Innholdsfortegnelse for Nov-07-15 i Billboard Magazine

MOVE OVER, BEATLES. With One Direction’s new single “Perfect” roaring onto the Nov. 7 Billboard Hot 100 at No. 10, the act bests its British boy band forebearers as the group with the most top 10 debuts in the chart’s 57-year history. The single is One Direction’s fifth top 10 debut on the Hot 100, and second from its forthcoming album Made in the A.M., out Nov. 13 (“Drag Me Down” bowed at No. 3 on the Aug. 22 chart). With the achievement, the quartet — Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson — passes The Beatles’ four top 10 debuts. Among all artists, group and solo, Taylor Swift has the most top 10 Hot 100 bows, with 12. The strong start of “Perfect” was fueled primarily by…

TWO DECADES AGO, LARGE PARTS of London’s Kings Cross section were dark and dangerous no-go zones, rife with crime, drug dealers and prostitution. Today, the North London district — near Camden and St. Pancras International train station — is home to one of the capital city’s most vibrant developments and is rapidly becoming a mecca for music, tech and creative enterprises, with Universal Music Group the latest company to sign a long-term lease in the area. The major’s U.K. headquarters long have been based in Kensington, also home to Sony Music and Warner Music Group. But come the summer of 2017, UMG will move its 1,000-plus workforce, as well as those of its sister companies Universal Music Publishing Group and See Tickets, to 4 Pancras Square, one of Kings Cross’…

JOANNA NEWSOM Divers Drag City SINGER-SONGWRITER JOANNA Newsom is one of modern music’s greatest anomalies: an indie artist whose touchstones are harp arrangements, polysyllabic lyrics and a bizarrely squeaky voice. The 33-year-old proudly belongs to another time period — perhaps medieval — but still managed to keep a dedicated fan base after the freak-folk boom of the mid-2000s. Her last LP, in 2010, is a perfect example of her singularity: Have One on Me, a dazzling triple album. But Newsom narrows her creative scope for once on new album Divers, and the result is her best record yet. At 11 tracks, it won’t scare away listeners overwhelmed by the volume of past projects. The songs themselves are more approachable too but no less lush and captivating. Divers is a…

November 1995 Spirit Music Group is founded by former BMI executive Mark Fried. It partners with London-based Palan Music for startup funding and a global network of subpublishers. May 1996 A wave of deals brings a trove of standards to Spirit through agreements with the estates of songwriters Bernie Wayne (“Blue Velvet”) and Johnny Burke (“Misty”) as well as 1960s hits from Lou Christie and Paul & Paula. October 1996 Spirit boosts its profile in rock and soul of the 1970s through deals for the song catalogs of Dick Wagner (“Only Women Bleed”), Orleans (“Love Takes Time”) and Taste of Honey (“Boogie Oogie Oogie”). It also starts representing the catalog of Irwin Levine (“Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” “Knock Three Times”). March 1997 Hitmakers from the ’80s join Spirit through deals…

“F—ING ADELE.” So cracked a member of Justin Bieber’s team after “Hello,” the 27-year-old British singer’s first new song since 2012, premiered Oct. 23, siphoning all attention in its wake and pushing aside highly touted same-day releases — like Bieber’s own “Sorry,” the second single from his forthcoming album. There’s reason for competitors to worry. With “Hello” poised to vault over The Weeknd’s “The Hills” and Drake’s “Hotline Bling” for the No. 1 spot on the Nov. 14 Billboard Hot 100, Adele has silenced any doubts about her relevance after a long absence. But one significantquestion remains: Can she score a million-selling first week with her new studio album, 25? Arriving Nov. 20, Adele’s third release on XL Recordings/Columbia is on track to reach that goal, a threshold last crossed…

I like everything I have done — more or less,” says Rod Stewart over the phone from his estate in Essex, England. The 70-year-old icon doesn’t waver, however, in his pride over his 29th solo album, Another Country, released Oct. 23 on Capitol. He co-produced with Kevin Savigar, his collaborator since 1978, but they switched things up by recording at Stewart’s Los Angeles home, feeling it would have a more intimate vibe than a studio. “I try to write as personal and honest as I can,” says Stewart. “The listener can certainly feel that.” You sing “If I die, I’m going to die laughing” on your LP. Why do you think you have this outlook? I’m a carefree guy; it’s just a line in a frivolous, makeyou-smile song. Don’t take…

IT’S A TOUCH BIZARRE FOR A BIG POP STAR to call making a big pop album an “experiment,” as British singer Ellie Goulding has said of her third full-length effort, Delirium. But in 2015, it’s clear what she means. The genre is going through one of its imperial phases: In the midst of popular mainstream music in general there is also pop with a capital “P,” a proper name for the specific form of hit-forging associated with a few superproducers, chief among them Swede Max Martin and his atelier of proteges. It’s music made by fitting each successive hook into the eye of the last, like an ouroboros of earworms chewing each other’s tails. It has an aggression borrowed from both hip-hop and EDM, mixed with a brightness born…

ON NOV. 1, 1975, DONNA SUMMER, then 26, quietly entered the Billboard 200 at No. 190 with her album Love to Love You Baby. Less than four months later, the LP peaked at No. 11, largely on the strength of the breathy, sensual, nearly 17-minute-long title track, which the singer punctuated with 23 simulated orgasms, according to the BBC. The album version of the song — which Summer co-wrote with disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder and producer Pete Bellotte — was too long and too racy for many radio stations, but the edited 7-inch record became Summer’s first hit on the Billboard Hot 100, rising to No. 2. In 2008, the singer told Billboard that the erotic moans were her idea: “I was imagining [that] if Marilyn Monroe sang the song,…

“ The guys in Europe understood they would be part of the fun.” —Sean Riley, The Martin Agency The members of veteran hard-rock band Europe were eager to show some self-deprecating good humor by starring in a goofy commercial for Geico insurance, but they weren’t interested in becoming the butt of a joke. The group insisted on rerecording its synthesizer-heavy 1986 hit, “The Final Countdown,” leaving that era’s big hair, guyliner and costumes behind. “If they had wanted the original song and for us to dress like we did 30 years ago, we wouldn’t have done it,” says lead singer Joey Tempest. “We wanted to look how we look now and do a version of the song that’s new and raw and tough.” Geico was happy to oblige — with…

FOUNDER/CEO, CARDENAS MARKETING NETWORK IN 1978, WHEN HENRY CARDENAS was a student at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, he put together his first disco party. He rented a wedding ballroom, hired a local DJ for $50, charged admission at the door and made $700. “It felt like $7 million,” says Cardenas says. “Even though my major was in accounting, I decided I was going to continue producing.” It has been a long road to the $180 million he expects his Chicago-based Cardenas Marketing Network (CMN) to gross in 2015 from ticket sales and sports and experiential marketing events — more than double what CMN grossed in 2014, making Cardenas the biggest promoter of Latin music in the country. “We usually do 70 to 90 concerts per year, but this year…

“How many of you are going to be 18 next year, before November?” singer Katy Perry asked the crowd during her performance honoring presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Oct. 24. “Listen, you have so much power, and this is going to be one of the most important elections in over a decade. So much change can happen. Let’s go, Hillary!” MTV Europe Music Awards MILAN, OCT. 25 THE THEME FOR THE 22ND ANNUAL MTV EMAs WAS CUTE vs. badass, noted hosts Ed Sheeran and Ruby Rose during their opening remarks. But for the 10,000 boisterous pop fans inside Milan’s Mediolanum Forum, it was most definitely cute — in the form of Justin Bieber — that won the day.…

Thirty years ago they shook up the pop world with their crossover tropical hits, and now Gloria and Emilio Estefan are shaking up the Great White Way with Broadway’s first-ever Latin jukebox musical. On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan opens Nov. 5 at the Marquis Theatre, after grossing an impressive $970,013 from its first seven preview performances. The bilingual musical has special meaning to the duo: “It’s a love letter,” says Gloria, 58, “to music and this country that opened its arms.” Adds Emilio, 62: “It shows that dreams have no limitations.” Five more reasons to check out On Your Feet: 1. THEY KEEP IT REALLY REAL “We wanted to tell the truth,” says Emilio. That meant recruiting six Miami Sound Machine bandmates for the group…

In the dramedy Rock the Kasbah (Open Road), in theaters now, Bill Murray stars as a talent manager who risks his life to help a Pashtun singer realize her dream of becoming the first woman to sing on Afghanistan’s American Idol equivalent. The screenwriter, Murray’s longtime friend Mitch Glazer, reveals their musical past: I’ve been writing for and with Bill since 1987, when we did Scrooged. I wrote Kasbah for him. I was thinking, “God, to see Bill Murray sing ‘Smoke on the Water’ to Pashtun tribesmen! Someone has to do that scene, and it might as well be me.” Bill and I have had some rock moments. Eric Clapton is a friend of Bill’s, and a few years ago the producer of Eric’s Crossroads Guitar Festival called me and…

THE FESTIVAL Founded by Icelandair, the country’s national airline, and first held in an airplane hangar in 1999, the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival now boasts more than 200 acts across nearly a dozen venues in the capital city of Reykjavik. Though this year’s edition will have such U.S. acts as Father John Misty, Ariel Pink and Beach House hitting the stage, the festival has remained true to its mission of showcasing local talent. Nonstop flights from JFK Airport in New York are six hours, and English is widely spoken. 3 LOCAL ACTS TO CHECK OUT Sin Fang The indie-folk solo work of Seabear’s Sindri Mar Sigfusson. Nov. 6 at 12:50 a.m. at Harpa Nordurljos Kiasmos BAFTA-winning composer Olafur Arnalds’ and Janus Rasmussen’s electronic project. Nov. 7 at 9 p.m. at…