Hey there, dance fanatics. It’s been another week, and with it comes a slew of hot new tunes to get us through the weekend. There’s noise from Tiesto as well as Dua Lipa and the icon Elton John, plus we took a close look at the new album from UK house stars Jungle — but wait! There’s more.

Here are six more saucy singles that’ll light up your life.

Love Regenerator & Eli Brown, “We Can Come Together”

Now that Calvin Harris has given us his annual summer dance-pop jam (“By Your Side”), he’s heading back to the club. The Scottish super-producer launched his new, rave-ready Love Regenerator alias in January 2020, releasing 10 original tracks in six months, including the adrenaline-rushing Moving EP with UK up-and-comer Eli Brown. After a yearlong hiatus, Love Regenerator is back and reunited with Brown on new single “We Can Come Together.” A club and festival anthem in waiting as ravers slowly return to once-empty dance floors, “We Can Come Together” swells with pure piano house euphoria that could breach tear ducts with its vocal call for unity: “I feel the time has come for us to come together/ I realize that only we can make it better.” — KRYSTAL RODRIGUEZ

Justin Martin – “Eye of the Storm”

Harp house is so 2021 — at least, that’s how we feel after diving headfirst into Justin Martin’s latest groove. “Eye of the Storm” is a bass-fueled boiler; a real churning hurricane of cool. A trudging synth slowly builds in pitch, creating a mad sense of anticipation, then a woman’s voice claims to be “changing the cultural DNA.” It’s a big statement, but it all comes into place when the center hits, and that gorgeous, funkadelic melody breaks the dam.

“There is a serene beauty that always takes place in the eye of a storm, amidst all the violent chaos that surrounds it,” Martin is quoted in a press release. “Capturing that extreme juxtaposition was my goal.”

“Eye of the Storm” is Martin’s sixth release from his new label What To Do. Catch the left-of-center icon dropping it on tour as he makes his way from San Francisco this Saturday to Houston, Miami, Vegas and back to SF by the start of 2022. — KAT BEIN

Brux, “Covet”

“Your Rolodex, your partner, your followers, your chakra; your Fitbit, your lipstick, your friendship with the Carters”: Everything has monetary and/or social value, and Brux wants it all on her latest single “Covet.” The Australian producer, singer-songwriter and Billboard Dance February 2020 Emerging Artist has a knack for combining social commentary with club sonics — think less after-school special and more afterhours. On “Covet,” Brux’s debut on Zeds Dead’s Deadbeats label, she captures the foreboding energy behind status obsession with textured production that broods, sparkles and spirals, reciting over it anything and everything that could up her clout game. Brux’s off-kilter sounds feel especially significant here, showing how something that at first seems innocent, fun and alluring can turn darkly obsessive.

“‘Covet’ is all about materialism,” Brux writes in a statement, “being blinded and ruled by it in these unhealthy times of social media…now more than ever.” — K.R.

DJ Seinfeld – “She Loves Me”

Some songs put you in a different place and time, and some bring you to a deep space within yourself. DJ Seinfeld’s latest “She Loves Me” feels like all that combined, a dark yet whimsical journey through inner space. Hanging synth chords and dreamy vocals from Swedish artist Stella Explorer conjure emotions as wide as the ocean and still as the night. It’s a vibe.

“The fine line between self affirmation and paranoia is alluring to me, and in music it’s always present,” Explorer is quoted in a press release. “It’s deceptive, and lyrics can change meaning at any time. I think the fewer words you use, the more they shift, and by combining that with different intentions like you do when you collaborate with someone (like this), it makes the outcome exciting.”

“I was connected with Stella by my friend Oskar who runs the label Year0001,” Seinfeld adds. “He had sent me some of her stuff, I loved it, and so he put us in contact … Stella and I mailed some music back and forth, and one day I received the beautiful vocal that is in the piece today. I hold this song extremely close to my heart.”

“She Loves Me” is the third single from DJ Seinfeld’s forthcoming sophomore album Mirrors. Wade into its luscious mood and prepare your body for more. — K. Bein

Joel Corry & Jax Jones feat. Charli XCX & Saweetie, “Out Out”

More than a decade after its release, “Alors On Danse” — Belgian artist Stromae’s breakout hit from 2009 — is experiencing a revival. Just last month, a slowed version of the song went viral on TikTok along with an equally laid-back dance routine. Now, it gets a caffeine boost as the sampled backbone of “Out Out,” the new super-collaboration from Jax Jones, Joel Corry, Charli XCX and Saweetie. “Out Out” radiates strong pre-game energy with a hint of FOMO: “Why am I on my own on a Friday night?” Charli begins. The following saga of hopping in an Uber and meeting your friends at the club is downright nostalgic, and when Charli sings in the chorus, “Just watch me dance” followed by those horn blasts, it’s an invitation to watch her live her best life… and maybe a challenge to live your own. — K.R.

Wave Point – “Higher Dimension”

Catch a slick groove and surf the sweet sounds of a “Higher Dimension.” Wave Point is the new project from former Golf Clap member Bryan Jones. It’s a smooth, organic trip through nostalgic house melodies and pulsing club rhythms, a truly shimmering slice of space lounge delight. “Higher Dimension” is the titular track from Wave Point’s debut album, which just dropped in full via self release.

“This album was made with a lot of session musicians from around the world,” Jones is quoted in a press release. “Since I couldn’t meet up with people physically, I went on places like fiverr.com and found musicians to work with that way. I would send them parts and tell them what I want and go back and forth until we had something…This album was made in a COVID world where parties weren’t happening, so these are made a little more for listening while still applicable on a dancefloor. ”

“Higher Dimension” feels like a familiar favorite already. Listen to it and the full album, for sure. — K. Bein

Independent live entertainment businesses have until Aug. 20 to submit or resubmit to receive federal assistance under the $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program. And although over 15,000 applications have been submitted already with millions distributed, eligible applications are still rolling in with only a week left to go.

“A lot of people could probably still apply, either they didn’t know about it or it was too complicated, or both,” says Joshua Pollack, co-founder of the newly launched firm MySVOG, which is currently advising more than 100 clients whose work go beyond the concert venues and promoters often associated with the program. Comedy clubs, dance studios, universities, museums, movie theaters and local arts organizations may be eligible for grants up to $10 million too. “Anything with a stage that would take a ticket qualifies on facility side,” he says. “There’s also promoters, talent managers, agents and the people that put acts on the stage that qualify on the presenting side.”

Pollack and his partner Schuyler Hoversten charge a “small success fee” for their services that’s “variable based upon how much work is involved and how organized or not they are,” says Hoversten. It’s similar to how other consultants have helped small businesses apply for other government-sponsored COVID-19 aid programs like the Payroll Protection Program and the SBA’s restaurant grant program during the pandemic. And with the SVOG deadline approaching, they want to encourage businesses not to give up, even if the process seems complicated.

“It’s so complex. It’s so convoluted,” Hoversten says. “They’re asking for a lot of information and I think if you’re not completely telling the story or showing that you’re eligible, then you’re going to have some issues…. It’s not a process geared toward getting a lot of people approved and I think that frustrates some people.”

But, he adds, “This money was authorized Congress and there is a real desire to get it into the right hands.”

As of Monday, about 68% of applicants — 10,826 out of 15,872 total — had so far received $8.4 billion in funding. But there are more than 3,200 businesses who had their applications rejected — roughly one quarter of all the SBA’s decisions. Of these, Pollack says, it’s part of the process and “this isn’t the SBA trying to be mean — it’s a situation where they’re stating to the people that need funding, ‘Let us try to help you,’” adding that the SBA will begin reaching out to applicants via telephone to close out any backlog appeals.

Rejections commonly come down to small clerical mistakes and missing paperwork, says Pollack. Or it can be a larger issue with how a company presents its financial reporting or describes its events and business. “You want to think about why you may have been declined,” he says, “You should study which people got approved and see if you can fit into one of those buckets.”

After Aug. 20, the SBA will open up its grant supplemental funding awards, for which businesses will not need to reapply, distributing grants for up to half of what was received in the first round.

Cardi B and Offset’s 3-year-old daughter Kulture now has an Hermès Birkin bag from both mommy and daddy.

The “Bodak Yellow” rapper made some serious money moves when she gifted Kulture a yellow Birkin with a bedazzled rainbow design on the front, which she posted on her Instagram on Tuesday with the caption, “Me & my best friend for life.”

Michelle Berk, CEO of Privé Porter, a private reseller of luxury handbags specializing in Hermès products, told Page Six on Thursday that Cardi called her after Kulture spotted a small rainbow purse at Claire’s and begged her mother for it. But the “I Like It” artist thought her daughter shouldn’t settle for less and decided to cop her a designer version that took more than 100 hours to place 30,000 rainbow-colored crystals on the custom bag, which costs $48,000.

Offset bought Kulture her first Birkin, a small pink handbag, for her 2nd birthday last year, and it caused an online uproar that Cardi quickly put a lid on.

“If I’m fly and Daddy’s fly, then so is the kid! If I’m wearing Cha-nay-nay, my kid is having the same thing,” she said in her Instagram Story rant. “It’s not up to what the kids like. If it was up to kids, they’d be outside in diapers. No! If I was looking like a bad b—h, an expensive b—h, and I have my kid looking like a bum bum, then you all be causing s–t…. So I’m not mad that Daddy bought baby a Birkin. She gonna match Mommy!”

See Kulture’s new Birkin below.

WizKid announced Thursday (Aug. 12) that Justin Bieber will be featured on a remix of his Afrobeats hit “Essence,” which also features singer Tems.

The Nigerian superstar teased “something special” was coming on his socials before announcing an official remix featuring the Canadian pop star, which is set to drop at midnight ET. “Thank u for letting me jump on the song of the summer,” Bieber wrote on Instagram while sharing a graphic featuring all three artists’ names on top of the song’s title.

“Essence” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in July at No. 82 after the Tems-assisted song was released in October 2020 from Wiz’s album Made in Lagos. The sultry Afrobeats/R&B club jam has been steadily climbing the tally over the last five weeks, rising to its current position of No. 54 in the week ending Aug. 14.

The song could experience a leap on the chart following the Bieber-assisted remix, which happened with Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” The Latin pop anthem leapt to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 2017 and remained at the top for 16 weeks, tying the record for longest-running No. 1 song at the time. The watershed movement could translate for the Afrobeats genre with the new version of “Essence.”

Wiz has famously worked with another Canada-born sensation — Drake — on the No. 1 smash “One Dance” in 2016, which also features British singer Kyla.

The remix comes in the same week as Tunji Balogun, who was executive vp of A&R RCA Records for six years and signed WizKid in 2016, being announced as the new CEO/chairman of Def Jam Records, the home of Bieber. Balogun — who was recently named to Billboard’s R&B Hip-Hop Power Players list — will oversee a roster including Bieber, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rihanna, YG, Big Sean, Logic and Alessia Cara in his new role.

“This is the first time where it feels like a song is competing on the level of a similarly promoted song from Western artists in the pop genre,” Wizkid told Billboard about the legacy of “Essence” in a new interview. “And I hope that’s the lasting influence of the record — that it opens doors for more people with different styles and different textures.”

A Music King’s Shattering Fall. It was September 1990, and Time magazine’s lead business story related that Walter Yetnikoff had been fired as CBS Records’ chief executive. Then the world’s largest record label, CBS had issued many of the top-selling albums of the 1980s, among them, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, and George Michael’s Faith. The Time article proposed that the bosses at Sony, CBS Records’ parent company since 1988, were scandalized by the depiction of Yetnikoff as a “crude, tantrum-throwing egomaniac” in Hit Men, my nonfiction account of the music industry, published two months earlier. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal also contended that my book had played a role in Walter’s dismissal. I believed then, and still do, that the claim was overblown. But from that point on, his name and mine became linked, to the displeasure of both of us.

I’m not going to pretend that my portrait of Yetnikoff, who succumbed to cancer on Aug. 8 only three days shy of his 88th birthday, was flattering. The Yetnikoff of Hit Men was a wild man — hurling expletives and plates, boozing to excess, cavorting with a bevy of girlfriends he dubbed his “shiksa farm,” and once threatening to punch out Mick Jagger over a contract dispute. (“Hell’s bells,” lawyer and manager Eric Kronfeld exclaimed after reading that account. “What middle-aged record executive wants to get into a fistfight with an artist?”) All of Yetnikoff’s excesses, and a good number of my anecdotes about him, were confirmed in his confessional 2004 memoir Howling at the Moon. Indeed, his self-portrait made my own portrayal of him seem tame, including as it did details I had been unable to nail down, such as cocaine binges and sexual trysts in a room adjoining his 11th floor office at Black Rock, the New York headquarters that housed CBS television, radio and records.

Yetnikoff rose from modest beginnings in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the son of a laborer who periodically beat him. He edited the law review at Columbia Law School, and after a stint in the army, joined the law firm that represented CBS and its founder and chairman William Paley. CBS Records hired him as a staff attorney in 1961, and he moved steadily up the ranks to run the label’s international division, becoming label president in 1975. Unlike great record men such as Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis or Berry Gordy, Yetnikoff had a tin ear for music. But he had perfect pitch when it came to artist relationships. When Michael Jackson swept the 1984 Grammys for Thriller, he grabbed Yetnikoff by the arm and brought him onstage to share in the glory.

The Walter Yetnikoff I met in the late ’80s was bearded and barrel-chested, and chain-smoking Nat Sherman cigarettes, a habit that left his Brooklyn baritone a bit raspy. The beard, I always suspected, was worn to cover a weak chin, but it also accented his ethnicity, which he paraded with pride. He called himself Velvel, Yiddish for “Little Walter,” and dubbed Thomas Wyman, CBS president from 1980 to 1986, “the goy upstairs.” At the conclusion of my first encounter with him, he relayed plans for a new musical genre, “Hasidic rock,” and crooned one of his own compositions, “The Shiksa Shtupping Song.”

When Laurence Tisch — a “landsman,” as Yetnikoff put it, Yiddish for “fellow Jew” — ousted Wyman in September 1986, Yetnikoff was initially delighted. NBC News had recently singled out Yetnikoff for opposing an investigation of alleged organized crime influence in record promotion, and implied he was a cocaine user. Tisch rushed to his defense. A month after he became CBS president, I asked Tisch about the NBC report, and he all but wagged a finger at me. “Walter Yetnikoff is a very honorable man,” he said. “Don’t go by the fact that he’s not wearing a tie and has a beard. Walter is a conservative businessman, and too smart to do anything that would jeopardize the company or himself.”

The honeymoon didn’t last long. By 1987, Yetnikoff was calling the short and bald Tisch “the kike upstairs” and “the Evil Dwarf.” That year, Walter midwifed the sale of CBS Records to Sony for $2 billion, making himself rich in the process, with a sign-on bonus estimated at $20 million. He was gleeful. The last time I saw him, in May 1988, Yetnikoff was standing outside the Titus Theater at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Inside, Tisch was conducting the annual CBS shareholder’s meeting, fielding questions about the sale of the record division. “You know,” Yetnikoff said, noticeably drunk, “in the springtime, life blooms, and the flowers grow, and the grass is green, but dwarfs die in the light of the sun. And it’s sort of early spring. That’s a dream I had.”

Tisch, for his part, had ceased referring to Yetnikoff as “a very honorable man.” In 1991, he asked a reporter for New York magazine, “Did you read that book Hit Men? Do you understand why I sold that business? Would you want to be in that business?” Tisch died in November 2003, a few months before the publication of Howling at the Moon, which vindicated a good deal more his decision to sell — Yetnikoff’s confessed cocaine use at Black Rock could have jeopardized CBS’s federally sanctioned broadcast licenses, which were subject to FCC oversight.

Walter’s self-portrait was harsher than anything I had written about him, yet long after his tell-all was published, the mention of Hit Men still set him off. In a 2010 interview, he called me “a plagiarist,” claiming I had appropriated passages from a privately recorded tribute to the late Goddard Lieberson “with no attribution.” (Not true: the attribution was in my source notes.) Walter was always swearing to take legal action against all enemies, real or perceived — in 1988, he told journalist Fred Goodman he was contemplating a RICO, or racketeering, complaint against MCA Records — but not once did he threaten me with litigation.

That honor fell to Clive Davis and David Geffen. In late 1989, the unedited manuscript of Hit Men was leaked by someone at Random House, and before long it seemed all the book’s principal subjects had a copy. Davis sicked the prominent trial lawyer Robert Morvillo on me, and among his litany of complaints was my purportedly false and defamatory account of an unfortunate meeting between himself and the 21-year-old Bob Dylan. The Random House lawyer asked to see my source material. I showed her. It was Clive’s 1974 autobiography. Geffen, meanwhile, unleashed his legal bulldog Bertram Fields, and wasted his money, because the disputed passages had already been removed in the course of fact-checking and editing.

Entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman took a different approach, cordially inviting me to his office, where he insisted on serving me chicken soup with kreplach. Grubman wanted some changes to the chapter about him, and handled the matter in his typical fashion, as a friendly negotiation, an approach that never would have occurred to Geffen. Yetnikoff had thrown a lot of clients Grubman’s way, including Bruce Springsteen, and in return he expected absolute fealty and even some groveling — he once got Grubman to beg on his hands and knees to close a record distribution deal. My manuscript included another more egregious example of Grubman’s subservience to Yetnikoff, but I agreed to remove it, simply because it was not an important detail. Beyond that, I said I would change nothing that he couldn’t convince me was nonfactual. “You have this quote here from Walter,” Grubman said. “‘Once I yelled at Allen, and his wife told me he had to take three Valium.’” Not true? “It is true,” Grubman said. “But I wish you’d add I had to take three more Valium when I read your book!”

By the time Hit Men was published, Grubman no longer had reason to fear Yetnikoff, because Yetnikoff was self-destructing. In 1989, Yetnikoff had checked himself into the Hazelden clinic in Minnesota, emerging clean and sober, and remaining so, he maintained, until the end of his life. But sobriety, he wrote in Howling at the Moon, made him a better person only in some ways. “On many other levels,” he said, “I became worse.” In less than a year, Yetnikoff alienated nearly all his closest allies in the business, including David Geffen, whom he had roused to rage with his insults. Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau, who called Geffen his “rabbi,” issued a damning statement to Billboard in late August 1990. In it, Landau said he and Springsteen had long enjoyed “a superb professional relationship and a pleasant social one” with Yetnikoff, but for the past two years, “neither Bruce nor I have had a significant conversation with him.”

To this day, I am convinced that Landau’s declaration shook up the brass at Sony far more than Hit Men, and played the decisive role in Yetnikoff’s ousting. Afterward, I asked Landau whether Geffen had prompted him to issue the statement. He denied it, saying of Yetnikoff, “He took a 14-year relationship and trashed it for irrational reasons. I harbored a great deal of emotion, and I don’t feel like I needed any instruction from David or anybody else. I wrote it in consultation with Bruce.”

I don’t know whether Landau ever made peace with Yetnikoff, but I wish I had. Walter may have disliked me, but the feeling was by no means mutual. In 2014, I updated Hit Men’s e-book edition with a new last chapter — excerpted in Billboard — and the additional material was complimentary to Yetnikoff. In the more than two decades since the book had first been published, Walter had taken to heart the 12-step principle to be of service to others, drawing on his experiences as a recovering addict to volunteer at recovery centers around the New York area. And as a star trial witness, he had helped Steve Popovich, the founder of Cleveland International, recoup unpaid royalties from Sony on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, which had been issued on Popovich’s custom label. True, while helping Popovich, Yetnikoff may have delighted in sticking it to Sony. Whatever his motive, his cross-examination by Sony’s attorney, whom Yetnikoff brilliantly flummoxed, makes for hilarious reading.

When the news broke of Yetnikoff’s death, I received a lot of messages from friends and colleagues, who, like me, were saddened by his passing. I particularly liked the note sent by Adam White, a former editor-in-chief of Billboard and Universal Music Group executive, and a good friend since the Hit Men days: “So adieu, Velvel. I never thought of him as ageless, but was rather surprised. Wonder if he’ll shout at the gatekeeper, whether above or below.”