Innholdsfortegnelse for June 22, 2024 i Billboard Magazine

SABRINA CARPENTER’S ascent hits new heights as the pop singer-songwriter-actress boasts the two biggest songs in the world: “Espresso” rises to No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200, becoming her first leader on the chart, and new single “Please Please Please” debuts at No. 2. “Espresso” percolates to the chart’s hottest spot with 109.3 million streams (up 17%) and 12,000 downloads sold (up 27%) worldwide June 7-13, according to Luminate. Concurrently, the Quakertown, Pa.-born artist’s “Please Please Please” becomes her second top 10, debuting with 104.6 million streams and 10,000 sold globally. The latter song arrived June 7, alongside its official video starring Carpenter’s rumored boyfriend, Barry Keoghan, whose turn in the 2022 film The Banshees of Inisherin earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. She…

HOZIER “Too Sweet” becomes Hozier’s first No. 1 on the all-format Radio Songs chart, with 70.5 million in audience, up 7%, June 7-13, according to Luminate. He previously peaked at No. 3 with “Take Me to Church” in 2015. His latest single also earns him his initial Mainstream Top 40 leader.…

Apocalyptica (above) earns its first No. 1 on the Classical Crossover Albums chart with Plays Metallica, Vol. 2. The set is the long-awaited follow-up to the Finnish trio’s 1996 debut, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos. On the new album, Apocalyptica performs cello-driven covers of Metallica songs such as “Ride the Lightning,” “St. Anger,” “The Unforgiven II” and “One,” the lattermost featuring Metallica members James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo. The set is Apocalyptica’s 10th studio album and first since 2020’s Cell-0, which reached No. 2 on Classical Crossover Albums. While mostly known for instrumentals, Apocalyptica enjoyed U.S. rock radio success in the late 2000s and early 2010s through collaborations with vocalists including Adam Gontier and Corey Taylor. In 2008, “I’m Not Jesus” (featuring Taylor) hit No. 6 on Mainstream Rock…

LAST JULY, more than 70 country songwriters and producers filed into Sony Music Publishing’s Nashville office to hear a presentation from Beatstars, a popular website that allows artists to buy or lease full instrumentals for their own use. In attendance was Seth Mosley, whose recent co-writes include songs recorded by Tim McGraw and Gabby Barrett. Mosley says he was compelled by the company’s pitch and started regularly posting beats on the platform in December. It’s an unusual way of working in country music, but Mosley and others are hoping it can provide them with a new income stream — and another source of exposure. Beatstars was initially popularized by artists making hip-hop, R&B and pop; genres where each track on an album might be overseen by someone different and…

FROM Biel, Switzerland AGE 24 LABEL UMG Germany/Switzerland FOUNDATION Nemo’s career started from a place of sheer curiosity. At age 9, the singer found a flyer in their hometown advertising open auditions for a youth opera and joined. After one performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, they came to a stunning realization: “I love being on a stage.” Nemo went on to perform in a number of operas and even landed a role in a musical in Zurich, all of which helped hone their vocal skills and educate them on writing lyrics. In 2015, they self-released Clownfisch, an EP of songs written in Swiss German. But soon after its release, Nemo realized that writing and performing songs in their native dialect could only get them so far. “Swiss German…

Big Brother was supposed to take over in 1984 — not a 5’2”, 26-year-old musical polymath from Minnesota. But with the June 25, 1984, release of Purple Rain, Prince took his throne as a global pop star. The album “was like a magic bullet,” Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin tells Billboard ahead of Celebration 2024, a five-day Minneapolis party with performances from The Revolution, Morris Day and New Power Generation. “He knew there was lightning in a bottle.” Purple Rain, which will turn 40 in June, poured onto Billboard’s pages as soon as it came out. ‘WET’ BEHIND THE EARS When Prince released his debut album, For You, the April 29, 1978, Billboard hailed it as “a one-man gangbuster” from an “18-year-old musical phenomenon who goes only by the name…

Taylor Swift’s signature number, 13, now matches her career total of No. 1s on the Adult Top 40 chart as she claims her latest leader on the airplay list with “Fortnight” (featuring Post Malone). She boasts the most No. 1s among soloists; overall, only Maroon 5 has more, with 15. Post adds his second chart-topper after “Circles” reigned for four weeks in 2020. “Fortnight” blasted onto the Adult Top 40 chart dated May 4 at No. 9. The launch tied for the highest in the ranking’s history — matching the arrival of Swift’s own “Shake It Off” in 2014. The lead single from Swift’s album The Tortured Poets Department debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May, leading for two weeks. It became her 12th leader…

Cyndi Lauper spends a second week in the top 10 of the Soundtracks chart with the companion album to her new documentary, Let the Canary Sing, which premiered June 4 on Paramount+. The set earned 5,000 equivalent album units in the United States June 7-13, according to Luminate. The collection includes Lauper’s eight Billboard Hot 100 top 10s, all achieved in 1984-89, including her breakthrough classic, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” and the No. 1s “Time After Time” and “True Colors.” It also features such deep cuts as 1993’s acclaimed “Sally’s Pigeons,” which she wrote with Mary Chapin Carpenter. Lauper is set to kick off her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour in Montreal on Oct. 18. “I’d like to say ‘thank you’ and come up with…

WHEN NXWORRIES, the duo of Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge, released its second album, Why Lawd?, on June 7, it was made available on vinyl, CD and cassette. But fans had to wait a week to stream it. The goal was “to re-create the nostalgic feeling of truly appreciating the experience of a physical product that we all grew up with in the pre-streaming era,” says Anna Savage, who manages .Paak. Jason McGuire, GM of NxWorries’ label, Stone’s Throw, adds, “We wanted to do something special for their fans by giving them an opportunity to experience the record a little earlier.” Combined with a pop-up event in Los Angeles, he says the aim is to get “more people talking about the record leading up to the streaming date.” Most albums…

DID YOU COME IN when I was dressed like a sperm?” Despite her wry tone, Annie Clark — the artist better known as St. Vincent — isn’t joking. Not quite an hour earlier, Clark was posing for her Billboard photo shoot in a hooded, ruffled cream mini-dress in front of a billowing blush-pink backdrop meant to evoke a different bit of human anatomy. (Let’s just say the setup was a spiritual descendant of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work.) As St. Vincent, Clark conjures an enigmatic, opaque aura. But today, she’s in a frank, funny and freewheeling mood. She jests about the suggestive pictures of female models plastered on the walls around us (“Boner patrol, look out!”) and swerves easily from topics highbrow (abstract Russian painter Kazimir Malevich) to low (an off-and-on…

El Fantasma scores his first leader on the Latin Airplay chart with “Sabor a Michelada.” With the cumbia- and banda-blended song, the singer-songwriter rules after logging 10 previous top 10s on the overall radio ranking. The single rises 14-1 with 8.5 million audience impressions, up 71%, in the United States June 7-13, according to Luminate. WOJO-FM Chicago had the most audience impressions for the song (1.3 million) among chart reporters in the tracking week. “Sabor a Michelada” also gives El Fantasma his seventh No. 1 on Regional Mexican Airplay — and his second this year — as the song climbs 6-1 with Greatest Gainer honors (awarded weekly to the track with the largest surge in audience). The achievements land during the Mexican artist’s Se Activó la Chavalada tour, which…

GIVEN THE GLACIAL pace at which federal antitrust litigation moves, the U.S. Department of Justice’s historic lawsuit against Live Nation and its wholly owned subsidiary Ticketmaster is expected to take years to wind its way through the legal system whether it’s fully adjudicated or the live-event Goliath agrees to make changes to its business, which the government often terms “behavioral remedies.” And though it’s clearly too early to predict how the case will play out, legal expert and antitrust attorney Lawrence J. White from New York University’s Stern School of Business says the potential winners and losers have already been largely predetermined based on hints found in the 128-page complaint that the DOJ filed May 23 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. “The companies…

FOR A BRIEF SHINING moment in the 1960s, Black trans soul singer Jackie Shane seemed to be turning into a star. That is, until she inexplicably vanished. “This is a woman who disappeared off the face of the earth for 45 years and nobody knew if she was alive or dead,” says Michael Mabbott, co-director of the forthcoming documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. “As a filmmaker, that’s an intriguing thing in itself.” The simultaneously sad and triumphant tale of a groundbreaker before her time is the crux of the film. Co-directed by Mabbott along with Lucah Rosenberg-Lee and co-produced by Elliot Page, it brushes away the dust and traces Shane’s stunning rise as a trans singer during an inhospitable period. The result of her quest is…

DAVID FURNISH felt a rush of endorphins wash over him. It was a warm June evening in 2023, and the surging crowd of over 120,000 had gathered to witness the first-ever Glastonbury Festival set — and, at least for the time being, the last public concert in the United Kingdom — by Elton John. That crush of concertgoers was screaming for Furnish’s star client — who also happens to be his husband. “Even the concession stands in the back closed down so that they could watch the show,” Furnish recalls, still flabbergasted nearly a year later. “The crowd just filled in around the stands and along the entire north barrier. It was a sea of joy.” The performance would break records for the annual festival: Along with that in-person…

FLY ME TO THE MOON,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” “Space Oddity” — the list reads like the top titles in a major music company’s catalog. But it’s actually a list of just a few of the copyrights in the catalog of the quiet independent publishing giant TRO Essex Music Group. Founded in 1949 by Howie Richmond, a former press agent for the day’s biggest stars like Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa who went on to become a pioneering music publisher (and co-founder of the Songwriters Hall of Fame), today’s TRO Essex started under the name Cromwell Inc. and quickly grew into a collection of 22 publishing companies under The Richmond Organization (TRO) umbrella. It became a titan of indie…