⚫ ROLLING IN THE GIGS
Gabby Barrett was 10 years old when she first heard
Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” on a car radio. One day,
she was singing the chorus around the house and
her father stopped her. “He said, ‘I want to video
this,’ ” recalls Barrett, now 20. “He thought there was
something there.” With her dad’s motivation, the
Munhall, Pa., native soon booked her first gig, and for
the next six years she performed at restaurants, malls
and even grocery stores — as long as the “venue”
was within driving distance, as her parents insisted
she stay in school. “We could miss 29 [school] days a
year,” she says, “and I missed 29 days every year.”⚫ GIRL POWER
In Barrett’s early sets she covered songs by major
female artists like Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, Duffy
and Adele. “I really respected women that could
sing their tails off and entertain well,” she says.
“I wanted to get that across before I [performed]
my own music.” She started writing originals at
14 , and her teen-spirit tune “Young Blood” took off
locally. Meanwhile, her online presence caught the
attention of an American Idol producer, who in 2017
emailed Barrett suggesting she audition for the
show’s upcoming season. “I was like, ‘This has to be
spam,’ ” she says. Still, she decided to try out and
ended up placing third in the 2018 finale.⚫ PEN TO PAPER
After Idol wrapped, Barrett moved to Nashville hop-
ing to land a record deal but discovered her TV fame
wasn’t enough — she had to prove she could write
a hit, too. Her managers scheduled a session with
songwriters Zachary Kale (Florida Georgia Line) and
Jon Nite (Keith Urban), which resulted in the fiery
breakup track “I Hope” about wishing the worst for
a cheating ex. She independently released the song
at the top of 2019 , and it soon landed in rotation on
SiriusXM channel The Highway; by spring, Barrett
signed a recording contract with Warner Music
Nashville. Chairman/CEO John Esposito said at the
time he had only been as adamant about an act once
before: Grammy-winning duo Dan + Shay.⚫ LEADING LADIES
Warner immediately put Barrett on a radio tour to
maintain the momentum of “I Hope.” Now, nearly a
year later, the song has climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s
Country Airplay chart — a historic feat, as Barrett
and labelmate Ingrid Andress became the first two
women to simultaneously land solo debut hits in
the tally’s top 10. (“I Hope” is also at No. 17 on the
Hot 100 , a new peak.) As Barrett readies her debut
album — which will expand beyond strictly country
— for now, she says, “I’m just glad to be making some
noise at this age.”GABBY BARRETT
At 20 , the former American Idol
contestant is already making chart history
BY TAYLOR WEATHERBYCHARTBREAKER
32 BILLBOARD • APRIL 25 , 2020INSIDE LOOKStill Making Noise
Why the new Beastie Boys documentary went straight
to streaming during a “weird, bittersweet” moment
BY JASON LIPSHUTZT
HE TWO OF US WILL DO THE
best we can because one of us isn’t
here,” declares Michael “Mike D”
Diamond in the opening minutes
of Beastie Boys Story while stand-
ing alongside Adam “Ad-Rock”
Horovitz. In the heartfelt new documen-
tary, available to stream starting April 24 on
Apple TV+, the pair tells the origin story of its
boundary-pushing New York hip-hop trio and
pays tribute to its third member, Adam “MCA”
Yauch, whose death from cancer in 2012 ended
the group’s decades-spanning run.
Diamond and Horovitz recently told their
story in another medium: The nearly 600 -
page Beastie Boys Book became a bestseller in
late 2018. “The documentary started with the
book,” says Diamond. “Adam and I were like,
‘Oh shit, we have to go out and promote this.
Are we going to sit in a bunch of bookstores
with blazers on and try to pretend that we’re
real authors?’ ”
Instead, the pair teamed up with another
longtime friend, director Spike Jonze, to create
a multimedia stage show that brought the best
stories from the book to life before an audi-
ence. After a successful run in 2019 , the show
— part TED Talk, part stand-up routine, with
two aging jokesters reflecting on their best
pranks and pivotal moments — morphed into
the foundation of a documentary, with Jonze at
the helm. “It was dizzying in a lot of ways, but
that’s exactly why I’ve always loved their bandand their music,” says Jonze, who directed the
group’s iconic “Sabotage” music video in 1994.
The project was initially conceived as a
collection of “weird stories and stupid stuff,”
says Horovitz, until Jonze pushed him and
Diamond to be more reflective. The surviving
Beastie Boys discuss their teenage exploits at
hardcore shows, the feigned party-boy schtick
of their Licensed to Ill days, the disappointment
of Paul’s Boutique bombing commercially and
the contrition they now feel over the sexism
in their early lyrics. Yauch’s presence as the
trio’s creative and intellectual center looms
over the documentary; in its climax, Horovitz
tears up while recounting the group’s final
performance in 2009. “The hardest part [of
the show] was just talking about Adam Yauch,”
he says. Adds Diamond: “It somehow became
more emotionally resonant for us as we did it. ...
It was a moment of us really missing our friend
and partner.”
Beastie Boys Story was originally slated to
premiere at South by Southwest and receive
a limited theatrical run. But the coronavirus
pandemic derailed its rollout plans and forced
the documentary to become immediately avail-
able for home streaming, which Diamond says
felt “weird” and “bittersweet.” Now, as he and
Horovitz wrap up another project that exam-
ines their past, they aren’t entirely sure what
their future holds. Says Horovitz with absolute
seriousness, “I’m just trying to fucking stay
alive right now.”A still from Beastie Boys
Story of a photo taken by
Yauch in Los Angeles in 1989.
Clockwise from top: Diamond,
Yauch and Horovitz.BOYS:^ COURTESY^ OFAPPLE.^BARRETT:^ ROBBY^ KLEIN.8sound_chartbreaker_beastie_lo [P]_27876891.indd 32 4/21/20 7:19 PM