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Def Leppard’s first two albums vaulted five boys from working-class Sheffield, England to the vanguard of the new wave of British heavy metal. On 1983’s Pyromania, the quintet set their sights even higher. “There’s no point in trying to appeal to half the population,” bassist Rick Savage tells Billboard. “Why not appeal to 100% of the population?”
With ace producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange back in the studio after 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry, Def Leppard crafted a technically sophisticated album of hard chugging yet melodic songs that catapulted them onto radio waves and stages usually reserved for pop stars. Prior to Pyromania, the music industry had been reluctant to invest in metal; an article in the April 14, 1984, Billboard quoted a radio executive who described “a longhaired kid wearing a torn Def Leppard shirt” as “the kind of person you wouldn’t want in your store.”
After Pyromania, radio and record labels couldn’t ignore the growing genre any longer. Pyromania went all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (soaring past their previous peak of No. 38), produced two Mainstream Rock Airplay No. 1s (“Photograph” for six weeks and “Rock of Ages”) and gave the band three top 30 Billboard Hot 100 hits (the aforementioned singles plus “Foolin’”).
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The album’s blockbuster success — which also eventually included a diamond RIAA certification for over 10 million units shipped — paved the way for the pop-metal crossover of bands like Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses and Poison, and set Def Lep up for a long, fruitful career. In 2022, the still-active band became only the third group to notch a top 10 album on the Billboard 200 in every decade since the ‘80s.
Ahead of the 40th anniversary edition of Pyromania (out April 26), Savage and frontman Joe Elliott hopped on a Zoom call with Billboard to pull back the curtain on the making of the classic — as well as share thoughts on a former CMT Crossroads collaborator who has since become the biggest pop star in the world.
Pyromania had the same producer, Mutt Lange, as the album that came out before it, High ‘n’ Dry. Even so, that one feels a bit rawer compared to Pyromania. Was it a conscious decision to give the album a cleaner production?
Rick Savage: Yeah, absolutely, from day one. I mean, I don’t know if I’d call it clean. What we really set out to do was create this a wall of sound. High ‘n’ Dry was very much in your face and very aggressive. It was our first album with Mutt and he got us ultra-focused in creating a rock song. With Pyromania, we wanted to take a lot of elements of that but develop the harmonies, banks of vocals, banks of guitars, just everything very multitracked and very orchestral. And I think that’s the biggest thing, apart from the songs, which were obviously more developed and had a lot more nuances to them. Basically, the progression from High ‘n’ Dry is creating a wall of melodic mayhem, if you like.
Joe Elliott: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. The obvious observations for those two records is that High ‘n’ Dry sounds like a band playing live and Pyromania sounds like a band in the studio — à la Pink Floyd, à la the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper — that sat down to craft some songs. They’re not just, “Okay, hit the record button and play it live.” That’s what High ‘n’ Dry sounds like — even though it actually wasn’t, because we did that in bits and bobs. But it has that impression.
Technology was starting to change. Recording studios in 1981 were pretty much the same as they were in 1979. Recording studios in 1982, ’83, there’s new bits of equipment coming in on a daily basis that can do things: synthesizers, drum machines. Drum machines were a big part of the music industry, with The Human League and New Order. We were using this kind of stuff, but most rock bands weren’t. And the great thing about having Mutt on your side is he’d be very enthusiastic about saying, “Well, why not? Why can’t a rock band…” and then fill in whatever phrase you want. It would be like [why can’t a rock band] “use that technology that these arty pop bands are using within the field of rock and see where it gets you”? We didn’t want to make High ‘n’ Dry 2.
I was looking through the Billboard archives, and an article from 1984 postulated that a lot of Def Leppard’s appeal was connected to youth. Other metal acts at the time – Ozzy, Motörhead, whatever – were in their thirties, but you guys were a bit younger and maybe more attractive to girls. Is that something you were aware of back in the day?
Savage: God, yeah, absolutely. It was always 50-50, and in some cases, actually more girls than boys. There is a youthfulness to it, but it’s the music actually — we were just slightly different from the standard heavy metal, if you like. You mentioned Motörhead and Ozzy — two fantastic acts, don’t get me wrong, but they were very definitely of a certain sound. We were trying to expand on that and appeal to a wider range.
We want to appeal to as many people as we can. There’s no point in trying to appeal to half the population — why not appeal to 100% of the population? All of a sudden, from Pyromania onwards, so many women and girls came to our shows. And it’s just testament to the actual songs, because they’re the things that get people first interested, and then everything else follows from that.
Elliott: We are a weird band in that respect, because we’ve always wanted to be honest with people. When you are five kids from Sheffield and you want to get up on stage and play rock music, there’s an oomph to it. It’s got a feeling that I don’t think — with the greatest respect to, say, the Human League, when we opened for them one night in their embryonic stage, they’re behind plexiglass sheets with keyboards. It doesn’t really have that Townshend windmill factor to it. It’s always fun to play the rock stuff, you know, “Highway to Hell” or “Tie Your Mother Down.”
But honestly, when we were in the factory rehearsing before we even played our first gig, we’d be talking about music way different than what we were playing. Me and Sav instantly bonded over the fact that we loved Kate Bush. Or the first two Peter Gabriel albums, which we were listening to way more than Motörhead. I don’t think Motörhead ever sat up a rehearsal room and had a discussion about “Wuthering Heights,” whereas we would. We always wanted it to be a glam rock, power guitar thing: Bowie, Slade, Sweet, Queen. That’s the fun element.
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That sophistication is especially apparent on “Photograph,” which is very well constructed. Speaking of, I know “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak” got some MTV play, but “Photograph” was a huge staple for the channel. Was that on your minds at the time, using this new marketing tool to hit a wider audience?
Savage: I don’t think so. It kind of happened in reverse. We weren’t really trying to market anything or become influenced by the latest media thing. We just got picked up from it, and we were fortunate in that respect. Before Pyromania was released, we knew that videos were coming to the fore. MTV was getting more and more popular, so it was just an obvious thing to do. We made two videos, one for “Photograph” and one for “Rock of Ages.” That was done in December of ’82, the album didn’t come out till early ‘83.
Elliott: Yeah, there’s no doubt that when we were making the album, the last thing on our mind was worrying about, “Oh, we got to make videos.” The one that really started to get a bit of traction was “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak.” In London, we’d start receiving the odd phone call from management in New York saying, “Oh, yeah, they played ‘Bringin’ on the Heartbreak’ 40 times on MTV last week.” “Okay, interesting.” Then you three weeks later you get another message saying that High ‘n’ Dry started selling again. Three weeks later, you get another message: “Bloody hell, it’s selling 50,000 a week.” By the end of the year, we’re getting this message that it’s gone gold, so we know that this is not going gold because the radio — it’s gone gold because of MTV. We were just getting little messages as we’re [making] the [Pyromania] album. It’s like a mosquito in your ear, like, “Yeah, okay, fine.”
“Bringin’ on the Heartbreak’ knocked on the door, but “Photograph” kicked it off its f–king hinges. It was the combination of radio — the song was absolutely produced to sound good on FM, there’s no doubt, it was Mutt Lange’s job to do that — and the video. By the time we got to America, we’re getting our head around the fact that this MTV thing is really a big deal. By the time we got on tour, the first thing we would do is check into the hotel and try to find it. It’s like, you can’t believe that there’s this 24-hour rock video channel — because as kids we had 30 minutes of Top of the Pops on a Thursday and an hour of the [The Old Grey] Whistle Test if you were allowed to stay up to watch bearded musicians play bearded music. That’s when we really realized the value of it. When we were delivering the videos, it was on the advice of people going, “You got to do this.”
As you were saying about youth, because we were all 21, 22 years old, when somebody says, “You got to spend a day in Battersea Power Station shooting videos,” you go, “Great.” We learned after the fact that a lot of seasoned bands from the ‘70s were reluctant to do them, which is why a lot of videos by bands from the ‘70s that were presented in the ‘80s were crap. I think the only band that really grasped the nettle when they came back with a resurgence was Aerosmith. Really, they did a brilliant job with videos. But lots of other bands were like, “I don’t see why we’re having to do this.” We were the next generation, and started to realize, “This is almost as important as making the record.”
Speaking of TV and “Photograph,” fast forward about 25 years. You’re on CMT Crossroads with a very young Taylor Swift singing that song. Did you ever think, “This person is going to become the biggest pop star in the world?”
Savage: She was pretty big then, to be honest. It was unbelievable that somebody had such youth, but almost like an old head on young shoulders when she came to songwriting. It was actually quite eye-opening. It was great fun; it was a bit of a laugh. She’s quite popular now, isn’t she? But trust me, she was pretty popular then as well. I mean, not to the level she’s at now, obviously — but within the country scene she was as big as they came. It was a really great experience working with her and the band. She had a great band back then as well.
Elliott: We were together for a week in Nashville for rehearsals. We were just so very impressed with Taylor — because, as you know, the album 1989 is called that because that’s year she was born. So basically, in the womb, she was listening to Pyro and Hysteria, because her mom was a big fan. She was born to Def Leppard, basically. [Prior to CMT Crossroads] we saw this article where she said, “There’s only one band I would do Crossroads with,” and it was us. We were beyond flattered and management said, “We should get in touch with her management to see if she actually really means it.” And she did.
What impressed me the most was that when we got to the table of like, which songs we’re going to do, she wanted to do a lot of [Songs From the] Sparkle Lounge. I’m thinking, “She’s heard that song?” And then “Two Steps Behind” got pulled out, which wasn’t going to be suggested, but she says, “I want to do that one.”
It’s all very logical and all very organic. It really was. I got to sing “Love Story,” bits from the perspective of a guy. She was really enthusiastic and obviously a big fan. And we became fans of her. I think we’d all be lying if we said we knew she was going to become as big as she has because she’s actually become bigger than anything that’s ever been before. She’s probably bigger than The Beatles and The Stones combined, for her generation of fans. I’ll probably get lynched by some 75-year-old reading this, but it’s all relative.
Today it’s all about the streaming numbers and all that kind of stuff. There’s been a lot of massively successful bands, but she’s taken success to a level that is unheard of. It’s absolutely mad. It’s success beyond anything that anybody could have ever dreamed of, probably her herself. I’ve seen the Eras film and it’s astonishing what she’s done. I hope she works with us again one day. [Laughs.]
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I’ve read that “Rock of Ages” has a back-masked message of “F—k the Russians” on it. I wanted to ask if that was true, and if so, what inspired that.
Savage: [Laughs.]
Elliott: There’s a lot of backwards stuff in the middle of the solo, because we had we discovered all these toys that could instantly do things backwards. This is what I was talking about with the technology. It was 1982, England was at war with Argentina over the Falklands, and there was the Cold War, which was always on the horizon. You know, you read in the paper, Brezhnev this, and whoever the American was in it, Reagan. You’d be reading about it and we were just jokingly saying things on the mic and would just turn it around backwards. And it wasn’t what you said, it was how it sounded backwards. It’s like, “That sounds really weird, shove it in the solo!” What was more important was how it sounded the other way around. In fairness, one of the words was “a—hole” backwards, and it just went really well within the melody of the solo, you know?
Savage: The song is so sparse and open. We needed cues as guitar players as to when we’re going to come in because we didn’t have a vocal at the time. It was very easy to get lost in, because we’re just playing it to a drum machine. A lot of the stuff was there as cues to when the next part was coming up, of which “gunter gleiben glauchen globen” was one of them. It was much like saying, “1-2-3-4, here comes the bridge” sort of thing. So yeah, there was a load of stuff going down on that particular song, just to keep us interested.
Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, this was born out of cabin fever, because this was the first time that we’d been in a studio doing 22-hour days, six days, maybe seven days a week and we’re probably into month six or seven so you start to go a bit ’round the bend. You start doing crazy stuff. People always mock rock bands for being silly, but I’ve read so many articles about what you might call sophisticated artists doing stuff just as stupid because they had cabin fever. The Beatles, Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, just doing goofy s–t in the studio because it relieves the tension, relieves the boredom.
Audacy has reduced its workforce by 2%, according to a company spokesperson. Affected employees included a Boston sports reporter who was laid off the day before today’s NFL Draft, a Chicago afternoon news anchor and roughly 98 other employees, according to reports. “It’s like, ‘How many layoffs can they go through before there’s nobody left?’” […]
BMI celebrated songwriter, composer and producer David Foster at the 74th annual BMI/NAB Dinner held Tuesday (April 16) at Encore Las Vegas. The private event was sponsored by Xperi.
BMI President & CEO Mike O’Neill presented Foster with the award, praising Foster’s “extraordinary creativity and the singular impact he’s made as a songwriter, a producer, an artist, a mentor and a philanthropist.” Foster joined BMI in 1978.
The annual BMI/NAB dinner recognizes the mutually supportive relationship between the songwriting community and the broadcast industry. Past recipients of the BMI honor include Paul Anka, John Fogerty, Graham Nash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Mike Post, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Carrie Underwood and John Williams.
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Following a video of career highlights, Foster performed. He was joined on stage by his wife, singer-actress Katharine McPhee, and classically trained vocalist Daniel Emmet.
Foster has received many accolades over the years, including 16 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy and three Oscar nods for best original song.
His Grammys include three wins for producer of the year (non-classical), three for album of the year and two for record of the year. He has won 11 of his 16 Grammys for producing, four for arranging and one for songwriting (his first Grammy, for co-writing Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1979 smash “After the Love Has Gone,” which was voted best R&B song). His other Grammys are for work with Jennifer Holliday (on the Dreamgirls cast album), Chicago, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Cole, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Michael Bublé.
His Emmy was for co-writing a song for The Concert for World Children’s Day, an ABC special in 2003. He has been nominated three times for outstanding music direction for those endlessly replayed Great Performances specials on PBS.
Foster was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010. He was honored as a BMI Icon the following year. He has won 42 BMI Awards and was named BMI pop songwriter of the year three times.
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According to multiple sources, DJ Mister Cee, born Calvin LeBrun, has passed away. He was 57.
“We have lost the iconic Mister Cee,” wrote Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg on X, formerly Twitter, confirming his longtime colleague’s untimely death. “I listened to him yesterday and am in complete shock. He was a dear friend to all of us, a wonderful man, and one of the most important and impactful DJs of all time. I love you Cee.”
The loss is a heavy one for Hip-Hop culture. Born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in the late 80’s Mister Cee came to fame as Big Daddy Kane’s DJ, who he met while in high school. As part of the Juice Crew, Cee was there on Kane’s seminal debut album Long Live The Kane, featuring on a song called “Mister Cee’s Master Plan” with his expert cutting and scratching throughout the album.
But perhaps even more notable is that Cee is credited with discovering late, great rapper the Notorious B.I.G. Cee was among the first to co-sign the then local rap phenom before appearing in The Source magazine’s Unsigned Hype section.
Later on in his career, Cee would shine on the radio at New York City Hip-Hop station Hot 97, where he was nicknamed The Finisher, and the party scene. Controversy in Mister Cee’s personal life would ensue after multiple arrests for soliciting trans prostitutes. Although he denied being gay, he did admit to an affinity for seeking oral sex from trans women.
There is no cause of death reported at this time.
Rest in power DJ Mister Cee.
This story is developing.
Beginning in September 2022, Ron Poore and his Atlantic Records radio promotions team emailed and called alternative-rock program directors for months to convince them to add Paramore‘s new single, “This Is Why,” to playlists. Their efforts paid off: The song hit No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart in February 2023. “You work that record for weeks and weeks and weeks, and all of a sudden it starts showing up in the research,” says Poore, then Atlantic’s senior vp of promotion, alternative and rock and a 21-year veteran of breaking radio hits by Death Cab for Cutie, Coldplay, Portugal. The Man and others.
“This Is Why” is an example of a classic record label promo story: an experienced major-label staff working radio connections to achieve chart success. But it didn’t end well for Poore. In February, Atlantic laid off Poore as part of an industry-wide downsizing that hit promo teams especially hard.
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“Five years ago, 10 years ago, it’s radio, radio, radio,” Poore says. “And now it’s the last thing we do at these labels.”
Layoffs at two of the top labels, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, began in February, affecting dozens of employees, many in traditional media positions such as publicity, marketing and radio. (Sources say similar cuts affected Sony Music Entertainment as well.) The layoffs have had little to do with the companies’ financial health: Universal earned $12 billion in revenue and $1.3 billion in net profit last year, and Warner said it is coming off its best quarter ever. But top executives from both labels announced they were adapting to a long-running industry shift towards new technology.
In a late February statement announcing layoffs of roughly two dozen staffers, Julie Greenwald, chairman/CEO of Warner-owned Atlantic Music Group, said, “The changes we’re making today are primarily happening in our radio and video teams.” And Lucian Grainge, Universal’s chairman/CEO, told staffers in January, before the latest layoffs, that the label would be “not just expanding geographically and leveraging new technologies” but “further evolve our organizational structure to create efficiencies in other areas of the business.”
From a practical standpoint, according to Diane Monk Harrison, a radio manager at Warner-owned distribution company WEA, who lost her job in mid-March, that meant the industry layoffs have been “disproportionately affecting radio promotion.” The broadcast business is shrinking: The biggest radio company, iHeartMedia, has been downsizing since the pandemic, including a recent wave in the last few weeks. That means fewer programmers exist for major labels to lobby for extra playlist adds. “Radio is still extremely important,” says Skip Bishop, a former longtime promotion executive at Sony and other labels who has been a consultant for more than a decade. “But it’s just an evolution. You don’t need six regionals, three nationals, two vps and an svp [at a label] when 20 to 45 people are making the decisions that 200 people used to make at radio.”
Adds a major-label source: “In the old world, you might have radio-promo people who were earning the same, or more, as the head of A&R. That’s not going to happen in the new world, for obvious reasons. What is happening is the labels are keeping the absolute very best radio people.”
As listeners have shifted away from old-school radio stations in favor of on-demand streaming, the radio business has declined: According to Nielsen Media Research data, weekly listenership dropped during the pandemic, from 89% of adult Americans in 2019 to 82% in 2022. The medium’s most resilient advertising area is in digital sales, a recent Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates study shows, and not in AM-FM airplay. “The only portion of radio that’s growing is not dependent on music,” says Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, an analyst group that focuses on media advertising and marketing. “I don’t think the record labels are daft of what has happened to the industry in terms of listeners, and they’re well aware of the aging nature of terrestrial radio programming.”
iHeartMedia has more than $5.2 billion in debt and has been laying off personnel over the last few years, including a wave of reported layoffs in early 2024. (Audacy, another broadcast giant, filed for bankruptcy in January, owing $2 billion in debt.) As the number of radio employees decreases, major label staff who attempt to influence them have made proportionate changes. “It makes sense to shrink your radio promotion when there’s less radio people to deal with,” says Don Cristi, a veteran radio programmer recently laid off as iHeartMedia’s senior vp of programming in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. “I dealt with way more ‘nationals’ in the last few years [from labels] than what used to be called your regional guy.”
And many independent artists are going around both labels and radio entirely, having “already done the heavy lifting” to break on TikTok and other social media, according to an indie R&B and hip-hop music executive. “Nothing will ever go back to the way it was just five years ago,” this person says. “A label may shift from promo field execs to mobile digital execs, just as radio is now relying on its digital real estate to generate additional revenue.”
Still, the radio business has shown resilience: 82% of U.S. listeners is no small number, and a recent Chartmetric study shows radio maintains a powerful ability to break hits. Stations aired 7.4 million songs roughly 102.4 times apiece, for a total of 755 million spins, in 2023, and the top 10 radio songs earned major streaming boosts. And while rock, pop and hip-hop artists have become less reliant on radio in recent years, some genres, including Latin and country, remain attached to radio. “Music companies continue to be very important strategic partners with the entire radio industry and there are no signs that is abating,” says Wendy Goldberg, iHeartMedia’s spokesperson, in a statement. “Labels rely on broadcast radio to break new artists, because in order to introduce new music to the masses, you need radio and its unparalleled reach.”
At many labels and artist management companies, radio and streaming teams are working in tandem, befitting the hit-breaking relevance of both media. “As for now, they’re both very valuable,” says Bob McLynn of Crush Music, which manages Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Sia and others and employs radio and label veterans on its promo staff. “You could argue [radio] is not what it was 15 years ago. When you got a hit on radio, that was the all-being. Sometimes you used to lead with radio, and now radio comes later.”
Robust radio promotion departments have been expensive for labels to maintain: It costs money to send employees from New York, Los Angeles or Nashville to build relationships with programmers throughout the U.S. Still, these departments are where labels keep “boots on the ground,” as Monk Harrison calls them: employees with an understanding of how fans in Omaha or Detroit discover artists, attend shows and follow local entertainment from concerts to sports. “Relationships are still key and no algorithm can replace that,” says David Linton, a former executive at Capitol, Island and Arista who is a program director with jazz station WCLK in Atlanta.
Ed Brennan, who was Atlantic’s vp of alternative promotion until he lost his job in late February, plans to use these kinds of relationships to build his own company, White Leather Projects, potentially focusing on artist management, tour marketing and radio promotion. In the meantime, he’s concentrating on more important issues. “The first thing I did when I got the phone call that my position was to be eliminated, I volunteered to chaperone my son’s field trip at school. He’s 8,” Brennan says. “I’m excited about the unknown future.”
Additional reporting by Gail Mitchell.
With a couple hundred songs across 10 albums — plus one more on the way — Taylor Swift definitely has enough music to have her own radio channel. And pretty soon, she will.
SiriusXM announced Tuesday (April 2) that it plans to launch “Channel 13 (Taylor’s Version)” this month, allowing listeners to hear selections from the pop star’s 17-year discography 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nothing is off limits, too, with the broadcaster promising to play both original and “Taylor’s Version” editions of her older hits as well as From the Vault songs, live recordings, bonus tracks and more.
Plus, Swifties will come on-air to share their own “personal and meaningful experiences with Taylor and her music,” according to a release.
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The channel will go live on April 7 and remain available through March 6. On the 13th day of its run — April 19 — Swift will drop her highly anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. To tune in, fans need only download the SiriusXM app and select Channel 13.
“The versatility of Taylor’s music and the phenomenal impact she’s had in her career across so many musical genres will be on full display,” said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM president and chief content officer. “We’re all experiencing a legend at work and are so thrilled to work with Taylor to present a one-of-a-kind channel that connects her fans with her extraordinary body of work.”
The news comes in the midst of a break in the 14-time Grammy winner’s ongoing global Eras Tour, which will pick back up in May with a four-night stint in Paris. In the meantime, Swift is gearing up to release Tortured Poets, which features collaborations with Post Malone and Florence + the Machine as well as four bonus tracks spread out across different extended versions of the album.
On Monday (April 1), the “Anti-Hero” singer won artist of the year at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards, which she accepted via a pre-recorded speech. “It’s completely up to you to choose how you spend your time, what concerts you want to go to, what music you want to make the soundtrack to your life,” she said in the video, which played during the ceremony.
She added, “To anyone who has included me in those choices, I’m so, so, so thankful for that.”
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams was left flustered when confronted on a radio broadcast about reviving harmful racial profiling policies by the NYPD.
On Thursday (March 28), New York City Mayor Eric Adams appeared on The Breakfast Club for a conversation with hosts Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy. It soon got tense due to lawyer and political commentator Olayemi Olurin challenging Adams on his administration’s stances concerning the New York Police Department and public safety, which left him at times visibly flustered.
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As Adams had finished a point about the public perception of crime and safety in the city’s subway system, Olurin questioned him on his rhetoric about in press conferences. “You’ve continued to fearmonger about crime in the subways, you’ve added 2,000 police officers in the subways despite the fact that you’ve acknowledged that the subways are not that dangerous,” she said. Adams replied, “I’m lost. Can you give me the quotes where I’ve done that?”
The exchange soon got testy as Olurin quoted statistics from a federal monitor regarding the revival of policies utilizing racial profiling of Black and Brown citizens as Adams seemed to scoff with a laugh. “They said that you brought back units doing stop and frisk worse than what we’ve seen in the Bloomberg era.” Adams countered by asking her to show data, to which Olurin replied, “I know it’s been available to you because your spokesperson commented on it.” She then went on to recount how in their analysis, they found that 97% of all stops and searches in ten neighborhoods have been on Black and Latino New Yorkers.
Adams was clearly frustrated, at times directing his conversation towards Charlemagne and DJ Envy instead of Olurin halfway through the interview, saying she was providing “misinformation.” One key moment came as Adams attempted to deflect by bringing up NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller who was shot and killed in Far Rockaway earlier this week, claiming that Olurin was “dismissive” of his life. “Mayor Adams, that’s not going to work on me,” she replied. He then challenged her on if she has ever visited the family of a slain officer, to which she countered: “And the family of the 19-year-old who was killed by cops that he called for help yesterday in Queens, have you visited them?” He offered no response.
The entire interview between Mayor Eric Adams and Olayemi Olurin is available to watch above.
When Beyoncè announced the March 29 release of what’s expected to be a country-leaning album, Cowboy Carter, she alluded to a moment when she felt unwelcome in the genre.
But current chart numbers suggest that the carpet has been rolled out for her, assuming she’s willing to keep walking the path. Her single “Texas Hold ’Em” jumps to No. 33 in its sixth week on the Country Airplay chart dated March 30, while it remains at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs. The Airplay position is lower than the slots the song occupies on other genre charts, where she has been historically established. But country radio develops slowly. Only two of the 32 songs ahead of her on Country Airplay — Nate Smith’s “Bulletproof” and Keith Urban’s “Messed Up As Me”— have charted for six weeks or fewer. The performance of “Texas Hold ’Em” suggests that the genre may be as open as it ever has to figures invading country from other entertainment formats.
“I kind of see things starting to open up,” says Country’s Radio Coach owner and CEO John Shomby.
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Beyoncè is hardly the only artist making a move into the format from another entertainment base. Post Malone spent 18 weeks on Country Airplay in a pairing with the late Joe Diffie, Diplo has released two country-shaded projects, and Lana Del Rey is reportedly recording a country album. Additionally, actors Charles Esten and Luke Grimes recently released their debut country albums, contemporary Christian artist Anne Wilson has signed with Universal Music Group Nashville, and retired St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright made his Grand Ole Opry debut on March 9.
There’s no guarantee that any — let alone all — of them will stick. But it’s not like country music is a closed society.
“Take a look at Jelly Roll,” Shomby says. “This guy was a rapper, for crying out loud — he wasn’t even a famous rapper, but he was around. He’s welcome with open arms.”
It hasn’t always been that way. There’ve been plenty of figures from other music formats — such as Jessica Simpson, Connie Francis and La Toya Jackson — who made brief forays into country, then disappeared. So did former NFL quarterbacks Terry Bradshaw and Danny White, plus actors Dennis Weaver and Maureen McCormick.
The country music business has long been skeptical of people it perceives as carpetbaggers. Even artists who’ve had some success when jumping into country — such as Tom Jones, who scored a No. 1 single with 1977’s “Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow” and a top five with 1983’s “Touch Me (I’ll Be Your Fool Once More)” — have been flummoxed by its expectation of a commitment.
“With country stations, if you don’t record country all the time, they feel then that you’re not a country artist,” he complained in ’83. “If you only come out with an occasional country album, it’s hard to get it played on some stations because they stick with their regulars.”
R&B and adult contemporary stations, he allowed, operated with the same sort of provincialism.
But plenty of artists have made successful transitions into country, too — Conway Twitty, Dan Seals, John Schneider, Exile and Darius Rucker, to name a few. All of them faced skepticism on their way to acceptance. Seals’ former manager, Melody Place COO Tony Gottlieb, recalls when Seals was confronted about it on late-night TV.
“This guy who’s from Nashville — obviously tuned into the Nashville scene — asks Dan, ‘What do you say about failed pop artists coming to Nashville to pursue country music careers?’ ” recalls Gottlieb. “Of course, as Dan’s manager, I wanted to strangle the guy because he had just ambushed him right on live TV.”
Seals had actually been raised on country — Ernest Tubb and The Louvin Brothers — and he proved himself over the long haul. His fourth single, “God Must Be a Cowboy,” became the first of 16 top 10s, including 11 No. 1s. Like Twitty and Kenny Rogers before him, Seals did three things that most successful outsiders have done to become insiders: He committed to country; his music targeted the center of the format, not its sonic periphery; and he recorded high-quality songs.
“You can be new one time,” observes Mike Reid, who segued from his original career as an all-pro NFL lineman into a country singer-songwriter in the 1980s. “But you better always be good, you know. The audience is going to tell you if you’re any good or not.”
The audience likewise will decide whether members of the current crop — including Beyoncè and Post Malone — make an authentic connection with their country endeavors. Pushback is to be expected in the beginning.
Maverick partner Clarence Spalding saw that play out in the early 1980s as the road manager for Exile, which began making country records five years after a No. 1 pop single with “Kiss You All Over.” Spalding’s current management client list includes Rucker, who was known as the frontman for multiplatinum pop/rock band Hootie + the Blowfish before he recorded as a solo country artist.
“There’s a divide — there always is — when anything new comes in town,” Spalding notes. “It’s, you know, ‘That’s not country,’ ‘That is country,’ ‘What is country?’ I don’t know the answer; it’s a subjective thing. If the consumer accepts it as country, then it’s country.”
Transitioning into the genre might actually be easier now than ever before for multiple reasons, beginning with the makeup of the music itself. From the soul-tinged sound of Thomas Rhett’s core hits to the hard-rock influence in HARDY’s material, the genre is much more flexible.
“It’s a wider avenue to go down, and so it’s going to be more forgiving than if it were the traditional country song,” suggests Reid. “You better not go near that unless you know what the hell you’re doing.”
Additionally, Taylor Swift’s reverse transition more than a decade ago, from country singer to pop stadium-filler, has made genre-hopping more acceptable.
“She could probably put a country album out tomorrow, and nobody’s going to question anything,” Shomby says.
Like Swift, Beyoncè, Post Malone and Del Rey are all courting country while they are still going strong in their original genre. Many of their predecessors tried to jump to country only when their pop careers had sunk, creating a negative view of the practice in Nashville.
Radio programmers are operating differently, too. Many modern PDs came into country from other formats and view country’s boundaries with more elasticity, and since they often work for stations in multiple formats, they’re less concerned about the exclusivity of any single genre. Plus, digital service providers have created a more fluid environment.
“Clearly the technology has changed this,” says Gottlieb. “This discussion would not have occurred in the same context six, eight years ago before the DSPs had such a major impact on what we’re doing.”
Perhaps the biggest factor, though, is sheer quality. The country industry has historically felt demeaned by the rest of the business. The fact that visiting artists are approaching country while they’re hot is viewed positively on Music Row. But the quality, and authenticity, of the work weighs most heavily in the reception it receives.
“If it’s a really, really good song, I hope they play it,” Spalding reasons. “And if it’s not a really good song, if it just has a big name on it — you know, don’t spread the crap.”
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This year’s Academy of Country Music (ACM) Radio Awards nominees have been revealed, and includes double nominations for KATI-FM (Jefferson City, Missouri), KCLR-FM (Columbia, Missouri), KFRG-FM (Riverside, California), KKWF-FM (Seattle, Washington), KXKT-FM (Omaha, Nebraska), WGGY-FM (Scranton, Pennsylvania), WLHK-FM (Indianapolis, Indiana), and WUBE-FM (Cincinnati, Ohio).
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The winners of the ACM Radio Awards will be revealed prior to the 59th annual ACM Awards, which are slated for Thursday, May 16, at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
The 59th ACM Radio Awards nominees are:
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National daily on-air personality of the year:
Bobby Bones, Amy, Lunchbox, Producer Eddie, Morgan, SZN, Mike D, Abby, Pitts, Kevin, Lauren and Scuba Steve (The Bobby Bones Show)
Ania Hammar (The Highway/Nights with Ania)
Katie Neal (Katie & Company)
Elaina Smith (Nights With Elaina)
Rob Stone and Holly Hutton (The Rob + Holly Show)
National weekly on-air personality of the year
Kix Brooks (American Country Countdown)
B-Dub (B-Dub Radio Saturday Night)
Lon Helton (Country Countdown USA with Lon Helton)
Buzz Brainard (Hot 30 Countdown with Buzz Brainard)
Wayne D and Tay (iHeartCountry House Party)
Kelly Sutton (Y’all Access with Kelly Sutton)
On-air personality of the year – major market:
The Morning Wolfpack with Matt McAllister –Matt McAllister, Gabe Mercer, and “Captain Ron” Koons/KKWF-FM, Seattle, WA
The Jason Pullman Show – Jason Pullman/ KPLX-FM, Dallas, TX
Paul Schadt and Sarah Lee in the Morning – Paul Schadt, Sarah Lee, and Producer Geoff/WKKT-FM, Charlotte, NC
Angie Ward – Angie Ward/WUBL-FM, Atlanta, GA
The Most Fun Afternoons with Scotty Kay – Scotty Kay/WUSN-FM, Chicago, IL
On-air personality of the year – large market:
Dale Carter Morning Show – Dale Carter/ KFKF-FM, Kansas City, MO
Anthony – Anthony/ KFRG-FM, Riverside, CA
Annie & Cole – Annie Fox and Cole Dunbar/ WLHK-FM, Indianapolis, IN
The Wayne D Show – Wayne D and Tay Hamilton/ WSIX-FM, Nashville, TN
Jesse & Anna – Jesse Tack and Anna Marie/ WUBE-FM, Cincinnati, OH
On-air personality of the year – medium market:
Drive Home with Jody Jo – Jody Jo/ KSKS-FM, Fresno, CA
Steve & Gina in the Morning – Steve Lundy and Gina Melton/ KXKT-FM, Omaha, NE
The Doc Show – Doc Medek and Chewy Medek/ WGGY-FM, Scranton, PA
New Country Mornings with Nancy and Woody – Nancy Wilson and Aaron Woods/ WHKO-FM, Dayton, OH
Mo & StyckMan – Mo and StyckMan/ WUSY-FM, Chattanooga, TN
On-air personality of the year – small market:
Hilley & Hart – Kevin Hilley and Erin Hart/ KATI-FM, Jefferson City, MO
Liz & Scotty in the Morning – Liz DelGrosso and Scotty Cox/ KCLR-FM, Columbia, MO
Morning Show with Pat James – Pat James/ KHUT-FM, Hutchinson, KS
The Eddie Foxx Show – Eddie Foxx and Amanda Foxx/ WKSF-FM, Asheville, NC
Steve, Ben and Nikki – Steve, Ben, and Nikki/ WXBQ-FM, Bristol, VA
radio station of the year – major market:
KILT-FM – Houston, TX
KKWF-FM – Seattle, WA
KSON-FM – San Diego, CA
WXTU-FM – Philadelphia, PA
WYCD-FM – Detroit, MI
Radio station of the year – large market
KFRG-FM – Riverside, CA
KNCI-FM -Sacramento, CA
WDSY-FM -Pittsburgh, PA
WLHK-FM – Indianapolis, IN
WQDR-FM – Raleigh, NC
WUBE-FM – Cincinnati, OH
Radio station of the year – medium market
KUZZ-FM – Bakersfield, CA
KXKT-FM – Omaha, NE
WBEE-FM – Rochester, NY
WGGY-FM – Scranton, PA
WTHT-FM – Portland, ME
Radio station of the year – small market
KATI-FM – Jefferson City, MO
KCLR-FM – Columbia, MO
WFLS-FM – Fredericksburg, VA
WNGC-FM – Athens, GA
WRTB-FM -Rockford, IL
Music monitoring company MonitorLATINO has expanded its services to Spain, giving the music community in the country “access to a platform with advice, data and accurate song playback information on radio and digital platforms,” according to a press release. Founded more than 20 years ago in the United States, the reputable music industry firm — […]
