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Variety is pleased to announce the honorees for its fifth annual Hitmakers celebration. The Dec. 2 issue recognizes the writers, producers, publishers, managers and executives who helped make – and break – the 25 most consumed songs of the year.
Hitmakers culminates in an invitation-only brunch held on Saturday, Dec. 4, presented by Peacock and the streamer’s Emmy-nominated comedy series “Girls5eva.” At the brunch, the cast and creator of “Girls5eva” will help MC the event with videos made exclusively for the celebration.
Amazon Music will host the red carpet pre-show and awards presentation with Variety, and present the Rising Star of the Year Award which recognizes Polo G. IHG Hotels and Resorts will showcase their properties at the event.
Wagoneer is the official partner of the event and will be showcasing the all-new 2022 Grand Wagoneer on site. Premium spirits portfolio William Grant & Sons will be providing specialty cocktails made with Hendrick’s Gin, Reyka Vodka, Milagro Tequila and Monkey Shoulder Whisky.
The 2021 Hitmakers program includes the following awards selected by Variety’s editorial team:
Olivia Rodrigo – Songwriter of the Year: With her debut album “Sour” released months after turning 18, Olivia Rodrigo has solidified her place as one of the most important voices of her generation. Variety celebrates her string of 2021 hits, including “Drivers License,” “Good 4 uU” “Deja Vu” and “Traitor.”
SOURCE: Variety.com
Olivia Rodrigo and the Weeknd lead the nominees for the American Music Awards with seven and six nods respectively, show producers MRC Live & Alternative and ABC today this morning. Bad Bunny, Doja Cat and Giveon are close behind with five. The full list of nominees is below.
Voting for the show, whose winners are chose by fans, is open — fans can vote for all AMA categories on TikTok by searching for “AMAs” in-app. The awards take place live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 8:00 p.m. EST/PST on ABC and stream next day on Hulu.
Rodrigo makes her AMAs debut scoring seven nominations, including Artist of the Year and New Artist of The Year. Five-time AMA winner The Weeknd earned six nominations, including Artist of the Year as well as Favorite Music Video and Favorite Pop Song. Other Artist of the Year nominees include Ariana Grande, BTS, Drake and Taylor Swift.
New categories this year are Favorite Trending Song, with nominees from TikTok on the year’s most viral songs, Favorite Gospel Artist, and Favorite Latin Duo or Group, which rounds out last year’s expansion of the Latin categories bringing the total to five in the genre.
Nominees are based on key fan interactions – as reflected on the Billboard charts – including streaming, album sales, song sales and radio airplay. These measurements are tracked by Billboard and its data partner MRC Data, and cover the time period September 25, 2020, through September 23, 2021. The American Music Awards winners are voted entirely by fans.
The 2021 American Music Awards is produced by MRC Live & Alternative and Jesse Collins Entertainment. The show is sponsored by Xfinity.
SOURCE: Variety.com
Paramore’s Hayley Williams and former guitarist Josh Farro have been given songwriting credits on Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 mega-single good 4 u.
The chart-topping Sour track has been a huge hit this year though has also drawn attention for sounding similar to Paramore’s Riot! classic Misery Business. Now, seemingly, this is been acknowledged, with Hayley and Josh retroactively credited alongside Olivia and Daniel Nigro.
A source tells Kerrang! that, “The teams have been in touch prior to the song’s release and the production credits have now been updated to include an interpolation of Misery Business, alongside Olivia and the track’s producer, Dan Nigro.”
Read this: Will the success of Olivia Rodrigo’s good 4 u be good for rock music?
The Paramore vocalist also shared the news on her Instagram stories, reposting publisher Warner Chappell Music’s post writing, “Our publisher is wildin rn [right now].”
SOURCE: Kerrang!
Any lingering impact that COVID-19 had on American life did nothing to slow music’s six-year growth streak, as MRC Data’s 2021 Mid-Year Report shows overall music consumption for the first six months up 13.5% over the same stretch of 2020. That gain outpaces the 11.6% year-over-year growth that the U.S. music market clocked in all 12 months of 2020.
The mid-year report card also finds actress-turned-singer Olivia Rodrigo joining the winners’ circle, Swift continuing to thrive, and the once-novel comeback by the vinyl LP is on its way to a 16th straight year of annual growth, all as streaming continues to rule the roost. On-demand audio and video song streams are up by 10.8% in the U.S. over the first half of 2020, and up 27.5% on a global basis. (The full MRC Data report can be downloaded here.)
While Swift remains vital, the queen of the charts thus far in 2021 is 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo, who graduated from Disney Channel star to pop sensation in January when her “Drivers License” single entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 1.
She went on to earn the distinction of seeing all 11 songs from debut album “Sour” enter the Hot 100 in the same frame the collection racked up 295,000 equivalent units in its first week — the biggest seven-day total of 2021 and the biggest week for a debut album since Billboard began factoring song sales and streams into its album charts in December 2014, besting a mark that Cardi B set in 2018.
Although the album has only been out since May 21, it stands as the second most consumed set of 2021, as streams from her first two singles help her compile a six-month total of almost 1.4 million overall units. She and Wallen are the only acts to top 1 million equivalent units in the first half of 2021, although Justin’s Bieber’s “Justice” (962,000) and “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon” by the late Pop Smoke (948,000) come close. Five albums racked up a million or more equivalent units in the first half of 2020, when Lil Baby’s “My Turn” topped all with 1.47 million.
Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” is the undisputed champ on MRC’s Mid-Year Top Digital Song Consumption list (sales plus equivalent value from streams) with 3.92 million units, runner-up “Levitating” by Dua Lipa with DaBaby at 3.2 million. The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” fell just shy of 3 million with 2.93 million, while each of the remaining top 10 songs each surpassed 2 million.
Pop, led by Rodrigo, owns half of the top 10 albums in the first half of 2021, compared to just three a year ago, with Lipa, Swift and Ariana Grande joining Rodrigo and Bieber in this half-year’s winner’s circle. Country, shut out of the top 10 albums in 2020’s first half, owns two slots in the latest report, with Luke Combs — the genre’s lone top 10 album in the 2020 year-end recap — joining Wallen. The Weeknd is R&B’s sole representative in the mid-year top 10, as he was a year ago.
Aside from the four hip-hop songs, the mid-year top 10 includes three pop tunes (Rodrigo, Lipa and Bieber’s “Peaches,” featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon) and three R&B entries (SZA’s “Good Days” joining the two Weeknd songs).
“Olivia Rodrigo is just rewriting the rules,” says the aforementioned label exec. “She’d be an outlier in most years. Dua Lipa has been one of the most amazing artist development stories over the past three years. The genres of the top 10 songs are more diverse than we’ve seen, and that’s good.”
SOURCE: Full article available at Variety
Olivia Rodrigo has been open about how much Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” influenced her Sour single “Deja Vu.” Now she has made the connection official by adding Swift, Jack Antonoff, and St. Vincent as co-writers on the track.
The songwriters have been added to the track’s Spotify and TIDAL metadata, with credit going to them over the song’s bridge.
Rodrigo’s Swift fandom cuts deep, and the pair first interacted when Swift acknowledged a cover Rodrigo had done of “Cruel Summer.” After releasing “Deja Vu” as the second single off her debut album, Rodrigo told Rolling Stone that the yelling on the bridge of the song was inspired by the fan-favorite Lover track.
“It’s one of my favorite songs ever. I love like the yelly vocals in it, like the harmonized yells that [Swift] does, I think they’re like super electric and moving, so I wanted to do something like that,” the singer says in the video. The song is also the only collaboration between Swift and St. Vincent, who both work with Antonoff. (Reps for Rodrigo and Swift did not immediately reply to requests for comment.)
This is the second Sour track to feature a Swift-Antonoff interpolation and writing credit, with “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” borrowing from the Reputation ballad “New Year’s Day.” Although the pair have yet to actually link up in a studio or for a performance, Swift and Rodrigo have been orbiting around each other over the course of the year. Rodrigo and friend/fellow famous Swiftie Conan Gray were part of the Fearless (Taylor’s Version) rollout and made TikToks set to songs off the re-recorded take on Swift’s sophomore LP. Swift also gave Rodrigo a ring she wore while recording Red. They officially met at the Brit Awards, where they exchanged handwritten letters.
SOURCE: Rolling Stone
‘Good 4 U’ by Olivia Rodrigo takes out the #1 spot on the ARIA Singles Chart for a fifth straight week. The track is one week away from equaling the run at #1 by Rodrigo’s debut single, ‘Drivers License’ (#1 Jan. ’21).
Olivia Rodrigo makes it five consecutive weeks at #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart with SOUR. The last artist to spend five or more weeks at #1 on both the Albums and Singles charts was Ed Sheeran, who spent five straight weeks at #1 in March/April 2017 with ÷ and ‘Shape Of You’, respectively.
SOURCE: Singles; Albums
In a series of tweets this morning to announce their chart data, SOUR claims #1 on the album charts, with all of its 11 songs inside the Hot 100 Top 30. Check them all out below.
Olivia Rodrigo cements her position as the year’s biggest breakthrough artist as she scores the Official Chart Double – her debut album Sour and latest single Good 4 U both land at Number 1.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Sour celebrates a number of achievements in its opening week:
- Sour surpasses Foo Fighters to earn the biggest opening week for an album so far this year, racking up 51,000 chart sales.
- It’s also the biggest opening week for a debut album in two years, since Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent in May 2019.
- At 18 years and 3 months old, Olivia becomes the youngest solo artist in UK chart history to achieve the Official Chart Double – view the full list here.
- Olivia is the first artist in six years to claim the Official Chart Double with their debut album, since Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour (album) and Lay Me Down (single) in 2015.
- Sour sets a new all-time Official Chart UK streaming record, with the most week 1 streams for a debut album, overtaking title holder Lewis Capaldi. Sour notches up a staggering 45.7 million track streams over the past seven days (30,945 streaming-equivalent sales).
On the Official Singles Chart, Good 4 U lifts from 2 to Number 1 to become her second chart-topper, following Drivers License back in January. It’s the biggest Number 1 single of 2021 so far, notching up 117,000 chart sales across seven days – including 13.5 million streams – to claim the top spot.
Two more songs from Sour feature in the Top 10; recent single Déjà Vu leaps seven places to a new peak at 4, while Traitor is new at Number 8.
SOURCE: Official Charts
Olivia Rodrigo becomes the first woman in history to hold all top 3 positions on the Official Irish Singles Chart concurrently.
Olivia Rodrigo has claimed an Irish chart double as her debut album SOUR lands at Number 1 on the Official Irish Albums Chart and latest single Good 4 U retains the top spot of the Official Irish Singles Chart.
In addition, Rodrigo’s previous single, Deja Vu rises to a new peak of Number 2, and album track Traitor is this week’s highest new entry at Number 3, marking the first time in Official Irish Chart history a female artist has held all of the Top 3 positions concurrently.
Only Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran have achieved this previously.
The 18-year-old pop-rock rising star’s album has racked up the biggest opening week of chart sales so far in 2021, surpassing the previous best set just last week by J. Cole’s The Off-Season.
SOURCE: RTE
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