Innholdsfortegnelse for Apr-18-15 i Billboard Magazine

A TOUCHING ODE TO A FALLEN HOLLYWOOD STAR is firing on all cylinders. Following the April 3 premiere of blockbuster film Furious 7, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” (featuring pop singer-songwriter Charlie Puth) — a tribute to the franchise’s late star, Paul Walker, who died in a car crash in 2013 — vaults 84-10. Meanwhile, the film’s soundtrack surges 17-2 on the Billboard 200 (see page 58). The arrival of the Furious film — which had the fourth-best worldwide box-office opening weekend ever ($392 million, according to Box Office Mojo) — propels “Again” by 488 percent to 168,000 downloads sold in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music, sending the track 42-1 on Digital Songs . It should soar even further through streaming: Walker’s co-star, Vin Diesel, premiered…

ON FEB. 27, 20-YEAR-OLD SINGER Alfredito Olivas was shot eight times while performing at a nightclub in Parral, Mexico. On March 22, grupero star Javier Rosas was shot multiple times while riding in an SUV in the northern Mexico state of Sinaloa. Both singers, known for narcocorridos — danceable, accordion-driven songs that tell often-celebratory tales about drug dealers — survived. But Rogelio Brambila Lizarraga, singer of Los Plebes del Arranke, a relatively obscure group whose songs reference the notorious Arellano Felix cartel, wasn’t as fortunate. On March 21, the 22-year-old’s body was found in a parked car in Tijuana, Mexico, riddled with bullets from two different guns. Along with the death of narcocorrido singer Ariel Camacho in a car accident, those incidents — which took place within the span of…

Don’t expect to see Chrissy Teigen getting her groove on while co-hosting the 2015 Billboard Music Awards. The self-proclaimed “worst dancer on the planet” will instead have to look to Ludacris, with whom she’ll share a stage on May 17 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The three-hour show is produced by Dick Clark Productions and will air live at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. This year’s BBMAs include the biggest chart-topping names of 2014: Taylor Swift (who leads with 14 entries in 13 categories), Sam Smith (13), Iggy Azalea (12) and Meghan Trainor (nine). Returning co-host Ludacris and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz unveiled the first five categories on ABC’s Good Morning America, and the remainder were announced by Teigen and Empire star Jussie Smollett during…

HIGH-ENERGY PERFORMANCES — AND STRONG POLITICAL OPINIONS — were on display at Indianapolis’ NCAA March Madness Music Festival at White River State Park. During Rihanna’s crotch-grabbing, middle-finger-waving, 14-song set, she expressed outrage against Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “Who’s feeling these new bullshit laws that they’re trying to pass?” she said. “I say f— that shit.” But it was happy vibes afterward, as she tweeted to attending fans: “You blew me away! ... You SANG every F—ING word!!!! That shit legit give me goose-bumps!!!” Meanwhile, Jack Antonoff — who recently spoke to Billboard about why his band Bleachers wouldn’t boycott its performance — wore a “Protect LGBTQ Hoosiers” T-shirt, also expressing his distaste for the RFRA. Other performers included Passion Pit, Lady Antebellum, Weezer, Kacey Musgraves and Imagine Dragons, whose…

Tobias Jesso Jr.’s debut album, Goon, out March 17 on True Panther Sounds, has sold only 8,000 copies, according to Nielsen Music. But if there was a chart for hype, he’d be vying for No. 1. The 29-year-old Canadian is selling out shows on his national tour, drowning in critical praise, getting co-signs from both A-list stars like Adele and the hipster set, and just signed a major publishing deal. So what’s all the buzz about? 1He’s having a great 2015 — but after ahorrible 2012, he deserves it. Sad ballads like “Hollywood” were inspired by an awful week during Jesso’s fourth year as a struggling bassist and songwriter in Los Angeles. “I broke up with my girlfriend,” he recalls. “Later that week, I got hit by a car on…

“People said, ‘Howcould you walkaway from music?’But being a dad,there’s nothing thatcan touch that.” —GARTH BROOKS The country star in an interview with People, about his 14-year hiatus from the music industry. “I’m notdoing anymoreinterviewsthis year.” —AZEALIA BANKS The rapper, reacting negatively to her Billboard cover story in a since-deleted Instagram post. “You have thisbeautiful moment.And then someone’f—ing in your face.It’s terrifying.” —ADAM LEVINE The Maroon 5 singer, after being attacked by a stage-rushing fan at a show in Anaheim, Calif. “The doctors saidI was lucky to bealive and that therewas still a chanceI could die.” —DERYCK WHIBLEY The Sum 41 frontman to Noisey in his first interview since his hospitalization for, and ongoing recovery from, severe alcohol addiction. “He’s the sweetest.I love him.” —CHRISTINA MILIAN The R&B singer on…

There are rock stars, and then there are ROCK STARS, and with their swaggering new album, the once-genteel Mumford & Sons — who ditched their folksy instruments for U2-sized stadium sonics, now call both London and New York home and even (in the case of Marcus) got hitched to a Hollywood A-lister — clearly aspire to join the pantheon of Golden Gods. “We’ve been itching to do something different,” says Mumford. A HANGOVER-NURSING ENGLISH band seeking an oasis of quiet, clubby Britannia amid Los Angeles’ hustle and sprawl could do worse than the Penthouse Bar at the West Hollywood Soho House on a Tuesday afternoon. Which might be why Mumford & Sons have encamped there during a visit that seems to make them all a little wary. “Whenever you hang…

STEP 1 FIND YOUR BEST PLATFORM Does Instagram, Vine or Snapchat best suit your strengths? Decide and commit. “You can’t put out something great and go away,” says Adam Alpert, CEO of Disruptor Management, who works with viral-DJ duo The Chainsmokers. “If people aren’t looking at you, they’re looking at somebody else.” STEP 2 CONNECT AND COLLABORATE Make friends and engage with influencers, but don’t lavish them with disingenuous praise. “Reach out to people because you enjoy their content — and say why,” says Brandon Martinez, CEO of INDMusic, YouTube’s largest music network. “No one’s going to turn you away because you think they’re awesome.” STEP 3 GET A TALENT MANAGER Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency both represent micro-stars, but don’t pitch them. Instead, focus on getting everyone…

By Richard Goldstein Bloomsbury USA The godfather of rock criticism looks back In 1966, Richard Goldstein, 21 and looking 15, became America’s first full-time rock critic, penning The Village Voice’s “Pop Eye” column — a job that was “better than sex with The Shirelles,” he writes in his vivid, eccentric new memoir, Another Little Piece of My Heart. Goldstein, now 70, was at the sizzling center of the Fillmores East and West, and all scenes in between. Andy Warhol introduced him to a pre-fame Lou Reed, “not yet the volcano of ’tude he became.” John Lennon razzed him in “Give Peace a Chance” (“Everybody’s talking about ... rabbis and Pop Eyes”). Goldstein’s photographer, Linda soon-to-be-McCartney Eastman (“To call her a groupie is to understate her allure”), got him in to…

THE EVENT STARTED MODESTLY, WITH A guitar-shaped cake and a buffet dinner at the Red Barrel Nightclub in Hawaiian Gardens, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles. The down-home menu set the tone for a 1963 awards banquet honoring country and western musicians who drew crowds to the nightclubs of Southern California. By 1965, the people behind the banquet had organized officially, creating the Academy of Country and Western Music. A year later, the first official awards show was staged at the Hollywood Palladium. Bonanza family patriarch Lorne Greene was the host. The ACM (which dropped “Western” from its name by 1973 ) has “stayed true to its roots in Southern California and the notion that great country music is a sound that ... comes from the heart and not from…

NUMBERS :JODECI RETURNS After a 20-year recording hiatus, the legendary R&B group Jodeci has finally returned to the album charts. The quartet’s new LP, The Past, The Present, The Future, takes a bow on the April 18 tallies, making a mark with its first new studio set since 1995. 2 The new album, released on Sphinx/Epic, bows at No. 2 on R&B Albums (27,000 copies sold in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music) and No. 23 on the Billboard 200 (bowing with 28,000 equivalent-album units). 18 The new album, released on Sphinx/Epic, bows at No. 2 on R&B Albums (27,000 copies sold in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music) and No. 23 on the Billboard 200 (bowing with 28,000 equivalent-album units). 142 The album’s…

Thanks to his featured turn on Wiz Khalifa’s fast-rising Furious 7 soundtrack single, “See You Again,”Charlie Puth (above), who also co-wrote and co-produced the song, earns a spot on the Billboard Artist 100 as he debuts at No. 95. As the track soars 84-10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (see page 1), fueled by massive interest in the film (and with streaming set to surge even more following the April 6 premiere of the Paul Walker tribute/official “Again” video), Puth bows on the Artist 100 with 85 percent of his points from song sales. The cut blasts 42-1 on Digital Songs, up by 488 percent to 168,000 downloads sold in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. With the coronation, Puth scores his first No. 1 on a…

For your fifth album,Human, which debuts at No. 16 on the Billboard 200, you worked with new lead singer Matt Walst, who replaced Adam Gontier. How did that change things? A lot of it remains what we’ve always done. We all sort of collaborate and write lyrics and melodies. We’ll sit down with acoustic guitars and just hash out ideas. We’ve collaborated with Matt in the past — he wrote on the first Three Days Grace album. He’s our bass player Brad’s younger brother, so we’ve all grown up together. It was a fairly natural progression. But there definitely was a new energy born just by having Matt step in. What has fan reaction toMatt been like? If you look, you can find negative feedback to just about anything. Social…

Kendrick Lamar (below) returns to the Billboard + Twitter Top Tracks chart after the April 1 release of the official music video for “King Kunta,” the third single from his Billboard 200-topping album, To Pimp a Butterfly. The resulting conversation causes the track to re-enter the chart at No. 2, which ties the peak of Lamar’s prior single, “The Blacker the Berry,” which arrived in the runner-up slot on the Feb. 28 chart. His set’s first single, “I,” topped Top Tracks on Oct. 11, 2014. As predicted, former One Direction member Zayn Malik makes his debut solo chart appearance with “I Don’t Mind” (No. 5 on Top Tracks), a demo of a track produced by Naughty Boy that was shared on Twitter on March 30. After Naughty Boy tweeted the…

Death Cab for Cutie (above) notches its third No. 1 on Top Rock Albums as Kintsugi starts with 51,000 units sold, according to Nielsen Music. The alternative rock band’s eighth studio album also starts at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 — its fourth top 10 effort but lowest entry for a studio set since Transatlanticism debuted at No. 97 in 2003. Its previous release, Codes and Keys, started at No. 3 in 2011 (102,000). The group notched one leader on the Billboard 200 with 2008’s Narrow Stairs. Kintsugi’s lead single, “Black Sun,” led Triple A for two weeks and reaches its No. 5 peak on Alternative on the April 18 chart. The song marks the band’s highest rank on each list since it scored a leader on both tallies…

Rapper NF’s first fulllength debuts at No. 1 on Top Christian Albums as Mansion moves in with 9,000 copies sold in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. NF (real name Nate Feuerstein) signed with Capitol Christian Music Group in 2014 and made his first chart appearance as the featured act on Flame’s “Start Over” (No. 7 peak on the Gospel Digital Songs chart dated Oct. 19, 2013). Mansion is NF’s second visit to Top Christian Albums, following his selftitled EP, which reached No. 12 on Aug. 23, 2014. The new release also launches at No. 62 on the Billboard 200. On Top Gospel Albums, Erica Campbell collects her second leader as Help 2.0 bows atop the list (5,000 sold). It follows Help, which spent seven nonconsecutive weeks…

“HEADED RIGHT FOR THE NO. 1 SPOT on the Hot 100,” read Billboard’s review of Nancy and Frank Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid” in 1967, and the prediction soon proved true. On April 15, 1967, five weeks after the review was published, the song topped the chart and stayed there for four consecutive weeks. The single, which is the only father-daughter duet to hit No. 1 — Frank was 51 then, and Nancy 26 — would rank at No. 7 on the year-end Hot 100 recap, and scored dad his sixth Grammy Award nomination for record of the year. The song also generated controversy because it’s sung from the point of view of two lovers. In 1996, Nancy told NPR’s Fresh Air that DJs dubbed it “ ‘the incest song’ ... It…

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’S MANTRA of “free is bad” is spilling over to the talk-show circuit. After years of sanctioning the posting of bonus music performances online — an outro song or any additional performance beyond the act’s one-song commitment to the show — the major labels are considering vetoing access to such clips on secondary screens. The potential impact could mean less airtime for artists, particularly on late-night TV, if bookers choose to instead feature comedians or other non-music acts, and could also do away with large “event” performances like Van Halen’s seven-song set on Hollywood Boulevard for Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 30. At the heart of the issue: money. The labels are paying to produce expensive content, yet aren’t able to monetize it. In Kimmel’s case, some $400,000…

For their 50th-anniversary edition, the Academy of Country Music Awards are going big: The event will be the first awards show broadcast from a football stadium — the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas — and will feature hosts Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton and more than 50 acts, including Kenny Chesney, Florida Georgia Line and Reba McEntire. Billboard talked with ACM CEO Bob Romeo about the challenges in staging the milestone show, produced by Dick Clark Productions, which airs at 8 p.m. ET April 19 on CBS. (DCP and Billboard are both owned by Guggenheim Partners.) Can you put a number on how much biggerthe show has gotten? As far as production, we’re tracking four times what it cost us to do the show [in previous years] in…

ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC IS HAVING A watershed moment in the United States. It’s the undisputed musical youth movement of the millennial generation — an exponentially growing cultural shift driven by technology and interconnectivity. But what will we have to show for it beyond the music and live events? As a DJ, artist, radio host, label owner, executive and co-founder of the International Music Summit (IMS), I’ve been championing dance music for more than three decades. I’ve watched it grow from Chicago basements to mainstream festival stages, and traced the DJ’s evolution from background club curator to modern-day rock star. It frustrates me that we haven’t made an impression in film and TV the way that genres like rock, hip-hop and R&B have. There’s no shortage of award-winning documentaries or films…

IT’S A FEW MINUTES TO SHOWTIME, AND EARL SWEATSHIRT, one of the most compelling, confounding young rappers today, needs to do one final bit of preparation. Sitting in a dressing room at The Ready Room in St. Louis — where he’s launching a world tour days after releasing his new album, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside (Tan Cressida/Columbia) — the 21-year-old takes out a vial of liquid chlorophyll, squeezes a few drops into a glass of water and ceremoniously chugs the resulting algae-green mixture down. “This shit got oxygen in it, bro,” he says excitedly. “It’s for my health. It goes straight to your red blood cells!” Earl’s taste in beverages has evolved, to say the least. In 2010, when he first came to public attention in…

THE ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC Awards has a yearly tradition: Miranda Lambert winning. The singer, 31, has 18 ACM trophies, including a record five in a row for female vocalist of the year, to her name. When the 50th ACM Awards — once again hosted by Lambert’s husband Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan — take place April 19 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Lambert will be up for a leading eight awards, including entertainer of the year. After 18 wins and 43 nominations, are you starting to feel like the Meryl Streep of the ACMs? I get butterflies every time I hear my name . I’m pinching myself : “Is this real life?” Growing up, I used a yellow legal pad to write down all the nominees, circle who…

I’ve always had a husky voice, and that was fine — until my schedule went from this to this . I did Jimmy Kimmel Live! and I knew something was wrong. I could barely sing one song. I was on tour in Australia with Katy Perry. The doctors told me it was a cyst and that I needed surgery. I panicked. They said I could do the two last shows; my family came all the way from Sweden to be there. I played my last show in New Zealand — I was crying my eyes out. After the surgery I woke up in pain, and the doctor said, “I want you to make a little hum so we know: Is your voice still there?” It was. But I couldn’t say…

When six-second video purveyor Vine launched in 2013, attention-span-deficient creators and fans quickly coalesced around the sharing — sorry, Vining — of teeny, tiny bursts of goofball comedy, twerky dance routines and snippets of cover songs. (YouTube? Who has the time?) Instagram followed with its own shortform video platform, Snapchat went nuclear with disappearing video, and a whole micro-content industry — performers, distributors, studios, agents, bookers, sponsors — was born. Now, with a potential No. 1 album debut, 16-year-old Vine phenom Shawn Mendes is leveraging his six seconds of fame into old-school music stardom. Can others follow in his wake? And, more to the point, should they?…

CONSIDER ALABAMA SHAKES THE TORCH-bearers for the new retro rock. The sound’s first wave, sparked in the early 2000s by bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes (plus a thousand other groups with “The” in their names), was viewed as a rebuke of the post-grunge clogging up the late-’90s airwaves. The movement was inarguably vital to the modern rock canon, but the artists sometimes walked the very fine line between style and substance. Today, Alabama Shakes and their ilk (acts like Dawes, The War on Drugs and newcomer Matthew E. White) exist in sharp contrast to this balancing act: They can make the pop leanings of retro rock 1.0 feel studied, almost contrived, whereas their music feels desperate, searching and vital. Sound&Color, Alabama Shakes’ follow-up to their riveting 2012…

TAME IMPALA “’CAUSE I’M A MAN” INTERSCOPE “Not often proud of what I choose … a greater force I answer to,” sings Kevin Parker on Tame Impala’s soulful single, his falsetto chased by luminous synths for four gorgeous minutes spent battling his weaknesses. He never names that force; the answer’s out there somewhere, drifting in the psych-rock cosmos. —RYAN REED JOY WILLIAMS “WOMAN (OH MAMA)” SENSIBILITY/COLUMBIA Ex-Civil Wars member Joy Williams returns as a soloist with a worldbeat anthem brimming with garbled metaphors about the power of womanhood. The production creates an otherworldly tribal atmosphere, but lines like “I am the universe wrapped in skin” bring it crashing back to earth. —JASON LIPSHUTZ MS MR “PAINTED” COLUMBIA Unlike the standouts on MS MR’s 2013 debut, Secondhand Rapture, which gradually erupted…

AT NEW YORK’S WEBSTER HALL, APTLY AGLOW with a red-lit atmosphere, fans and friends had gathered on an early March evening to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Cherrytree Records. The evening’s scheduled headliner, Sting, who has worked with Cherrytree Music founder Martin Kierszenbaum since before the company’s inception, had canceled due to a bout with the flu. But the crowd was still buzzing with anticipation, then fell quiet as singer-songwriter Feist took the stage with just an electric guitar on her shoulder and effects pedals at her feet, her signature voice floating out above the reverent silence. The singer appeared much the same way when Kierszenbaum first saw her in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2005, the year after Jimmy Iovine, then-chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, gave him the go-ahead to…

Richie Furay Returns Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Richie Furay graces a Billboard chart for the first time in more than 35 years as Hand in Hand enters Heatseekers Albums at No. 12 and Folk Albums at No. 15. He last appeared on the Jan. 5, 1980 Billboard Hot 100 with “I Still Have Dreams,” which peaked at No. 39. Furay is best-known for co-founding the iconic country-rock bands Buffalo Springfield and Poco. As he told Billboard in March, he hears that hybrid in country music today. “We were plowing some ground back then,” he said. “It feels cool that that’s part of my legacy.”…

Ringo Starr (above) and Boz Scaggs return to the Billboard 200, notching their 16th and 17th charting albums, respectively. Starr’s latest, Postcards From Paradise, bows at No. 99 with 7,000 equivalent-album units earned in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. Scaggs’A Fool to Care arrives at No. 52 with 11,000. For Starr, Postcards comes nearly 45 years after he made his solo debut on the Billboard 200 with Sentimental Journey. That set started at No. 51 on May 16, 1970, on its way to a No. 22 peak the following month. Starr would visit the top 10 twice in his solo career, with 1973’s Ringo (peaking at No. 2 for two weeks behind Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and 1974’s Goodnight Vienna (No. 8). Starr is…

Van Halen debuts at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 with its new live album, Tokyo Dome Live in Concert. Remarkably, if the release — the band’s 16th chart entry — goes no higher than No. 20, it will mark the lowest-charting effort for Van Halen in its 37-year career on the tally. Tokyo Dome starts with 31,000 equivalent-album units, nearly all from pure album sales, in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. The set was promoted by a two-night performance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 30 and 31, and an April 2 visit to The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The gigs were touted as the band’s first U.S. TV performances with singer David Lee Roth. Previous to this week, the only Van Halen title to…

Hilary Duff returns to the Social 50 after the singer-actress announced her new single, “Sparks,” and forthcoming album on March 30. The pop star comes in at No. 25 — a new peak. Duff appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America as well as The Ellen DeGeneres Show on March 30, speaking about her new music. The appearances, which were promoted heavily across Duff’s social channels, led to a 33 percent gain in Facebook fans in the week ending April 5, according to Next Big Sound. She also earned a 164 percent increase in new Instagram followers and a 41 percent spike in views to her Wikipedia page. “Sparks” debuted on iTunes and YouTube on April 6. Higher up the tally, Ludacris collects the chart’s biggest percentage gain, as he zooms…

Ludacris (above) returns to Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums with his first full-length studio album in five years as Ludaversal enters at No. 2 (and debuts at No. 3 on the Billboard 200). The set sold 62,000 copies in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. First single “Good Lovin’ ” (featuring Miguel) lifts 11-10 on Rap Airplay (despite a 3 percent drop in audience impressions), netting the rapper his 25th top 10. The ascent ties Ludacris with Kanye West for fourthmost top 10s on the chart —Lil Wayne leads with 42. Rihanna’s hard-hitting “Bitch Better Have My Money” becomes her highest debut on the Rhythmic chart as a lead act, entering at No. 19 (soaring 188 percent at the spins-based format). She matches her previous best arrival, which she…

Madeon (above) debuts at No. 1 on Top Dance/Electronic Albums with his first full-length album, Adventure. The title sold 11,000 copies, according to Nielsen Music, the fourthmost for a debut this year: Only albums from Purity Ring (16,000), Above & Beyond and Skrillex & Diplo (14,000 each) have sold more. The French DJ also places three tracks from the album on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs: “You’re On,” featuring Kyan (No. 28); “Pay No Mind,” featuring Passion Pit (No. 30); and “Nonsense,” featuring Mark Foster (No. 36). Also making noise on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs are Dillon Francis & DJ Snake, who re-enter at No. 6 with “Get Low.” The duo sold 35,000 units, up 251 percent, while collecting 1.7 million U.S. streams, up 88 percent. “Get Low,” which peaked at No. 13…

When an estimated 100,000 EDM fans per day flocked to down town Miami for the 17th annual Ultra Music Festival, held March 27-29, they expected the lights, thumps and fist-pumps of such dance titans as Skrillex, Tiesto and Avicii. Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande? Not so much. But there they were, along with Diddy and Usher, eliciting a surprisingly positive reaction from the crowd, which was flooded with artists and executives angling to get in on the EDM action. The festival’s clear winner was manager Scooter Braun of SB Projects and School Boy Records, who has a hand in the careers of nearly all of the festival’s special guests (Bieber, Grande and Korean star CL, as well as Martin Garrix and ex-Swedish House Mafia member Steve Angello), and orchestrated Garrix…

IN THE THROES OF A BRUTAL WINTER during his first year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, Los Angeles native Ted Chung made a vow: Once he graduated, he would return to the West Coast, found a business, live by the beach and drive a convertible. CHUNG’CV 1996-1998 A&R CONSULTANT, POLYGRAM MUSIC PUBLISHING — 1998-PRESENT FOUNDER, CASHMERE AGENCY — 2004-PRESENT FOUNDER, STAMPEDE MANAGEMENT Chung, the son of Korean immigrants, began realizing that promise in 2003 when he and two others co-founded the Cashmere Agency — the formal iteration of the street-marketing company he had launched five years earlier while working at PolyGram Music Publishing — in a borrowed one-room office. Targeting 12-to 34-year-old multicultural millennials, the lifestyle marketing company offers such services as PR, marketing, branding, partnerships, synch…

WHEN THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME nominating committee meets in New York every September, they nibble on sushi and Carnegie Deli sandwiches, and decide which artists to place on that year’s election ballot. The committee members — successful musicians, record executives, writers and historians — remain cordial even when they disagree, with one exception: the annual arguments that raged about Kiss. Whenever Kiss was mentioned, “there were fireworks,” says one attendee. Several people in the room recall hearing the phrase “over my dead body.” Some on the committee see membership in the Rock Hall as the ultimate stamp of credibility; they viewed Kiss, a popular and crass band, not with skepticism, but with disgust. Dave Marsh, an author and committee member, said Kiss embodies “music at its most…

Summer Finish For Mean GirlsMusical The Mean Girls musical from Tina Fey; her composer husband, Jeff Richmond; and lyricist Nell Benjamin is expected to be finished by late summer. And then the hard work begins: table reads, rewrites and investor meetings. “We definitely want to see some kind of shape by the end of the summer,” says Richmond of the adaptation of the 2004 film. (Fey wrote the screenplay and also appeared in the movie.) “With that in mind, we know that 60 or 70 percent of that will go away when we start bringing in real singers and actors. We’ll do a lot of rewriting.” He adds that “the most difficult part of the process is determining, ‘What are your best song ideas, and what do you leave alone…

Looking back, I think I just wanted the attention. I see that now. But back then, I felt like attention was the last thing I wanted. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if it was any one specific thing that had pushed me to that point. I just know that I was mad. Mad and sad. I felt like no one wanted me. My daddy was dead, and my mama didn’t want me. I didn’t really get along with my stepdad, and my grandma already had nine kids of her own, so there wasn’t really a place for me at her house either. I felt like I couldn’t do shit right, and the only way I could get any attention was by f—ing up. No one would come…

RECYCLED STYLE COMES NATURALLY TO Jillian Hervey, 25, and Lucas Goodman, 26, who make up neo-soul duo Lion Babe. As kids, singer-songwriter Hervey raided the closest of her mother, actress-singer Vanessa Williams, while producer-instrumentalist Goodman borrowed Stussy hoodies and streetwear from dad Ray Goodman, who co-founded New York’s punk retail institution Trash and Vaudeville. “One of my favorite things from my mom is a chocolate brown three-piece Chanel outfit,” says Hervey. “I had it tailored because she taught me the importance of fit.” Adds Goodman: “I cop everything about my dad’s style, especially his shoes.” Since releasing its self-titled debut EP on Interscope in December, the New York-based act has been working on a full-length album that, like the duo’s edgy, throwback style, channels a pastiche of influences. “We’re ’90s…

THE MOST SURPRISING thing about Shawn Mendes is how unassumingly normal the Canadian teenager is. Sitting in the Manhattan offices of Island Records in March, the 16-year-old singer-songwriter looks like he could be working at the local Aeropostale: He’s dressed in a black-and-white flannel button-down with acid-washed jeans and black Nikes. He’s tall for his age — 6-foot-2 — but otherwise, unfailingly polite and attentive. So much so that he claims he can still roam freely around Toronto, the city closest to his Pickering, Ontario, hometown. “If I dressed like a celebrity that’d be one thing, but this is how I dressed a year ago, and this is how I still dress now,” says Mendes with a sweet shrug. But when one considers the last 12 months, Mendes isn’t that…

Chillwave, oft-maligned for being a toss-away hipster synth-pop genre, wasn’t such a bad movement to emerge from. But to witness the pace with which Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick has distanced himself from it, one would think it was an intellectual backwater. Since debuting with 2010’s Causers of This, Bundick, 28, has been both prolific and stylistically voracious, exploring genres from 1990s house to silky R&B during the course of two more full-lengths, a B-sides collection and a dance album as Les Sins. What For? is yet another of Bundick’s quixotic genre surveys. This time, he’s on a psychedelic ’60s and ’70s rock kick, and the sheer number of influences peeking through the sound is staggeringly diverse: Shades of The Free Design, Badfinger, Steely Dan, Small Faces and Shuggie Otis…

Ever since he went solo in 1970, Ringo Starr, 74, has kept a steady beat. On March 31, prior to his April 18 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, the Beatles drummer released his 18th studio LP, Postcards From Paradise, his first time using his touring All-Starr Band on an album of new material. How was it working with the All-Starr Band? Since the first All-Starr Band in 1989, I wanted us all to sit around and write and record songs. I tried with every version of the band, and it never worked until now. I’ve kept this one together for three years because we get on so well. Liverpool 8, from 2008, was an entire LP ofmemories;Postcardsbegins with “Rory andThe Hurricanes,” named…

In 2006, Sting told Cherrytree Music founder Martin Kierszenbaum that he wanted to make an album based on 17th-century lute songs by Renaissance troubadour John Dowland. Kierszenbaum had his hesitations. “With Sting,” he recalls, “you can suggest things, but he’s going to follow his own internal compass. And in the end, he usually turns out right.” To sell what some might have seen as a niche album at best, Kierszenbaum struck a deal with Universal Music Classics, which helped market the disc, Songs from the Labyrinth, released on Cherrytree and Deutsche Grammophon. The album went on to sell 268,000 copies, according to Nielsen Music. “We have one foot in indie-land and one foot in major-land,” says Kierszenbaum. “It’s the best of both worlds.” Adds Sting: “I’ve enjoyed taking risks in…

AS WALE’S THE ALBUM ABOUT NOTHING debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, rap rules the top four of the tally for the first time since 1998, and only the second time ever. Wale’s Seinfeld-inspired third full-length arrives with 100,000 equivalent-album units earned in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. It’s joined in the top four by the Furious 7 soundtrack (zooming 17-2 with 74,000 units; up 202 percent), Ludacris’Ludaversal (debuting at No. 3 with 73,000) and Kendrick Lamar’s former No. 1 To Pimp a Butterfly (1-4 with 65,000; down 47 percent). An all-rap top four first happened on Oct. 17, 1998. That week, the top three welcomed new arrivals from Jay Z (Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life), Outkast (Aquemini) and A Tribe Called Quest (The…

Boy band EXO earns the largest sales week for an album by a K-pop act as the group’s Exodus: The 2nd Album sells 6,000 copies in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music, and starts at No. 70 on Top Album Sales. It also bows at No. 1 on World Albums, the act’s second leader. The group beat the previous sales record, logged by 2NE1 when its Crush launched with 5,000 slightly more than a year ago (on the charts dated March 15, 2014). The 10-member EXO previously topped World Albums when 2013’s The 1st Album ‘XOXO’ bowed with 1,000 sold. EXO also takes over the World Digital Songs chart, claiming nine titles on the 25-position tally. (The band’s biggest seller of the week is “Call Me Baby,”…

Rock band We Are Harlot debuts at No. 1 on Heatseekers Albums with its self-titled debut set selling 5,000 copies in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. The group, which includes former members of Asking Alexandria and Silvertide, also starts at No. 6 on Hard Rock Albums. The album’s single, “Dancin’ on Nails,” is making inroads at rock radio: The track rises 21-17 on Mainstream Rock (a new peak) with a 17 percent gain in plays at the format, according to Nielsen. Elsewhere on Heatseekers, veteran jazz singer-pianist Eliane Elias debuts at No. 6 with Made in Brazil. With 2,000 sold, the set scores the artist her best sales week since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991. The album also debuts at No. 3 on Traditional Jazz…

Darius Rucker (above) debuts at No. 1 on Top Country Albums as his Southern Style starts with 52,000 first-week copies sold, according to Nielsen Music. The set marks Rucker’s fourth No. 1 in as many tries on the tally, counting only his studio albums; his prior release, the seasonal Home for the Holidays, reached No. 3 in December 2014. Rucker first reached the chart with the No. 1 Learn to Live in 2008 and followed with fellow leaders Charleston, SC 1966 (2010) and True Believers (2013). All four of his No. 1s have started at the summit. While Rucker’s run is impressive, he doesn’t hold the record for the most studio albums an artist has taken to No. 1 on Top Country Albums, dating to a first entry on the…

Juanes (above) earns a new No. 1 on Latin Airplay as “Juntos (Together)” leaps 10-1. The Colombian pop artist takes Greatest Gainer honors, soaring 74 percent to 10.6 million audience impressions in the week ending April 5, according to Nielsen Music. The rise of the track, from the McFarland, USA soundtrack, pushes Juanes into a seven-way tie for fourth-most No. 1s on the chart. (Enrique Iglesias leads with 27.) The increased airplay spurs a 18-12 jump on Hot Latin Songs, pushing the song closer to its No. 11 peak, which it attained on the March 14 chart. The highest debut on Top Latin Albums is Selena’s Lo Mejor De..., arriving at No. 2 with slightly more than 2,000 copies sold and marking her 15th top 10. The best-of was released…

Latin artist Ricardo Arjona (above) owns three of the Boxscore chart’s top-grossing concert engagements, including a two-night stint at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles that ranks at No. 2. Ticket sales topped $1.4 million at the Southern California venue from performances during the final days of his four-week trek through U.S. markets. The Guatemalan singer-songwriter has been on tour since last summer in support of his Latin Grammy-nominated album Viaje, which arrived earlier in 2014. He launched the tour with a string of concerts in Latin American countries and was on the road for select dates during the fall. After kicking off 2015 with shows in Mexico, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, he began his U.S. trek in Miami on Feb. 27 and wrapped in San Diego on March…