Year in Review
20 Best Latin Songs of 2021: Staff Picks
“Telepatia,” “Yonaguni,” and “Pepas” sent Latin artists Kali Uchis, Bad Bunny and Farruko skyrocketing to the top of Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart this year. Meanwhile, fueled by their massive success on TikTok, Rauw Alejandro (as a solo act) and Gera MX entered the all-genre Hot 100 chart for the first time. Needless to say, it was a good year for Latin music, which provided a soundtrack for all your moods: Karol G’s “200 Copas” for your heartbreak, Calibre 50’s “A La Antiguita” to flaunt your romanticism, and Yotuel’s Latin Grammy-winning “Patria y Vida” for your inner activist. Below, see our editors’ picks for the best 20 Latin songs of 2021, arranged in alphabetical order by artist. [flexi-common-toolbar] [flexi-form class=”flexi_form_style” title=R...
25 Best K-Pop Songs of 2021: Critics’ Picks
K-pop expanded its perimeters and scope this year while simultaneously infusing itself into today’s trends and sounds in creative ways. While many acts raised their international profiles with releases that found bigger audiences than ever, the songs that truly soared pushed the limits to represent more than just the stars singing them. While it’d be impossible to capture the brilliance of the K-pop industry in one year-end list, these songs give a snapshot of some of the best that the scene had to offer in a year that was challenging for many but offered inspiration in other ways—including from these 25 songs.
How Fans Helped BTS, Taylor Swift and Britney Spears Score Major Victories This Year
When her decade-plus conservatorship was finally dissolved in November after a prolonged courtroom battle, Britney Spears thanked her entire support system — and first and foremost, her fans — for bringing her plight into the public eye. “The #FreeBritney movement: you guys rock,” Spears wrote on Instagram on Nov. 16, the day after a judge freed her from the conservatorship that controlled her life and finances for 13 years. “Honestly, my voice was muted and threatened for so long… You guys saved my life.” The #FreeBritney movement was a yearslong coordinated effort by fans across continents that produced real change — something increasingly commonplace in pop music this year, as music lovers mobilized to encourage artistic freedom, amplify marketing choices and score chart victories. Clea...
From Vinyl Variants to NFTs, Inside 2021’s Collecting Craze
The spike in vinyl has been at a steady incline for over a decade, with sales growing year over year since the mid-2000s. But, during a pandemic in which concerts were canceled and music fans were kept inside, interest in vinyl exploded, dating back to July 2020 and continued with vinyl unit sales in the United States growing 81% as of October 2021, according to MRC Data (compared with 46.2% by the end of 2020). That growth now suggests an estimated year-end 2021 revenue of $1 billion. Interestingly, around the same time that a time-honored physical format started to soar, so too did the very intangible, very online non-fungible tokens in the music space. (An NFT is a one-of-a-kind digital token that exists on a blockchain, most often Ethereum, which is the second most popular cryptocurren...
Here are Music’s Major NFT Moments This Year
While non-fungible tokens have been around for years, buying and selling these blockchain-powered collectibles was relegated to cryptocurrency circles. But there was a noticeable shift in early 2021, when the market for music-related NFTs skyrocketed from $306,000 in sales during December 2020 to $26,756,243 in March 2021, according to tech newsletter Water & Music. The spike proved that what was once a niche, tech-savvy market became music’s next revolution — or at least a way for artists to make a quick buck as the pandemic stretched on. Illmind Sells Samples and Beats as NFTs Grammy-winning producer Illmind released the first-ever melody/sample loop pack as an NFT, opening a new practical use for the token in the music business. By purchasing this NFT, buyers could use the samples i...
How the Pandemic and TikTok Fueled the Success of Kali Uchis’ Bilingual Hit ‘Telepatia’
When Kali Uchis told her father she wanted to skip college to become a professional musician, his answer wasn’t quite what she had hoped for. “ ‘There are a lot of girls prettier than you and that have a better voice than you,’ ” Uchis recalls him telling her. “ ‘What would make you stand out from them?’ ” She wasn’t dissuaded. “ ‘Well, there can be a million girls more pretty than me and with a better voice than me,’ ” she answered. “ ‘But they’ll never be me.’ ” Today, it’s precisely that other-ness that has led 27-year-old Uchis — the bilingual, bicultural, genre-bending singer-songwriter whose vocals flow effortlessly between English and Spanish — to become an unlikely star with the song “Telepatía,” a trippy fantasy in which she sings of wa...
Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2021: No. 3 — Adele
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2021 for the rest of this week. At No. 3, we remember the year in Adele — a long-dormant pop titan who returned late in the year and proved herself still one of the industry’s mightiest forces. Explore Explore Adele See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news If you had Adele on your mind back in January, maybe you were celebrating the 10-year anniversary of her blockbuster 21 album (alongside the singer) – or maybe you were still pondering why she decided to host Saturday Night Live in fall 2020 without anything to promote. After all, it had been more than five years since the world had heard a musical peep from the...
