Innholdsfortegnelse for June 3, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

LUKE COMBS’ faithful interpretation of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” has brought the song back to the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10, while making it a hit for the first time on Billboard’s country charts. The song ranks at No. 10 on the Hot 100, with top Airplay Gainer honors, up 52% to 19.8 million U.S. radio audience impressions during the week of May 19-25, according to Luminate. It also drew 19.8 million official streams (up 1%) and sold 8,000 (up 3%) in the tracking week. “Fast Car” concurrently holds at No. 2 on the multimetric Hot Country Songs chart, while revving 21-14 as the Greatest Gainer on Country Airplay. It also advances to No. 20 on Adult Top 40. “Amazing song, hugely popular artist bringing familiarity and nostalgia,” says…

“Not Strong Enough” becomes the first No. 1 for boygenius on a Billboard songs chart as it reaches the top of the Triple A list. It also marks the first trip to No. 1 on an airplay ranking for all three band members: Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus (above, from left), each of whom has hit the chart’s top 15 as a soloist. The Record, boygenius’ debut album that includes the single, bowed at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 dated April 15 and has earned 171,000 equivalent album units through May 25, according to Luminate. “We were told, ‘If we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10.’ And then it was, ‘Actually, maybe we could break top five,’ ” Dacus recently told Billboard,…

ON MAY 15, CAMEO CARLSON, CEO of the management services company mtheory, took the stage at the Music Biz conference in Nashville to address a room at the JW Marriott that was less than half full. “This is inarguably the most important conversation that will happen at Music Biz,” she said. “And it’s unfortunate that not every registrant of this conference is here as they should be.” The subject of the panel was the second Music Industry Action Report Card from the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), a nonprofit organization founded in 2020 to combat systemic racism in the music business. But the underwhelming attendance at the event would not have surprised the dozen-plus Black executives who spoke for this article. They all expressed concern or frustration that the…

ONE DAY IN THE SUMMER of 2021, Sony Music Publishing Nashville CEO Rusty Gaston sat down in his Music Row office with his right-hand A&R vp, Anna Weisband, and singer-songwriter Cole Swindell to listen through a list of songs they were considering for Swindell’s next album. As they talked about what kind of track might boost Swindell to the next level, Gaston hit upon the idea of using elements of an old song to tell a new story. “It started with thinking about the legacy that lives in [the Sony Music Publishing] song catalog and Cole’s love of ’90s country,” remembers Gaston, who mentioned to Swindell and Weisband that “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” a hit for Jo Dee Messina in 1996, had become a karaoke favorite. He connected Swindell…

AS CMA FEST gears up to welcome visitors from around the world to downtown Nashville June 8-11, the enduring festival will celebrate 50 years of bringing together country music fans with their favorite artists. “From a fan’s perspective, there’s nothing else like it in the world,” says Luke Combs, who will perform at Nissan Stadium on the festival’s opening night. “You can go see every act in the genre, from the smallest act to the biggest act, and all you have to do is walk a few blocks. It’s so unique.” When the inaugural festival was held on April 12, 1972, at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium, it was billed as Fan Fair, drawing nearly 5,000 attendees and featuring performers including Roy Acuff, Bill Anderson, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb and Jeannie…

As Swift holds steady atop the Artist 100, she could score additional No. 1s on the charts dated June 10. Midnights was reissued in multiple new iterations on May 26, while a remix of the album’s latest single, “Karma,” featuring Ice Spice, arrived the same day with a new music video. NO. 11 ‘Heavenly’ Chart Returns Lewis Capaldi (above) matches his best rank on the Artist 100 as he jumps 74-11 in the wake of the arrival of his second studio album, Broken by Desire To Be Heavenly Sent. The set enters at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 on Top Album Sales — launching with his largest week in both equivalent album units and traditional album sales, respectively. It bows with 30,000 units earned…

Coi Leray, David Guetta and Anne-Marie (above, from left) hit No. 1 on the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart dated June 3 with “Baby Don’t Hurt Me.” Guetta achieves his 13th No. 1, tying him again with Calvin Harris for the most since the chart launched in August 2003. On the May 20 ranking, Harris pulled ahead of Guetta thanks to “Miracle” (with Ellie Goulding). Notably, Guetta remixed that track, which led for two weeks. Until their latest chart-toppers, both men were tied with Rihanna. The chart’s new No. 1, a reworking of Haddaway’s Eurodance classic “What Is Love” (which reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1993), is Anne-Marie’s third Dance/Mix Show Airplay No. 1 and Leray’s first. The song earned core dance airplay on SiriusXM’s BPM,…

DAVID SLUTES SAYS it took him a while to notice that bar tabs had fallen at a number of the shows he oversees at the 325-capacity Club Congress in Tucson, Ariz. “Coming out of COVID-19, everything about the live-music business was turned upside down,” says Slutes, who serves as the venue’s entertainment director. “We weren’t sure why the numbers were like this. Then we did a deeper dive, and at every event aimed at a Gen Z crowd, we saw numbers that were very different.” Money spent on alcohol dropped by as much as 25% relative to shows that catered to older generations. (Gen Z refers to those born between 1997 and 2012.) “Gen Zers are just simply not drinking the same amount” as their predecessors, Slutes says. Dayna…

While ruminating on her nearly 10-year marriage and recent divorce for her new album, Kelly Clarkson turned to a pair of films from the 2000s to illustrate the difference between idealistic young love and often-messy adult relationships. “I hate love, and The Notebook lied/It’s Complicated is more like what happens, so you can keep Gosling and I’ll take Steve Martin,” she sings on the cheeky “I Hate Love,” from her 10th studio album, Chemistry, out June 23. Clarkson’s cinematic inspiration didn’t just affect the song’s lyrics: It also led to an unexpected instrumental cameo. While writing much of the new project in the early days of the pandemic, Clarkson had been watching Martin play his banjo in livestream videos to keep fans entertained during lockdown. She went to “I…

“Kill Bill” by SZA (above) rebounds 2-1 for a historic 21st week atop Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, where it breaks from a tie with Lil Nas X’s 2019 smash, “Old Town Road” (featuring Billy Ray Cyrus). It becomes the leader for the most weeks at No. 1 since the chart became an all-encompassing genre survey in 1958. In the 24 weeks since “Kill Bill” debuted at No. 1 (Dec. 24, 2022), the track has vacated the No. 1 spot only three times — one week each for The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s “Die for You,” Drake’s “Search and Rescue” and Lil Durk’s “All My Life” (featuring J. Cole). The “Kill Bill” journey parallels similar record-breaking achievements for its parent album, SOS. The set’s 20th week at No. 1 on Top…

“Thank God I Do” by Lauren Daigle (above) tops the June 3-dated Hot Christian Songs chart for a third week. The ballad drew 7.4 million all-format audience impressions and 2.4 million official streams and sold 4,000 in the week of May 19-25, according to Luminate. As it’s being promoted to Christian and adult formats, the song places at No. 8 on Christian Airplay and No. 13 on Adult Contemporary. “Thank God I Do” is the lead single from the Louisiana native’s self-titled set, which arrived at No. 1 on the May 27-dated Top Christian Albums chart with 25,000 equivalent album units. “I truly hope that people gain new elements of encouragement from this album,” Daigle recently told Billboard. “I found myself coming alive making this record, after all that…

JIMMY HUMILDE’S first foray into the music business was a party at his sister’s house in Venice, Calif., that he promoted with street flyers. The entrance fee was $5, and Humilde, then 13 years old, made $300. He was hooked. It was the early 1990s, and the soundtrack of the streets was trance, techno and hip-hop. But Humilde (born Jaime Alejandro to immigrants from Michoacán, Mexico) soon started to include the music of his home in his flyer parties, adding Vicente Fernández and Mexican cumbias into the mix. Then a cousin introduced him to the music of Chalino Sánchez, the underground corrido singer from Culiacán, Mexico, who was kidnapped and murdered at 32 years old in 1992 in what presumably was a revenge killing. “I didn’t know who Chalino…

IN JANUARY 1999, one month after he turned 14, Jason DeFord was baptized by full immersion at Whitsitt Chapel Baptist Church in Antioch, Tenn. By the end of that year, he was incarcerated for the first, but not the last, time. For the next decade, DeFord cycled in and out of juvenile and then adult correctional facilities for crimes ranging from aggravated robbery to drug dealing. “I got baptized in here some 20 years ago and have since done nothing but go to prison, treat a bunch of people wrong, make a lot of mistakes in life, turn it around, [then] go on to be a fucking multimillionaire and help as many people as I possibly can,” says DeFord today, a hint of awe in his voice as he…

WHEN BAILEY ZIMMERMAN takes the stage to perform his brooding, multiweek Country Airplay chart-topper “Rock and a Hard Place,” the memories of a particularly bad breakup come flooding back to him. “There was a girl I really loved. I wanted to give her the world and bought her a ring, and then she did some really messed-up stuff,” Zimmerman says. “Every time I see people cry during ‘Rock and a Hard Place’ when I’m singing it live, it takes me back to that moment. I remember being in my truck, screaming the lyrics to [Morgan Wallen’s] ‘Sand in My Boots’ because I was so sad and hurt. The line in ‘Rock’ about ‘We’ve been swinging and missing’ just resonated with me.” When it comes to his career, Zimmerman (who…