Innholdsfortegnelse for August 5-11, 2017 i Billboard Magazine

SAM HUNT’S “BODY LIKE A Back Road” ties for the most weeks spent atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart as it earns its 24th week at No. 1 on the Aug. 5 survey. Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” also reigned for 24 weeks in 2012 and 2013. “Making history is fun, and this smash keeps going and going,” says Universal Music Group Nashville chairman/CEO Mike Dungan. Like “Cruise,” “Back Road” — at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 after reaching No. 6 — has made history thanks to support at its home format and a crossover to pop. Hunt’s hit likewise leads the Country Streaming Songs chart (16.7 million U.S. streams, according to Nielsen Music) and Country Digital Song Sales (46,000 downloads sold) for a 24th week each; at 1.4…

07-17 Triple 8 Management acquired Nashville-based artist management, marketing agency and independent label Good Time Inc., whose roster includes Judah & The Lion and Kris Allen. Chrysalis Records entered a global partnership with pop duo Everything but the Girl. 07-18 Amy Wheatley was appointed GM of Ministry of Sound Recordings. She joins the Sony-owned imprint from Three Six Zero, where she was head of U.K. marketing. Colombian star Maluma signed a worldwide publishing deal with Sony/ ATV. He’s signed to Sony Music Latin America. Grammy-nominated hip-hop veteran Jeezy signed with United Talent Agency for worldwide representation 07-19 The Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow announced Fleetwood Mac as the 2018 MusiCares Person of the Year. The 28th annual benefit gala is set for Jan. 26 at Radio City Music Hall in…

EXECUTIVE OF THE YEARSARAH TRAHERN “I always call it ‘the big tent,’ ” says the CEO of the Country Music Association, who has helped expand not only the genre’s borders but also its audience through deft diplomacy and “lightning-rod moments” at the CMAs AS SARAH TRAHERN LEADS THE WAY TO HER CORNER OFFICE, she warns that it might not be in the most presentable state. “I’m a little scared because I haven’t even sat down in here today,” she says, waving warm hellos to Country Music Association (CMA) staffers as she passes their open doorways. Trahern’s floor-to-ceiling windows offer a second-story view of the traffic on Music Row, the symbolic center of Nashville’s music industry, flooding with natural light a workspace that is, in fact, very tidy. A few stacks…

KEN ROBOLD, 52 EXECUTIVE VP/COO, SONY MUSIC NASHVILLE STEVE HODGES, 52 EXECUTIVE VP PROMOTION AND ARTIST DEVELOPMENT, SONY MUSIC NASHVILLE When Robold, a lifelong New Yorker, relocated to Nashville in 1994 — “knowing no one,” he says — he was skeptical that it would be a permanent move. Twenty-three years later, he is one of the primary strategic forces behind a revitalized Sony Nashville, the label-group home of breakthrough artists Maren Morris, Luke Combs, Old Dominion, Kane Brown and a resurgent Miranda Lambert. “Bringing Maren in really put the town on notice [that] Sony’s back and is going to be a player,” says Robold. “And Luke Combs is on fire.” Combs’ single “Hurricane” and EP This One’s for You have topped the Country Airplay and Top Country Albums charts, respectively.…

Anyone who lives in Nashville will tell you the city has been undergoing a real estate boom during the past few years. The empty lots and abandoned warehouses that once dotted downtown’s southwestern fringe known as The Gulch, for example, have been replaced with chic cafes, shops and lofts. The same can be said for Germantown, where Gen and Benjamin Sohr have captured the synergy of old and new Nashville in the home and commercial spaces they reimagine for Pencil & Paper Co., the boutique design agency the couple launched in 2012. “There is nothing more fulfilling than taking old architecture and shaking it up with colorful, graphic wallpaper. The juxtaposition of those things is what Nashville is now,” says Gen, whose penchant for mixing bold patterns, bright colors and…

CARLA WALLACE* CO-OWNER, BIG YELLOW DOG MUSIC Punching above its weight, this 10-person firm had a stellar year with Maren Morris, who won the best country solo performance Grammy Award for “My Church.” In addition to writing the song, Morris recorded it for Big Yellow Dog Music at Wallace’s urging, which turned out to be pivotal in getting her signed to Columbia Nashville in 2015. Since then, Morris has sold 1.8 million digital downloads; logged four hits on the Country Airplay chart, including her featured turn on Thomas Rhett’s No. 1 “Craving You”; and won both the 2016 CMA and 2017 ACM new artist awards. NOT YOUR MAMA’S MUSIC PUBLISHERMorris is the latest success for a company whose roster of 19 includes Meghan Trainor — who thanked Wallace profusely when…

When Eric Church’s Holdin’ My Own Tour rolled into town, concert promoter Louis Messina had to have the T-shirt talk with the locals. “Eric sold this shirt that read ‘Eric Fucking Church,’ ” says Messina, “and the building managers would all bitch and moan about selling the shirt,” disapproving of its expletive. “I would just tell them, ‘If you want Eric to play here again, you better just sell the damn shirt,’ ” says Messina of the top-selling item of tour merchandise, which sells for $30. “They’d sell the shirt — and then later pat me on the back for moving so much merch.” To say nothing of moving so many tickets. Church sold 930,000 seats on his just-concluded tour, says Messina, whose Messina Touring Group also has promoted Taylor…

ELEVEN YEARS AGO, WHEN Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss met as students at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, they had three things in common: They were obsessive music geeks; they used Macintosh computers; and they felt MySpace was bloated and overly complicated, especially for musicians. In 2008, the duo launched SoundCloud, a nimble, easy-to-use platform for artists to share new tracks instantly — and within months, Beck, Sonic Youth and Moby were on it, helping spread the service to 160,000 users Now reaching 175 million users globally, SoundCloud continues to drive music culture, helping break hits like Desiigner’s “Panda” and spawning a grassroots, youthoriented wing of hip-hop known as “SoundCloud rap.” But due to a series of missteps, the German-based outfit is on life support, announcing 173 layoffs, drastic…

AFTER SWEARING 20 YEARS AGO THEY WOULD NEVER tour again, Guns N’ Roses boast the top-grossing tour in what has been another record year for the concert business so far, despite fears of market saturation, high-profile festival collapses and terrorist threats. The reunited group’s Not in This Lifetime Tour, which began in April 2016, has been packing stadiums from Japan to the United Arab Emirates ever since. “People love these songs but many haven’t had the opportunity to see them live,” says the band’s agent, Ken Fermaglich, of United Talent Agency, noting that Appetite for Destruction is Spotify’s second-most-streamed album of the 1980s, with “Sweet Child O’ Mine” having racked up 250 million streams alone. “So it’s new fans and people that have been fans of the band for some…

AFTER LIVING IN NEW York for nearly 20 years, The National’s Aaron Dessner moved with his wife to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2014 to raise their two children. He had been searching for ways to connect with his new community when famed chef and new Nordic cuisine pioneer Claus Meyer reached out on social media to ask if he’d play a local festival. “The note was touching,” recalls Dessner, 41. Since then, Meyer, 54, moved to Manhattan to open the Michelin-starred eatery Agern, while Dessner (whose U.S. album sales with The National total 1.3 million, according to Nielsen Music) produced Sleep Well Beast, the band’s seventh LP (Sept. 8, 4AD). The two friends collaborated as well, opening a bar in Denmark, investing in a soccer league and launching Haven, a two-day…

LABELS SCOTT BORCHETTA* PRESIDENT/CEO/FOUNDER, BIG MACHINE LABEL GROUP ⋆FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE In the (nearly) three years since his marquee artist Taylor Swift released her smash album 1989, Borchetta says that the label group has been “focused on the next wave,” grooming rising acts Brett Young and Thomas Rhett, whose “Craving You” (featuring Maren Morris) topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and generated 34.2 million ondemand streams. In other promising news, reports persist that Swift’s Billboard Hot 100 hit with Zayn Malik, “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker),” which sold over 1 million downloads, won’t be the only new music she releases this year. BIGGEST ISSUE FACING COUNTRY “The streaming genie’s out of the bottle, so we have no choice now but to scale it with premium services. The…

J.R. SCHUMANN, 35 SENIOR DIRECTOR OF COUNTRY PROGRAMMING, SIRIUSXM The executive in charge of SiriusXM’s country programming says he’s proudest of the artists the satellite broadcaster’s top country channel, The Highway, has spotlighted early in their careers — many who have broken through to a larger audience. (SiriusXM reaches 31.6 million subscribers but doesn’t break out listenership by genre.) During the past year, Schumann has watched two female artists who were designated “Highway Finds” catch fire: Carly Pearce, whose “Every Little Thing” is No. 18 on the Aug. 5 Country Airplay chart and has sold 138,000 downloads, and Ashley McBryde, whose single from her self-released EP Jalopies and Expensive Guitars, “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,” got early love from Schumann and helped the Arkansas native score her Grand Ole…

A year and a half after opening, Nashville boutique Two Son has become a pivotal player in a style revival that has brought celebrated indie fashion labels Mayram Nassir Zadeh and Black Crane to the city for the first time. The store was started by two married couples — David Perry, who also has a fashion production company, and Leigh Watson, part of the folk duo Watson Twins; and photographer Aubrey McCoy and James Kicinski-McCoy, who runs the lifestyle site Bleubird — who noticed a deficit in the city’s offerings. Now, the modernist, 2,200-square-foot space in East Nashville is a must-hit for locals in the know and tourists looking for edgy curation in home goods and men’s and women’s clothing. “When we moved here, most of our friends said they…

By late August 2014, Eric Church’s status as one of country’s superstars was secure. After the breakthrough of his 2011 album, Chief, his new release The Outsiders had reached No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart; his latest single, “Cold One,” had reached No. 21 on Hot Country Songs; and he had sold 4.2 million albums to date, according to Nielsen Music. For Church, it was time to give back. On Aug. 21, 2014, the singer and his wife, former music publisher Katherine Blasingame, announced the launch of their charity, Chief Cares, to support an array of humanitarian organizations in the United States and worldwide. Rather than incur the operating costs of a stand-alone charity, Chief Cares would be administered by the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, which has…

THIS SUMMER, DJ Arthur Chi’en took a leave of absence from his day job as a New York newscaster to head to the Greek island of Mykonos, opening a new beach club called SantAnna where dance music artists have been spinning deep house tracks for 800 afternoon revelers a day since July 5. “There’s a general consensus that this is the next Ibiza,” says Chi’en, 44, a partner and music director for the club who starts the tunes at 2 p.m. on weekends to dissuade all-night partiers from “missing the most beautiful time on the island.” Despite Greece’s economic crisis, Mykonos is becoming an international Mecca for sun-drenched, ouzo-fueled partying as fans pour in to hear the latest in dance music. The Aegean Sea isle, with just 180 hotels, had…

WHEN SHAKIRA AND Carlos Vives released their global hit, “La Bicicleta,” in May 2016, the Colombian diva followed up with a personal request to her Zumba instructor, Marta Formoso: Could she do anything with the song? As it turns out, she could do plenty. Formoso was in the midst of a global tour with Zumba co-founder/chief creative officer Alberto “Beto” Perez, 47, who spent that night feverishly choreographing the track with cumbia steps and sexy hip swivels. The next day, Perez premiered the dance in front of 4,000 people at a Zumba class in Italy, adding encores in Brazil, Japan and Argentina. Shakira posted a video of the debut on her YouTube channel, garnering over 2.6 million views. Two days later, “La Bicicleta” debuted atop Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart. “Shakira’s…

Art For Life BRIDGE HAMPTON,N.Y.,JULY 15 THE 18TH ANNUAL ART FOR LIFE GALA, which took place at Fairview Farms, honored a handful of vocal supporters of the arts, such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Uber chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John, former BET president of programming Stephen G. Hill, Art for Life 2017 featured artist Sanford Biggers and Esi Eggleston Bracey, former president of the consumer beauty division at Coty. Hosted each year by Russell Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, founded by Simmons alongside his brothers Joseph (Rev. Run of Run-D.M.C.) and Danny, the “Midnight at the Oasis”-themed gala raised over $1.1 million and saw Russell auction off gold and blue balloons that brought in more than $150,000 within seven minutes of bidding. After guests enjoyed an allvegan menu, Chuck…

“We went through puberty. We survived our musical acne.” —Ali Youngblood WE WERE THE POSTER children for a band getting popular on the Internet,” laments Reggie Youngblood, the 39-yearold frontman of momentary rock stars Black Kids, who will finally return this September with a second LP. A decade ago, the Jacksonville, Fla., quartet became a blog-hype success story a few months after forming, thanks to the whip-smart indie-pop single “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You.” The group’s first EP, 2007’s Wizard of Ahhhs, was named best new music by Pitchfork; soon after, the band signed with Columbia Records, drew a big crowd at Coachella and toured internationally. Yet just as quickly, Black Kids — Youngblood, sister Ali Youngblood, Dawn Watley and Owen Holmes — were…

Paris Hilton says she “loves changing people’s minds” when it comes to her music. The 36-year-old business mogul and former Simple Life star celebrated the five-year anniversary of her Foam & Diamonds party at Ibiza’s Amnesia in July, extending her run as the island’s sole American female DJ with a residency. Meanwhile, Hilton is staying active in the pop world: This month, she dropped a new single titled “Summer Reign,” announced work on a long-overdue remix of her 2006 hit “Stars Are Blind” and showed up in pal Demi Lovato’s music video for “Sorry Not Sorry.” Eight years after first dabbling in the DJ booth, Hilton breaks down the essential rules for commanding a crowd. 1 ADAPT TO TECHNOLOGY Keeping up with equipment innovations has become a Hilton hobby —…

THE BLUEBIRD CAFE ISN’T MUCH TO LOOK AT. IT’S IN A NASHVILLE STRIP MALL, next to Le Bon Ton Hair Salon. The joint seats fewer than 100 people, and there are just two small bathrooms — directly in the path of the waiters leaving the kitchen. But the club’s humble footprint belies a storied history: This is where Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift scored record deals, where an unknown Dierks Bentley and Keith Urban once played open-mic nights, and where, on any given evening, Bonnie Raitt or Vince Gill might just drop by unannounced. Since Amy Kurland opened the Bluebird in June 1982, it has become a haven for songwriters, a listening room (most shows are played in the round) where patrons are encouraged to shush anyone talking during a…

When entertainment figures in Nashville seek to add to their art collections, they’ve typically looked to cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York. In recent years, though, a nascent art scene has bloomed here alongside other growing industries, leading artists from around the country to set up studios and new galleries in the city. Alex Lockwood, an abstract sculptor who also runs Nashville’s Elephant Gallery, moved from Brooklyn in 2011 with his now wife. He soon found himself getting the chance to take on projects that wouldn’t have been possible in larger art markets. “I got to do a show at a performing arts space, 10,000 square feet,” he says. “I had to make more work than I’d ever made. That kind of opportunity was a big deal for…

ERIC CHURCH ISN’T thinking about music. After six months on tour — playing to arena crowds across North America, from Lincoln, Neb., to Nashville — for 62 nights, the country music superstar is trying to quiet his mind. And he’s got the perfect place for reflection: his family’s summer retreat, 5,000 feet above sea level, in North Carolina’s High Country “I’m on top of the mountain with almost no cell reception,” says Church. “We picked this place for that reason. There’s, like, one place you can stand, if the weather’s right, to get cellphone service and communicate with the outside world. Otherwise, no one can get ahold of me up here.” “Quiet” is the last word his fans associate with Church. The 40-yearold singer, songwriter and guitarist has brought a…

REWINDING THE CHARTS IT ONLY TOOK FOUR YEARS, THREE countries, two Spaniards and one Miami DJ, but on Aug. 3, 1996, Los del Rio’s “Macarena” topped the Billboard Hot 100, wrapping an improbable journey for a song whose origin dates to a 1992 party in Venezuela. There, Los del Rio — the duo of Antonio Romero Monge and Rafael Ruíz Perdigones from Seville, Spain — was inspired by a woman named Madalena, which led Romero to craft the melody that would become “Macarena” during a 1993 studio session. The track arrived on U.S. shores through Miami, after WPOW (Power 96) DJ “Jammin” Johnny Caride heard it at a local nightclub. Though his station avoided playing exclusively Spanish songs, Caride persuaded his bosses to make an exception. The program director demanded…