Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/16/2016 i Billboard Magazine

Last summer Merle Haggard invited me to his ranch outside Redding, Calif., to discuss collaborating on an autobiography that was never realized. “Might start off with a story about Bob Eubanks,” said Haggard, “the host of The Newlyweds. I’ve known ol’ Bob forever. We’re about the same age, pushing 80. Bumped into Bob long ago and the first thing he said was, ‘Merle, you need a face-lift.’ “Well, I looked him square in the eye before saying, ‘Bob, your face looks like it caught on fire and somebody beat out the flames with a track shoe. If that’s what a face-lift looks like, I don’t want no part of it.’ ” Haggard wanted to be seen the way he was. “Wrote a tune not long ago called ‘I Am What…

DECADES BEFORE THE FIRST chord was struck at Coachella or Bonnaroo, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was packing them in down South. Launched in 1970 and steeped in the rich musical legacy of its home city, Jazz Fest has weathered hurricanes, economic troubles and everchanging musical trends, due in no small part to Quint Davis, CEO of Festival Productions Inc. (FPI) New Orleans, who was brought in as a 19-year-old by founder George Wein. And while Davis’ résumé also includes the Essence Music Festival and, with FPI partner AEG Live, successful country music festivals, his first love remains Jazz Fest. The seven-day event has drawn more than 400,000 people in each of the past eight years. Its 47th edition runs from April 22 to May 1 with a…

THE PULSE OF MUSIC RIGHT NOW ONE OF THE HARDEST LESSONS FOR ANY new pop star is learning when to say “no.” Luckily for Lukas Graham, the Danish quartet behind “7 Years,” one of 2016’s biggest global hits, its frontman has no problem putting his foot down. Singer-songwriter Lukas Forchhammer, 27, and his band — drummer Mark Falgren (28), bassist Magnus Larsson (26) and keyboardist Kasper Daugaard (33) — look happy serenading staffers at a piano on a typically cloudy March afternoon at Warner Brothers HQ in London. But Forchhammer’s smile turns to a scowl when it’s suggested he wear something more stylish than a plain white T-shirt for a photo shoot afterward. “If I am going to have my picture taken,” he says later, “then I’m going to wear…

Vinyl and cassettes are experiencing an unlikely renaissance, but the brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop stores built to sell them are closing in droves. Enter Record Store Day (RSD), an annual celebration of independent music shops across the globe, now in its ninth year. More than 350 special releases — think limited runs, unreleased rarities and new artwork — will be pressed exclusively for the 2016 edition on April 16, including these five must-grabs. (See page 37 for a look at the best new turntables and other tips for vinyl lovers.) David Bowie, The Man Who Sold The World (Rhino) This beautiful picture disc, featuring rare album art for the classic 1970 LP’s German release in lieu of the standard black vinyl, is one of a trio of exclusives showcasing the late legend:…

Martin Shkreli may be the only person to hear RZA’s work on Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the one-of-a-kind, $2 million Wu-Tang Clan LP. The MC-producer is guaranteed a bigger audience soon, however — just not for his music. RZA, 46, stars as a hitman with a heart of gold in Mr. Right (out April 8 from Focus World) with Anna Kendrick and is directing Coco (Lionsgate), starring Azealia Banks as a poet turned rapper. Mr. Right is a new look for you: It’s half action, half rom-com, and you play a good guy. What attracted you to it? Every time I choose characters it’s therapy, and this one seemed like a different release for me. He’s a quirky, awkward guy. The director [Paco Cabezas] told me, “You look…

Immortalized in the film version of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and frequented by The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Vintage Vinyl in Evanston, Ill., has been a record collector’s mecca ever since Steven Kay opened its doors in 1979. Beyond the well-stocked racks of the store, Kay has amassed more than 50,000 records of his own. How do you know if a record is in mint condition? Look at the color of the grooves, which might be gray instead of rich black if not cared for properly. Look at warpage on records, especially ones from the mid-’70s manufactured during the oil crisis; hold it up as straight to your eye as possible to look at the flatness. Also check for spindle marks around the label, which can diminish the value. What’s…

Growing up, this cabinet was the focal point of our living room. My mom would put records on and go about her day, so music was always playing. As we got older, my older brother took out the crappy turntable that it came with and upgraded it with a Technics, I think. The console became where I listened to all of my music: I would take a couch pillow and sit on the floor, open up a piece of vinyl, unwrap it and then sit there listening, looking at the album notes. I remember hearing Born to Run, David Bowie’s Greatest Hits and Wings Over America that way. The cabinet eventually went to Florida with my mom. Around 2007, she moved to a nursing home, and I thought it would…

Frank Keller is founder and president/CEO of Kel Executive Services — a full-service security consulting firm with clients that include Bonnaroo, Coachella and San Francisco’s Outside Lands. What is your approach to festival security? For each event, I customize a plan that may incorporate closedcircuit television, canine patrols, security guards, vehicles, bicycles, towers, drones, helicopters and other technologies. Plans are tailored for the site, genre and crowd size. Has the U.S. festival boom made fans better prepared? They’re definitely savvier. In the old days, fans would show up with a toothbrush and, maybe, a rain poncho. Now there’s a wide range of gear — and the mobile phone has changed everything. How has the Bataclan attack in Paris affected festival security? Sept. 11 ushered in more intense partnerships between private…

Despite little airplay or social media pull, Jack White-backed singer-songwriter Margo Price makes a notable debut on Top Country Albums with her first LP, thanks to critical acclaim and media buzz. Look for her numbers to jump soon: She’ll perform on Saturday Night Live on April 9. 10 Price’s Third Man Records debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, enters at No. 10 on Top Country Albums — the first time a solo female has debuted in the top 10 with a first album without any history on the Hot Country Songs chart. 224 Radio has mostly ignored Price thus far: The album’s songs have generated a mere 224 plays across all monitored stations, through April 3. Of those spins, 82 percent are for the lead single, “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle).” 3.5 K…

Graceful Landing Australian pop singer-songwriter Grace enters the Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart at No. 37 with “You Don’t Own Me,” featuring rapper G-Eazy. The original version, by Lesley Gore, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. “It’s difficult to be a woman in this industry,” Grace told Billboard in 2015. “But I know who I am and what I want to do. This song speaks to that. Lesley’s generation paved the way.” Grace isn’t the only artist paying tribute to Gore: Melanie Martinez is bubbling under Mainstream Top 40 with “Pity Party,” her reinterpretation of Gore’s 1963 No. 1, “It’s My Party.” 27% THIS WEEK DEMI LOVATO’S “STONE COLD” STREAMS 1 .5 MILLION 8% THIS WEEK DJ LUKE NASTY’S “MIGHT BE” AUDIENCE 27.8…

Merle Haggard was the best country songwriter there ever was. You always felt like he had experienced the things that he was writing about, and he used the kind of language that country people use in conversations, even if he didn’t necessarily always agree with that point of view. When I was in The Drive-By Truckers, we used to talk a lot about “Okie From Muskogee.” From what I understand, the perspective in that song was really Merle’s father’s more than it was his own, but still he was able to write it in a really natural way. That’s when I realized really how great Merle was. My dad listened to Merle religiously when I was growing up. He would come home from work — he had been doing construction…

ACM AWARDS EDITION Crying For A Cause The Academy of Country Music Awards, held at Las Vegas’ Arena on April 3, were a celebration — but they were preceded by a whole lot of crying. On April 1, at the first day of the Party for a Cause Festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, Carrie Underwood broke down when ACM CEO Bob Romeo presented her with the Lifting Lives Gary Haber Award, named after her late business manager, which honors artists committed to helping others. “I am very happy to be accepting this not only on my behalf but also Gary’s — he was a great guy,” said a weeping Underwood, before remembering she was slated to sing “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” “Holy crap — now I got to…

In honor of the recent announcement that the one and only Prince is writing an autobiography (slated to be published in 2017 by Spiegel & Grau), Billboard asked other music stars what they would name their own tell-alls. ALABAMA SHAKES’ BRITTANY HOWARD More, Please OF MONSTERS AND MEN’S NANNA BRYNDÍS I Was Tired All the Time, But It Was Fun ASAP FERG Ferg Forever “I want everything that I do to be everlasting.” RACHEL PLATTEN This Is My Fight Book BIRDY My Life and Mermaids and Unicorns “Because mermaids and unicorns are beautiful things — they make me happy.” NOEL GALLAGHER I Can’t Remember Anything “We’re doing an Oasis documentary now, and I’ve done hours of interviews. They showed me some photos and I was like, ‘Who is…

BEHIND THE $33,000 PRICE TAG Handmade with slate from the last two functioning quarries in Pennsylvania, Oswalds Mill Audio turntables aren’t merely eye candy — they incorporate only idler and direct drives (instead of belt drives) to achieve an incomparable sound quality. At 210 pounds, the player’s literal mass insulates the vinyl record from any vibration. When used in tandem with founder/CEO Jonathan Weiss’ speakers, which take inspiration from audio equipment made for cinemas in the 1930s through the ’50s, the sound has proved so moving that a cult following of audio engineers and celebrities have placed orders. OSWALDS MILL AUDIO Tourmaline SP10 turntable system with Pennsylvania slate plinth, $33,000; oswaldsmillaudio.com.…

The Beatles THE BEATLES $790, 000 When Ringo Starr auctioned his personal copy, numbered 0000001, in December 2015, it was a perfect storm, says Gold, a former executive vp/GM at Warner Bros. “It was a first pressing in exceptional condition, had a promotional label, and the fact that it came from one of The Beatles exponentially raised the value,” he says. “I helped catalog that record; I held it in my hot little hands.” “My Happiness”/“That’s When Your Heartaches Begin” ELVIS PRESLEY $300, 000 After purchasing the 1953 10-inch acetate at an auction in January 2015, Jack White rereleased it on his Third Man Records label on Record Store Day in April 2015. “This was Elvis’ first recording ever, and there are no other copies,” says Gold.…

WHEN YOU’RE THE BIGGEST BAND EVER TO explode out of a music- obsessed college town like Columbus, Ohio, people there tend to give you what you want. For Twenty One Pilots, whose genre-defying smash “Stressed Out” has climbed to the top of every radio format short of country, the request on this chilly early-spring day is a modest one: They just need to briefly commandeer the sound system at the Newport Music Hall, a local rock club where they cut their teeth. Tyler Joseph, 27, the two -man crew’s singer-songwriter, has just been Dropbox ed a new mix of a tune that’s in contention for the soundtrack of a major summer blockbuster, and he’s eager to give it a spin. As drummer Josh Dun, 27, goes off in search of…

ON EASTER SUNDAY, JAMES Murphy, the 46-year-old frontman of LCD Soundsystem, stepped onstage for the first time in five years. The occasion was the live resurrection of Murphy’s dance-punk band at New York’s Webster Hall, the first of two hometown warm-up shows before headlining Coachella’s two weekends in April. “It has been a hot minute,” said Murphy, before a maze of keyboards and colleagues. “We’re still not used to it.” LCD Soundsystem is one of two substantial reunions topping Coachella’s 2016 lineup. The other is Guns N’ Roses, a second coming of the hard-rock behemoth’s essential trinity — singer Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan — a reconciliation 20 years in the making that not even the band’s 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction managed to…

Festival promoter/producer Paycheck $5 million to $25 million Description Stages the festival, books talent and oversees every aspect of the experience. Also, takes the financial risk. Agent/booker for main-stage headliner Paycheck $15,000 to $200,000 Description Artist reps secure a prominent festival spot for an act and earn either a flat fee or 2 to 10 percent of the talent’s income. Main-stage headliner Paycheck $1 million to $4 million Description Top-tier performers often earn several times more for a festival than they would for a stand-alone show. Small-stage act Paycheck $500 to $1,500 Description Artists booked in early slots on far-off stages don’t do it for the money but the value of increased exposure. Security guard Paycheck $7.50 to $15 per hour Description The T-shirted watchdogs manning the gates and stages…

‘LONG LIVE’ LANCO Signed to Arista Nashville in October 2015, LANco is fronted by vocalist Richard Lancaster; initially the act was called Lancaster & Company. LANco’s poprock “Long Live Tonight,” produced by Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Little Big Town) and penned by Lancaster and Jason Reeves (Colbie Caillat, High Dive Heart), is bubbling under Country Airplay ahead of its May 16 radio add date. NO LANGUAGE BARRIER DJ Khaled-backed Florida rapper Kent Jones jumps 25-22 on Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop with “Don’t Mind” (We the Best), a cheerful ode to women worldwide whose chorus features a series of multilingual greetings. As of April 4, the track was the 23rd-most-searched on Shazam’s Top 100 popular songs list in the United States (373,000 tags) — the highest rank for a song not on the…

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A TIME WHEN Usher wasn’t one of music’s most interesting artists, but in 2014 producer Jermaine Dupri told Billboard that as the R&B singer set out to record his fourth album in 2003, “People not being interested in Usher the person was the main topic of discussion.” Although Usher had landed three Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s by then, his straitlaced image gave the media little choice but to focus on the music, not the man. That would change with the 2004 album that emerged from Dupri’s discussions with the singer-songwriter: Confessions. Just 25 at the time, Usher broke new artistic ground with songs that explored the painful subject of infidelity that many speculated were references to his failed relationship with TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. Dupri…

The first song of Merle Haggard’s I remember hearing was “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.” From before I could walk, Haggard was playing in the house. I was at the Crazy Horse [Steak House & Saloon, in Santa Ana, Calif.] in the early ’90s. It was the first time I’d seen him play live. I’m standing in the back shadows. He says, “I hear Garth Brooks is in the audience tonight.” And my whole throat just tightened up. I was like, “Please, I’ll never make it. I’ll just bawl like a baby.” He said, “I’d love for him to come up here and sing, but the truth is I got enough of my own songs to sing tonight.” And the place laughed and I started laughing through my tears.…

AS THE VICE president of the United States, Joe Biden can likely introduce whomever he wants at the Academy Awards. This year, his first time presenting, he welcomed Lady Gaga. For the 34 million people watching it might have yielded minor headscratching, but thousands of college students understood the link between politician and global superstar. Gaga’s Oscar-nominated song “Till It Happens to You” is the track she co-wrote and recorded for The Hunting Ground, a 2015 documentary about sexual assault on campuses. In 2014, with President Barack Obama, Biden launched the It’s On Us initiative to bring awareness and collective responsibility to the epidemic of campus assaults. (According to NotAlone.gov, a resource site launched in 2014 as part of a White House task force to protect students against sexual assault,…

Best friends and frequent duet partners Big Sean and Jhené Aiko describe their new act Twenty88 and its self-titled album (released April 1 on Def Jam) as a “passion project” — in more ways than one. Recorded in secret, their eightsong debut as a duo features the Grammy-nominated R&B singer and chart-topping Detroit rapper (who previously linked up on such singles as “Beware” and “I Know”) playing boyfriend and girlfriend, chronicling the rapture and rancor of modern-day romance. In real life, Aiko is reportedly married to producer Dot Da Genius, but has yet to publicly confirm their status. Sitting with Billboard on a March afternoon at Beverly Hills’ Polo Lounge, she and Sean, both 28, were similarly coy about the meaning of Twenty88 — but they were open about their…

NAME Bibi Bourelly AGE 21 FROM Berlin BACKSTORY One of 2016’s most promising rookies started as just another restless teen looking for escape. At 16, Bourelly left her parents in Berlin to live with her aunt and uncle in Maryland. “I’m not defiant — I just can’t live my life around people who don’t get me,” says the singer-songwriter. Music soon took priority over high school. “I’d take every opportunity to skip. I’d go to the studio, smoke and write.” BIG BREAK After linking with producer Paperboy Fabe (Ledisi, Jay Rock), Bourelly met Kanye West at a Los Angeles studio. “He was a lot nicer than I thought he was going to be!” she recalls. His co-sign helped lead to writing for Rihanna (whose “Bitch Better Have My Money” was…

“‘Role model’ is not the title they like to give me — which is why tonight is so important.” —RIHANNA The “Work” singer accepting the Rock Star Award at BET’s Black Girls Rock! ceremony. “Thank you, Chris Stapleton, for not being a group!” —KIMBERLY SCHLAPMAN The Little Big Town singer joking after the band’s win for vocal group of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards — one of the few trophies Stapleton didn’t claim. “Having the power to make every final decision and being accountable for them is definitely a burden and a blessing.” —BEYONCÉ The star on being boss of her new activewear line, Ivy Park, in an interview with Elle. “I got offered my freedom if I were to lie... I would rather let the…

He would be a hell of a director if he wasn’t doing music,” says Twenty One Pilots creative director Mark Eshleman of frontman Tyler Joseph, who has had Eshleman taping the band since the two met in 2009. Where other artists use Twitter or Instagram to connect with their audience, Pilots fans (they call themselves the Skeleton Clique) go behind the scenes with the duo’s documentary-style videos. “Tyler knew what he wanted to see from the beginning,” says Eshleman, who recalls going through Joseph’s favorite music videos with him early on. “They’re all about being on camera.” The charismatic artists are affable hosts in videos detailing everything from a trip to Disney World to a Twitter poll pitting the two against each other. “They really know the importance of keeping…

The idea wasn’t ‘Let’s go into the mountains, find a babbling brook and a waterfall, and have a camping festival,’ ” says dance-music veteran Bassnectar (aka Lorin Ashton), 38, about the debut of his two-day Colorado camping festival, Bass Center 2016, on July 29. ”I want to play somewhere that I have full freedom with the sound.” Bassnectar is one of a growing number of artists who has started a boutique festival. In June, Jack Antonoff will throw his second Shadow of the City, a one-day bill in Seaside Heights, N.J., featuring Carly Rae Jepsen and The 1975. In August, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner will host their second Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival in Eau Claire, Wis. And Animal Collective recently announced its…

COLOMBIAN STAR JUAN FERNANDO FONSECA, 36, has just played a sold-out show in Quito, Ecuador, and is flying back to his home in Key Biscayne, Fla., just across a bridge from downtown Miami. Soon, it’s over to Los Angeles, where on April 4 he will play the Billboard en Vivo show, and four days later, he’ll open his Conexión Tour in San Diego, promoting his new album of that name. One of Colombia’s most admired musicians, Fonseca has collaborated with Juanes, Carlos Vives and Willie Colon and has enjoyed a streak of hits on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart. “He’s a chameleon,” says Julio Reyes Copello, who produced Fonseca’s Conexión album and produces Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. “He’s one of the most versatile artists I know. He can traverse genres…

ZAYN IS NO STRANGER TO THE NO. 1 SLOT on the Billboard 200 — after all, during his time with One Direction, the group landed four chart-toppers. However, Zayn now has the penthouse all to himself: The singer’s first solo effort, Mind of Mine, debuts at No. 1 on the April 16 Billboard 200. The set, released on March 25 through RCA Records, earned 157,000 equivalent album units (including 112,000 in pure album sales) in the week ending March 31 in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. Zayn’s No. 1 debut makes chart history: The singer, born in Bradford, England, is the only British male solo artist to debut at No. 1 with his first album. Amazingly enough, the last British male solo artist to take his first album…