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Billy Mann

@billymann

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Husband/Dad, Grammy Award-nominated Singer/songwriter, Producer, Talent Advocate, Publisher, Investor, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Patriot 🇺🇸

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Former Chairman of A&M/Island/Polydor Al Cafaro and I speaking at @clivedavisinst years ago. The theme was “never let any one person’s opinion define your worth as an artist.” And of course that rule should apply to all of us. It was one of those conversations that was so hilarious and full of “eurekas,” that in a world of too many phones I wish someone had captured it this one time. 🤦🏻‍♂️#thehitlife taken in NYU-Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music by @billymann

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3 days ago

April 2010. I was in Cologne doing business reviews at the @emirecords office when a volcano in Iceland with a name nobody could pronounce (Eyjafjallajökull…and no, I still can’t) shut down the sky over Germany. My friend Andre said, “Go to Heidelberg.” I had never been. He took me there and we drove 140 MPH on the Audubon in his Audi station wagon. It turned out to be gorgeous—a town with a castle straight out of the Magic Kingdom and, of all things, an American army base—and I stayed for what felt like two weeks (more like ten days), working from one place while the world stood still, by myself and away from my family longer than I had ever been.

I discovered Germany in a way I had never imagined (mostly because, for once, I couldn’t leave it), and getting out meant going south to find open sky…a car and driver through Switzerland to Milan, dinner with my friend and colleague @marcoalboni , a train to Rome and the last available seat on a flight home to New York. But this picture is what I kept. A wonderful photographer I met there @martin.hausler took it with the castle behind me, and when I look at it now I don’t see a guy who was stuck—I see a guy who needed a volcano to close the sky before he’d sit still long enough to hear that the rests are part of the music too. #thehitlife taken in Heidelberg, Germany by @billymann

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6 days ago

🎂Happy birthday @shawnstockmanofficial
What a journey life is, bro! Blessed to call you my friend, collaborator and (when our lives allow) band mate. @chosenfamilymusic is one of so many things on the daily Thanksgiving plate I’m grateful for. Celebrate everything today! Your beautiful wife and kids and all of the little things. 54! Don’t forget to press save! #thehitlife #chosenfamilymusic #shawnstockman taken in Studio 54 by @billymann

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11 days ago

This week “So Incredible” is the #1 viral song in the Netherlands, 18 years after release. @universalmusicnl hired me to executive produce @ilsedelangemusic ‘s album. We took a risk on collaborators; she dove in on faith and the album was a smash for her.

But recently a 22-year-old TikTokker, @aisha.hdv (who was 4 when it came out), played it every morning and told people why. Ilse’s song stood up.

The songwriters in the room in 2008:

Ilse, ten years a star at home, 5x platinum debut, she always writes like she has something to prove. And since: Eurovision runner-up with The Common Linnets, “Calm After the Storm” #1 in 14 countries, a CMA Global Country Artist Award via Carrie Underwood, Edison Oeuvreprijs, Popprijs, Gouden Harp, a T Bone Burnett record, a role on Nashville, a Voice of Holland chair, 40+ awards, 18x platinum.

MachoPsycho : Nikey Olovson and @robinlynch_ Gothenburg, wrote 9 songs on Incredible. Since: Grammy nominated…Backstreet Boys, Cher, Justin Timberlake, Keith Urban, Natasha Bedingfield, Jessica Simpson, millions of records.

@natecampany a Cleveland kid I had just signed. He was Starbucks by day, songs every other hour. No hits, no credits, no leverage. Just a beautiful gift, an amazing manager @madametisch and passionate drive, which is all that matters. Since: LP’s “Lost on You,” Martin Garrix and Dua Lipa’s “Scared to Be Lonely,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Almost Love,” Becky G and Natti Natasha’s “Sin Pijama,” a stack of Carly Rae Jepsen’s E·MO·TION, Halestorm, Tove Lo, K.Flay.

What I think people get wrong about the 10,000 hours: the clock doesn’t start when the audience shows up. Each of these souls was working at this level in 2008–maybe in rooms without witnesses.

But this song is back at #1 because it was that good and the Netherlands decided to catch up again. The market is often late even when the work was on time. Congrats @IlseDeLange, Nate, Nikey and Robin! So incredible. taken in Nashville, Tennessee by @billymann

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14 days ago

Keynote Q&A at NARM Convention 2011. 🏔️ Peak big hair era!🤣 ✂️ #flashbackfriday taken in Hyatt Regency Los Angeles by @billymann

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19 days ago

🏈 Birds 24, Commanders 22. Season opens with a Dub. I’ll take it! Even just 2 points. Division rival. Week 1. As a fan, “one play at a time” isn’t a coaching method but so many of us can feel like we need a cardiology referral after each game. It’s a normal stress, especially since all of these @NFL teams are potentially champions… But the biggest win at the Linc for the @philadelphiaeagles won’t show up in the chatter on @wipafternoons . Since 2018, the @eaglesautism foundation has raised more than $56 million for autism research and care. This spring’s Eagles Autism Challenge alone: $16 million, a record, from nearly 7,000 people walking, running and riding out of the stadium. And last year the Lurie family gave $50 million to @childrenshospitalofpa and Penn to launch the Lurie Autism Institute, the largest single gift to autism research at an American academic medical center. Ever. Swoop (our team mascot) wears headphones now. Somewhere in the upper deck, a kid wearing his own looks down at the sideline and sees himself. Owners. Players. Fans. Tens of millions of dollars, one bag, one bike ride, one pair of headphones at a time.

Autism families know one play at a time, day at a time, game at a time. I love the team for what they fight for on the field, but maybe even more because of who they are as people. #flyeaglesfly
Go Birds 🦅💚 taken in Eagles Autism Foundation by @billymann

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22 days ago

Twenty-five years ago today, 2,977 people went to work, or boarded a plane, or answered an alarm, and never came home. A fork-tongued politician said they simply “died.” They didn’t. What happened to them was done to them by a violent, fanatical religious cult that turned passenger jets into bombs and used innocent people to make a statement.

They were murdered.

I remember the smell. Office paper snowing on Brooklyn. People at the windows choosing the air over the fire. Men gray from helmet to boot, rinsing the poison off their faces at a hydrant and walking straight back into the pile. Everybody knew the pile was people. They went back in anyway. Then the flyers—a father in a birthday hat, MISSING—parents looking for children, children looking for parents, each holding a photograph and a glimmer: maybe an air pocket, maybe a miracle, maybe. And under the flyers, the flowers, candles, and hope on its knees at the curb.

Here is what I need to scream: we were not divided. Nobody in the blood-donation line asked how you voted. Congress stood on the Capitol steps and sang, off-key and together. Passengers over a Pennsylvania field took a vote and charged a cockpit. The best of New York, of Washington, of this whole country rose out of that ash, and for a little while a nation was singing in one key.

A quarter century later the dust is still killing the people who dug, there are 25-year-olds with a father’s name on a bronze parapet and no memory of his voice, and the sheer inhumanity of it left a scar on every kid born since.

So what have we learned? I’m not sure the answer flatters any of us. We learned to be afraid. What we’ve unlearned is the thing that ran toward the smoke. And on which extreme ideologies we should make room for now—the one that flew into the towers, or the quieter ones we excuse because they hate the right people (every side has one, mine included)—the answer is the same as it was that morning: none.

We will never forget. The question is whether we can find who the hell we were on September 12th—the better souls the murdered put to work—and be them again without needing another pile to remind us. 🇺🇸

I wrote this song just after 9/11. 🙏 taken in 9/11 World Trade Center Memorial Monument by @billymann

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a month ago

🧚‍♀️ Everybody thinks the bold part is the harness, the flying, the sheer amount of air between her and the floor of a stadium. But for those who know, including millions of her most die-hard fans, the bold part never actually leaves the ground…ever. A mom first, the friend who shows up with wine and food but stays to help with the dishes, the one who gives silently and asks only that in return everybody else live vibrantly…Beautiful & bold is what she does when the safer play for anybody else is silence or hiding or blending or joining. Let me vouch for this: that middle finger resting in that fist in the air is an equal opportunity riser. Regardless of the momentary weather system or the “ready, fire, aim” culture system or the hydroplaning global socioeconomic system or the pile-on pop culture or the pay-for-slay algorithm, the only measure I’ve ever trusted is whether people can count on you when it costs something, and with her the answer has always been yes. Not just for her friends and family, but for her fans. The list of philanthropic generosity is so much longer than the world knows because she doesn’t put out press releases when she gives unlike many others who give only to get “attah girls” and “attah boys.”

Beyond that, Alecia has been in the room for some of the best days of my life and a couple of the worst, and she stood in exactly the same spot for both. I proudly stand with @pink always. Is Alecia really as cool as she seems? Yes. More actually. She wears the truth in ways that inspire and will sometimes intimidate. And she’s more beautiful when you see her with her hands checking the grapes in her vineyard, her arms wrapped around her kids’ waists, her hand always raised to try the difficult thing, her salty joke delivered, her willingness to taste the unexpected dessert, her call to unearth a new song, a next phrase to turn & yes, bravely calling bullshit when required. I wish everyone could see the inner workings of this very public person & be pleasantly shocked by how transparent she has chosen to be. But actually, I think people feel it which is why she is so respected and loved. Happy birthday 💗 taken in Queen Esther by @billymann

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a month ago

Found this throwback today. A high school gym somewhere outside Philly (I think Cheltenham), our band was called THIS SIDE UP (the name was more of a suggestion—most nights we were sideways) and holding it down was (and still is) @wolf_drums seated in that drum pit. (Holding it up was my two tone collar…the 80s…🤦🏻‍♂️) We started playing together when I was 12 and he was 13, which means he has been holding time for me since before I knew that keeping time was in some ways the whole job. Not like we had a manager or a plan B… but we had a makeshift PA out of a Peavy amp that smelled like a fire hazard and total certainty that somebody important was always in those bleachers. Nobody was. We played like they were anyway and we rehearsed and rehearsed. The drum prodigy in this picture went on to play on everything from “I Kissed a Girl” and “Wrecking Ball” to about half the pop radio you’ve hummed against your will (Katy, Alicia, Miley, Beyoncé, Alecia, Aretha…). He was the best drummer I knew then. He’s still the best drummer I know. The only difference is that now so does everyone else. @wolf_drums 🥁🎸. Talk about 10,000 hours… he gives added meaning to “keeping time.” love you, Wolf. #wolfdrums #legend taken in Drummer by @billymann

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a month ago

In May 2014 I flew to Mexico City to give a keynote at @endeavormexico. The other keynote that day was a legendary economist, brilliant author, investor named @carlschramm —former president of the Kauffman Foundation, longtime Syracuse professor, a man who has devoured more about entrepreneurial economics than most of us could ever learn. On paper we had nothing in common. He came with spectacular business analysis and profound observations. I came with stories about necessity being an entrepreneur’s greatest virtual partner (aka, hunger) and articulating the different kind of accountability that artists feel and how media businesses can learn from meeting that kind of urgency. We spoke to the same room of founders from across Mexico and Latin America, from two completely different worlds, and somehow kept arriving at the same place.That was twelve years ago. Since then Carl included me in his book “Burn the Business Plan” (still surreal), we’ve consulted each other on numerous businesses and ideas more times than either of us can count, and I’ve had the joy of guest lecturing in his economics and biz dev courses at @syracuseu —a creative business executive standing in front of future analysts and soon-to-be financial explorers, trying to explain why the life cycle of a song and a startup are also surprisingly similar animals. We call each other “Oscar and Felix.” I’ll let you guess which is which…though depending on the topic and the email, we’ve been known to trade.

Here’s what the friendship keeps teaching me. Creative people love to roll their eyes at the “suits,” and I’ve done my share of eye-rolling. Business people tend to pat creatives on the head like we’re adorable children who wandered into the wrong meeting. Both sides are wrong, and both sides are poorer for it. The best ideas I’ve ever been near happened when somebody who thinks in spreadsheets and somebody who thinks in colors and choruses stopped translating each other from a distance and started actually listening—when 1+1 quietly became 3.

Who is your unexpected sparring partner who makes you better?

#thankscarl #billymann #carlschramm taken in Mexico City, Mexico by @billymann

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a month ago

The hits are Celine (“A New Day Has Come”), Miley (“Wrecking Ball”), The Weeknd (“Earned It”). But before any of that he was the house pianist in the lobby bar at the Four Seasons in Toronto, six nights a week. The new record is called Scenes From a Velvet Room. The Velvet Room is that lobby and my brother @stephanmoccio went all the way out and all the way back. 🎹 🎶

He and I have been talking on social media for years, trying to find a way to get in a room together creatively. I put his music under my posts constantly because it always prompts emotions from me. Last night we finally connected in person.

Social media does real damage and some of it is deeply serious. But like every digital era capability, it can be tragically used for bad and it can also be weaponized for miraculously good things, too. We forget that.

This is what I think happens when you gossip the success of others. When you’re openly admiring and complimenting other people’s talent—other mediums and ideas, other cultures, other languages, other experiences—those bridges get built, and great treasures can come your way. Last night mine was a hard fought human connection and a collaboration to come.

BRAVO, Stephan. Beautiful performance, brilliant compositions. If you don’t know his music, go find it. And yeah…say nice things about other people behind their backs…. #thehitlife taken in Blue Note New York by @billymann

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a month ago

🎂 Birthday gold for @thepursuitofjaspyness Happy 24 ON the 24th—a golden birthday for the magically golden. Yesterday was pure Jasper: 🦞lobster rolls, 🍊orange soda, and 🏊‍♀️ swimming at 🏖️ Compo. His favorites, his water sensory immersion, his best terms and conditions—the entire family picking at 🍟 French fries with him. There was a time @genamann7’s and my beach afternoons were spent in a constant aerobic state, chasing him as he ran gleefully along that shoreline—full speed, pure delight, laughing in the wind ahead of two winded parents/grandparents/babysitters in pursuit. Today he approaches the water much more calmly, on his own clock, and somehow that maturing peace says as much as the running ever did. For 24 years, too much of the world has seen and defined the contours by deficits… but today (and every day), we lean into his many distinctions... Like the ability to identify people carrying light and compassion faster than most—no résumé required, no small talk needed. His laugh is contagion in its purest form and he shines his face on you in a way that says more than most speeches I’ve sat through. He doesn’t chase social or material status, as much as he unintentionally holds a mirror up for the rest of us to ensure we have our priorities straight. Our first-born gives all these gifts to us even on his golden day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JASPER!!! 💙 #thehitlife taken in Golden Hour by @billymann

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a month ago