Fans of The 1975 have a new reason to see Taylor Swift as a musical anti-hero. In a recent interview, frontman Matty Healy shared that his synth-pop band was almost featured on a version of the “All Too Well” singer’s blockbuster new album Midnights, but it never came to be.
Speaking with DTS Sound Station on KROQ-FM, Healy first revealed that Swift had heard some of The 1975’s new record, Being Funny In a Foreign Language, before it came out in October. Jack Antonoff served as producer on both Healy’s new record and Swift’s Midnights, which came out a few weeks after.
When asked if the Grammy-winning pop star had “returned the favor” by allowing Healy and his bandmates — Adam Hann, Ross MacDonald and George Daniel — to listen to an early cut of Midnights, the “Somebody Else” singer said that she’d actually gone one step further. “Yeah,” he said in a snippet of the interview, posted Monday (Nov. 28) to DTS’ Instagram story. “We actually worked a bit on that.”
“But then the version of it never came out,” he added, prompting some in the audience to vocalize their disappointment.
“No, no, no – that’s not how it works,” he said in response to some booing. “It was for reasons that are not to be criticized. She’s amazing.”
The revelation might come as a surprise to fans whose dreams of a Swift x 1975 collaboration were crushed prior to the release of Midnights. Healy himself had shut down rumors of the band’s involvement a couple months before the record dropped by confirming that a “leaked” tracklist — which showed his band featured on a nonexistent song called “In My Dreams” — was definitely false.
“I would love that! But unfortunately FAKE NEWS,” he wrote at the time, retweeting the faux list of song titles.
Watch Matty Healy talk about the Taylor Swift collab that never was below:
what i’m hearing is that taylor swift ft the 1975 exists but i’ll never get to hear it pic.twitter.com/t9n92Sy6BB
Recently divorced from Morgan Evans, she had had possession of her new home — purchased from fellow country star Kacey Musgraves — for less than a week, and she was already planning to host a holiday soirée with friends.
Single people naturally rely on their compadres in a big way, and Ballerini is set up to do that, not only in her personal life, but also in her latest career move. “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too),” which Black River released to country radio via PlayMPE on Nov. 15, is a “besties” single, a track focused on two women with a shared, rambunctious history. If the title generates thoughts of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon driving off the cliff in Thelma & Louise or the song’s murder reference leads to thoughts of the Dixie Chicks single “Goodbye Earl,” then it’s working as intended.
“We just started talking about Thelma & Louise, and [“Earl” characters] Marianne and Wanda, and these really beautiful best-friend stories that had a tinge of murder attached,” Ballerini remembers. “Me and my girlfriends will all listen to Crime Junkie and text each other every Monday after we listen to the podcast. And if we have a girls’ night, we’re going to watch some kind of true-crime documentary.”
Ballerini had that Thelma & Louise conversation with two male friends — songwriters Julian Bunetta (“Craving You,” “Look What God Gave Her”) and Shane McAnally (“Body Like a Back Road,” “One Night Standards”), who co-produced her current Subject to Change — during the final stages of the album’s production this summer. They felt they had enough material to make a solid album, but they mapped out one last “Hail Mary” writing day on the chance that they could craft a song that would beat what they had already cut. That morning, they penned “I Can’t Help Myself” with Josh Osborne (“I Was on a Boat That Day,” “Merry Go ’Round”); after he left, they had one more hour to work, and they reviewed the topics that might be absent from Subject to Change.
“There was a big, missing puzzle piece, and that was a song that honors my friendships,” she recalls. “Friends was a huge theme on my last record — the two lyrics that popped up the most on that Kelsea record were ‘home’ and ‘friends.’ And so it was like I was doing a disservice to a pillar in my life to not have a song that carried that through.”
Bunetta found a groove with a celebratory attitude, driving home a simple, fast-paced chord progression that provided a foundation for the story. He kept at that rhythm, bolstered by a distinct chop, for much of the write. “I got this funny little guitalele that is my fun writing guitar that songs just seem to pour out of,” he says. “It’s just a fun little nylon-string, so it’s easy on the hands.”
They instinctively locked in on a melody that reflected the attitude. The lines in the opening verse start primarily with an ascendant passage, ending in a flood of syllables. The chorus flips that pattern a bit, descending in its opening moments and making longer notes more prominent. That cheery setting gave them plenty of leeway to go dark with the plot.
“The juxtaposition of lyric and music, if you can get them right [as] opposing forces, it always makes it a bit more intriguing and multilayered than sad music/sad lyric,” notes Bunetta.
The first line — “I’ve known you since Brad and Angelina” — used a celebrity couple rather than a calendar year to provide a sense of the friendship’s longevity. And it also tied the lyric further to Thelma & Louise because that movie introduced the world to a shirtless Brad Pitt. The rest of the lyric embraced holding secrets and hiding evidence as the two women look after each other’s reputations in a mutually beneficial manner: “Dirt on you is dirt on me,” Ballerini sings at the start of the chorus.
The song continues to traverse an outlaw path, with an imaginary bank robbery and a “getaway Mercedes” — shades of Bonnie and Clyde — plus an additional pledge to lie on her girlfriend’s behalf should their crime spree take the ultimate twist: “Hypothetically, if you ever kill your husband …”
They introduced subtle variation to the structure of “Go Down” by playing with the final line of the choruses, singing “If you go down, I’m goin’ down too” once at the end of the first chorus, twice to wrap the second and three times when they reached the fourth (and final) chorus.
Ballerini sang over Bunetta’s guitalele for the demo, though all three writers agreed that the lyrics might be misordered. In fact, when they met up again the next day to record “Go Down” at Starstruck Studios on Music Row, they swapped two of the verses and delayed a lyrical change in the chorus — “Our bodies are buried, and they’re in the same ditch” — until the final chorus, instead of the second; it made more sense for that reference to come after the “kill your husband” thought.
Most of the instruments were acoustic — only one electric baritone guitar is present among two acoustics, a mandolin and a Dobro. Drummer Evan Hutchings plays the snare with brushes instead of sticks, and bassist Craig Young borrowed Bunetta’s Kala U-bass, which enhanced that acoustic motif.
“It sounds kind of like an upright bass, but it’s still got like some give in the in the notes, meaning that they bend a lot because of the way that those rubber strings are, so it just fit the texture perfectly,” Bunetta says. “I happened to bring it out and kept it in my car because I just had a feeling that we’d use it.”
They brought in Jenee Fleenor later to overdub a fiddle part, and she filled in half of the original solo section, creating a trade-off between fiddle and mandolin. “We really wanted to lean into a very ’90s country feel, and so we brought in fiddle for the song, which I think to me makes it,” says Ballerini. “That’s also why there’s a Chicks reference to it, which everyone picks up on, which was absolutely intentional. I didn’t want to make it sound like anything else on the record. I wanted it to be its own moment.”
Ballerini spent roughly two hours on the vocal. The notes weren’t particularly difficult, but she worked very specifically on providing lines that sounded like an aural wink, ensuring that the listener would not take the song’s criminal streak seriously.
“You can almost see her acting it out,” Bunetta says. “It was a very visual thing, [the way] the vocal was being shaped.”
Black River assigned “If You Go Down” a Dec. 5 add date, issuing an uptempo single to radio at a time of year when ballads are a little more prevalent. Meanwhile, the running-buddies theme mirrors the new period in her personal life when friends will play a bigger role than they have for several years.
“Sometimes you put out a single because you think that it’s the most radio-friendly, and sometimes you put out a single because it’s actually reflective of where you’re at in your life,” she says. “And then sometimes, both things can be true.”
Kanye West continued his bizarre alt-right media tour on Monday (Nov. 28) when he was joined by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos on Tim Pool’s Timcast IRL podcast. At first, West (who now goes by Ye), energetically defending himself against the media backlash spurred by his recent rash of antisemitic comments — while simultaneously doubling down by repeating hate language about Jewish control of the media and banking — but when Pool gingerly probed that line of questioning Ye quickly bailed.
“I just got to go to the heart of this antisemite claim,” West said as he dove into a monologue in which he accused former retail partners Gap and Adidas, as well as Vogue magazine, former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and his personal trainer of being part of a Jewish-led conspiracy to destroy his career. “It’s the truth,” Ye said of his antisemitic claims, pointing to his rapid fall from grace as proof that he’s been targeted and brought low by a shadowy, citing former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner for no clear reason other than that they are Jewish.
When right-wing host Pool probed that area and noted that where West sees Jewish people and “associates” them with power, Pool doesn’t think that is not relevant to the discussion. Yiannopoulos then praised West for breaking the “biggest dam,” seemingly referring to the discussion of hateful tropes about alleged Jewish control of media and banking. “We were all wondering how this dam was going to break… what is the root of this hypocrisy? Why can people talk about white people a certain way, why can’t we talk about that group a certain way?,” he asked. “The wretched and wicked and prevailing orthodoxy of cancel culture… well, it turned out that the one thing that was going to break the dam was the biggest star in the world… and now the dam is broken.”
West complained that “they tried to put me in prison,” without going into specifics, discussing his “de-banking” and claiming he’s trying to start his own bank to avoid the traditional systems. When the conversation turned more directly to allegations of Ye’s antisemitism, the rapper tightened and threatened to bail before doubling-down on his anti-Jewish statements. “I feel like it’s a setup … I’m going to walk the f–k off the show if I’m having to talk about,” Ye said. “‘You can’t say Jewish people did it,’ when every sensible person knows — that Jon Stewart knows — what happened to me, and they took it too far.” Then, less than 23 minutes into the conversation, Ye walked out.
Trump has been widely condemned, by both sides of the political aisle, for hosting Ye and white nationalist Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate last week, where, according to the disgraced rapper, he pitched the former commander-in-chief on being his vice president as West seemingly ramps up for a second long-shot White House bid.
Visibly angered by Pool’s antisemitism questions, West compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr., evoking the horrific images of the 1960s civil rights struggle as a metaphor for his feelings about the meltdown of his once-formidable fashion and music empire in the wake of his repeated slurs against the Jewish people.
“I thought I was more Malcolm X, but I found out I’m more MLK. As I’m getting hosed down every day by the press and financially, I’m just standing there,” West said. “When I found out they were trying to put me in jail, it was like a dog was biting my arm and I almost shed a tear. Almost. But I still walked in stride through it.” When Pool tried to commiserate with West by saying that “they” (which he identified as the “corporate press”) had been “extremely unfair” to Ye, Fuentes attempted to speak on the rapper’s behest before Kanye got fed up, pulled off his headphones and angrily left the set.
“Corporate press. I don’t use the word as the way, I guess, you guys use [it],” Pool said. “It is them, though, isn’t it,” Fuentes asked. “No, it’s not,” Pool replied. “What do you mean it’s not?” Ye said annoyed before leaving.
Speaking on a follow-up Timcast, Pool said he thought the walk-off was “staged” by Ye, even as he referred to Yiannopoulos as a “genius” for what he suspected was a secret plot by Milo to get revenge on Trump and ruin the twice-impeached real estate mogul’s chances for a third White House bid; Pool also noted that he finds Yiannopoulos and Fuentes’ statements on Jewish people to be “ridiculous” as he speculated that West’s aim all along was to walk off in protest to create a spectacle.
Fuentes has been called a “white supremacist” by the Anti-Defamation League and in February at the the America First conference, he was widely denounced for praising Adolf Hitler in his introduction to alt-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying, “And now they’re going on about Russia, and ‘Vladimir Putin is Hitler’ — and they say that’s not a good thing … Can we get a round of applause for Russia? Yes!”
Yiannopoulos, who has also been accompanying West lately and is reportedly his 2024 presidential campaign manager, is a well-known right-wing troll who interned for Greene earlier this year and has been blocked from most major social media platforms for his repeated comments about Islam and feminism and his embrace of antisemitic figures.
Ye (formerly Kanye West) walks out of an interview with Tim Pool when pushed on his claim that Jews control the media.
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we remember the late Irene Cara with an extended look at her lone Hot 100-topper: the era-straddling soundtrack classic “Flashdance…What a Feeling.”
Flashdance didn’t invent movie/music synergy, but it perfected the formula for the MTV generation. MTV, after all, wasn’t even two years old when Flashdance premiered in the spring of 1983.
Footloose, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing and other mega-successful music-driven movies of the 1980s all owe a debt to Flashdance, an unexpectedly huge movie with no established stars and a fairly thin – but as it turned out, very relatable – plot. The film told the story of Alex Owens, a young woman who works as a welder and dreams of becoming a ballerina, but first must overcome her fear of auditioning before a panel of judges.
Irene Cara’s propulsive “Flashdance…What a Feeling” was released in March 1983 to build anticipation for the film, which was released on April 15. The song was just right for both the movie and the moment – a time when Black pop music was reaching new commercial heights thanks to Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Prince and many more star artists.
The film debuted at No. 2 at the box-office in its opening week, and spent the next three weeks at No. 1. Cara’s single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late May, the soundtrack album topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks starting June 25 – and a second song from the soundtrack, Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” topped the Hot 100 for two weeks in September. That is what you call a movie/music grand-slam.
Cara, who died on Friday (Nov. 25) at age 63, had enjoyed a comparable success three years earlier, when she introduced the rousing title song from Fame. That smash reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 in September 1980. But she didn’t co-write that song – Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford did, winning the Oscar for best original song for their efforts. As a co-writer of “Flashdance…What a Feeling,” Cara shared in her second film smash’s Oscar glory.
Disco don Giorgio Moroder composed the melody for “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and produced Cara’s single. The instrumental backdrop has echoes of Moroder’s electronic film score work. But it’s warmer and more triumphant-sounding than Midnight Express, for which Moroder won an Oscar in 1979, or say, Donna Summer’s 1977 smash “I Feel Love,” which Moroder co-produced with his long-time creative partner, Pete Bellotte.
Cara co-wrote the lyric with Keith Forsey, Moroder’s frequent session drummer and a future star writer/producer in his own right, with No. 1 Hot 100 hits for Simple Minds and Billy Idol in the back half of the ’80s to his credit. Cara’s warm vocal conveys yearning and humanity, which offsets the occasional chilliness of the synthesized backdrop.
Jerry Bruckheimer, who co-produced Flashdance with his late partner Don Simpson, contacted Moroder in 1982 to see if he would be interested in composing the music for Flashdance. The two had previously teamed on 1980’s American Gigolo, which spawned Blondie’s “Call Me,” also a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100.
Cara had been somewhat reluctant to work with Moroder because she didn’t want to trigger comparisons to Moroder’s star client, Summer. “Giorgio approached me right after ‘Fame,’” she told me in an interview for Billboard that ran in the March 10, 1984 issue. “The only reason I didn’t go with him at the time was all the comparisons. But with ‘Flashdance […What a Feeling],’” we were thrown together by Paramount.”
Cara and Forsey were shown the last scene of the film, in which Alex auditions at the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory, so they could get a sense of what the lyrics should be. They both felt that the dancer’s ambition to succeed would work as a metaphor for anyone hoping to achieve any dream.
“Flashdance…What a Feeling” wasn’t the first or last motivational anthem to reach No. 1, but it’s one of the best. The lyric “Take your passion and make it happen” is excellent career and life advice. Also, the line “in a world made of steel, made of stone” is an apt nod to the day job of Jennifer Beals’ welder character.
Moroder felt that the oft-repeated lyric “what a feeling” was right for the story but tried to persuade Cara and Forsey to incorporate the title of the film into the lyrics. The word “flashdance” never appears in the song – it’s a tough word to rhyme – but the words “flash” and “dance” do appear separately. It was only after the song was completed with the intended title “What a Feeling” that the word “Flashdance…” was tacked onto the title, for its promotional value.
The song wound up being used over the climactic scene Forsey and Cara had previewed, as well as during the opening credits. “Flashdance…What a Feeling” is what we hear as a young woman rides her bike through the streets of Pittsburgh just after sunrise, and as she starts her shift at the steel mill.
Cara had a good, well, “feeling” about the song. “I knew when we were recording it that we had something special with the song,” she said in an interview for BBC Radio 2’s Electric Dreams: The Giorgio Moroder Story. “Some things you just feel, you know? You can’t really dissect it or analyze it. It’s a spiritual thing that you sense, and I did sense that I had something special with this song.”
Bruckheimer also immediately sensed the song’s potential. On the Special Collector’s Edition DVD release of Flashdance (2010), Bruckheimer said, “When you first heard it, you said, ‘It’s a hit.’ It’s one of those things you just heard, and you just couldn’t get it out of your head. And it just got us all so excited. We kept playing it over and over and never got tired of it. To this day, I’m not tired of that song.”
As Cara had fretted all along, “Flashdance” drew comparisons to Summer’s hits of the era – and not just because of Moroder’s involvement. The song’s balladic opening, which segued into a rousing dance section, echoed a formula Summer and Moroder had perfected on hits like “Last Dance.” That Thank God It’s Friday highlight had won the Oscar five years earlier.
But while “Flashdance…What a Feeling” is very much in Summer’s wheelhouse, Cara sang it with an approachability and conviction that made it her own. She takes the listener on a journey from timidity and fear (“First, when there’s nothing/ But a slow-glowing dream”) to joy and abandon (“Pictures come alive/ You can dance right through your life”).
Even snarky critics were (mostly) won over by the single. Writing for Rolling Stone in 1984, Don Shewey called it “1983’s cheapest thrill… a patently ludicrous ode to instant gratification that Cara’s youthfully urgent, desperately soulful vocal rendered transcendent.”
“Flashdance…What a Feeling” was the second-highest new entry on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending April 2, 1983. Only Duran Duran’s “Rio,” first released in 1982, got off to a faster start that week. “Flashdance” reached No. 1 in its ninth week, dethroning David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” and stayed on top for six consecutive weeks – until it was in turn booted by The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” “Flashdance…What a Feeling” was the longest-running No. 1 hit of 1983 by a female artist. It also was the only 1983 single to log 14 weeks in the top 10.
At the end of the year — and this is almost too perfect — Cara’s single and the film achieved identical rankings on key year-end charts. On Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 singles chart for 1983, “Flashdance…What a Feeling” ranked No. 3 behind “Every Breath You Take” and Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” On boxofficemojo.com’s accounting of the top-grossing films of 1983, Flashdance ranked No. 3 behind Return of the Jedi and a 1982 holdover, Tootsie.
When the 26th Annual Grammy nominations were announced, Cara received four nods – record of the year and best pop vocal performance, female, both for “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and album of the year and best album of original score written for a motion picture or a television special, both for Flashdance.
At the Grammy telecast on Feb. 28, 1984 – the highest-rated Grammys in history, in large part because the red-hot Jackson was expected to sweep (and did) – Cara won the female pop vocal award and shared in the award for original score. She also performed “Flashdance” as the final performance of the night.
The female pop vocal category was highlighted on the show, with performances from all five of the nominees – Cara, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Tyler, Sheena Easton and – you guessed it – Summer. Cara seemed genuinely shocked when Bob Seger and Christine McVie announced her as the winner. “Are you sure?,” she charmingly asked, before saying, “Um, I can’t believe this.”
Five weeks later, on April 9, 1984, Cara performed “Flashdance…What a Feeling” on the Oscars. She was accompanied by 44 boys and girls from the National Dance Institute. The number was sensationally staged, and was interrupted by applause six times.
When Flashdance star Beals and Matthew Broderick announced “Flashdance…What a Feeling” as the winner, Cara became only the second person of color to win an Oscar for best original song – following Isaac Hayes for his 1971 classic “Theme From Shaft” – and the first woman of color to do so.
In her acceptance speech, Cara graciously saluted a legendary lyricist/composer team that was also nominated with two songs from Yentl. “Just to be nominated with the likes of Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand is an honor enough.”
In the wake of “Flashdance,” Cara landed just one more top 10 hit on the Hot 100. “Breakdance,” which Cara and Moroder co-wrote to capitalize on the breakdancing phenomenon, reached No. 8 in June 1984.
It’s hard to know why Cara didn’t sustain as a successful recording artist. Her two tentpole smashes were so ubiquitous they may have simply been too hard to follow. Summer dominated the dance/pop space in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s to the degree that it was hard for anyone else to step out of her shadow. Also, 1983-84 saw the emergence of a new MTV class of visuals-forward pop artists, including Madonna, Jackson, Prince, Cyndi Lauper and Culture Club. That may have left Cara, whose two big hits had visuals defined more by their movies than her own star power, trailing a little behind.
In the interview she did with me the week after winning two Grammys, she cited sexism in the music industry as a source of frustration, even then, at the pinnacle of her career.
“It’s very hard being female in this business,” she said. “They don’t want to know that you can play an instrument, which I do, or that you can write. They want you to look pretty and sing, and I’m not about just being a chick singer.
“That’s why I have tremendous respect for Donna [Summer] and Barbra [Streisand],” she continued, “and the women who are out there trying to have some control over their own careers.”
Cara saw the frequent comparisons to Summer – who was also 63 when she died in 2012 – as rooted in sexism. “A lot of people like to rival other female artists,” she said. “I listen to the radio and I hear one song after another by all the male artists and I can’t tell one voice from the next, but no one says anything about that.”
Whatever career frustrations and roadblocks Cara encountered, her talent and charisma at her peak — as seen in her recordings and those award show performances — are forever there for all to hear and see. She took her passion and made it happen.
Another accolade for BLACKPINK! The girl group, along with nine other acts in K-pop, managed to secure the worldwide fans’ choice top 10 award at the 2022 MAMA Awards, which took place in Japan at the Kyocera Dome Osaka on Tuesday, Nov. 29.
Though the girl group was not in attendance, they were honored with a “Pink Venom” dance tribute and a special segment that aired at the award show that also featured their music producer Teddy Park.
BLACKPINK was the only female group who won the worldwide fans’ choice top 10 award. The other nine artists who were victorious in the category are BTS, ENHYPEN, GOT7, NCT DREAM, PSY, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, TREASURE and TOMORROW X TOGETHER. Winners of the award were voted on by fans on the MAMA website in a series of polls that ended on Nov. 4.
Day 2 of the 2022 MAMA Awards is scheduled to take place on Nov. 30. BLACKPINK is up for another four awards at the ceremony in the best female group, best dance performance female group and song of the year “Pink Venom,” as well as artist of the year categories.
For BLINKs who were hoping to catch the quartet at the awards show, you’re out of luck. BLACKPINK is just one day away from starting the European leg of its Born Pink World Tour. The European leg will kick off on Nov. 30 in London, and will make stops in Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and more before heading back to Asia in 2023.
Backstreet Boys’ remake of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” dashes to No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary radio airplay chart (dated Dec. 3, reflecting plays in the Nov. 21-27 tracking week, according to Luminate).
The ever-youthful boy band notches its third AC No. 1 and first since its pop classic “I Want It That Way” reigned for 10 weeks beginning in July 1999. The act first led with “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” for seven weeks starting in October 1998.
Backstreet Boys’ triumphant return to the AC summit grants them the record for the longest break between No. 1s among groups: a week shy of exactly 23 years since the last frame on top for “I Want It That Way.” Among all acts, only Elton John has waited longer between time at No. 1 (23 years, 11 months and a week between “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” in 1998 and “Merry Christmas,” with Ed Sheeran, last holiday season). Among groups, Backstreet Boys pass the Eagles (a week short of 20 years between “Best of My Love” in 1975 and “Love Will Keep Us Alive” in 1995).
Backstreet Boys’ update of “Last Christmas” is from their first holiday LP, A Very Backstreet Christmas, which launched at No. 1 on the Top Holiday Albums chart in October. Another song from the set, “Christmas in New York,” rises to a new No. 19 AC high.
Released in 1984, Wham!’s “Last Christmas” — written and produced by George Michael — re-enters the all-genre, multi-metric Billboard Hot 100 at No. 23. The song hit the top 10 for the first time in the 2020 holiday season and reached a No. 7 best last season. On the Holiday 100, the carol ranks at No. 6 as the survey returns.
With the original receiving strong airplay, and streams, each holiday season – Wham’s version ranks at No. 5 on the Dec. 3-dated Holiday Airplay list with 19.8 million audience impressions – charted covers of “Last Christmas” have been rare, although all by high-profile acts.
Here’s a recap of remakes of “Last Christmas” on individual-format Billboard airplay charts:
(Grande’s version also hit No. 1 in 2013 on Holiday Digital Song Sales, where covers have additionally charted, joining the Glee Cast’s and Swift’s, by Carly Rae Jepsen, Gwen Stefani and Meghan Trainor.)
Meanwhile, “Last Christmas” is the 28th holiday No. 1 on the AC chart since 2000, around the time that most stations in the format began playing seasonal songs heavily, or 24/7, between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year.
Here’s an updated recap of all the holiday songs that have hung atop the AC chart’s highest bough:
Title, Artist, Chart Date Reached No. 1, Weeks at No. 1
“Last Christmas,” Backstreet Boys, one (to-date), Dec. 3, 2022
Dolly Parton achieves her 48th top 10 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart (dated Dec. 3) as Diamonds & Rhinestones: The Greatest Hits Collection enters at No. 4. In the tracking week ending Nov. 24, the set — released Nov. 18 — earned 19,000 equivalent album units, with 15,000 in album sales, according to Luminate.
The 23-track album includes songs released between 1971 and 2019, including 10 No. 1s on the Hot Country Songs chart in 1974-89, from “Jolene” to “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That.” Among those leaders are her two No. 1s on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100: “9 to 5” (1981) and “Islands in the Stream,” with Kenny Rogers (1983).
The newest cut is “Faith,” Parton’s collaboration with Swedish DJ/production duo Galantis and featuring Dutch vocalist Mr. Probz. The track debuted atop Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales in November 2019, giving Parton her first No. 1 in the genre, and topped Dance/Mix Show Airplay that December.
Parton extends her record for the most Top Country Albums top 10s among women, pushing six ahead of Loretta Lynn’s 42. Parton also remains the only woman with top 10s in every decade since the list began in January 1964. Her top 10 totals by decade: 1960s – four; ’70s – 18; ’80s – 11; ’90s – five; 2000s – three; ’10s – four; and ’20s – three.
Parton has netted eight Top Country Albums No. 1s, most recently A Holly Dolly Christmas, which bowed on top in October 2020. In between that set and her latest, Run, Rose, Run debuted at its No. 4 best this March.
Parton boasts the second-most Top Country Albums top 10s among all artists, after Willie Nelson (the only other act with top 10s in seven decades), with 53. She first reached the tier with her second entry, Just Between You and Me, with Porter Wagoner (No. 8 peak, 1968).
More ‘Proof’ of a Hit
Morgan Wallen’s “You Proof” rebounds from No. 2 for a sixth week atop Country Airplay (26.6 million audience impressions, down 7%). The song, Wallen’s seventh leader on the list (dating its first week on top on the Oct. 15 chart), ties for the longest reign of the 2020s, matching Dustin Lynch’s “Thinking ‘Bout You,” featuring MacKenzie Porter (starting last December), and Luke Combs’ “Forever After All” (starting in June 2021).
Since Country Airplay started in January 1990, only seven songs have led longer, with two tied with a record eight frames at No. 1 each: Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett’s “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” (2003) and Lonestar’s “Amazed” (1999).
Meanwhile, “Proof” is the first song to return to the Country Airplay apex since Chris Lane’s “Big, Big Plans” hit No. 1 on Dec. 19, 2020, and revisited the top two weeks later.
Top 10 ‘World’ View
Jordan Davis banks his sixth Hot Country Songs top 10 as “What My World Spins Around” rises 12-10. The song, which he co-wrote, drew 7.7 million official streams (up 1%) and sold 2,000 downloads (up 98%) Nov. 18-24. On Nov. 17, he announced that his second LP, Bluebird Days, is due Feb. 17.
On Country Airplay, “Spins” ranks at No. 10, up by 7% to 18.7 million impressions in the week ending Nov. 27.
Davis last reached the Hot Country Songs top 10 with “Buy Dirt,” featuring Luke Bryan. The collaboration led for four weeks in January-February, becoming his first No. 1 (and Bryan’s 12th). It dominated Country Airplay for two frames, marking Davis’ third leader (and Bryan’s 26th).
Davis posted his first Hot Country Songs top 10 with his rookie entry “Singles You Up,” which hit No. 4 in April 2018, and followed with “Take It From Me” (No. 4, March 2019); “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot” (No. 6, April 2020); and “Almost Maybes” (No. 7, July 2021). “Singles” and “Slow Dance” also topped Country Airplay for a week each.
Matty Healy’s latest hit isn’t the kind to impact the charts.
The 1975 frontman is having an unusual viral moment, thanks to an off-the-cuff comment he made at security when his voice was filtered through Auto-Tune.
Healy was in full voice during a recent concert when he calls on staff to help a potentially injured fan.
In a clip doing the rounds of social media, Healy is in the flow of “I Like America & America Likes Me,” when he spots something in the audience.
“Someone’s fallen down over there,” he interjects, his voice as synthetic as a Twitter bot. “Go and f***ing sort ’em out. Stop standing there like a bunch of d***heads.”
The moment, which has been seen nearly 1 million times, was reportedly captured during the English act’s Nov. 23 concert at the Arizona Financial Theatre in Phoenix.
It’s not the first time Healy’s on-stage antics have enjoyed by the masses, watching on from their devices.
During a performance earlier this month at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Healy caused a stir when he whipped out a slab of raw, red meat and munched on it. Even his mother, actress Denise Welch, tweeted about the bizarre moment.
America likes the 1975, true. And so does Britain, where the alternative rock band has a perfect five consecutive No. 1 albums, including their latest release, Being Funny In A Foreign Language, which dropped last month.
In the U.S., Healy and Co. have cracked the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart on four occasions, including a No. 1 for 2018’s A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships.
North America tour dates in support of Being Funny In A Foreign Language are due to wrap Dec. 17 in Pittsburgh, PA, with U.K. and Ireland dates kicking off from mid-January, and South America, Asia and Australia following in early-to-mid 2023.
Stormzy is eying a hattrick on the U.K. albums chart with This Is What I Mean (via 0207/Merky), which leads at the midweek point.
The Croydon, England rapper is a perfect two-from-two, having led the Official U.K. Albums Chart with with his 2017 debut Gang Signs & Prayer and 2019’s Heavy Is The Head.
The Brit Award winner’s latest LP starts at No. 1 on the midweek chart, just ahead of pop veteran Cliff Richard’s festive collection, Christmas With Cliff (EastWest/Rhino).
Richard’s first Christmas release in almost two decades is on track to become the iconic British artist’s 47th Top 10 solo album, a feat that includes seven leaders.
It’s nearly that time of year, which means a batch of Christmas-themed records are charging up the U.K. charts.
Andrea, Matteo and Virginia Bocelli’s A Family Christmas (Decca) lifts 11-5 on the midweek survey, and Michael Bublé’sChristmas (Reprise) is hovering just outside the top 10, up 35-11.
Further down the list, a Christmas edition of George Ezra’s former leader Gold Rush Kid (Columbia) bumps 33-15, while Aled Jones & Russell Watson’sChristmas With Aled & Russell (BMG) holds at No. 37.
It’s similar story on the midweek singles survey, with holiday classics from Mariah Carey and Wham surging into the top 10.
Elsewhere on the midweek albums survey, Rock And Roll Hall of Famers The Cure could mark a return to the top tier with the goth faves’ ninth album Wish (Polydor/UMR), thanks to a reissue. Wish reached No. 1 following its original release in 1992, and blasts to No. 4 on the Official Chart Update.
Finally, David Bowie could bag a 69th top 40 appearance on the U.K. albums survey with A Divine Symmetry (Parlophone), a four-disc package of rarities and demos that traces the year leading up to the release of his 1971 classic album, Hunky Dory.
Interest in the legendary late singer continues to run hot, thanks in part to the release of Brett Morgen’s feature-length documentary Moonage Daydream, the soundtrack to which opened at No. 20 on the Official U.K. Chart last Friday (Nov. 25). A Divine Symmetry could hit the same height; it’s new at No. 20 on the midweek chart.
Bowie died Jan. 10, 2016 at the age of 69, just days after the release of his Blackstar album.
The Official U.K. Albums Chart is published late Friday.
It’s been 20 years since Jennifer Lopez unveiled her third studio album, 2002’s This Is Me… Then, much of which was inspired by her then-relationship with Ben Affleck. Now, the singer is reflecting on the album and her rekindled romance with her now-husband.
“It is a little bit like the Twilight Zone. It doesn’t happen,” Lopez told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this week. “That album, This Is Me… Then really captured a moment in time where I fell in love with the love of my life. It’s all right there on the record. I didn’t even realize what was happening and what I was doing. It was just every day going from the set to the recording studio, doing the thing, being in love, him coming into the studio, writing ‘I’m Glad,’ […] Me tweaking the lyrics with him. Every single song that we wrote there, me writing ‘Dear Ben’, it was such a special moment in time to have captured.”
As expected, the Good Will Hunting actor “loves” the album. “He knows all of the words. It’s crazy. He also was with me while I was creating it,” she shared. “You’re listening to the demos in the car. You’re listening to the mixes. ‘I wrote this today. What do you think of this?’ It was that over and over again for two years while we were together. He knows it so well and he loves it so much. He’s my biggest fan, which is awesome, and supporter. When he came back into my life again, the same thing happened where I felt so inspired and so overtaken with emotion that it was just pouring out of me.”
Lopez also shared that her 2004 breakup with Affleck was the “biggest heartbreak of my life.” “I honestly felt like I was going to die,” she said, noting that she couldn’t perform songs from This Is Me… Then because it was too painful. “It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn’t get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most would-never-happen-in-Hollywood ending.”
Now, the multihyphenate is gearing up to release her new album This Is Me… Now, which was inspired by her marriage and how much she has grown over the years. “I think what the message of the album is very much if you were wondering if you have, like me at times, lost hope, almost given up, don’t. Because true love does exist and some things do last forever and that’s real,” she said.
Watch the full interview below.
Are you still listening?
3628718109
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
