mind, a heartbroken Puth tries to capture the memories in sound.
A link in the video’s description on YouTube directs fans to pre-save Puth’s new single, also titled “That’s Not How This Works,” which will be released Friday (March 31) and will feature not only Carpenter but also Dan + Shay in some capacity.
The song marks the first new release from the “That’s Hilarious” singer in the wake of his self-titled 2022 album Charlie. Next, he’ll be hitting the road this summer for The Charlie Live Experience with openers Blue DeTiger and Alexander Stewart.
Meanwhile, Carpenter just unveiled the deluxe edition of her own breakthrough 2022 full-length, Emails I Can’t Send, which featured new bonus tracks “Feather,” “Lonesome” and “Things I Wish You Said” as well as a remix of her hit single “Nonsense” with Coi Leray.
Watch Puth and Carpenter’s short film for “That’s Not How This Works” below.
Niall Horan stopped by The Spout Podcast on Wednesday (March 29) to talk about his experience on The Voice and praise fellow new coach Chance The Rapper.
“You get a lot of serious-level singers on the show and it’s about making them realize that they’re on a TV show and you should, like, enjoy it for what it is,” the One Direction alum said of his freshman go-round mentoring contestants on the NBC singing competition. “Because I think that was what I took away from when I was on The X Factor. Like, you know, I’m getting to do something that not many people get to do. I still try and carry that now.”
More than a decade after he became part of One Direction on the British reality series, Horan is on the verge of releasing his third solo album The Show, but admitted in the interview that he’s hesitant to get feedback on it from his fellow coaches on The Voice, which also include Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton.
“I should play them the record,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know if they’d like it or whatever, but I always get scared with Chance because he’s such a musical genius. Like, I listen to his stuff and I’m blown away, you know? His stuff is so cool to me.”
Though Chance hasn’t released a full-length since his 2019 debut The Big Day, he dropped a string of singles throughout 2022, including “Child of God,” “Wraith” featuring Vic Mensa and Smoko Ono, “A Bar About a Bar,” and “The Highs & the Lows” featuring Joey Badass.
Meanwhile, Horan — who recently visited the White House for St. Patrick’s Day — will drop The Show on June 9 via Capitol Records. Listen to his full interview on The Spout Podcast below.
Spinning Gold, which opens theatrically Friday (March 31), weaves the fantastical tale of Neil Bogart, the freewheeling, charismatic entrepreneur who brought ’70s records from KISS, Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, the Isley Brothers, the Village People and Parliament to the world, through Buddah and then Casablanca Records.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Though he ultimately created one of the most successful independent labels ever, Casablanca’s future seemed perilous at every turn — as Bogart borrowed money from mobsters to keep the wins coming, became a drug and gambling addict and basically made one bad business decision after another. But his reliable musical instincts in spotting talent and persistence led to a glorious run of hits before he sold the label to Polygram in 1980.
The movie’s story is told by Bogart, who died in 1982 at age 39, and is played here by Tony-nominated actor Jeremy Jordan, as he looks back on his professional and personal life with the losses as highlighted as the wins as he seemingly rises from the ashes again and again.
Written and directed by Bogart’s oldest son, Timothy Scott Bogart, Spinning Gold has been a two-decades labor of love with many fits and starts, but now that it is here, Timothy Bogart hopes it gives fans of the music a chance to get to know the person behind the hits.
“I’ve always believed that my father has been lost to music history. When we think of the greatest showmen, we think of Jimmy Iovine, Clive Davis – but my dad was absolutely as significant and transformative,” Timothy Scott Bogart says. “To finally get the film to be seen — for me, as a storyteller who has fought so hard for so long — is remarkably rewarding.”
Bogart’s younger son, Grammy-winning songwriter Evan Bogart, scored the film, wrote two original songs and produced the soundtrack, which comes out digitally on Atlantic Records on Friday. It includes the versions of the hit songs in the film as recorded by the contemporary artists playing the now legends, including Wiz Khalifa (George Clinton), Ledisi (Gladys Knight), Tayla Parx (Donna Summer), Pink Sweat$ (Bill Withers) and Jason DeRulo (Ron Isley).
“We made the creative choice from day one to not use the original masters that everyone has been listening to already for the past 40+ years,” Evan Bogart says. “Tim wanted people to see these iconic artists through the same eyes that my dad did — the moment he heard them for the first time, the moments he recorded them, the moments they played live, the moments they were discovered — so it was important that we captured them in an entirely new light. To do so, we set out to find the artists from today that we felt embodied the spirit of those classic artists. It didn’t matter to us if they sounded or looked like them, it was more about who was going to bring the passion and talent and put their own spin on these legendary songs. I think we really nailed that.”
Timothy Scott Bogart, who also serves as one of the film’s producers, declines to state the budget they had at their disposal — but it “was far less than anyone should have ever attempted to make this film under,” he says. “Creativity comes from adversity and this film, I hope, is a loving example of that.”
Following its theatrical run, Spinning Gold will be released digitally through Universal and then head to a streaming outlet. In an interview edited for length and clarity, Timothy Bogart looks back on his father’s legacy and the process of bringing Gold to the big screen.
This has been such a beautiful labor of love for you. What did you learn about your dad that you didn’t know going into the movie?
How scared he was, and how close he was to cataclysmic disaster at every turn. Kids only know who their parents became — we don’t ever get to know who they were at the start, when they were first starting out on their own dreams. For me, out of necessity, I found myself doing a forensic investigation into both who he was at the start and the honest vulnerability he hid from almost everyone. I always knew he was a dreamer and always understood he had extraordinary perseverance — but the intensity of those dreams and the near-Herculean commitment to that perseverance in the face of a million obstacles and a chorus of “no’s,” that was a revelation to me.
The movie shows your dad’s heart and his talent for discovering great music — but also shows his darker side with drugs, gambling and shady business dealings. How painful was it to show your dad, warts and all?
It really wasn’t painful at all, and I mean that. To me, those flaws that defined him did, in fact, define him. Yes, they were messy and challenging — but they really did make him who he was. If my father was not addicted to gambling, there’s no way he would have ever taken the risks he did and achieved the heights he reached. His addictive behavior drove him in every way.
Many of your dad’s business practices wouldn’t be tolerated today, but do you feel like the record business has also lost a sense of fun because so much of it is so corporate now?
I absolutely believe the fun has been lost in the face of corporations over independence. But what’s worse is that I believe the love for music and the genuine connection to the artists has been lost along the way, as well … I think that’s why we’re seeing such a resurgence of independent artists working to pave their own paths today.
How much did accuracy matter to you in the film?
Accuracy was incredibly important to me. Not just because I believe it should be for any story about our collective history, but because I believe that in this case, the truth was so much more interesting than anything I could ever make up! I interviewed everyone. Over and over again. George Clinton happens to have an encyclopedic memory! Donna, before her death, was incredibly giving with her time and her honesty of what she felt had not ever been told. And Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] even worked with our design teams to approach the make-up and the costumes and the instruments the way they wanted me to.
Interestingly, there’s been some online comments about their make-up — but the make-up in 1974 was not the make-up it would ultimately become … Every choice was made with the intention of getting the spirit and essence of every single thing right.
The movie has gone through so many iterations. At one point Justin Timberlake was slated to play your father, before Jeremy Jordan was cast. What happened there?
I really loved working with Justin. He’s such a professional and has a fantastic story sense. Ultimately, the struggle between his music life and his acting life was just too hard to balance. Every time we’d get close to moving forward – a new album or tour would understandably take over. And while I waited through a few of them, it made sense, in the end, for me to move on.
Courtesy of Spinning Gold
You have experience working in film and TV, but what was the biggest challenge for this film since you were producer, director and writer?
The biggest challenge was to just keep believing in the value of my dad’s story and the ability for me to tell it. Every time we’d get close – some financier or studio who had been over the moon to get involved suddenly seemed to have a revelation that this wasn’t a biopic of Donna or Kiss or Parliament – that it was about a guy named Neil Bogart who nobody knew. They, like history, seemed to have a hard time embracing the significance of who he was and what he gave to us all. Refusing to give up – in the light of constant, near insurmountable odds. My dad certainly faced the same headwinds and his lesson to me was that the word “no” only applied if you let it.
Your dad died when you were 12. What is your favorite musical memory of him?
My mom had started me on violin lessons, probably as a way to annoy my dad. I arrived from the airport to the Casablanca offices and my dad saw the violin and made a call. About 15 minutes later, Gene Simmons walked into the office, took the violin and shattered it. [He] then handed me a bronze-top, 1978 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe and a Pig Nose Amp and declared: “You’re gonna play rock n’ roll, kid.”
Interview footage of your dad plays over the final credits. Did you think about making a documentary instead?
We’ve always thought this film was just part of how we hoped to share his legacy. And, in fact, we’ve been actively shooting a documentary about him for the past few years, under award-winning director Mark Brian Smith.
There is the moment at the end of the film where your dad’s character says, “I bet not any of you know my name. That’s OK. I made you dance.” How do you hope this film rectifies that?
I was just out in Manhattan yesterday and happened into a store – and started nodding to some music when I suddenly realized, it was “Funkytown,” a Casablanca hit [for Lipps, Inc. in 1980]. I smiled, and started walking further through the store — when suddenly, the next song came on, and it was [Donna Summer’s 1979 hit] “Bad Girls!” And just as I stopped shaking my head in amusement, the next song came on and it was [Gladys Knight & The Pips’ 1973 hit] “Midnight Train to Georgia!”
Fifty years later, and there’s three songs in a row that never [would have happened] without him. I don’t think he’s gotten the credit he deserves for making that happen — and if this film can help people remember who he was and what he accomplished even a little bit, well, that’s a hell of a gift any son can give their parent.
Katy Perry‘s weekends are looking a little different now from the ones she sings about in “Last Friday Night” (“We danced on tabletops, and we took too many shots…”).
While attending a curated cocktail event in New York City Monday night (March 27), the pop star declined to drink anything spiked and revealed that she’s currently attempting a three-month sobriety pact with fiancé Orlando Bloom. “I’ve been sober for five weeks today…,” she said at the event, according to People.
“I’ve been doing a pact with my partner and I want to quit,” she added, jokingly pretending to cry.
And when fellow American Idol judge Luke Bryan, who was also in attendance along with Lionel Richie, asked the “Firework” singer if she was going to break her promise to Bloom, she said: “No, girl! I can’t cave. I made a promise. Three months.”
Luckily, Perry didn’t have to abstain from the party completely. The bar was reportedly stocked with her own line of non-alcoholic apéritifs, De Soi. “I definitely can’t drink like I was in my 20s,” she said in an interview when she launched the company last year. “On a weekday, having a couple [of alcoholic drinks] will take me out of the presence game for the next day or two.”
“So I like to have a bit of self-control on the weekdays and then have dinners with friends and stuff on weekends or when I’m not working, et cetera,” continued Perry, who shares a two-year-old daughter with Bloom. “But really it’s about balance.”
Hulu wasn’t explicitly looking to develop a musical comedy when songwriters Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, writer Steven Levenson, and director Thomas Kail presented them with Up Here. The platform hadn’t ever done a musical TV show — which, despite well-received past series like Glee, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Schmigadoon remains a relative rarity in the current streaming world.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
But, as head of scripted content at Hulu Originals Jordan Helman remembers it, it was hard to resist this “who’s-who of the heavy hitters of Broadway in the past decade.” Kail is the Tony-winning director of Hamilton (and now Sweeney Todd); Levenson the Tony-winning playwright behind Dear Evan Hansen; and Lopez and Anderson-Lopez the Academy Award-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning married duo behind the music of Frozen, Frozen 2 and Coco (Bobby, who co-created The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, is also a double EGOT winner).
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
Sarah Shatz/Hulu
Up Here is based on a musical of the same name by Anderson-Lopez and Lopez, produced in 2015 at the La Jolla Playhouse. The story of Miguel and Lindsay (portrayed by Carlos Valdes and Mae Whitman) finding themselves, and romance, in New York City in the 1990s — while battling the naysaying voices of their subconsciouses, personified onscreen — was, Helman says, an “irresistible” opportunity for Hulu to enter the musical landscape. Its audiences have responded positively to female-driven soaps and thrillers in the past, but “we had never really approached [a show] through a rom-com lens,” Helman continues. “This felt like a tailored opportunity to broaden the aperture of what we do, but still feeling deeply relevant to the viewers we have on platform.”
For Lopez and Anderson-Lopez, developing Up Here for TV was also an enticing opportunity to expand upon and rethink their original show — which dwelt on the male protagonist’s subconscious. It was freeing as well, allowing them to explore multiple genres in their songwriting. And with each episode functioning like a mini-musical — complete with elaborate singing and dance numbers — they were able to see a much larger than usual quantity of their compositions make it to the final product (those songs can also be heard on the show’s soundtrack, recently released on Hollywood Records).
“We’re from Broadway,” says Bobby. “And we wanted to bring what was great about Broadway musicals and see if we could do our version of it in a streaming series.” Below, he and Anderson-Lopez speak to Billboard about precisely how they did it.
After the production of Up Here at La Jolla, what did you hope its future would be?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: La Jolla was a huge growth experience. We’d never done book, music and lyrics all together before … while raising two children out of town … and getting infested with bird mites. [Laughs.] That’s a thing that happened! We realized that where we are in our lives, we wanted to work with book writers [going forward]. You can’t address what you need to in production, on all three fronts, overnight, every day. So, we’d started to talk to talk to book writers and had actually identified Steven Levenson as someone with their finger on the pulse of what we wanted to do.
Then life took over: Frozen Broadway, Frozen 2, Coco. There was an Excel spreadsheet somewhere that said we could do nothing else for four years. [Laughs.] So it got put away. But there was always this intention of revisiting it with Steven at some date in the future. And then that date came in 2020 when Tommy Kail called us and said, “Hey, I’d like to do something with you guys on TV” — and we’d fallen in love with Fosse/Verdon [the FX series that Kail directed]. If there’s a president and vice president of the Fosse/Verdon fan club, it’s us.
Bobby Lopez: The production in La Jolla was very different from what we ended up with on Hulu — in that it only really entered the guy’s head, and one of the takeaways was, “Gee, I wish we’d written it so you could see what she’s thinking, too.” We couldn’t imagine rewriting it for the stage in a way that would preserve any of what we had. So, we were a little frustrated.
But when the idea of television came into it — doing a half-hour comedy, where every week we had the structure to write a mini-musical in essence, and end up with 8 mini musicals adding up to a larger grand musical [over a season] — we got very excited. It just seemed like, “This is a new take on the idea, we’ll be able to tell a different story, we’ll be able to change the characters in exciting ways.”
‘Up Here’
Patrick Harbron/Hulu
Did you preserve anything from the original stage show?
Kristen: I’d say the thing that’s preserved is the concept and question of: Can you ever truly know someone? And what does it feel like when a relationship that you assume is, “This is my person” — they become a stranger? And how you realize you’re up against the bubble of your own consciousness.
Bobby: Some of the songs about that theme carried over. For instance, the idea of “I Can Never Know You” — that was a song in the original, and we transformed it into a different song called “Please Like Me” for the show.
Kristen: “Please Like Me” was originally kind of a “I’m Just a Girl Who Cain’t Say No” charm song — an introduction to the female lead — and now it’s about the huge problem she’s battling. I think it probably always was. And we were always curious to see if you could have a song that’s so clearly, “This person needs to grow from this.” But it’s also why you identify with her, because she’s so honest about it.
Even in the expanded streaming world, musical television shows still feel pretty few and far between. Why do you think that is?
Kristen: I can tell you, after doing it for the last three years — it’s very, very difficult to do. TV is always hard to do. It’s always about getting it ready as much as you can, then you have to get lightning in a bottle on the film day, then you have to piece it together. If you add the elements of learning music and choreography, producing music, to something already time-constrained… you’ve added weights to what’s already hard.
Bobby: I think we sold this show on the first pitch, to [co-chairman of Disney Entertaiment] Dana Walden. And they were very excited — we all were — and then we realized the process of developing a TV show. A lot of the writing is done during production, whereas musical theater is very iterative as a process: You write a draft of the whole thing, you have to see it in front of an audience to know whether it’s working. And it’s the same in animation, honestly – we screen the first version of the film, and then kind of throw it all out, and at the end of many iterations we have something we know works and we produce that.
TV is much more accelerated. It took a lot of time before we were greenlit, rethinking the concept of who these characters were. It was a high degree of difficulty to not only have these singing characters, but also the concept of being inside their minds.
What are the specific challenges inherent in making an episodic musical, as opposed to one in film or onstage that’s over in about two hours?
Kristen: Every musical has an architectural scaffold to it: You have your opening, your “I want” song, your charm song, your act break, your finale, your 11:00 number. [For a show] you really want to know what the whole is before you start making the parts.
We really had to think architecturally [with this show] as we were breaking the story – toggling between what it is to break a normal streaming comedy and to break a musical. There’s a little bit of a Russian doll aspect: In order to have the whole series, we needed to have a giant overview and know where the key songs were going to be before you could ever film. And then you need to record all those songs. Everything has to be pretty solid before a single actor has ever stood on a soundstage, because the songs get pre-recorded.
Bobby: Which is the opposite of how we usually work. In theater, the cast album is the last thing. In animation, you kind of record as you go. It’s never the very first thing — like, “Hi Mae, I’m Bobby, this is Kristen! Now, if you step inside the booth, let’s record the first song.”
Kristen: I will say, I have never been part of a TV writers’ room, and I absolutely loved it. It was kind of like eight hours of group therapy every day. It’s just really creative people pretending, basically.
You get to play with musical genre so much from episode to episode. Did that feel like a freeing new direction?
Kristen: It was liberating. We could jump all over – you could have a Fiona Apple[-type] song next to a Katrina and the Waves song next to a weird eight-bit mini opera.
Bobby: The original show was vast — it was meant to be like a British mega-musical, it had a big orchestra, it wanted to sound gigantic. This version, we really went small with it, trying to think of it all as one rock band playing the music. Getting to work with the same players every day, it felt like we were making an album, rather than hiring players to be in the orchestra pit. It felt unified by its small, intimate sound.
Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez
Sarah Shatz/Hulu
What was the casting process like? Both Mae and Carlos are great singers, but they’re not huge, over-the-top Broadway voices.
Kristen: At its heart we wanted this to feel like an extraordinary story about ordinary people – so we didn’t want them to be larger than life. We wanted to find those people we’ve seen – or not seen – who really seem like you could see them on the street. They could [ordinarily] be the sidekick on a show, but this is a chance for the sidekicks to be the lead.
Mae brings with her such a beautiful humility; she does feel like, to me, your little sister. She’s so relatable and just lets you see all her emotions. And Carlos … we put poor Carlos through the wringer. He came in five times, because what he had to do was extraordinary. He had to be able to have these intimate scenes, but also dance up a storm and sing and really show us what’s underneath the toxic masculinity, and bare his soul. And he always rose to the occasion.
Bobby: We were 100% behind them vocally. They both have experience singing, and for what they needed to do in this, they really were rock stars. Not to mention the chemistry they have that just sparked.
Kristen: Mae likes to say she’s not a singer — but I spent years raising my kids on her Tinker Bell! She’s an amazing singer.
Bobby: One of my first gigs, I wrote a song on spec for The Jungle Book 2, and if it had gotten selected, Mae would have been the singer. I think she was 10.
Kristen: And Carlos was in Darren Criss’ band at University of Michigan. He went to this hardcore, triple-threat high school that was like the FAME high school of Atlanta — and then he got into Michigan for musical theater, which is like, where you go to become a Broadway star.
You also have big Broadway stars on the show, like Norm Lewis and Brian Stokes Mitchell — but it seems like you’re having fun casting them against type.
Bobby: There’s always a bunch of people we’re dying to work with and haven’t yet, and this was a great opportunity to. Scott Porter, we’d seen in Altar Boyz a long time ago and knew he was an amazing singer and dancer, so to get him onboard was incredible. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Norm Lewis are baritone titans of Broadway.
Kristen: To talk about Stokes for a second: To bring him in to do a hip-hop Dr. Seuss character, to show this side of him that’s so funny – we knew we needed a really charismatic, attractive silver fox. But then he just had this bead on this character that was so funny, and the ability to really commit that teeters on the absurd. And across the board, that’s what we got with all these Broadway performers. Nobody’s afraid of going toward the stylized, so everyone just committed hard to these big emotions in such wonderful, quirky ways.
Musicals, both on stage and in animated form, go through years of workshopping and development, and so much gets left on the cutting room floor. Up Here on the other hand seems to have a much higher quantity of songs – was that liberating?
Kristen: Yeah! Frozen, we wrote 26 songs and 7 got into the movie. Whereas here we wrote 25 songs and 21 are in the show. Although I will say, if you count La Jolla as part of that development process, the math falls apart there.
Bobby: Then it’s like 75 songs. [Laughs.] But yeah — we did toss a few numbers, but we didn’t have the luxury of doing a lot of cutting and rewriting. We killed ourselves making 21 brand new songs in a row, and having to mix and master and produce tracks that you love, it’s a great deal of work. Now, when we listen to the soundtrack, it does play like a cast recording – it feels like a Broadway show, and that’s what we wanted.
