The biggest and most talked about story of 2023 was Taylor Swift’s total takeover as the Pop Queen. With her Era’s tour becoming the top selling concert of all time, Ms Swift was everywhere this year. Looking down from her private box at the Kansas City Chiefs Arrowhead Stadium, Tay saw her tour net over a billion dollars, playing to an average of 72,000 lucky ticket holders per show. Swift and Beyonce also unveiled their tours as concert films that played in cinemas this year. Swift’s The Eras Tour film grossed over 100 million dollars at the global box office, while Renaissance: A Film By Beyonce has netted about $38 million. This could possibly signal that huge artists like these could potentially release films of their succesful tours to keep the revenue pouring in.

Speaking of tours, The Cure launched their most successful tour this year. While it was a huge hit with audiences around the world, the band was also lauded for taking on Ticketmaster. Bandleader Robert Smith chastised the company and their outrageous service fees causing the ubiquitous mega conglomerate to issue ticket buyers service fee refunds.

AI became a hot topic of conversation this spring when a unique “Drake” & “The Weeknd” collaboration dropped. The track, called “Heart on My Sleeve”, was created by an anonymous online artist known as ghostwriter and fueled a lengthy debate about whether such works could be deemed legitimate by recognizing them for award consideration. The Grammys and Canada’s Juno awards both debated putting the song into their Best Rap Song and Song of the Year categories but decided that, as it wasn’t actually what it was claiming to be, to vote against it.

In another interesting wrinkle on the AI front, the Beatles released a brand new track featuring all members, alive and dead. “Now and Then” was created, with the help of AI, from a demo John Lennon made in the late 1970s, a guitar performance from George Harrison from 1995 and recently recorded performances from suriving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr just this past year. To have a brand new Beatles song in 2023, that all the members played on, is definitely an exciting aspect of what AI can do. Whether these exciting developments remain in the hands of the artists themselves or elsewhere remains to be seen.

While these were just a few of the biggest stories of 2023, there were so many other news items that we would be remiss to leave out. 2023 saw an arrest in the Tupac murder case, Tom Delonge, with recently reunited Blink 182, said an “I told you so” after the US Congress held hearings about the existence of UFOs. Hip Hop turned 50 and Kayne kept ranting. Lana Del Ray worked a shift at a Waffle House and Talking Heads reunited after years of division.

2023 was a great one for music fans. With Hollywood taking a long break due to the strikes, it was nice to have the many personalities of our favorite, and most disliked artists to keep us company. Here’s to an exciting 2024!

Words by Adam Williams