Coldplay is back in the studio, and frontman Chris Martin took to Twitter on Tuesday (Dec. 6) to give fans an update as well as share some of the songs he’s listening to lately.
“I hope you’re all doing well. Here are some things I love at the moment,” Martin wrote in a note shared to the social media platform, before listing his current top tracks which include RM‘s “Yun” featuring Erykah Badu, Badu’s live rendition of “Tyrone,” Bayka‘s “She Like It,” The 1975‘s “Looking for Somebody (to Love),” Inhaler‘s “Totally,” Kyoka‘s “Hurt People” and Stormzy‘s “Hide & Seek.”
Martin concluded his message by writing, “We are in the studio. We send you all much love.”
Coldplay unveiled their ninth studio album, Music of the Spheres, in October 2021 via Parlophone and Atlantic Records. The 12-track album featured the BTS collaboration “My Universe,” which blasted onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 1, marking the Brits’ first leader since 2008’s “Viva La Vida” and giving both groups appearances on the Rock & Alternative Airplay and Alternative Airplay charts.
Music of the Spheres, meanwhile, peaked at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart dated October 30, 2021, and spent eight total weeks on the chart.
Kenny Chesney was king of the road among country artists in 2022. The touring titan led all country acts reporting to Billboard Boxscore by grossing $135,046,047 from 41 stadium and arena shows on his Here and Now tour.
The total was also enough to land him at No. 9 on the all-genre Billboard Boxscore year-end tally. Additionally, he drew the highest attendance among country acts, attracting 1.3 million people. Chesney last topped the tally in 2018 with $114.3 million from 42 shows on his Trip Around the Sun stadium tour that drew 1.3 million people. (A limited 21-date arena tour in 2019 grossed $19.2 million.)
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The Here and Now Tour included dates originally scheduled for 2020 and then 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic caused cancellations and postponements.
“We had missed each other so much,” Chesney tells Billboard of his fans. “I think we’d almost forgotten how good it was, and once we got there and felt that love – both off the stage and from the people – the word was out. We always have crazy great audiences, but this year, No Shoes Nation wanted to be there, to share the moment in a way where we were making up for those years we couldn’t come together and rock.”
Chesney’s manager Clint Higham agrees, telling Billboard, “The people of No Shoes Nation are such intense fans, the being together after four years created its own energy and momentum. We found ourselves adding seats in so many markets to try to meet the demand because whether it was the people who’d held their tickets for over 1,000 days in many cases or the people buying those new tickets who felt the buzz and wanted to be there, it was a whole new level of demand based on what Kenny gives people.”
Coming in at second place — and No. 11 on the all-genre chart — Morgan Wallen grossed $128,718.950 from 66 shows on his first full arena outing. Wallen dominated the album charts as well: In September, his Dangerous: The Double Album broke the record for the most nonconsecutive weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 by a singular artist with 86 weeks, surpassing the 85 weeks tallied by Peter, Paul & Mary’s self-titled album in 1962-1964.
Chris Stapleton, who led the tally last year with $33,884,658 from 32 shows, came in third in 2022 with a gross of $83,080,631 from 69 shows.
Country icon George Strait played only 10 shows to roll into fifth place, grossing $50,048,167 from 263,285 fans.
Fellow legend Reba McEntire was the only woman to make the top 10, grossing $27,506,847 from 27 shows. The outing has been extended into 2023 and will include her first headlining Madison Square Garden show.
NBA YoungBoy is letting Kanye West know that he has at least one person in his corner after Ye’s string of increasingly unhinged and hate-speech-filled interviews.
Over the weekend, the “Outside Today” rapper shared an eight-minute-long track titled “This Not a Song, This for My Supporters,” in which he shared his feelings about West and insisted he needs to hold his ground.
“It hurt my heart that Kanye let them people break his soul/ How the f— that go? N—a, stay in yo’ home!/ N—a, hold your ground! You strong!”
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YoungBoy’s comments supporting Ye come in the midst of a massive upheaval against the rapper over his antisemitic comments, both via social media and in interviews. Most notably, Ye appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars talk show last week and said that he sees “good things about Hitler.”
He added, “I love everyone, and Jewish people are not going to tell me, ‘You can love us and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography.’ But this guy that invented highways and invented the very microphone I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good and I’m done with that. I’m done with the classifications.”
Despite Jones’ visible discomfort at the comments throughout the interview, Ye doubled down, adding, “I don’t like the word ‘evil’ next to Nazis … I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” The rapper reiterated that it’s “time to promote love” by declaring, “I do love Hitler. I do love the Zionists.”
Janis Hunter Gaye, the second wife of Motown legend Marvin Gaye and the inspiration for several of his songs, died Saturday of an undisclosed cause at her home in Rhode Island, her family announced. She was 66.
Hunter Gaye was introduced to the singer by producer Ed Townsend during a 1973 recording session at Hitsville West in Los Angeles for his album Let’s Get It On, which was released that year. Gaye at the time was married to Anna Gordy, the sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy; Hunter Gaye was 17, he was 34.
Gaye wrote the song “Jan” for his future wife and recorded it for his 1974 album, Marvin Gaye Live!, and his 1976 album, I Want You, has been described as “a romantic and erotic tribute” to her. His 1977 disco single “Got to Give It Up,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, featured her on background vocals. They were married that year.
According to her family, Hunter Gaye put together the iconic outfit — red watch cap, beaded denim shirt and silver red-laced platform boots— that Gaye donned for his memorable 1974 concert performance at the Oakland Coliseum.
The pair were married from 1977 until their 1981 divorce. He died three years later after being shot by his father in Los Angeles. Her memoir, After the Dance: My Life With Marvin Gaye, was published in 2015.
Hunter Gaye was the daughter of singer-musician Slim Gaillard, known for hits including “Flat Foot Floogie (With a Floy Floy).” She also managed the career of her daughter, Nona Gaye, a singer and actress with credits including Ali, Crash and two Matrix films.
“From the time she met my father, she was exposed to the way he saw this world was aching, and she did her best to preserve his legacy as he was taken from us far too early,” Nona Gaye said in a statement. “She took every moment to speak about every word and every note of his music, and she wanted to make sure everyone knew the man she fell in love with. I will never get to see her again in this life but know she’s in heaven with my father and a spokesperson for us in spirit.”
Survivors also include son Frankie, sister Shawnn, brother Mark and grandson Nolan.
It’s Taylor Swift‘s world, and we’re just living in it. Whether you’re counting awards, sales, chart success or all of the above, the 32-year-old pop star had a huge year — and that’s even by Swift’s standards.
But where to begin? There’s that time in May when she achieved her longtime goal of being bestowed with an honorary doctorate, donning NYU’s purple and black robes alongside thousands of other graduates to deliver 2022’s commencement speech. Or, there’s that time at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then againat the VMAs, and then again at the Toronto International Film Festival when she really stepped into her status as a filmmaker, earning recognition for her self-directed All Too Well: The Short Film.
And then there’s the obvious one: that time she dropped her tenth studio album Midnights and subsequently shattered one major record after another. Even the 11-time (soon to be more, possibly) Grammy winner herself couldn’t believe the astounding success.
“The fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it — I’m 32, so we’re considered geriatric pop stars,” she laughed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in October, in one of only a couple interviews she did for the Midnights release cycle. “They start trying to put us out to pasture at age 25, I’m just happy to be here.”
Keep reading to see a full list of Taylor Swift’s biggest career highs in 2022 below.
Congolese-French rapper and singer-songwriter Gims earns his first top 10 through a first entry on any Billboard Latin chart as “Arhbo (Music From The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022),” with Ozuna, jumps 29-8 on the Latin Airplay chart (dated Dec. 10). The track is also Gims’ first chart entry overall.
Arhbo is a Qatari slang word for “welcome” which derives from the Arabic word “marhaba;” basically the simplest type of greeting. The song, produced by RedOne, is the second single from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 official soundtrack. The World Cup began on Nov. 20 and runs through Dec. 18.
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“Arhbo” was released Aug. 19 via 2101 Records/ Katara Studios/UnitedMasters. Thanks to its 29-8 surge –in its fourth week– on Latin Airplay, it takes the Greatest Gainer of the week with a lofty 72% gain in audience impressions, to 6.4 million, earned in the U.S. in the week ending Dec. 4, according to Luminate.
The singles also marks the first top 10 and chart entry on Latin Airplay for Middle Eastern Katara Studios and United Masters. Meanwhile, producer RedOne’s 2101 Records previously an imprint under Republic Records, scored a No. 22 high through Jennifer Lopez’s “Live It Up,” featuring Pitbull, in 2013.
Ozuna collects his 36th top 10, still the fourth-most among all acts since the chart launched in 1994. Here’s the scoreboard:
46, Daddy Yankee 41, Enrique Iglesias 40, J Balvin 36, Ozuna 34, Shakira 30, Marc Anthony 28, Ricky Martin, 27, Marco Antonio Solis 27, Wisin 27, Wisin & Yandel
Further, Ozuna’s new top 10 arrives after he secured his second week atop Latin Airplay with “Monotonía,” with Shakira, in the week prior.
With the R&B singer’s forthcoming album S.O.S. arriving this Friday (Dec. 9), SZA fans wanted to know: When will they see her collaborate with the Paramore frontwoman?
“@sza Hayley Williams x SZA collab when???” one fan demanded to know. Instead of giving an update, SZA replied in a Tuesday (Dec. 6) tweet, “I talk to her more than you’d think lol.”
The fan question arrives after SZA shared the 23-song track list for S.O.S. on Dec. 5. The LP includes several features, including Don Toliver on “Used,” Phoebe Bridgers on “Ghost in the Machine,” Travis Scott on “Open Arms” and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard on “Forgiveless.”
The R&B singer coveredBillboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players issue in November. In the story, she questioned the future of her career. “I feel like music, in this capacity, I don’t see longevity,” SZA admitted. “I like to create, I like to write, I like to sing, and I like to share. But I don’t know if chasing after superstardom or whatever I’m supposed to be doing right now is sustainable for me or for anybody. I’mma take a good swing at it, and I’mma give ’em my absolute best.”
S.O.S. follows the star’s 2017 debut, Ctrl, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and featured hits like “Love Galore,” “Broken Clocks” and “The Weekend.”
BamBam is heading to the Philippines to lead a lineup of international acts for the forthcoming Wavy Baby Music Festival next month.
Billboard can exclusively reveal that the Thai-born singer-rapper joins fellow K-pop star Sunmi, as well as R&B singer Pink Sweat$, as the final headliner for Careless Music’s Wavy Baby Music Festival taking place at the North Reclamation Area of Mandaue City of the Philippines’ province of Cebu.
BamBam joining as a headliner makes the musician trio somewhat of a family affair as BamBam and Sunmi are both signed under Korean management label Abyss Company, while Sweat$ produced and co-wrote Bam’s latest single “Slo Mo.”
Careless Music’s Wavy Baby Festival is the brainchild of James Reid, the Filipino singer-songwriter who launched his Careless record label in 2017 that’s signed artists like California singer-songwriter Destiny Rodgers and singer-actress Nadine Lustre. Way Baby’s lineup also includes Rogers as well as Korea’s rock-pop band The Rose, Australian electronic music duo Bag Raiders, L.A.-born producer DJ Yultron, and some of the Philippines’ breakout bands like Ben&Ben.
Wavy Baby Festival takes place from Jan. 13-14, 2023, to coincide with the religious Sinulog-Santo Niño Festival celebrations that typically take place in Cebu every year in January. COVID-19 concerns canceled Sinulog festivities for the past three years, but 2023 will mark its long-awaited return alongside the debut of Wavy Baby.
Early bird tickets are still currently on sale for the next three days. The full artist lineup is below.
James Reid BamBam Sunmi Pink Sweat$ Issa Massiah Lesha Jolianna The Rose Ben & Ben Destiny Rogers DJ Yultron Bag Raiders December Avenue Franco A-Team SOS August Wahh The Sundown Mandaue Nights Sepiatimes Three Legged Men Wonggoys
Absence, it is said, makes the heart grow fonder, and touring musicians ought to know.
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The travel, the time spent waiting and prepping in the dressing room and the let-down moments after the show is over are all windows of time ripe for gnawing self-reflection and what-ifs. Time apart can indeed change a heart, and Russell Dickerson figured that out roughly a decade ago, when a breakup with Kailey Seymour forced him to confront a gaping hole as he traversed the club circuit as a newly single man.
“We had just broken up, and I was looking for anybody,” he remembers. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be out here on the road. Might as well see if I can find a wife out here.’ It didn’t work. But at the time, we were just playing crappy bar after crappy bar. I’m giving it my all, nobody’s showing up, I’m lonely, I just left my future wife back in Nashville.”
A lot turned around on that particular tour. Dickerson’s mindset changed; they reunited and married in May 2013. Kailey was the inspiration — and the videographer — for his first hit, the 2017 single “Yours,” and she’s again a looming figure in the plot of “God Gave Me a Girl,” penned during several days of focused songwriting last spring at the Middle Tennessee home of songwriter Ashley Gorley (“She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” “Take My Name”).
On the second or third day of the retreat, after they had written several songs and emotional walls were down, Zach Crowell (“Body Like a Back Road,” “Waves”) suggested a solid potential title, “God Gave Me a Hometown,” that the quartet started playing with and reshaping. In the process, Dickerson turned it into “God Gave Me a Girl,” a title that checked at least two boxes for him.
“I love alliteration,” he says, “and my reputation precedes myself as the love song guy.”
Chase McGill (“5 Foot 9,” “Never Say Never”), working with an electric guitar borrowed from Crowell, started playing with a random tone — a little glassy, a little dirty — and created a melancholy riff that rises slowly before tumbling back to its starting point. Gorley toyed with the word “gave” — “God gave me a girl, girl gave me a kiss/Kiss gave me a feelin’ that I still get” — and halfway through the chorus, they knew they were on to something with a worthwhile lyrical bent and a melody that fits, climbing as it progresses through the initial lines of the chorus.
“The key to melodies is where it’s repetitive, but changes,” says Gorley. “I know that sounds crazy, but it has a little bit of rise where it’s repeating the rhythm, but then the melody changes and has tension and release.
“I want you to almost be able to sing along during the first chorus,” he continues, “like where you can kind of join in when you’re singing a song and you don’t really know it.”
As they kept building the lyric around shades of the word “give,” it changed tense and reversed roles between the couple: “She gave me her hand, I gave her a ring.” And finally at the end, the singer credits the Almighty for shifting his viewpoint: “I knew what I wanted but He knew better/ God gave me a girl.”
“I almost wanted God to come out of nowhere, because that’s kind of how it happens for me,” McGill says. “You’re going along, you’re doing your thing, and then God interjects. Then from that point on, it’s a progression of the changes in your life.”
The song’s progression is a familiar one to many adult men. The protagonist spends part of verse one trolling at night — “I gave my all to those empty bars” is a direct reference to Dickerson’s touring when he and Kailey had broken up — and by verse two, after the divine intervention, his friends adjust slowly to his shifting priorities. By the bridge, he pledges to “give her the world” after recognizing some sort of destiny brought the couple together.
“I feel like it was God who changed my mind, that convinced me that this was my wife,” says Dickerson, further connecting the song to his actual life. “As soon as I broke up with her in college, all the peace left my body. And that’s just a spiritual thing, like I was being convinced that she’s my wife, this is happening, we’re doing it.”
At the end of the March 30 writing session, Crowell produced a demo built around Dickerson’s vocal and McGill’s guitar work. At some juncture over the next few months, the vocal was mistakenly erased, and Dickerson recorded another version.
But that also meant he had more repetition before the tracking session at Nashville’s Sound Stage on June 22. Crowell and Dickerson co-produced the date, fashioning an arrangement that gradually unfolds from the original demo’s sound — the glassy guitar and programmed percussion — to a full band. The musical elements all help to keep it from becoming overly mushy.
“That probably goes back to that guitar riff and that guitar tone,” Crowell says. “It’s not so pretty, light and fluffy, and the other production stuff I did hopefully all ties into it. If it’s a pretty poem as a lyric, it’s nice that the track may have a little bit of a slight edge to it that makes it a good Russell Dickerson song.”
The other production elements included some cloudy, atmospheric sounds and a slide guitar that lend a slightly mysterious aura.
“The mystery is definitely a good thing,” says Crowell. “There’s a little tension in it, but it’s not a bunch of dark, eerie chords or anything. It’s all still hopeful.”
Ultimately, “God Gave Me a Girl” embraces the natural femininity of a love song, offset with a touch of grit. “It doesn’t feel like a ballad,” Gorley says. “I’m a piano guy, so every day, I fight the temptation of writing a ballad. To just write a love song on piano, super slow, every day would be great, but I’ve worked that out of my system. And so I’m always looking for some way for it to feel fun or celebratory or something like that. This one pulls that off.”
The writers weren’t the only fans. “Our real test for songs is always playing them for our girls,” says McGill. “My four-year-old and three-year-old are old enough where they can sing along with Daddy’s songs and whatnot. Me and my wife can always tell if they request it in the car. When they did that, I was like, ‘Maybe we got a little hit here.’ ”
Triple Tigers released “God Gave Me a Girl” to country radio on Nov. 18. Dickerson felt they had a commercial winner on their hands even before they finished writing it, and its release suggests his assessment that day still holds true: “I think we’re headed to hitty city with this one.”
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