Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/29/2023 i Variety

By the time we get to the last push on our annual Hitmakers issue, the entertainment world is just starting to reflect on the year that was. Oh, there will be lists in the coming weeks — so many lists. But in fact Hitmakers is a year-round editorial project in terms of planning, tracking, analyzing and reviewing the biggest songs of the year. We study a wide range of sync, sales and audience data to determine the year’s Top 25 hits. We also go with our gut on recruiting the biggest music players of the year for in-depth interviews and profiles. Jem Aswad, our executive editor of music, led the charge in assembling this genre-rich package. Aswad put SZA at the top of his wish list of cover subjects early…

All summer long, writers and actors led a backlash against artificial intelligence outside studio gates. “AI has no soul,” one picket sign read. “ChatGPT doesn’t have childhood trauma.” But in the end, the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA embraced a balanced approach to the technology. Both guilds obtained job protections against AI abuse, including consent and protection against diminishment of pay. But their agreements also allow the use of AI tools both in screenwriting and in the creation of performances. AI companies have been pleased with the outcome, which sets up guardrails for further development of such tools. “I’m happy with the agreement the WGA made,” says James Yu, the co-founder of Sudowrite, an AI fiction writing tool. “We believe in the power of the writer to choose whether…

The Hollywood biographical drama — or biopic, to use the word that always makes it sound like a dental instrument — is now enjoying its mega-moment. “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic about the father of the atomic bomb, proved that a story-of-a-life movie could be as big and coruscating as the cosmos; not so incidentally, it’s garnered Nolan the most ecstatic reviews of his career. Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” has also won audiences and acclaim. In telling the story of Priscilla Presley, who met Elvis when she was 14 and spent six years married to a slowly dissolving romantic mirage, the film takes us through the looking glass of pop-music fame. In Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” the lives of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre, become a rapturous study in love,…

What constitutes a hit? Like “success,” the definition is usually up to the beholder. ¶ But in this era of streaming and “consumption” and “video creates” and everything else in the music world that adds up to an old-fashioned sale, a hit is an elusive quantity. How do you count the number of hearts melted by SZA’s beautiful voice and melodies? The fists pumped in the air for Morgan Wallen’s anthems? The abuelos perking up to the familiar, centuries-old strains of Eslabon Armado’s revamped música Mexicana? ¶ Also like success, a hit has many parents. So in another well-intended yet deeply imperfect effort to identify those parents as fairly and squarely as time and sanity allow, we present Variety’s seventh annual Hitmakers issue, awards and event. The chart comes from…

THE three singer-songwriters who make up Boygenius are musing about what they did and didn’t intend to accomplish when they went into the studio to make “The Record,” which has just landed them six Grammy nominations. Becoming role models for a much-needed sense of community across a swath of young America was not part of the master plan. ¶ “We didn’t set out to be like, ‘And we symbolize friendship!’” bandmate Julien Baker points out. “We just were like, ‘Let’s make a good record.’” ¶ Fair enough. But have we mentioned that they do, in fact, symbolize friendship? At least that’s part of the appeal for Boygenius’ avid fan base, and a conclusion that band member Lucy Dacus was not avoiding when she recently told Teen Vogue that “being affectionate…

The fact that Peso Pluma has become a driving force in the growth in popularity of regional Mexican music is a sign of how much the centuries-old genre has evolved in recent years. “He looks like a rocker; maybe he could be a rapper,” Pluma’s manager, George Prajin, says of the 24-year-old artist. “The last thing he looks like is a regional Mexican singer.” Born Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, Pluma attended high school in Texas, but was born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico. His influences include everything from reggaeton to hip-hop, trap to the traditional Mexican folk songs — or corridos — he grew up hearing at home. That distinct combination of sounds, just as borderless as they are genre-bending, has landed him and acts like Eslabon Armado, Junior H…

It’s remarkable enough that Republic Records has been Hitmakers Label of the Year four out of the past seven years. But the company exceeded its own high bar in 2023 by fielding no less than 12 of the top 25 songs on our chart. Yes, country superstar Morgan Wallen holds six of those slots, including No. 1 with “Last Night,” but there are also two songs each from Taylor Swift and Metro Boomin, one from the Weeknd (who also features on Metro’s “Creepin’”) and one from Drake with 21 Savage. Monte Lipman and his brother, Avery, who is Republic’s president and COO, founded the label back in 1995 after both spent several years in senior roles at Arista, EMI, Atlantic and other labels. They saw an early global smash with…

Who is country music’s most successful songwriter today? One would be hard-pressed to find a metric where the end result is not Ashley Gorley. He’s a co-writer on five of the last six Morgan Wallen singles, all of which effortlessly topped the Billboard country chart, with “Last Night” also going Top 5 at pop radio. No doubt this played a part in the song spending a near record 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Gorley was recently named songwriter of the year at the ASCAP Country Music Awards for a record 10th time, on the basis of having 10 songs among the organization’s 50 most-played hits of the past year. If that already sounds dominant, consider this: On the latest Billboard country airplay chart, Gorley has…

Whether we’re talking about a soundtrack, a score or a song placement, there are countless wrong ways to do music for film and few ways to make it feel right. Yet it’s hard to think of a movie where the story and the soundtrack are as well matched and intricately integrated as Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster “Barbie.” Mark Ronson executive produced the music and wrote the score (with Andrew Wyatt), as well as co-writing songs for Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Dominic Fike and Ryan Gosling. With albums and songs by Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and many others under his belt, Ronson, who has won seven Grammys and an Oscar, is one of the most successful pop songwriter-producers working today. But “Barbie” was a new experience: Not…

Country music hasn’t had a huge presence in the mainstream Top 10 since Florida Georgia Line provided a crossover hit in 2012. But that changed in triplicate in 2023 with three Nashville exports — the well-established Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, and a blazing-hot newcomer, Bailey Zimmerman. His first three singles hit No. 1 on country airplay charts (with a fourth poised to keep his perfect game going), but it was “Rock and a Hard Place” that landed the 23-year-old in the upper ranks of the Billboard Hot 100. Zimmerman’s secret sauce? He grew up as a rocker, and his gravelly tone reflects the rock power ballads of his youth. “He’s from Southern Illinois. What they listen to over there is Eddie Vedder, AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Southern rock,” producer Austin…

Viral revivals are a hallmark of the streaming era, with songs regularly springing back to life years — sometimes decades — after they were first released. Miguel’s “Sure Thing” is an aberration. Rolled out as a single in 2011, the romantic ballad cracked Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 and crowned the R&B chart. It then quietly soundtracked weddings, proposals and anniversaries — until the TikTok gods resurrected it last year. And that’s just the latest twist in the song’s unorthodox journey. To begin, “Sure Thing” was almost given to another superstar. “Miguel’s manager sent it to me, and I wanted it for Usher,” remembers Mark Pitts, RCA president and the song’s original A&R. “But I started to fall in love with it.” He wanted to hear more and…

Since Jaime Zeluck Hindlin founded Nonstop Management at her kitchen table in 2017, the boutique company has become a stealth power player in the music business. Getting the right songwriters and producers in a room is Hindlin’s specialty, but her range of clients — not to mention genres — contributing to three of 2023’s biggest hits is impressive. She’s got Miley Cyrus’ pop hit “Flowers,” Morgan Wallen’s country smash “Last Night,” and Rema and Selena Gomez’s Afropop-tinged “Calm Down (Remix).” “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that something like this would happen,” Hindlin says. “Obviously, you hope for one big hit. But three? I’ve had my jaw on the floor for half a year.” The placements were the culmination of years of emails, phone calls and relationship-building. “We…

In addition to a top-to-bottom organization overall, the Golden Globes added two new categories for its next awards, for cinematic and box office achievement and stand-up comedy performance on television. The creation for a box office achievement award is clearly a move to attract viewers who have tuned out kudofests in recent decades because they tend to focus on little-seen movies. The category honors artistically outstanding films that have grossed more than $150 million, with at least $100 million coming from the domestic box office, or have commensurate streaming viewership confirmed by a “trusted industry source.” Films released after Nov. 22 may qualify if their projected box office or viewership meets the benchmarks. The field of contenders is surprisingly wide, with no fewer than 20 films eligible as of November,…

“The other day, somebody told me that my voice is on the number-eight-selling album of all time and the number-three-selling country song of all time,” says Darius Rucker. “You have to pinch yourself when you hear something like that — it just blows your mind. I’m just a kid from South Carolina.” Between Hootie & the Blowfish’s 1994 debut album, “Cracked Rear View” (21 times platinum), and his inescapable 2013 single, “Wagon Wheel” (11 times platinum), Rucker has provided the sound for two massive musical phenomena. Add in four No. 1 albums and 10 No. 1 singles on the country charts, plus three Grammy awards, and it’s pretty apparent why on Dec. 5, he’s receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame “I found out on Twitter,” says Rucker…

MUSIC REVIEW ARTIST: Peter Gabriel LABEL: Real World Before talking about the substance of Peter Gabriel’s new album, “i/o,” which stands for “input/output,” it is inevitable that discussion will focus on the level of output leading up to this release. It’s his first studio album of original songs in 21 years (and the last one before 2002’s “Up” was 1992’s “Us”). So many things have not changed in these ever-elongating gaps: the returning core band of bassist Tony Levin, guitarist David Rhodes and drummer Manu Katché; the brooding tones that will occasionally give way to a bit of secular gospel or funk; the two-letter album titles (if we don’t count the slash that pops up in the middle of this one). But there are some shifts as well: A 73-year-old…

Notice is hereby given that on December 22, 2023, at 10:00 a.m., at the offices of Buchalter, located at 18400 Von Karman Avenue, 8th Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, Zelus Film Holding Company, LLC, as the secured party pursuant to various loan and security documents, will sell, at public auction, to the highest bidder for cash or otherwise acceptable terms, all right, title, and interest of its original borrower, Laptron Limited and other guarantor parties, including, ApolloMedia GmbH & Co. 5. Filmproduktion KG, ApolloMedia GmbH, QI Quality International GmbH & Co. KG, Film Group 111 spol. S.r.o., MFF (Sound of Thunder) Limited and CoCo Films, LLC (collectively, the Debtors), to certain assets pledged as “Collateral” thereunder, which includes all rights of the Debtors, if any, to: i) the film, A Sound…

Our Hitmakers cover story took Jem Aswad, executive editor of music, to a strange and beautiful desert ranch high in the hills of Malibu, where horses, tarantulas and SZA roamed free. Chief music critic Chris Willman spent time in Nashville with Ashley Gorley, who showed up fresh from a songwriters’ Bible study; then he came home to L.A. to see Boygenius, who were about to go on “SNL” to perform “Satanist.” “I wanted the day to feel like an escape for SZA,” says cover photographer Mason Poole. “The ranch in Malibu where we did the shoot gave us exactly that. SZA looked right at home in the golden afternoon sunlight.” Says photographer Jingyu Lin about Boygenuis: “It was an experience to capture the dynamic between people who have such an…

On a cold November Saturday night, hordes of mulleted and mustachioed Brooklynites line up outside Warsaw, the Greenpoint punk club, waiting to see indie rock band Geese. On a wall opposite the box office, a sign warns: “No Moshing.” That rule is broken not 20 minutes into the set, when the band unleashes the guitar riffs of “2122,” a shape-shifting blues-rock romp flecked with nonsense lyrics, banjo plucking and Elvis impersonations. “Voodoo Balarama Baba Yaga, I’m taking my love to the outside!” Cameron Winter yowls a cappella, with a delivery that would do Jon Spencer proud, before a distorted guitar spirals over pattering drums. It all somehow … works? That’s because Geese grasps a fundamental aspect of rock ’n’ roll that seems lately to have been neglected: It’s supposed to…

SZA is madly scrolling. ¶ “I never have topics before I start a song,” she’s saying about her creative process. “I just let the beat tell me what to do, and then I start babbling and making words, and it starts to form itself. It’s like a puzzle. Sometimes I write down phrases but I never go back to those — even though they’re always good-ass phrases!” Her forefinger flies across her phone. “They go back years and years and years. It’s all music and random bounces and writing. ¶ Oh, shit!” she exclaims, suddenly pointing to some words on the screen. “It’s ‘Kill Bill’!” — her song that just happens to be the No. 2 charting single of the year. “This is literally ‘Kill Bill,’ the day that I…

2023 had a galaxy of major stars, but even in a year when Taylor Swift and our own Hitmaker of the Year, SZA, dominated the public consciousness, one name dominated the charts: Morgan Wallen. The controversial Nashville superstar racked up a record-setting six songs in the Hitmakers Top 25, led by the ubiquitous hit “Last Night.” Even with Wallen’s wallop, the year-end chart shows impressive diversity, with two songs each from SZA, Swift and Metro Boomin. The Weeknd and fast-rising Mexican singer Peso Pluma appear twice as well. Indeed, Latin music and country both had strong showings — hopefully setting an example for people to coexist in real life as positively as they can in the music world. *Stream Equivalent Songs — song sales with streaming equivalents included (375 ad-supported…

Presented by City National Bank It’s not hard to find on the internet: a group photo from a Grammy Museum workshop that featured Stevie Nicks as the guest teacher, circa 2011. She’s surrounded by musicians, executives and a few hopeful young musicians — including a young Billie Eilish and Finneas, who were 9 and 13 at the time, and have spoken often of how many events they attended at the museum. Since 2008, the museum in downtown Los Angeles has championed the notion that music is a gateway to learning, while enlisting the help of prolific artists and industry leaders along the way. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, that one tells a very clear story of what a difference such a foundation can make for young…

There are “child stars,” and then there are performers that start working during childhood only to become bona fide, beloved screen icons, enjoying long, varied careers throughout their lives. Following in the footsteps of Shirley Temple, Natalie Wood and Mickey Rooney, Macaulay Culkin has — for three decades and counting — been a contemporary standard bearer for that personal and professional journey. Culkin became a full-fledged cultural phenomenon after the explosive commercial success of his fifth film, 1990’s “Home Alone,” which he made when he was just 10 years old. The film grossed $476 million worldwide, due in direct part to his mischievous-yet-vulnerable performance as Kevin McAllister. But beginning in his teenage years, Culkin began seeking projects that piqued his artistic interests rather than sustaining his immediate and colossal celebrity.…

AWARDS CIRCUIT Oscar season begins this week in the Big Apple. The New York Film Critics Circle will be the first major group of film journalists to unveil its winners on Nov. 30. And its selections should provide an important look at which films are viable contenders for big awards. After all, there’s been plenty of prognosticating about the movies that are generating the most heat with Oscar voters and other awards bodies. But those predictions are taking place before much hardware has actually been handed out. Unlike previous years, where NYFCC members might not yet have seen a late-breaking contender or two (as was the case last year with “Avatar: The Way of Water”), this time there aren’t many unknown entities to factor in. Every major December release, including…

Reports of Maren Morris leaving country music have been greatly exaggerated. “You don’t fight for what you don’t love,” the singer says over Zoom from her Nashville home during a chat squeezed in while her son, Hayes, is taking a nap. “I do all of this because I want it to be better for everybody, not just for the few.” Morris isn’t going anywhere — not leaving Nashville, not stopping her mission to make the music industry more equitable for all, and definitely not leaving her Texas country roots to become a “pop star,” as she puts it. “Obviously no — like, that’s hilarious.” Her Hitmakers Changemaker Award arrives after years of Morris using her success in country music to push the genre toward more inclusivity on all fronts —…

Few artists ever have had a year on the scale of Morgan Wallen’s 2023. The crossover country star broke multiple streaming and radio records (such as having his smash “Last Night” become the longest-running solo No. 1 in Billboard Hot 100 history with 16 weeks atop the chart this spring and summer), all while picking up the millions of new fans that helped sell out shows nationwide. But it takes a village to create a brand as big as Wallen’s, and Team Wallen turns out to be an insular, tightly knit group of friends in Nashville consisting of managers, songwriters, producers and A&R people. “There is a really strong group of songwriters that have been using the Big Loud studios as their hub and base, and Charlie Handsome is one…

A densely layered multimedia project that combines music, comic book art, holograms and mini-movies, Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is wildly ambitious. That scope and vision comes through in the music. “Superhero” sets the tone for the album with its propulsive beats and “The Dark Knight”-referencing Kanye West sample, while “Creepin’” finds the producer rebuilding Mario Winans’ 2004 classic “I Don’t Wanna Know” from the ground up. Pulling together disparate sounds and influences is Metro Boomin’s superpower, used to full effect on “Superhero (Heroes & Villains)” featuring Future and Chris Brown, which first surfaced online in 2021. “We did the song probably a couple of years before it dropped,” Metro remembers. When the sweeping track reappeared in late 2022, it had a new outro and a clip of Jay-Z ruminating…