Innholdsfortegnelse for Aug-09-14 i Billboard Magazine

WOW, I CANNOT believe this experiment worked,” Sia jokes about her latest achievement. “Chandelier” reaches the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10, rising 11-9. It’s her first top 10 as a lead after scoring two in featured roles in 2012. Not bad for the 38-year-old artist, who didn’t show her face in TV performances leading up to the release of 1000 Forms of Fear, which debuted atop the Billboard 200 on July 26, and didn’t pose for traditional photo shoots (similar to how she appeared with her face obscured by a paper bag on the cover of Billboard in 2013). “This is gratifying on so many levels,” says RCA Records GM/ executive vp Joe Riccitelli. “The best part is that she accomplished this her way, and we were able to execute…

SURE, DRAKE DROPPED the No. 2 rap album of 2013 (Nothing Was the Same) and earned high marks this year for hosting Saturday Night Live and the ESPY Awards. But the Torontoborn superstar, 26, is also an aspiring mogul now facing the ultimate test of his business muscle. Will he be Canada’s answer to Jay Z — who oversees a thriving record label, apparel business and sports agency — or the next Rick Ross, whose Maybach Music Group has seen middling results since its 2009 launch? The first release from Drake’s label, OVO Sound, is off to a solid start. After just three days of sales in its first week, Majid Jordan’s Place Like This made its debut at No. 31 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Then on July…

Three headliners of Honda’s expanded Civic Tour (American Authors, Grouplove and Portugal, The Man) are just one part of an estimated $50 million reallocation of the automaker’s cable budget to live music programs this year. The bank paid an estimated $4 million in cash (plus activation fees) to win the competitive rights for presale tickets and onsite activation of the pair’s hot stadium tour. The “Jungle” collaborators are taking to the streets of London, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Philadelphia on a quest to curate a global “busker band” that will perform at Budweiser’s Made in America Festival. The chain teamed with Perry to pledge $1 million to provide school supplies for underfunded teachers and school programs. The retailer also sponsored Perry’s North American Prismatic tour and recently debuted…

CORNER OFFICE PRESIDENT OF BLUE NOTE RECORDS AS A TEENAGER ENROLLED AT THE UNIVERSITY of Michigan in 1970, Donald Fagenson sought solace in Wayne Shorter’s 1964 Blue Note album, Speak No Evil, whenever emotional trouble struck. He would play side two and after 15 minutes, be free of whatever funk he was in. “Forty-five years later, that record still fulfills that function for me,” says Fagenson, known for the past 30-odd years as Don Was. “It’s my compass. That’s what artists should do for people — make music that will make you feel something.” That credo has served Was, 61, well in his position as president of Blue Note Records since January 2012, the first full-time job he has ever held. Known in the 1980s as the bassist and coleader…

After a six-year, recessioninduced hiatus, Fashion Rocks returns Sept. 9, resurrected as New York Fashion Week’s opening act. With a new media partner (Time Inc. replacing Conde Nast), network (CBS) and parent company (creator Richard Beckman and his Three Lions Entertainment, with Ron Burkle and Joel Katz), the show has united with Don Mischer Productions and host Ryan Seacrest for its inaugural live run from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It also brings a mixed lineup — including Jennifer Lopez, Usher, Duran Duran, Kiss, Pitbull, Rita Ora and Nico & Vinz — to a crowded lineup of fall music specials. The two-hour show lands between ABC’s CMA Music Festival and MTV’s Video Music Awards in August and the CW’s iHeartRadio Festival in mid-September, followed by the BET Hip Hop Awards…

The fourth annual Full Moon Festival isn’t trying to elevate itself to the level of other New York megamusic festivals, like the Governors Ball or Electric Zoo. Instead, according to New York-based creative agency Matte Projects, the company behind the fest, smaller is preferable. “The pressures of having $10 million of overhead at an 80,000-person music festival just aren’t there,” says cofounder Brett Kincaid of the indie act-focused event that attracted a solid 5,000 showgoers last year. (Electric Zoo, by comparison, attracts approximately 150,000 attendees over the course of the festival.) “There’s enough people that like our niche sound.” With a steady wave of hype since its debut in 2011 at Manhattan’s Beekman Beer Garden Beach Club, Full Moon Festival has grown organically into one of New York’s summer party…

IT’S NOT HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHERE 5 Seconds of Summer is staying while on tour in Milan: Just follow the screams. Ten floors below the hotel penthouse where 5SOS — “five sauce,” to devotees — is gathered for a Billboard cover shoot, a crush of teenage fans nervously paces the sidewalk on a blustery afternoon in late June. Converse sneakers slap the pavement. Piles of colorful rubber bracelets quiver on the arms of girls running back and forth between the lobby doors and rear exit, iPhones at the ready, to catch a cherished glimpse of the Australian pop-punk quartet. The giddy teens better not blink — these guys are on the move. In four hours, 5SOS will open for One Direction at the sold-out San Siro Stadium, the 80,000-seat…

How did 5 Seconds of Summer sell more than 250,000 copies of its self-titled debut album in the first week? By stressing the band’s “authenticity,” says Capitol senior vp marketing Kirdis Postelle. High-profile appearances on Today and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she notes, showcased the fact that, unlike other boy bands, 5SOS’ members play their own instruments. “The TV exposure helps, but only because the performances were so strong,” says Postelle. “They play, they sing, and it’s infectious. For people who aren’t really familiar with them, that expands their core base and keeps our numbers going.” The band also has been aggressive on social media, reminding its 3.8 million Twitter followers that 5 Seconds of Summer is finally available and touting the success of its new single, “Amnesia,” which topped Billboard’s…

Music SOMETIMES, BECKY GOMEZ, AKA BECKY G, is too excited to sleep at night. Like after she spent the day with her idol, Jennifer Lopez, filming her video for “Becky From the Block.” Or when her single “Can’t Get Enough,” featuring Pitbull, became her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Rhythm Airplay chart in May. It’s a lot for the 17-year-old rapper-singer to take in. “I’m lying in bed, looking at the ceiling, on a natural high of, ‘Oh my God, this is my life. Like, this isn’t a movie,’ ” says Gomez in her chirpy teenage cadence. “This is me, living this. Right now. It’s crazy.” It’s going to get crazier. “Shower,” the ridiculously peppy first single from Gomez’s full-length debut album, which will arrive in the fourth quarter…

DON’T LET THE LAID-BACK ATTITUDE fool you — Brad Paisley has a whirlwind schedule this summer. The country star is gearing up to release his new studio album, Moonshine in the Trunk, on Aug. 26 through Arista Nashville, preceded by single “River Bank,” which is No. 13 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Since May, he has been headlining arenas on his Kraft-sponsored Country Nation Tour, which wraps in November. In between, you can catch him on ABC’s Rising Star as a judge alongside Kesha and Ludacris. Following a performance at Nashville’s iconic Grand Ole Opry, Paisley, 41, spoke candidly about farmhouse bars, breastfeeding and what he learned after the “Accidental Racist” controversy. Where do you see this album fitting in with the rock- and rap-influenced country that dominates radio…

The YouTube star, 19, has his single “Happy Little Pill” debuting at No. 24 on the Digital Songs tally and No. 92 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single previews the Australia-based, South Africa-born singer’s new TRXYE EP, due Aug. 15 on Capitol Records. 101k ”Happy Little Pill” sold 101,000 copies globally in its first five days on sale, according to Universal Music. Stateside, it shifted 55,000 in just its first three days, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (It was released in the early morning on July 25.) 24M Sivan has a sizable YouTube following, with 2.4 million subscribers to his channel, and 103 million total views of his videos. His clips regularly get between 1 million and 2 million views each. 590% Sivan’s social metrics soared in the week ending…

LIKE A TIME-LAPSE NATURE FILM, SWEDISH indie-pop duo JJ has been gradually emerging from a cocoon of willful anonymity since 2009. Its past releases were lovely, all sparkly synths, shiny strings and loping beats, with the requisite tug of melancholy coming from Elin Kastlander’s bittersweet singing. But what was great in the moment was not terribly sustainable. Even the hip-hop references and substantial profanity in the songs’ pretty, hazy sound didn’t dirty things up as much as they should, hindering their staying power. The pair’s third LP, V (which is actually its third full-length ), is what instrumentalist Joakim Benon has said the duo has been working toward for its entire career. The album is paradoxically both bigger and leaner, more epic and more intimate. The aching lead track, “All…

Few artists are as strongly linked to their homeland as Colombia’s Fonseca. It is not just about his music. He also is connected to Colombian brand partnerships, and even with the country itself. These associations have been groundbreaking, and they have continued with his new album, Fonseca Sinfonico. “For us, producing an album of this caliber with a pop musician is unprecedented,” says Claudia Franco, executive director of Colombia’s Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional. While the organization has performed pop music and occasionally accompanied pop acts, it had never recorded a full-fledged album featuring such an act. “It was a huge investment for us,” says Franco. “But it looks like we’re going to make it back with concerts and sponsors, and independent of the economics, it gives the orchestra a visibility it…

GEORGE MICHAEL’S “I WANT YOUR SEX” was both a sizzling hit and a controversial moment in pop culture. Released as the AIDS epidemic was making headlines worldwide, the song’s frank lyrics made some radio programmers anxious. Although the London-born Michael, who was 23 at the time, explained in Billboard that the tune “is all about sex with one person, which is a perfectly normal thing,” the BBC banned the track, as did some U.S. stations. Others aired a sanitized version titled “I Want Your Love.” And, thanks to a scene featuring a near-naked Michael and his female co-star — MTV twice sent back its racy music video for editing. Despite — or because of — the controversy, “I Want Your Sex” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 on Aug.…

“THIS LOOKED LIKE IT WAS going to be one of the best summers in Israel’s history when it came to international acts, but now it’s quite grim,” says Carmi D. Wurtman, the CEO of 2b Vibes, a hybrid music company that has produced more than 100 festivals and concerts in the last 10 years. He is talking about the wave of postponements and cancellations — due to security concerns — that have dealt a heavy blow to the live event business in the Holy Land since the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict flared in Gaza in mid-June. With violence escalating again on July 28 after a cease-fire, Live Nation chairman of global touring Arthur Fogel, who is producing Lady Gaga’s tour, says he is “watching the situation” to determine if Gaga, who…

It looks like the “elusive chanteuse” continues to elude career stability. Mariah Carey has parted ways with longtime musical collaborator Jermaine Dupri as her manager, and has been working closely with Kevin Liles, who was president of Def Jam during the singer’s stint at the label, Billboard has learned. Sources say “nothing official” has been inked with Liles’ firm KWL Enterprises, but the two have been working together since the June launch of Go N’Syde’s Carey-branded Butterfly interactive beverage line. “I’m a very hands-on person when it comes to my work,” Dupri tells Billboard in a statement. “I put my all into every project. But when I’m not allowed to do what I do, then I know it’s time for me to move on. Mariah and I enjoy working together…

“Weird that so many ravers were at a Keith Urban concert. Oh wait…there’s a drug/alcohol prob OUTSIDE of electronic music?? ” —KASKADE The DJ, weighing in on Urban’s July 26 show in Mansfield, Mass., where dozens were hospitalized. “yall can hate on my socks and sandals... but i assure you i am 100% comfortable at all times... ” —GRIMES The singer-songwriter, defending on Twitter her attire at San Diego’s Comic-Con, where she performed a DJ set aboard an aircraft carrier. “My favorite hue is Jay Z Blue” —BEYONCÉ The singer, captioning an Instagram photo of her husband and daughter on a beach, amid rumors claiming the couple is separating and she was looking at a $21.5 million penthouse in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. “Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga are releasing…

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, WHICH opened Aug. 1, features a tree-like creature named Groot, a talking raccoon and a device just as alien to children of the digital age: a Sony Walkman containing a mixtape of 12 hits from the 1970s, including 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love,” Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” and David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream.” The portable cassette player belongs to Guardians character Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord (played by Parks & Recreation actor Chris Pratt). “It wasn’t in the comics, or the original script,” says James Gunn, 43, co-writer and director of the buzzgenerating Marvel Comics adaptation. The plot device was added to establish Quill’s connection to Earth and his late mother (who gave him the Walkman ). Gunn used year-end Billboard…

BRIDGEHAMPTON , N.Y. , JULY 26 ACCORDING TO RUSSELL SIMMONS — who hosted his 15th Annual Art for Life gala with his brother Danny on July 26 — the success of live auctions is influenced by the stock market the day before the event. “It’s small, but it really does aff ect the way [guests] spend,” he hypothesized to Billboard at Fairview Farms in Bridgehampton, N.Y. “They feel richer or poorer.” Luckily for Simmons, even though the stock market was down on the previous day, that didn’t prevent his 800 guests from opening up their wallets: The evening raised approximately $1.3 million. (Art for Life provides some 3,000 inner-city youths exposure and access to the arts each year, as well as giving under- represented artists exhibition opportunities.) “I consider Russell…

IT’S UNDENIABLE THAT K-POP — THE Korean dance-pop craze that includes Girls Generation and Big Bang — is taking over the world. (YouTube reports viewership of K-pop videos has grown from around 700 million views in 2010 to more than 5.5 billion in 2013.) No surprise, then, that the K-pop beauty look, or K-beauty, also is having a moment. For proof, one need only look at the country’s cosmetics exports, which, according to Statistics Korea, topped $1 billion in 2013 — a record high and a sixfold increase from $173 million more than a decade ago. And it’s not just Korean brands that are benefiting: Dior, Chanel and Benefit are a few of the international names with K-pop followings. “The power of K-pop stars is amazing,” says Charlotte Cho of…

GREEN DAY Debut 39/Smooth, 1990 Unit sales 26.2 million Thanks to the pop-punk pioneers, 5SOS bassist Calum Hood “fell in love with music” and his band was inspired to post YouTube covers. BLINK-182 Debut Cheshire Cat, 1995 Unit sales 14 million The tighty-whities in “She Looks So Perfect” are a nod to Blink’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, guitarist Luke Hemmings’ fave LP. NEW FOUND GLORY Debut Nothing Gold Can Stay, 1999 Unit sales 3 million The rapid-fire guitar and disenchanted lyrics of 5SOS’ “Social Casualty” trace back to pop-punk’s second-wave leader. GOOD CHARLOTTE Debut Good Charlotte, 2000 Unit sales 6.1 million The charismatic Madden twins influenced 5SOS with a balanced diet of catchy melodies and snotty, insightful lyrics. SUM 41 Debut All Killer, No Filler, 2001 Unit sales…

FROM TEH FIRST TIME powerful redio executive Jesus Salas and rising pop star Katherine Alexander met two years ago, there were fireworks. Salas, the executive vp programming at SBS (the largest publicly traded Hispanic-controlled media and entertainment company in the United States) who was married at the time, swooned over the arresting, dark-haired Alexander, an aspiring singer and private school teacher. Once he was single again and deep in their affection for each other, he was a gentleman publicly and often preferred to keep their relationship low key unless they were alone, say those familiar with the couple. The up-and-coming singer, now 24, sometimes wrote love letters declaring her devotion. “I want to make you happy in mind, body and soul,” wrote Alexander in a romantic letter dated Dec. 30,…

Amid the mechanical clinks and chimes on “Coffee,” the hit single from buzzed-about electronic/folk duo Sylvan Esso, there is the faint creak of a door closing. “Any weird sound you hear is probably recording something in the house,” multi-instrumentalist Nick Sanborn, 32, tells Billboard over the phone from a forest somewhere in Massachusetts, where he and singer Amelia Meath, 26, are decompressing between tour dates. “I love it when electronic music feels both human and machine.” But in the outside world, thanks to their charming sound’s oppositional forces, doors are opening for the duo. On July 9, the pair made its TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. After opening for Tune-Yards on tour, the band has dates with Foster the People in November. Its own headlining shows…

‘CROW’ ABOUT TO FLY Alex & Sierra, who won Fox’s third and final season of the U.S. version of The X Factor, near the Adult Top 40 chart with folk/pop track “Scarecrow” (Columbia). The Florida duo (who are also a couple) is playing dates with Colbie Caillat and Train through September. Their debut album, It’s About Us, is out Oct. 7. —WADE JESSEN DEAN ’S LIST Singer-songwriter-guitarist Dean Alexander’s debut single, “Live a Little,” launches at No. 53 on the Nielsen BDS-driven Country Airplay chart. He is signed to Warner Music Nashville’s Elektra Nashville imprint. Under Parallel Entertainment management, Alexander is working on his first fulllength album. —GARY TRUST LOVE FOR EERIES Sing-along satire ”Cool Kid” (Interscope) by L.A.’s The Eeries is bubbling under Alternative. KROQ Los Angeles added it…

PORTER ROBINSON’S WORLDS IS THE product of EDM exhaustion. The 22-year-old electronic producer played nearly every major music festival in 2011 and 2012, delivering well-manicured, crowd-pleasing bangers to the masses. But the used-up arrangements of big-room house and an increasingly homogenized dance scene got old. Burned out and, perhaps, a little bored, he moved into his parents’ basement in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he played ’90s-era video games and prepared to pivot. What that downtime inspired is a dramatic 12-song compilation that spans ambient, disco and electro-pop. Obligatory bass drops and dance-friendly rhythms are replaced with delicate chord progressions and deep, forceful synths. This is post-EDM, a genre largely defined by patience, and one that is bound to throw a few of Robinson’s old fans for a loop. Consider “Sea…

Jason Aldean moves his long-running house party to the bedroom on “Burnin’ It Down,” the lead single from his forthcoming sixth album. Though no stranger to straying from country’s standard formula — he did, after all, record a remix with Ludacris — here, Aldean unexpectedly replaces guitar heroics with electronic beats. Along with fellow foward-thinkers Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, he has crafted a country slow jam. Aldean deserves points for rejecting the genre’s stylistic presumptions, yet “Burnin’ It Down” never hits its stride. It’s hindered by a measured tempo and uninspired lines like, “I wanna rock it all night/Baby girl, will you rock it out with me?” While Aldean’s enjoying his time behind closed doors, fans are most likely awaiting his next arena-ready party song.…

Australia’s 5 Seconds of Summer crashes in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with its selftitled full-length debut. The set sold 259,000 copies in the week ending July 27, according to Nielsen SoundScan, following the album’s July 22 release. It’s the third-largest debut of 2014, and the fourth-largest sales week so far this year. (The year’s biggest sales week belongs to Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, which sold 383,000 in its first week.) The opening week for 5 Seconds of Summer also marks the biggest debut for an act’s first full-length album this year, and the largest for a group in nearly eight years. The last group with a bigger bow was Daughtry, when its self-titled debut album started with 304,000 in the week ending Nov. 19, 2006. Five Seconds of…

Investors like what they’re seeing from Live Nation. Shares of the world’s biggest concert promoter have risen 21 percent year to date and 47 percent in the past year. Over those time periods, the overall New York Stock Exchange, on which Live Nation trades, has risen 5 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Most impressively, its shares have climbed 193 percent since the dismal summer of 2010 when the touring business was being pummeled by the economic recession. Why is Wall Street so smitten? When the live entertainment business is healthy, so is Live Nation. Its business model uses concerts to drive revenue in ticketing, sponsorships, advertisements and other revenue streams, all of which grew 11 percent to $6.5 billion in 2013; the more people attend low-margin concerts, the more op…

IGGY AZALEA HAS BEEN DOMINATING the summer, holding down the top two slots of Billboard’s Summer Songs chart for an uninterrupted nine weeks with “Fancy” and a guest spot on Ariana Grande’s “Problem.” A third single (“Black Widow,” featuring Rita Ora) and an appearance on mentor T.I.’s comeback single, “No Mediocre,” also are scaling the charts. But can she translate early radio ubiquity into a sustainable career? After all, for every summer breakout like Bruno Mars or Katy Perry, there’s a Carly Rae Jepsen or Gotye that can’t quite make that next leap. There already have been two votes of confidence. Vin Diesel recently revealed that Azalea, 24, filmed a cameo in Fast and Furious 7, due in 2015. And on July 24 MTV named the former Wilhelmina model host…

Clockwise from top left: Hilary Duff (far left) with two of the entertainers at her “Chasing the Sun” single release party at New York’s Marquee on July 25; Nelly performed at the Disaronno Summer Camp afterparty at 1 Oak in Southampton, N.Y., on July 26; Wiz Khalifa during a stop on the Under the Influence of Music tour at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, N.J., on July 25; Jessie J in Tribeca on July 29; Emilio Estefan and wife Gloria in New York on July 28. Left: Rihanna sported her new Monster tour gear at JFK Airport in New York on July 29. Right (from left): Justin Bieber, Cody Simpson and Scooter Braun at the Young Hollywood Awards at Los Angeles’ Wiltern on July 27. Below: Lauryn Hill during FloydFest…

As the sun sets on the soundtrack as a guaranteed gold mine (not counting Frozen), Paramount Pictures is trying a singles approach for its summer tent poles. Both Transformers: Age of Extinction and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have only one key song, but they’re thoroughly integrated. The songs “are part of the fiber of the film,” says Paramount president of music Randy Spendlove. “The artists become involved in the marketing, the premiere, the score — it’s all tied together with one musical element.” For Transformers, Imagine Dragons worked with composers Steve Jablonsky and Hans Zimmer on the single “Battle Cry,” which they performed at the film’s Hong Kong premiere, and which plays over the end credits. It reached No. 24 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart on July 19. Using…

Would you like some EDM with your coffee? Turns out raves aren’t just reserved for the nocturnal set anymore, thanks to Morning Gloryville, a new sober early-morning dance event that came to New York from London in May. With a tagline of “Rave your way into the day,” the attendees of the nomadic event (so far, all Morning Gloryville New York raves have taken place in different Brooklyn locations) call themselves “bravers” — a portmanteau of the words “breakfast ravers.” Annie Fabricant, 32, the New York Morning Gloryville representative who works with founder Samantha Moyo, says there’s another meaning hidden in the word: “It’s ‘braving’ because people are courageous to get up at the crack ass of dawn to party with no alcohol.” So far, people from all professions have…

BRITISH-BORN SINGER DOMINO KIRKE, 31, comes by cool naturally: She has a rock star for a dad (Bad Company’s Simon Kirke), a famous younger sister (Girls’ Jemima Kirke), a celebrity shoe designer for a cousin (Charlotte Olympia) and a female bounty hunter for a namesake (Domino Harvey). The melodic lyricist, whose music was featured in Lena Dunham’s 2010 Tiny Furniture, is currently working with Luke Temple of Here We Go Magic. But she also has an atypical side gig: She’s a doula. “I still have trouble being on call, never knowing when I’m going to have to go to a birth, and planning my life as a musician,” lilts Kirke, who gave birth to her own son, Cassius Riley, in 2009. In 2012, Kirke founded Carriage House Birth, a collective…

Perhaps in an effort to combat its boy-band image, 5 Seconds of Summer sticks to a fairly specific uniform: black skinny jeans, low-top sneakers and vintage-inspired rock T-shirts touting iconic acts like Nirvana, Metallica and Joy Division. The handlers of 5SOS insist the look isn’t overly manufactured. And they have fun with it — Hemmings posted a picture to Facebook of a Ramones shirt and a pair of scissors, captioned, “Mum, can you cut this for me? I wanna be punk rock.” The vintage style, a favorite among hipsters, implies you’ve spent hours scouring eBay and left-field band forums in search of shirts produced for tours that happened decades ago. But there’s really no need to spend big bucks on worn-out collector’s items. Most of 5SOS’ favorite shirts can be…

CHOLARS SEEKING A deeper understanding of 20thcentury pop music will soon be able to pore over taped conversations with Lou Reed and The Ramones’ legal documents at Yale University, the Ivy League institution that houses a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. In January, Danny Fields, the former 16 magazine editor, Elektra Records publicist and The Ramones’ first manager, began sending his archives to the university’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, Conn. “I did it for posterity, but also because Yale has always been the sexiest of American universities,” says the Brooklyn-born, Queens-raised Fields, 72, who graduated from another Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to New York. There, he ran with the Warhol crowd and was instrumental in the signings of the MC5,…

Ten years ago, Daddy Yankee (aka Raymond Ayala), 37, found odd inspiration at Villa Kennedy, a housing project in San Juan . Calls of “Como le gusta la gasolina!” taunted pretty girls who accepted rides in flashy cars. “She really likes gasoline!” It became the hook for “Gasolina,” the single that globalized reggaeton (a fusion of Latin rhythms, dancehall and rap) and altered the business and aesthetics of the Hispanic music market. It helped Yankee’s Barrio Fino debut at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart the week of July 31, 2004 and later become the top-selling Latin release of the decade. With a European tour and a 15-week No. 1 run on the Hot Latin Songs chart this year, Yankee has welcomed a new crop of reggaeton acts…

UNTIL 2013, 24-YEAR-OLD LONDONER Jacob Anderson was just another rising actor who happened to moonlight as a singer under the pseudonym Raleigh Ritchie. Despite roles on popular U.K. TV shows Episodes and Broadchurch, his secret was well-kept and his music was released online to little fanfare. But then Anderson landed a choice role on the third season of hit HBO show Game of Thrones as Grey Worm, leader of castrated freed-slave army the Unsullied. A chance union with Odd Future members’ R&B band The Internet for his most recent project, The Black and Blue Part 2, released for free online in April, added to his dual careers’ momentum. Now he has landed a worldwide deal with Columbia and several high-profile U.K. summer festival gigs (including Glastonbury). With the latter, he…

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna. Or so the band would like you to think with its latest album, 1000hp. It has been four years since Erna and fellow Boston bad boys Tony Rombola, Robbie Merrill and Shannon Larkin released a new LP, but in that time, Erna hasn’t lost his pissed-off edge, remaining in perpetual rant throughout the album. At least he knows how to channel his ill temper into contagious rock radio confections, like the title track that’s climbing Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, where it is No. 2. But “confections” is right. The track may be booming with the band’s brand of blistering ire, but it is a bit too much of the same old Godsmack for a group that has had a lot of…

A LITTLE MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, Colombian star Carlos Vives inspired countryman Juan Fernando Fonseca to delve into “tropi pop” — the danceable style of Colombia’s accordion-driven vallenato music. For Fonseca — who is billed solely by his surname — that move led to a streak of hits on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart, from his 2006 breakthrough song, “Te Mando Flores,” to last year’s success with “Desde Que No Estas.” But Fonseca’s waters run far deeper than tropical Latin pop. “Many people think I only do party music, or music with accordion,” says the 35-year-old. “But I want people to know that I’m more than that. I want to open people’s spectrum of what they think about my music and what they think about me.” The Colombian singer-songwriter is…

DOT COM Read more Chart Beat at billboard.com/chartbeat. LEGEND Bullets indicate titles with greatest weekly gains. Album Charts Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 500,000 albums (Gold). RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 1 million units (Platinum). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 10 million units (Diamond). Numeral noted with Diamond symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 50,000 units (Oro). Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 100,000 units (Platino). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multi-platinum level. Digital Songs Charts RIAA certification for 500,000 paid downloads (Gold). RIAA certification for 1 million paid…