Kevan Kenney
@kevankenney • 81,100 subscribers
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Pharrell Williams is the first voice you hear on one of the biggest songs of the 2010s, and his name has never been on the cover. The song is "Havana" by Camila Cabello featuring Young Thug, released August 3, 2017. It began in a session with Cabello, producer Frank Dukes, Ali Tamposi and Andrew Watt; Tamposi told Billboard that Dukes played a piano loop and the hook "came out like it had been written before," so fast they thought it was too easy. Dukes then brought in Starrah, Brian Lee, Pharrell Williams, Louis Bell and Kaan Gunesberk to finish it. The liner notes of the album Camila credit Pharrell with background vocals, lyric sheets tag the opening "hey" and the chorus ad libs to him, and the CD single carries the fine print "Pharrell Williams appears courtesy of I Am Other/Columbia." Ten writers are credited and two are named Williams: Jeffery Williams, who is Young Thug and got the feature, and Pharrell. Cabello's debut solo single "Crying in the Club" had peaked at No. 47. Dukes later tweeted that "label heads and the people at radio told us this was not a hit." Cabello told BBC Radio 1 that everybody told her it shouldn't be a single, and The Guardian reported her management wanted "OMG" with Quavo instead, so she suggested putting both out the same day. "Havana" arrived as a promotional single, debuted at No. 99 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached No. 1 in its 23rd week, on the chart dated January 27, 2018, the first for both Cabello and Young Thug. In June 2018 it became Spotify's most streamed song ever by a solo female artist, and IFPI named it the best selling digital single in the world for 2018 at 19 million units, ahead of Drake's "God's Plan." IFPI's top single of 2013 was "Blurred Lines" and of 2014 was "Happy," which puts Pharrell's voice on three of six. On February 10, 2019, Cabello opened the 61st Grammy Awards with Young Thug, Ricky Martin, J Balvin and Arturo Sandoval; the same night Pharrell won Producer of the Year. The song's only Grammy nomination went to "Havana (Live)," a solo recording. This is the original, not the Daddy Yankee remix from November 2017. So did the label get "Havana" wrong, or did Camila Cabello just get lucky? #pharrellwilliams #pharrell #camilacabello #camillacabello #havana
Kevan Kenney907,200 views • 1 month ago
Ne-Yo wrote one of the biggest songs of the 2000s, and most people have no idea it's his. In 2004, Shaffer Chimere Smith was a songwriter who had already given up on being an artist. Columbia Records had signed him, let him finish an entire album, and then, by his own account, picked a single that didn't even sound like him. He refused to promote it, sat shelved for roughly two years, and was finally let go while the label kept the whole album. Then a meeting with Dr. Dre went nowhere. Dre passed, and as Ne-Yo tells it, the reason was that he wasn't "hood" enough. On his way out the door, a piano player named Scott Storch stopped him, told him he was dope, and said to look him up in Miami. Ne-Yo didn't even know who Storch was. His manager did. Storch happened to be in Miami that week working with a 16-year-old from Baltimore named Mario, whose only Top 40 hit so far was a remake of Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." They cut three songs. The second one was "Let Me Love You." Ne-Yo has admitted he didn't think a teenager could pull off a grown man's love song; when Mario walked into the booth, he says, the kid nailed it in about an hour, and Ne-Yo compared him to Sam Cooke reincarnated. J Records released it in October 2004 as the lead single from Turning Point. It became the first No. 1 song of all of 2005, held the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for nine straight weeks, spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on the R&B chart, and Billboard later ranked it the eighth biggest song of the entire decade. The songwriting credit reads Shaffer Smith. It earned Mario a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. And that one song is what finally made the industry take Shaffer serious as an artist: within months Def Jam signed him, he became Ne-Yo, and "So Sick" gave him his first No. 1 under his own name. Here's the wild part he's admitted himself: Jay-Z still asks him why he ever gave "Let Me Love You" away. I took dance lessons from Ne-Yo back in 2018, and even up close, this is the chapter of his story people always miss. So was giving that song to Mario the smartest move of his career, or did he hand someone else his own No. 1? #neyo #mario #letmeloveyou #rnb #2000sthrowback
Kevan Kenney178,900 views • 2 months ago
Adéla just landed her first top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with a song called Nicole Kidman, and the story of how she got here is wilder than you think. Adéla Jergová is a 22 year old singer and trained ballerina from Bratislava, Slovakia who taught herself English watching the Disney Channel. In 2023 she was one of 20 contestants on The Debut: Dream Academy, the HYBE and Geffen Records competition that created the girl group Katseye. More than 120,000 people auditioned for that show. When the fans voted, Adéla finished 20th out of 20 and was eliminated in the first round. Right before she went home, an executive said on camera, “We see Adéla as a solo artist.” Netflix told the story in Pop Star Academy: Katseye in 2024, and weeks later Adéla released her first single, Homewrecked, on her own. In 2026 it all paid off. Ain’t in LA became the first song by a Slovak artist to ever reach the Billboard Hot 100. The first verse of Ain’t in LA is about her mother, who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia with smuggled posters of American pop stars on her wall. Her debut album PRIMA arrived on September 4, 2026 and opened at number 4 on the Billboard 200. Then Nicole Kidman by Adéla knocked Choosin’ Texas by Ella Langley out of the top spot on Spotify in the United States after 125 days in a row, and Choosin’ Texas is the longest running number one song in Hot 100 history. Nicole Kidman by Adéla now sits at number 9 on the Hot 100, which makes Adéla the first Slovak artist to ever score a top 10 hit in America. Adéla now has more monthly listeners on Spotify than Katseye. The real Nicole Kidman gave the song her blessing, and when she posted her first TikTok ever, the sound she picked was Ain’t in LA by Adéla. How did Adéla get this big this fast? She is on the chart and on your feed at the same time, with two hits at once, the way Lady Gaga arrived with Just Dance in 2008. Even the brand deals fit, from 5 Gum to a PRIMA themed Waymo, the kind of partnerships that could look as iconic in twenty years as the early 2000s pop star ads do now. So is Adéla the next defining pop star of the late 2020s and early 2030s, or is it too early to crown her? #adela #aintinla #nicolekidman #prima #popmusic
Kevan Kenney15,900 views • 1 month ago
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