Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services, which provides physical and digital archiving for the media and entertainment businesses, has struck a partnership with ANALOGr Authentication to help artists preserve their cultural legacies, the companies tell Billboard. Through the collaboration, artists will have an end-to-end solution to protect their assets while monetizing and preserving them for future generations.

Iconic producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are the first musicians to have their assets valued under the partnership, from musical instruments to recording gear the duo used in their collaborations with such A-list artists as Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross, George Michael and Gwen Stefani. This marks the first time the Grammy-winning producers have properly archived, restored and preserved their assets.

The services provided under the partnership include ANALOGr’s “research and documentation services to organize, authenticate and validate the provenance and value of artists’ physical assets” and Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services’ media preservation services, according to a press release. Iron Mountain additionally stores video documentation and digital images of artists’ assets on its Smart Vault digital media preservation platform.

The Jam and Lewis assets archived and preserved by Iron Mountain and ANALOGr include:

A Yamaha S400 piano, which the duo likely used to help create songs like “Again” by Janet Jackson and “4 Seasons of Loneliness” by Boyz II Men.

A Yamaha CP70B portable piano, which was used for songwriting and can also be heard on “Tender Love” by the Force MDs.

A LinnDrum LM-2 drum machine, most prominently used to create 90% of the drum sounds on Janet Jackson’s 1986 breakthrough album, Control.

A Roland TR-808 drum machine, used on “Just Be Good to Me” by The S.O.S. Band as well as songs by Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey.

“Partnering with ANALOGr, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have helped us to pioneer an end-to-end solution that allows creators to be in the front seat of protecting their legacy,” said Greg Maratea, director of global client solutions for Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services, in a statement. “With the support of our proprietary technology Smart Vault, Iron Mountain’s highly secure digital media preservation platform, we’re breathing new life into legacy assets and shielding artists’ legacies by directly working with them to preserve what they find most valuable for generations to come.”

“At ANALOGr Authentication, our mission is to ensure that artists’ legacies are not only preserved but also elevated through comprehensive valuation and protection strategies,” added Thomas Scriven, CEO of ANALOGr. “Partnering with Iron Mountain and working with legends like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis allows us to pioneer a new way for creators to safeguard their cultural contributions and inspire future generations.”

Jam and Lewis also touted the partnership, noting that one of their “goals has been to future-proof our assets and understand their true value. So, when Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services introduced us to ANALOGr, we were excited to work with them. Now, our assets are properly covered by special insurance for their true value, and most importantly, our stories associated with our gear and memorabilia are forever secure. When the time comes to sell these items or pass them on to our heirs, we know the history is intact and truthful, and the value is there for the future.”

The top spot of the second iteration of the TouchTunes Frontline Chart is the same as its first: Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” reigns on the ranking for the third quarter of 2024.

The TouchTunes Frontline and Catalog charts for the third quarter of the year track the most played music on TouchTunes jukeboxes from July 1 to Sept. 30, with the Frontline ranking inclusive of music released in the last 18 months, followed by the Catalog tally for any music that was released more than 18 months ago. TouchTunes has jukeboxes in over 60,000 locations worldwide. TouchTunes data is not factored into other Billboard charts.

Much like the first charts, which covered the second quarter of 2024 (April 1-June 30), “A Bar Song” is not only No. 1 on the Frontline Chart — it was also the most played song on TouchTunes overall, besting all entries on the Catalog Chart.

Its continued reign is concurrent with the song’s ascension to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the timeframe; its coronation occurred on the July 13-dated Hot 100, and it’s ruled for 13 weeks in all (including the most recent survey, dated Oct. 12).

The latest Frontline Chart represents the first full quarter of data for “A Bar Song”; Shaboozey released the song on April 12, 12 days into the second quarter of the year.

In quarter two, the second-most-played song on TouchTunes was, unlike “A Bar Song,” a much older release – Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey,” which reigned on the Catalog Chart. And while, yes, “Tennessee Whiskey” indeed remains atop the latest Catalog survey, it’s surpassed by another Frontline contender in Post Malone’s Morgan Wallen-featuring “I Had Some Help,” which lifts to No. 2 on the Frontline Chart after premiering at No. 3 in quarter two.

Like “A Bar Song,” the third quarter is also the first full tracking period of data for “I Had Some Help,” which was initially released May 10. The song preceded “A Bar Song” at No. 1 on the Hot 100, ruling for six weeks in all beginning in May.

With Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey,” from his 2015 album Traveller, again leading the Catalog Chart and ranking as the third-most-played song overall, the country genre occupies the entire top three.

Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” follows as the most-played non-country song, ranking at No. 3 on the Frontline Chart after appearing at No. 2 in the second quarter.

It’s one spot ahead of perhaps the biggest mover of the month (as well as the most-played hip-hop song): Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which leaps to No. 4. The Drake diss was released May 4, begetting an appearance at No. 18 on the inaugural Frontline Chart.

Wallen’s “Cowgirls,” featuring Ernest (No. 5), and Hozier’s “Too Sweet” (No. 7) are the two other new entries into the Frontline Chart’s top 10.

Meanwhile, the top three of the Catalog Chart remains intact, with the aforementioned “Tennessee Whiskey” followed by Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” and Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. Brooks & Dunn’s “Neon Moon,” a two-week No. 1 for the duo on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 1992, breaks into the top five, rising 6-4, and Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses” (No. 8), Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road” (No. 9) and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” (No. 10) reach the top 10 for the first time.

As for the top debut on either chart? Wallen again. “Lies Lies Lies” bows at No. 11 on the Frontline Chart following its July 5 release, followed by the Wallen-featuring “Whiskey Whiskey” by Moneybagg Yo at No. 12 after its June 14 premiere as part of the rapper’s album Speak Now.

Sure enough, Wallen boasts eight appearances across both rankings — six on Frontline and two on Catalog. He has double the entries of the next closest, Jelly Roll, who appears three times on Frontline and once on Catalog.

See both 25-position charts below.

TouchTunes Frontline Chart

1. “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Shaboozey
2. “I Had Some Help,” Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen (+1)
3. “Lose Control,” Teddy Swims (-1)
4. “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar (+14)
5. “Cowgirls,” Morgan Wallen feat. ERNEST (+7)
6. “Last Night,” Morgan Wallen (-2)
7. “Too Sweet,” Hozier (+6)
8. “Fast Car,” Luke Combs (-3)
9. “Beautiful Things,” Benson Boone (-3)
10. “Save Me” Jelly Roll with Lainey Wilson (-2)
11. “Lies Lies Lies,” Morgan Wallen (debut)
12. “Whiskey Whiskey,” Moneybagg Yo feat. Morgan Wallen (debut
13. “Million Dollar Baby,” Tommy Richman (debut)
14. “Where the Wild Things Are,” Luke Combs (-4)
15. “White Horse,” Chris Stapleton (-4)
16. “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma,” Luke Combs (debut)
17. “Pink Pony Club,” Chappell Roan (debut)
18. “Pour Me a Drink,” Post Malone feat. Blake Shelton (debut)
19. “I Am Not Okay,” Jelly Roll (debut)
20. “Houdini,” Eminem (debut)
21. “I Remember Everything,” Zach Bryan feat. Kacey Musgraves (-6)
22. “Lovin on Me,” Jack Harlow (-13)
23. “Wild Ones,” Jessie Murph with Jelly Roll (debut)
24. “You Proof,” Morgan Wallen (-7)
25. “Sweet Dreams,” Koe Wetzel (debut)

TouchTunes Catalog Chart

1. “Tennessee Whiskey,” Chris Stapleton
2. “I Love This Bar,” Toby Keith
3. “Friends in Low Places,” Garth Brooks
4. “Neon Moon,” Brooks & Dunn (+2)
5. “Son of a Sinner,” Jelly Roll (-1)
6. “Fat Bottomed Girls,” Queen (+1)
7. “Drinkin’ Problem,” Midland (+1)
8. “Whiskey Glasses,” Morgan Wallen (+5)
9. “Copperhead Road,” Steve Earle (+2)
10. “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Journey (+4)
11. “Something in the Orange,” Zach Bryan (+1)
12. “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” Merle Haggard (-3)
13. “Simple Man,” Lynyrd Skynyrd (+2)
14. “Rockstar,” Nickelback (+3)
15. “Family Tradition,” Hank Williams Jr. (+1)
16. “The Joker,” The Steve Miller Band (+2)
17. “Wasted on You,” Morgan Wallen (-7)
18. “Oklahoma Smokeshow,” Zach Bryan (+5)
19. “Thunderstruck,” AC/DC (+3)
20. “Brown Eyed Girl,” Van Morrison (-1)
21. “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” Toby Keith
22. “Higher,” Creed (debut)
23. “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses (+1)
24. “Truck Bed,” HARDY (-19)
25. “Bartender Song,” Rehab (debut)

On a densely landscaped block in Miami, a stone’s throw from the Biscayne Bay coastline, a canopy of banyan trees, royal palms and bullet trees eventually gives way to a cave. At least, that’s how Pablo Díaz-Reixa, the musician-producer known as El Guincho, likes to describe his home studio in the city’s Coconut Grove area.

A dark, squat room tucked directly underneath his bedroom, the cave is where Díaz-Reixa spends most of his waking moments. Sometimes, he’ll notch 12 hours a day there noodling on potential beats, tinkering with the drums or listening through stacks of vinyl records he keeps by the mixing board. “The sensation I get when I’m in the studio, making music, is incomparable,” he tells me on the muggy September day when I visit his place.

Stepping just outside his pint-size studio, though, Díaz-Reixa’s own living space is ample and decidedly un-cavelike. With skylights scattered throughout its tall ceilings, his modernist abode exudes a sense of calm even with his toddler son’s toys strewn about. The place used to be a Buddhist temple, he tells me, which the Dalai Lama blessed over FaceTime before it could become a home.

Though Díaz-Reixa misses his former (and longtime) home of Barcelona, which he and his wife traded for this Miami enclave in 2021, living in South Florida suits him. The Cuban influences here remind him of where he grew up, on the Canary Islands located off the northwest Africa coast. He prefers a quiet neighborhood like this to the overstimulating glitz of South Beach — a fitting turn for a man whose producer nom de plume name-checks a bird of prey prone to nesting in the same cozy spot for years. Miami’s proximity to Europe and other major U.S. cities for music, like New York and Los Angeles, doesn’t hurt. But living in this leafy environment has been a boon for the producer in other ways. “When you have something that’s expansive, big, with a view… well, you start to think bigger,” says Díaz-Reixa, 40, while taking gradual pulls from a cup of black coffee and kicking back on an earth-toned modular couch.

Were it not for Díaz-Reixa mentioning in passing that he’s preparing for studio sessions later that day with a certain artist (he’s tight-lipped about whom), he seems like any other area dad puttering around in house slippers, stealing away moments within the demands of childcare to mess around with songs on Ableton. The difference is that Díaz-Reixa happens to be a superproducer who frequently works alongside genre-defying and culture-shifting artists, including Björk, Rosalía, FKA Twigs and Charli XCX, and left-field Latin pop musicians like Kali Uchis and Nicki Nicole.

A former indie musician with a proclivity for making “very innovative, very freaky, very strange” music, as he puts it, in the mid- to late 2000s, Díaz-Reixa is now one of pop’s most in-demand producers, especially among artists looking to take creative risks. With his ear for distinctly outré sounds, Díaz-Reixa’s unconventional production is catalyzing pop’s transformation into something more amorphous and idiosyncratic. “I think he knows how to lead songs into a truly unique place by juxtaposing hard and soft sounds,” says Camila Cabello, who collaborated with Díaz-Reixa for every song on her 2024 album, C,XOXO. “Producers like him truly make my favorite pop music — bold and fresh.”

Díaz-Reixa’s ethos for producing music, pop and otherwise, is informed as much by his open ears as it is isolation. “I grew up without a lot of resources,” he says. “So for me, my way of listening to music was to make it myself.” While coming of age in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, one of the archipelago’s two capitals, he listened to salsa, African music and other genres coalescing there at the time. His grandmother, a talented pianist, taught him how to read music when he was a child, but she was hardly didactic about it. Those lessons unlocked something in him — as did his hunger to hear more of anything, everything, since he didn’t readily have access to top 40 radio or a bounty of record stores on the Canary Islands.

As a teenager, he played punk and hip-hop grooves on the drums, and around then he began experimenting with recording himself — mainly Neptunes-inspired beats he had whipped up and loops he made on cassettes. “I always had a lot of curiosity about the process of recording, without knowing what a producer or an engineer was,” he says. Still, he always knew that he wanted to work in music in some capacity. “I always had it super clear,” he says. “I said it, and people would always laugh at me on my island.”

Eventually Díaz-Reixa moved to Barcelona. Around then, he played a solo gig as El Guincho at an underground Madrid club — with a sampler, a mic and a floor tom with an electronic trigger in tow — that changed his life. Young Turks (now Young)/XL Recordings, the tastemaking U.K. label group home to the likes of Radiohead and The xx, reached out to him on Myspace and signed him to a record deal shortly after, on the strength of that particular show. He began touring the world, and in 2008, he released his second album, Alegranza!, an avant-garde mélange of Tropicália, Afrobeats, looped vocals and other sounds.

Though he found a growing audience, especially in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico, Díaz-Reixa felt like an outsider even within the mid- to late-aughts heyday of inventive indie-pop. “There wasn’t a space for me in that music, nor in hip-hop, because of the themes I touched on,” he says. “I talked about love, identity. So I was in a kind of limbo as an artist. They didn’t know where to put me at festivals.”

In 2010, shortly after releasing his third album, Pop Negro, Díaz-Reixa got a call from Icelandic musician Björk. She wanted to work with him on her forthcoming album, Biophilia, so Díaz-Reixa made the trek to New York from Barcelona for the sessions. During that process, Björk said something that stunned him. “I remember that she told me, ‘You’re a producer.’ ” That didn’t totally sit right with Díaz-Reixa, who recalls thinking, “ ‘I’m an artist.’ ” Around then, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and in 2012 — the same year he signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music — he returned to the Canary Islands, where he spent a little over two years with her until she died.

When Díaz-Reixa returned to Barcelona, and to music after pausing things for several years, he started reevaluating his career — and realized that Björk had been right: He was meant to be a producer, not an artist. “In truth, what she said made sense,” he says. “Because the part that I’ve most enjoyed is making songs. I liked shows, the connection. But I think my true calling is to spend as much time as possible in the studio, and the least amount of time possible on the other duties as an artist: promotions, doing two interviews a day, touring.” After that, he put together a new album, Hiperasia, that he used to “explore my skills as a producer and see who I was going to be as a producer,” he says. “I used that as a kind of school.”

A few years later, a musician he knew in Barcelona, Rosalía Vila Tobella, invited him to see her perform at a flamenco bar, or tablao. She was singing standards and accompanied by a guitarist, and he remembers being struck by the way she commanded the small room, putting on the type of show that wouldn’t be out of place in a massive stadium. But when Rosalía later reached out to Díaz-Reixa to collaborate, he at first demurred. “Obviously I saw her as a tremendous talent, but I wasn’t sure where I could help,” he says. “She was very traditional in a style of music that I was very ignorant about. So for me it was like, ‘How do I situate myself here?’ ” Once the two of them got to know each other, though, they clicked and started informally making music together.

Those meetups led to Díaz-Reixa eventually helping Rosalía co-write her staggeringly original 2018 album, El Mal Querer, the entirety of which he also produced. He declines to comment more specifically on what he imparted in those sessions, but following the success of the album — and the more he kept producing — he realized that the isolation of his youth translated into a major strength in the studio, in that he looks “in places that the majority of people overlook,” he says. “I’m neither the best instrumentalist nor the best singer. But I do have that little thing that I’m realizing something that, later, will appear in the session.”

That sensibility comes through in how, say, he might suggest a Gucci Mane sample for a Cabello song — which he did for the snippet that ended up undergirding the pop star’s “I LUV IT.” Or the way he subverts traditional song structure. “I always look for the element of surprise to arrive very soon in a song,” he says. “You don’t have to wait 40, 50 seconds until the hook.” Cabello, a fan of Díaz-Reixa’s work with Rosalía, says she found in the studio that Díaz-Reixa “adds that quality of a bloodhound on the hunt for something magical, and he doesn’t settle for anything less.”

While he’s partial to collaborating on full albums like El Mal Querer and C,XOXO, Díaz-Reixa still relishes working with artists on individual songs. Recently he collaborated with Charli XCX on “Everything is romantic,” a sweeping track from her album — and cultural phenomenon — brat. As Díaz-Reixa tells it, Charli already had brat’s campaign carefully defined by the time that, about midway through completing the album, she came to Miami for a week to record with him. Charli had a clear idea about what she wanted this particular song to be: “She had been in Italy with her partner, and she wanted to reflect,” he says. “She had something written, just lyrics.” He adds that she sought out a “grand” opening to the tune, and from there Díaz-Reixa swiftly assembled the piledriving beat at A2F Studios, where “Everything is romantic” came together, along with a few other tracks that didn’t make the final cut.

Regardless of the project, Díaz-Reixa sees his job as a producer to meet artists where they are. “There are artists who have tremendous vision, and tremendous qualities to meet that vision, but they don’t have a way to convert the vision into music,” he says. “Other artists have a lot of qualities as musicians, but they need a bit of vision, or clarity. As a producer — and any colleague of mine would tell you this — what we have to do is just listen.”

Díaz-Reixa’s sought-after production skills, and his ongoing collaborations with boundary-pushing artists, are especially significant given that, for a while, he was a bit of an industry oddball. He stuck to his instincts for elevating music that was important to him — reggaetón, African music and off-kilter electronic music — for years, though it took a while for the world to catch up with him. “As in production, I made music that was kind of strange, indie,” he says. “There wasn’t space for people making music in Spanish with all those influences. Then suddenly, fast-forward 10 years later, that’s mainstream. Suddenly the world let its guard down and said: ‘No, all of these styles of music can be valuable, and they can be a part of a two-and-a-half-minute song that enchants the world.’ ”

His patience has paid off. Díaz-Reixa’s production work has nabbed him five Latin Grammys thus far and an MTV Video Music Award for “Con Altura,” a collaboration between Rosalía and J Balvin. He’s helping mentor the seven writer-producers signed to his label, Rico Publishing. He hasn’t yet sold his production catalog — though he has been approached about it. “It doesn’t interest me,” he says. “It’s not something that I see, for now. Also, when you’re a dad, you see a future there, too,” he adds, explaining that maybe his son could take on managing the catalog one day. More (secret) projects are also in motion. But at this point, Díaz-Reixa insists there’s no particular project or award left on his bucket list.

“Really, the greatest prize of making music is to keep making music,” he says. “My goal is much more artisanal: I love the process, I love to make music, and I want to keep dedicating myself to music — to be within the mystery of music, and to live inside that mystery.”

This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.

Barbra Streisand is among the top contenders for a Grammy nomination for best audio book, narration, and storytelling recording category for the audiobook of her long-awaited memoir, My Name Is Barbra. That was also the title of her first TV special in 1965, for which she won a Primetime Emmy (outstanding individual achievements in entertainment – actors and performers), and a companion album for which she won a Grammy (best vocal performance, female).

Streisand received a life achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Feb. 24, one of many such awards she has won. At the Grammys, she is one of just two women (Aretha Franklin is the other) to have won both a lifetime achievement award and a Grammy legend award.

This category usually yields one of most eclectic groups of nominees on the Grammy ballot – and so it will likely be again this year. The two most certain nominees would appear to be former president Jimmy Carter’s Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration and Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. On Oct. 1, Carter became the first U.S. president in history to reach the age of 100. Perry died in October 2023 at age 54 after a long struggle with drug dependency – “the big terrible thing” in the title of his memoir.

This would be Carter’s 10th nomination in the category, which would extend his record as the person with the most nods in the history of the category (which dates to the first Grammy ceremony in 1959). Should he win, it would be his fourth win in the category, which would enable him to break out of a tie with poet Maya Angelou as the person with the most wins in the category. Carter previously won for Our Endangered Values (2007), A Full Life: Reflections at 90 (2016) and Faith: A Journey for All (2019).

Perry received five Primetime Emmy nominations – including one for his iconic role as Chandler Bing on Friends.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a good chance at a nomination for The Art of Power. She would become the first current or former House Speaker to be nominated in this category. Grammy voters lean Democratic and this would give them a chance to salute the longtime leader, who was the first woman elected as House Speaker. She served from 2007-11 and again from 2019-23.

Questlove is a strong contender with Hip-Hop Is History. The hip-hop icon has been nominated twice in this category, with Creative Quest (2019) and Music Is History (2023). Questlove won both an Oscar and a Grammy for directing the acclaimed documentary, Summer of Soul.

And that’s how fast five slots fill up. There are many other strong contenders on the entry list of 145 entries should any of these presumed front-runners fall short.

Jill Biden‘s Willow the White House Cat could easily make it. Former first ladies Hillary Rodham Clinton (as she was known when she won) and Michelle Obama each won in this category. (Obama won twice.) Many Grammy voters will want to salute the Bidens as Joe Biden’s presidency winds down. But this particular audiobook may seem a little slight. Some voters may prefer to wait for the audiobook of her expected memoir chronicling her life in the public eye.

Dolly Parton’s Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones could also make the grade. The country queen was nominated in at least one category in 36 of the Grammys’ first 66 years, a remarkable show of sustained voter appeal. She has been nominated in each of the last five years. But she has yet to be nominated in this category.

Three past winners in this category are on this year’s entry list. In addition to former president Carter, they are TV hosts Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert. Maddow is entered with Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism; Colbert with Life, a collab with Father John Quigley.

Maddow won in this category in 2021 with Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rouge State Russia and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. (It didn’t win for Snappiest Title.) Colbert won in 2014 for America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t, from the period when he was parodying a right-wing, blowhard commentator on The Colbert Report.

Mariah Carey’s A Portrait of a Portrait could be a contender, though Carey hasn’t been nominated in any category since 2008.

Britney Spears didn’t narrate the audiobook for her best-selling memoir The Woman in Me. Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams did, and is entered here. Fun Fact: The Woman in Me topped the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction best-seller list, blocking My Name Is Barbra from reaching the top spot.

My Name Is Barbra isn’t the only case where a music star repurposed one of their old titles. Michael McDonald is entered with his audiobook What a Fool Believes, which he titled after The Doobie Brothers’ classic, which won Grammys for record and song of the year in 1979.

Many other titles by musicians are on the list, including George Clinton’s …And Your Ass Will Follow; Willow Smith’s Black Shield Maiden; gospel star Tasha Cobbs Leonard’s Do It Anyway: Don’t Give Up Before It Gets Good; Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life; Thurston Moore’s Sonic Life; Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Romy Ashby & Dennis Bousikaris’s Under a Rock; Tegan and Sara’s Under My Control; Jeff Tweedy’s World Within a Song: Music That Changes My Life and Life That Changed My Music; Jessie Reyez’s Words of a Goat Princess; John McEuen’s The Newsman: A Man of Record; Geri Halliwell-Horner’s Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen; and Jim Wilson’s Tuned In: Memoirs of a Piano Man – Behind-The-Scenes with Music Legends and Finding the Artist Within.

There are a number of titles by people from the worlds of politics and media on the list, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life; Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s One Way Back; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s True Gretch; Doris Kearns Goodwin & Bryan Cranston’s An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s and Ali Velshi’s Small Acts of Courage.

Three past winners for best comedy album are on the entry list here. In addition to Colbert, they are Tiffany Haddish and Whoopi Goldberg. Haddish is entered with I Curse You With Joy. Goldberg has two entries on the list, Bits and Pieces and Camino Ghosts.

Grammy, Emmy and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo is entered with Children of Anguish and Anarchy. Charlamagne tha God, who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2020 as a member of The Breakfast Club, is entered with Get Honest or Die Lying. Nicole Avant, a former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas (and the daughter of Clarence and Jacqueline Avant), is entered with Think You’ll Be Happy.

Works by TV stars on the list include Henry Winkler’s Being Henry; Dan Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude; Michael Richards’ Entrances and Exits; Julianne Hough’s Everything We Never Knew; RuPaul’s The House of Hidden Meanings; John Stamos’ If You Would Have Told Me; Mo Rocca’s Roctogenarians; Dr. Phil’s We’ve Got Issues (he’s listed as Phillip C. McGraw, PHD); Bill Maher’s What This Comedian Said Will Shock You; Patrick Stewart’s Making It So: A Memoir; and George Takei’s My Lost Freedom: A Japanese American World War II Story.

Three-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney is entered with Summer, 1976, a collab with Jessica Hecht. Other works by film stars on the list include Billy Dee Williams’ What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life and Rebel Wilson’s Rebel Rising: A Memoir.

Sports figures on the list include Andia Winslow with Brittney Griner’s Coming Home and Deion Sanders’ Elevate and Dominate: 21 Ways to Win On and Off the Field.

And did we mention that novelist Salman Rushdie is on the list with Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder? We told you the list was eclectic.

Our Fearless Forecast

So, which five titles have the best chance to be nominated? Here’s my prediction (alphabetically by title): Nancy Pelosi’s The Art of Power, Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Questlove’s Hip-Hop Is History, Jimmy Carter’s Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration, Barbra Streisand’s My Name Is Barbra.

Spanish superstar Alejandro Sanz will be honored with the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards. The singer-songwriter will receive the special award during the ceremony, which will broadcast Oct. 20 on Telemundo.

“I’m very happy to return to the Billboard Latin Music Awards, it’s certainly special,” Sanz said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful for this recognition from Billboard, and I love that it takes place in Miami. It’s fantastic to be home.”

From the launch of Viviendo Deprisa in 1991 to his latest studio album Sanz, released in December 2021, the singer’s artistic and personal contributions have expanded the reach of Latin music worldwide, and his influence continues to shape the industry today. Among his latest recognitions, the Madrid-born artist was bestowed with the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Cadiz and was deemed the esteemed title of “Hijo Predilecto” by Andalusia and the Province of Cadiz.

Past recipients of the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award include Armando Manzanero, Intocable, José José, Los Ángeles Azules, Los Temerarios, Maná, Marco Antonio Solís, Miguel Bosé and Ricardo Arjona, among others.

The 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards will broadcast Sunday, Oct. 20 at 9 p.m. ET on Telemundo, and simultaneously on the Telemundo App, Peacock, and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean on Telemundo Internacional.

Before being honored with the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award, Sanz will sit down for an exclusive Icon Q&A at the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Week on Oct. 16 in Miami. Tickets for Latin Music Week are now available at BillboardLatinMusicWeek.com.