Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/15/2016 i Billboard Magazine

RICKY MARTIN LEAVES NO doubt about where he stands in the upcoming presidential election. “I’m with her,” he tweeted on Sept. 30. “So with her.” That message is only the latest prompt that the singer has posted on his social media accounts since he officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in December 2015. “The Latino community needs to show up and vote,” says Martin. “We are alarmed by [the prospect of] what this world could become if someone like Donald Trump gets to the White House.” Martin, an American citizen, speaks for many Latinos, a demographic that has been roundly vilified by the Republican candidate. And while Latin music artists have not banded together to support Clinton, a large number have unified against Trump in an effort to mobilize the…

For those willing to equate “total album consumption units” with good old-fashioned sales, at 411 million units in the first three quarters of 2016, the U.S. music industry appears set to enjoy its most robust year since 2009. By that metric, which combines sales with track- and streamingequivalent units (with 10 track sales or 1,500 streams equaling one album, respectively), the industry is almost at 2013’s total of 415.4 million albums and is on track to pass 2009’s 489.8 million albums (both include TEA). The third quarter’s total is 5.3 percent higher than the 390.1 million units counted at the same time in 2015 — and the RIAA’s midyear report found that on a dollar basis, the industry was up 8.1 percent over 2015 to $3.43 billion. Dividing the album-plus-TEA…

“i dont give a f— if im hand delivering the return of baby jesus if i get the call my wife was robbed at gunpoint im out.” —EL-P The rapper reacting on Twitter to the news that Kanye West ended his set at the Meadows Music and Art Festival in Queens early after learning that his wife Kim Kardashian West had been robbed. “She’s been an activist from the beginning of her career and she’s always been very, very black.” —SOLANGE KNOWLES The singer on her sister Beyoncé in an interview with The Fader. The thing about Kendrick Lamar and Drake is they’re interested in the same thing that I am, which is sound.” —PAUL SIMON The legend on two of his favorite rappers during a Q&A at the Grammy…

Two words: Adele and Beyoncé. As awards show ratings plummet and viral moments increasingly decide a ceremony’s impact, the world’s two biggest stars going head-to-head on Feb. 12 — and also likely taking the stage at the Staples Center — may be the answer to CBS and the Grammy producers’ prayers. (Columbia Records, home to both divas, may prove the biggest winner of all.) But there’s much more to the 59th annual Grammy Awards than even this match. And with the eligibility period closed and the first ballot mailing date of Oct. 14 fast approaching, the other potential nominees in the main categories — and the rest of the Feb. 17 ceremony — are taking shape. This may be, among other things, the year that hip-hop finally takes the Grammy…

The Road To The 2017 Grammys Oct. 14, 2016 First ballot mailing Nov. 4, 2016 First ballot deadline Nov. 15, 2016 Last day to become a member to vote in final round Dec. 6, 2016 Nominations announcement Dec. 14, 2016 Final ballot mailing Jan. 13, 2017 Final ballot deadline Feb. 12, 2017 59th annual Grammy Awards telecast Music’s Biggest Night” faces what may be an insurmountable challenge: holding on to millennial TV viewers who are cutting the cord in increasing numbers. The Grammys, TV’s second-biggest awards show behind the Oscars, have managed to retain a relatively stable audience in recent years. But advertiserpreferred younger viewers are becoming more difficult to keep. CBS’ 2016 telecast dropped 10 percent among adults 18 to 49, even as viewership held at 25 million. Hardly…

The host of Elvis Duran and the Morning Show knows his listeners awake each day with more choices than ever for entertainment: Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Tidal, even iHeartRadio’s own app. “Yet we’re still doing well — our morning show still posts incredible numbers,” says Duran, whose weekday show reaches 10 million listeners nationwide, according to iHeartMedia. “I think that’s because we know how to hit the nail on the head better than anyone else.” For Duran’s program, hitting that nail has meant reflecting the changes in its audience’s behavior on the show. “All these things that people say are our competition — no, they’re not,” says Duran. “The clutter outside our show, that we assume is competition, is actually a part of our show: We talk about social media;…

REWINDING THE CHARTS BY LATE 2004, GREEN DAY WAS A superstar rock band with four smash studio albums and five No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Alternative airplay chart, yet a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 still eluded the trio. That changed on Oct. 9, 2004, when the raucous concept album American Idiot debuted atop the list, later earning a Grammy nomination for album of the year. “It’s pretty sweet,” singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, then 32, told Billboard about finally reaching No. 1. “We’ve been doing this for a long time.” Armstrong formed the band in 1988 in Rodeo, Calif., with his childhood friend, bassist Mike Dirnt, and the act adopted its name the following year. Drummer Tré Cool joined in 1990. Ironically, although the album was adapted into…

EVERY TIME THAT SPOTIFY’S Troy Carter meets with a label marketer, he hears the same thing: “How can I get No. 1 on Today’s Top Hits?” He has to explain, calmly, how songs are placed on the service’s most popular playlist, which has 11 million followers and is meticulously curated by senior content editor Mike Biggane based on a combination of songs’ popularity on other playlists and his own instincts. In other words, the old rules don’t really apply. “When you look at radio, when you look at retail, we’ve pretty much been working records the same way for decades,” says Carter, the former Lady Gaga and Meghan Trainor manager who was hired as the streaming giant’s head of creator services in June. “A lot of partners were trying to…

GENERAL COUNSEL/EXECUTIVE VP BUSINESS AND LEGAL AFFAIRS, UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AS GENERAL COUNSEL FOR the world’s largest music company, a key skill that Jeffrey Harleston relies upon is adaptability. “The one thing I know for sure is that whatever I’ve planned that day, I’m going to get hit by something different,” says the 55-year-old Boston native. “The business is changing just that fast.” Harleston has been in the trenches for much of that evolution. In 2013, he negotiated behind the scenes on Jay Z’s $30 million partnership with Samsung, in which the tech giant became the first brand to premiere and distribute a major album (Magna Carta Holy Grail). More recently, Harleston helped Universal Music Group hammer out a licensing deal with SoundCloud that allows the label to decide whether…

Laverne Cox was a freshman in college when she first met Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the “sweet transvestite” portrayed by Tim Curry in the 1975 musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in movie history (it has grossed $112 million to date). “I was transfixed,” says the Orange Is the New Black actress, 32, of the groundbreaking, sexually fluid character. “[His song ] ‘Don’t Dream It’ became a personal mantra.” Thanks to her new biggest fan — High School Musical and prolific music video director Kenny Ortega, 66 — Cox will step into Curry’s platform heels as a very glam Frank in Ortega’s made-for-TV Rocky (Fox, Oct. 20), alongside Victoria Justice, Adam Lambert and Curry himself, for a star-studded version intended to break TV’s reboot slump. The cast also has…

Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter need a rest. It’s a warm Los Angeles evening, and Phantogram’s singerkeyboardist and producer/multiinstrumentalist are curled up atop a bed in a luxury apartment, reflecting on a year of epic highs and one devastating, personal loss — the suicide of Barthel’s older sister Becky in January. Tomorrow in Las Vegas, the New York-bred duo kicks off a fiveweek, 29-date tour ahead of its third album, Three. “The record is about heartbreak,” says Barthel, 33. “The best way to see it is like a beautiful car crash, that for whatever reason makes you slow down and look.” Becky, Barthel’s only sibling, was also a classmate of Carter’s growing up in the pair’s hometown of Greenwich in southwest New York. Details around her passing remain spare, and…

For one month this summer, 37 Avenue Hoche in Paris became the most novel runway in the world. That was where 48-year-old chanteuse Celine Dion emerged every day from the lobby of her hotel in an ever more surprising outfit. One day, the star, previously known for Las Vegas-style sequins and gowns, wore a stark yellow Jil Sander coat with towering Gianvito Rossi boots. Then it was a red leather jacket from Off-White, and finally an $885 sweatshirt from Vetements that bore images from Titanic on the front. By season’s end, the singer had become a style icon. However, the man behind Dion’s transformation doesn’t want to be called a stylist. “I’m an image architect,” declares Law Roach, a Chicago native who also dresses celebrities from Ariana Grande to Ruby…

BARRY GIBB, THE SUAVE romantic whose soaring falsetto defined the Bee Gees and the Saturday Night Fever era, is padding around his Miami mansion in white tube socks, a pair of rimless glasses perched on his nose. At 70, Gibb is a genial, if slightly eccentric, grandfather of eight, his gray hair and thinning beard wispy where they were once leonine, his walk slightly hobbled. His vast living room is rife with gilded mirrors and cherub statuettes. A glass coffee table is piled high with books on his eclectic interests — the supernatural, alternative archeology, British history, the Third Reich — and a copy of evangelist Joel Osteen’s I Declare. As the sun floats in through a crack in the curtains, Gibb comes on like a serene guru, clad all…

GOLDENVOICE CHIEF AND Coachella festival founder Paul Tollett, 51, is behind the two biggest live music events in recent history (both held on the grounds of Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif.): successfully reuniting Guns N’ Roses in April and orchestrating Desert Trip, taking place on consecutive weekends in October (7-8 and 14-15). With a bill featuring Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, The Who and Roger Waters, and tickets priced between $399 and $1,599, the shows are expected to gross Goldenvoice parent AEG Live (a subsidiary of global sports and entertainment giant Anschutz Entertainment Group) more than $150 million. Tollett tells Billboard how it came together. What was the concept behind Desert Trip — “greatest concert ever,” “biggest bands on earth,” a “boomer-targeted” show, “rock royalty”?…

Meadows Music & Arts Festival QUEENS, OCT. 1-2 ONE WAY TO GET A NEW FESTIVAL ON THE MAP? Have the headliner — in this case, Kanye West — abruptly leave the stage mid-set due to a “family emergency,” which later proved to be a major international incident as news broke that his wife, Kim Kardashian West, was robbed at gunpoint in her Paris hotel room of $11 million in jewelry. Initially billed as a makeup date for West’s canceled performance at Governors Ball in June, his set was the main draw for the weekend, especially after co-headliner The Weeknd dropped out 18 hours earlier due to scheduling conflicts. Despite the unfortunate event, the Meadows Music & Arts Festival, produced by Founders Entertainment and held at Citi Field, pulled off a…

The film captures the final stop on your 20/20 Experience Tour (in January 2015 in Las Vegas). Why that show? When you spend two years with people, there’s good and bad scar tissue, right? More texture, more wrinkles and more heart because of all that shared experience. I’m glad we did it this way. Do you ever watch and critique your own performances? I used to do that a lot when I was younger, but I stopped when I realized that nothing’s perfect. (Laughs.) And that the imperfections are probably the most beautiful part. In the film, during “Mirrors,” you get a little emotional. What was going through your mind? I’m a softie. It happens some nights because you’re only one man standing up there, and you’re getting all of…

For an exclusive video interview with the artists discussing how and where they write music, go to Billboard.com. FOR SOMEONE WHO’S 48 hours away from mounting a one-day music festival that will draw 47,000 fans, Chance the Rapper looks remarkably chill. On a soundstage at Essanay Studios in his native Chicago, the 23-year-old splays his arms and knees in imitation of Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow as “Ease On Down the Road” from The Wiz plays on a boom box. (He later says the movie helped inspire his new live show.) He’s smiling and wearing Super Mario-esque burgundy overalls and one of his trademark baseball caps — this one red and embroidered with the number 3, a reference to his latest album, Coloring Book — as a photographer snaps away. The two…

IT’S A MID-SEPTEMBER DAY AT WHTZ (Z100) New York, the flagship pop-radio powerhouse of iHeartMedia, and Calvin Harris is maneuvering his 6-foot-6-inch frame into the studio of Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, where the host, standing a full head shorter than his guest, gives Harris an enthusiastic bro hug. “Look at you! You’ve grown!” jokes Duran, introducing the superstar DJ to his co-hosts, Bethany Watson and Danielle Monaro, and to his “killer dog, Max [a miniature schnauzer], in case we have any security problems.” For the 52-year-old Duran, who has been on the airwaves since he was a 14-year-old rookie announcer at KMMK McKinney, Texas, the encounter is another chance to give one of today’s hottest artists — who make Duran’s Morning Show an essential promotional stop — the…