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The writers strike is finally at an end, and the regular roundup of late night TV talkshows are back on our screens. Which means more Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. More gags and goofs, political insights, and interviews. And, yes, more music.
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John Mayer didn’t waste a moment.
Ahead of his fall Solo tour, the seven-time Grammy Award-winning bluesman appeared on two separate shows overnight, for chats, laughs and a performance.
At the restart of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Mayer stopped by for a chat with the host, and for several trips down memory lane.
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The rocker recounted the time Fallon’s bandleader Questlove filled in for his drummer on stage at Madison Square Garden. “He was coming to the gig anyway, and somewhere along the line of him coming to the show he got offered to play like six songs,” Mayer remembers. Questlove apparently learned all those songs on the way to the Garden, and delivered the goods for a “magical night.”
At the top of the talk, Mayer took us back in time for his “Crypto Bismol” comedy spot which came to him one night and ended up getting pitched for The Tonight Show.
As its title would suggest, the Solo shows feature Mayer alone with an acoustic guitar on stage – “out there on a tightrope” is how he describes it. “It works,” he tells Fallon, “it’s an opportunity for me to play some of the songs from my career, tell stories around them, and read signs with requests on them and they’ll try to stump me and see if I remember an old song.”
Expect the concerts to be “open-ended and great, and fun, and I’m never quite sure where the show is going to go,” with “turn on a dime” moments. “It’s really exciting.” The format is “the most fun to have finished; you know those shows where they’re really hard when you’re doing them and then when you’re done you’re just so rewarded.”
Mayer is clearly a busy guy. And what do you give a busy person? More work. That’s certainly the case, as Mayer unwraps his new SiriusXM channel, Life. The idea, he explains, is a radio channel that “isn’t genre-based, but plays music for whatever moment you’re most likely to be in during your day or week, your month or even your year.” Life begins in November.
Naturally, Mayer gave late owls a taste of things to come, with a one-man acoustic rendition of “Shouldn’t Matter but It Does,” lifted from his 2021 album Sob Rock.
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Not to limit himself, Mayer also dropped in at Watch What Happens Live for a spot on the couch with Andy Cohen.
The questions came hard and fast, some from fans Zooming them in from home.
Among them, will Mayer reunite with Dead & Company (“we will play shows. I have to believe…everyone has it in their hearts to keep playing”), what is the sexiest musical instrument (saxophone), his first celebrity crush (Debbie Gibson), his three-word self-description as a lover (“takes some time”) and his least-favorite album (Paradise Valley – he has reasons).
Mayer’s Solo arena tour kicks off Wednesday, Oct. 3 at the MSG in New York City.
Watch his latest WWHL appearance below.
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A crowd of girls, gays, theys and every combination therein milled about Madison Square Garden on Monday night (Oct. 2). They chatted with each other about their favorite shows they’d seen lately, swapping lyrics and showing off tattoos.
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Moments later, aside from a few errant cheers, the 20,000 person gathering had gone quiet, gently humming and singing along to an a capella hymn. The leaders of this communal canticle were the women of Boygenius — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Huddled around a microphone backstage and broadcast onto a massive LED screen, the trio offered a promise to their entranced congregants: “I’ll give everything I’ve got/ Please take what I can give,” they sang. “I want you to hеar my story/ And be a part of it.”
The ensuing 2 hours of Boygenius’ sold-out debut set at the iconic New York venue further proved why the supergroup has become one of the most essential bands of this generation. Through raucous hell-raising, intimate storytelling and proficient performing, the alternative triumvirate delivered their screaming fans an all-time great show fueled by emotional outpouring and a sense of genuine (and overtly queer) community. As Dacus put it towards the end of the evening, “this has been the best night of our lives.”
The band was certainly set up for success from the start — fellow queer-femme alternative purveyors MUNA (who Baker referred to as “our collective favorite band” later on) brought the house down with their high-energy, crowd-pleasing opening set. Skipping around the stage and kicking inflatable horses into the eager audience, the band made sure they got the crowd’s excitement that much higher for “MUNAGenius,” the portmeanteau fans used to further hype up the performance. “It’s like the capital of friends being horny with each other onstage,” lead singer Katie Gavin said with a laugh.
By the time the headliners pranced onto the stage, the house was already in shambles as attendees screamed along to every word of the rousing “$20.” Throughout the set, fans made a point to shout along in perfect unison on specific lyrics, like “sleep in cars and kill the bourgeoisie” on the exhilarating “Satanist,” or “f–k around and find out” on “True Blue.” With each member dressed in their crisp suits and wielding their guitars, you would be forgiven for drawing parallels between the cheering masses of today and those at the height of Beatlemania.
The feeling was most certainly mutual — at multiple points throughout the evening, the band stopped to survey the excited masses and express their awe. Dacus first addressed the crowd with a giddy scream; Bridgers shook her head and laughed that “this don’t make no sense”; Baker said she would do her best to actually keep her eyes open when singing, despite the fact that she was “so nervous” at the “insane” crowd.
It was that communal, reciprocal energy that brought something fresh to Boygenius’ show — as moved as fans were by the band’s tender ballads like standouts “Emily, I’m Sorry” and “Revolution 0,” the trio were just as moved by their fans’ attentive action. After Dacus was tossed a series of pink carnations during her performance of “We’re In Love” (a reference to the song’s lyric “I’ll be the boy with the pink carnation”), she couldn’t hold in her tears. Her cries of joy led to a group hug that sent waves of sentimental fervor through the audience.
At one point early in the evening, Bridgers couldn’t help but point out how different a Boygenius show felt to any other concert. “Our fans are all so nice to each other and to us, that the security team up here has literally been handing out tissues,” she said. “Thank you for your service, guys.”
The sentimentality certainly didn’t stop the band from letting fans in on sillier moments. When prompted to introduce one another almost halfway through the event, each member was given their own WWE-style introduction from their bandmates. Right after starting fan-favorite “Me & My Dog,” Bridgers brought the song to a halt in order to ask fans to hold up pictures of their pooches.
Much like their songs, the band made sure to show off the talents of each member at every given opportunity. Dacus’ crystal clear voice pierced through the artifice with”Please Stay”; Baker let her demons out on the outstanding “Favor”; Bridgers poured tender passion into each word of “Graceland Too.”
At one point towards the end of show, the trio decided to treat their adoring audience to something even more special; after a top-notch rendition of “Not Strong Enough,” the band ran to the venue’s B-stage on the opposite end of the Garden’s floor. Taking up their new position in a sea of rapt onlookers, the trio performed all four songs off their unreleased EP The Rest, set to release on Oct. 13. Whether embracing oblivion on “Black Hole” or dissociating on “Voyager,” Boygenius ran through the entirety of their new project, beaming at their fans the entire time.
Yet the highlights from the evening came when the band allowed themselves and the crowd to experience release, be it through confessional, tender performances like “Letter to an Old Poet,” or Dacus and Bridgers physically releasing their bodies by going partly-topless for closer “Salt in the Wound.” Bake had her own moment of catharsis on “Anti-Curse,” after which she revealed that she had lost her sense of confidence before getting to work with her friends again.
“These guys have given me my voice back,” she said, holding back tears as Bridgers and Dacus beamed at her from either side of the stage. “I think that is what music is for; to hear your voice against another person’s. So if you need confirmation, then let us be your confirmation bias. We need you to be able to do this.”
Check out Boygenius’ full setlist from their Oct. 2 show at Madison Square Garden below:
Boygenius’ Madison Square Garden Setlist:
“Without You Without Them”
“$20”
“Satanist”
“Emily, I’m Sorry”
“True Blue”
“Cool About It”
“Souvenir”
“Bite the Hand”
“Revolution 0”
“Stay Down”
“Leonard Cohen”
“Please Stay”(Lucy Dacus song)
“Favor” (Julien Baker song)
“Graceland Too”(Phoebe Bridgers song)
“Me & My Dog”
“We’re In Love”
“Anti-Curse”
“Letter to an Old Poet”
“Not Strong Enough”
B-Stage
“Black Hole” (unreleased)
“Afraid of Heights” (unreleased)
“Voyager” (unreleased)
“Powers” (unreleased)
Encore:
“Ketchum, ID”
“Salt in the Wound”
Music is only part of the audio-visual experience in U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, the 25-date U2 residency that opened Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29 and will run through December. For the show, creative directors Willie Williams and Es Devlin helped the band harness Sphere’s technological potential with immersive visuals, including pieces commissioned specifically for U2:UV and the innovative venue’s 160,000-square-foot LED screen.
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Among the creatives to work with the band was visual artist and filmmaker Marco Brambilla, whose eye-popping video collage “King Size” serves as the backdrop for “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” Achtung Baby‘s second track. For three decades, Brambilla, who began his career as a director, including of the 1993 sci-fi film Demolition Man, has created visual art pieces that grapple with subjects including media oversaturation, technology’s effects, and the nature of pop culture. In 2008, Brambilla began harvesting short loops of source material – clips of characters, landscapes, and backgrounds that were each one second or less – to make high-concept video collages that tackle “epic human themes, but interpreted in a way that’s very much about sensory overload in today’s media landscape,” he explains. After seeing one of his recent collages, “Heaven’s Gate,” at London’s immersive space Outernet Arts in early 2023, Williams reached out to Brambilla about becoming involved in U2:UV.
Brambilla’s no stranger to large-scale art installations – for one, Outernet bills itself as having “the world’s largest wrap-around screens” – but even so, Sphere’s unprecedented canvas offered new challenges and rewards. For Brambilla, whose rare musical collaborations include two operas with Marina Abramović and Kanye West’s 2010 “Power” music video, it also presented the opportunity to work with one of rock’s most visually daring artists – and on his favorite song off his favorite U2 album, no less.
“It’s fantastic, because Sphere is giving performers an opportunity to go into a space and be able to have visuals that you could never tour, without this technology and without the permanent installation of the LED screens,” Brambilla tells Billboard hours before leaving Paris for Sphere’s opening. “There’s all sorts of possibilities – and I think they’ve only scratched the surface.”
RICH FURY
How did you get connected with U2 and Sphere?
Willie went to see the [“Heaven’s Gate”] show and I got a call, and he asked if I would be interested in a commission for the residency that was coming up at Sphere. I had obviously heard about Sphere before and I became very interested very quickly, because the scale of the space and the technology was always really fascinating for me. From there, the only brief from them was really, “We want something really maximal, like, sensory overload.”
Then the concept of Elvis came up. The idea of the birth of Las Vegas and the death of Elvis became interconnected in my mind. I’d started watching a lot of Elvis films and doing a lot of research on his rise and fall. It seemed very prescient – it seemed like a really interesting commentary on what’s going on today. I put together the concept in a very short amount of time, it only took about a week. Then I started making the work.
Usually when I make a video collage I have scheduled anywhere between six months and a year. And in this case, I only had maybe three, three and a half months to make it. So it required a lot of new technology. I used a lot of AI to assist in making it and also to make versions of Elvis that would populate the canvas in AI.
How would you describe “King Size”?
It’s an upward scroll — the piece scrolls upwards from the desert. It starts in a very stylized, very theatrical version of the desert and Las Vegas, and then neon rises from the desert. Then, eventually, it becomes like a futuristic, hyper-version of Vegas, like a mega Vegas. At the same time, the characters are associated with every era of Las Vegas. So you have Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin in the kind of glamour years, and then it becomes more about performers and strippers and dance clubs as you go up.
And there’s also samples from many of Elvis’s characters he played in films, as well as samples from documentaries that we found that we were able to create gifs from. And so that became the population of it. But the architecture of it is really the birth of Las Vegas.
Did you come up with the concept with U2 and Willie?
It was actually in conjunction with Bono, because we were talking about how to express this idea of a myth – you know, like what happens to celebrities. Elvis was the first mega-celebrity, in a way. Bono said, “Oh, this could be about the death of Elvis, the death of Elvis is an interesting theme.” That was a departure point that became very clear, this idea of the parallel of excess and consumerism and the American dream and what’s happened to the American dream being personified by what happened to Elvis Presley. The lyrics in [“Even Better Than the Real Thing”] are exactly about that theme that I was exploring visually. It worked really well thematically, not just visually.
STUFISH ENTERTAINMENT ARCHITECTS
U2 has a rich history of creating forward-thinking, immersive concert experiences. What were they like as collaborative partners?
It was probably the best collaboration I’ve ever had. They really respect you as an artist. They commissioned John Gerrard, Es Devlin and Brian Eno to make pieces [for U2:UV], and these pieces are art pieces. They really wanted something that would stand alone as an art installation. The technical aspects of working with the scale of the screen at Sphere, that was incredibly complicated. The actual creative process, in terms of being able to make an artwork, that was incredibly easy and rewarding, because they were just fantastically supportive and really easy to work with.
How did realizing this piece on Sphere’s screen differ from other installations you’ve done?
I’d worked on large-scale, site-specific installations, as well as museum and gallery shows. But in this case, it was unprecedented. Both the scale and the resolution were so much more than anything I’d [previously worked on] – and I’d already worked on some fairly ambitious projects. This was, by a factor of four, more ambitious in terms of the technology involved.
What did that specifically involve for you?
The collage is a hybrid: It contains elements that are entirely generated by AI and elements that are computer-generated, but using AI pre-visualization. That helped tremendously in terms of the [expedited] schedule and being able to create something very dense and very rich. But [Sphere] also has very good tools to help you pre-visualize it. As you’re making the work, there’s a headset simulator that they have where you can pick any seat you want and you can choose to sit in the front row or halfway up or in the corner, and you can look at your work on the Sphere in this headset. I was able to do this remotely. I only saw it in Sphere about two and a half weeks ago.
STUFISH ENTERTAINMENT ARCHITECTS
What were the biggest challenges?
Just rendering files that are that size and to create the kind of sharpness and resolution necessary [for Sphere’s screen], it’s challenging. But it’s gonna get easier and easier. As the technology gets better and you have more computing power, you’ll be able to generate visuals at that resolution with in an easier way. So I think it’s kind of future-proof in terms of being able to create visuals; right now, it’s early days. We’re kind of inventing the technology as we go.
Tell me more about how you used AI to create “King Size.”
I was working on another project, for a show that’s coming up next year, using AI, and I was very happy to be familiar with it [when I started working on “King Size”]. I was able to speed up the process, because over the course of making so many of these [visual collages] over the years, I have a huge library of film clips. I was able to train an AI software called Stable Diffusion with all these clips. Basically, the library went into AI, and then I was able to call up images very quickly. It became a kind of a collaboration with me and the AI working to find images that would fit the storyline.
We started using a program called DALL-E in its beta phase and generated a lot of prototype visuals of Elvis and different versions of Elvis, these kind of fantastical exaggerations of Elvis using that program. The good thing about AI right now is I couldn’t have made this work without it in time I had – it would have been impossible to attempt to make something at this resolution and with this kind of detail.
How long might it have taken without AI assistance?It would have taken at least a year. “Heaven’s Gate” took eight months, and the resolution was 8K; this one is 16K, and it has probably four times the number of samples as “Heaven’s Gate.” With every increase in resolution for what I’m doing […] you have to create a canvas that has much more information in it. The rendering at that resolution becomes very time consuming. I was working with a really great post-production company called The Mill in Paris and we were able to output the files fairly quickly.
Courtesy Marco Brambilla Studio, 2023.
How might artists utilize Sphere’s canvas going forward?
They have a sound system that can localize sound very precisely. The screens are so sharp that you’re not aware of pixels, you’re not aware of any kind of resolution, it just looks like a window into another world. It removes the concept of being somewhere. You’re transported somewhere else. There’s so many things you can do with it, because the technology that’s in that building, that’s permanent technology, allows you to experiment with all sorts of interaction between the performance and the screens themselves.
Selena Gomez surprised Coldplay fans at the band’s stadium gig at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA on Sunday night (Oct. 1) when she joined the group for a run through their 2021 collaboration, “Let Somebody Go.” “Thank you @coldplay @hermusicofficial for an amazing night,” Gomez wrote on in her Instagram Story, which featured other […]
The Foo Fighters will hit a run of U.S. stadiums next summer on their Everything or Nothing At All tour. The Dave Grohl-fronted band announced the dates for the 12-show string of 2024 gigs on Monday morning (Oct. 2), with the shows slated to kick-off on July 17 with the first of two shows at Citi Field in New York.
The outing hitting major league stadiums will then move on to legendary Fenway Park in Boston (July 21), before touching down at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, PA (July 23), Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati (July 25) and Minneapolis’ Target Field (July 28).
The tour — with a rotating group of support acts including The Pretenders, The Hives, Mammoth WVH, Amyl and the Sniffers, Alex G and L7 — will also include gigs in Denver, San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland before winding down on Aug. 18 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, WA. Tickets for the summer stadiums shows will go on sale on Friday (Oct. 6) at 10 a.m. local time; click here for information on pre-sales and ticketing.
The Foos have been on the road all summer in support of their 11th album, But Here We Are, with the new stadium shows marking their biggest headlining U.S. gigs announced so far. The Foos’ next scheduled show is on Tuesday (Oct. 3) at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre in Phoenix, AZ, followed by a handful of other U.S. shows before the band heads to Dubai for the F1 Grand Prix Event on Nov. 26 and then shows in Australia and New Zealand from late November through late January 2024.
Check out the dates for the Foo Fighters’ 2024 Everything or Nothing At All U.S. stadium tour below:
July 17 — New York, NY @ Citi Field * July 19 – New York, NY @ Citi Field # July 21 – Boston, MA @ Fenway Park # July 23 – Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark Stadium # July 25 – Cincinnati, OH @ Great American Ballpark * July 28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target Field ** August 3 – Denver, CO @ Empower Field at Mile High * August 7 – San Diego, CA @ Petco Park $August 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ BMO Stadium #August 11 – Los Angeles, CA @ BMO Stadium % August 16 – Portland, OR @ Providence Park Soccer Stadium %August 18 – Seattle, WA @ T-Mobile Park %
* Pretenders & Mammoth WVH Support ** Pretenders & L7 Support # The Hives & Amyl and The Sniffers Support$ The Hives & Alex G Support% Pretenders & Alex G Support
Porno for Pyros postponed the tour that was scheduled to kick off next weekend, on Oct. 8. “We are beyond thankful for all of your support these last 30 years, and are anxious to celebrate our 30th anniversary with you,” said a statement from the Perry Farrell-fronted band on Instagram Friday (Sept. 29). “Whilst rehearsing […]
The Who’s classic album Who’s Next returns to Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated Sept. 30) following its expanded deluxe reissue on Sept. 15 across an array of formats, many containing a hefty number of bonus tracks. The set re-enters the tally at No. 8. The album was first released in 1971 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and spun off two Billboard Hot 100-charting singles in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (No. 15 peak) and “Behind Blue Eyes” (No. 34). The set also houses the rock radio staple “Baba O’Riley.”
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Also in the top 10 of the new Top Album Sales chart, new releases from Mitski, Demi Lovato, Dan + Shay, Thirty Seconds to Mars and Baroness debut.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
The sales of the Who’s Next reissue was bolstered by its availability in multiple configurations. On the low end is the base original nine-track album remastered on CD, vinyl and digital download, up through a lavish $300 Super Deluxe Edition boxed set with 10 CDs, a Blu-Ray Audio disc, a 100-page hard back book, posters and other merchandise.
All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes. In the week ending Sept. 21 in the U.S., Who’s Next sold 9,500 copies – up from a negligible sum the previous week. Of its 9,500 sold, physical sales comprise 9,000 (6,000 on vinyl, 3,000 on CD) and digital downloads comprise 500.
At No. 1 on Top Album Sales, Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts notches a second week in the lead (44,000; down 71%) after debut atop the tally a week ago. V’s Layover is steady at No. 2 (21,000; down 76% in its second week).
Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We arrives at No. 3 with 20,000 copies sold. It’s the second top 10 for the artist, following the chart-toping debut of Laurel Hell in 2022. Demi Lovato’s Revamped – a collection of rock reinterpretations of her previously released songs – bows at No. 4 with 11,000 sold, giving the singer her ninth top 10 (the entirety of her charting efforts). Dan + Shay’s new studio album Bigger Houses moves in at No. 6 with nearly 11,000 sold, marking the fifth consecutive and total top 10 for the duo.
Thirty Seconds to Mars’ first studio album in over five years, It’s the End of the World But It’s a Beautiful Day, debuts at No. 6 with nearly 10,000 sold. It’s the third top 10 set for the rock act, who was last on the chart with the 2018 studio set America (No. 2 debut and peak).
Rounding out the debuts in the top 10 is Baroness’ latest album Stone, which starts at No. 7 with nearly 10,000 sold. It’s the second top 10-charting title for the act, following 2019’s Gold & Grey (No. 5 debut and peak).
Taylor Swift’s former No. 1 Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) falls 5-9 on Top Album Sales (9,000; down 4%) and NewJeans’ chart-topping 2nd EP ‘Get Up’ descends 6-10 (8,500; down 3%).
In the week ending Sept. 21, there were 1.670 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 5.4% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.336 million (down 7%) and digital albums comprised 334,000 (up 1.6%).
There were 574,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Sept. 21 (down 11.4% week-over-week) and 752,000 vinyl albums sold (down 3.4%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 25.049 million (up 0.9% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 33.412 million (up 19.9%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 72.266 million (up 6.4% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 58.848 million (up 10.9%) and digital album sales total 13.418 million (down 9.8%).
Asking Alexandria notches its second No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, as “Psycho” lifts to the top of the Oct. 7-dated survey.
The song follows the one-week reign of “Alone Again” in November 2021.
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In between “Alone Again” and “Psycho,” the band charted with three titles, all in 2022, with “Never Gonna Learn” (No. 6, May); “Faded Out,” featuring Within Temptation (No. 14, September); and as featured, with Motley Crue, Ice Nine Kills and From Ashes to New, on The Retaliators’ “The Retaliators Theme (21 Bullets)” (No. 15, November).
Asking Alexandria first reached the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with “The Death of Me,” which peaked at No. 23 in November 2013. Prior to “Alone Again,” the band reached a No. 23 best with “Antisocialist” in July 2020, one of the act’s eight top 10s.
Concurrently, “Psycho” leaps 13-8 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.5 million audience impressions, up 19%, Sept. 22-28, according to Luminate. It’s the band’s highest-ranking entry on the tally, surpassing the No. 10 peak of “Alone Again.”
“Psycho” placed at No. 20 on the most recently published, Sept. 30-dated, multi-metric Hot Hard Rock Songs ranking. In addition to its radio audience, the song earned 327,000 official U.S. streams Sept. 15-21.
The song is the lead single from Where Do We Go From Here?, Asking Alexandria’s eighth LP, which has earned 15,000 equivalent album units since its Aug. 25 release.
All Billboard charts dated Oct. 7 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, Oct. 3.
Aerosmith is postponing the remainder of their farewell tour, due to frontman Steven Tyler’s vocal chord injury. “Unfortunately, Steven’s vocal injury is more serious than initially thought,” the band wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Friday (Sept. 29). “His doctor has confirmed that in addition to the damage to his vocal cords, he […]
The best part of producing Mick Jagger’s vocals, according to Andrew Watt, is when he begins taking off his clothes.
“He starts in like, a sweater, a button-down and a T-shirt,” the producer-songwriter recalls of a studio session with the Rolling Stones legend, “and then, two takes in, the sweater comes off. Two takes later, the button-down comes off. All of a sudden, he’s down to a T-shirt, and he’s ripped, and he’s 80, and he’s f–king giving you full-blown Mick Jagger, shaking and sweating as he sings every note.”
Such fantastical rock-star run-ins have become relatively commonplace for Watt — but the 32-year-old and 2021 producer of the year Grammy winner, who wore a different Rolling Stones T-shirt every day to the studio while producing the band’s forthcoming album, Hackney Diamonds, still recounts the experience with giddy breathlessness. “You can’t not be jumping up and down with excitement,” he says of watching Jagger work his magic, “because that’s what we’ve all been trained to do for the last 60 years.”
Over the past half-decade, Watt has transitioned from scoring hits for pop stars like Justin Bieber, Camila Cabello and 5 Seconds of Summer to guiding late-career projects from rock’s legacy elites, including Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John and Iggy Pop. While the New York native still collaborates with modern A-listers — Watt worked on the majority of Austin, the recent full-length from frequent collaborator Post Malone — his career has become an inverse of the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, with the 1990s baby blending in with legends in their 70s and 80s. “It’s like going to college,” he says, “and learning from the literal masters.”
Helming Hackney Diamonds, due Oct. 20 on Geffen Records, represented a true bucket-list item for Watt, who was introduced to Jagger by veteran producer Don Was in the middle of the pandemic and struck up a friendship over FaceTime. In the summer of 2022, Watt was in London working with Dua Lipa, and Jagger invited him over for some tea; after years of false starts and scrapped demos for the Stones’ first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, Jagger asked Watt if he would be interested in helping them cross the finish line. Watt’s jaw dropped: “You have this moment where you’re like, ‘Am I even capable of that?’ ” he says. “It’s the greatest honor as a kid with a guitar who grew up idolizing every single thing Keith Richards ever did.”
Courtesy of Polydor
That level of lifelong fandom, combined with an urgency to secure results, is what Watt believes makes him so effective at sharing the studio with icons more than twice his age. He understands that “these legends don’t owe anyone anything,” as he puts it, “so the only reason they’re making a new album is for themselves.” With that in mind, Watt encourages artists to pursue ideas indiscriminately — less conversation, more raw creation — and then it’s his job to approach projects from the viewpoint of what fans most want to hear.
When it came to the Stones, “Any fan wants to hear the greatest live rock’n’roll band of all time,” Watt explains, “so to do anything else with them in the studio is just letting everyone down.” When preproduction for Hackney Diamonds began in September 2022, Watt pushed the band to work efficiently and made sure to prioritize its live energy, particularly within the interplay between Richards and Ronnie Wood.
Session locations ranged from Los Angeles to Paris; Steve Jordan took over the drum kit from Charlie Watts, who died in 2021 but is posthumously featured on two tracks carried over from earlier sessions; and Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were among the guest stars to swing by. The result is a lean, 11-song Stones album that Watt says was mostly finished in under six months, and that “you could put on against other contemporary music, but is still loose and really gets grooving at certain points.”
Although Watt likens the experience of producing a Stones album to climbing a personal Mount Everest, he also says that he has plenty left to accomplish in his career. Aside from contributing to Lipa’s highly anticipated third album, Watt recently co-produced “Seven,” Jung Kook’s Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper featuring Latto. “That was the first time I worked with an artist who didn’t speak the same language as me, so we communicated through music,” he says of the BTS star. “It was the complete opposite of my work with The Rolling Stones, but that’s what keeps it interesting.”
Watt says that his work with various music legends has already started to inform his new stars. “Watching Paul McCartney arrange background vocals and harmonize with himself?” he says. “I’m taking that s–t with me to every production I do for the rest of my life.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.