meta-scriptGRAMMY Insider: Carrie Underwood, Adam Levine, Rihanna, Billie Joe Armstrong, Britney Spears, And More | GRAMMY.com

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GRAMMY Insider: Carrie Underwood, Adam Levine, Rihanna, Billie Joe Armstrong, Britney Spears, And More

All the GRAMMY winners news, including details on Carrie Underwood's new Sunday night NFL gig

GRAMMYs/Dec 3, 2014 - 05:06 am

(The GRAMMY Insider keeps you up to date about news on your favorite GRAMMY winners, including new album releases, tour updates, notable TV appearances, interviews, and more.)

Music And Film/TV
The NFL still loves country. Carrie Underwood is getting ready for football season as the GRAMMY winner has been slated to sing the theme to "Sunday Night Football" for the upcoming 2013–2014 season, beginning Sept. 8 when the Dallas Cowboys take on the New York Giants. Underwood replaces fellow GRAMMY-winning country artist Faith Hill, whose "Sunday Night Football" tenure lasted six seasons. … While his baby's mama Kim Kardashian is lighting up reality television, Kanye West may be coming to a big screen soon. The 21-time GRAMMY winner has reportedly been seen filming Anchorman 2 in Atlanta. … The Beatles' "Let It Be" musical opens on Broadway July 24 with a production that will tell the story of the band's early years and fast rise to stardom. … "The Voice" coach Adam Levine has signed a one-year development deal with longtime manager/producing partner Jordan Feldstein that will entail collaborating on the creation of scripted programming for NBC.

Lists
It's that time of year again, when Maxim magazine is good enough to let us know who the sexiest women celebrities are (based on fan votes) with their annual Hot 100 rankings, and it's not hard to find GRAMMY winners on the list, especially among the Top 15. Rihanna ranked No. 3, Taylor Swift No. 13 and Beyoncé came in at No. 14 (just in time for Mother's Day for Bey). The pole position went to untamable singer Miley Cyrus.

New Music
Less than two months after releasing his No. 1 album, The 20/20 Experience, Justin Timberlake has announced he will release a follow-up set featuring 10 new songs and outtakes on Sept. 30. … On May 14 Amy Grant will release How Mercy Looks From Here, her first album of all-new material in 10 years featuring "Our Time Is Now," a duet with Carole King.

Lifestyle
Shape magazine June cover girl Britney Spears has revealed how she got back in shape. "I'm doing 90 minutes of yoga twice a week in addition to a lot of cardio," she said in a recent interview. But Spears, who is preparing for an upcoming Las Vegas residency, admits the healthy lifestyle is no walk in the park. "Dieting is tough because my specialties are spaghetti, brownies and chocolate chip cookies. I try not to make those too often or I'll eat the whole bowl of dough."

On The Road
The lineup has been revealed for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which this year will take place over two weekends on Oct. 4–6 and Oct. 11–13. Artists taking the stage will include GRAMMY winners Kings Of Leon, Muse, Phoenix, Lionel Richie, Wilco, and Thom Yorke's Atoms For Peace project, as well as the Cure and Depeche Mode. … An all-star tribute to George Jones will take place Nov. 22 in Nashville during what was supposed to be the late singer's farewell show and will feature performances by Garth Brooks, Sam Moore, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Travis Tritt.

#theysaidit
Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong recently dismissed Korean pop star Psy as "the herpes of music." … Beyoncé recently told "Good Morning America" that she wants more children because she thinks her daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, "needs some company." … While some fans are paying upward of $1,200 to see the Rolling Stones on their 50 & Counting tour, guitarist Keith Richards said he'd like fans to be able to attend Stones shows "without sort of starving their babies and all." … The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has labeled the video for David Bowie's "The Next Day" "juvenile." The video, which finds Bowie dressed up as Jesus, was temporarily pulled from YouTube. … Liam Gallagher reportedly almost died after eating candy. "I've done some stuff over the years but never, never did I think a f***ing blue M&M would be the thing that could have killed me," said Gallagher.

Justin Timberlake's Road To 'Everything I Thought It Was': How Revisiting & Accepting The Past Resulted In His Most Assured Album Yet
Justin Timberlake at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscars Party.

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage)

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Justin Timberlake's Road To 'Everything I Thought It Was': How Revisiting & Accepting The Past Resulted In His Most Assured Album Yet

Revisit the journey that's led Justin Timberlake to his sixth album — both an homage to his past and a celebration of where he's going.

GRAMMYs/Mar 15, 2024 - 02:45 pm

When Justin Timberlake played his new material for close friends, they had one resounding reaction: "This sounds like everything we know you for, everything we thought we wanted from you."

Those words inspired the title of Timberlake's first album in six years, Everything I Thought It Was, which arrived March 15. The Memphis-born singer has described the release as "incredibly honest" but also as having "a lot of f—ng fun" — a statement that encapsulates how his music has evolved in the past three decades.

Since his beginnings as a child entertainer on shows like Star Search and Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, and later as a member of best-selling boy band *NSYNC, Timberlake proved that he belonged on the stage. His charisma and passion made him stand out effortlessly, and those experiences foreshadowed his star power and the brilliant solo career he was poised to have. 

When *NSYNC announced their hiatus in April 2002, it took Timberlake just six months to release Justified, his debut LP. For the first time in a decade, he was introducing himself as an artist with full agency over his work, and showing exactly the kind of music he wanted to create. 

"I felt like I had so much to prove to myself because I was coming from such a humongous group and a humongous movement of pop music," he reflected in a 2023 YouTube interview for Beatclub. "There was a real sound around what people were considering pop music before I went solo ... I knew I wanted to make a different type of album."

Justified promptly shifted Timberlake's good-boy image into a grown-up stunner. Through R&B, hip-hop and funk beats, he wears his heart on his sleeve; there's lust in lead single "Like I Love You," pain in "Cry Me A River," joy in "Rock Your Body." It resonated with the public — the album peaked at No.2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned two top five singles, proving that Timberlake was more than ready to shine on his own. In addition, the album won him his first GRAMMYs in 2004 for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Cry Me A River"; he had been nominated nine times with *NSYNC, and once for "Like I Love You" the year prior.

Largely produced by the Neptunes and Timbaland, Justified also marked the beginning of a vital partnership for the singer. Timbaland was essential in shaping Timberlake's musical DNA, and helped produce a majority of his discography — including credits on two tracks of EITIW. "We share the same perspective that we always want to make something that reminds us of music that we love, but at the same time is something we've never heard before," Timberlake told GRAMMY.com in 2014.

Following Justified, Timberlake ventured into acting — another one of his burgeoning skills — landing roles in films like 2006's Alpha Dog and Black Snake Moan. However, 2006 was best known as the year Timberlake brought sexy back with his sophomore album, FutureSex/LoveSounds.

Considered by many as peak JT, FS/LS shot his popularity into the stratosphere and solidified him as a superstar in his own right. An avant-garde pop masterpiece, its 12 tracks weave R&B and electronic music, sprinkling in guitar solos and interludes, Timberlake's flawless falsetto and distorted synths. Its experimentalism laid the groundwork for what became known as Timberlake's signature sound, and what he would explore in the future — including on Everything I Thought It Was singles "Selfish" and "Drown." The album also marked Timberlake's first solo No.1 on the Billboard 200, and produced three No.1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in a row.

According to Timberlake, those three singles — "SexyBack," "My Love," and "What Goes Around…Comes Around" — "started a sound that I feel like it went on for, humbly speaking, a whole decade." FutureSex/LoveSounds earned Timberlake four more GRAMMYs: Best Dance Recording for "SexyBack" and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "My Love" in 2007, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "What Goes Around…Comes Around" and Best Dance Recording for "LoveStoned/I Think She Knows" in 2008.

Following FS/LS, Timberlake started a six-year release pattern that he has continued through Everything I Thought It Was. During those down periods, he still managed to maintain his star prowess by landing successful acting spots and producing songs for artists such as Rihanna and Madonna. And the first six-year hiatus was clearly fruitful, as his third LP was a two-part beast: 2013'sThe 20/20 Experience.

Produced by Timbaland and J-Roc, the double album displayed the singer at his most sophisticated yet, and reflected his growth in the decade since Justified came out. The first half's 10 tracks are lofty, lengthy meanderings inspired by neo soul and Timberlake's lasting love of '60s music. 

"When we were making the record I said, 'If Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin can do 10-minute songs and Queen can do 10-minute songs, then why can't we?' We'll figure out the radio edits later," he told Capital FM at the time, according to NME. The album went straight to No.1 on the Billboard 200, spearheaded by the austere charm of "Suit & Tie," featuring Jay-Z, and the stirring emotions of "Mirrors."

Six months later, Timberlake dropped the second half of his project, The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2, and the compilation of both albums, The 20/20 Experience – The Complete Experience. Comprising songs with a more accessible structure (though they still averaged 7 minutes), 2 of 2 also debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200, and "Pusher Love Girl" won Timberlake his first Best R&B Song GRAMMY in 2014. Furthermore, its sounds pushed Timberlake's versatility to new edges, and deeply impacted his future releases.

As he entered his thirties, Timberlake's priorities shifted; he married actress Jessica Biel in 2012, and welcomed his first son, Silas, in 2015. A break from music was only natural, but this time it was also transformational — and reflected in his artistry. In 2016, in the middle of an album hiatus, Timberlake landed one of the biggest and most unexpected hits in his career: "CAN'T STOP THE FEELING!."

The disco-infused single was part of the soundtrack for DreamWorks Animation's Trolls, where Timberlake voiced the character Branch and worked as executive music producer. Attesting his talent for making simple, feel-good hits, "CAN'T STOP" was Timberlake's first No.1 single in almost a decade, and earned him a GRAMMY for Best Song Written For Visual Media and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. It is also his biggest streaming song to date, with over 1 billion listens on both Spotify and YouTube.

Trolls brought Timberlake back into the limelight after years of focusing mostly on his personal life, and consequently created buzz around his upcoming releases. "I wouldn't say [my new material] is the antithesis of 20/20, but it does sound more singular," he teased in an interview with Variety in 2016. "If 20/20 sounded like it literally surrounds your entire head, this stuff feels more like it just punches you between the eyes."**

In 2018, Timberlake dropped his fifth studio album, Man Of The Woods, whose title derives from the meaning of Silas' name. The album itself was largely inspired by Timberlake's family and his Southern roots, and found him back with Timbaland and the Neptunes. The result is a record where Timberlake mixes his brand of funky pop while diving into the country and Americana sounds of his childhood. It's his most vulnerable work so far; in the album closer, "Young Man," for example, Timberlake takes the position of a doting father passing on his teachings, wrapping it up with vocal snippets from Biel and Silas.

Even though Man Of The Woods largely didn't have the same commercial impact as Timberlake's previous works, it still marked his fourth consecutive No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, and the release lined up with a headlining gig at the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show — a testament to his staying power.

In the years prior to Everything I Thought It Was, Timberlake kept busy by collaborating with artists like SZA ("The Other Side" from Trolls World Tour), Calvin Harris ("Stay with Me" with Halsey and Pharrell Williams), and Jack Harlow ("Parent Trap"). He also welcomed second son, Phineas, in 2020, and worked in several movies, including two Trolls sequels.

2023's Trolls Band Together, the latest installment of the franchise, also held a sweet, dreamlike surprise: Timberlake reunited with *NSYNC to release their first song together in 20 years. The heartwarming, funky "Better Place" was a reminder of the quintet's chemistry, and reignited hopes for further collaborations.

Luckily, fans wouldn't need to wait for too long. *NSYNC is among the three featured artists on  Everything I Thought It Was, on a breezy track called "Paradise." (And those who were in attendance at Timberlake's "one night only" show at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on March 13 got to see the group's first performance together in over a decade, when they premiered "Paradise" and sang four *NSYNC classics.)

This isn't the only callback to the past on the album, though. The chill beats and adoring message of lead single "Selfish" bring to mind a refresh of 20/20's "Not A Bad Thing"; second single "Drown" rides on the same wavelength of "Cry Me A River" and "What Goes Around…Comes Around," but tinged with more sadness than spite. Meanwhile, "Sanctified" is the pure ambition of FS/LS transmuted into a soul-opera-rock trip. Throughout the album's other 15 tracks, Timberlake also dabbles on heavy basslines ("No Angels"), disco melodies ("My Favorite Drug"), sweet R&B croons ("Love & War"), and sour, stingy ballads ("Flame").

As Timberlake declared himself on The Graham Norton Show, bits and pieces of all his previous works come together to form an updated version of himself on this album — one that is finally comfortable in being vulnerable, and thankful for everything he's been through. "I'm everything you thought I was/ I'm everything I thought I was/ It was everything I thought it was," he sings in the opening track, "Memphis."

"I'm having this moment in my life looking back on everything that has been, and accepting all of it. The good, the bad, the fast, the slow," he said on The Kelly Clarkson Show. "It's just about arriving at this place right now in my life, as an artist, as a husband, as a father, as a human. And I'm just really excited about what the future holds."

Justin Timberlake's Biggest Songs, From His Best *NSYNC Moments To The Solo Smashes

The Taylor Swift Effect: 8 Ways The Eras Tour Broke Records & Shattered Sales
Taylor Swift performs during the Eras Tour in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Nov. 24, 2023.

Photo: Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

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The Taylor Swift Effect: 8 Ways The Eras Tour Broke Records & Shattered Sales

As the Eras Tour hits Disney+ with 'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version)', take a look at some of the mind-boggling feats the pop superstar has accomplished with her culture-shifting trek.

GRAMMYs/Mar 14, 2024 - 05:13 pm

Taylor Swift has continuously redefined what it means to be a pop superstar for almost two decades. But 2023 might have been her most defining year to date, thanks to the Eras Tour.

With 152 dates in stadiums across five continents, the Eras Tour isn't just Swift's personal biggest tour to date — it's a feat few other artists have accomplished. The sprawling 3 1/2-hour show is an impressive feat in itself, but the tour has gone on to break records and boost economies, firmly cementing Swift's stratospheric position as one of pop's all-time greats. 

There's a reason why the term "The Taylor Swift Effect" has been coined — it captures the impact Swift has had not just on music, but society as a whole. Swift's latest concert tour weaves through her 10- (and soon to be 11-) album discography, totaling a whopping 44 songs across 10 different acts for each "era." Between the allure of each set's surprise song and the next-level fan engagement, the tour has become far more than your average concert — it's a full-on cultural moment. 

Though the trek still has a bewildering nine months to go (it will hit Europe and another North America stretch from May to December), Swift is celebrating the Eras Tour's one-year anniversary by bringing its record-breaking concert film to Disney+ on March 14th. 

As fans get ready to stream Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version), GRAMMY.com looks at the impact of the Eras Tour so far, exploring the records Swift has shattered since it first began.

Becoming The Highest Grossing Tour Ever

In eight months, Swift's Eras Tour did something no other artist has ever done: gross over $1 billion on a single tour. Pollstar reported the news in December 2023, stating that the 60+ shows she played in 2023 accumulated to 4.3 million tickets sold. 

This number is even more staggering when compared to Elton John's farewell tour, which lasted five years and had 328 shows and accumulated $939 million. Not only has Swift been able to do the same with 152 shows, but she still has nine months to go — and at the pace she's going, Pollstar projects that she could pass the $2 billion mark.  

Shattering Attendance Records

From breaking the all-time record for attendance during her three shows at Nashville's Nissan Stadium in May 2023 to playing the largest shows of her career at Melbourne's Cricket Ground in February 2024 (performing to 288,000 fans over three days), Swift couldn't stop breaking attendance records at various stops. Including those venues, she's broken eight attendance records at seven so far: Seattle's Lumen Field, New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, Pittsburgh's Acrisure Stadium, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and Sao Paolo's Allianz Parque (where she broke one-day and three-day attendance records).

Although her friend and collaborator Ed Sheeran already broke some of her attendance records during his own 2023 world tour, Swift has done the impossible again by creating an entirely new record to break: how many people are both inside and outside the venue. Cities like Tampa and Detroit all had "Taygating" — mass parties with thousands of fellow Swifties that include singalongs, cookouts, and trading handmade friendship bracelets like the fans inside. In Philadelphia alone, cell phone usage data in the area determined that around 57,000 fans "taygated" outside throughout the tour's three nights.

Spiking Craft Sales

Creating costumes for Taylor Swift concerts is something that fans have been doing since Swift's Fearless Tour in 2009 and 2010, but a lyric from MIdnights' "You're On Your Own Kid" created a new way for fans to engage with each other. The lyric "So make the friendship bracelets/ Take the moment and taste it" sparked a friendship bracelet frenzy, and caused a 40 percent chainwide increase in jewelry sales overall at Michaels craft stores, with locations within Eras Tour stops seeing a 300 percent sales increase in beads and jewelry categories leading up to the concert.

Since the start of the tour, Michaels has also helped Swifties create over 22,0000 bracelets in their bracelet-making classes in-store. And that simple lyric has inspired other fandoms to take part — Formula One fans are handing bracelets off to drivers before races, and British soccer players are making them to help boost team morale.

Spawning The Highest Grossing Concert Film Of All Time

When she announced that the Eras Tour concert film would be headed to the big screen, Swift opted to "bet on herself" by personally investing $10-20 million to bypass Hollywood entirely to facilitate a partnership directly with AMC. To say that bet worked would be an understatement: the Eras Tour concert movie became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, amassing $250 million in worldwide movie ticket sales. On the day it was announced, movie ticket buyers broke AMC's single-day advance ticket sales record, amassing $26 million within 24 hours.

The Eras Tour film would not only become a huge box office achievement, but would become the first concert film to ever be nominated for a Golden Globe, competing against other major box office blockbusters like Barbie and Oppenheimer.

Igniting Social Media

If fans can't physically be at the concert or "Taygate" outside the venue, they can tune in thanks to TikTok's live-streaming capabilities. Fellow fans provide streams of the entire concert for those who want to watch the gig. Although the viewer count varies, anywhere from 30k+ people can be tuning in on one stream (statistics have shown that most fans tune in for Swift's surprise songs).

Since the start of the Eras Tour, TikTok has been flooded with over 1.9 million videos, with Variety reporting that Taylor-related content can average around 380 million views per day and no day falling below 200 million views. Swift took note of some of the fan-fronted trends, too, including the viral "Bejeweled" dance, created by fan Mikael Arellano, as part of her choreography on tour.

Read More: Behind The Scenes Of The Eras Tour: Taylor Swift's Opening Acts Unveil The Magic Of The Sensational Concert

Boosting The Economy

Every weekend, cities that hosted the Eras Tour awarded Swift with something special — Nashville placed a bench in Centennial Park as a nod to a lyric in "Invisible String," Santa Clara made her an honorary mayor, Minneapolis renamed the city 'Swiftie-apolis,' and Rio de Janeiro projected Swift's junior jewels shirt from the "You Belong With Me" onto Christ the Redeemer. No matter how the cities honored Swift, her visit was certainly beneficial for their local economies — one stop of the Eras Tour averaged around $1,300 spending per person on travel, hotels, food, and merchandise. 

The U.S. Travel Association likened it to the Super Bowl, but happening 53 times across 20 cities, estimating the economic impact to be around $10 billion by the time the tour wraps. It's a tour that has single-handedly changing travel, according to CNN, with fans choosing their travel based on where they can get tickets. And since money talks, politicians and world leaders — from Canada's Prime Minister to the Chilean President — have come out in spades to beg for Swift to add their countries to the worldwide tour. 

Breaking Niche Records

Two nights in Seattle resulted in a "Swift Quake" after so many fans danced to "Shake It Off," which caused seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. Seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach collected 10 hours of data — from the music to the speakers to the dancing — to see how that energy can impact the ground enough to shake it.

Although not an official record, within the Swiftie community, fans have had battles to see which city can have the longest-standing ovation after "champagne problems," as detailed on Reddit and Billboard. Right now, Swift's penultimate Los Angeles show at SoFi Stadium is the winner, clocking in at 8 minutes.

Elevating Swift's Discography

After the start of a tour, it's natural for artists to see their discography have a short influx of listeners and then taper off again. But after the first 10 weeks of the Eras Tour, Swift's catalogue was growing more and more with every stop — up to 79 percent more than where she was before the tour began. And instead of listeners streaming specific singles or albums, the streamers were all over Swift's set list; Billboard reported that 23 of the 42 songs performed have doubled in weekly streams. 

The tour even helped the resounding fan favorite from 2019's Lover, "Cruel Summer," transform from beloved deep cut to chart topper. Streams of "Cruel Summer" went up 304 percent, resulting in the track becoming both her 10th No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and her sole longest-leading No. 1 on Billboard's all-format Radio Songs chart.

Using the Eras Tour to work in tandem with her rerecording release schedule has also become an integral marketing tactic. So much so that coinciding the tour and the releases (as well as the announcements) has helped contribute to her having six albums in the top 20 of the year-end Billboard 200, more No. 1 albums than any woman in history with 13 (as of press time), and 1989 (Taylor's Version) outselling the original — a staggering 1.3 million albums in its first week. 

Swift wrapped her first 2024 Eras Tour leg in Singapore on March 9, as she's now preparing to release her highly anticipated 11th album, The Tortured Poet's Department, on April 19. Three weeks later, the Eras Tour will pick back up in Nanterre, France, on May 9, with dates nearly every week until it wraps in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Dec. 8. 

With an already record-breaking tour and a new album on the way, there's no doubt that the world will continue to feel the impact of Taylor Swift and her pop star prowess — throughout 2024 and beyond.

5 Reasons Why Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Will Be The Most Legendary Of Her Generation

Jeff Tweedy & Cheryl Pawelski Sit Down For "Up Close & Personal" Chat: 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,' Writing One Song & More
Cheryl Pawelski and Jeff Tweedy

Photo: Daniel Boczarski

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Jeff Tweedy & Cheryl Pawelski Sit Down For "Up Close & Personal" Chat: 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,' Writing One Song & More

Cheryl Pawelski is the producer and curator of 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)', which won a GRAMMY in 2023 for Best Historical Album. On Feb. 27, she sat down with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy about all manner of creativities.

GRAMMYs/Mar 11, 2024 - 02:48 pm

"We don't get the applause. That's later."

That was an offhand comment from Sarah Jensen, the Senior Executive Director for the Recording Academy's Midwest Chapter — ahead of a conversation between Cheryl Pawelski and Jeff Tweedy. But given the nature of the ensuing chat, it's oddly apropos.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Wilco's seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, four-time GRAMMY winners Tweedy and Pawelski chatted before a hometown audience at the Rhapsody Theater in Chicago. Pawelski produced and curated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition), which won Best Historical Album at the 2024 GRAMMYs; Pawelski accepted the golden gramophone on their behalf.

Today, 2002's ambitious, deconstructionist Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is just about universally revered as a watershed for alternative music. But in a David-and-Goliath story told and retold since its release — especially in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Yankee was rejected by its label, Reprise.

Wilco left their label, published Yankee on their own website, and it became a tremendous hit. Nonesuch — which, like Reprise, operates through Warner Records — picked them up, meaning the same record company, in effect, paid Wilco twice.

Ever since, the applause for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — the one with the immortal "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," "Jesus, Etc." and "Ashes of American Flags" on it — has been unceasing. And, naturally, a hefty chunk of Pawelski and Tweedy's conversation — for the Recording Academy's "Up Close & Personal" interview series, and MCed by Chicagoan family music artist Justin Roberts — revolved around it.

According to Tweedy, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a pivot point, where they decided to move away from any sort of pastiche.

"There are a lot of things on the boxed set," he said — referring to the plethora of alternate versions of well-known tracks — "where I would listen to them now and go, 'That was good enough.' But it wasn't satisfying… Rock and roll was built on that thing, above all else… be yourself, without any apology, and on purpose."

The "Up Close & Personal" session didn't start with Yankee, though; it started with How to Write One Song, Tweedy's 2020 treatise on the process of… well, writing one song. Which gets as psychologically and spiritually incisive as Tweedy fans would expect.

"I think music in general is a safe place to fail," the prolific songwriter stated. "When you take your ego out of it and you look at it as a daily practice of spending time with yourself in your imagination… once you do it for a long time, it really makes the notion of failure almost quaint or something."

When it comes to songwriting, the 11-time nominee said "nothing's really ever lost. You learn something about yourself writing terrible songs. I know myself better because of the songs that you've never heard."

Tweedy offered other helpful concepts and strategies, like accumulating enough voice memo ideas — for so long — that you can treat them like the work of a stranger. "I'll go through and listen through a bunch of stuff like that," Tweedy quipped, "and go, 'Who wrote this?'"

Pawelski went on to elucidate her rich legacy in the music business — including her fight to get the Band's deep cuts, like Stage Fright, included in Capitol's music budget. (She's worked on archival projects by everyone from the Beach Boys to Big Star to Willie Nelson across her decades-long career.)

Read More: Jeff Tweedy's Blurred Emotions: Wilco's Leader On Cruel Country & Songwriting As Discovery

Tweedy also discussed the magic of collaboration. "I've gotten really good at being alone with people. So I think that facilitates collaboration to some degree," he said. "What I mean is being as forgiving of myself with other people in the room as I am with myself alone."

What was one of his favorites, Roberts inquired?

"The one that probably will always be the most proud of is getting to work with Mavis Staples and contributing something to her catalog, to her body of work that seems to have resonated not just with her audience or a new audience, but with her that she likes to sing, that means something to her. I think that would've satisfied me without it winning a GRAMMY [in 2011]."

When the conversation drifted to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Pawelsky discussed the foreboding process of digging through the sessions' flotsam and jetsam.

"The world kind of changed during the making of this. The band certainly changed, and also, technology changed," she explained. "So we had everything — we had DATs, we had ADATs, we had tape, we had cassettes, we had CD-Rs."

About her process: "I go backwards and try to reconstruct how things happen, and it's always incomplete and I don't know what I'm missing, so it's extra fun. But this particular record was done and undone in a lot of ways… some of the latter recordings sound like they're earlier recordings."

As Pawelski admits, the prospect of stewarding Yankee was "kind of terrifying" because of how meaningful the record is. "It really was a Rubik's cube. I would get the orange side done and I'd turn it over."

As the talk wound down, the subject of Wilco's latest album, Cousin, came up — as well as Wilco's rare use of an outside producer, in Cate Le Bon.

"I thought that it would be really a catalyst for getting something different out of the songs that I write," Tweedy explained. "I like the idea of working with a woman, which I felt like has not happened that much in rock and roll, from my perspective

"So that felt like an inspired bit of lateral thinking," he continued. "that felt so right to me to get to — and that she wanted to do it, and that we were friends, and it did."

To go "Up Close & Personal" with Tweedy is unlike most interviews; his brain simply works different than most, and you walk away pleasantly scrambled and transformed.

Which is what the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions were like — and thank goodness for Pawelski, who shows it's not merely a masterpiece: in all its alien transmissions, vulnerable one-liners and shattered poetry, Yankee continues to engender GRAMMY glory.

Songbook: A Guide To Wilco's Discography, From Alt-Country To Boundary-Shattering Experiments

Listen: GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2024 Playlist: Female Empowerment Anthems From Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Jennie & More
(Clockwise, from top left): Jennie, Janelle Monáe, Anitta, Taylor Swift, Victoria Monét, Ariana Grande, Lainey Wilson

Photos (clockwise, from top left): Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella, Paras Griffin/Getty Images, Lufre, MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY, Paras Griffin/Getty Images, JOHN SHEARER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

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Listen: GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2024 Playlist: Female Empowerment Anthems From Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Jennie & More

This March, the Recording Academy celebrates Women's History Month with pride and joy. Press play on this official playlist that highlights uplifting songs from Taylor Swift, Victoria Monét, Anitta and more.

GRAMMYs/Mar 8, 2024 - 04:44 pm

From commanding stages to blasting through stereos, countless women have globally graced the music industry with their creativity. And though they've long been underrepresented, tides are changing: in just the last few years, female musicians have been smashing records left and right, conquering top song and album charts and selling sold-out massive tours.

This year, Women's History Month follows a particularly historic 66th GRAMMY Awards, which reflected the upward swing of female musicians dominating music across the board. Along with spearheading the majority of the ceremony's performances, women scored bigtime in the General Field awards — with wins including Best New Artist, Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, and Album Of The Year.

Female empowerment anthems, in particular, took home major GRAMMY gold. Miley Cyrus' "Flowers" took home two awards, while Victoria Monét was crowned Best New Artist thanks to the success of her album Jaguar II and its hit single "On My Mama." As those two songs alone indicate, female empowerment takes many different shapes in music — whether it's moving on from a relationship by celebrating self-love or rediscovering identity through motherhood.

The recent successes of women in music is a testament to the trailblazing artists who have made space for themselves in a male-dominated industry — from the liberating female jazz revolution of the '20s to the riot grrl movement of the '90s. Across genres and decades, the classic female empowerment anthem has strikingly metamorphosed into diverse forms of defiance, confidence and resilience.

No matter how Women's History Month is celebrated, it's about women expressing themselves, wholeheartedly and artistically, and having the arena to do so. And in the month of March and beyond, women in the music industry deserve to be recognized not only for their talent, but ambition and perseverance — whether they're working behind the stage or front-and-center behind the mic.

From Aretha Franklin's "RESPECT" to Beyoncé's "Run the World (Girls)," there's no shortage of female empowerment anthems to celebrate women's accomplishments in the music industry. Listen to GRAMMY.com's 2024 Women's History Month playlist on streaming services below.