Innholdsfortegnelse for February 15, 2020 i Billboard Magazine

In the early 2000s when Molly Hawkins was 20, she moved to New York to pursue a career as a DJ — but ended up working in fashion and “hated it,” she says. She became a waitress instead. That spring, she and her friend, Terrible Records co-founder Ethan Silverman, drove to South by Southwest, and when she returned, a friend from Nashville who happened to be in the band Chairlift hit her up, saying, “ ‘I heard you’re in the music industry now!’ ” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, it worked!’ ” The friend asked Hawkins to be the band’s tour manager as it hit the road with MGMT in 2007; following the tour, she started managing Chairlift full time. “Shortly thereafter we got a commercial…

⚫ HUMBLE BEGINNING When Sonora, Mexico, native Natanael Cano was 13, he taught himself to play Mexican band Maná’s “Rayando el Sol” on guitar by watching YouTube tutorials. Three years later, he started gravitating toward corridos like the ones he grew up listening to by regional Mexican singers Gerardo Ortiz and Ariel Camacho — and at 16, Cano recorded his first original song, “El de los Lentes Gucci,” and its music video, which was funded by a close friend. The track previewed his urban take on corridos, resulting in a genre he has since deemed corridos tumbados, which fuses hip-hop and trap together. ⚫ NEW HOME SWEET HOME By his late teens, Cano found new musical inspiration in Legado 7, a corrido group that stepped outside traditional lines with…

LAST SPRING, LYOR Cohen was in Mumbai, India, when, as he recalls it, his mind was “splattered all over the ground.” The 60-year-old was there for the India launch of his company’s subscription product, YouTube Music Premium, and acts hailing from across the subcontinent were in attendance, with some traveling thousands of miles to perform. “The artist and label community came out in such a loving way,” says Cohen, perched at the edge of an armchair in YouTube’s Chelsea Market offices in Manhattan. “They’re going through a transitional moment, with the benefit of exploding connectivity. I pay a lot of tolls being here, but I get so much joy and pleasure by experiencing things like this.” A little over two years ago, Cohen joined YouTube as global head of…

Quinlan’s Solo Debut Frances Quinlan (above) makes her first solo Billboard chart appearance. She arrives at No. 37 on Emerging Artists thanks to her debut LP, Likewise, which sold 2,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Quinlan is the lead singer of Hop Along, whose most recent LP, Bark Your Head Off, Dog, hit No. 2 on Heatseekers Albums and No. 7 on Vinyl Albums in April 2018. Meanwhile, Trevor Daniel logs a third week atop Emerging Artists as his breakthrough single, “Falling,” enters the top 30 of the Billboard Hot 100 (33-27). —XANDER ZELLNER CHART BEAT FINNEAS CONTINUES RISE WITH ‘FALL’ On Jan. 26, Finneas (above) snared five Grammy Awards, including producer of the year, non-classical, for producing sister Billie Eilish’s album When We…

JO1 Jumps On To Social 50 Japan’s JO1 (above) has already made a splash on the Social 50 chart, debuting at No. 29 prior to releasing any music. The 11-member group, which appeared on the reality-competition TV show Produce 101 Japan, bows with 196,000 Twitter reactions; 50,000 retweets; and 14,000 new Twitter followers in the tracking week ending Feb. 6, according to Next Big Sound. On Jan. 31, the boy band revealed that its official greeting would be “To the world, to the top,” a phrase that courted controversy due to its similarity to NCT’s greeting (“To the world, this is NCT”). The group has since stated it will change its greeting. JO1 has been posting multiple teasers of new music on its social media as well, with an…

Combs Not ‘Leaving’ Yet Contrary to its title, “Even Though I’m Leaving” by Luke Combs (above) is exhibiting impressive staying power as the former five-week Country Airplay No. 1 spends an 18th week in the top 10 (ranking at No. 6). After no songs had lasted at least that long in the region since Kenny Chesney’s “Don’t Blink” in 2007-08, four have now done so in under three years, and Combs boasts two of them: His “She Got the Best of Me” logged 19 weeks in 2018-19. Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” and Morgan Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses” likewise completed 19-week top 10 runs in 2017 and 2019, respectively. The record, dating to the chart’s 1990 inception, belongs to Lonestar’s “Amazed”: 21 weeks in the top 10 in…

Shakira’s Super Surge Following her Super Bowl LIV halftime show performance on Feb. 2, Shakira (above) is back in the top 10 of the Top Latin Albums chart for the first time since September 2018 as her 2010 set Sale el Sol reenters at No. 7. It earned 5,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Feb. 6 (up 434%), according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, most of which are attributed to streaming activity. The set includes “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” a track performed during the halftime show. Shakira’s total song catalog increased by 201% in on-demand streams (audio and video combined), with 54 million clicks registered, up from 18 million in the prior week. Elsewhere on the charts, Nicki Minaj claims her first No. 1 on Latin…

10 Million Strait George Strait (above) continued his Strait to Vegas residency at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas with two chart-topping shows on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. The double-header grossed $4.2 million and sold 31,556 tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, pushing Strait’s reported career total past 10 million tickets sold (10,031,222). It is Strait’s 21st time ruling the Boxscore chart, dating back to a July 7, 1990, concert at The Summit in Houston, where he took in $287,000 with a quaint $21 ticket. (His recent residency’s cheapest seat was $50.) Strait also hits No. 5 on the chart with a non-Vegas concert, grossing $2.7 million from a Jan. 24 show at INTRUST Bank Arena in Wichita, Kan. —ERIC FRANKENBERG BOXSCORE: THE TOP GROSSING CONCERTS…

SONY/ATV FINISHED 2019 strong, holding on to the top spot in market share for both the Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 Songs charts, thanks to Lewis Capaldi and Post Malone. During the fourth quarter, Sony/ATV had a whopping 24.93% market share of the 100 songs on the Top Radio Airplay chart — six percentage points higher than Universal Music Publishing Group at 18.81%. Sony/ATV and UMPG each owned a stake in the publishing of 54 tracks on the chart, but Sony/ATV had stakes in the top five songs, including both the No. 1 and No. 2 hits, Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” and Post Malone’s “Circles,” respectively. On Hot 100 Songs, the competition was much closer. Sony/ATV had a stake in 46 titles, including the No. 1 “Circles,” while…

I FEEL LIKE I’VE GOTTEN on every tour I could have imagined wanting to get on,” says Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison — “except for Taylor Swift.” Within three years of forming her project, the now-22-year-old rising indie-rocker opened for Kacey Musgraves, Vampire Weekend, Paramore and Wilco, among others. During the summer between her high school graduation in her hometown of Nashville and her freshman year at New York University, Allison started uploading bedroom recordings to Bandcamp as Soccer Mommy — then just herself and a guitar — later releasing music on the boutique label Orchid Tapes. While at NYU she played gigs at DIY venues like Shea Stadium and Silent Barn, and in May 2017 landed a booking agent: High Road Touring’s Wilson Zheng. That same month, she signed…

BEFORE BAY AREA NATIVE Jacob Sullenger managed a pizzeria in New Jersey, he had made “emo songs” with his brother at home. By 2016, when he was 20, Sullenger decided to pursue music more seriously and moved to Philadelphia to be near his musician friends. Now, he has even adopted the city’s all-purpose noun “jawn” for his stage name. For his first three years in Philly, though, he made music as Johnny Utah (inspired by Keanu Reeves’ character in the 1991 film Point Break) and was still working in the food industry (at a local fried chicken restaurant). But in April 2019, his career took off after he independently released the groovy “Honeypie” on publishing platform Future Classic. The music video, in which Sullenger pursues an actual pie, has…

Funeral Starts At No. 1 Lil Wayne’s Funeral lands the hip-hop superstar his fifth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (and 12th top 10) as the set launches with 139,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Streaming activity drove 72% of Funeral’s first-week units: of its 139,000 total-unit start, 99,000 were streaming-equivalent album units. (That translates into 134 million on-demand streams for the album’s songs in its first week.) The remaining unit sum of its total first week consisted of 38,000 album sales and 2,000 track-equivalent album units. Funeral’s first-week album sales were bolstered by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer and an array of merchandise/album bundles sold on Lil Wayne’s website. —KEITH CAULFIELD 11 TAYLOR SWIFT Lover Swift’s catalog…

‘Might Be’ Definitely No. 1 The first entry on the Alternative airplay chart by White Reaper (above), “Might Be Right,” becomes its first No. 1. The Louisville, Ky.-based band is the third act in a row to notch a first leader on the list following Meg Myers (“Running Up That Hill”) and Absofacto (“Dissolve”). “Might” also bullets at its No. 2 best on the all-rock-format Rock Airplay chart with 7.2 million audience impressions, up 8%, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, and spends its 10th nonconsecutive week at its No. 4 high on the Triple A airplay tally. Triple A also sports a first-time leader as Black Pumas pounce 3-1 with “Colors.” The duo is the first act to reign with a maiden No. 1 since CAAMP, with “Peach Fuzz,”…

Redman, Paulk Debut Matt Redman (above) scores his sixth top 10 on the Top Christian Albums chart as Let There Be Wonder arrives at No. 10 with 3,000 equivalent album units earned, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Redman last reached the region in October 2017 with Glory Song, which opened and peaked at No. 2. Meanwhile, the new set’s “The Same Jesus” lifts 49-41 on Christian Airplay, surging by 74% to 338,000 audience impressions. Plus, Darius Paulk earns his first Hot Gospel Songs entry as “Strong Name” bows at No. 24, fueled by its No. 17 rank on Gospel Airplay (up 5% in plays). Paulk first broke through in the genre with a writing credit on VaShawn Mitchell’s “Nobody Greater,” a nine-week Hot Gospel Songs No. 1 in 2010-11.…

WHEN JAY-Z AND TIMBALAND needed to defend their use of a sample in the 1999 smash “Big Pimpin’,” Christine Lepera was at the ready. Her argument was so airtight that the suit was dismissed before it even went to a jury. Legal victories like that have made Lepera one of the most sought-after copyright litigators in the music industry. In January, Lepera won a copyright infringement case for Drake, who was sued over the use of a spoken-word passage in his song “Pound Cake.” Most recently, Lepera successfully argued that the pop singer Kesha defamed her client, superstar music producer Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, in a text message to Lady Gaga. The ruling was a major victory for Lepera’s team in a contentious legal dispute that has been going…

WILSON ZHENG, 31, HAS worked for High Road Touring since 2009 — and after a decade, he’s sticking to the same strategy of prioritizing opening slots over rushing to secure headlining gigs. “I feel like I hit the lottery every time I get a support tour,” he says. “It buys time and allows the band to work on their live show. When you’re latching on to a tour you know is going to have 700 people or more every night, it’s a wonderful situation for any young artist.” The tours Zheng secured for Soccer Mommy often drew considerably more. When angling for these gigs, he says a concise pitch is key: “Some agents will get anywhere between 20 to over a hundred submissions for that slot,” he says. “Everybody…

LAST YEAR, WHEN B2K reunited for The Millennium Tour, the 2000s R&B/pop group’s frontman, Omarion, had a realization: “Fans were coming up to us at the show, and they were like, ‘Yo, this is my girl. We haven’t hung out in many years — she has kids, I have kids — but we’re at The Millennium Tour,’ ” recalls the singer. “To see all of the fans be engaged on a level like that encouraged me to continue.” The Millennium Tour grossed $25.5 million in 2019, selling just under 290,000 tickets, according to Billboard Boxscore. The nostalgia-fueled trek even caught the eye of Drake, who booked B2K along with the show’s supporters Ying Yang Twins, Mario and Lloyd for a slot at Toronto’s OVO Fest last August. The successful…

THERE’S A LINE OUT THE DOOR AT HILLTOP COFFEE + Kitchen in Los Angeles’ Inglewood neighborhood, but Issa Rae, the creator and star of HBO’s Insecure, strolls right past it, nonchalantly making her way in through the crowd. “I love working out of coffee shops. It always bothered me that I had to leave my neighborhood to do that,” says Rae. So a year ago, when she purchased a building for her company, Issa Rae Productions, she decided maybe she should open her own inside it. Her business manager “was like, ‘Cool. Are you going to be serving the coffee? When are you going to have time to do that?’ ” Rae says with a laugh. So she partnered with Hilltop’s owners for this location, less than two miles…

Arista Returns Arista Records is back in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 for the first time in years, thanks to the arrival of Louis Tomlinson’s debut album, Walls (78/SYCO/Arista). The venerable label relaunched in 2018 after shuttering in 2011. Walls debuts at No. 9, with 39,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, aided by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer and a variety of merchandise/album bundles. Arista, which Clive Davis founded in 1974, last appeared in the top 10 with a new album on the chart dated April 16, 2011. That week, Jennifer Hudson’s then-new I Remember Me spent its second and final week in the top 10 (at No. 7), after debuting at No. 2 on April…

AIRPLAY & SALES DATA COMPILED BY RADIO SONGS: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR SONGS, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY AUDIENCE IMPRESSIONS AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. DIGITAL SONG SALES: THE WEEK’S TOP-DOWNLOADED SONGS, RANKED BY SALES DATA AS COMPILED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. POP/RHYTHMIC/ADULT: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR CURRENT SONGS AT MAINSTREAM TOP 40, RHYTHMIC, ADULT CONTEMPORARY AND ADULT TOP 40 FORMATS, RESPECTIVELY, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY DETECTIONS, AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. SONGS ARE DEFINED AS CURRENT IF THEY ARE RELATIVELY RECENTLY-RELEASED TITLES, OR SONGS RECEIVING WIDESPREAD AIRPLAY AND/OR SALES ACTIVITY FOR THE FIRST TIME. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. SEE CHARTS LEGEND ON BILLBOARD.COM/BIZ FOR COMPLETE RULES AND EXPLANATIONS. ALL CHARTS…

Russ’ ‘Best’ Song Result Russ (above) adds a third top 10 album to his resume as Shake the Snow Globe debuts at No. 4 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The set earned 63,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Globe follows the rapper-singer’s 2017 major-label debut, There’s Really a Wolf, another No. 4 success, while 2018’s Zoo debuted and peaked at No. 2. Meanwhile, Russ’ current single “Best on Earth,” with BIA, reaches new milestones for the 27-year-old. The track pushes 9-8 on Rhythmic (up 9% in plays in the week ending Feb. 9) to match his best showing on the airplay chart, after he previously reached the same rank with “Losin Control” in 2017. “Earth” also achieves career highs on Hot…

‘On The Floor’ On The Charts Following the Super Bowl LIV halftime show performance of Jennifer Lopez (above) and co-headliner Shakira in Miami on Feb. 2, Lopez’s “On the Floor” (featuring Pitbull) — which closed her solo set — reenters the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart at No. 1, marking its first week atop the tally. The song, originally a No. 3 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2011, sports a 1,015% vault to 5,000 sold in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. It also debuts on the multimetric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart (which launched in 2013) at No. 4 with a 145% surge to 2.7 million U.S. streams. Lopez briefly shared the halftime show stage with J Balvin, whose “Que Calor” (with Major…

One of the music industry’s most pervasive hitmakers, Linda Perry has had success as an artist (4 Non Blondes), songwriter-producer (P!nk, Christina Aguilera, Dolly Parton) and label founder (Custard, Rockstar Records, We Are Hear). The LGBTQ icon says that performing at her first Billboard Music Awards in 1993 made her and the band feel like “we were fucking making it. We could see it happening in real time.” When 4 Non Blondes hit No. 1 on [Billboard’s] Heatseekers [Albums chart], we just knew we were going to the majors. With “What’s Up,” I wrote a legacy classic at 24. It’s a very personal punk-folk song based on frustration. At the Billboard Music Awards, there were obstacles for us to climb because of the nature of being so out, but…