Jake Shimabukuro is still pinching himself. And Mick Fleetwood is smiling ear to ear.

That’s how the two are feeling as they bring out Blues Experience, a collaborative album that finds the ukulele virtuoso and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer exploring the blues over nine tracks – one of which is a moving tribute to Fleetwood’s late Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie.

“I’m really excited about this project,” Shimabukuro tells Billboard via Zoom from Hawaii, where he lives (and where he met Fleetwood, another Hawaii resident). “It’s such a departure from anything I’ve ever done, but I love that because it really feels like I learned a lot from this experience. In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that this album would exist someday. And I love those kinds of things…the most unlikely collaborations or combinations coming together to do something very different and unique.”

Fleetwood — who has some 40 ukuleles hanging on the walls of his home as decorations — adds that the appeal for him was to work with someone he calls “an explorer. He’s fascinated with music. He comes from a very traditional musical background, but he’s done an extraordinary amount of projects with anyone from Neil Young to Bette Midler, all this strange, bizarre, super-eclectic stuff that’s obviously intrigued him on his journey. That’s what led to, ‘What can a funny old drummer — me — do with someone like this?’”

Fleetwood and Shimabukuro had met a number of times over the years, establishing a friendly relationship. “We basically were passing in the night for years, always saying, ‘We’ve got to do something together,’” recalls Fleetwood. Meeting up again at a Shimabukuro show in Maui during early 2023 put the idea on the front-burner for both, and by March they were in a studio Fleetwood has near his home, with “no pressure, no agenda, just to get in there to see what happens.” Four songs in four days — “recording everything live and just experimenting and having a lot of fun,” according to Shimabukuro — proved they were creatively in sync. Shimabukuro was even happy to plug into a vintage Fender Princeton amplifier that helped him craft a sound that “really seemed to work nicely for this genre and this style.”

Playing blues was a no-brainer, even if it’s something Shimabukuro had not done to a great extent before. “First, Mick’s the iconic blues drummer,” he explains. “I’ve always loved that style of music, that style of playing the guitar, that kind of phrasing. I mean, one of my all-time favorite Jimi Hendrix tunes is his version of ‘Red House’ when I was young. So it was in me.”

Shimabukuro also acknowledges the influence on his playing of “Uncle” Joseph Kekuku, the 19th century acknowledged inventor of the steel guitar. “I’m not playing slide on my ukulele, but this album kind of brings it back to what he did and what I learned from that. It’s kind of a throwback but at the same time is progressive.”

Fleetwood says that his cohort “was very privy to the pedigree of early Fleetwood Mac and Peter Green. So that became sort of the template of the conversation, or at least the overview. He’s very passionate about what he does, and anything with passion in it, in my quiet opinion, is connected to the blues. He’s an incredibly, technically capable player, period, and he has a whole other world of looking at things in a different way, where you actually pay attention to where the blues come from. So this album ended up being a combination of his natural self, which is a huge catalog of technical ability, and what it is that I do.”

Blues Experience isn’t strictly blues, mind you; there are renditions of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” for instance, as well as Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” But the bulk of the set hews that way, including the Shimabukuro original “Kula Blues,” and the Stevie Wonder-written, Jeff Beck-popularized “‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” a personal favorite of Shimabukuro’s that features Sonny Landreth on slide guitar. Keyboardist Mark Johnstone from the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band plays on a couple of tracks, while bassist Jackson Waldhoff and keyboardist Michael Grande play throughout the album.

The album’s most stunning moment, however, is its closing, a rendering of Christine McVie’s Fleetwood Mac signature song “Songbird” followed by a spoken word coda by Fleetwood, mourning McVie’s death on Nov. 30, 2022. It’s a three-hanky musical elegy, even though Fleetwood says “that wasn’t the intention.”

“‘Songbird’ came out of the blue, and we couldn’t not include it,” Fleetwood says. “It was around the time when Christine had passed, and we found ourselves doing that song, which was not predetermined. To me that was very poignant. I was very pregnant with the loss of Christine, and the fact that we were singing it but not singing it reminded me of Peter Green; he had a great natural voice, but he also sang through his instrument. It was very emotional and also in those moments was a prayer, for sure. Christine was a huge loss for me and for millions and millions of people.”

Saluting McVie on a blues album was also appropriate, Fleetwood adds. “She was a blues player,” he says. “She came up through the ranks, playing with Freddie King. And she was an extraordinarily passionate songwriter; just when you thought she was on a journey into the pop world she’ll go out and lay something on you like ‘Songbird’ that really is a lament…which is of course connective to the blues.

“Before we lost Christine there were some intentions that Fleetwood Mac would’ve found a way to say goodbye…but we didn’t. It was unthinkable for (the band) to do any more. Stevie (Nicks) has been able to do that in many ways on the big excursion that she’s doing; she’s been able to do what Fleetwood Mac was not. All of that was like a sort of tsunami of feeling as we did that song. But it was also very healing, and a kind of closure.”

Fleetwood and Shimabukuro played some of the Blues Experience songs live at We Are Friends — A Maui Wildfire Benefit Concert on the island last year, and they both voice a desire to perform together again. They’re also up to collaborate more, though Shimabukuro claims that “I would never want to get greedy and ask for another project like this from him — but if he brought it up and said, ‘Man, let’s do another one,’ are you kidding me? Oh my goodness, that would be a dream come true, like winning the lottery twice.”

The odds are better than that, however. “If Jake knocked on the door and said, ‘I’m actually not on the road,’ I would always be open to doing something,” Fleetwood affirms. In the meantime, he’s working on an album of his own, collaborating with an “interesting” corps of other artists (he mentions Girl In Red specifically) and even employing some of those ukuleles from the wall.

“It’s petrifying,” Fleetwood acknowledges, “but it’s actually turning out to be really interesting. I’m having a lot of fun doing that, and my heart is saying ‘you need to do more.’ Doing this (album) with Jake did me a lot of good. It was really the trigger of ‘you can do this.’ It’s very therapeutic, and I’ve actually learned to express myself in little areas I never knew was there, and to whatever avail doesn’t really matter. It’s just about doing it, and then we’ll see what it leads to.”

After much fun and many late nights, the 2024 Ibiza season has come to a close. Some tracks commanded the dance floor more than others, with the 40 most-played songs over the summer at island clubbing mecca Pacha counted down below.

While the list includes a few global hits, like Tyla’s “Water,” and a few classic capital-B bangers (see: Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”), the list is largely composed of underground dance music made by known stars and emerging producers alike.

“Pacha Ibiza has its own singular sounds, driven by the world’s best DJs, and is where music lovers first discover new artists and new, previously unheard of, tracks” Aloki Batra, FIVE Hospitality and The Pacha Group CEO, tells Billboard.  

The data that created this list was collected by KUVO in partnership with DJ Monitor, which installs technology in clubs like Pacha that functions much like Shazam, identifying tracks within its library. This library is comprised of a database of nearly 80 million songs submitted to DJ Monitor by PROs, which allows DJ Monitor to create setlists with 93% accuracy, the company reports.

FIVE Holdings acquired the Pacha Group in 2023 in a deal worth approximately $330 million. The deal encompassed the Ibiza flagship club, which opened in 1973, along with two hotel island hotel properties, Toy Room Club, which has multiple locations in Europe, India and the Middle East and WooMoon Storytellers, a party that happens primarily in Ibiza and Tulum. 

2024 resident DJS at Pacha included Solomun, Marco Carola, Bedouin and many more. This year the club was also graced with the presence of stars including Katy Perry, Rita Ora, Jason Statham, Naomi Campbell, Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz and many others, the club reports.

“Pacha Ibiza believes in the universal language of music uniting a global community of music lovers for over 50 years. The central ethos of Pacha Ibiza remains the same as we move into a new chapter of our time tested values of love, joy, connection, celebration, inclusiveness and diversity. This is evident in Pacha Ibiza’s legendary Flower Power party that is reimagined for a new era in 2024 while preserving its core essence. Evolving from its roots, today’s Flower Power celebrations blend nostalgia with contemporary happy house sounds, offering an immersive experience that transcends generations.” 

The Top 40 Songs Played at Pacha Ibiza in 2024

Rita Ora‘s latest concert featured an emotional tribute to Liam Payne, who died at age 31 on Wednesday (Oct. 16) after falling from the third floor of his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Taking the stage in Japan within hours of the tragedy, the singer/actress struggled to get through the words of “For You,” her 2018 collaboration with the former One Direction star for the Fifty Shades Freed movie. Looking visibly emotional in videos captured by fans, Ora ended up having the crowd sing the lyrics for her as she walked with her head bowed, at one point turning her back to the audience and looking up at the ceiling.

She then sat down on a riser and attempted to sing the final pre-chorus before cutting out again. “I can’t even sing this right now — can you do it for me?” she said, pointing into the crowd before covering her face with her hands.

As a black-and-white photo of Ora and Payne in the studio flashed on the screen behind her, the Descendants: The Rise of Red star watched her fans sing the chorus for a minute more before mouthing, “I’m sorry,” and walking off the stage with her arms folded over her chest.

“For You” reached No. 76 on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to appearing on the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack, the collaboration also found homes on Payne’s debut solo album LP 1 and Ora’s Phoenix.

Shortly after news of Payne’s death came to light, Ora wrote on Instagram that “For You” takes on “a whole new meaning for me now.”

“He had the kindest soul, I will never forget,” she added, sharing photos of herself and the “Strip That Down” artist. “I loved working with him so much – he was just such a joy to be around on and off stage. This tragic news breaks my heart.”

Countless other musicians and fans have also shared messages of shock and grief on social media over the past 24 hours, with two of Payne’s other collaborators — Zedd and J Balvin — speaking out as well. The X Factor alum’s former school recently posted a statement remembering his “positive impact” on the community in which he grew up (Wolverhampton, England), while his family told the BBC, “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul. We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”

A recent preliminary autopsy confirmed that Payne died from multiple traumas and hemorrhages obtained from the impact of his fall. Police are still investigating what happened, but initially reported finding substances in the star’s room that appeared to be narcotics and alcohol.

See Ora’s tribute to Payne below.