Pride
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When Kim Petras sang that “she’s so problématique” on one of her latest songs, X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — took it literally. In a post to her Instagram Stories on Wednesday (Sept. 20), the pop singer revealed that she had been locked out of her X account for sharing […]
If you’re just coming down from the “Rush” of Troye Sivan’s last single, don’t fret — he’s ready to get you started all over again
On Wednesday (Sept. 20), Sivan gave fans yet another new song in the form of “Got Me Started,” a sweltering R&B-pop jam that sees the singer connect on a deeper level with his lover. Sampling Australian duo Bag Raiders’ viral hit “Shooting Stars,” Sivan urges his lover to take him to the edge. “Boy, can I be honest? Kinda miss usin’ my body,” he sings in a pitch-shifted chorus. “F–k it up just like this party did tonight.”
Alongside the new single, the Australian pop star shared a dazzling music video for the track. Shot in Bangkok, the clip shows a series of vignettes of couples around the city sharing tender moments, as Sivan breaks out his best choreography for the song’s chorus. As the tune progresses, so does Sivan’s night out in Bangkok: The star visits a drag club, where he tries on a few looks himself, dances through the streets and eventually winds up on a rooftop as the sun rises, still dancing the night away.
A teaser for the clip, posted to Sivan’s Instagram on Tuesday, showed clips from the lush video with the singer narrating a soliloquy over an entrancing beat. “After the last couple of years, I really thought that I, like, was incapable of feeling anything for a long time,” Sivan’s voice says. “Just even to feel a little bit of butterflies, or f–king … just feeling. I don’t know what you did, or how you did it. You said to me, ‘This is one of life’s greatest pleasures.’ And you know what? You were right.”
In an interview with Apple Music 1′s Zane Lowe, Sivan described the song as “the euphoric moment of total freedom, realizing that you’re completely fine on your own and that also this is not a moment of sadness, but a moment of endless possibilities.”
“Got Me Started” is the second single off of Sivan’s upcoming third studio album, Something to Give Each Other, due out Oct. 13 via Capitol Records. Watch the full music video above.
Singer-songwriter Maren Morris is putting her money where her mouth is when it comes to standing up for the LGBTQ community. On Wednesday (Sept. 20), Morris announced a special show to celebrate the release of her new EP The Bridge, featuring singles “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here.” Taking to the first […]
Surprendre, Bunheads! Pop superstar Kim Petras is here to say “bonjour” to her fans with a special surprise project. On Monday (Sept. 18), Petras is set to surprise drop her French-pop album Problématique via Repbulic / Amigo Records. Across 10 tracks, Petras delves into ecstatic pop sounds, ranging from funk (“Born Again”), to R&B-pop (“Deeper”) […]
The weekend is here, which means it’s time to get some new tunes to jam out to from your favorite queer artists. Billboard Pride is proud to present the latest edition of Queer Jams of the Week, our roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.
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From Demi Lovato’s reimagined pop-turned-rock songs, to K.Flay’s raging new LP, check out just a few of our favorite new releases below:
Demi Lovato, Revamped
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While re-recording past work has become something of a trend as of late, no one is doing it quite like Demi Lovato. On Revamped, Lovato takes a look back through some of their biggest pop hits and reimagines them as bonafide rock bangers, whether it’s soulful ballads (“Tell Me You Love Me”), monster pop smashes (“Heart Attack”) or already rock-adjacent singles (“La La Land”). Revamped is the work of an artist taking the narrative back from her years of pop stardom, and it’s a raucous delight to listen to.
K.Flay, MONO
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If you’re still wanting to rage after hearing Lovato’s new album, might we suggest K.Flay’s excellent new LP MONO? Throughout this dynamic new project, K.Flay goes for the jugular over and over again by turning her songwriting inward and learning that her experience is just that — hers. Whether she’s delicately singing about a toxic ex (“Hustler”) or self-flaggulating alongside some gnarly production (the excellent “Punisher”), K.Flay goes all in on every song, making MONO a must-listen.
Vagabon, Sorry I Haven’t Called
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On Sorry I Haven’t Called, Vagabon offers to bring listeners on a journey of sorts — with a flourish of house beats and slick pop sounds, the singer-songwriter is ready to whisk you off into a brand new reality, built for the sole purpose of keeping the vibes pure. It’s a smartly-produced, lyrically-rich album that promises to capture your attention for all 35 minutes. As Vagabon told Billboard, “The ethos of what I wanted on this album was just to tell the audience, ‘We’re fine, at least for now.’”
Big Thief, “Born For Loving You”
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Anyone who’s attended a Big Thief show in the last few years likely already knows “Born For Loving You” — but if you haven’t attended, now’s your chance to hear it. The studio rendition of the song maintains the joyful, heart-melting energy of the band’s live performance, bringing a pure injection of dopamine into your day. “Doesn’t matter what dreams come true,” Adiranne Lenker sings on the song’s buttery chorus. “I was born for loving you.”
Snail Mail, “Easy Thing”
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On her last album Valentine, Lindsey Jordan — a.k.a. indie star Snail Mail — proved to be a master of yearning bedroom rock. Her latest single, “Easy Thing,” yet again underlines that point. On this doleful guitar ballad, Jordan pines for the love that got away, waxing poetic on their relationship even though her ex is left looking like a “loser” throughout the song. It’s a simple, sweet moment of melancholy that we highly recommend you listen to ASAP.
King Mala, “Never Wanna Know”
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Imagine giving a s–t what your ex thinks about your life? That’s the mission statement of King Mala’s delectable new kiss off “Never Wanna Know,” a bubbly, middle-finger single in which she proudly proclaims that she’s not even remotely interested in whatever her former flame is up to nowadays. The grooving bassline confidently brings you from one biting lyric to the next, while Mala styles her voice like an audible shrug as she sings, “I never wanna know / If your past keeps you up at night, cause I never worry about mine.” If you are striving to be unbothered, press play.
Check out all of our picks on Billboard’s Queer Jams of the Week playlist below:
Looking back on her last full length album released in 2019, Laetitia Tamko can’t help but feel like it remains in some small part incomplete. Released in October, just five months before a global pandemic shut down the world, Tamko — better known by her stage name Vagabon — sees her self-titled album as an incomplete circuit.
“I never got to play those shows or tour that album — so if you think about it like a cycle, the loop didn’t get too close,” she tells Billboard via Zoom, sitting on the floor of her bedroom. “By the time the lockdown happened, a lot of artists were like, ‘Perfect, I’ll just write new music.’ I spent that first year and a half doing absolutely nothing music-related, because I was mourning the fact that I couldn’t, be out there performing.”
But the pandemic did bring Tamko something she hadn’t expected; a new audience. At the early height of the COVID-19 lockdown, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter watched as a song off of her self-titled album, “Water Me Down,” began to gain significant attention, with fellow quarantined people around the globe finding some solace in her introspective songwriting and experimental alternative sound.
Tamko “wasn’t ready” to make new music, but she knew that she had a new cadre of followers waiting to see what she did next. Now, nearly four years after the release of her self-titled effort, their patience is being rewarded. On Friday (Sept. 15), Vagabon released her highly-anticipated new project Sorry I Haven’t Called, a thrilling, pop-infused album of escapist fantasy, where Tamko fully embraces her potential as a star in the making.
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The project was born in a small village in Germany, where Tamko retreated in 2021 to evade the dreariness of her life in lockdown and to privately mourn the loss of a close friend. Yearning for something to distract her from the tedium of her day-to-day existence, Tamko sat down and did what she does best — she wrote.
“A lot of the stuff I was making was music that I used to lift myself out of my grief. And that was confusing for a while — ‘I am in despair, so why am I writing about sex and horniness,’” she recalls. “I started to realize that that’s a valid reaction to grief.”
When it came time for her to start producing the songs she’d written, Tamko decided to run with that feeling and make Sorry I Haven’t Called her first dance-adjacent album. Filled with house beats and dance-pop synths, while still maintaining the bedroom, DIY feel of her previous work, the album enters uncharted territory for the artist.
Specifically, Tamko refers to the genre of her Sorry as “‘Dancing on My Own‘ music,” paying homage to Robyn’s iconic single. “She is the best there is at doing these huge pop songs with crazy emotional depth for sad girls who love to dance — ‘girls’ being gender neutral,” she says. “Like, ‘Do you have mental illness? Do you want to dance? Great, this is for you.’ That is what I wanted the sound to be here.”
The house influences turned out to be incredibly timely — while Tamko was in the middle of finishing and mastering her album, she watched as megastars like Beyoncé and Drake delivered their own new takes on the genre (“I thought to myself, ‘Okay, this is how I wasn’t taking too long,’” Tamko quips). But as she puts it, house music, as a genre, is largely timeless thanks to its origins in underground Black queer spaces.
“In its foundation, there is a richness of creativity, it’s rich in references,” she says. “When genres sprout up from people making do with what they have, that’s part of the reason that the genre won’t go away. People will always want to be inspired and encouraged to move. And it’s fun to be a musician in those instances, because you get to shepherd other people moving and living. It’s a complete privilege.”
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Towards the end of her writing and producing process, Tamko had a chance meeting with Rostam Batmanglij, the former member of Vampire Weekend-turned-solo artist and producer to the stars. Seeing that Rostam had sent her a DM saying that he loved her music and wanted her to stop by his studio, Tamko took the opportunity and brought him all the music she had been working on for Sorry.
According to Tamko, she knew almost immediately that she wanted to work with him on the album. “He has such a deep musical understanding and knowledge — even just hearing compliment the things that I’ve done was like a badge of honor,” she says. “I just knew I wanted any help he could provide.”
The feeling was mutual. After hearing a handful of tracks, Rostam offered to help produce the rest of the album, bring a “cohesiveness” that Tamko says was not nearly as present before he joined. But of all the many contributions Rostam made to the album, the singer says that his greatest skill came was his malleability.
“He knows how to be in service of the art and who that art is coming from,” she says. “I think that’s why we got along so well — that and the fact that he has great taste and also a very scientific brain when it comes to music.”
Throughout Sorry I Haven’t Called, Tamko still offers the kind of heart-wrenching, introspective lyricism that made “Water Me Down” such a potent pandemic listen. Album closer “Anti-F–k,” for example, sees Vagabon reeling from a relationship that cannot work, as she asks herself “Am I wrong to decide? The last thing I want is unknown/ Am I wrong to reply? The last thing I felt was alone.”
But the feeling of introspection is different this time around — it’s rendered through the lens of a fantasy world generated inside of her own swirling emotional interior. The same way Tamko fled to Germany as a means of managing the emotional fallout of her real life, Sorry I Haven’t Called offers listeners just over 30 minutes of time where they don’t have to actively deal with the myriad struggles of modern existence, but rather let their feelings rush up and out.
“I’ve always looked to music that is the opposite of whatever I am experiencing,” Tamko says. “The ethos of what I wanted on this album was just to tell the audience, ‘We’re fine, at least for now.’ For the duration of this album, you’re being held in this world. There’s still yearning and some heartbreak, because for it to be a world, it needs to have like the valleys so you can better feel the euphoria. You have to embrace the lows before you can reach the highs.”
That very concept in and of itself — the ability for Tamko to conjure up her own universe via songwriting — is a testament to where she has arrived in her own journey. No longer questioning or doubting her own abilities, Tamko says she is finally ready to command the attention she deserves.
“I think I’ve had enough time with the internal,” she offers, bluntly. “It all comes down to confidence, and I have found a profound sense confidence in myself, in my voice, and in my ability to say things and I was maybe too scared to say before. I found a way to take up more space.”
For years, Kelsea Ballerini has been advocating for greater diversity in country music — look no further than her headline-making CMTs performance from earlier this year for proof. Now, in a new interview, Ballerini spelled out exactly what she means by that.
In an interview as a 2023 TIME100 Next honoree, Ballerini said that she wanted to see country music become a platform where all kinds of artists could find massive success. “It’s a process, and we’re undoing a way that, specifically, country music has done things forever,” she said. “It’s making sure that we’re giving a voice to new artists; we’re giving a voice to unsigned artists who represent underrepresented groups in Nashville because they’re not getting a chance to be signed.”
Continuing, Ballerini got more specific, pointing out that the communities finding themselves the least represented in country music deserve to be given a fair shot at stardom. “Nobody says people don’t want to jam out to guys on the radio. I do. I also want to hear from women. Just as much, maybe more,” she said. “I also want to hear from people of color, from the LGBTQ+ community. I want to hear all the voices we hear on pop radio on country radio.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Ballerini said that she was not comfortable speaking as the representative for all country artists. “One person cannot speak for everyone. That is true for country music,” she said. “I am in control of standing in what I believe in — and being a kind, good person who works towards making the world a more heard, safe, and inclusive place in whatever capacity I can do.”
Part of that aim to make the world better and more inclusive came during her aforementioned CMTs performance, when Ballerini brought a group of drag queens on stage with her to perform her song “If You Go Down,” and to protest ongoing legislative attacks against drag artists around the country. Speaking about it now, Ballerini said that if she had the opportunity, she would go back and do it again.
“I was not only hosting the CMT Awards, but I had a performance for a song of mine that is all about friendship and standing up for people that you love, and being ride-or-die for your people,” she said. “I realized that that would be a really good, important, loud, big stage to make that statement on, and CMT was all for it.”
Appearing on the smoke-filled stage of New Jersey’s Prudential Center on Tuesday night (Sept. 12), Demi Lovato was ready to reintroduce herself to a throng of screaming fans. Sporting a black vinyl gown and their now-signature slicked black hair, Lovato showed the MTV VMAs what it means to re-contextualize your pop stardom into rock glory.
Two weeks before their star-turn set, Lovato tells Billboard that they’re not feeling the nerves about their first performance in six years on the VMAs stage. “We just started rehearsals for it and I’m getting the creative locked in right now,” she says over a Zoom call. “I’m really excited. I think it’ll be a great performance.”
That confidence in her own skills as a performer are largely what helped Lovato make Revamped (out Friday, Sept. 15), her new album of old hits reshaped in her new rock image. The 10-track LP features some of their all-time biggest hits (“Heart Attack,” “Sorry Not Sorry”) alongside fan favorites (“La La Land,” “Tell Me You Love Me”), all refurbished with a punchy pop-punk feel to better fit Lovato’s venture back into the world of rock music.
For Lovato, change has been the constant of their career — whether that means transitioning from pop-punk into pure pop and back to rock music, or publicly opening up about their gender identity (Lovato uses both they/them and she/her pronouns). So going back and making aesthetic changes to her music wasn’t anything new. “It just feels really good,” she says. “I’m really proud of the work that we did, and I’m excited for the songs to be out there.”
Below, Billboard chats with Lovato about the origins of Revamped, which song in her discography was the hardest to translate into rock, her abortion rights anthem “Swine” and her recent split from manager Scooter Braun.
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Take me back the beginning of this process — when did you start seriously thinking about going back and re-recording these old hits?
Well, I started putting together these rock versions of the songs last year when I was heading out on tour. I had to figure out the puzzle of how to make [songs] like “Sorry Not Sorry” and “Heart Attack” work with all of the new rock songs I was doing. So, the thought was, “Why don’t we edge them up a little bit and see what what they sound like?” We did that, and they just ended up sounding great. I performed them on tour, and the fans really loved them. I thought, “Why don’t I rerecord and release them?”
Were there any songs in particular on Revamped that felt much more difficult to reimagine as rock tracks than others?
Oh, definitely. I think “Tell Me You Love Me” was the one that felt really tough to translate into a new genre of music. The vocals are just so soulful on that one, and so trying to keep it soulful while also amping it up for this record was pretty difficult. Ultimately, I think we made it work — it turned out really great.
When you started creating these rock versions of your biggest hits, did you find that it changed your relationship to the original pop songs themselves?
Actually no — I think it reignited an excitement inside of me for those songs. Like, take “Give Your Heart a Break,” for example: I got really tired of performing that one live, because it had been in my catalog for so long, and it didn’t really reflect any sound that I had anymore. Even when I went more R&B-pop, it just wasn’t the kind of sound I was looking for anymore, because it was just so pop. But when we put together the rock version, I was suddenly having a really fun time on stage performing it.
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It’s worth noting that it’s been 15 years since you put out your debut record Don’t Forget, and your voice has grown and changed a lot since then. Were there any moments in the re-recording process where you found yourself adjusting the songs around your evolved voice?
Yeah, I’d say my voice like expanded in a really positive way. So, if anything, with some of the songs I found myself going, ‘Oh, I can hit higher notes than I used to.’ And so I started hitting higher and higher notes when we were recording — to be honest, I think we added an extra high note on every track. I think that’s actually part of the exciting thing with this album; getting to hear the the higher notes that I’m doing in my songs and like taking it to another level. I’d even say they were easier to record, just because I’ve been singing them for so many years.
Re-recordings have become something of a trend in the business as of late — obviously you have Taylor Swift re-recording her masters, but also icons like Lucinda Williams, Moby, U2 and others going back through their catalogs for re-makes. What is it about revisiting your past work that’s so appealing to artists?
I think that anytime you’ve been like performing a song for a long time — for me, like you said, it’s been 15, 16 years, since I put out some of these records — it’s appealing to get to really reinvent them. It’s also a cool challenge, which is exciting. For me, the challenge was, “How can I go in and make this better vocally?” Because the producing was largely done by my incredible production team [Oak Felder, Alex Nice and Keith Sorrells], so I didn’t really have to challenge myself with that.
I think if you’re the type of person that’s always striving to be better, then this process is going to be naturally appealing to you. So, I guess it just depends on the artist; if the artist is totally chill with having their songs out there as they are, and they’re proud of the work that they’ve already done, then that’s great. But I’m the type of person that wants to out-do myself always.
You made headlines in recent weeks when it was announced that you were parting ways with Scooter Braun and SB Projects. Can you talk about what went into that decision?
You know, I’m really thankful for my time with SB Projects, and now I’m just looking forward to the next chapter in my career. Ultimately, it was just time for me to move on and go in a different direction. But I’m really excited for my next chapter.
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Let’s talk a little bit about the other song you put out earlier this year, “Swine.” This felt like such a poignant “f–k you“ anthem about the state of abortion rights in America — what went into making that track in time for the one year anniversary of the Dobbs decision?
Well, when I went into the studio to make “Swine,” my goal was to make an anthem — I wanted to write an anthem for women and people that give birth. It was something that was really thought-out for me. Yeah, to be honest, I just wanted to do exactly what you said; make a f–k you anthem to anybody that opposes our rights. [Laughs.] And it felt really good.
I also wanted to commend you for hosting a gender-diverse cast in the “Swine” video, including trans and non-binary people in the clip. Why was that such an important part of making the video for you?
Inclusivity is just something that’s really important to me, and will always be really important to me. Any time I’m doing something that is such a statement like “Swine,” I want to make sure that we keep it inclusive. I’m not trying to limit my art to just one type of person, I think that’s unfair. There has to be representation in my work, so keeping that in mind always is at the forefront of my mind whenever I’m working.
With Revamped coming out, what can we expect to see next from Demi Lovato?
I think after the VMAs and a couple of show, I’m going to be getting back into the studio after the month of September. We’ll be trying to, you know, figure out what the near future looks like for me.
P!nk turned 44 over the weekend and while many fans offered up sweet, thoughtful birthday messages, as always, there were some haters who took the opportunity to throw shade. And, as usual, the singer met their haterade with a sharp lesson in tolerance and dignity.
After someone posted a birthday wish accompanied by a photograph of trans British comedian/actor Eddie (Suzy) Izzard in a striped dress on a red carpet in what appeared to be an attempt to troll the singer, P!nk shot back with a pointed response.
“Thank you so much. I just showed my 12-year-old daughter your post,” she wrote of her eldest child Willow Sage Hart. “I explained to her that I’ve never met you, I don’t know you, and I have no idea why you would go out of your way to be hateful. It was a good lesson in ignorance. Thank you. I still don’t know you. Congrats. You’re no one.”
In a follow-up, she added, “MOST IMPORTANTLY -what a wasted opportunity here. There are so many pictures you could’ve chosen that were actually me that were worse than this picture, you nameless f–ko. At least be creative next time dum dum.”
The singer, who has long been a fierce ally of the LGBTQ community and a powerful voice against bullying, offered up one more thought in an early morning tweet on Tuesday (Sept. 12), writing, “I post these things to show the kids I know- my own kids as well, that we are all occasionally treated badly. I show them because they know me, and they know that my self-esteem does Not rely on the opinions of others. Nor does it rely on how many tickets I sell. Good/bad. Whatever. I love Me. Now I shall Sleep really really Well.”
When a fan offered that they were shaking their head at people who are “the worst,” P!nk agreed that “some” are, slamming cowards who try to throw bombs from the shadows. “What these kind of people are anonymous, lonely,” she said. “And Miserable. But Most people are smart, good, and rad.”
The singer’s Summer Carnival tour marches on on Friday (Sept. 15) with a show at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, GA.
Lil Nas X has always been unabashedly himself, never shying away from being out and proud in a genre that hasn’t always been accepting to the LGBTQ community. The “Industry Baby” rapper also reveals in his new documentary, Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, that he helped his brother, Tramon Hill, come out as bisexual.
The film — which has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night — includes a scene in which Hill describes how Lil Nas, 24, made him comfortable discussing who he is as well, according to EW. “My brother really opened doors for a lot of people,” Hill says in the film, EW reported. “Yeah, he opened a door for me. What I mean by that, like, I’m not gay, though, you feel me? I’m bisexual. He helped me be real with myself. My brother made me more open to it.”
Later in the movie, Hill says that while he was worried about losing some of his cherished relationships after coming out, Lil Nas helped show him the way again. “If you f–k with me, you f–l with me. If you don’t, you don’t. Bye. Get out of my presence. I don’t need you,” Hill says. “At the end of the day, people are going to f–k with who they f–k with, so stop trying to chase a friend. A friend is going to always be there.”
The film also follows Lil Nas as he hits the road for his debut tour, 2022’s Long Live Montero, hangs with Madonna and faces off against homophobic protesters outside his shows. EW also noted that Lil Nas tells a funny story toward the beginning of the movie about running into How to Get Away With Murder star Viola Davis at the iconic L.A. grocery store Erewhon that did not go as expected.
“I met Viola Davis at an Erewhon, but I don’t think she knew who the f– I was,” Lil Nas says while showing directors Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel a photo of David taped to his bedroom wall, which also features images of Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Euphoria star Alexa Demie. “I was like, ‘I’m such a big fan,’ and she was like, ‘Oh, thanks,’ and she hurried out the store. It was kind of funny.”
At press time there was no release date yet for the film, whose debut this weekend was delayed by 20 minutes after a bomb threat was called in to the festival; authorities later verified that the threat was not credible.