Rock
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At some point, music fans of a certain age inevitably ask the same question: why do shows have to start so late? Maybe you’re too cool to admit it, but Oscar-nominee Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t. The 64-year-old acting legend recently told The Hollywood Reporter on the Independent Spirit Awards red carpet and the Today show that as an early riser, she’s annoyed that there are no rock show matinees.
“I would love to go see Coldplay. I would love it,” she said. “The problem is, I’m not going to see Coldplay if they start their show at 9 and there’s an opening act. I want to hear Coldplay at 1 p.m.” Coldplay, on break from their mega Music of the Spheres world tour — which, for the record, has them taking the stage around 9 p.m. most nights — could not be reached for comment at press time.
The Halloween star has a point, though. So, since she asked, Billboard reached out to some prominent venue owners and promoters to ask them why JLC can’t sing a “Hymn For the Weekend” and still be home in time for the evening news.
“Just like when Jamie Lee Curtis’ movies play in theaters, they need to sell popcorn. Most of our margin is on drinks,” says Peter Shapiro, owner of Relix magazine, as well as the Brooklyn Bowl venues in New York, Las Vegas and Nashville and a number of other clubs. “It’s hard to sell drinks at 1 p.m.”
Shapiro says with the majority of ticket revenue and service fees going to the band (and ticketing agencies), the headliners take home most of the night’s haul, leaving the venue to live off ancillary revenue, most of which comes from the bar.
And while drinks play a huge part in keeping the lights on, Shapiro says there is another crucial element keeping shows after dark: mystique. “You can see a show in the afternoon, but at the end of the arc of the day it works going to a show in darkness,” he says. “The lights, being indoors… that’s all part of the impact. The lighting just doesn’t work as well at 1 p.m.”
After all, when Curtis is on set, she needs proper lighting to make a scene pop, just like headliners need their strobes and lasers to help amp up that going-out energy. “It’s the arc of the day, the moon… rock n’ roll lives at night. It’s in the DNA of rock n’ roll,” says Shapiro.
In a twist that might make JLC feel Everything Everywhere All At Once, however, that might slowly be changing, according Sound Talent Group agent John Pantle. As artists and their teams increasingly dive into the data behind their audience’s preferences, he says STG has found that some of his clients — and their fans — are into daytime gigs.
“Those shows are easier and cheaper to put together and through the use of metrics and social data, artists are better understanding the psychographics of their fanbases and tailoring performances to where those audiences are,” he says. As an example, he pointed to a recent sold-out show at L.A.’s Echoplex by Japanese metal band Nemophila, at which the headliner promptly started at 8 p.m.
“Younger audiences and teen audiences like that and we do matinee shows as well as headliner shows,” he says. “I have no problem doing an afternoon show because that proves artists are getting smarter about understanding their fanbase,” he says, adding, “it’s not all just working Joes who get off at 7 p.m.”
One of the few upsides of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Pantle, is that there is a greater understanding of the work-from-home atmosphere and how we’ve all gotten a better handle on how we want to spend our time playing. “The days of concerts being solely for an all-night experience and leaving at 1:30 in the morning are over,” he says, noting that by wrapping before 11 or midnight, the bands and their crews can load-out earlier and get on the road at a decent hour.
He’s seen the results by booking a number of earlier gigs for acts such as Japanese rockers Radwimps, virtual pop star Hatsune Miku and singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas. “I know the Hatsune Miku crowd, I know their demos, so not all shows are gonna be starting at 11 p.m. and not all shows are gonna be at 1 p.m. But data reflects audience. And if artist’s actions don’t reflect audience, artists will lose audience.”
That’s all fine and good for shows that might appeal to a younger, less hard-drinking crowd, but what about the midnight marauding EDM audience, who are used to, and expect, the party to go all night long?
Sorry, that’s changing too, according to veteran dance promoter James “Disco” Donnie Estopinal of Disco Donnie Presents. “When I first started doing shows in the ’90s they used to go until 8 a.m. and you can imagine how that looked… it was like The Walking Dead before that show even existed.” Lately, the DDP boss has slowly been moving up the end time of some of his festivals and events to midnight, or even 10 p.m., “depending on what I can get away with.”
Estopinal says so far he hasn’t seen any effect on attendance numbers, and, like Pantle, he also loves getting his team and venue staff home earlier. “Most people know you probably can’t get a venue in the middle of a city that will let you go until 2 a.m.,” he says, noting that there are, of course, exceptions such as Eric Prydz, whose legendarily trippy 3D hologram images just won’t fly at lunchtime.
He also says there is a younger audience of EDM fans who grew up going to Las Vegas daytime pool parties — or as his college-age son has informed him, “dartys” — that are a win-win for artists and crews used to breaking gear down when the sun comes up; the up-charge on drinks at such Vegas events doesn’t hurt the house’s bottom line, either. “I was just in New Orleans for Mardi Gras where we did two shows and I took a nap before both shows so I could make it until 4 a.m. and people made fun of me,” he jokes. “But I told them ‘I’m not gonna make it unless I get that nap.’”
Shapiro is already prepping the next generation of hard-dartyers for their turn with his long-running series called “Rock and Roll Playhouse.” The series has brought the music of Prince, Queen, The Beatles and Taylor Swift to more than two dozen venues around the country for morning and early afternoon shows at 500-1,500-capacity rooms that would otherwise be idle at that time.
“The weekend afternoon shows are a nice augmentation to Saturday night shows and it’s a good intro to cue the next generation into rock n’ roll,” Shapiro says. “But it’s an addition. It can never replace the DNA [of nighttime shows]… people won’t come at 3 and drink a bunch of beers, and that’s the money that powers the venues and the way venues can pay artists more money.”
So, take heart Jamie Lee — you might be getting your darty wish after all.
Pop-punk trio Meet Me @ the Altar arrived during the pandemic as a vibrant newcomer to the scene — and has been eager to release its debut album ever since. “I’m done waiting,” vocalist Edith Victoria tells Billboard in late February, in a tone that fuses excitement with exasperation. “I’m really over it.”
Fortunately, the wait is over as Past // Present // Future arrives today (March 10) on Fueled by Ramen. It’s the culmination of an effort that the band — comprised of Victoria and guitarist/bassist Téa Campbell, both 22, and drummer Ada Juarez, 24 — began writing in mid-2021.
With a tense-themed title that nods to the genre’s pivotal players throughout the past few decades and teases where the band will take it from here. Single “Kool,” backed by crunchy guitar, turns its title into an approximately nine-syllable word; “Thx 4 Nothin’” could fit seamlessly onto the Jonas Brothers’ 2008 album, A Little Bit Longer; and album closer “King of Everything” rolls its grunge-based production into a head-banging chorus. “We didn’t want to trap ourselves in the box of genre,” Campbell says. “It’s our art at the end, and we want to make the music that makes us happy.”
And though the group is intent on providing more than just nostalgia, its members aren’t afraid to tug on heartstrings: During its tour opener at New York’s Gramercy Theatre at the top of March, the band performed a medley of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” into Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” into the Freaky Friday battle of the bands classic, “Take Me Away.” (Plus, Victoria noted during the show that the vulnerable “T.M.I” draws inspiration from P!nk’s 2001 hit “Don’t Let Me Get Me.”)
Over the course of the roughly hourlong set (Meet Me @ the Altar’s first headlining show, and its first of 23 stops on tour), the trio took turns marveling at the crowd and offering an early listen of some Past // Present // Future hits.
“That’s such a big aspect in releasing anything. People really come to understand [new music] after they see it played live,” Victoria says. “I’ve even experienced that as a music lover. Not really liking a song, and then after I see it live, I’m like, ‘I love that song.’ I’m really excited for that.”
Below, Victoria, Campbell and Juarez discuss how they made an experimental — yet cohesive — body of work, wanting to tour arenas with the Jonas Brothers and more.
The release of Past // Present // Future comes just before the fifth anniversary of your first EP as a trio, Changing States. How has your creation process evolved since?
Campbell: I always forget that we even have Changing States. As time goes on, you understand each other’s visions, and we’re always communicating and talking about what we want for this band and what directions we want to go. We’ve gotten a lot better at visualizing our vision. Before, we were kind of just doing whatever. Now, we’re really locking in on what we want to be making.
What conversations inspired the sonic direction of this debut?
Victoria: We wanted for it to be a little bit experimental because it’s our first record. If fans end up liking those songs, we have so many different avenues we can take for the second [album] — and not have our fan base be so confused as to where the heck it came from.
Campbell: Right. We didn’t want to trap ourselves in the box of genre, which a lot of artists do and a lot of fans inflict on bands, too, which is kind of messed up. It’s our art at the end of the day, and we want to make the music that makes us happy. If other people like it, that is great. But if they don’t, it’s still music for us. Like Edith said, we want to be able to go any direction [while] still keeping it rock-based. An example of a band who did it perfectly was Paramore: Their records all sound different, but it’s still them. Some people take a while to get with it, and that’s alright. That happens any time anyone changes anything. But they’ll get over it.
Victoria: One thing I’ve always hated about the music industry is that fans don’t see their favorite artists as lovers of music that can like multiple things. It’s so unfortunate because I remember when Paramore released After Laughter everyone was freaking out and I was like, “This is so good, though!”
You’ve previously discussed wanting to create an album that sounded like a cohesive body of work. Why was that an important focus?
Victoria: [With] us being huge music-lovers and listening to a lot of different types of records, it’s always really hard to find the sweet spot between having a diverse record but also keeping it cohesive. Because you can listen to an album and then four songs in you’ll be like, “Well, I’ve already heard this.” We had to find out how to keep it diverse but also keep it cohesive. That’s what we would like to see in other artists, so we want that for our band, too.
Were there moments when you thought the project was finished and then you’d listen back later and think, “You know, we’ve heard this song already”?
Juarez: So many times.
Campbell: We thought we were done in April and didn’t get done until November. In the beginning, there were so many swaps because we weren’t really sure of what specific sound we wanted this album to have. As we had more writing sessions and fell in love with more songs, we started to really understand, so then those would beat out some of the other ones that we didn’t really feel fit that cohesive vibe. We recorded the album in April and then we had a last-minute session and flew out to L.A., wrote a couple more songs and had to put them on the album. We swapped those out last second.
How many songs do you think were written for the album in total?
Victoria: Around 30? There are some songs that I refuse to ever … we’re taking those to our grave.
Juarez: Those our deepest, darkest secrets. It’s just going to be us knowing those songs.
John Fields (Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato) helmed the album’s production. How did that come together?
Victoria: I made a playlist of early 2000s throwback pop-rock songs — Kelly Clarkson, Demi Lovato, Jonas Brothers, all those people. We were all listening to it during the process, and when we were seeing how the record was going to shape up, we had to decide who [was going] to produce it. I was looking through that playlist and I saw John Fields’ name under “Get Back” by Demi Lovato, and that’s one of our favorite songs. I was like, “He’s probably going to be a million dollars a song, it’s not going to work out.” But we had dinner with our A&R and he was like, “I’ll just reach out and see what happens.” John really liked us and it all worked out.
Juarez: Long live John Fields. He was the perfect person for this album.
The first line on the album opener and lead single, “Say It (To My Face),” immediately addresses being an industry plant. Why did you decide to kick it off with that?
Victoria: That’s the leading insult that people say to us, and we wanted to start this album rollout with an in-your-face moment. We’ve heard it so much since signing to the label; just people saying sh-t for no reason. We still get that. We get that more now than I think we ever have.
Campbell: In between [August 2021 EP] Model Citizen and “Say It,” we had all that time to see what people were saying. It was like, “We’ve been gone for a while, but we’re back. We saw what you were saying while we were gone! We’re going to address it and we’re moving on.”
You’ve been signed to Fueled by Ramen for a few years now. What are some of the bigger goals the label has helped you accomplish?
Campbell: First of all, we have the best publicists in the world. That has contributed to so much of our blowup. Everyone on the label genuinely cares, and it’s so nice to feel taken care of and listened to because that’s hard to come by, especially in our experience.
It’s also funny because — I’ve seen this recently — people assume that when a band changes anything, it’s because a label is making them. It’s all us. If you don’t like that, that sucks because it’s our idea. The label never forces us to do anything. Everything is our choice.
Victoria: It’s so funny. Especially since we kind of shifted gears with our sound, everyone is like, “Oh, the label is changing them.” They’re not.
Juarez: Funny enough, we would’ve done it sooner. Almost did.
Victoria: We almost did. Model Citizen almost sounded more like this.
You’re on your first headlining tour. As a band that has supported so many icons on the road, what were you eager to apply to your own shows?
Campbell: Every time we tour with someone, we’re out there [in the crowd]. To be able to tour with bands like Coheed and Cambria, The Used and Green Day who have been doing this for so long, we really studied those acts because they alter their songs around the show and alter their show around the songs. It makes you think of, like, “Oh, I could be doing this kind of moment” — whether it be a clapping thing or whatever — in our own songs. We really tried to absorb as much as we could.
Now that the album is out, what are the band’s biggest goals moving forward?
Juarez: Taking over the world.
Campbell: I want to tour with the Jonas Brothers!
Juarez: I want to do a big arena tour so bad. Manifesting.
Victoria: Yeah, I’d really want us to open up for an arena tour. The Green Day shows that we played in Europe were amazing. But Jonas Brothers, yes. They have a new album coming out, too…
If you had to designate one song on the album in each of the “past,” “present” and “future” categories, which would you choose?
Campbell: I would say “T.M.I” is past because I feel like that song has a vibe most similar to “Bigger Than Me.” Like, that era of MMATA.
Victoria: I feel like “Try,” too.
Juarez: For future, “Kool” has to be there. That’s that futuristic type sh-t. People haven’t even thought of it yet.
Campbell: Present would probably be “Say It.”
Victoria: Also, it could be “Rocket Science” from a lyrical sense. We’re experiencing so many new things and I think we’re going to have to remind ourselves—
Campbell: It isn’t rocket science!
Victoria: Yeah! It’s a whole new era for us, in every single way. First album, new sound, new vibes. We might have to remind ourselves a couple of times to chill and not overthink [things]. Like, “Oh yeah. We did that.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Ethereal rock meets ’90s punk on Florence + The Machine‘s new cover of No Doubt‘s classic “Just a Girl,” recorded for the highly anticipated upcoming second season of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.
The cover is also heavily used throughout the brand new trailer for Yellowjackets season two, both of which dropped Thursday (March 9). Based on the trailer, No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani‘s spunky 1995 lyrics perfectly match the show’s coming-of-age and survival themes, while Florence Welch’s haunted vocals and sinister production bring out Yellowjacket‘s horror-inspired texture.
“I’m such a huge fan of Yellowjackets and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for the show,” Welch said of the cover in a statement. “We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone whose first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani it was a dream job.”
Available for streaming March 24, the second season of Yellowjackets will continue the Emmy-nominated thriller’s harrowing story of a girls’ soccer team fighting for survival after a plane crash leaves them stranded in the wilderness. “As they confront the horrible truth of what survival entails, the real nightmare for each of them will be to figure out who they are — and what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive,” reads a release about the upcoming season.
Meanwhile, Welch is currently in the middle of her world tour in support of Dance Fever, Florence + The Machine’s fifth studio album released in May last year. The “Just a Girl” cover comes exactly three months after Welch and Ethel Cain dropped a duet version of “Morning Elvis,” the final track on Dance Fever.
Stream Florence + The Machine’s cover of “Just A Girl” and watch the trailer for Yellowjackets Season 2 below:
The Cure announced their first run of North American dates in more than four years on Thursday (March 9). The Robert Smith-led band’s Shows of a Lost World Tour is slated to kick off on May 10 at the Smoothie Center in New Orleans and take the goth rock icons through Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal and Atlanta before wrapping up at Miami-Dade Arena in Miami, FL on July 1.
The run — their first extensive U.S. dates since 23019 — will include a three-night stand at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles (May 23, 24, 25) as well as a triple-play at New York’s Madison Square Garden (June 20, 21, 22); The Twilight Sad will open all the shows.
Tickets for all 30 dates will go on sale via Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program beginning March 15; pre-registration is required and registration will close on March 13 at 10 a.m. PT. In the wake of ticket sale snafus affecting Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny onsales, in a message to fans, the Cure wrote, “we have priced tickets to benefit fans and our efforts to block scalpers and limited inflated resale prices are being supported by our ticketing partners.”
At press time there was no information about new music from the band, though Smith has been promising a follow-up to 2008’s 4:13 Dream for several years.
Check out the dates for The Cure’s Shows of a Lost World 2023 North American Tour below.
May 10 — New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King CenterMay 12 — Houston, TX @ Toyota CenterMay 13 — Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis PavilionMay 14 — Austin, TX @ Moody CenterMay 16 — Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta AmphitheaterMay 18 — Phoenix, AZ @ Desert Diamond ArenaMay 20 — San Diego, CA @ NICU AmphitheatreMay 23 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood BowlMay 24 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood BowlMay 25 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood BowlMay 27 — San Francisco, CA @ Shoreline AmphitheatreJune 1 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge ArenaJune 2 — Vancouver, British Columbia @ Rogers ArenaJune 4 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Smart Home ArenaJune 6 — Greenwood Village, CO @ Fiddler’s Green AmphitheatreJune 8 — Saint Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy CenterJune 10 — Chicago, IL @ United CenterJune 11 — Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music CenterJune 13 — Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music TheatreJune 14 — Toronto, Ontario @ Budweiser StageJune 16 — Montreal, Quebec @ Bell CentreJune 18 — Boston, MA @ Xfinity CenterJune 20 — New York, NY @ Madison Square GardenJune 21 — New York, NY @ Madison Square GardenJune 22 — New York, NY @ Madison Square GardenJune 24 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo CenterJune 25 — Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post PavilionJune 27 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm ArenaJune 29 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie ArenaJuly 1 — Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena
Gorillaz and Godsmack lead Billboard’s rock album charts dated March 11 with the new sets Cracker Island and Lighting Up the Sky, respectively.
Gorillaz’s Island bows at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums tallies with 64,000 equivalent album units earned, according to Luminate. A total of 49,000 of those units are via album sales.
It’s the virtual band’s third No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums and first since 2017’s Humanz. Prior to that, Plastic Beach ruled in 2010. (The chart began in 2006.)
Concurrently, Island crowns Top Album Sales, becoming the act’s second leader (after Humanz) and tops Vinyl Albums with 32,000 sold on vinyl.
On the all-genre Billboard 200, as previously reported, Island starts at No. 3, marking Gorillaz’s sixth top 10 and best rank since Humanz reached No. 2.
Seven songs from Island reach the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated March 11, led by “Tormenta,” featuring Bad Bunny, at No. 9, thanks to 5.1 million official U.S. streams and 1,000 downloads sold. It’s followed by current radio single “New Gold,” featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown, up 42-22 (2.8 million streams, 1.1 million radio audience impressions). “Gold” currently rises to No. 16 on Alternative Airplay.
Thanks to “Tormenta,” Bad Bunny scores his first entry and top 10 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. He boasts a record 59 top 10s on Hot Latin Songs.
Meanwhile, Godsmack’s Lighting Up the Sky launches at No. 1 on Top Hard Rock Albums on the strength of 21,000 units (18,000 in album sales).
The Sully Erna-fronted band boasts four No. 1s dating to the chart’s 2007 inception, including three in a row, with Sky following 2018’s When Legends Rise and 2014’s 1000Hp. The group first led with The Oracle in 2010.
Sky also begins at No. 3 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums. On the Billboard 200, it opens at No. 19, marking the band’s 11th entry, dating to its initial appearance with its self-titled set in 1999.
The new album’s lead single, “Soul on Fire,” enters Hot Hard Rock Songs at No. 17 (883,000 streams; 478,000 airplay audience impressions) and starts at No. 30 on Mainstream Rock Airplay.
The 2023 Bourbon & Beyond festival at the Highland Festival Grounds in Louisville, Kentucky will host headliners Brandi Carlile, The Killers, The Black Keys and Bruno Mars atop an eclectic lineup of rock, pop, folk, blues and country acts from Sept. 14-17.
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The four-day event’s roster announced on Wednesday (March 8) will also feature Billy Strings, Train, Midland, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors and The Lone Bellow on the first night, which will be topped by Carlile.
Night two will find the Killers atop a list including Duran Duran, Hozier, Brittany Howard, Bastille, The Gaslight Anthem, Wayne Newton, Inahler, Joy Oladokun and more. The Keys and Crowes will top Saturday’s rocking run-down, with support from The Avett Brothers, Spoon, First Aid Kit, Old Crow Medicine Show, City and Colour, Paolo Nutini, Luke Grimes and Danielle Ponder. The final night pairs headliner Mars with Blondie, Jon Batiste, Ryan Bingham, Babyface, Aloe Blacc, ZZ Ward and Fantastic Negrito, among many others.
Each day will also feature a full lineup on the Bluegrass Situation Stage with acts including Kelsey Waldon, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, The Lil Smokies, Twisted Pine, The Cleverlys, Town Mountain, Della Mae, Sunny Mar, Lindsay Lou, Dan Tyminski and Frank Solvian & Dirty Kitchen.
Tickets — including weekend GA, Weekend Mint VIP, Angels Envy Beyond VIP and single day GA and single day Mint VIP — are all available now here. As always, in addition to a full day and night of music, the fest will host bourbon and food stages with appearances from master distillers, A-list chefs and, of course, dozens of bourbons to taste.
Check out the full lineup on the festival poster below.
Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16.
Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.
It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”
For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.
It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.
“I did what I really wanted to do, which was create a body of work that reflected me,” says a soft-spoken Yachty the day before his listening event. “My idea was for this album to be a journey: Press play and fall into a void.”
Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
His desire to move on from his past is understandable. When Yachty entered the industry in his mid-teens with his 2016 major-label debut, the Lil Boat mixtape, featuring the breakout hit “One Night,” he found that along with fame came sailing the internet’s choppy waters. Skeptics often took him to task for not knowing — or caring, maybe — about rap’s roots, and he never shied away from sharing hot takes on Twitter. With his willingness and ability to straddle pop and hip-hop, Yachty produced music he once called “bubble-gum trap” (he has since denounced that phrase) that polarized audiences and critics. Meanwhile, his nonchalant delivery got him labeled as a mumble rapper — another identifier he was never fond of because it felt dismissive of his talent.
“I came into music in a time where rap was real hardcore, it was real street,” he says. “And a bunch of us kids came in with colorful hair and dressing different and basically said, ‘Move out the way, old f-cks. We on some other sh-t.’ I was young and I didn’t really give a f-ck, so I did do things that may have led people to the assumptions that I was a mumble rapper or a SoundCloud kid or I don’t appreciate the history of hip-hop. But to be honest, I’ve always been so much more than just hip-hop.
“There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references,” he continues. “They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.”
Let’s Start Here is proof. Growing up in Atlanta, the artist born Miles McCollum was heavily influenced by his father, a photographer who introduced him to all kinds of sounds. Yachty, once easily identifiable by his bright red braids, found early success by posting songs like “One Night” to SoundCloud, catching the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder/COO of Quality Control Music, now home to Migos, Lil Baby and City Girls. In 2015, Coach K began managing Yachty, who in summer 2016 signed a joint-venture deal with Motown, Capitol Records and Quality Control.
“Yachty was me when I was 18 years old, when I signed him. He was actually me,” says Coach K today. (In 2021, Adam Kluger, whose clients include Bhad Bhabie, began co-managing Yachty.) “All the eclectic, different things, we shared that with each other. He had been wanting to make this album from the first day we signed him. But you know — coming as a hip-hop artist, you have to play the game.”
Yachty played it well. To date, he has charted 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including two top 10 hits for his features on DRAM’s melodic 2016 smash “Broccoli” and Kyle’s 2017 pop-rap track “iSpy.” His third-highest-charting entry arrived unexpectedly last year: the 93-second “Poland,” a track Yachty recorded in about 10 minutes where his warbly vocals more closely resemble singing than rapping. (Let’s Start Here collaborator SADPONY saw “Poland” as a temperature check that proved “people are going to like this Yachty.”)
Beginning with 2016’s Lil Boat mixtape, all eight of Yachty’s major-label-released albums and mixtapes have charted on the Billboard 200. Three have entered the top 10, including Let’s Start Here, which debuted and peaked at No. 9. And while Yachty has only scored one No. 1 album before (Teenage Emotions topped Rap Album Sales), Let’s Start Here debuted atop three genre charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums.
“It feels good to know that people in that world received this so well,” says Motown Records vp of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani. “I think it’s a testament to Yachty going in and saying, ‘F-ck what everyone thinks. I’m going to create something that I’ve always wanted to make — and let us hope the world f-cking loves it.’ ”
Yachty says he was already confident about the album, but after playing it for several of his peers and heroes — including Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Post Malone, Drake, Cardi B, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator — “their reactions boosted me.”
Yet despite Let’s Start Here’s many high-profile supporters, some longtime detractors and fans alike were quick to criticize certain aspects of it, from its art — Yachty quote-tweeted one remark, succinctly replying, “shut up” — to the music itself. Once again, he found himself facing another tidal wave of discourse. But this time, he was ready to ride it. “This release,” Kluger says, “gave him a lot of confidence.”
“I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other sh-t,” Yachty says. “It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the sh-t I was making did not add up to the sh-t I listened to.
“I just wanted more,” he continues. “I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.”
Last spring, Lil Yachty gathered his family, collaborators and team at famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch.
“I remember I got there at night and drove down because this place is like 30 miles outside El Paso,” Coach K says. “I walked in the room and just saw all these instruments and sh-t, and the vibe was just so ill. And I just started smiling. All the producers were in the room, his assistant, his dad. Yachty comes in, puts the album on. We got to the second song, and I told everybody, ‘Stop the music.’ I walked over to him and just said, ‘Man, give me a hug.’ I was like, ‘Yachty, I am so proud of you.’ He came into the game bold, but [to make] this album, you have to be very bold. And to know that he finally did it, it was overwhelming.”
SADPONY (aka Jeremiah Raisen) — who executive-produced Let’s Start Here and, in doing so, spent nearly eight straight months with Yachty — says the time at Sonic Ranch was the perfect way to cap off the months of tunnel vision required while making the album in Brooklyn. “That was new alone,” says Yachty. “I’ve recorded every album in Atlanta at [Quality Control]. That was the first time I recorded away from home. First time I recorded with a new engineer,” Miles B.A. Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist.
And while they did put the finishing touches on the album in Texas, they also let loose. “We had a f-cking grand old time,” SADPONY says. “We had about 50 people all throughout these houses and were driving in these unregistered trucks, like cartel trucks, around this crazy pecan farm. Obviously, we were all having some fun making this psychedelic record.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty couldn’t wait to put it out, and says he turned it in “a long time ago. I think it was just label sh-t and trying to figure out the right time to release it.” For Coach K, it was imperative to have the physical product ready on release date, given that Yachty had made “an experience” of an album. And lately, most pressing plants have an average turnaround time of six to eight months.
Fans, however, were impatient. On Christmas, one month before Let’s Start Here would arrive, the album leaked online. It was dubbed Sonic Ranch. “Everyone was home with their families, so no one could pull it off the internet,” recalls Yachty. “That was really depressing and frustrating.”
Then, weeks later, the album art, tracklist and release date also leaked. “My label made a mistake and sent preorders to Amazon too early, and [the site] posted it,” Yachty says. “So I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” He says the biggest loss was various videos he made to introduce and contextualize the project, all of which “were really weird … [But] I wasn’t introducing it anymore. People already knew.” Only one, called “Department of Mental Tranquility,” made it out, just days before the album.
Yachty says he wasn’t necessarily seeking a mental escape before making Let’s Start Here, but confesses that acid gave him one anyway. “I guess maybe the music went along with it,” he says. The album title changed four or five times, he says, from Momentary Bliss (“It was meant to take you away from reality … where you’re truly listening”) to 180 Degrees (“Because it’s the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever done, but people were like, ‘It’s too on the nose’ ”) to, ultimately, Let’s Start Here — the best way, he decided, to succinctly summarize where he was as an artist: a seven-year veteran, but at 25 years old, still eager to begin a new chapter.
He dug into his less obvious influences: In 2017, he listened to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon for the first time. “I think that was the last time I was like, ‘Whoa.’ You know?” He believes Frank Ocean’s Blonde is “one of the best albums of all time” and cites Tame Impala’s Currents as another project that stopped him in his tracks. All were fuel to his fire.
Taking inspiration from Dark Side, Yachty relied on three women’s voices throughout the album, enlisting Fousheé, Justine Skye and Diana Gordon. Otherwise, guest vocals are spare. Daniel Caesar features on album closer “Reach the Sunshine.,” while the late Bob Ross (of The Joy of Painting fame) has a historic posthumous feature on “We Saw the Sun!”
Rouzbehani tells Billboard that Ross’ estate declined Yachty’s request at first: “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean. They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.” But Yachty was adamant, and Rouzbehani played the track for Ross’ team and also sent the entire album’s lyrics to set the group at ease. “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call,” she says. “Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
From the start, Coach K believed Let’s Start Here would open lots of doors for Yachty — and ultimately, other artists, too. Questlove may have said it best, posting the album art on Instagram with a lengthy caption that read in part: “this lp might be the most surprising transition of any music career I’ve witnessed in a min, especially under the umbrella of hip hop … Sh-t like this (envelope pushing) got me hyped about music’s future.”
“People don’t know where Yachty’s going to go now, and I think that’s the coolest sh-t, artistrywise,” says SADPONY. “That’s some Iggy Pop-, David Bowie-type sh-t. Where the mysteriousness of being an artist is back.”
Recently, Lil Yachty held auditions for an all-women touring band. “It was an experience for like Simon Cowell or Randy [Jackson],” he says, offering a simple explanation for the choice: “In my life, women are superheroes.”
And according to Yachty, pulling off his show will take superhuman strength: “Because the show has to match the album. It has to be big.” As eager as he was to release Let’s Start Here, he’s even more antsy to perform it live — but planning a tour, he says, required gauging the reaction to it. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he says. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”
While Yachty’s last full-length studio album, Lil Boat 3, arrived in 2020, he released the Michigan Boy Boat mixtape in 2021, a project as reverential of the state’s flourishing hip-hop scenes in Detroit and Flint as Let’s Start Here is of its psych-rock touchstones. And though he claims he doesn’t do much with his days, his recent accomplishments, both musical and beyond, suggest otherwise. He launched his own cryptocurrency, YachtyCoin, at the end of 2020; signed his first artist, Draft Day, to his Concrete Boyz label at the start of 2021; invested in the Jewish dating app Lox Club; and launched his own line of frozen pizza, Yachty’s Pizzeria, last September. (He has famously declared he has never eaten a vegetable; at his Jersey City listening event, there was an abundance of candy, doughnut holes and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.)
But there are only two things that seem to remotely excite him, first and foremost of which is being a father. As proud as he is of Let’s Start Here, he says it comes in second to having his now 1-year-old daughter — though he says with a laugh that she “doesn’t really give a f-ck” about his music yet. “I haven’t played [this album] for her, but her mom plays her my old stuff,” he continues. “The mother of my child is Dominican and Puerto Rican, so she loves Selena — she plays her a lot. [We watch] the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez a sh-t ton and a lot of Disney movie sh-t, like Frozen, Lion King and that type of vibe.”
Aside from being a dad, he most cares about working with other artists. Recently, he flew eight of his biggest fans — most of whom he has kept in touch with for years — to Atlanta. He had them over, played Let’s Start Here, took them to dinner and bowling, introduced them to his mom and dad, and then showed them a documentary he made for the album. (He’s not sure if he’ll release it.) One of the fans is an aspiring rapper; naturally, the two made a song together.
“I want to be Quincy Jones,” Yachty near whispers. Last year, he co-produced a handful of tracks on the Drake and 21 Savage collaborative album Her Loss. And recently, he features on two Zack Bia tracks, one of which he produced, for Bia’s upcoming album. Six months ago, he started living by himself for the first time. “I wish I did it sooner. I wake up, play video games and then I go to the studio all night until the morning,” he says. “That’s all I want to do.” Since finishing Let’s Start Here, Yachty claims he has made hundreds of songs, some experimenting with “electronic pop sh-t” that he can only describe as “tight.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty wants to keep working with artists and producers outside of hip-hop, mentioning the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even sharing his dream of writing a ballad for Elton John. (“I know I could write him a beautiful song.”) With South Korean music company HYBE’s recent purchase of Quality Control — a $300 million deal — Yachty’s realm of possibility is bigger than ever.
But he’s not ruling out his genre roots. Arguably, Let’s Start Here was made for the peers and heroes he played it for first — and was inspired by hip-hop’s chameleons. “I would love to do a project with Tyler [The Creator],” says Yachty. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”
Yachty is now hoping everyone else does, too. “I just want people to understand I love this. This is not a joke to me. And I can stand with my chest out because I’m proud of something I created.”
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
If Nikki Sixx is still thumping out “Girl, Girls, Girls” at 73, “Kickstart My Heart” might take on a whole new meaning. In a recently resurfaced video from an interview with Brazil’s A Rádio Rock from December (according to Blabbermouth) the 64-year-0old Mötley Crüe bassist said he could imagine a scenario where the Crüe celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2031.
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Describing drummer Tommy Lee’s 60th birthday party in Mexico a few months earlier — where the guys, their wives and some friends chilled out without talking business at all — Sixx said there was talk of keeping the train rolling a bit longer.
“Me and Tommy and [singer] Vince [Neil] had this conversation. I said, I go,’ What are you guys doing for the next eight years?,’” he said he asked them. “And everybody’s laughing: ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Why don’t we just keep going? Let’s just take it to 50.” The group was formed in 1981 and 2031 will mark their half-century anniversary.
Sixx then put a finer point on it. “So this isn’t a final tour,” he said. “What does that look like? I have no idea. I’m just telling you, you have the band saying, ‘We’re having a blast. Why stop?’”
Keep in mind, back in 2014, the Crüe signed a Cessation of Touring agreement and swore that their final show would be a Dec. 2015 gig at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. But just a few years later it seemed like they’d pulled the plug too early and after a few pandemic delays, they hit the road last year with Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett for the wildly successful The Stadium Tour, which earned a cool $173.5 million. They are currently on a world tour with Leppard slated to run through July, followed by North American stadium dates through mid-August.
All the original members will be in their 70s if they keep on rocking into 2031 — except for newly recruited guitarist John 5, who will be a spritely 61; recently departed guitarist Mick Mars, who left the band last year due to decadeslong, painful battle against a spinal condition, would be 80 at that point.
Check out the interview below
“If Darkness Had a Son,” the latest taste of Metallica’s upcoming album, 72 Seasons, bows at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs chart dated March 11.
Billboard’s Hot Trending charts, powered by Twitter, track global music-related trends and conversations in real-time across Twitter, viewable over either the last 24 hours or past seven days. A weekly, 20-position version of the chart, covering activity from Friday through Thursday of each week, posts alongside Billboard’s other weekly charts on Billboard.com each Tuesday, with the latest tracking period running Feb. 24-March 2.
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“Darkness” is the third song to be released from 72 Seasons, following the premieres of lead single “Lux Æterna” and fellow promotional single “Screaming Suicide.” Both songs also made the weekly Hot Trending Songs survey upon release, with “Lux” reaching No. 6 (Dec. 10, 2022) and “Screaming” hitting No. 7 (Jan. 28).
“Darkness” debuted March 1, and thanks to two days of sales and streams, the track concurrently bows at No. 12 on the latest multimetric Hot Hard Rock Songs chart via 1.1 million official U.S. streams and 1,000 downloads, according to Luminate.
72 Seasons, Metallica’s 11th studio album and first since 2016’s Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, is due April 14.
“Darkness” is followed by a slew of songs from Miley Cyrus’ upcoming album, Endless Summer Vacation, after its tracklist was revealed on Feb. 27. The Sia-featuring “Muddy Feet” leads the way at No. 2, and Cyrus makes up the remainder of the top 11 with the majority of the remainder of the 12-song tracklist, save for “You” and the already-released “Flowers.”
Music from J-Hope with J. Cole, Sukhbir, Boygenius and more also debut.
Keep visiting Billboard.com for the constantly evolving Hot Trending Songs rankings, and check in each Tuesday for the latest weekly chart.
Portugal. The Man know the importance of a good value on the road. Which might explain why the band has teamed up with Taco Bell again by lending their new psychedelic single, “Dummy,” to the ad campaign for the fast food chain’s $5 Cravings Trio. The dreamy song — the first taste of the band’s upcoming album, Chris Black Changed My Life (June 23) — appears in a new spot advertising the meals.
In addition to the music placement, PTM singer John Gourley and drummer Jason Sechrist appear in a separate 3-minute clip in which they reminisce about finding variety eating on the road, how Taco Bell helped feed them during the lean years and writing “Dummy.”
In it, Gourley calls the song “that goth kid dance… ‘yah the world is ending, everything sucks, but I kinda want to go dance to ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’” he explains. “And then I’m gonna be up at 4 in the morning staring at the ceiling thinking about the end of the world.”
The band has a yearslong relationship with the Bell, dating back to 2010 when they were part of the “Feed the Beat” campaign, and then again when their song “Evil Friends” was used in the ad for the chain’s grilled stuffed nachos. “When the Feed The Beat program came along they started giving us these five dollar gift cards and each member would be walking in, for once not thinking about money, but rather, ‘I can get some food and I finally feel like a PERSON!,’” Gourley recalls in the video.
“Taco Bell really fed all these young bands coming up,” he continues in the chat with Sechrist. “When you think about how many vegan, straight edge bands we toured with, and vegetarian, and diet restrictions. You couldn’t do that anywhere else. Taco Bell was really that place that fed us all. Feed The Beat is a really really great program and I’m really thankful for it.”
Taco Bell’s 16-year-old Feed the Beat program has included spots with music from Doja Cat, Dolly Parton, Turnstile, whiterosemoxie, Priya Ragu and Meet Me @ the Altar.
Listen to “Dummy” in Taco Bell’s “The Hang” ad below.