State Champ Radio Rock
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2023 is off to a strong start for John Mayer fans. The guitar pro announced a solo acoustic arena tour on Thursday (Jan. 26), featuring 19 stops across North America this spring.
“I began my career on stage with only a guitar and a microphone,” he shared. “A lot has changed since then, but I knew one day I’d feel it in my heart to do an entire run of shows on my own again, just like those early days.”
It was unclear what was to come for the artist after Mayer announced his departure from Columbia Records after 21 years in March 2022. The only thing that was clear was that John wasn’t calling it quits, sharing at the time that “I love music more than ever, and I believe some of my best work still lies ahead.”
This run of shows marks Mayer’s first solo endeavor since the departure, with attendees having “acoustic, electric and piano” picks both new and old to look forward to on the special tour.
While he can rip up an electric solo like no other, some of his best lyricism and guitar work shine on his acoustic tracks. This was made abundantly clear during several stops of the 2022 Sob Rock tour, when Mayer pivoted to an acoustic-heavy format after several of his band members tested positive for COVID-19.
Could those set of shows have been the inspiration for this stripped-down trek? Of the 20-plus years of songs in his catalog, here are 24-ish songs we hope to hear on the solo tour, with a focus on the acoustic and piano favorites.
After more than 15 years of appearing on the Billboard rock radio charts, Paramore is No. 1 for the first time.
“This Is Why,” the lead single from the band’s upcoming album, lifts to the top of the Alternative Airplay list dated Feb. 4.
Paramore claims its second radio No. 1 overall, following the three-week reign of “Ain’t It Fun” on Adult Pop Airplay in 2014.
Paramore first ranked on Alternative Airplay in 2007 with “Misery Business,” which peaked at No. 3 that October. It stood as the band’s top-charting song on the survey for over 15 years until “Why.”
In between “Misery” and “Why,” Paramore charted 10 titles. In all, the trio boasts six top 10s, with those two tracks sandwiching “Crushcrushcrush” (No. 4, 2008), “Decode” (No. 5, 2009), “Ignorance” (No. 7, 2009) and “Brick by Boring Brick” (No. 9, 2010).
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Paramore’s 15-year, six-month and one-week streak from its first Alternative Airplay appearance to its first No. 1 is the lengthiest since Stone Temple Pilots went a record 17 years and two weeks between “Plush” in 1993 and “Between the Lines” in 2010.
Concurrently, “Why” remains at No. 11, after reaching No. 9 in January on Adult Alternative Airplay, having become the band’s first entry on the tally.
On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, the song rises 5-4 with 3.6 million audience impressions, up 7%, according to Luminate. It rose to No. 3 in early January.
Elsewhere, “Why” has hit No. 15 on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. It placed at No. 39 on the Jan. 28-dated list with 1 million official U.S. streams, in addition to its airplay, Jan. 13-19.
This Is Why, Paramore’s sixth studio album, is due Feb. 10.
Måneskin is in demand. The Italian rockers, who are fresh off the release of their third studio album, Rush!, revealed during their Thursday (Jan. 26) appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that The Rolling Stones‘ Mick Jagger is a fan, and shared a story about opening up a show for the legendary rock band. The “Beggin’” hitmakers also detailed the hilarious antics that ensued while meeting the “Gimme Shelter” singer and his bandmate Keith Richards for the first time.
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“Mick Jagger chose you to open for The Rolling Stones in Las Vegas … what was it like when you got that call?” Fallon inquired of his guests.
“It was our first stadium so it was crazy. And also it was iconic because we got the chance to talk to [Jagger], and he was so nice and knew a lot of our music,” bassist Victoria De Angelis explained. “And then we met Keith Richards and he was like, ‘I don’t know who the f–k you are, but they told me you’re good.’ We were like ‘OK!’ We were blessed. We got the blessing.”
The rock group also discussed a 2023 Grammy nomination for best new artist. Lead singer Damiano David was the first to find out the news, and recounted the story to Fallon. “It streamed in the morning so I was the only one really awake in front of the television. They were all waking up and getting dressed, and when they said our name I started screaming,” he shared. “We were actually shooting a video for this because we wanted to share the reaction but we couldn’t because it was too vulgar, too aggressive.”
De Angelis confirmed that her bandmate’s reaction was so intense, she thought the rest of the band was in serious trouble: “I heard him starting banging on my door, and I was like, ‘What’s wrong? What have I done? I’m f–cked.’”
“They all thought we didn’t get the nom,” David added, to which De Angelis replied, “I thought you wanted to kill me or something.”
Closing out the band’s appearance on Fallon was a performance of Rush! single “GOSSIP.” Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello, who also features on the track, joined the quartet for the performance.
Watch Måneskin on Fallon below.
Not a match made in heaven. Pamela Anderson looked back on her brief marriage to Kid Rock in a new interview on Thursday (Jan. 26).
Appearing on The Howard Stern Show to promote her upcoming memoir, Love, Pamela, the Baywatch star compared her relationship with the rocker to her first marriage to Tommy Lee. “I don’t think I ever gave myself a chance to have another relationship after that that was of any value,” she said of her high-profile romance with Mötley Crüe drummer. “You know, it was more like trying to put a family unit back together, but I wasn’t really in love — I just was going through the motions and then realizing, ‘I have nothing in common with this person.’
“I was putting people in my life to kind of numb some of the pain or be with someone. — companionship, but nothing … nothing healthy,” she continued before host Howard Stern asked point blank when she knew her marriage to Rock — which lasted for four months in 2006 — was a “tremendous f–king mistake.”
“Right when I got married,” Anderson replied with a laugh. “Well, just after. Obviously not in time. That’s terrible, I know it’s embarrassing, it’s just a flaw, I don’t know. Like, I just jump into something because, you know, Tommy and I did and we had this, you know, incredible connection. But then you jump into something and it’s like, ‘Oh it’s not this incredible connection, it’s this, just … something else.’ Then I slowly try and find my way out.”
Following her divorce from Rock, the actress married poker player Rick Salomon (twice!), film producer John Peters and, most recently, her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst.
Anderson’s memoir is set to hit shelves on Tuesday (Jan. 31). Watch her full chat with Stern below.
In retrospect, 2022 will be remembered as the year of Bad Bunny. And while his album Un Verano Sin Ti dominated much of the year after its May 6 release, the boost that it gave to Latin music’s share of the overall market — with the highest growth in percentage year over year of any genre, going from 5.39% in 2021 to 6.33% in 2022, an increase of 28.8% — is not simply a one album, or even one year, phenomenon.
Between 2020 and 2022, Latin music grew 55.29% in album consumption in the U.S., according to Luminate, far outstripping the overall industry’s 21.61%, as well as the growth of the four biggest genres in the U.S. over that time: R&B/hip-hop (12.17%), rock (22.28%), pop (20.64%) and country (19.22%). And Latin isn’t alone: World Music has also made tremendous strides over that time period, growing 47.67% from 2020 through 2022 on the Stateside growth of K-Pop and Afrobeats, among other ex-U.S. genres, and up 25.8% in 2022 over 2021. Both genres have seen over 20% growth in on-demand audio streams dating back to 2019, while the overall industry has grown in that sector in the mid-teens each year during that time.
Those are two of just four genres (of the 15 tracked by Luminate) that grew at a faster rate than the overall music industry in 2022, which increased consumption 9.2% year over year. (The other two were children’s music, at 30.0%, and dance/electronic, at 11.7%; new age grew essentially in line with the business). And it speaks to how significant that growth has been, and could continue to be moving forward as the business becomes increasingly more global.
With 2023 fully underway, here are four more trends to watch this year:
How Big Is a Hit?
Children’s music (1.38%) overtook holiday music (1.26%) as the ninth-biggest genre in the U.S. this year due to the runaway success of Encanto, which helped boost the genre by 30% in consumption year over year (35.5% in on-demand streams). How significant was the effect of that hit? Growth for the genre year over year was 6.7% in 2020, and actually declined -3.7% in 2021, with on-demand streaming dropping 2.8% in each of those years. The growth is almost certainly unsustainable, but it shows the value of a surprise mainstream hit. For a related analog, comedy was the only genre to actually decline year over year, due to the sector coming back down to earth after the huge gains from Bo Burnham’s Inside (The Songs) album in 2021. From 2020 to 2021, overall comedy consumption ballooned 27.3%, with total on-demand streams growing 28.4%; those numbers fell to -11.3% and -5.0% in 2022, as the effect of the album receded.
Major Genres Shrinking in Share
As a statement of fact, year over year the four biggest, most dominant genres in the U.S. all declined in terms of their share of the overall market: R&B/hip-hop (from 27.72% in 2021 to 26.82% in 2022), rock (20.01% in 2021 to 19.95% in 2022), pop (13.05% in 2021 to 12.68% in 2022) and country (8.09% in 2021 to 7.76% in 2022). But there are a few ways of looking at that.
The first is that, when a genre is as dominant as R&B/hip-hop, for example, maintaining the same percentage growth gets harder every year. And the growth is still huge: the top four genres accounted for 67.21% of the market in 2022, even if down slightly from the 68.87% they held in 2021, and just shy of 50% of the gains year over year. And rock and R&B/hip-hop saw the two biggest increases in raw consumption numbers over 2021, with the former claiming 19.37% of the growth in 2022 over the year prior and the latter 17.13% of it.
The other way to look at it is that the market is, slowly but steadily, diversifying. Latin, the fifth-biggest genre in the country, was third in percentage of growth in the market, up 16.38% year over year; less than 1 million units separated its increase from R&B/hip-hop’s in 2022. Pop was fourth (8.67% of industry growth), but world music — the seventh-biggest genre overall — claimed the fifth-highest share of the market’s growth, at 5.53% year over year. And country, which claimed 4.17% of the growth, was run a close race by Dance/Electronic, at 4.14%. Just three years ago, in 2020, Latin made up 4.95% of the overall market and World Music 1.88%. That doesn’t seem like regular fluctuation, but a true growth trend.
R&B/Hip-Hop Report
Over the last few years, there has been an accepted fact of the marketplace: In a streaming world that reflects not just what people are buying, but what people are continuing to stream and listen to, R&B/hip-hop dominates. That is still, unquestionably, the case. But lately there has been some hand-wringing about the slowing growth of the genre and what that could mean for the broader marketplace, a fair question for others to answer.
Here are some facts: R&B/hip-hop is now 26.82% of consumption. It’s been growing consistently — up around 6% per year the last few years — though not as much as the marketplace overall for several years now percentage-wise. And its share of total on-demand streams dropped from 30.11% in 2021 to 28.61% in 2022. In raw numbers it’s still growing massively, though, second only to rock in share of the industry’s total unit growth in 2022. And compared to 2017 — the year that Luminate predecessor Nielsen first declared that R&B/hip-hop had become the biggest genre in the industry — it still claims a higher share of the market. So while it displays a higher variance year to year than some other genres, the sky isn’t falling just yet.
R&B/Hip-Hop Share of Consumption By Year:2017: 24.52%2018: 25.94%2019: 28.62%2020: 29.07%2021: 27.72%2022: 26.82%
Country Streaming Sputters, Rock’s Resilience
Country’s streaming growth is slowing down. After big gains in audio on-demand streaming the past two years (22.1% in 2020 and 16.5% in 2021) as more of its audience began to embrace the format, that figure slipped below the audio streaming growth of the overall industry in 2022, 11.1% vs. 12.2%, respectively. And total on-demand Country streaming (audio plus video) grew at 9.8%, compared to 12.2% for the overall industry. (Yes, overall and audio on-demand streaming grew at the same rate.) That isn’t the end of the world — R&B/hip-hop on-demand audio streaming has grown less than the overall market percentage-wise in the past few years, though its raw numbers are still massive — but it’s worth noting that the growth is slowing year over year after outpacing the market recently, and its percentage of the growth in on-demand streaming in 2022 was just 6.01%, by far the lowest of the five biggest genres. In total consumption, country grew just 4.8%, slightly over half the rate of growth of the overall industry (9.2%), with its share of the market slipping from 8.09% in 2021 to 7.76% in 2022.
It’s notable compared to the fortunes of rock music. For all the “Rock Is Dead” talk, the format is essentially keeping pace with industry trends overall (up 9.0% in consumption, 14.3% in on-demand streams) and actually grew its share of overall on-demand streaming year over year, from 16.30% in 2021 to 16.62% in 2022, while continuing to flat-out dominate in sales (43% of the market). Again, rock was the genre that showed the most growth in 2022 over 2021: at 19.37%, it outpaced R&B/hip-hop (17.13%) and Latin (16.38%) for the biggest share of growth year over year.
The lineup for A Grammy Tribute to the Beach Boys will be stacked with a mix of modern pop, rock, R&B and country acts influenced by the iconic California sunshine pop group. The special that will tape on Feb. 8 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood — three days after the upcoming 65th annual Grammy Awards — will feature appearances from Beck, Brandi Carlile, Weezer, Fall Out Boy, Lady A, John Legend, Charlie Puth, St. Vincent and Hanson, among others.
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The concert will air on CBS and be available live and on demand on Paramount+ at a later date, with tickets to the live event available through Ticketmaster here. Other acts slated to take the stage for the tribute to the group known for such 1960s sand and surf hits as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “God Only Knows,” “I Get Around” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” among many others include: Norah Jones, Little Big Town, Michael McDonald, Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Pentatonix, LeAnn Rimes and Take 6.
The special honoring the group who’ve been nominated, but never won, a Grammy in competition is the latest in the series of “Grammy Salute” specials, taping just six weeks after Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the songs of Paul Simon aired on Dec. 21.
Despite four nominations, the Beach Boys have never won a Grammy, with even their acclaimed 1966 single “Good Vibrations” going 0-3 at the Grammys, though voters have since decided they appreciate the band quite a bit. The group received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2001. Singer Brian Wilson was also named MusiCares person of the year in 2005. Five Beach Boys recordings have been voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which functions as a second chance for the Grammys to reward worthy records they may have missed the first time around.
Prepare to take a trip with Lil Yachty on Let’s Start Here, his fifth studio album that dropped on Friday (Jan. 27) via Concrete Records, Motown Records and Quality Control Music.
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In an interview with Ice Box last year, the rapper revealed he was going in a different direction with the sound of his upcoming studio effort. “My new album is a non-rap album,” he declared. “It’s alternative, it’s sick… It’s like a psychedelic alternative project. It’s different. It’s all live instrumentation.”
This wouldn’t be Yachty’s first dip into the genre, as he collaborated with Tame Impala on a 2021 remix of “Breathe Deeper” from The Slow Rush B-Sides & Remixes, which peaked at No. 47 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.
In the week leading up to the album’s release, he unveiled a nearly two-minute skit titled “Department of Mental Tranquility,” which shows Yachty walking into the video’s namesake and responding to a receptionist’s pestering, miscellaneous questions in a sweltering waiting room replete with erratic people before the performer carefully enters into the white light.
Yachty released his last full-length album, Lil Boat 3, on May 29, 2020. The 19-track set, which included lead single “Oprah’s Bank Account” featuring DaBaby and Drake, launched at No. 14 on the Billboard 200.
Stream Let’s Start Here below.
The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal will make his Saturday Night Live hosting debut on the Feb. 4 episode of the show, which will feature musical guest Coldplay. While the actor who stars in the new HBO drama based on the wildly popular action-adventure video game as well as Disney+’s The Mandalorian will be taking the stage at 8H for the first time, next month’s performance will mark Coldplay’s seventh go-round on SNL.
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The pair join a 2023 run that has already included White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza and Sam Smith last weekend and Creed‘s Michael Jordan and Lil Baby preparing to rock SNL this weekend.
Coldplay recently announced a new run of West Coast shows in September on their massive “Music of the Spheres” world tour while the first two episodes of HBO’s apocalyptic pandemic drama has been a ratings juggernaut, with Sunday’s second chapter up 22% (5.7 million viewers) over the 4 million fans who tuned in for the debut.
Smith turned heads last weekend with a dramatic pair of performances of songs from their upcoming album. For their third appearance as an SNL musical guest, the singer unleashed unforgettable live performances of chart-topper “Unholy” and the title track from their soon-to-be-released fourth album, Gloria, due out Friday (Jan. 27).
Smith opened with their smash hit “Unholy,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2022. Donning an extravagant fluffy pink dress, Smith belted out the opening lines of the song before sneaking in Kim Petras, who is featured on the track, to assist with her verse. For their second performance, the singer surprised with a guest appearance from Oscar-nominated actress Sharon Stone, who lounged on a gold-covered couch while Smith delivered their recently dropped single “Gloria.”
After its synch in HBO’s new series The Last of Us, Depeche Mode’s ‘80s hit “Never Let Me Down Again” blazes to No. 1 on Billboard’s LyricFind U.S. and LyricFind Global charts dated Jan. 28.
The LyricFind Global and LyricFind U.S. charts rank the fastest momentum-gaining tracks in lyric-search queries and usages globally and in the U.S., respectively, provided by LyricFind. The Global chart includes queries from all countries, including the U.S. The company is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics, with data provided by more than 5,000 publishers and utilized by more than 100 services, including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, SoundHound and iHeartRadio.
“Down” reigns following its appearance in the series premiere of the HBO show (based on the video game of the same name), which premiered Jan. 15.
According to LyricFind, lyric searches and usages for “Down” zoomed 182% globally and 999% in the U.S.
Thanks to the synch, the song also found its way onto Billboard’s Alternative Digital Song Sales and Rock Digital Song Sales charts at Nos. 7 and 18, respectively. In the Jan. 13-19 tracking week, the song earned 1,000 downloads, up 1,199% from a negligible amount the previous period, according to Luminate.
It also saw a significant stream boost: 552,000 official on-demand U.S. streams Jan. 13-19, a 210% gain from Jan. 6-12.
“Down” reached No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. It can be found on 1987 album Music for the Masses, which peaked at No. 35 on the Billboard 200.
Pantera have been dropped from another European festival. After the organizers of Germany’s Rock am Ring and Rock im Park announced on Monday that the reunited thrash metal band will not be performing at this summer’s events, on Wednesday (Jan. 25), the organizers of Vienna, Austria’s Gasometer Festival also crossed the group off their roster.
Promoter Mind Over Mater Music announced in a FB message that the Pantera performance originally announced for May 31 has ben cancelled; the post did not give any further information on the reason for the decision.
According to a report in Vienna’s Die Presse, the Austrian Green Party had a hand in the cancellation after demanding that Pantera be removed in a statement that echoed one from Germany’s Greens in advocating for Pantera to be dropped from that country’s events. “Due to its National Socialist past, Vienna in particular has a special historical responsibility to oppose any form of right-wing extremism. The appearance of Pantera is completely incompatible with this responsibility,” the statement from the Austrian party reportedly read.
A spokesperson for the band said management had no official statement on the German cancellations and at press time the band’s rep had not responded to Billboard‘s request for comment on the Gasometer news.
The reformed band’s new lineup — featuring original singer Phil Anselmo and longtime bassist Rex Brown joined by Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante and longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde — kicked off their first major tour in two decades in South American in December. While organizers of the three events did not give a specific reason for their decision, speculation has centered on an incident from 2016 when Anselmo was filmed giving a nazi salute and shouting “white power” during a tribute to late Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell.
Shortly after, Anselmo issued an apology, in which he said, “I was at the Dimebash, and it was extremely late at night. There was heavy-duty talk between myself and those who love Dime. And heavy emotions were flowing, jokes were made backstage that transpired upon the stage, and it was ugly. It was uncalled for. And anyone who knows me and my true nature knows that I don’t believe in any of that; I don’t want to be part of any group. I’m an individual, and I am a thousand percent apologetic to anyone that took offense to what I said because you should have taken offense to what I said. And I am so sorry, and I hope you just … man, give me another chance to … just give me another chance.”
Both of the German festivals take place in Nuremberg — the site of many Nazi rallies, including a 1934 one filmed by Leni Riefenstahl for the notorious party propaganda film Triumph of the Will — and Germany’s Stern magazine reported that there was pressure from the city’s Green Party city council representatives to remove the band from the lineup of the gigs in the city, with a Green spokesperson saying Anselmo’s apology for his white power outburst was “not credible enough.”
Similarly, the reported statement from the Austrian Green Party noted, “Therefore, it can only mean for Vienna: No stage for a Hitler salute, no stage for Pantera!”
