Super Bowl
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Turns out, the way to Taylor Swift‘s heart is magic tricks. In an interview on The Pivot Podcast uploaded Tuesday (Feb. 27), Mecole Hardman opened up about how he won over the 34-year-old pop star after she started dating his Kansas City Chiefs teammate Travis Kelce, and revealed details about the moment she gave him a big hug after he caught the game-winning touchdown at the 2024 Super Bowl.
The 25-year-old wide receiver started by praising Kelce for pulling Swift. “It’s Trav, bro,” he told the show’s hosts, laughing. “If anybody’s gonna do that, it’s Trav who’s gonna get that right there.”
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“Trav is such a cool dude, and Taylor’s so cool,” he added. “She just vibes.”
Hardman went on to say that he first met the “Anti-Hero” singer at a “get-together” at Kelce’s house. At the party, he wowed Swift with an impressive card trick.
“Honestly when we leave, we’re like, ‘D–n, that’s Taylor Swift! Ay, that’s crazy,” he said of his fellow players.
Flash forward to the Feb. 11 Super Bowl at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. After the Chiefs went into overtime against the San Francisco 49ers, Hardman secured a Kansas City victory by catching quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ game-ending pass.
Immediately after the game wrapped, Swift joined the players on the field and kissed Kelce in front of NFL cameras. She also made sure to give Hardman a big hug.
“She was like, ‘Good job, proud of you, good game,’” he recalled of the moment. “Then she said something about, ‘You and these magic tricks.”
“Every time she sees me she talks about [the card trick],” No. 12 continued. “‘Your hands are magical,’ or something like that.’”
Hardman’s remarks came the same day Andy Reid revealed that Swift baked homemade pop-tarts for the Chiefs’ offensive line. “She didn’t give me one, and the offensive linemen definitely didn’t give me one,” the coach said in an interview, looking slightly miffed that he didn’t get to try one of the singer’s pastries.
“Since the queen has passed away, she might be the most famous woman in the world,” Big Red added of the star. “She’s so grounded for who she is. I think it’s a great escape for her, where she can come [to games]. She sincerely enjoys the games.”
For those who have been holding out hope that Usher will finally drop his “Believe” track that’s been swirling around online for years, good news awaits: Jermaine Dupri, one of the song’s writers, confirmed via X on Thursday (Feb. 22) that the song will finally arrive on Friday. Usher’s reps confirmed to Billboard that “Believe” […]
Travis Kelce is speaking out in the wake of the Feb. 14 Super Bowl parade shooting, which began as a celebration of the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory but ended in gunfire that killed one person and injured 22 others.
The 34-year-old tight end addressed the events in a new video clip for his and brother Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast posted on X Monday (Feb. 19), which was shared ahead of this week’s new episode. Noting that the Wednesday (Feb. 21) installment was recorded prior to the shooting, Travis said in the video, “After the tragic events of the Super Bowl parade in Kansas City, it didn’t feel right without you guys hearing from us first.”
“Our hearts go out to all of the victims, their families, Chiefs Kingdom and really all of Kansas City that was really there on a day to try and celebrate the community,” added Jason, who plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles. “It’s unfortunate and deeply tragic, the events that occurred. We also want to thank the local law enforcement that sprang into action, the first responders on scene.”
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“Kansas City and Chiefs Kingdom, we love you guys,” Travis concluded, noting they’d be sharing a link to a donation collection supporting those affected by the shooting. “We’re with you guys.”
The offensive lineman was one of many who attended the parade celebrating his team’s second Super Bowl win in a row, three days after the big game on Feb. 11. Before the shooting broke out, he and his teammates — as well as his mom, Donna Kelce — road atop a float and waved at Chiefs fans lining the streets. The Associated Press previously reported that according to the police chief, a million people likely attended the celebratory parade.
Shortly after the shooting, Travis shared a message to fans via X. “I am heartbroken over the tragedy that took place today,” he tweeted. “My heart is with all who came out to celebrate with us and have been affected. KC, you mean the world to me.”
Taylor Swift, who is dating Travis, was not at the parade, although she did attend the Super Bowl in Las Vegas to cheer on Kansas City. She has donated $100,000 to the family of Lisa Lopez-Galvan, the radio DJ who was killed in the shooting.
See Travis and Jason Kelce’s statement on the Super Bowl parade shooting below.
I am heartbroken over the tragedy that took place today. My heart is with all who came out to celebrate with us and have been affected. KC, you mean the world to me.— Travis Kelce (@tkelce) February 15, 2024
As electric as Usher‘s Halftime Show performance at the 2024 Super Bowl was, fans couldn’t help but be a little bummed that a much-rumored Justin Bieber reunion didn’t take place Sunday (Feb. 11) at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. But in a recent interview, the 45-year-old superstar revealed that he did indeed ask Bieber to […]
Few events can stitch together the various webs of American culture like the Super Bowl, and the numbers this year bear that out: With 123.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, the Big Game last Sunday (Feb. 11) was the most-watched broadcast since the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. And that means a lot of eyeballs for a lot of high-profile advertisement slots, which were priced accordingly: Commercials for the event this year went for as much as $7 million for a 30-second ad, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That makes working on such ads a high-stakes game, not to mention one that’s highly coveted in the world of music supervision and production. This year, boutique music and sound design company Barking Owl Sound landed seven such spots, doing sound design, mixing and production for ads with Booking.com (with Tina Fey) and Etsy; music arrangement and production for Budweiser’s spot; sound design, mix, production and original music for Starry’s ad with Ice Spice (No. 10 on Billboard‘s list of best commercials from the event); mixing and production for Paramount+’s Champions League ad; sound design and production for Kia’s commercial; and original music and production for Homes.com’s Mascot ad. And that high-profile work for the firm earns Barking Owl Sound co-founder/executive creative director Kelly Bayett the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
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Here, Bayett discusses the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the sound production of a Super Bowl ad; how she helped build Barking Owl and its creative team as well as its new music library, along with the opportunities it entails for them; and what’s next for the company. “With seven spots this year, it really solidifies our position in the industry moving forward and opens us up to new opportunities,” Bayett says. “We can accept the challenge and our team can excel with a number of projects under the highest amount of pressure. Moving forward, we are strong as ever and ready for anything.”
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This week, Barking Owl worked on the music for seven Super Bowl advertisements, including for Etsy, Budweiser, Kia and more. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
In our industry, getting Super Bowl ads is definitely relationship-dependent. An agency and client will rarely go to a vendor they don’t know and trust for a piece with millions of dollars on the line. Our key decisions are actually based on building the long term and not what feels fast and easy. [It’s about] focusing on growing relationships that last and consistently keeping the work you are doing fresh and interesting.
Can you tell me about how the company got started and your philosophy around what you do and what work you choose to get involved with, particularly as it pertains to these spots?
I was a single mom and I and my then-boyfriend, now husband, decided to start a music and sound design company in our home. Fourteen years later, we have added mix, brand partnerships, gorgeous studios in L.A. and New York as well as a global team of composers and writers. Our philosophy was to create a company that focused on creative and felt like home. We care about the craft of sound. If you look at any piece of work we have done for the Super Bowl, or anything on our reel, you will see that we don’t just grab sounds out of the library. We create them for each moment and we have been really fortunate to attract clients who value and appreciate the process.
What is the typical process for how you guys work on a commercial like these?
We will get a brief from the agency, and from there, it’s go time. We get on a call and talk about the process, creative directives, and then we start to create and build. It’s important to us to have the agency involved in the collaboration so that there are no surprises on either side. We keep it fun and light, we have amazing executive producers in New York and L.A. in Ashley Benton and KC Dossett who keep everyone on task. It’s the only time of year where every job is racing to the same finish line, so it takes incredible scheduling and organization.
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Your work on these was a mix of sound design, mixing, production, arrangement and original music. How do you approach each of those roles differently?
We have different teams of specialists for each role. Original music can be the trickiest a lot of the time because we are creating themes, tones and movement with an incredibly fast timeline. You are working with personal taste, and when it comes to thoughts about music, there is no right or wrong, it’s all about feeling. Sometimes, you just don’t like something because it doesn’t move you, and that can be challenging. We have to become detectives and figure out what isn’t hitting emotionally or tonally. Sometimes the whole team is on board with the exception of one holdout, and even though majority rules, I feel like we have failed if everyone has not left happy.
Arrangements are really about timing and vision of the track. Sound design is one of the most fun pieces, and also the piece that if we do it exactly right with hours of foley recording and sound manipulation, it will feel like we have done nothing at all. Mixing is the glue that keeps all of it together, giving space for the dialogue, VO, music and sound design. A great mix is dynamic, a bad mix is overly compressed and you lose the craft of each element you have so diligently created. Having our work destroyed by lazy mixers inspired the creation of our mix department.
Music production work like this is a competitive space, dealing with both huge companies and smaller houses. How do you guys compete within that environment, and stand out against your competitors?
It’s an incredibly competitive environment and it only gets more competitive as new companies are popping up each day. I have never really been one to look around and see what others are doing. I am solely focused on our mission, our purpose and what work we are putting out there. How are we showing up each day? Is it good enough? We are also a female-founded company with female creative leads, which is highly unusual. I came up in a space that was so insanely male, we wanted to bring a different perspective and change the landscape with female composers, mixers and sound designers. Everyone matters and everyone is supported here. When people feel supported they are free to create better and more inventive work. We created a structure where we all work as a team and there is no internal competition. That is a huge difference as well. Our employee retention is incredibly high and we all know each other so well, it’s truly like family.
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You’re also building out your own music library. What will that allow you to do, and how can that allow you to grow in the future?
I am so insanely excited about this. We have this amazing library of about 15,000 original tracks from years of demos created for commercials that never sold. The quality we expect from composers and the years of crafting and scoring have resulted in an incredibly varied, diverse library of tracks that are of the highest creative level. We didn’t exactly know what to do with them or how to set up a library, but we knew that we could offer something unique to the industry, as well as broadening our reach to TV and film. Last year, we brought in a partner, Kirkland Lynch, who leads these types of strategic initiatives as CEO. Kirkland brings experience from years with Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Stevie Wonder and YouTube Music. He has been a great addition to the team bringing an understanding and knowledge we really needed.
What does success look like from your point of view for a commercial like these? And with seven spots at this year’s game, what does that allow you guys to do moving forward?
We aren’t in charge of the overall idea, so the success for us is to see if we have executed the idea in the best way possible. Sound design properly in the space, the music scored and arranged in a way that tells the story and makes you feel something, mixes where each sound element complements the other — that is success. With seven spots this year, it really solidifies our position in the industry moving forward and opens us up to new opportunities. We can accept the challenge and our team can excel with a number of projects under the highest amount of pressure. Moving forward, we are strong as ever and ready for anything.
For Will Bratton, the best part of Super Bowl LVIII was not when Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman caught the game-winning pass for an overtime touchdown or when Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker nailed a 57-yard field goal. It was when Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, during the trophy ceremony after the game, belted out an impromptu, raggedy chorus of “Viva Las Vegas” on the CBS broadcast.
Those three words, repeated several times in a pacing and melody only vaguely resembling Elvis Presley’s classic 1964 hit, have delivered an unexpected payday for the song’s rights holders.
“We were very excited about him doing that,” says Bratton, president of Pomus Songs Inc., namesake publisher for the late Doc Pomus, who wrote the song with Mort Shuman. “Royalties are paid for that performance through BMI.”
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Kelce’s rendition constituted an “ephemeral use,” according to Rachel Jacobson, who oversees film and TV for Warner Chappell Music (WCM), which administers Pomus’ recordings. As when a marching band plays an off-the-cuff snippet of a song during a televised football game, the use generates a royalty payment through BMI as a public performance. “Anything beyond that, then you come and clear it,” she says.
Although Bratton couldn’t say how much money Pomus Songs made from Kelce’s performance — “BMI’s generally three quarters behind, so we won’t have that data until probably next December” — the revenue is likely to continue. Late-night talk shows airing Kelce’s version would have to pay for a “previewing synch license,” according to Bratton, which would lead to a negotiated fee as opposed to the ephemeral use royalty payment. WCM’s Jacobson is not aware of any requests for such a license involving Kelce’s rendition of “Viva.”
For the Super Bowl, Bratton says, “It was also licensed to CBS Sports for a pre-game show and it was shown once during the game over a viewing of Taylor Swift. That paid — I don’t want to say how much, but it was good money.”
Written for the Presley film of the same name, “Viva” has come to symbolize Las Vegas glamor-and-gambling culture and has been covered by Bruce Springsteen, Dead Kennedys, ZZ Top and Shawn Colvin. Bob Dylan wrote a chapter about the song in his 2022 book, The Philosophy of Modern Song: “This is a song about faith. The kind of faith where you step under a shower spigot in the middle of the desert and fully believe water will come out.”
The song was also in The Big Lebowski and a Viagra commercial (“Viva Viagra”), which, Bratton recalls, “was a very nice synch license momentarily — but I’m not sure if we regret it or not.”
Pomus, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter who wrote classics such as The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me” and “This Magic Moment”; The Coasters’ “Young Blood”; and Presley’s “Little Sister,” was a “sports fanatic,” according to Bratton, who is married to Pomus’ daughter, Sharyn Felder. “He would have been thrilled that his song was used like that,” he says of Kelce’s “Vegas” rendition. “It was more of a holler than a sing. It was his enthusiasm that was notable.” He adds: “We just like it to make money.”
Taylor Swift said that Travis Kelce‘s viral “You Belong With Me” serenade at the 2024 Super Bowl afterparty Sunday (Feb. 11) was the “most romantic” gesture she’s ever received — and given that she’s a celebrated love-song writer, that’s some high praise. In a newly surfaced video from the post-game celebration — which was held […]
Streams and sales of Usher’s sizable catalog of music rose amid and following his performance at the halftime show of Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11.
From Feb. 11-12, consumption of Usher’s music totaled 35.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams, up 46% from 24.6 million between Feb. 9-10, according to initial reports to Luminate.
Additionally, his music accumulated 27,000 downloads Feb. 11-12, a 210% jump after accruing 9,000 Feb. 9-10.
The gains come despite higher-than-usual totals for the singer on streaming services thanks not just to buzz around his performance, but also the premiere of Coming Home, Usher’s ninth studio album, which was released on Feb. 9. Comparing the two-day period of Feb. 11-12 to the Sunday-Monday stretch of a week before (Feb. 4-5), the percentage gain is even higher – 299%, up to 35.9 million from 9 million. Download-wise, it’s a leap of 1,685% from 2,000 downloads to 27,000.
Leading the way is “Yeah!,” featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, which accumulated 4.8 million official on-demand U.S. streams Feb. 11-12. That’s up 105% from Feb. 9-10, when the song earned 2.3 million streams.
Some of Usher’s biggest gainers were, like “Yeah!,” performed during the halftime show. The same can be said for “My Boo,” Usher’s duet with Alicia Keys (who made a cameo during the medley). The tune vaults 158% to 3 million streams Feb. 11-12, up from 1.2 million the previous two days.
“Love in This Club” (which features Jeezy) follows with 2.4 million streams Feb. 11-12, a 147% boost from 961,000, and then comes “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” (featuring Pitbull) via 2.1 million streams, up 83% from 1.2 million.
Sales-wise, “Yeah!” also paces the pack, racking up 7,000 downloads Feb. 11-12. In the previous frame of Feb. 9-10, it earned 1,000 downloads, giving the song a 424% leap.
“U Got It Bad” boasts the next highest sales count at 3,000 Feb. 11-12, a 349% jump from 1,000 Feb 9-10.
The full breadth of Usher’s catalog gains will be noted on the Billboard charts dated Feb. 24, which cover streams, sales and airplay accrued during the Feb. 9-15 tracking week.
Usher ended Super Bowl weekend with a bang — or wedding bells, rather. The “U Got It Bad” singer took to Instagram on Wednesday (Feb. 14) to share a series of photos from his Las Vegas wedding to his longtime girlfriend Jennifer Goicoechea on Feb. 11, just hours after the star took the stage at Super […]
Underestimate The DunKings … at your peril! Jennifer Lopez may have drowned husband Ben Affleck‘s pop-star dreams in Dunkin’s 2024 Super Bowl ad, but the Oscar-winning actor is following his heart. The DunKings boy band — comprised of Affleck and fellow Boston boys Matt Damon and Tom Brady — dropped their track “Don’t Dunk Away […]