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The way pop singer/songwriter Troye Sivan describes his new album Something to Give Each Other, it’s really about “every sort of connection being beautiful in its own way, and of togetherness and community and joy.”
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen to Sivan’s interview, below), the musician and actor says that he wrote the just-released project “over a long period of time” and realized at one point that “the overarching themes of the last two-and-a-half-three years of my life are mostly really joyous themes.”
Sonically, Sivan says the only intent with the new album was that he knew he was very “drawn to warmth.” He says in the past, it’s “sort of been like this melancholy warmth, and this time I didn’t feel that way.”
“I talk a lot about Janet Jackson,” Sivan tells Pop Shop hosts Katie and Keith, “because she’s so important to me, but I saw her show at the Hollywood Bowl really early on in the process. And, to me, it took me right back to when was I was like, however old I was, I was probably like 7… hearing ‘Together Again’ for the first time. And that melody and those chords and the warmth that’s in that song literally changed the trajectory of my life. The trajectory of my life as a musician and as a songwriter, specifically. And that’s something that I was really really striving for [on the new album]. I wanted something warm.”
The album’s lead single “Rush” brought the warmth – and the heat! – when it was released in July. It reached the top 40 on the Billboard Global 200 chart and hit the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The “scorching” track was accompanied by an equally hot, dance-heavy music video, directed by Gordon von Steiner (who also “creative directed” the album) and lensed by cinematographer Stuart Winecoff (who also photographed Something’s album cover).
But the video didn’t necessarily come easy, Sivan says. “First things first, considering all of my references for a good pop star growing up, were those who made these mega mega mega videos where the budgets were very very different from what they are now. I had so many times, in so many meetings (where people said), like ‘music videos don’t matter, the music is dead,’ and I pushed and pushed and pushed and I’m so grateful that we go to make the music video of my dreams for ‘Rush’ … It went wider than I think anything ever has of mine before, and that’s really cool. I’m very grateful and thankful.”
“Rush” was followed by two more buzzy singles and videos, both from the von Steiner and Winecoff teaming: “Got Me Started” (which features Sivan and his co-stars dancing through Bangkok) and “One of Your Girls” (in which Sivan is seen through a whole new light, alongside his main co-star, musician and actor Ross Lynch).
With Something to Give Each Other now out for fans to listen to, will Sivan bring that special Something on tour soon? Though he doesn’t have a plan yet, he’s thinking about it – and he’s feeling the pressure. “I’m intimidated because … when this tour happens, I want it to be the tour of my life. I really do. And I want to give the big pop show that I think this album is asking for, and these visuals [his music videos] are asking for. And so it’s a big job. … So, I’m gonna take a second and regroup and then figure it out. For some reason, I really really really feel the pressure, I really do.”
Also on the new edition of the Pop Shop Podcast, we’ve got chart news how Drake pulls double-debut duty at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on Billboard Hot 100 songs chart thanks to For All the Dogs and “First Person Shooter,” featuring J. Cole, respectively. Plus, Keith details his experience being at opening night of Madonna’s The Celebration Tour in London on Oct. 14, while Katie recounts what it was like attending the red carpet premiere of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film on Oct. 12 in Los Angeles.
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 executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, 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.)
INXS got the band back together this week, for a few hours at least, to celebrate the release of several, special new projects.
The surviving band members — Garry Gary Beers, Kirk Pengilly and brothers Andrew, Jon and Tim Farriss — gathered Tuesday (Oct. 17) at Sydney’s Intercontinental Hotel, towering over Sydney Harbour and all its famous landmarks, for a rare reunion — their first since 2017.
The chaps were relaxed and chatty as they flicked through old photos, wound back the years.
Some of those memories are preserved in Calling All Nations, a new 400-plus “love letter” created by a global fanbase and the band. UMG’s Andrew Kronfeld and Live Nation’s Arthur Fogel contributed essays.
Until the project came together, the artists had “no idea how much it meant to so many individual fans. It wasn’t always about the show,” recounts Pengilly. Those tales include deeper, shared experiences of road trips “driving six hours to meet their friends to get ready to go to the gig. And then, you know, they might just somehow meet us backstage or have an interaction and a look from one of us on stage,” and “they feel a connection. Yeah, I found it really emotional.”
Bass player Beers, now based in California, relished the chance to meet his old bandmates on home soil. He offers a different glimpse at the life of a group on the rise, and their connection with fans. “Being broke and young back in the day, we used to take up offers to go to people’s houses and eat their food. So, you got to meet a lot of people. When you look back at the book, you remember that we did matter to people, not just musically, or for successes. People helped us along in many ways.”
A partnership of Petrol Records, UMe, uDiscover Music and This Day In Music Books, Calling All Nations is available via INXS.com in three configuration — the standard “First Edition” hardback book, a limited-edition “Deluxe” boxset, and an extremely limited-edition “Super Deluxe” box, hand-signed by the members of INXS.
Also on the release slate, All Juiced Up – Part 2, a collection of nine limited edition colored vinyl 12” records featuring remixes of classic INXS songs, including “Need You Tonight,” “Listen Like Thieves” and “New Sensation,” plus the 30th anniversary edition of Full Moon Dirty Hearts, for which Giles Martin has created an exclusive, immersive audio edition; it’s due out Nov. 2.
The last time the surviving band members were in a room together, prior to this week, was for the celebration of their 40th anniversary, in 2017, when they were honored for 50 million global record sales at the State Theatre masquerade party.
Formed in Western Australia in 1977, INXS scaled the highest mountain of popular music with six U.K. top 10 albums (including a No. 1 with Welcome To Wherever You Are from 1992) and five U.S. top 20 albums, a BRIT Award (in 1991 for best international group) and, in 2001, elevation into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
The band’s journey was tragically derailed by the 1997 death of lead singer Michael Hutchence, at the age of just 37, though INXS continued with replacement singers.
In Sydney, talk turned to Hutchence, and “seventh member” Chris Murphy, who died in 2021, aged 66. “Chris was hungry,” recounts Pengilly. “He just took no prisoners”.
The question every fan, or reporter, would ask INXS is on a return to live performances. A tour, perhaps, or a one-off show at an iconic venue. The answer isn’t a flat no.
Beers put his hand up (“I really miss playing with these guys”). Tim Farriss’ fretting hand, however, isn’t what it was following a grim injury to his left ring finger back in 2015. “We loved every bit of it,” notes Pengilly of the band’s journey. “But you know, we did it all.”
INXS called time on touring in 2012, with a gig where it all started – in Perth.
“To be fair to us is that,” comments Andrew Farriss, “as people losing someone as talented, dynamic a frontman as Michael, it became really in the forefront of our minds that, okay, we’ve created this legacy and we own it. And so we’ll decide when we want to play or not. That’s the important point, to not have it dictated to what we can and can’t do when we feel like it.”
The other side of the coin, “which is appealing to me,” he adds, “is who that singer could possibly be. There must be someone that we haven’t even thought of or discovered or found it. That could be an amazing thing to happen.”
In a surprise for the band members, Universal Music Australia president Sean Warner presented INXS with global awards for four billion streams, featuring a powerful Indigenous “full moon” design. A sixth award was forged for the late Hutchence.
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Oppenheimer is going digital. Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster will be released on digital streaming platforms and Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD on Nov. 21.
The streaming and Blu-ray release dates were announced on Tuesday (Oct. 17). Oppenheimer will be available to stream on Prime Video, Apple TV+, Xfinity, Verizon Fios and other platforms next month.
Pre-orders for the digital release will reportedly begin on Oct. 18, according to Vudu, Fandango’s streaming website. The Blu-ray is currently up for pre-order at Best Buy and will be available at Amazon, Target and Walmart.
Nolan wrote and directed the film, which is about theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” Cillian Murphy stars as Oppenheimer.
Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh and Casey Affleck are included in the cast.
“I view Oppenheimer as the most important person who ever lived,” Nolan said in an interview with CBS earlier this year. “Oppenheimer’s story is one of the biggest stories imaginable.”
“By unleashing atomic power, he gave us the power to destroy ourselves that we never had before, and that changes the human equation,” Nolan added.
Oppenheimer was adapted from the 2005 novel American Prometheus. The film was released the same day as Barbie on July 21. With so many fans opting for the #Barbieheimer double feature during opening weekend, Oppenheimer debuted in second place behind Barbie and has raked in nearly $1 billion at the box office.
You’ll have to wait another month before you can buy and stream Oppenheimer, but if you want to dive deeper into the film, purchase the official screenplay below.
NFL fans seem to have mixed feelings about all the coverage Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s relationship is getting across various sports broadcasts, but Thursday Night Football announcer Al Michaels is all for it.
“We love it, man,” Michaels told Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night, during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Swift attended last week’s Thursday night game between Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, once again making headlines for sharing a suite with Travis’ mother, Donna Kelce, and hugging Brittany Mahomes, wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
“We had to be judicious,” Michaels told Kimmel about figuring out how best to address Swift’s presence on the Prime Video broadcast. “We had the game last Thursday night in Kansas City. We knew she’d be there. So how much do you show her? She’d been on twice, and football fans were going, ‘Enough.’ But we were praying she’d come into the booth and sing for us,” he said with a laugh.
Kimmel played a clip of Michaels fumbling his words while trying to describe Swift on the broadcast, as he settled on calling her Kelce’s “good buddy and girlfriend.”
“So is she his good buddy or his girlfriend, Al?” Kimmel said, ribbing the announcer. “You can’t be both!”
“You know, you’re doing a game like that, I know the Internet’s gonna blow up,” Michaels said. “Page Six is waiting for whatever I say. You know what I really wanted to say? ‘Fiancee.’ I didn’t because I figured Travis would beat me up at the end of the game. … Or [Swift] would have beat me up.”
In the end, Michaels and company wanted to make sure football came first in the broadcast. “It’s hard because people tune in to watch a football game,” he said. “I’m not doing Access Hollywood.”
Following Thursday’s game, Swift and Kelce confirmed their long-rumored relationship by attending the Saturday Night Live afterparty over the weekend hand-in-hand. (Find a full timeline of their relationship so far here.)
Watch Michaels’ Kimmel appearance below:
Carla Bley, leader of the free jazz movement, pianist and composer, has died following complications from brain cancer, according to The New York Times. She was 87 years old.
The Oakland, Calif., native and five-time Grammy nominee was born Karen Borg, and changed her name to Carla in 1957. She married jazz pianist Paul Bley that same year, and kept his last name even after the couple divorced in 1967. Throughout their marriage, the couple toured together and Paul Bley’s 1964 album Barrage featured Carla’s compositions entirely.
Throughout her career, Bley released albums as a bandleader and collaborator. She’s had three albums hit the top 20 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart, with Carla’s Christmas Carols (in collaboration with Andy Sheppard and The Partyka Brass Quintet) peaking at No. 16 in 2009, Andando El Tiempo (in collaboration with Sheppard and Steve Swallow) peaking at No. 14 in 2019 and Trios (with Sheppard and Swallow) peaking at No. 19 in 2013. Two of her solo albums, Heavy Heart and The Very Big Carla Bley Band, peaked at No. 27 and 25 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Albums chart, respectively.
She was also prominent in the jazz music business, as she was involved in organizing the Jazz Composers Guild in 1964. She also founded record labels JCOA Records and the ECM-distributed Watt. She worked with Michael Mantler — whom she was married to until 1991 — to open the nonprofit New Music Distribution Service, which expanded JCOA, ECM and other labels to larger audiences.
Bley released her final album, a collaborative project with Sheppard and Swallow titled Life Goes On, in 2020.
She was also decorated with awards throughout her life, receiving the 1972 Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition. In 2015, she received the NEA Jazz Masters Award.
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