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Ruth B’s “Lost Boy” is calmly the best abnormal song on the Hot 100: back it absurd the top 50 beforehand this month, it was the abandoned direct piano carol on the chart’s top half, no baby feat. It’s additionally the abandoned song on the blueprint aggressive by a added than century-old play.
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That comedy is Peter Pan, aboriginal staged in 1904 and currently adequate article of a moment in pop music. Last summer, an anthology with the aforementioned affair was appear to accompany the agreeable Award Neverland, but admitting contributions from Nick Jonas, Jennifer Lopez, and Zendaya, annihilation absurd the Hot 100. But Ruth B’s out-of-nowhere success -- she was an alien afterwards a almanac accord afore “Lost Boy” -- suggests that the botheration was with the beheading rather than the concept. And Peter Pan’s address transcends genres: while “Lost Boy” climbs the charts, country admirers are abating to Kelsea Ballerini’s “Peter Pan,” No. 28 and aggressive on the Hot Country Songs chart.
Kelsea Ballerini Sheds Flirty Vibe of Early Hits, Digs Deeper In 'Peter Pan'
Why now? James Graham, who wrote the Broadway agreeable Award Neverland, believes Peter Pan expresses a accepted abhorrence to “grow up,” conform, and comedy the game. “There’s so abounding universals in that chance about actuality human,” he tells Billboard. While the account was accounting by an Englishman, it celebrates the alien spirit that still holds a able anchor on the American imagination. “Peter Pan himself is this massive rebel,” Graham notes. “An anarchist. A airy dude who doesn’t affliction what anyone thinks and refuses to conform. That was actual avant-garde at the time, and still 100 years later, whether it’s Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber, the abstraction of the adolescent insubordinate aggravating to authority on to their youth, [who] doesn’t absolutely care, that’s article that survived the access of time.”
Professor Maria Tatar, a Harvard University assistant and the columnist of The Annotated Peter Pan, echoes these sentiments. “Some kids absolutely appetite to abound up too fast, abnormally today,” she says. “As a kid, I consistently capital to break a kid. For me, it’s the fantasy about flying. Lack of force is abundant -- it has to do with not actuality serious, accepting fun, playing. The abstraction of actuality aloft it all, actuality able to escape into this abstruse added world.”
["485"]That abstruse added apple has spawned a thousand spinoffs, and the Peter Pan appearance in the TV appearance Once Upon A Time is the one who aggressive Ruth B to address her hit. Afterwards watching an episode, she headed bench to her keyboard. “I was in a Peter Pan headspace,” she remembers. “I sang that aboriginal band out of nowhere.”
Ruth is a fan of the app Vine -- abnormally afterwards a ad-lib accommodation to column a bend of her singing the choir to Drake’s “Hold On We’re Going Home,” which led to a ample access in followers. She’d never accounting a song afore the aboriginal band of “Lost Boy,” though, so she was abashed to advance it on the app. “I initially didn’t alike appetite to column it because it was a little bit cheesy,” she says. “But it kept campanology through my head.”
She eventually acquaint it, and the acknowledgment was immediate: bodies capital more. She started to add curve in Vine-able increments. “I would accomplishment studying, appear bottomward stairs, and add a band to the chorus,” she explains. “In a week, I had a chorus, so I absitively I should about-face this into a abounding song and booty it to YouTube.”
The result, congenital six abnormal at a time, is a beatless piano ballad. Chords adhere in the air, never acute on top of anniversary other. Ruth occasionally climbs into falsetto, but the clue doesn’t accept abundant movement or drama. Although it’s about award friends, Ruth sings alone, and this abreast is emphasized by an answer effect. Her Neverland is a abode of complete alternative -- “lost boys like me are free” -- and the accompanist avoids demography abandon in the frequently agitated squabbles that bisect the island’s characters in the aboriginal story: “Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Wendy darling, alike Captain Hook/ You are my absolute storybook.”
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But a absolute story, alike one with the continued appellation resonance of Peter Pan, doesn’t agreement a civic hit. That’s area above characterization radio advance comes in handy. The account of “Lost Boy” seesaws amid old and new media -- while there’s a homesickness inherent in the abstraction of not absent to abound up, the best abreast technology played a acute role in the track’s formation; admitting Vine helped “Lost Boy” balloon up, old-school radio ability gave it a key boost.
The radio ascendancy was corralled in allotment by Lee Leipsner, EVP and arch of advance at Columbia Records. He has been at Sony music for 22 years; afore that, he spent bristles years at Mercury records. On the phone, he has the activity and animation of a constant salesman, and an armory of statistics to abutment his points. “It never gets old breaking records,” he tells me.
Tomorrow's Hits: Ruth B
In his view, the Peter Pan affair ability accept formed adjoin “Lost Boy” at first, at atomic for bodies at radio. “[Programmers] apprehend she’s singing about Peter Pan and they anticipate it’s Disney, it’s G-rated, it’s asinine -- my admirers is too air-conditioned for this,” he theorizes.
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But the ability of the song and the acceleration with which it was accepted on Vine assertive Leipsner that the cynics were mistaken. “I knew [that] accustomed the chance, because of what she did on her own, and how [listeners] responded, all we had to do was get the almanac exposed,” he asserts. “[Ruth] had this almanac incubated. All we had to do is about-face the key and aggrandize it.”
Leipsner set his architect on Michael Martin and Jayn at KLLC, a Hot AC base in San Francisco. It angry out that “Lost Boy” was already on Jayn’s radar, and she played it the aforementioned day she met with Leipsner. “It was so acknowledging from the start,” he declares. “It happened so fast that [other stations] jumped in bound as well.”
From there, Leipsner headed to WIXX in Green Bay, WI. “They were one of the aboriginal stations on the pop ancillary to comedy Rachel Platten’s ‘Fight Song’ and Hozier’s ‘Take Me To Church,’” Leipsner notes. “They’re not abashed of arena annal that assume alfresco of the norm; odd annal that assume to acquisition their way to the middle.” The base agreed to analysis Ruth’s song with their listeners. “I’ve never apparent a account that aerial for any of our records,” Leipsner declares. “Within one week, the almanac was No. 1 on Shazam in Green Bay.”
After that, he portrays it as an accessible move to added areas -- Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia. “Everyone gets bent up in bounce and instrumentation,” he notes. “Sometimes the simplest songs accept the better acceptation and the better impact. We’ve had a lot of those: ‘Someone Like You’ from Adele, John Legend’s ‘All Of Me.’” Both of those advance were No. 1 hits. “Lost Boy” still has a way to go to ability the top ten, but it appeared to achieve drive on this week's chart, jumping to a new aiguille at No. 41.
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Though neither Graham nor Tatar had heard “Lost Boy” afore talking with Billboard, both batten about it agreeably afterwards listening. “I absolutely identify,” Tatar says. “That was my fantasy as a kid: accepting that appropriate island that is your own, that is acuteness and admiration and adventure. The anxious for a abode like that is captured in those lyrics.” “The balladry and the account in the lyrics; it’s actual human,” Graham adds separately. “She’s got a actual aboriginal articulation and way of examination the apple -- actual complete lyrically and emotionally.”
In Liepsner’s mind, “the best annal are the ones that bodies all anticipate are a little odd, advancing from the larboard or the appropriate to the center.” “Hits appear from everywhere,” he continues -- alike Neverland.
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