Month: August 2023

Too much, too often, is too bad. Just ask Post Malone, who reckons his mental acuity isn’t what it once was, thanks to overdoing it with hallucinogens.

The singer and rapper still digs mushroom, of the magical variety, but not with the same appetite as he once had.

“Yeah, I’ll take shrooms. I like shrooms,” he admits in a recent interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. “Not as much as I used to. It really affected my short-term memory.”

For his sitdown with the New Zealand-born broadcaster, Malone reflects on an earlier “stint of habitual overuse, like daily” which may have contributed to the fog. “Now I take a little bar of (mushroom) chocolate with my buddies, a little square of chocolate and just laugh and laugh and laugh.”

Nothing is off-limits, as Malone reflects on youthful indiscretions, including bad experiences with pharmaceuticals drugs. But never the hard stuff. “I shouldn’t have to really justify anything to anyone, but I appreciate the concerns that people (have about his health),” he adds, “but then the rumor starts that I’m doing hard drugs, which I’ve never done in my entire life.”

Malone also talks about his newfound priorities as a parent, and the early mornings that come with it. “The schedule just keeps getting fuller, and now that I’m a dad, the schedule only got more full,” says the singer and rapper, a known late-riser.

That schedule continues to gets “fuller and fuller” with the release of new music. That’s the case with Posty’s fifth and latest studio album Austin, which dropped last Friday, and will be supported with another major world tour. Austin is the followup to 2022’s Twelve Carat Toothache, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, and became Malone’s fourth studio album to chart within the top five. It’s currently at No. 3 on the midweek U.K. chart. “I’m definitely more tired. I was always tired before (children), but now I’m more tired.”

Watch the interview below.

Alejandro Fernández collects his 10th No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart as “No Es Que Me Quiera Ir” pushes 13-1 to lead the Aug. 5-dated survey. The song follows the two-week champ “Caballero,” his first career No. 1 this decade (Feb. 2020).

“No Es Que Me Quiera Ir” conquers Latin Airplay after it gained 9.1 million in audience impressions, a 50% rise from the week prior, earned in the U.S. during the July 21-27 tracking week, according to Luminate. The song’s main supporters include Univision stations, KSCA Los Angeles and WOJO Chicago, as monitored by Mediabase, which provides Luminate data for Billboard charts.)

The ranchera, released May 19 and written by Eden Muñoz, ejects Prince Royce’s “Me EnRD” from the lead after its one term at No. 1, as the bachata dips 1-5 with 17% drop in audience impressions, to 8.4 million.

Further, “Que Me Quiera Ir” earns Universal Music Latino/UMLE its second No. 1 in 2023, after the label dominated the chart with Karol G and Shakira’s “TQG” for two weeks between May and July.

As mentioned, with “Me Quiera Ir” capturing the crown on Latin Airplay, Fernández scores his 10th ruler, the second-most among regional Mexican acts, trailing Marco Antonio Solis who continues to lead with 11 champs on his Latin Airplay account. Plus, “Que Me Quiera” becomes his first win since “Cabaellero” in 2020. In between he’s placed five top 10s, for a total of 23 top 10s since “A Pesar de Todo” reached No. 10 high in Dec. 1994.

Here’s a full recap of Fernández’s 10 leaders dating back to his first in 1997:

Peak, Title, Artist, Weeks at No. 1
Oct. 18, 1997, “Si Tú Supieras,” six
Dec. 27, 1997, “En El Jardín,” featuring Gloria Estefan, six
March 14, 1998, “No Se Olvidar,” eight
July 18, 1998, “Yo Nací Para Amarte,” five
Aug. 21, 1999, “Loco,” one
Dec. 1, 201, “Tantita Pena,” six
Oct. 23, 2004, “Me Dedique A Perderte,” two
Feb. 06, 2010, “Se Me Va La Voz,” one
Jan. 04, 2020, “Caballero,” two
Aug. 05, 2023, “No Es Que Me Quiera Ir,” one

Notably, “Que Me Quiera Ir” marks a new milestone achievement for singer-songwriter Eden Muñoz, who captures his first No. 1 on Latin Airplay as a songwriter. Previously he scored a No. 2 high as a songwriter through Banda Carnaval’s “Esa Vez Soy Yo” (Jan. 2020).

Elsewhere, “Que Me Quiera Ir” advances 7-1 on Regional Mexican Airplay as the week’s Greatest Gainer. Fernández wins his sixth champ, the fifth-most among regional Mexican soloists.

Country music fans will be hearing more Randy Travis music soon.

On Wednesday (Aug. 2), Travis’ team announced an upcoming concert feting Country Music Hall of Fame member, as ‘A Heroes and Friends Tribute to Randy Travis’ is set for Oct. 24 at Huntsville, Alabama’s VBC Propst Arena.

During a press conference announcing the event, Travis’ wife Mary Travis told reporters that “the chances are 100%” that fans will hear more music from Travis soon, by way of a forthcoming From the Vault album of songs that music fans have never before heard.

“It has already been mixed,” Travis said. “Everything’s ready to go by Kyle Lehning, Randy’s producer….a whole other album of Randy Travis music.”

The seven-time Grammy winner’s most recent full-length studio project came with the 2014 covers album Influence Vol. 2: The Man I Am, which was recorded prior to the “Forever and Ever, Amen” hitmaker’s near-fatal stroke in 2013.

Over the past few years, Travis’s team has released a few “From the Vault” songs from Travis’s archive of recordings, including “Fool’s Love Affair,” “One in a Row” and “Lead Me Home.”

A performer lineup for the October Huntsville, Alabama show has yet to be revealed.

However, this isn’t the first ‘Heroes & Friends’ tribute concert for Travis; in 2017, dozens of artists including Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Kane Brown, Kenny Rogers and Josh Turner performed at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, in Travis’ honor.

In addition to music, Travis and his team have kept his life, music and career in the forefront in recent years by releasing the 2020 documentary More Life, as well as Travis’ 2019 memoir, Forever and Ever, Amen: A Memoir of Music, Faith and Braving the Storms of Life.

Lindsay Lohan is glowing in motherhood! The star, who recently gave birth to her first child, took to Instagram on Wednesday (Aug. 2) to share a postpartum mirror selfie complete with a Mean Girls reference.

In the snap, the 37-year-old actress is seen giving a soft smile to the camera as she rocks a pair of grey Frida Mom postpartum underwear. “I am so proud of what this body was able to accomplish during these months of pregnancy and now, recovery. Having a baby is the greatest joy in the world,” she wrote in the caption, before tweaking an iconic quote from her Amy Poehler’s character in the 2004 film, Mean Girls: “I’m not a regular mom, I’m a postpartum mom.”

Lohan, of course, starred in the comedy film as Cady Heron.

In July, Lohan’s reps confirmed to Billboard that singer-actress gave birth to her first child with husband Bader Shammas. The newborn is a “beautiful, healthy son named Luai,” the rep said. “The family is over the moon in love.”

The actress first announced her surprise pregnancy in March. At the time, she shared a photo of a white onesie featuring the words “coming soon,” and tagged financier Shammas in the post. “We are blessed and excited!” she captioned the post.

To understand how Carly Rae Jepsen arrived at her recently released seventh studio album, The Loveliest Time, we have to start back in 2020, when the pop star wrote an entire musical project while in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I wanted to face my loneliness and write about all the discovery I found in that place,” she tells Billboard of the creative inspiration that hit her at the time. “My imagination went to some pretty extreme places. I had a thought of, should I text my ex and rekindle that terrible relationship? [laughs] It was fun to write songs about all the extreme reactions you get from loneliness, like joining a dating app or going to some reflective place where you’re thinking about choices you’ve made or some grief for some stuff you haven’t unpacked that you finally have time to do. I was definitely looking at this theme of loneliness as a really cool starting place.”

As a result, 2022’s The Loneliest Time was born, filled to the brim with social media viral hits like the album’s title track, “Western Wind,” “Beach House” and more, keeping fans company during their own lonely moments. But Jepsen wasn’t done with the concept of growth through isolation. “It was always an intention of mine to look at this piece of work as a package,” she explains.

Throughout her hectic touring schedule in 2022, Jepsen still made time to revisit some of the B-sides that didn’t make the cut for The Loneliest Time. “I think, partially, having some time away and then coming back to them sort of helped me have new perspective on them,” she says of the songs. “There’s strength in leaving things and coming back and looking at it, and I felt like it was really helpful for me to sort of unlock some things that needed to be solved on these songs.”

That refreshed energy led to the aptly titled The Loveliest Time, which officially arrived on July 27. “The Loveliest Time was always the intended name for the album, but I was still in a lonely place when I wrote it,” she says of turning her two recent projects into sister albums. “It was just my imagination taking shape with, ‘what about when the world opens up?’ and the extremes of love and of being able to travel, like, getting to live in this really loud, fearless way. I don’t think I could have gotten to The Loveliest Time without going through The Loneliest Time.”

Capturing quite literally the loveliest time in her musical career, the album shows a new, experimental and free-spirited side of Jepsen, as she plays with unique sounds while still remaining true to her bubbly, colorful personality. She mentions “Psychedelic Switch” specifically, a rave-ready track with an unexpectedly extended intro leading into a euphoric, transcendent chorus. “If you hear the beginning of ‘Psychedelic Switch,’ it’s still dance-y, but it’s more slow. It was the work of [producer and co-writer] Kyle Shearer, who started going to raves with his wife when the world opened up after COVID. He comes into the studio, and I hadn’t seen a hot minute, and he’s like, ’So, I’ve been into rave music.’ And he starts playing ‘Psychedelic Switch’ and it sounds like a rave, and I’m like, ‘Let’s go!’ There was this playful energy, not only in my experience creating with people in person again, but also for everyone else who was a part of this and I think it brought this energy of like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is our renewal back into music.’ It has born some new, crazy energy in me.”

On the other end, The Loveliest Time also sees Jepsen dive deeper introspectively, as seen in “Kollage,” a mid-tempo track in which the 37-year-old superstar opens up about her fragility in how she deals with heartbreak and pain. “I think with The Loneliest Time and having some songs that offered a little bit more depth to them, I kind of realized that my audience seemed really welcoming to it,” she says of feeling ready to be more vulnerable. “I realized I was ‘allowed’ to be anything. In fact, there is no ‘allowed.’ Who made these rules? As long as my music feels sincere. Getting to write about subjects that are a little bit more nuanced, that feels so refreshing for me — being in the pop industry for so long and not feel like I have to be so cookie cutter or black and white.”

She concludes with a perfect representation of who she is as an artist right now: “It’s all so deliciously gray and everything in between.”

Listen to The Loveliest Time below.