Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec-19-15 i Billboard Magazine

ONE WAY TO KICK OFF THE ANNUAL CONTEMPORARY art fair? At an intimate celebration hosted by Jorge Perez of the Perez Art Museum in Miami, Wyclef Jean led a conga line — but only after riding on the real estate developer and art collector’s shoulders first. Solange Knowles, who spun at Aby Rosen’s annual Dom Perignon bash on Dec. 3, took a moment to deliver a message of substance from her perch in the club’s DJ booth, declaring, “Honestly, anybody who’s at Basel this weekend, we’re all very privileged to be here in light of what’s happening in the world right now.” The party continued well past 2 a.m., when Lenny Kravitz, who debuted his “Flash” photographic exhibit earlier in the week, surprised partygoers with a live performance of “American…

Before this year a lot of people knew me better as a guy who was in a bluegrass band. But people who read liner notes knew I was a songwriter. I wanted to make a record that I would enjoy playing every night. Just to put Traveller out was my expectation — I didn’t have any beyond that. The commerce of it was not as much of a factor for me. That’s not necessarily my job either. My job is to make the best music that I can and let people a lot smarter than me figure out how to get it to other people. For the Country Music Association Awards, I called up Justin Timberlake. It wasn’t something the producers threw together. We’ve known each other for a couple…

PANDAS. KIDS. CLINTONS. IN 2015, EVERYONE AND THEIR grandmother made videos dancing to rapper-singer Silento’s “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).” The song, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, led a wa us cap Silento wave of top 20 tracks from indie-rap unknowns (ILoveMemphis’ “Hit the Quan,” T. Wayne’s “Nasty [Freestyle]”) powered by user-made online clips. “Before it was even a song, it was an a cappella on Instagram — I got 200 comments,” says It’s called ‘Watch Me,’ but I made it so everyone would think it’s talking to them, telling them to dance.” Now the question is: Can he and his peers parlay viral hits into careers? After signing with Capitol this summer, Silento is about to find out. “I know how to go viral, but I…

Idon’t know how many really good ideas you get in a lifetime, but the idea of telling Hamilton as a hip-hop story was definitely one. Because you get to do everything: love and death and a war and duels and revenge and affairs and sex scandals. At opening night at the Public Theater in February, I remember thinking, “Soon everything will go back to normal” — and that just never happened. Two things have saved me from having a swelled head: One, before we started rehearsals, my wife and I had our first child. And two, the show itself: I’m rapping for two hours and 45 minutes every night. Ask any MC — that is not easy. The discipline it takes to do that has kept my feet firmly on…

To be clear: Nicki Minaj is a better musician than she is a celebrity. But she’s an awfully good celebrity. For Minaj, 33, it’s a job that entails more than the routine duties of 21st century multimedia fame — spreading your stardust across dozens of platforms, from recording studio to concert stage to red carpet to Instagram feed. Minaj’s brand of megastardom means inhabiting the eye of a storm that sweeps up contentious issues of race and gender and sexuality, while tending to more quotidian controversies like rap beefs and diva rivalries. During the past 12 months, Minaj has found herself playing the role of fearsome pop-culture provocateur — often, but not always, intentionally. She has scorned racialized beauty standards, one statement prompting a Twitter riposte, then a hasty apology,…

{ FROM LEFT } ANDREW COLVIN [AGENT, BILLIONS CORP.], DAVE COBB, ISBELL, TRACI THOMAS, DAVID MACIAS, JIM FLAMMIA [FOUNDER/PRESIDENT, ALL EYES MEDIA] SOMETHING MORE THAN FREE 1 Week On Top Country Albums And Top Rock Albums, And 4 Weeks On Folk Albums Two years ago, Jason Isbell established himself as a critic’s darling with the addiction-haunted narratives of his fourth album, Southeastern. This summer’s follow-up, Something More Than Free, not only reflected the 36-year-old singer-songwriter’s hard-won personal peace, it elevated him to multiformat force: The album reached No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums, Top Country Albums and Folk Albums charts, even edging out a new album from icon Alan Jackson. It also earned him a Grammy nomination for best Americana album; “24 Frames” is up for best American roots…

{ FROM LEFT } KELLY, SCOOTER BRAUN “NOBODY LOVE” Trending 140 “UNBREAKABLE SMILE” Trending 140 “SHOULD’VE BEEN US” Trending 140 Tori Kelly’s debut studio album, Unbreakable Smile, helped establish the singer-songwriter as a rising talent, but it was the 22-year-old’s memorable awards-show performances that catapulted her from YouTube curio to best new artist Grammy nominee this year. Her first national TV breakthrough was the May 17 Billboard Music Awards: When the talentshow alumna played a soulful acoustic version of “Nobody Love,” the track surged to No. 1 on the realtime Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart twice the following day. At the MTV Video Music Awards in August, when Kelly burned through her breakup anthem “Should’ve Been Us” — a song that already had hit No. 1 on the Trending…

AS THE SUN SET ON CHICAGO’S SOLDIER Field on July 3, more than 70,000 fans, some clutching roses, cheered to greet The Grateful Dead’s return — and one of the most anticipated concerts of 2015, 20 years after the group formally disbanded following the death of Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead’s three Fare Thee Well 50th-anniversary concerts in Chicago July 3 to 5 rank as the top Boxscore of the year, with an eye-popping gross of $30.7 million and total attendance of 210,283. Add in two shows the previous weekend at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., and the band’s Fare Thee Well shows brought in a take of $52 million. THE YEAR-END TOURING CHARTS ARE BASED ON BOXSCORE DATA REPORTED FOR THE NOV. 29, 2014 ISSUE THROUGH THE NOV.…

2 Album of the year nominees managed by Red Light Management (Alabama Shakes, Chris Stapleton) 1 Number of 2016 best new artist nominees previously nominated for a Grammy (Meghan Trainor) 3 Number of genres in which Kendrick Lamar received his nominations (pop, rap, dance) 19/25 Number of writers/publishers credited on best rap performance nominee Kanye West’s “All Day” 205 Number of nominations claimed by indie labels (according to the American Association of Independent Music) 2 Number of nominated albums originally released as mixtapes (Drake, Kehlani) 25 Average age of the best new artist nominees 60 Average age of the best traditional pop vocal album nominees…

OPENER: REX FEATURES/AP IMAGES. 1: BRUCE GLIKAS/FILMMAGIC. 2: THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES. 3: RODRIGO VARELA/GETTY IMAGES. 4: EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP. 5: KRIS CONNOR/GETTY IMAGES. 6: KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE…

COVER GIRL Rihanna fronted 15 glossies this year, transforming for each: fiery locks in Cuba for Vanity Fair, platinum for V and in the mouth of a shark for Harper’s Bazaar. DIOR’S DARLING RiRi became the first black woman to land a Dior campaign, one of fashion’s most prestigious houses, for a reported $2 million. SOCK IT TO HER The singer collaborated with Stance on a line of 15 pairs of fall socks with phrases like “Broke Bitch” on them and then released a new collection for winter. QUEEN OF THE CARPET An omelet? A piece of pizza? A crepe? Big Bird? Rihanna sparked a thousand memes with the canary yellow Guo Pei gown she wore at the Met Gala in May. SET SIGHTS ON WASHINGTON After accepting the Michael…

My year started in an outdoor shower in Jamaica. I was vacationing there with my family when Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann called to talk over the final details for the Fare Thee Well shows: two at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., in June and three at Chicago’s Soldier Field in July. During the next five months, the 50th anniversary of The Grateful Dead was in my head all the time, even in my dreams. From organizing global broadcasts to clearing blimps and fireworks to planning movie-theater simulcasts, Fare Thee Well was bigger than a concert — it was a cultural event. For me, a Grateful Dead fan since age 20, bringing together Phish’s Trey Anastasio and The Dead’s Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Kreutzmann was a…

It was do or die. My last album, Record Collection, hadn’t done well. And I really respect [RCA heads] Peter Edge and Tom Corson. I didn’t want to make them another quirky, eccentric album that they have no idea how they’re going to break. I wanted to deliver them this f—ing record so that they can have some ammunition this time. But I was surprised at every crazy notch that “Uptown Funk!” kept achieving. Anytime you’re doing something that sounds different, it’s a battle to get it through the door, but people just reacted to it. It’s a good lesson: Just do the shit that you really love, and make sure you make it incredible. But the highlight of my year was the Glastonbury Festival. I was like “F—, if…

DR. DRE Age: 50 16 YEARS SINCE LAST ALBUM 295K Equivalent-album units Compton moved week one — although it was blocked from No. 1 by Luke Bryan’s Kill the Lights. INSPIRATIONAL LYRIC “Goddammit, I’m too old, I forgot I got it all/But Andre young enough to still get involved” —“Talk About It” JAMES TAYLOR Age: 67 7 YEARS SINCE LAST ALBUM 96K First-week sales of Before This World, JT’s first-ever No. 1 album (1971’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon reached No. 2). INSPIRATIONAL LYRIC “Days go by, and I wish that I could slow the whole thing down/Have it all back again” —“You and I Again” JANET JACKSON Age: 49 7 YEARS SINCE LAST ALBUM 116K Equivalent-album units Jackson’s Unbreakable netted in its first week, securing…

FROM LEFT } SHAWN GEE [MANAGER; PARTNER, MAVERICK], JULIE GREENWALD, SCOTT, JULIETTE JONES WOMAN 1 Week On The Billboard 200 Jill Scott — singer, songwriter, actress and, for many devoted fans, mother confessor — has come a long way since her platinum introduction in 2000, Who Is Jill Scott? For her fifth album, Scott, 43, recorded in both Los Angeles and Nashville. The creative merger spawned Woman, her second consecutive No. 1 debut on her Blues Babe/Atlantic label. JULIETTE JONES, executive vp urban promotion, Atlantic: Jill was coming off her last No. 1 album [2011’s The Light of the Sun] and its two No. 1 singles, so it was a very friendly environment. SCOTT We started with the blues track “You Don’t Know.” It was a huge statement about the…

{ FROM LEFT } KAREN FAIRCHILD, LORI MCKENNA, HILLARY LINDSEY, KIMBERLY SCHLAPMAN, JIMI WESTBROOK, PHILLIP SWEET, LIZ ROSE “GIRL CRUSH” 13 Weeks On Hot Country Songs At a moment when feel-good party jams ruled the country airwaves, Little Big Town — Karen Fairchild, 46; Kimberly Schlapman, 46; Jimi Westbrook, 44; and Phillip Sweet, 41 — dared to release a spare, sensual ballad about woman-onwoman jealousy that became 2015’s most talked-about country single. “Girl Crush,” written by Liz Rose, Lori McKenna and Hillary Lindsey, even weathered a trumped-up controversy over its lyrics — misinterpreted as an expression of same-sex lust — to reach No. 1 on Hot Country Songs, where it stayed for 13 weeks, the longest reign by a group of at least three members in the chart’s history. “Girl…

{ FROM LEFT } ERIC WONG, ANDREW GERTLER, DAVID MASSEY, MENDES, PETE WENTZ, JOE TROHMAN, PATRICK STUMP, ANDY HURLEY, JONATHAN DANIEL FALL OUT BOY: AMERICAN BEAUTY/AMERICAN PSYCHO 1 Week On The Billboard 200 SHAWN MENDES: HANDWRITTEN 1 Week On The Billboard 200 In February 2013, Fall Out Boy had just announced its return from a nearly three-year hiatus, Shawn Mendes was a ninth grader who had yet to discover a new app called Vine, and Island Records was still Island Def Jam. Flash forward to 2015, and Fall Out Boy — Patrick Stump, 31; Pete Wentz, 36; Joe Trohman, 31; and Andy Hurley, 35 — and Mendes, 17, are two of the top acts for Island, which has been on a hot streak since its split from Def Jam in…

RYAN SEACREST KICKED OFF a Dec. 8 taping of American Idol at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre with a joke. “I’ll be performing a ballad by Adele,” cracked the host and 15-year veteran of the Fox show as 50 hopefuls, their friends and family, and a trifecta of star judges settled in their seats. “I’m also available to DJ weddings, bar mitzvahs, parties...” Indeed, the busiest man in show business will be a little less busy come April 2016 when Idol sings its last note, anointing a winner four weeks earlier than in previous years, sources reveal to Billboard. FremantleMedia North America president of entertainment programming Trish Kinane, who shares showrunning duties with Fox executive vp David Hill, won’t confirm season 15’s truncated schedule or rumored finale dates of April 6 and…

FROM ONE DIRECTION GOOFING OFF OUTSIDE ITS dressing room to Meghan Trainor palling around with Tove Lo and Shawn Mendes: The backstage scene at KIIS-FM’s Jingle Ball played out like one star-studded holiday party. “A lot of artists are really shy,” Mendes told Billboard. “So this is a really good opportunity to meet people.” During the annual A-list bash, headliners Selena Gomez, 1D and 5 Seconds of Summer dominated with triumphant sets for a sold-out Staples Center crowd of more than 18,000, while relative newcomers Hailee Steinfeld, Charlie Puth and DNCE charmed with the best of their debut releases. The Joe Jonasled DNCE toasted the gig by jokingly carrying a trophy across the stage to the tune of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” But for Fifth Harmony’s Camila Cabello, who…

From becoming a “click-bait-y wormhole” to selling out Madison Square Garden, the singer had a life-changing 2015 I don’t know how to wrap my brain around anything that has happened in the past year. Every time I think the craziest thing ever happened to me, something crazier happens — whether it’s Badlands debuting at No. 2 [on the Billboard 200 in September] or selling out Madison Square Garden in New York. It has gotten to the point where simply stating facts feels like I’m being arrogant. It happened so fast. I moved into my apartment in Los Angeles in March, right around the time I was supposed to deliver the album. I just became obsessed; Badlands became my life. I had an air mattress, no furniture, nothing. There were just…

THE CHART pop of the century’s first dozen years was like a roving strip bar and dance club inside a giant Escalade, fleeing 9/11 fear and financial-crisis loathing in one very long lost weekend. But when the comedown hits, you call on the Canadians, the stealth outsiders with a line in bummed-out ambivalence. Voila, here’s Drake and The Weeknd to counterbalance Jay Z and R. Kelly, the way that early-1970s Neil Young and Joni Mitchell cast rueful shade across the paisley-speckled sunshine of the previous decade. At least, that’s one reading. But there are as many meanings as you choose to draw from the fact that two Torontonians, Drake, 29 (real name: Aubrey Graham) and The Weeknd, 25 (Abel Tesfaye), were dominant and defining figures of 2015 in two distinctly…

Iwas accused of being a Satanist a few times this year. I spent May through June opening for Lana Del Rey and 70 percent of the crowd probably hadn’t heard of Grimes. When you’re performing a really aggressive set in broad daylight for a crowd of sober 13-year-olds and people wearing flower crowns, it’s like a test. I wanted to win everyone over, but there were times when I just thought: “Shit. Sorry, guys.” But it was touring with Lana that I think I finally got good at playing live. I never walk onto the stage and worry that something might go really wrong now. Although I did get seriously hurt when we did a show in Toronto. My brothers and a whole group of friends came onstage during my…

June 16 Trump announces his presidential bid, declaring: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists ... It’s coming from all over South and Latin America.” June 18 Fher Olvera of Mexican rock band Mana is first to speak up: “I have never heard a speech as violent or as filled with hatred — not since Hitler.” June 24 J Balvin pulls out of his scheduled TV performance at the Trump-owned Miss USA pageant. “This [is] about showing leadership through social responsibility.” June 25 Univision announces it will end its business relationship with Trump’s Miss Universe Organization and won’t air the 2015 Miss USA pageant. June 26 Trump sends a letter to Univision CEO Randy…

I N THE BRAVE NEW WORLD of streaming, finding music to listen to is rarely a problem — but sifting through it certainly is. That’s why helping listeners locate songs and artists they like has become so important, for both a music biz looking to break hits on this new platform and for streaming services needing to stand out from competitors. The tech world first took on curation with Pandora’s Music Genome Project, which analyzed songs by up to 450 different characteristics, then used algorithms to create personalized online radio. Other services adopted a similarly technical approach. In 2014 Spotify bought The Echo Nest, a startup that analyzes music in order to provide more advanced recommendations. In 2015, however, it started to seem like human tastemakers would be just as…

Every artist dreams of topping a Billboard chart, but the 15 wildly diverse performers featured in this portfolio — from FUTURE to JILL SCOTT, SELENA GOMEZ to LITTLE BIG TOWN — pulled off that feat in 2015 thanks to two things they all share: a relentless, razor-sharp support team and, according to hip-hop superstar NICKI MINAJ — whose 2015 included a public feud and romance — stadium-sized ambition: “You have to be bigger than your music. I was never settling. I was ruthless”…

{ FROM LEFT } JUAN DIEGO MEDINA, JAM “EL PERDON” (NICKY JAM & ENRIQUE IGLESIAS) 30 Weeks On Hot Latin Songs Juan Diego Medina was in his management office when client Nicky Jam (real name: Nick Rivera Caminero, 35) called from the studio, humming a new melody. Recalls Medina, 27, “Nicky said, ‘I’ll send you a hit in two hours.’ The next day, we put the chorus up on his Instagram, and that’s all it took.” Fans went wild for “El Perdon,” the story of a man lamenting the loss of his lover to another. At the time, “Travesuras,” Jam’s comeback hit after a 10-year absence from the charts, was No. 4 on Hot Latin Songs. The uniqueness of the sound had caught Enrique Iglesias’ ear, and Jam sent him…

A THREAD OF NOSTALGIA WEAVES together the year’s biggest artist, album and song: Taylor Swift, her late-’80s-pop retrofit 1989 and the soul throwback “Uptown Funk!” by Mark Ronson, featuring Bruno Mars. Swift rules as Billboard’s top artist of 2015, thanks largely to the runaway success of 1989 (named for her birth year), the record’s smash singles and the squad leader’s sold-out stadium tour. It also marks the second time that Swift, who turns 26 on Dec. 13, is the year’s top artist, making her only the second woman to claim that crown twice, following Adele in 2011 and 2012. Swift last ruled in 2009, after her second record, Fearless, spent 11 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200. But back then, the singer-songwriter was still firmly a country act. Fast-forward to…