Earlier this summer, avant-garde musical pioneer Laurie Anderson stopped by Billboard’s first-ever Indie Power Players event at the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan to accept the Indie Icon Award. When I bring it up to her over Zoom a few weeks later, Anderson laughs off the idea of being hailed as one of the GOATs. “That was a little embarrassing – or a lot embarrassing,” she demurs. “Yeah. Icon. But you know, it’s flattering. It was sweet.”

She’s clearly retained some of that Midwestern humility from her childhood in the suburbs of Chicago. But if Laurie Anderson isn’t an indie icon, then who is? After making waves in the New York City art scene since the ‘70s, she brought her uncompromising, idiosyncratic vision to one of the major labels, Warner. Bros., with 1982’s Big Science. A heady, funky mélange of minimalism, electronica and art-pop, the trailblazing classic enjoyed improbable crossover success thanks in large part to its single “O Superman (For Massenet),” which became a No. 2 hit in the U.K. Over the ensuing decades, Anderson has become an influential force in exploring the ways music, technology and performance art intersect. Plus, she’s done everything from voicing a Rugrat to directing films to winning a Grammy.

The lattermost came thanks to Landfall, her 2018 album with the Kronos Quartet. On Friday (Aug. 30), Anderson returns with Amelia, a Nonesuch release that delves into legendary aviator Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated final flight. But while questions such as “what really happened to Amelia Earhart?” and “where did her plane crash?” have recurred throughout popular culture for nearly 90 years, Amelia isn’t interested in answers, or even asking questions. Instead, Anderson – through her indelible mixture of storytelling, sing-speak and dizzying soundscapes – takes us into the cockpit with Earhart throughout the course of her flight, drawing on flight logs, diary entries and contemporary interviews to give a sense of the frightening vastness of the ocean, the thrill and loneliness of exploration and the othering of female pilots in the 1930s. Like much of her work, it’s soothing, unsettling and thought-provoking.

“They called her Lady Lindy, they didn’t even take her seriously,” Anderson says. “But she was doing this really dangerous thing. She was very hands on, unlike Charles Lindbergh, who was a white gloves pilot in many ways. She really was working with the guys under the hood.” It’s that element of Earhart’s life that makes her story feel “super timely” to Anderson, who notes that “girls still aren’t really encouraged to do engineering” nearly 100 years later.

Below, Anderson walks Billboard through this project’s roundabout gestation, why collaborator ANOHNI is perfect “for every project” and her work on a “doomsday comedy” that will serve as Part V to her groundbreaking magnum opus from 1983, United States Live.

When you arrived at Billboard’s Indie Power Players event in June, you gave a surprise performance with this little handmade electronic device in your mouth. How long does it take you to make something like that?

Oh, you know, it’s sorts of time depending on what you’re making. I’m making a few things now for a big show in the fall. Right now, the project that I’m doing called ARK is mind-boggling. There are so many pieces to it that it’s just weird.

What’s ARK?

ARK is a big thing with music pictures and electronics on a stage in a big theater [Factory International] in Manchester, which is going to open in the fall [Nov. 12-24]. And it’s something about the end of the world.

I mean, we could be facing that soon.

Well, it’s kind of in the back of people’s minds. And I really like what’s in the back of people’s minds. It influences you even though you’re not necessarily talking about it. So that’s why I wanted to do that. It’s also — it sounds really stupid — but it’s like a doomsday comedy.

How else does one approach doomsday?

Exactly. That’s what I think. Yeah, yeah.

So Amelia is your new album, but I gather you’ve done this piece before – in 2000 at Carnegie Hall.

That was its distant cousin, let’s say. That was a very long time ago. Those pieces don’t really sound like each other at all. That was something that I was commissioned to do for Carnegie Hall, and then it was kind of horrible, actually. Really. It’s really pretty bad. So I stopped working on it. Then a few years later, the conductor [Dennis Russell Davies] said, “You know, I really liked that piece.” And I said, “You did?!” He said, “Yeah, let’s just do it for string orchestra.” So we did and it sounded pretty cool. Then, in the pandemic, he got back to me again and said, “Let’s record that.” And I really like this conductor a lot. He’s really supportive and cool. So we recorded it, and then I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna put some other stuff on top of this.” And that’s what this record is.

So did Carnegie Hall specifically commission it to be about Amelia Earhart, or was that your choice?

No, they just wanted something about flight, so I chose Amelia. I really got very fond of her working on it. She was she always talking to women — she was like the original blogger, first of all. She was talking to reporters at every stop, she would send telegrams at every stop, and she would write in her pilot’s log and in her diary. She was very conscious of her public. She also married her press agent, which tells you a lot. What I liked the most about her was she said, “You know, if I survive this trip” — and she wasn’t sure if she would — she said, “I want to start shop for girls.” At that point, boys in school took shop, which was like engines and motors and metal and woodworking, and girls took cooking and cleaning. I was like, “Whoa, that’s very cool.” She said, “Girls should find out how engines work, too.” She didn’t live to make that happen. But it was I was very impressed with that because her plane crashed like 87 years ago, on July 2 [1937], and you look at what’s going on now: Girls still aren’t really encouraged to do engineering or government, medicine, politics. It’s just kind of weird that women haven’t made more progress, I think. So anyway, that was an important story to hear now.

It’s timely.

Super timely, especially when we virtually just elected a president who kind of thinks women are stupid. It’s crucial to look at people who did really amazing things. And she was a great pilot. People were very patronizing when she was doing it: they called her Lady Lindy, they didn’t even take her seriously. But she was doing this really dangerous thing. She was very hands on, unlike Charles Lindbergh, who was a white gloves pilot in many ways. She really was working with the guys under the hood. And I really admire that about her. People are always asking me, “How do you work with technology?” And it’s not like it’s so amazing. It’s still [seen as] weird for women to be working with technology.

I hadn’t heard she was called Lady Lindy ‘til I listened to the album. That’s doubly a shame, since he was a racist.

He’s a pretty odd character. And pretty, I think, horrendous in the end. Just a really scary, weird guy. And what a story that he actually killed his son – did you go for that story?

The baby thing?

Yeah, the baby thing and trying to get the organs for his sister. I was like, “Whoa, that’s the weirdest story ever.”

That dovetails a bit with something I wanted to ask. Like the Lindbergh baby, people are still coming up with theories and evidence about the Earhart crash. Not that long ago, someone said they might have found her plane. Did that ever make you think, “hmm, maybe I should address this in the project?”

Oh, no, no. I think some of those are sort of credible but most of them aren’t really. They’re pretty iffy. The very last one? Maybe. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me.

After immersing yourself in her world and travels, do you ever get the urge to visit some of these places – Howland Island, New Guinea – for research? Or have you?

If I could go anywhere, I’d go to the Galapagos. Just to see what that would feel like. But no, I never really felt like going to look for her plane. I’d rather write about certain things than go there. Although that’s not to say that wouldn’t be really, really fun to do.

The album features guest vocals from one of my favorite singers, ANOHNI. What was it about ANOHNI that made her make sense for this project?

She makes sense for every project. I just love her singing. I got to hear her new show a couple weeks ago. So beautiful. I’m just a complete fan. She’s singing in ARK as well; she’s singing the part of the Buddha. It’s so inspiring to work with her.

So Amelia is a “distant cousin” of something you started in 2000. Last year, I saw you perform your Let X=X show at BAM in Brooklyn, and it was absolutely incredible. Similarly, that found you revisiting some of your older work, with Sexmob as your backing band. When you revisit this material, how do you balance the urge to tinker with it and make it different, as opposed to staying true to the spirit of the original piece?

Really good question, because that’s something I’m doing in this project called ARK now, which is subtitled The United States Part V. It’s basically what I see as the empire falling, in a way. But you never know; there are complex ways that things fall apart and then come back into shape, so you never know. There are a couple of things that refer to earlier pieces. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who’s going to notice that but sometimes other people do. It’s a wild project to be doing. But anyway, with Amelia I was very happy with how the orchestra seemed to be almost the ocean in it or the wind. It had this wildness to it that was really fun to work with. I did this backwards, actually. I did the orchestra and then I did drum and bass overdubs. Which is crazy. Tony Scherr, the bass player, I just said, “I want you to improv over the whole thing.” I didn’t play it for him [before]. He just did his part live. He’s an incredible player and he did some really intuitive things. It felt very spontaneous. I loved what he did.

When you’re working on these things, are you a one-take, two-take person, or do you obsess over tweaks and changes?

One hundred percent obsession. It goes on forever. It’s never right. Oh yeah. I love it. I love sitting in the studio and sampling things and playing around and that’s kind of how I put it together. Just a long time alone in the studio. It’s a lot of fun for me to do it like that.

After having a seven-album deal with Warner Bros. back in the day, you’ve been with Nonesuch for a while. Being on an indie must jibe well with your tendency to take your time, as opposed to being forced to hit deadlines to deliver albums.

That’s probably true. Although they didn’t bother me about that at Warner. They didn’t say, “Crank them out, come on!” The time I was [at Warner] there were some real music lovers, and they were just really interested in what I was doing. And at Nonesuch, I feel the same. For me, it depends more on the people than on the actual label. So I didn’t really feel that kind of pressure.

You’ve done a number of performance pieces that haven’t made it to a recording studio. I’m thinking of your 1999 piece Songs and Stories From Moby-Dick. I’ve always been curious, do you ever think about going back to those pieces and making a proper document of it on an album?

No, I don’t. I want to move forward. If there’s a point in incorporating it into anything then I would, but not just to go back and set the record straight.

Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. 

This week: Addison Rae’s major label debut might become a breakout hit, Oasis’ daily streams soar thanks to news of their comeback, and Sabrina Carpenter looks to collect another Short n’ Sweet hit.

Addison Rae Eyes Major Pop Breakthrough With “Diet Pepsi”  

It’s been a few years since she was popping and locking on TikTok — now, we’re the closest we’ve ever been to witnessing Addison Rae’s breakthrough pop star moment. After first capturing the ears of pop listeners with “2 Die 4” and her audacious remix of Charli xcx’s “Von Dutch,” Rae has unleashed “Diet Pepsi,” her major label debut single.

Arriving on Aug. 9, “Diet Pepsi” pulled over 3.05 million official on-demand U.S. streams in its first week of release, according to Luminate. That number rose by 4% the following week (Aug. 16-22), collecting over 3.17 million streams. Although its third week of release (Aug. 23-30) is not yet complete, “Diet Pepsi” is already on track to once again rise in week-over-week streaming activity. From Sunday (Aug. 25) to Monday (Aug. 26), the Elvira-produced track jumped 20.5% in streaming activity, going from approximately 537,000 streams to 647,000 streams. 
 
“Diet Pepsi” is currently playing in around 95,000 posts on TikTok, helping the track reach No. 8 on their Viral 50. The song has also topped Spotify’s USA Viral 50 chart and earned over 2.4 million YouTube views for its official music video. With a few dance trends seeking to truly take off, “Diet Pepsi” is off to a formidable start on streaming that could potentially lead to the social media star’s first commercial hit. – KYLE DENIS

Oasis’ Daily Streams Nearly Quadruple Thanks to 2025 Reunion Announcement

The nearly impossible, the previously unthinkable, is happening: Oasis has announced a reunion, with Liam and Noel Gallagher re-forming the British rock group that made them famous after 15 years and countless verbal jabs at each other. And over the past few days, U.S. music listeners have toasted the unlikely comeback by revisiting (or discovering) the band’s back catalog, nearly quadrupling their daily audio streams in the process.

Click here for the full story on Oasis’ soaring streams. – JASON LIPSHUTZ

“Good Graces” Continues Sabrina Carpenter’s Hot Streak 

“Espresso” reigned as one of the songs of the summer, “Please Please Please” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and “Taste” is her latest smash – but Sabrina Carpenter isn’t letting up anytime soon. On the heels of the release of her new LP, Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter is eyeing an impressive fourth hit from the record.

“Good Graces” — an Ariana Grande-esque kiss-off jam produced by John Ryan and Julian Bunetta – has been getting a lot of attention on streaming, easily becoming one of the most-consumed album tracks upon the album’s full release (Aug. 23). In its first day of release, “Good Graces” earned nearly 3.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams. While the song has yet to cross the three million threshold in the days since, it has pulled over 2.4 million streams everyday this with, including an impressive 2.89 million streams on Monday (Aug. 26).

Given how early it is in the song’s run, there’s no viral dance craze or can’t-miss trend set to its R&B-indebted groove just yet. Nonetheless, the song currently soundtracks over 16,000 clips on TikTok, a substantial portion of which finds fans gushing over how much they love the song. Notably, with 1.6 million views, “Good Graces” is also the Short n’ Sweet album track with the highest-viewed lyric video. 

Between three consecutive smashes and a slew of choices for her next hit, Sabrina Carpenter certainly isn’t dealing with “Slim Pickins” when it comes to pushing Short n’ Sweet. – KYLE DENIS

Streams and sales of Beyoncé’s 2016 Kendrick Lamar-featuring song “Freedom” have continued to rise throughout the last month following its pick as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign theme song for her 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, capturing its biggest streaming day in a month on the day after Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination at the party’s national convention on Aug. 22.

On Aug. 23, streams of “Freedom” ballooned to 159,000 official on-demand U.S. listens, up 43% from 111,000 on Aug. 22, the final day of the Democratic National Convention, according to Luminate. (Incidentally, Aug. 22 was also the day Beyoncé was rumored to be performing at the Chicago convention, the whispers of which did not ultimately ring true.)

A week before on Aug. 16, “Freedom” pulled 49,000 such streams, making that gain far more pronounced: a 224% jump.

Streams of the song accelerated once the convention began on Aug. 19. It earned 51,000 streams on day one, followed by sums of 87,000, 101,000 and 111,000 prior to the accumulation of 159,000 on Aug. 23.

That being said, the Aug. 23 count for “Freedom” isn’t its largest over the last month or so. On July 23, one day after Harris walked out to “Freedom” while visiting her newly minted campaign headquarters, the song scored 205,000 official on-demand streams, then a 646% boost over July 22’s sum of 27,000. It rebounded again on July 25 and 26 following the premiere of a campaign ad featuring the song on July 25, racking up 179,000 and 184,000 streams those two days, respectively.

32% of “Freedom’s” on-demand official streams in the U.S., year-to-date, have occurred in the span of time between when Harris used the song at her first campaign event (July 22) and the day after she accepted the Democratic party’s nomination (Aug. 23). In those 33 days, the song garnered 2.8 million on-demand official streams – of the song’s total 8.8 million earned since the start of the year.

As for sales, “Freedom” jumped 216% in the week ending Aug. 22 to 2,000 downloads sold, spurring its coronation at No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B Digital Song Sales chart dated Aug. 31. The song had never been No. 1 before; it debuted at No. 15 on the May 14, 2016, survey and had not charted since 2019 until it blasted onto the ranking at No. 2 Aug. 3 due to its initial affiliation with Harris’ campaign.

That 2,000-download count also puts “Freedom” at No. 25 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales list, its first time there since the chart dated May 21, 2016.

“Freedom” was released as part of Lemonade, Beyonce’s sixth studio album, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated May 14, 2016. It peaked at No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year.

—Additional reporting by Keith Caulfield

Attending Burning Man is an investment. There’s the $400-plus needed for a ticket; more for the flight or long drive to Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, where the event takes place each August. There’s the money for food, outfits, a bike and the many other supplies needed to survive in the barren setting. Most attendees take time off from work, including a few days on the back end to get home and recover. It’s hot, dusty and often mentally, emotionally and physically draining. A lot of people love it; others say they’d never go, and some simply don’t have the resources to make it happen.

But while the Burning Man Project’s famous mothership event is happening this week (Aug. 26-Sept. 2), another 85 official global Burning Man events, called “Regionals,” have long offered people around the world a chance to Burn more locally. In 2023, 93,000 people attended these global Regionals. There’s Kentucky’s Singe City; Michigan’s Lakes of Fire; and events in Arkansas, Utah, Virginia and approximately 70 other U.S. sites. The biggest Regional, AfrikaBurn, draws roughly 10,000 to Cape Town, South Africa every April. Taiwan’s Turtle Burn launched in 2019. Each July, roughly 400 people gather in the Romanian forest for RoBurn.

Burning Man 2024 has made headlines for not selling out for the first time in years, with tickets usually very difficult to get. (Sources close to the event estimate that roughly 10,000 tickets went unsold this year, bringing the attendance number down to approximately 70,000.) But while many Burners say the extreme heat of 2022 — when daytime temperatures reached 106 degrees — and the headline-making rain of 2023 are reasons many veteran Burners are taking this year off, Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell also points to the generally soft festival market, and to the Regionals.

“The goal has always been to decentralize this, because Black Rock City was never going to have the capacity,” Goodell says. “And with travel challenges, the cost, the heat — it isn’t for everybody. But when I meet people that tell me, ‘Are you f–king kidding me?’ [in regard to going to Black Rock City], I’m like, ‘Well, where do you live?’”

Goodell and Burning Man Project — the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that produces Burning Man and supports the global Burning Man community — has been directing Burners to Regionals since 2007, when the first official offshoot launched in Texas. Regionals had been germinating since 1997, when representatives for Pershing County, where Burning Man is held, sent organizers a huge bill for county services at the end of the event. Groups of Burners offered to fundraise, including one based in Austin, Texas. The internet had just come online, so Goodell created austin@burningman.com to help facilitate the fundraiser, and the first Regional group was born.

“Then I did New York, Canada and Seattle,” she says. “The internet allowed people to leave Burning Man and say, ‘Where are the other Burners?’”

As it turned out, with the global Burning Man network growing in tandem with the growth of the main event, they were everywhere. Soon, groups of Burners were meeting up across the country, placing glowsticks on bar tables to identify themselves and, in doing so, living out the Burner philosophy that it’s not just an event, but a culture that can exist anywhere.

Ignacio Roizman has traveled to Black Rock City from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina many times over the years. Wanting to help bring Burner culture back home, he co-organized Argentina’s Regional, Fuego Austral, in 2016, when two groups of Argentinian Burners who’d been gathering for meetups joined forces to put on a multi-day campout.

“It’s very expensive to get from Argentina to the U.S.; you need a visa, you need the supplies,” Roizman says. “It’s basically an economic and logistical challenge.”

The most recent edition of Fuego Austral, in February, brought roughly 1,000 people to a swath of verdant farmland four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Like in Black Rock City, there was art, music and the ritualistic burning of a man made from wood. (In the past, Israel’s Midburn has set fire to both a man and a woman.)

“The biggest difference between Regionals and Black Rock City,” Roizman continues, “is the intimacy you can create in a space where you have 1,000 people instead of 80,000. By the end of the week, everybody knows each other.” Most Fuego Austral attendees have never been to Black Rock City, although Burners from countries like Brazil, Israel and the U.S. have flown in to attend.

Representees from The Org (as Burning Man Project is called in Burner parlance) advise Regionals on how to organize, with a few primary requirements. One is that events start small, with Goodell saying that even 1,000 people is too big for an inaugural year. Organizers need to have gone to Black Rock City at least once. Like Black Rock City, Regionals must allow children.

“We have a team that decides if the intention is in the right direction and if the people are skilled enough to do it,” says Goodell. “We’ve taken permission away when events looked more like a rave.”

Aspiring Regionals must also abide by Burning Man’s 10 Principles, the social guidelines for existing at a Burning Man event; these rules were in fact created in 2004 as a response to the Regionals. When the Regional network was taking shape in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Goodell put groups on an email thread with late Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey, who answered their questions. Over time, the Principles — which include radical self-reliance and leaving no trace — developed as, Goodell says, “a direct response as to what kind of guidelines would help facilitate a Burning Man event.”

“One of the first questions was, ‘Why can’t we do vending? We want to be a Burning Man event, but we want to sell hot dogs or whatever,’” Goodell recalls. Harvey’s response spurred a discussion that ultimately created the “gifting” and “decommodification” Principles, the latter of which states that “our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.”

The Org also offers practical support, helping Regionals write press releases or find an attorney if legal advice is needed. They step in if a death happens at a Regional (which has happened a handful of times over the years), provide advice on creating a business entity like an LLC and, Goodell says, “sometimes go in to help with drama.

“Different cultures deal with different problems differently,” she adds. “The folks in Sweden, for instance, lean towards more socialist solutions when making decisions. Parts of the United States might be more hierarchical.”

In a more obvious way, most Regionals look very different than Black Rock City, which is famous for its barren environment. For many, this singular landscape is what makes Burning Man Burning Man.

“We’ve asked ourselves that a lot,” Goodell says of whether the intensity of the desert defines the event. “When I first joined the organization, I asked Larry, ‘Why the Black Rock Desert?’ He said it was a practical thing; that when you’re in nature and forced to reflect on yourself and your role in nature, you can see how small you are. Plus [the environment] makes you band with others for your own survival.” 

The philosophy here is thus that Burning Man is not defined by being caked with a layer of dust, but being in the middle of nowhere. (To wit, Spain’s Regional, which takes place in the Monegros Desert, is called Nowhere.)

“Through the evolution of the Regionals, we’ve discovered you really should be as remote as you can, but it can be green rolling hills,” Goodell says. ‘You should not be walking to a store or gas station. To me, that’s more important than the weather being hard.”

A Las Vegas Regional she attended was visible from the road, which, she says, “was a negative.” Miami’s Love Burn, which takes place on the city’s Virginia Key, also has “a lot of challenges” given that attendees can Uber there and stay for a day. Goodell says these shorter experiences are “just not as transformative” as a multi-night event.

But Regional organizers do find ways to build in challenges. Fuego Astral requires attendees to be dropped off at the front gate and then walk across the sprawling site to get to their camp, which makes it so, Roizman says, people “have experienced that sense of overcoming a challenge.”

But while Black Rock City is remote, given that tens of thousands of people arrive there and build a bustling and often very noisy city, it’s not an ideal setting for those who prefer country life.

“Black Rock City has a culture that’s sometimes very urban,” Goodell says. “A lot of people will tell you they’d rather go to Michigan’s Lake of Fire that has 2,500 people instead of 80,000, because they live rural.”

A young Burning Man staffer recently attended Lake of Fire, which happens in Rothbury, Michigan, to help The Org figure out why young people aren’t going to Black Rock City in high numbers. “She feels like the cost is one of the reasons,” says Goodell, who teared up when seeing photos of lights reflecting on a lake at Lakes of Fire in a way that reminded her of Black Rock City. “You don’t have to go to Black Rock City to be touched, create new community, collaborate on art and be together.”

Goodell says for her it’s especially satisfying to see Regionals develop in places like the former Eastern Bloc, where creativity has often been stifled by socio-political circumstances. She says while the Russian and Ukrainian groups are both currently “a bit stunted” because of the war, people from these countries are in attendance this week at Black Rock City. Israel’s Midburn, the second largest Regional after South Africa, typically brings 10,000 people to the desert, but scaled down to about 1,500 this year due to the war. The Thai and South Korean Regionals are produced largely by expats, although Goodell says that “we really would prefer locals produce the Burning Man culture and not the traveling expats.”

The goal with the Regionals is simply to keep growing them. This past April, the European Leadership Summit Gathering happened in Talinn, Estonia and brought 30 staffers and 200 Burners from Europe and beyond together for panels and networking. Estonian Burner and Summit attendee Pille Heido says the experience provided the education and inspiration to “make sure people don’t just focus on that one event in the desert in August, which is great, but make sure there’s other things you can do outside of it as well.”

Goodell says additional funding for Burning Man Project would help spur the Regionals network, with South America and Asia being regions “that could use more encouragement.”

But where this money will come from is, she says, “the 10-million-dollar question.” While Burning Man Project raised $8 million in 2023 through ticket sales and philanthropy, “We’re absolutely at a point where we’re going to need to have a conversation about the longer-term method.” Goodell says a donation model “is the next bridge. Someone who doesn’t go to Back Rock City might still give $250.”

But while that evolution of that issue is yet to be seen, Goodell says Black Rock City being down in population this year is, in a way, a sign of health. “We’re proud of the fact that people are like, ‘I went to my Regional this year, so I’m taking a year or two off.”