Billboard’s Carl Lamarre spoke with H.E.R. on the red carpet of the 2022 GRAMMY Awards about her GRAMMY win, getting her album ready, touring and who she’s excited to see tonight.
Camila Cabello shared a note on social media about how it feels to be followed by the paparazzi in her personal time at the beach.
While paparazzi snapshots of the singer in a bikini circulated on the internet Saturday (April 2), she took a moment to address what she goes through when she just wants to enjoy some time in nature.
“Every time I’ve gone to this beach club in Miami I get papped – somehow when I check in paps know and get me in my bikini and every time I’ve felt super vulnerable and unprepared,” wrote Cabello, whose new album Familia is due out on April 8. “I’ve worn bikinis that were too small and paid no mind to how I looked, then saw pictures online and comments and been so upset.”
“I reminded myself when it impacted my self esteem that I was thinking the culture’s thoughts and not my own. A culture who has gotten so used to an image of what a ‘healthy’ woman’s body looks like that is completely not real for a lot of women. Photoshop, restrictive eating, over exercising, and choosing angles that make our bodies look different than how they are in the moment and in their natural form, when we take a deep breath, when we eat a meal, when we allow waves to tussle us around,” she said.
“I remind myself of this, listen to podcasts on intuitive eating, follow women who accept their cellulite, stretch marks, bellies, bloating, and weight fluctuations… and still, I’m a single woman in her 20s in the middle of a s— ton of promo and I want to feel like I look ‘good,’” Cabello admitted.
“Today I got a new bikini, a whole f—in cute outfit, put lip gloss on, and didn’t eat anything too heavy before going in the OCEAN cause I knew it was gonna be basically a whole photoshoot,” wrote Cabello. “I held my core so tight my abs hurt and didn’t breathe and barely smiled and was so self conscious of where the paps were the whole time i couldn’t let go and relax and do what we’re meant to do when we go out into nature. I tried to pretend they weren’t there but I couldn’t and I held my breath from my sun chair in the ocean.”
The “Bam Bam” singer then described seeing children playing at the beach with “no self consciousness” and noted that her goal was to “get back to feeling like 7 year old me on the beach” — “happy, silly, breathing, pretending to be a mermaid, FREE.”
“I knew I looked ‘good’ in the pictures and thought I would feel accomplished and yet I’ve never had a worse time at the beach,” Cabello said.
“I’m not yet at the point in my journey where I can not give a f—,” she added.
Cabello’s upcoming 12-track Familia album features collaborations with Ed Sheeran (“Bam Bam”), Willow (“Psychofreak”), Maria Becerra (“Hasta Los Dientes”) and Yotuel (“Lola”).
See her full note below.
— camila (@Camila_Cabello) April 2, 2022
The week before the Oscar ceremony, director David Leitch — in a stroke of unintentional good timing — withdrew as the director of a planned Netflix movie Fast and Loose, starring Will Smith. Instead, he moved onto Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling, for Universal, which is supposed to start production in August.
A source says Netflix was competing with Universal to be the next project for Leitch, but Universal pulled ahead. According to sources, Netflix put out an urgent call for another director to take over a project featuring the star who was heavily favored to win best actor at the Oscars. But soon after Smith’s attack on Chris Rock on the Oscars stage, Netflix quietly moved the project to the back burner.
Fast and Loose was to tell the story of a crime boss who loses his memory after an attack. Piecing together clues, he discovers that he has led a double identity as a wealthy kingpin and a broke CIA agent. It appears that Netflix was understandably wary of moving forward. It is unclear whether it will try to make the project with another star and director.
Smith now has Apple+’s slave escape drama Emancipation in post-production. The streamer had planned a 2022 debut but has not dated its release. Apple declined to comment. Otherwise, Bad Boys 4 at Sony had been in active development — Smith received 40 pages of the script prior to the Oscars — but will now pause, a source said. A few other projects in pre-production are likely to do the same. Netflix did not respond to requests for comment.
In his April 1 statement resigning from the Academy, Smith said, “Change takes time and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”
Smith, Gosling and Leitch are all CAA clients.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Elton John credits teenage AIDS victim Ryan White and his family with saving his life.
The singer told the crowd at his concert at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Friday (April 1) that spending time around White’s family caused him to make changes in his life. White was from Indiana.
“I knew that my lifestyle was crazy and out of order. And six months later, I got sober and clean and have been ever since,” John said.
He said White’s family was the catalyst for him to change.
“I cannot thank them enough, because without them, I’d probably be dead,” the singer said, WTHR-TV reported.
White died in Indianapolis at age 18 on April 8, 1990. He had contracted HIV years earlier through a tainted blood transfusion. His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, continues to share a close relationship with John, who acknowledged her presence at the concert.
“I love you so much,” John said. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me. This song is for you.”
He then began playing “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”
Harry Styles‘ new single “As It Was” has set a new Spotify record in its first day of release.
On Saturday (April 2), Spotify confirmed that “As It Was” is now the most-streamed song in the United States in a single day, with 8.3 million streams, a record that was formerly held by Olivia Rodrigo‘s “Drivers License” (8 million streams).
Styles’ new song is also now the most-streamed song globally on Spotify in a single day for 2022 so far, with 21.6 million streams. That number of streams tops Anitta‘s “Envolver,” which saw 8.6 million single-day streams in March.
“As It Was,” which dropped on March 31, is the first taste of Styles’ upcoming third album, Harry’s House. The 13-track album is scheduled for a May 20 release.
“I feel very lucky that this is the proudest I’ve been of something that I’ve made so far,” he recently said of the project in an interview on Sirius XM‘s The Morning Mash Up. “I feel the most comfortable I’ve been with myself and happiest with what I’m making.”
See Spotify’s Harry Styles update below.
You know it’s not the same As It Was. @Harry_Styles just broke some records 🏆 pic.twitter.com/VT2cq87Vg0
— Spotify (@Spotify) April 2, 2022
Editors note: In this series, Billboard Dance is speaking with each 2022 Grammy nominee from the dance/electronic categories ahead of the 64th Annual Grammy Awards on April 3 in Las Vegas.
While he’s not yet taken home a Grammy, Bonobo is a clear favorite amongst the dance/electronic categories at the awards. The Los Angeles-based producer, born Simon Green, has five total nominations across the two categories going back the past four years, a timeline that parallels these categories shifting away from bombastic EDM and towards the subtler form of IDM that has long been Green’s signature.
This year his chances of winning are doubled, with Bonobo showing up twice in the best dance/electronic recording category. One nomination is for his own “Heartbreak” — a smartly euphoric slice of U.K. rave made in collaboration with Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs released as a single in September 2020 through his own Outlier Records. The other is for his work with Icelandic composer/producer Ólafur Arnalds on Arnalds’ ambient “Loom,” which is also up for the award this year.
While Green thus holds a roughly 30% chance of winning, he says he’s less concerned with which producer takes home the trophy and more excited about “all of us getting to DJ in our suits and having a party” on Sunday (April 3) in Las Vegas.
Where was “Heartbreak” made, and when?
We made it in L.A., with Orlando. We actually started it in his studio. He lived up in Beachwood Canyon at the time. It started off as a kind of demo that he had. We started working on it together and I added the vocal part and brought the sample in. Between our two studios — I’m over on the east side of L.A. and he’s up in the hills — we finished it over summer 2019. Then we just kind of sat on it for a little while and decided to put it out.
Why did you release it when you did?
I thought it could be a good way to start my Outlier Record label, because it was more club focused. But I felt that even though there were no clubs open, it was 2020, that whole thing, I was trying to put dance floor music out even though there was no dancing. Like, let’s try and make it sort of a celebration anyways?
Besides Orlando, who was the first person you played it for and how did they react?
Actually, I did get a chance to play it out, like in March of 2020. I still played a couple of shows. One of them was Elsewhere in Brooklyn. I got like, one opportunity to play it out before everything shut down.
How did the audience react?
Good. It’s a very euphoric tune, especially that long breakdown and build up. It worked really well, so I was excited to keep playing for the rest of 2020, and then didn’t have the opportunity until about six months ago.
Did you know when you made it that it was special or a “hit”?
I was hoping. I didn’t really know. I thought that it had the ingredients to be something special. I knew that it was probably going to work really well on the dance floor and that was the kind of whole focus of it, to make something that was really for the club and to create one of those special moments in the club.
It must have been especially special to play it again all this time later. Did it take on a different meaning when you got to do that?
Yeah, it does. The whole thing with “Heartbreak” is that it was a dance floor song with a very sentimental lyric. So yeah, it fit with the times quite perfectly. It’s a Class Action sample, which is the “can’t take the heartbreak” vocal. But I think a lot of those tunes that didn’t get to be played in 2020, they’re still valid to play now. Even if they didn’t get the exposure at the time, it’s good to play them out.
Why do you think the track appealed to Grammy voters?
It has that sort of euphoria. It’s a good time, that song. I think it represents club music in a good place.
What were you doing when you found out you were nominated?
I was in the studio working on some stuff and my phone started going off. It started blowing up, and I didn’t know what was going on. I was getting people going, “Congrats! That’s amazing news.” I was like, “What news?” There were a lot of people texting me without any context, assuming that I knew what was happening, but I didn’t. I had to piece it together. It’s either good or bad news, when you get 100 text messages from everyone you know.
The collection of tracks nominated this year is really sonically diverse, from EDM to IDM to rave to dance pop. What’s your take on quite disparate styles of dance music competing against each other in the same category?
I’m not familiar with every tune in this category, I have to be honest. But I like that there’s ambient Icelandic music in there along with Tiësto. Perhaps the diversity could have been more across the genders.
Right. There are no female producers nominated in this category in 2022, and this isn’t the first year that this has happened. How do you explain the lack of female artists represented here?
I don’t know. I’m not super familiar with the Grammys. It’s not something I grew up with that much. I’m not sure how those systems are in place, but I feel like that especially after the last few years, if they’re not getting it now, then I don’t know what to say. There are more and more women in music, especially in electronic music, now more than ever, so it would be nice to see more representation in those categories.
Do you think male artists have a responsibility to create greater equality in the scene, and if so how can they do that?
Absolutely. If you’re somebody in a position to be programming festivals or parties, I think that’s on you to create that inclusivity. If you’re making playlists or in any sort of curatorial position in dance music, then that’s your responsibility as well.
Would you like to see the Recording Academy in any way expand or update the way they handle electronic music?
I’m not sure. I don’t really know how it works with the Grammys, because I don’t feel like I really sort of represent them in a way. I don’t know how it really works, to suggest how it could work going forward. It’s such a huge category, and I think that perhaps the Grammys is more catered towards the pop categories and more a binary recognition of commercial success in those categories. That’s not necessarily how it works with dance music. I think electronic is a very new category to the Grammys and something they’re catching up with as a cultural shift. I think they’re still kind of finding their feet with it and still trying to understand the genre a bit.
You’re competing against yourself in this category, with your collaboration on Ólafur Arnalds’ “Loom.” Which song do you want to win?
I don’t really care, honestly. I’m just in it for all of us getting to DJ in our suits and having a party. I never set out to get the Grammy, but it’s great to be recognized. The nomination is great. There are people who maybe wouldn’t be paying attention to you that are now. I think that in itself is excellent and we get to have a fun night in Vegas.
What’s the best Grammy afterparty you’ve ever been to?
They haven’t generally been the best parties I’ve been to. There have been some fun ones. I like the energy of it, even when I wasn’t nominated. Just being around it when it’s in Los Angeles is quite fun to dip into. It’s this side of L.A. that even though I live there, I don’t see very often. It’s nice to get a foot into that world of glitzy Hollywood. It’s a very fun thing to do for a weekend.
If you win, how will you celebrate?
We’ll probably crash the televised event so I can acknowledge my family on TV.

