Innholdsfortegnelse for August 26, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

OLIVER ANTHONY MUSIC’S breakout viral hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” arrives at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Among his other achievements, the singer-songwriter is the first artist to launch atop the list without any prior chart history. Officially released Aug. 11, the song drew 17.5 million official streams and sold 147,000 downloads in the United States in the week ending Aug. 17, according to Luminate. It also tallied 553,000 radio airplay audience impressions, the bulk on country stations. The single debuts at Nos. 1 and 4, respectively, on the all-genre Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs charts, as well as atop Hot Country Songs. The track by the Farmville, Va.-based artist born Christopher Anthony Lunsford (whose stage name honors his grandfather) first drew buzz online, including…

8 OLIVIA RODRIGO WEEKS ON CHART 118 The singer-songwriter’s “Bad Idea Right?” debuts at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 19.7 million streams, 5.3 million in airplay audience and 4,000 sold, according to Luminate. The second single from her sophomore album, Guts, due Sept. 8, also launches at No. 1 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. —GARY TRUST NO. 33 Trippie Redd Stamps Reentry Trippie Redd returns to the Artist 100 at No. 33 thanks to his A Love Letter to You 5 mixtape. The set, which he has stated is the last installment of the Love Letter series, opens with 37,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 17. It starts at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on…

Grammy Award-winning songwriting and production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis first met Clarence Avant in 1982, when they wrote a song for his Tabu Records act The S.O.S. Band. They remember the crucial role Avant played in their success. JAM We wrote “High Hopes” for The S.O.S. Band. But we didn’t produce it. When we met Clarence, we told him that. And he was like, “If you were to produce it, what would it sound like?” We played him a demo of the song and he loved it. LEWIS We told him that we would have put the chili sauce on it. He cracked up; he loved that comment. JAM I didn’t know a lot about Clarence, but my first impression is of him making me laugh: “Who…

This fall, Irish singer-songwriter Hozier is hitting the road for a full U.S. tour — his first outing post-pandemic. Following a handful of warmup dates at smaller venues stateside and overseas, his Unreal Unearth tour (in support of his long-awaited third album, of the same name, released Aug. 18) will bring him and his new backing band to iconic venues from coast to coast for some of his biggest shows to date. As he sees it, “I’m just excited to share the work live with a fan base that has been with me now for 10 years.” Here’s what else he’s looking forward to on this upcoming trek. EXPANDING HIS SHOW (AND SETLIST) “We’ve been bringing this killer nine-piece band to these tiny rooms. It’s a band that really…

The indie-rock frontman on celebrating two key anniversaries with one spectacular outing Late last year, Ben Gibbard was staring down a pair of significant milestones: Death Cab for Cutie’s breakthrough album, Transatlanticism, would be turning 20 in 2023, as would Give Up, the lone full-length that Gibbard and electronic artist Jimmy Tamborello released as The Postal Service. Death Cab’s management suggested separate 20th-anniversary tours, but Gibbard envisioned a two-for-one nostalgia jamboree. “I was like, ‘People are going to lose their minds if this is one tour,’ ” he recalls. “And I think the initial response and ticket counts were certainly a vindication of my approach.” Indeed, the Give Up/Transatlanticism joint tour will bring both indie touchstones to arena and theater crowds beginning Sept. 5, with stops at New York’s…

AMBROSIA HEALY and Dennis Dennehy’s first meeting wasn’t quite storybook perfect. It was a stormy day backstage at the Tibetan Freedom Concert at Washington, D.C.’s Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in June 1998. Healy and Dennehy were already aware of each other — but they weren’t fans. Dennehy, then handling publicity at Geffen Records, had a roster that included Britpop band Embrace, and the band’s legendary manager, Jazz Summers, had recently suggested bringing Healy, a talented indie publicist he was working with, into the fold to take the lead for the act’s press. To put it mildly, Dennehy wasn’t thrilled. When an indie is brought in to supplement a label representative’s work, he says, it implies, “You’re not doing your job” — and anyway, he still insists he’d “gotten…

IN HIS WASHINGTON, D.C., office, Michael Huppe rolls his chair past gold records, an Elvis Costello poster and an electric guitar to a back shelf to locate a key and unlock a drawer. “Let me see if I still have it here,” the SoundExchange president/CEO says before pulling out a black vest with capital yellow letters that read “RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit” and draping it over his coat. Prior to collecting performance royalties from digital radio stations, as well as broadcast companies such as SiriusXM and distributing them to songwriters and other copyright owners through SoundExchange, Huppe helped hunt down piracy rings around the country for the RIAA to ensure artists weren’t losing out on revenue. “I have gone on raids — flea markets, cassette operations, some CD operations,” he…

When Tony Bennett died July 21 in his hometown of New York at the age of 96, the world lost one of the last great interpreters of the American Songbook. Billboard has 32 years on Tony — although we can only wish we had such unflagging class and charisma — and we have to admit that we greeted the crooner with a “Cold, Cold Heart” when he debuted in 1951. But we quickly came to appreciate the way he flew us to the moon. ‘CRY’-ING SHAME When 24-year-old Anthony Dominick Benedetto rebranded himself as Tony Bennett and debuted on Columbia Records, Billboard didn’t exactly bet on the “Rags to Riches” singer. The May 12, 1951, issue called “I Won’t Cry Anymore” a “competent etching” and dismissed “Because of You”…

AFTER BEYONCÉ CROWNED BILLBOARD’S TOP TOURS chart in May, she slid to No. 2 in June. But in the July recap, she’s not only back at No. 1 but bigger than ever before, garnering record-breaking revenue: According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, her Renaissance world tour earned $127.6 million over 11 shows from July 8 through July 30, claiming the largest one-month sum for any artist since the Boxscore archives began in the mid-1980s. Throughout May and June, Beyoncé conquered Europe with a $150 million run, then leveled up when she kicked off the tour’s North American run in Toronto on July 8. Since returning from across the pond, her per-show grosses are up 60%. Her doubleheader at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium alone brought in $33.1 million and…

A&M signed The Police in 1979, and the band’s frontman, Sting, reflects on his rewarding decadeslong professional and personal relationship with A&M co-founder Jerry Moss. I first met Jerry Moss in 1979. I just got to California with The Police. We booked into the Sunset Marquis and obviously sat at the swimming pool. And then in walked Jerry Moss and [A&M executive] Gil Friesen; two very tall, handsome, distinguished-looking Californian businessmen. Jerry really looked the part, I have to say: such a striking, handsome guy. Jerry very quickly became a family friend rather than a record executive. If I’m asked why I think they were so successful as a record company, I would say Jerry was not, to my knowledge, a cutthroat businessman. He was a friend. He was…

HE HAD THE CAR radio on,” Dolly Parton recalls of the day she met Carl Dean, her husband of 57 years. “I don’t remember what it was playing, but it was loud and it was rock’n’roll.” His love of the genre is, in many ways, what led Parton to record a rock album of her own: Rockstar. “I dedicated it to him because he has always loved rock’n’roll,” she says. “The harder [and] louder, the better.” Spurred by her 2022 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — an honor the country legend felt she needed to “earn,” initially asking to be removed from the ballot — the 30-track Rockstar finds Parton, 77, taking on rock’s classic canon and often collaborating with the songs’ original artists. Paul…

UNDER ITS PRESIDENT/CEO, Michael Huppe, SoundExchange has consistently supported the American Music Fairness Act — which would, for the first time ever, impel terrestrial radio companies to pay performers and copyright holders when airing their songs. Since U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., introduced the bill in June 2021, it has slowly progressed through Congress. In December 2022, the House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation. “For decades, broadcast corporations have made hundreds of billions of dollars while denying creators royalties for music played on AM/FM radio stations,” Huppe said in a statement at the time. “That’s fundamentally wrong.” In February, Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; Thom Tillis R-N.C.; and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reintroduced the bill into the U.S. Senate. On its website, SoundExchange summarized…

Although Carlos Vives is best known for popularizing Colombian music worldwide, his activities include multiple ventures in his homeland that collectively employ some 250 people. The singer and his wife, Claudia Elena Vázquez, call their overall enterprise Universo Vives. “We have interplanetary meetings,” jokes Vázquez, who has worked alongside her husband since 2012 and is CEO of the entity. While Vázquez, a former chemical engineer and entrepreneur, readily admits she “didn’t know much about the music business” before, she has come to effectively oversee this particular universe. The ventures include: GAIRA MÚSICA LOCAL Although Vives founded his own record label (named after an area near his hometown of Santa Marta) over 30 years ago, he relaunched it in 2019 with local artists like Gusi and Estereobeats. Gaira, distributed by…

THE ORDERS are detailed and easily located on X, the app formerly known as Twitter: “We need to tackle Amazon, itunes and [the French music service] quboz expeditiously,” reads one. For each platform, instructions describe a strict purchase protocol. “One copy per, version with new card/payment method/new email, new IP address/new device.” Anyone hoping to execute this properly must plan ahead. “You will need to have multiple new emails, prepaid debit cards like the cashapp card... egift cards you can buy at different wifi locations, cafes, gym, friends, and neighbors homes.” Rotating among multiple burner emails, cards and internet protocol addresses sounds like the stuff of an elaborate digital scam. In fact, it’s a plan to maximize sales of a recent K-pop single (which was not identified in the…

THE ONGOING DUAL Hollywood strikes, by the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, have brought the movie and TV businesses to a grinding halt as the historic work stoppage appears headed into the fall — and perhaps beyond. The impact has already been felt on the red carpet, as actors have had to skip new interviews or promotional appearances for some of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, as well as their upcoming projects. When Troye Sivan spoke with Billboard recently, the singer was happy to talk about his summer single, “Rush,” but was unable to discuss his work on the HBO drama The Idol, which had wrapped its run weeks earlier. “I am in total support of the strike and am holding strong with everyone in…

London Nightlife Coming out of the pandemic, Balvin and his team looked around at a world mired in negativity. “The vibe wasn’t right for inspiration,” Balvin says. “We decided, from within ourselves, to focus on giving happiness to our listeners and change the vibe from negative to positive.” A key element was London’s vibrant club scene, which became a living, breathing experiment to discover and test beats. Balvin and his team hit two or three clubs every weekend to take inspiration from dancefloors and observe what fans were connecting with. And, on occasion, he would even play demos. “We wanted to see fan reaction,” he says, “and it was amazing.” Usher Though Balvin has known the veteran hit-maker for years, their first collaboration was the result of a chance…

Tree Paine @ursleightofhand god bless whatever voo doo magic tree paine had to do i will never doubt you again queen @mirrorballboobstree paine icontree paine legendtree paine mothertree paine girlbosstree paine slaytree paine sexytree paine for president 2024 @fuckinglegacies LEGEND. A FUCKIN LEGEND. LITERAL PREMIUM PR. CAN WE MAKE APRIL 7TH TREE PAINE APPRECIATION DAY?????!!! @mystique_chaos THE DEVIL WORKS HARD BUT TREE PAINE WORKS HARDER!!!!! YAS QUEEN THANK U FOR UR SERVICE @my_old_scarf tree paine i hope both sides of your pillow are always cold! god bless! @kpretzz I aspire to be Tree Paine Queen of PR @Kaileesee This is a Tree Paine appreciation post. What a queen. @sunsets_swift I SPY TREE PAINE THE LEGEND @boygeniuslor tree paine my masked up queen @itisbecky9 i wish tree paine was my…

Several highlights mark Carlos Vives’ yearlong celebration of his three-decade musical career. In April, the Colombian superstar released Escalona Nunca Se Había Grabado Así, an album that unites the members of his original band — La Provincia — and his longtime accordionist, Egidio Cuadrado, to revisit some of legendary vallenato artist Rafael Escalona’s biggest hits. In May, Vives launched El Tour de Los 30 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his breakout album, Clásicos de la Provincia. The outing appropriately kicked off at Colombia’s Vallenato Festival in Valledupar (the Colombian city known as the birthplace of the music that defines Vives’ style), then went through South America. A nine-city U.S. run began Aug. 19 in New York and ends Nov. 5 in Los Angeles. “He’s undeniably one of the…