#59 - Night, love you 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! It’s another week of football, but this time, noticeably less Taylor Swift coverage (finally). Perhaps people are anticipating the inevitable? This week, we’re featuring a band we’ve loved daily, but especially Nightly, since 2017. Hope you enjoy a little light reading before bed.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet by Del Water Gap.

2. 💿 This Week in Music: Drake hiatus, Bank of America live entertainment report, Amazon Amp shutting down.

3. 📈 Weekly Charts: Doja disappoints and is still without a #1.

4. 🎙️ Nightly is our artist of the week.

Rating Rationale: Del Water Gap’s highly anticipated sophomore album is finally here, and it’s truly a must-listen. Sam’s vivid and passionately raw poetic prowess counterintuitively matches the production style, especially as you listen chronologically through the album. While the earlier released singles power the beguiling feeling of “smiling depression” in the first half of the album, the second half illustrates a brilliant contrast into a more spiraling state towards despair. Again, it’s a must listen.

👋 Drake on Hiatus: You read that headline right. After dropping his highly anticipated album, For All The Dogs, Drake has announced that he will take a break from music to focus on his health.

🌈 Two-Stepping Back: Country artist, Maren Morris, has chosen to step away from the country music industry due to the genre’s traditionally poor relationship with the LGBTQ+ community.

💃 Latin Rising: Not only have on-demand streams for Latin music risen in 2023 (up >22% YoY to ~57.9 billion), but also in recent years, Latin music has given way to new individual risers in the category, particularly Peso Pluma and Fuerza Regida as evidenced by their wins at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. However, as Latin music’s popularity has grown, the dark side of Latin America’s political instability has shown that these same artists can be challenged.

😮 Tour Benefits: After finally wrapping up her Renaissance World Tour last Sunday, Beyoncé is estimated to have grossed $579 million in revenue. Taylor Swift, who is currently still on her Eras Tour, surpassed $100 million in box office ticket sales for her upcoming The Eras Tour Concert Film, coming to theatres this Friday.

🎸 Boy Band Culture: A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the psychological fan response to pop artists. Coincidentally, this week, Paramount will be releasing an upcoming boy band documentary on Paramount+ that features *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Golden Age, and others.

📺 You Gotta Watch This: In partnership with Toyota, Sean Miyashiro shares an interview of his journey of founding the pan-Asian record label, 88rising, in his parking garage in New York:

🎢 Funflation: In a research report by Bank of America Global Research, the live entertainment sector is expected to see continued strong growth as consumer spending focuses on “experiences” for younger generations and social media platforms further accelerates artist and event discovery. More importantly, the research report does a deep dive into each part of the live music “value chain,” which ranges from artists and their management to venue operators and ticketing platforms.

⚡ No Amplitude: Last December, we wrote about Amazon’s experimental live radio app, Amp. This week, Amazon Music announced it would be shuttering Amp after a year and a half. It was fun while it lasted.

📜 Spotify Updates: It’s been a busy year for Spotify. Earlier this year, Spotify patented its own A&R technology to predict breakout artists. Late last month, the US Patent Office issued a new patent to Spotify allowing for a system that generates and distributes digital mixtapes while enabling users to integrate their own audio. This week, Spotify code revealed functionality for prompt-based playlists as well as a report from The Independent noting that Spotify will be launching a “Supremium” subscription tier that includes AI tools and lossless audio.

💔 Record Label Splits: On his 46th birthday, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, The-Dream (credits include Umbrella, Single Ladies, Partition, Baby, All of the Lights, etc.), recently announced that he would be leaving Warner Chappell Music Publishing. This week, Jessie J announced that she would be parting ways with Republic Records and would be releasing her next project independently.

💰 Securing the Bag: Australian singer-songwriter, Angus Stone, who also goes under the moniker, Dope Lemon, sold the recordings of his first three Dope Lemon studio albums to BMG. The Circuit Group, formed by industry veterans in the artist management space, is looking to acquire up to a 50% stake in artists’ catalogs.

🌐 Web3 Updates: Cooper Turley, best known for his efforts in investing in the web3 music space, has revealed a new project known as Onchain Curator, a way to showcase which on-chain songs you’re listening to. Currently, Onchain Curator is integrated with Sound.xyz and Reservoir.

💜 An Evening with Olivia Rodrigo: American Express announced an intimate show in which Olivia Rodrigo will play a one-off performance at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles tomorrow night. Tickets are only $25 and will benefit her new non-profit, Fund 4 Good.

📺 Saturday Night Live: With the writers’ strike finally ending, SNL is set to return this upcoming Saturday, with Bad Bunny and Ice Spice as the first musical guests.

🎅 Christmas Albums: Cher has announced a Christmas album, which will arrive next Friday. The following week, country artist, Jon Pardi, will be releasing his aptly named Christmas album, Merry Christmas From Jon Pardi.

👀 What’s Coming Up: BTS’ Jung Kook will be dropping Golden, in November. FKA twigs previewed her new album at Valentino’s Paris Fashion Week show. Charli XCX has been in the studio. Kanye West held an intimate listening party in Italy for his upcoming album. Chromeo announced their next album, Adult Contemporary, which arrives in February. Sigrid will be dropping her new EP, The Hype, on October 27th. mxmtoon announced an upcoming EP, plum blossom. 

🚶‍♂️ Artists On Tour: SZA teased an “intimate mini tour” for her upcoming deluxe version of SOS. Bruce Springsteen announced his rescheduled US tour dates for 2024 after postponing his remaining 2023 tour dates last month due to illness. Other artists on tour include Foo Fighters, LCD Soundsystem, Oliver Tree, LANY, PJ Harvey. Finally, Stevie Nicks suggests that Fleetwood Mac is unlikely to ever go on tour again after the passing of Christine McVie nearly a year ago.

📈 What’s Trending? Doja’s fourth LP debut was nothing short of disappointing as she failed to crack a top three spot on the Billboard 200, especially with no other major releases that week. Surprisingly, Doja still does NOT have a #1 album, an achievement that has been oddly elusive for an artist that is categorically mainstream.

Primer: The namesake of this week’s newsletter is a nod to one of our favorite rising alt-pop bands. They wanted a name that was personal to their fans, like something you’d send in a text message. We hope it’s how you feel while reading it.

Jersey Shore: The initial band’s concept began when distant cousins, Jonathan Capeci and Joey Beretta, bonded over their matching Fender guitars in their hometowns near South New Jersey. They like to say, given their Italian descent, being cousins basically means they’re brothers. Throughout their teens, they were both in and out of several bands until they joined forces to create Dinner And A Suit with their two friends. Jonathan submitted one of their songs to a regional Battle of the Bands contest, which won them a spot on a number of Vans Warped Tour dates along the East Coast in 2009. It was the captivating feeling of performing live that hooked them on pursuing a career in music full-time. After encouragement from their families, they decided to move to Nashville to make their dreams a reality.

Making It Happen: The band quickly immersed themselves into the Nashville music community, playing shows throughout the city and booking a few licensing syncs, including one on MTV show Jersey Shore. Shortly after booking a trip to Los Angeles to write and promote their band, Dinner And A Suit split, but Jonathan and Joey decided to make the trip anyway. They spent ten days in the city writing together and creating what would become the first Nightly EP, Honest. They met their drummer, Nicholas Sainato, in Nashville, and together they released their debut EP under Interscope Records after single, “XO,” was spotlighted on Spotify’s weekly “New Music Friday” playlist. In March 2020, they moved over to BMG, and after spending months writing, recording, and producing in quarantine, they released their debut album, night, love you.

Wear Your Heart Out: Throughout the years, Nightly has played major headline and supporting tours alongside NF, All-American Rejects, and Andy Grammer, while also playing festivals like South By Southwest, Bonnaroo, Hangout Fest, and Firefly. Leading up to their sophomore album, wear your heart out, the band opened for Kane Brown and Imagine Dragons during the Super Bowl Music Fest in Phoenix and released a number of collaborations with artists like ayokay, NOTD, and Vault Boy.

Their sophomore album dropped in August, and as long-time fans, we think it’s their best work yet. Feeding off the energy from their fans across non-stop touring shows in 2022, Nightly was inspired to create an album that centers on their live show experience. A direct contrast from their typical sad song repertoire, this album offers a lighthearted production you’ll instinctively need to dance to—feeding the disco renaissance we’ve seen over the last few years. If the album cover of their signature ‘<3’ logo made in the form of broken pieces of a disco ball isn’t telling of that, we don’t know what else would be.

Genre: Alternative-pop

Current Label: Independent, managed by Neon Coast

What’s Next: Nightly kicked off their wear your heart out tour this past Thursday in Austin, TX and is slated for 18 more tour stops across the U.S. promoting their sophomore album. If you live in one of these cities, we recommend trying to catch them live. We’ll be dancing in LA 🪩

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with some pretty solid music merch finds.

The Merch Table 💳

• 🤝 OVO x NCAA: Drake’s brand, October’s Very Own, announced a partnership with the NCAA to release limited edition merchandise, featuring the Texas Longhorns, Kentucky Wildcats, Alabama Crimson Tide, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Memphis Tigers.

• 🥃 Smooth as AC/DC Whiskey: As part of Ballantine’s “True Music Icons Collection,” AC/DC launched a limited edition whiskey to commemorate 50 years of the rock band.

• 🎀 Gold Dust Barbie: In honor of her 75th birthday, Mattel released Stevie Nicks’ first-ever Barbie last Monday. While it’s sold out on Mattel’s website, you can try your luck on eBay for resale prices up to $160.

• 🎨 A Running Start of the Art: Sufjan Stevens released Javelin on Friday, and he announced a book of art and essays to go with it.

Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya