JON BATISTE DEBUTS NINTH STUDIO ALBUM BIG MONEY, OUT TODAY
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “LEAN ON MY LOVE”
FEATURING ANDRA DAY
FROM THE ALBUM HERE
IN SUPPORT OF THE ALBUM, BATISTE KICKS OFF HIS
BIG MONEY TOUR AUGUST 27
DOWNLOAD ASSETS HERE
22 AUGUST 2025 (TORONTO, ON) – Multi-GRAMMY® and Academy Award® winner Jon Batiste today released his ninth studio album, Big Money, out now via Verve/Interscope/Universal Music Canada.
. Earlier this week, Batiste performed the title track on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and staged a sold-out pop-up in Central Park the following night to celebrate the release. Listen to Big Money HERE, with exclusive signed CDs and signed hot pink vinyl available at https://jonbatistestore.com/.
Batiste today also shared the third single from the album, “Lean on My Love” featuring Andra Day. Known for her powerful vocals, Day softens her approach to match the song’s gentle, soulful spirit. The music video—filmed in Altadena, CA at Victory Bible Church with Andra’s community—is an offering of hope and community, and a portrait of the resilience and nobility of those who lost their homes and were impacted by the fires. Watch the video HERE. Learn more at www.thelegacylandproject.org.
Written and recorded in just two weeks, Big Money strips things down to their essentials while staying rich with spirit, joy, irony, and depth. Much of the record was tracked live—often in single takes and sometimes with one microphone—prioritizing feel over perfection. Anchored by groove, heart, and collaboration, the album blends Batiste’s gospel roots, New Orleans heritage, protest-song grit, and pop melody, moving fluidly from soul and reggae to blues and minimalist ballads. In addition to Day, other collaborators on the album include Randy Newman and co-producer No ID.
“We were in the middle of a five-years-long conversation about life,” Batiste recalls of No ID. “The moment we decided to collaborate there was a synergy we couldn’t have planned for—him wanting to explore something different, me in an American-roots guitar space, the shifts in culture.”
The title track—powered by Nick Waterhouse’s vintage acoustic strum and lifted by The Womack Sisters (granddaughters of Sam Cooke)—is an immediate listen with a double edge: a hooky anthem about ambition that also interrogates it. As Batiste puts it, “The title is soaked in irony—it’s about how greed can make you sell your values… ‘Don’t be a dummy, everybody chasing that big money’ pushes you and warns you—it cuts both ways.”
Other standouts deepen the album’s conversation across generations. “Lonely Avenue”—the Doc Pomus classic made famous by Ray Charles—was captured in one take at Randy Newman’s piano with only a handheld recorder running, after the two spent time together talking life, family, and music. The performance is wonderfully unfiltered, with Batiste scatting in unison with the piano in a subtle nod to Charles. “Ray is my patron saint,” Batiste says. “I’m in conversation with Randy and Ray.”
On “Petrichor,” Batiste sets a warning to a dance beat—an appeal to respect the planet’s limits and the “life support systems of the earth,” naming ocean, air, and food while invoking stewardship and faith. “Do It All Again” offers the romantic heart of the album, a timeless ballad that could be sung to a lover, a child, or the divine. “Pinnacle,” produced with the core team and Sunny Levine (Quincy Jones’s grandson), summons ancestral voices—John Henry among them—framing Batiste’s role as a modern griot. “At All” arrives as a quiet revelation about choosing presence over career calculus, and “Maybe” distills openness into a piano-and-voice meditation from the first day of sessions with No ID—released exactly as it happened.
The album closes with “Angels,” drawing on Lee “Scratch” Perry and ancient Greek thought, and featuring Batiste’s cosmic alter ego Billy Bob Bo Bob, an interstellar DJ “beaming soul across space and time.” “When I turn into Billy Bob Bo Bob,” Batiste says, “I feel like a griot who lives in all tenses at once… When I dissolve tense, I dissolve tension.”
Earlier this year, Batiste performed a widely praised National Anthem at the 2025 Super Bowl and earned two GRAMMY® Awards—Best Music Film for Netflix’s American Symphony and Best Song Written for Visual Media for the Oscar-nominated “It Never Went Away” (with Dan Wilson). Big Money follows Beethoven Blues (Verve/Interscope), which delivered Batiste’s biggest sales week to date, debuting at No. 1 on Billboard’s Classical Albums chart and spending nine consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Classical Crossover, while entering the Billboard 200 at No. 64.
Batiste will support Big Money with a national headlining run, The Big Money Tour: Jon Batiste Plays America, beginning August 27 and stopping at more than 30 venues nationwide, including Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the Grand Ole Opry, and a co-headline at The Muny with Diana Ross. Full dates and tickets at jonbatiste.com.
BIG MONEY TRACKLIST:
1. LEAN ON MY LOVE (FEAT. ANDRA DAY)
2. BIG MONEY
3. LONELY AVENUE (FEAT. RANDY NEWMAN)
4. PETRICHOR
5. DO IT ALL AGAIN
6. PINNACLE
7. AT ALL
8. MAYBE
9. ANGELS (FEAT. NO ID & BILLY BOB BO BOB)
The Big Money Tour: Jon Batiste Plays America 2025 Dates:
08/27/25 @ The Midland Theatre in Kansas City, MO
08/28/25 @ The Muny in St. Louis, MO (co-bill with Diana Ross)
08/29/25 @ The Zoo Amphitheatre in Oklahoma City, OK
08/31/25 @ The Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, NM
09/01/25 @ The Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, NM
09/03/25 @ The Gerald R. Ford Amphitheatre in Vail, CO
09/04/25 @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO
09/06/25 @ Encore Theater in Las Vegas, NV
09/07/25 @ Encore Theater in Las Vegas, NV
09/08/25 @ Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre in Salt Lake City, UT
09/10/25 @ Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville, WA
09/11/25 @ Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville, WA
09/16/25 @ Cuthbert Amphitheater in Eugene, OR
09/18/25 @ Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA
09/19/25 @ The Rady Shelly at Jacob's Park in San Diego, CA
09/20/25 @ Santa Barbara Bowl in Santa Barbara, CA
09/24/25 @ The Orpheum Theater in Madison, WI
09/25/25 @ The Orpheum Theater in Madison, WI
09/27/25 @ Palace Theatre in St. Paul, MN
09/28/25 @ The Astro in Omaha, NE
10/01/25 @ Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, TN
10/04/25 @ Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, TX
10/05/25 @ The Pavilion At Toyota Music Factory in Irving, TX
10/08/25 @ Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, FL
10/09/25 @ Au-Rene Theater in Ft. Lauderdale, FL
10/10/25 @ Dr. Phillips Center - Walt Disney Theater in Orlando, FL **On Sale June 6
10/11/25 @ St. Augustine Amphitheatre in St. Augustine, FL
10/21/25 @ Taft Theatre in Cincinnati, OH
10/22/25 @ Mershon Auditorium in Columbus, OH
10/24/25 @ Fox Theatre in Detroit, MI
10/26/25 @ Akron Civic Theatre in Akron, OH
10/28/25 @ Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, PA
10/30/25 @ The Met Philadelphia in Philadelphia, PA
10/31/25 @ The Anthem in Washington, DC