Innholdsfortegnelse for November 18, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

THE BEATLES MAKE a fab return to the Billboard Hot 100 as “Now and Then” debuts at No. 7. The song starts as their 35th top 10 — extending their record for the most among groups — and marks their first trip to the region since 1996. “Now and Then” is billed as the final Beatles song, first recorded as a demo in 1977 by John Lennon and initially intended for the band’s three-edition Anthology series in the mid-1990s. It was completed by surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, among others, after new technology helped extract Lennon’s vocals from the original demo. Portions of guitar recorded by George Harrison during the initial attempt to finish the track in the ’90s were also incorporated. The single enters the Hot…

JUNG KOOK’S “Standing Next to You” soars in at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200. He achieves his third solo leader on the chart — and is the only BTS member to reach the top as a solo act — following “3D” (with Jack Harlow) for one week in October and “Seven” (featuring Latto) for seven weeks beginning in July. “Standing Next to You” starts with 81.6 million streams and 121,000 sold worldwide Nov. 3-9, according to Luminate, following its Nov. 3 release. In addition to its original version, seven mixes of the song arrived Nov. 6: its Future Funk, Holiday, Latin Trap, PBR&B and Slow Jam remixes, as well as its band version and instrumental version. BTS members now total 10 Global 200 top 10s with individual…

Originally released on Valentine’s Day, Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want To Turn Into You receives more flowers as it debuts at No. 5 on Vinyl Albums, No. 9 on Top Album Sales and No. 87 on the Billboard 200 following the Nov. 3 arrival of multiple physical versions (11,000 units, up 2,421%, with 10,000 in vinyl sales). The set by the singer-songwriter, who first hit the charts in 2008 in the band Chairlift, spun off the Alternative Airplay hit “Welcome to My Island” in May. On Nov. 10, it was nominated for a Grammy for best engineered album, non-classical. GO TO BILLBOARD.COM FOR COMPLETE CHART DATA…

SONY MUSIC PUBLISHINGruled the Top Radio Airplay, Hot 100 Songs and Country Airplay publisher rankings for its third consecutive quarter of 2023, and Warner Chappell Music surged to No. 2 on the Hot 100 Songs chart — the first time it has held the position since the Hot 100 ranking began in 2019. All of the big three publishers benefited from shares in the Afrobeats radio hit “Calm Down” by Rema and Selena Gomez. Sony also benefited from stakes in “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen and the Taylor Swift smash “Cruel Summer,” which hit Nos. 5 and 3 on Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 Songs, respectively, the latter due to its placement as the opening song of Swift’s The Eras Tour. Tracy Chapman finished the quarter as the…

TATE McRAE WAS RECENTLY scrolling TikTok when an old interview she did at 16 came across the screen. “I was the most awkward person ever, and I was like, ‘There’s no chance that this is the same person,’ ” she says with a grimace. “You evolve so much, and not only am I seeing it, but I’m documenting it in my music in real time.” Now 20 and living in Los Angeles, the native of Calgary, Alberta (which she calls “the Texas of Canada”), has spent much of her life thus far on screens — both her own, while navigating TikTok like a promotional pro, and others, whether on network TV or YouTube. As a teen, McRae placed third on the 2016 season of So You Think You Can…

BILLBOARD’S SEASONAL Top Holiday Albums chart jingled back to our weekly menu with the Nov. 4 chart and will continue to publish weekly until early January 2024. The return of the chart kicked off with a bang as Cher’s first holiday album, Christmas, debuted at No. 1 on the Nov. 4 list. The 13-song set includes familiar favorites, newly composed tunes and guests Michael Bublé, Cyndi Lauper, Darlene Love, Tyga and Stevie Wonder. Following the set’s Nov. 17 vinyl release, the album could also garner gains with some high-profile NBC and Peacock appearances by Cher. On Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23), she will perform during the Macy’s parade TV special and appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. On Nov. 29, she’ll perform on Christmas in Rockefeller Center. On…

SUHEL NAFARunderstands the impact that music can have around the world. Born in Lod — a city about 25 miles from Jerusalem — to Palestinian parents, Nafar learned English by listening to Dead Prez, 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. The influence of these artists was so strong that in the late 1990s, he — along with his brother Tamer Nafar and their friend Mahmoud Jreri — started the first Palestinian hip-hop group, DAM. “Listening to hip-hop and seeing music videos of artists being chased by police and feeling their oppression and their anger without knowing what they were talking about because I didn’t speak English — I felt they were talking about me,” Nafar tells Billboard over Zoom from Lod in late October. He spent 20 years touring the…

Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) holds atop the Billboard 200 for a second week following its blockbuster debut on the Nov. 11 chart. In the week ending Nov. 9, the set earned 245,000 equivalent album units (down 85%) in the United States, according to Luminate. The rerecorded album debuted at No. 1 with 1.7 million units — marking the largest week for any album in nearly a decade, since Adele’s 25 launched with 3.5 million units earned in the week ending Nov. 25, 2015. On the final day of the chart’s tracking week, Swift introduced a new deluxe digital download edition of the album, exclusively available at her official webstore for less than 10 hours. The new version includes one bonus track, “Slut! (Acoustic Version) (Taylor’s Version).” 1989 (Taylor’s…

Megan Thee Stallion, at No. 40 on the Artist 100, captures the highest debut on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart with “Cobra” at No. 10. The single registered 12 million official U.S. streams Nov. 3-9, powering a No. 7 start on R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs, while its 6,000 downloads sold fuel a No. 1 entrance on R&B/ Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales. Notably, “Cobra” is the rapper’s first release on her independent label, Hot Girl Productions, following three years of legal battles with her previous label, 1501 Certified Entertainment.…

A&R HAS historically been one of music’s most glamorous roles, but today, it’s common to hear that it’s “less sexy,” as one manager put it — a job much closer to a Wall Street number-cruncher. Now, as labels struggle to break new stars, some are thinking about bringing sexy back. In pre-streaming days, A&R executives were tasked with using their ears and instincts to discover promising artists and help them make commercially successful music. But as digital platforms flooded the industry with data, they were supplanted by analytics experts who based creative decisions on terabytes of information from streaming services and social media sites. “Over the past five years, everything has been centered around the data,” says Mike Weiss, head of A&R for distribution company UnitedMasters. The industry prioritizes…

During the pandemic, singer-songwriter Laufey (pronounced LAY’-vay), 24, spent her free time at the Berklee College of Music taking virtual meetings with industry executives. With only two self-released singles out, the modern jazz artist was already fielding emails from managers, labels and publishers — and was eager to better understand the music business. “I had a second education talking to people,” she says. “I would say, ‘I’m not signing anything, but tell me everything you know about the music industry.’ ” Since then, she has built a team to help her second album, Bewitched, move to No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz charts, spurred by its bossa nova-inspired lead single, “From the Start.” The artist born Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir understood life as a musician from an early age: Her maternal…