SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 | WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 51Big Machine Label
Group’s Nashville
talents go all in:
Thomas Rhett’s Life
Changes (Sept. 8),
plus debuts from
croon-y trio Midland
(Sept. 22) and up-
and-comer Carly
Pearce (Oct. 13).St. Vincent (aka
Annie Clark) shreds
across Europe and
the United States
(starting Oct. 17) on
her Fear the Future
Tour — and could well
release an album to
go with it before
year’s end.Following up last
year’s widely
acclaimed Billboard
200 No. 2 From A Room:
Volume 1, renegade
country rocker Chris
Stapleton looks to
ascend the chart
again with From A
Room: Volume 2.What to expect from
Weezer’s Pacific
Daydream (Oct. 27)?
If it’s anything
like lead single
“Mexican Fender,”
crunchy guitars,
infectious melodies
and vintage Rivers
Cuomo emoting.The ever-chameleonic
Robert Plant keeps
rambling on with
Carry Fire (Oct. 13),
exploring “dramatic
landscapes of
mood, melody and
instrumentation” —
and duetting with
Chrissie Hynde.Two years after his
glam-pop-rap-punk
debut, Ratchet,
eccentric charmer
Shamir returns on
a new label (San
Francisco indie
Father/Daughter)
with Revelations
(Nov. 3).29 30 32 33 34The king of mellow’s
new album, All the Light
Above It Too (Sept. 8),
grew out of “being
away from things,
writing on a guitar and
a ukulele that fits in
my backpack.” Here,
how to relax like he
would this fall.21.
JACK JOHNSON ON HOW TO THIS FALLSurfing in Hawaii,
his home state, “starts
to turn on a little more
in fall; it’s slower, but
you get good waves,”
says Johnson.“In our short-attention-
span society, it’s nice
to focus on a book,”
he says. Next up for
him: John Steinbeck’s
East of Eden. —R.M.“Summer kind of lasts
into fall in California,” he
says. He loves camping
up the coast (especially
in Big Sur) and Yosemite
National Park.device as better-sounding, and it will allow the company
to compete with Amazon in voice-activated streaming.
Amazon plans to focus on the millions of U.S.
consumers who don’t yet have a streaming subscription
but might have an Amazon Prime membership.
Analysts believe that by the end of the year, over half
of U.S. households will have Prime, which gives the
company a marketing advantage in music. Redington
won’t say when or how, but Amazon plans to
experiment with different prices and services.
Making its own play for a mass audience, Pandora
— which recently sold a 19 percent stake to SiriusXM
and brought in new CEO Roger Lynch — plans to keep
expanding its on-demand subscription service, which
now has 390,000 subscribers (out of the service’s
76 million active monthly users). iHeartRadio has never
disclosed subscriber numbers, but the size of its online
and traditional radio businesses gives it an advantage
as well. TIDAL — which recently hired former Kobalt
Music Group president Richard Sanders, its fourth
CEO in four years — remains focused on exclusives:
It offered JAY-Z’s 4:44 a week before other services,
and it’s still the only place to legally stream Beyoncé’s
Lemonade. And SoundCloud? In August, a last-minute
injection of capital saved it from extinction. The only
sure winner here is the overall music industry, which
expects another year of significant growth as streaming
becomes mainstream. —ROBERT LEVINET.I.
Scheming
character Plankton
needed an
energetic song
“that felt like he was
on top of his game,”
says Kitt. “The
world of hip-hop
and T.I. felt perfect.”- SPONGEBOB TAKES BROADWAY
The highly anticipated SpongeBob SquarePants musical (opening Dec. 4) boasts
a score written by pop and rock stars from David Bowie to T.I. Musical supervisor
Tom Kitt, who worked with the artists, explains how their tunes came together
DAVID BOWIE
“A huge
SpongeBob fan”
who appeared
in one episode,
Bowie allowed
Nickelodeon
to use his song
“No Control” in
the show.LADY
ANTEBELLUM
The trio’s “Chop
to the Top” (a
“Rocky moment”
for SpongeBob)
has a “warm,
country-pop feel
— a groove you
want to sit in.”STEVEN
TYLER &
JOE PERRY
Tyler sang
the demo for
“Bikini Bottom
Boogie,” a bluesy
rocker Kitt calls
“Aerosmith, right
in front of you.”THE FLAMING
LIPS
Wayne Coyne
and Co. turned
in a four-minute-
plus “gorgeous
melodic
experimental”
demo for the act-
one finale.CYNDI LAUPER
The Kinky Boots
Tony winner
delivered “an
earworm,
but with that
dramatic
quality” for a
rallying moment.
BADA$$: PAUL ZIMMERMAN/WIREIMAGE. JOHNSON: MATTHEW EISMAN/GETTY IMAGES. SPONGEBOB: NICKELODEON. PERRY, COYNE: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES. T.I.: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES. BOWIE: BRIAN RASIC/GETTY IMAGES. LAUPER: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC. SCOT^ —R.M.
T: R ANDYHOLMES/ABC. KESHA: CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES. ST. VINCENT: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES.31