Innholdsfortegnelse for July 15, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

ORIGINALLY RELEASED in August 2019, Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” is surging in the early going of summer 2023. The song bounds from No. 9 to No. 3 on the Billboard Global 200, up 16% to 44.1 million streams and 4% to 5,000 sold worldwide June 30-July 6, according to Luminate. On the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, it jumps to the top 10 (14-7) with 29.7 million streams and 1,000 sold (up 19% in each metric) outside the United States. Introduced on Swift’s 2019 album, Lover, and now promoted by Republic Records as her newest single, the song has been gaining momentum in recent weeks as Swift has performed it on her The Eras Tour. It’s her first tour on which she has been able to play songs from…

Album Of The Year In a welcome change, the academy reinstituted a baseline of involvement needed to receive a nomination in this category. Credited and featured artists, songwriters, producers, engineers, mixers and mastering engineers must have worked on at least 20% of an album’s playing time to receive a nod. This is up from no baseline the last two years, when the academy handed out nominations in this category like they were Halloween candy. BOYGENIUS The Record The trio, consisting of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, co-produced its long-awaited debut album with Catherine Marks. Previous “supergroup” collaborations to be nominated in this category include Crosby, Stills & Nash; the all-star Trio consisting of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris; Traveling Wilburys; and The Three Tenors. Billboard…

The Recording Academy has long attempted to cram dance and electronic music’s disparate styles into an all-encompassing pair of categories: best dance/electronic recording and best dance/electronic album. The collision of house, EDM, intelligent dance music and other subgenres has made for strange nominee bedfellows over the years — like in 2022, when Tiësto’s pop-centric crossover smash, “The Business,” competed against the delicately experimental “Loom” from Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds featuring Bonobo. But nowhere has the Grammys’ dance/electronic culture war been so acute as with pop dance (or “dance pop,” as it’s more commonly called), the style that rides the line between the two genres with big melodies, center-of-attention vocals and traditional pop structures. In 2005, Britney Spears’ “Toxic” triumphed over songs like The Chemical Brothers’ “Get Yourself High” for…

In May, a few days after accepting the award for new female artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards in Nashville, Hailey Whitters was onstage in Madison, Wis., opening for Shania Twain. Afterward, as she watched the legend from the wings, Whitters, 33, flashed back to her 8-year-old self “singing Shania Twain in [my] underwear in the living room ... and it hit me just how far I’ve come,” she says. “I set out to do this, and I definitely was hellbent on achieving it, but even the last few months have surprised me.” Her spring accomplishments also included landing her first top 20 hit at country radio. The winsome, effervescent “Everything She Ain’t,” released in early 2022, has spent 62 weeks on Billboard’s…

How did you connect with 21 Savage to create “Peaches & Eggplants”? I ain’t even going to play like I was on some intentional shit, it was just me playing around in the studio and being goofy — I was just being silly with my buddies. Honestly, that was [21 Savage’s] choice. He just heard it and was like, “What’s that lil’ ‘boaw boaw’ song that you got? Let me hop on that shit,” and we made it happen. Tell me about how the music video came together. I don’t like to drop the song that everybody wants first — I like to let my other songs get a little shine, too. That’s why I dropped “Pancake” first. That motherfucker was lit, though! It really wasn’t even that many…

DIEGO GONZALEZ started making his own music in 2020, inspired by some of the tracks he loved from The Kid LAROI’s first album. “I was using GarageBand on my phone at the time,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what else to use.” While killing time on TikTok, he came across posts from other artists praising BandLab, another free app that aims to make it easy for aspiring creators to create instrumental tracks and record vocals with a mobile phone. Gonzalez took to it quickly, especially the presets that add clarity and heft to a vocal. “You don’t need 1,000 buttons on there to make something sound good,” he says. With BandLab, he recorded his breakout hit, a mournful 6/8 ballad titled “You & I” that has nearly 50 million…

From swing to bebop to fusion, evolution has defined jazz throughout its history. The Grammys’ new best alternative jazz album category acknowledges that constant change, as a new generation brings the storied genre into the 21st century. In recent years, the Grammys’ existing best jazz instrumental album category has recognized esteemed musicians of yesteryear, awarding the likes of Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea — who all played with Miles Davis in the late 1960s and early ’70s. By contrast, less conventional jazz artists such as Kamasi Washington and Makaya McCraven, and bands such as Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming (both led by acclaimed British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings), have remained absent from the category’s nominees. Robert Glasper, the genre-hopping musician who has played with artists…

Regional Mexican music — an umbrella term given to the broad range of subgenres with folk roots that include banda, mariachi, norteño and corridos — has long been absent from the main categories of the Latin Grammy Awards. Though regional Mexican has its own field with five categories, a living regional Mexican artist hasn’t taken home the trophy for album, record or song of the year in the 23-year history of the Latin Grammys. (Juan Gabriel won posthumously in 2016 for Los Dúo, Vol. 2.) The absence reflects an unspoken stigma: Regional Mexican is considered unsophisticated music for the masses and, therefore, unworthy of a win in the Big Four categories. Only one act associated with the genre — Monterrey, Mexico, DJ collective 3BallMTY — has won a Big…

PESO PLUMA ARRIVES slightly early to his own birthday party. He’s dressed in Dior from head to toe, but still looks casual in a long-sleeve button-down overshirt stamped with the designer’s oblique logo, dark jeans and black sneakers with white shoelaces. The famously punctual birthday boy, who’s turning 24 today (June 15), tours the venue — a gorgeous hidden garden just south of Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, that’s overflowing with trees and sparkly chandeliers — to ensure his vision for the party has been executed. Amid the greenery is a makeshift club with a stage, a dancefloor surrounded by tables and couches, and a huge light-up bar that’s impossible to miss. Pretty much what one would expect a 20-something’s birthday party vibe to be like. But his childhood dreams…

9 Aespa My World: The 3rd Mini Album The set sold 39,000 copies in the United States in the week ending July 6, according to Luminate (the week’s top-selling album), largely driven by more than 16 collectible CD packages, as is typical with K-pop releases. 86 Phish Farmhouse Phish’s 2000 studio album returns to the chart following a new vinyl pressing, which sold 11,000 copies (No. 1 on Vinyl Albums), the act’s best sales week on vinyl ever. 154 The Rolling Stones Hot Rocks 1964-1971 The Stones’ late drummer, Charlie Watts, who died in 2021, makes his first solo appearance on a chart since 1996 as Anthology debuts at No. 13 on Traditional Jazz Albums, No. 18 on Jazz Albums and No. 99 on Top Current Album Sales.…

FIRST CHART APPEARANCE Jay-Z made his Billboard chart debut on March 16, 1996, with the double-sided single “Ain’t No Ni**a” (featuring Foxy Brown)/“Dead Presidents.” It entered multiple charts including Hot Rap Songs (at No. 33) and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (at No. 75). FIRST NO. 1 ALBUM Jay-Z earned the first of his 14 No. 1s on the Billboard 200 with Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life in 1998. The album, home to hits such as “Can I Get A...” and “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” topped the list for five weeks, the longest reign of his career. THE BILLBOARD 200’S SOLE SOLO CHAMP When The Blueprint 3 debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (Sept. 26, 2009), it gave Jay-Z his 11th chart-topper, breaking his tie with Elvis Presley…

THERE IS A MYTH that at the SACEM restaurant, there are people serving food with white gloves and an orchestra playing,” the organization’s CEO, Cécile Rap-Veber, says with a hint of amusement in her voice. “It is a good story, but it is not true.” Rap-Veber, who joined SACEM in 2013 and got the top job in 2021, is referring to what she calls its “old-fashioned” reputation. SACEM, which stands for Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique, was founded in 1851 after composers Ernest Bourget, Victor Parizot and Paul Henrion refused to pay their bill at the Paris cafe Les Ambassadeurs until they got paid for the use of their compositions there. It became the first music collecting society, as well as the model for those that…

From Afrobeats crossover hits like Burna Boy’s “Ye” and Wizkid’s “Joro” in 2018 and 2019, respectively, to more recent smashes like Rema’s “Calm Down” and CKay’s “Love Nwatiti,” the myriad sounds of Africa have become increasingly dominant in the U.S. and U.K. mainstream markets. After the broad best global music performance category flattened the diversity of non-Western musical stylings, the Recording Academy’s new best African music performance category aims to respond to the explosive growth of the continent’s music. In 2021, the Grammys awarded the inaugural best global music performance trophy to Arooj Aftab’s “Mohabbat” — a shock to those betting on Wizkid & Tems’ “Essence,” by far the most commercially successful song in the category. The following year, “Bayethe,” a collaboration among South African artists Wouter Kellerman, Zakes…

ELENA ROSE As fans wait for Elena Rose to drop her long-awaited debut album, the Venezuelan singer-songwriter has kept busy with a string of singles recorded under her own name, plus a plethora of hits in the pop and urban realms. As one of the first women to actively collaborate with reggaetón stars, Elena Rose has opened the door for a new generation of women songwriters — making her a prime pick for the first class of best songwriter of the year nominees. The prolific collaborator has co-written massive hits like Karol G and Becky G’s “MAMIII,” Bad Bunny’s “Party” and, this year, TINI and Maria Becerra’s “Miénteme.” EDÉN MUÑOZ The former frontman of norteño group Calibre 50 has emerged as a successful solo artist and a sought-after songwriter…