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Kelly Clarkson’s voice is big enough to fill an arena, and that’s exactly where Kings of Leon’s anthemic hit “Use Somebody” belongs — so the singer’s latest Kellyoke cover is a perfect match.
On Wednesday’s (March 3) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the multi-talented host tackled the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit from Kings of Leon’s 2008 album Only by the Night. In addition to peaking at No. 4 on the Hot 100, “Use Somebody” also topped the Alternative Airplay and Adult Alternative Airplay charts. Coincidentally, Kings of Leon are back atop the Triple A chart this week with their latest single “The Bandit.”
Clarkson was joined by a full band and a harmonizing backup singer for the rocking cover, with appropriately epic lights flashing all around to the song’s driving beat.
KoL’s latest single, “The Bandit,” is the lead track from When You See Yourself, Kings of Leon’s eighth full-length and first since 2016’s Walls, the band’s first Billboard 200 No. 1 album. The new set is due Friday via RCA Records.
Watch the Kellyoke cover below:
Swedish House Mafia and Columbia Records have amicably parted ways, Billboard has learned.
The EDM trio’s tenure with the label lasted only two years, with the group signing to Columbia in February 2019. Despite a label deal sources say was worth more than $3 million, the partnership resulted in no new music from the trio, which blew up in the early 2010s with a series of era and genre-defining tracks including “Don’t You Worry Child,” “Save The World” and “Greyhound.”
The trio previously released music on Polydor, Virgin and EMI, among others.
Two sources familiar with the matter also tell Billboard that Swedish House Mafia has parted ways with their manager, Patriot Management’s Ron Laffitte, who took over for longtime manager Amy Thomson following the group’s 2018 reunion show.
After splitting up in 2013 following their 53-date One Last Tour, the trio reunited for a show-closing performance at Ultra Music Festival 2018. There they teased a full-on reunion, with SHM member Axwell announcing to the crowd, “It’s Swedish House Mafia for life this time.” In the three years since, the group has played about a dozen dates in Europe, Asia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, with these shows containing new, as-yet-unreleased music. In June of 2019, due to supposed scheduling conflicts, band members Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello didn’t make it to Seoul for a much-anticipated appearance at Ultra Korea.
Columbia signed the band in 2019 after a bidding war that included Universal Music Group, sources tell Billboard. It is unclear whether Swedish House Mafia will have to return their advance to Columbia.
While sources also report that the trio has been in the studio in Stockholm throughout 2020, working on a possible album, the group hasn’t released any new music since 2012, and has been silent on social media since December of 2019.
ABC’s true-crime series The Con is returning on Wednesday night (Mar. 3), with five episodes delving into major fraud cases.
The first episode will look into the disgraced 2017 Fyre Festival, when entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule aimed to pull off an ultra-luxury two-weekend musical event on the beaches of Great Exuma, Bahamas, with the event being promoted by high-profile models including Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner.
However, the event quickly experienced disastrous problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services and more, which led to the festival getting canceled. Instead of the luxury villas and high-end meals the pricey ticked promised festival attendees, they received prepackaged sandwiches and FEMA tents.
In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud to defraud investors and ticket holders, and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor that occurred he was on bail. Later that year, he was sentenced to six years in prison.
The Con, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, will interview McFarland from prison. The special airs at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. SlingTV also offers ABC as well as more than 30 other channels for $35 a month.
Watch the upcoming episode’s trailer below.
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Nick Jonas, Lily Collins, Rosario Dawson, Aubrey Plaza, Pedro Pascal and more are lending their voices to the auditory mystery thriller series Calls heading to Apple TV+ this month.
The official trailer, which premiered Wednesday (March 3), teased snippets of the nine bone-chilling conversations between loved ones that will leave listeners, both onscreen and off, hanging. Based on Timothée Hochet’s CANAL+ French series of the same name, Calls is an immersive television series that blends audio and abstract visuals to tell dark short-form stories through seemingly ordinary, unrelated phone calls that eerily find their point of connection. Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) directed the Apple Originals series in association with CANAL+ and in production with Studiocanal and Bad Hombre.
The star-studded cast of Calls also includes Nicholas Braun, Clancy Brown, Mark Duplass, Karen Gillan, Judy Greer, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, Riley Keough, Joey King, Stephen Lang, Jaeden Martell, Paola Nuñez, Edi Patterson, Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jennifer Tilly.
All nine episodes of the first season will premiere worldwide on Apple TV+ on Friday, March 19. The French-language version of Calls will premiere on CANAL+ in select markets. Apple TV+ will premiere the series under the title Llamadas, which will include custom Spanish-language graphics, in select Spanish-speaking markets in Latin America.
Watch the official trailer for Calls below.
Machine Gun Kelly’s longtime drummer JP Cappelletty, who goes by Rook, was recently attacked, robbed and hit by a car, TMZ reports.
Rook posted a picture of him raising his left arm cast on his Instagram Story on Wednesday (March 3), reassuring fans with the message, “Don’t worry I’ll bounce back.” Rook’s second picture featured MGK flipping off the camera while taking the selfie with his bedridden drummer in the hospital.
TMZ broke the news, saying Rook was walking down a street in the Hollywood Hills on Tuesday around 8 p.m. when two men jumped out of a vehicle and robbed him. Law enforcement told the publication that a physical altercation ensued, and thousands of dollars worth of property was stolen from the drummer. He was also reportedly hit by a car, which resulted in injuries to his foot and arm.
He accompanied the pop-punk artist for his debut Saturday Night Live performance on Jan. 30, where they tore through “My Ex’s Best Friend” and “Lonely” from MGK’s Billboard 200 No. 1 album Tickets to My Downfall. “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE! Dreams come true, but it ain’t an easy road,” Rook wrote on his Instagram at the time. Rook also made a cameo in MGK’s Downfalls High musical film.
Rook has been performing and touring alongside the 30-year-old artist since he was offered the drummer gig as a senior in high school.
How about this for an 18th birthday? Olivia Rodrigo’s “biggest celebrity crush” Pete Davidson compared her to her biggest “idol” Taylor Swift during a Saturday Night Live sketch entirely about her breakout debut single “Drivers License,” which has been the biggest song in the world for seven weeks straight.
“I was absolutely floored, I was screaming. I think being made fun of and parodied on SNL is the biggest compliment in the whole world,” she told Radio.com in a new interview on Tuesday (March 2). “So that was so surreal.”
But the line Davidson draws between Rodrigo and Swift is pretty solid. Following Swift’s co-sign of “Drivers License,” Rodrigo said the pop superstar penned her a letter based on the teen singer’s favorite lyrics from “long story short” on Swift’s most recent Billboard 200 No. 1 album evermore: “Past me/ I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things/ Your nemeses/ Will defeat themselves before you get the chance to swing.”
“So she wrote about that a little bit in her letter,” Rodrigo elaborated about the heartfelt note. “She was like, ‘I think we make our own luck and I think when you’re kind to people and do what’s right, it always comes back to you in the best ways.’”
The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series breakout star has been experiencing a lot of positive things coming back to her in the best way, including more sweet messages from two of her favorite artists, Lorde and Phoebe Bridgers.
“Lorde doesn’t have social media, but Lorde’s sister reached out to me and was like, ‘My sister and I love the song,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, That’s crazy!’” she exclaimed. “Phoebe Bridgers… commented ‘happy birthday’ [on my] post on my Instagram, so that was cool. It’s just so surreal to have my idols become my peers so quickly. It’s just insane.”
Watch her entire Radio.com interview below.
MUMBAI — Prashan Agarwal, the CEO of Gaana, is leaving the Indian audio-streaming service, a source close to the company has confirmed to Billboard.
Gaana, which is jointly owned by the Times Group and Tencent, has yet to officially announce his departure, which has surprised many in the Indian music industry. There’s no word yet on where Agarwal might move to, and who might replace him.
Under Agarwal, who joined as COO in 2016 and was promoted to CEO in 2018, Gaana has grown into one of India’s leading audio-streaming services. From approximately 25 million monthly active users (MAUs) towards the end of 2016, Gaana’s customer base has increased exponentially each year, from about 25 million MAUs in late 2016 to over 185 million MAUs in August 2020, the platform has said.
Gaana amassed much of this audience in less-populated cities — tier-II, tier-III and tier-IV cities — which the platform has keenly targeted with a combination of tiered pricing, regional Indian language content and user-friendly features such as voice-based search.
Agarwal and his team have also been quick to cater to changing consumption patterns by launching a string of original projects, such as Gaana Originals, a series of exclusive Hindi and Punjabi “non-film” or commercial pop singles the service has been releasing since 2017. Gaana also started staging the multi-city Punjabi music festival Crossblade in 2018, and in mid-2020 it unveiled HotShots, a short video platform following the ban on TikTok in India.
However, revenues have not kept pace with the rise in MAUs. While the number of paid subscriptions grew 2 1/2 times in the first half of 2020 compared to 2019, they accounted for a little over a third of the total income. At the end of the 2020 fiscal year, Gaana’s losses had risen more than 82% from the previous financial year to Rs352 crore ($48 million). Last August, Gaana received fresh rounds of funding from existing investors, the Times Group’s digital arm Times Internet and Tencent, which now owns almost 35% of the company.
Gaana’s main competitors in India’s crowded audio-streaming market are JioSaavn, which is owned by telecom behemoth Reliance Jio and also claims over 150 million MAUs, and Spotify, which is fast gaining traction since its launch in India in February 2019.
Prior to his half-decade stint with Gaana, Agarwal co-founded property website PropTiger and held leadership roles at jobs portal Naukri and GE Infrastructure.
When Jessie J first moved to LA from the U.K. more than a decade ago, she was living off Cheetos, doing three studio sessions a day, and wondering where her next check might come from. But through a combination of writing songs for other artists and releasing her years-in-the-making debut album in early 2011, she launched her career as the music star we know today.
And it all truly started with Who You Are, Jessie’s very first album, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary on Sunday. The project, which peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, spawned J’s breakout song “Price Tag,” her debut U.K. single “Do It Like a Dude” and her first Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “Domino.”
For the 10-year anniversary, Jessie J got on a video call with the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast to talk all about the making of the album, scoring her first (and second) No. 1 hits in her native U.K., and a familiar face that popped up in her early music videos.
Listen to the podcast below:
She also has some great stories about writing “Do It Like a Dude” with Rihanna in mind but keeping the aggressive anthem for her first U.K. single instead (“I just remember seeing the complete split of ‘I love her’/’I hate her’ [when it debuted] … I loved the extremity”) and writing what would become one of Miley Cyrus’ biggest hits. “‘Party in the USA’ put my foot in the door as a credible artist that can write songs, and that I will always be grateful for,” she said, even singing a few of the original lyrics that were about Jessie’s move from U.K. to the U.S. instead of Miley’s move from Nashville to LA.
“When Biden was elected, it was played everywhere,” Jessie added of the 2009 hit. “To be associated with such a historic moment, even now, literally 13, 12 years on, it’s just so magical. I’m so grateful for Miley and what she did for that song and what it did for me. It paid my rent. She basically kept me afloat when it was a tough time and I was a struggling artist that just wanted to do my thing.”
(Speaking of 12 years ago, watch Jessie do a virtual duet with her younger self on the song “Mamma Knows Best,” posted Sunday to celebrate the anniversary.)
In the end, Jessie J is happy she made such a big splash out of the gate, but she thinks she has a lot left to prove. “I love that people still call me underrated,” she said. “I don’t need to be the biggest thing in the room. I want to be the truest thing and the realest.
“When I look back at it now, there are so many moments where I just want to give myself a hug, when I doubted myself. … Now I’m just living my best life.”
Part of that best life: Jessie J dropped some hints about the music she has coming next. Her yet-untitled fifth album is set to be executive-produced by Ryan Tedder — and he even sent her a video message during the interview. “There’s a lot of honesty in there, because obviously I’ve lived a lot of life that people want to know about,” Jessie says about what she’s singing about on her next album, adding that her inner-circle keeps telling her these songs sound like they belong in a movie.
“I’ve always been controversial without being offensive,” she said about the tone of the music. “I like to stand on the edge but not fall off. I like to bleed out and make people stand in the middle of their f—ing sh–, good and bad, as I do that for myself.”
Now she’s ready to see if her new music can make just as big of a splash as Who You Are did 10 years ago. “The challenge of beating that is the hardest thing. And I haven’t. ‘Bang Bang’ nearly got there,” she says of her team-up with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj for her third album in 2014. But she thinks her new stuff has what it takes: “‘I can hang out with you at a party,’ these songs can say to the old songs.”
While she doesn’t have a specific timetable for the release, she expects we’ll hear a taste before the fall, teasing, “These songs are not for a turtleneck, you know what I’m saying?” she laughs.
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news about how Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album spends a seventh week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, claiming a unique distinction among country albums on the chart, and how Chris Brown and Young Thug’s “Go Crazy” jumps to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Brown his highest-charting hit since 2008.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s deputy editor, digital, Katie Atkinson and senior director of Billboard charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
