Innholdsfortegnelse for July 17, 2021 i Billboard Magazine

When’s the last time a new record became one of your all-time favorites? It’s probably been a while. Hey, growing up happens. You can’t keep up with everything new that comes your way. That’s why you still listen those trusty old classics. John Mayer kept listening to them too, until one day he had an idea: why not make a record that feels like those unforgettable albums we grew up loving? It’s not easy to do. You’d basically have to be John Mayer to pull it off. But he is. And he did. The result is ‘Sob Rock,’ a collection of instantly catchy and satisfying tunes, played by world-class musicians and painstakingly produced to make every note count. Just like they used to. So whether you’re mending a broken…

WHEN THE NOMINA TIONS for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards were announced last November, Beyoncé became just the second artist in Grammy history, following Pharrell Williams, to receive two record of the year nods in the same year. And Post Malone became the first artist since Steve Winwood in the ’80s to receive a record of the year nod three years running. Who’s likely to make history when the 64th annual Grammy nominations are revealed later in 2021? From Olivia Rodrigo to BTS, here’s a closer look at the potential record-setters. BRUNO MARS Mars could land his sixth record of the year nomination for “Leave the Door Open,” his homage to ’70s soul that he recorded with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic. Mars would become just the third artist…

THE FIRST TIME BAD BUNNY MET TOMMY TORRES, it was backstage at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico. The inventive, prolific artist was on his 2019 X 100PRE tour, and Torres — a successful singer-songwriter in his own right and a go-to-producer for the likes of Ricky Martin, Ednita Nazario and Ricardo Arjona — was at the arena to play piano on the ballad “Amorfoda.” “It all happened so fast, we didn’t have time to talk,” recalls Bad Bunny. “And we didn’t see each other again or keep in touch.” Since then, Bad Bunny, 27, has become a global superstar, scoring back-to-back No. 1s on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart last year with YHLQMDLG, Las Que No Iban a Salir and El Último Tour del Mundo, the first all-Spanish album…

AARON LEWIS, FOUNDING MEMBER AND LEAD V OCALIST OF Staind, bounds onto the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 14 — and scores his first No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart — with “Am I the Only One.” Released July 2, the song arrives with 4 million U.S. streams and 59,300 sold in the week ending July 8, according to MRC Data. Valory Music will begin promoting it to country radio on July 26. Lewis adds his fourth Hot Country Songs entry, besting a prior No. 39 high with “Endless Summer” in 2012. He has two No. 1s among four total top 10s on Top Country Albums: his first country release, the EP Town Line in 2011, and Sinner in 2016. Staind has hit a No. 5 best…

COVID-19 HAS DEVASTATED THE concert business for over a year, but all signs point to enough pent-up demand that the touring industry could soon see a post-pandemic boom. Consumers who attended shows regularly before the pandemic seem eager to return to concert venues: Less than 15% of ticketholders requested refunds to events that weren’t canceled, according to Ticketmaster. And research shows that a significant percentage of fans who bought tickets to some of the first shows amid lifted pandemic restrictions — including tours by Bad Bunny and The Weeknd, as well as Rolling Loud festivals in Miami and New York — will be attending either their first concert ever or their first show in two years. New data compiled by Billboard reveal that new fans are entering or re-entering…

girl in red If I Could Make It Go Quiet, the debut set from the Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer, reached No. 67 on the Billboard 200. Standout single “Serotonin,” co-produced by FINNEAS, made the top 20 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. Glass Animals The British electronic/pop band’s third studio album, Dreamland, hit No. 7 on the Billboard 200 in 2020. “Heat Waves” reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Kid LAROI The Australian rapper-singer reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in 2020 with his mixtape F*ck Love. The single “Without You” received a remix with Miley Cyrus in April, which helped the song crack the top 10 on the Hot 100 the following month. He previously hit the top 10 of the chart…

ON A PLACID INLET OF THE BALTIC Sea, where swans glide by the European sports cars parked across the road, the Djursholm Country Club looms behind a red brick wall with a black iron gate. Built in 1907 with a fortune tied to the Nobel Prize, this villa was originally a private residence, and later a convent where Pope John Paul II stayed. About five years ago, a group of locals transformed it into a private oasis for the wealthy and well-connected in and around Djursholm — a district in the most affluent municipality in Sweden, where Spotify founder Daniel Ek and ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus are neighbors. On this humid evening just before Sweden’s Midsommar, the clean-cut members and their guests socialize on the outdoor patio, their small children…

WHEN MARY J. BLIGE listened to her recording of “Spinnin” for Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’ new album, Jam & Lewis Volume One, she asked Jam (birth name: James Harris) to convey a message to his partner: “‘You tell Terry that he killed me on that vocal, but it’s amazing,’” he recalls her saying. Blige was referring to the number of takes Lewis had her do for “Spinnin” to get a performance that packs a lasting emotional wallop. While some producers use Auto-Tune to tweak vocals, Lewis says, “Tuning instead of takes is blasphemy. I’ll do that with any artist because you’ve got to move me.” The version of “Spinnin” on Volume One, which BMG released July 9, does that. “Whenever I play Mary’s song now, I always run…

ALTHOUGH THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS an increasingly global enterprise, reliably measuring the income of artists who are popular on an international scale remains an inexact science. The September 2020 launch of Billboard’s global charts, which are based on digital track sales and streaming reports from over 200 territories, has made the process more accurate, but many key metrics, such as authoritative physical and digital album sales, are currently not obtainable. In order to determine sound estimates of music’s top global artists for 2020, Billboard employed a multistep calculation process. To estimate global sales, we compared the RIAA’s physical and digital revenue report for last year with IFPI’s global revenue statistics and found that domestic physical sales made up 30.6% of total global sales (physical music video sales were not…

BTS “Butter” Fans worldwide were hoping “Dynamite” would be nominated in this category last year. Although it wasn’t, the group has an even longer-running No. 1 hit now vying for a nod with its snazzy smash that is, as the song suggests, “smooth like butter” and features a co-writing/co-production credit from Columbia Records chairman/CEO Ron Perry. Billie Eilish “Therefore I Am” or “Your Power” This would be Eilish’s third consecutive nod in this category. “Therefore I Am” (boosted by a video of Eilish running through a deserted mall, a defining image of 2020) reached No. 2 on the Hot 100; the cinematic ballad “Your Power” hit No. 10. Giveon “Heartbreak Anniversary” The sleeper hit, released in February 2020 but not entered in this category last year, has climbed as…

When voters for the 64th annual Grammy Awards fill out their ballots in October, their selections will count more than ever, following significant recent changes by the Recording Academy — including disbanding its controversial nominations review committees. The committees, first adopted in 1989, over time spread to the point that their secret members determined the final nominees in 59 of the 84 categories presented in March. Now, nominations in the general and genre fields will be determined solely by the voters, a move that academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. says was made to “make sure the [voting] process was completely transparent and completely unassailable.” Artists like The Weeknd, angered after receiving no nominations for the 63rd annual awards, had publicly questioned the committees’ value, leaving the academy with the…

THERE’S NO ONE WAY TO BECOME A HIT PRODUCER — just ask Jack Antonoff. A decade ago, he was a guitarist in Fun., trying to convince other artists to let him produce their records after years of playing in his own bands. Now he’s one of the most in-demand producers in pop, known less for a signature sound than for his intensely collaborative nature, which has resulted in prolific partnerships with the likes of Taylor Swift, Lorde and St. Vincent. “If you meet someone whom you believe you could do something valuable with — which is why I end up doing more than one record with some people, because it’s very rare to find those connections — how dare you not explore that?” he says, sitting on a couch…

EVEN AMONG THE TREES AND THICK shrubberies lining the pathways outside Conway Recording Studios in Hollywood, it’s easy to find Omer Fedi. His hair, dyed a siren red last year, makes for a blinding follicular flash that, combined with his rainbow manicure and heavy chain necklace that jangles loudly when he gets animated — which is often — immediately announces his presence. Ensconced behind the sound board at Conway’s Studio C, Fedi gives a one-word explanation for his hair inspiration: “Kurt” — as in grunge icon Kurt Cobain, who went rouge in 1992 and whose style Fedi is also invoking today, despite the 75-degree weather, in a brown and yellow cable-knit sweater. He elaborates: “I was looking around, like, ‘Nope! No one else has red hair. Might as well…