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Keith Urban Hits Latest Country Chart ‘High’: ‘I’m as Passionate as When I Started’

Keith Urban notches his 11th top 10 on Top Country Albums as his new LP High debuts at No. 10 on the Oct. 5-dated ranking with 17,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States Sept. 20-26, according to Luminate.

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The set sold 12,000 copies and also opens at No. 6 on the all-genre Top Album Sales chart.

Urban arrived on Top Country Albums with his self-titled set in 2000; first hit the top 10 with Golden Road in 2003; and posted the first of his seven No. 1s with Be Here in 2004.

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“I love discovering new things,” Urban says. “That, blended with my own well of influences and life experiences, is what comes out when I go into a writing room or the studio or even when I play live. I have ‘beginner’s mind,’ so I see each day as brand-new.”

Concurrent with High’s chart start, lead single “Messed Up as Me” jumps 36-24 for a new best on the Hot Country Songs survey. It ranks at No. 17, after reaching No. 16, on Country Airplay (10.5 million audience impressions, up 4% week-over-week).

“I can only create what excites me,” Urban muses. “I try to capture each song like a photograph. In this metaphor, I may take many photographs of each song … each photo is real … but one will seem to have captured the feeling better than the others. That’s the one I’ll release. I have no real clue who any of it may appeal to, but if I really love it, then I’m good to let it go and find others who might, too.”

Caleb & John Notches Its First Christian Radio No. 1 With CAIN Collab ‘Somebody Like Me’

Caleb & John’s “Somebody Like Me,” featuring CAIN, climbs to No. 1 on Billboard’s Christian Airplay and Christian AC Airplay charts (dated Oct. 5). It leads the former with 5.4 million audience impressions Sept. 20-26, according to Luminate.

The duo of Caleb Crino and John Secker earns its first chart-topper with its second entry. “Hallelujah Feeling” hit No. 5 on Christian AC and No. 8 on Christian AC Airplay in November 2023. CAIN claims its third leader on each list; the trio last led with “Yes He Can” in 2021. 

Caleb & John co-wrote “Somebody Like Me” with Colby Wedgeworth. “We could not have picked a song with a better message to be our first No. 1,” the twosome tells Billboard. “We want the world to know that no matter who you are, and no matter what you’ve done, Jesus will change your life if you let him.”

Transformation Worship Charts Third Album of 2024

Transformation Worship’s new release, Thy Kingdom Come, enters the Top Gospel Albums chart at No. 6 and Top Christian Albums at No. 23. It earned 2,000 equivalent album units its first week (Sept. 20-26).

The Tulsa, Okla.-based music collective began at the city’s Transformation Church with husband and wife Michael and Emily Todd, who have served as its pastors since February 2015. The act’s new seven-song set mixes live and studio tracks and features Christian and gospel music stars including Jekalyn Carr, KB, Tasha Cobbs Leonard and Kierra Sheard.

Transformation Worship adds its third entry on each chart, all logged in just over four months. Overflow: The Album arrived atop both tallies (dated June 1), while Dominion debuted at No. 1 on Top Gospel Albums and No. 2 on Top Christian Albums (dated July 27).

The Cure Announce Intimate ‘Songs of a Lost World’ Album Release Show in London

The Cure will gear up for the release of their anticipated new album Songs of a Lost World (Nov. 1) with an intimate show in London for a “Radio 2 in Concert” gig at the BBC Radio Theatre. Fittingly for a band whose whole vibe is spooky to the core, the pre-Halloween show at the 550-capacity venue will take place on Oct. 30.

Fans can register for free tickets that will be handed out via random ballot, with registration open now through 4 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 here; ticket registration is available to all U.K. residents 18+ for the standing-only gig.

According to the NME, the concert will be broadcast on Jo Whiley’s show on Radio 2 and BBC Sounds on Oct. 31 from 7-9 p.m., along with an interview with singer Robert Smith. In addition, the band will play for a “6 Music Session: The Cure Live” on Huw Stephens’ show on Oct. 31 from 4-7 p.m. GMT, in a broadcast that will also feature a interview with the frontman.

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“It’s not often we perform such intimate shows, so we’re really looking forward to this, and to sharing more tracks from the new album for the first time on 6 Music and Radio 2,” Smith said in a statement. The NME noted that the Radio 2 Breakfast Show will feature exclusive tracks from the Radio 2 concert on Nov. 1, with both concerts available to watch on BBC’s iPlayer on the evening of Oct. 31.

The Cure teased a second song from their first new album in 16 years earlier this week when they offered up a 15-second instrumental preview of the brooding “Endsong.” The latest glimpse at the band’s long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s 4:13 Dream comes after last week’s first taste of the album via the typically tumultuous “Alone.”

Check out the announcement below.

Sara Bareilles to Perform at 2024 CARE Impact Awards

Sara Bareilles is set to perform at the 2024 CARE Impact Awards, which will take place Monday, Oct. 21, at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City.

Ali Velshi, chief correspondent for MSNBC and host of Velshi on that network, will host the seventh annual awards ceremony. The honorees are Lynsey Addario, MacArthur Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and author; Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, The New York Times; Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, business executive and lecturer; and Zuriel Oduwole, global education advocate, filmmaker and presidential advisor.

Bareilles has amassed six top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, including Kaleidoscope Heart, which debuted at No. 1 in September 2010. Bareilles’s biggest hit on the Hot 100 is “Love Song,” which reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2008 and ranked No. 3 on Billboard’s recently-published list of “The 100 Greatest Songs About the Music Industry: Staff List.”

Bareilles won a Grammy for best American roots performance for “Saint Honesty” and has received three Tony nominations, including best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for a revival of Into the Woods. She also co-hosted the 2018 Tony Awards with Josh Groban.

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Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization dedicated to saving lives, defeating poverty, and achieving social justice. This year, CARE and partners worked in 109 countries implementing 1,671 poverty-fighting development and humanitarian aid projects and initiatives that reached 167,000,000 people. To learn more, visit www.care.org.

Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder Sweetly Covers Taylor Swift’s ‘The Best Day’ With Daughter Harper Vedder

Like father, like daughter. Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder made the band’s headlining set at Sunday’s Ohana Festival a family affair when he brought his 16-year-old daughter Harper to sing a very special mash-up. “We’ve had so much diversity on both these stages in the last few days,” Vedder said of the band’s annual three-day event in Dana Point, CA that featured sets from Devo, Maren Morris, Dogstar, Sting, Black Pumas, Alanis Morissette and the Breeders, among many others.

“But I realized it’s been a while since we had a powerful young woman up on stage with us so my pal Harper here is gonna help me out,” proud papa Vedder said with a smile as he looked to his left and got a big grin back from his youngest, who looked appropriately nervous, but resolute. Vedder then began strumming his acoustic guitar and launched into PJ’s signature cover of Wayne Cochran’s 1961 car crash tragic love classic “Last Kiss.”

After dear old dad’s first verse, Harper launched into the first verse of the Swift Fearless track, tentatively singing, “I’m five years old, it’s getting cold, I’ve got my big coat on/ I hear you laugh and look up smiling at you, I run and run/ Past the pumpkin patch and the tractor rides,” her voice gaining confidence as she made her way through, bursting into a huge smile as the audience gave her plenty of love in return.

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Father and daughter continued to trade off vocals, with Harper saying the quiet part out loud when she hit the bridge before the third verse, singing, “I have an excellent father, his strength is making me stronger/ God smiles on my little brother, inside and out/ He’s better than I am/ I grew up in a pretty house and I had space to run/ And I had the best days with you.” Before singing the final line, Harper looked over at her dad and the two shared a loving glance, with Vedder’s pride spreading across his face at the special moment.

As he strummed the final notes, the singer leaned over to give his daughter a shoulder bump, with the teen standing up to plant a kiss on her dad’s head before leaving the stage. Pearl Jam released “Last Kiss” as their 1998 Christmas fan club single; it reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the band’s highest-charting single to date.

Back in May Vedder proved his Swiftie bona fides, when the singer talked about attending Swift’s Eras Tour with his wife and two daughters. “She’s an artist who’s respectful of her audience and I know from my daughter that she’s really kind of incredible at planting these little… hidden codes that they can pick up,” he said, while also praising Swift for being “incredibly prolific.”

Click here to watch a video of the performance.

Phish Will Ring In 2025 With Four New Year’s Shows at Madison Square Garden

Phish will be back in their happy place in December when they set up shop at New York’s Madison Square Garden From Dec. 28-31. The jam band legends announced the gigs on Tuesday (Oct. 1) in an Instagram post where they noted that the visit will bring their total number of MSG plays to date to 87.

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The ticket request period for the four gigs is open now here and will run through Oct. 7 at noon ET. A general onsale will kick off on Oct. 11 at noon ET.

The band is gearing up for their end of year gigs with a three-show run at New York’s MVP Arena from Oct. 25-27, with proceeds going to singer Trey Anastasio’s rehabilitation facility Divided Sky Residential Recovery Program. The facility is a personal project for the singer/guitarist, who is 17 years sober. In late 2023 he opened the facility in his native Vermont with the caseworker who helped him after a 2006 arrest for heroin possession and DWI.

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“Some people need longer than others. There’s a staff that assesses the condition that your loved one is in, and some people would come 20, 30 days, other people might need 90,” Anastasio said of Divided Sky. “It’s based on your individual situation. Some people might need longer and that’s perfectly fine.”

Earlier this year, Phish became the second resident band at Las Vegas’ immersive Sphere venue, putting on an eye-popping spectacle across four shows as the follow-up to the building’s first resident band, U2.

Check out the poster for Phish’ MSG NYE run below.

Lady Gaga Brings Harley Quinn to Life with ‘Happy Mistake’ Performance on ‘Kimmel’

Lady Gaga lit up Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Oct. 1 with an emotionally charged performance of “Happy Mistake,” a track from her newly released album Harlequin, which ties in with her role as Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux.

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The stripped-back rendition showed off Gaga’s vocal prowess, channelling raw emotion and intensity that perfectly reflected the chaotic essence of her cinematic alter ego.

Gaga’s performance wasn’t just a song; it was a glimpse into the world she’s crafted around Harlequin. Following the performance, she told Kimmel, “It was inspired by the movie, it was inspired by my character Harley, and just also kind of this reflection on my life as a performer. It’s meant to be a really personal song about how sometimes we can go through dark times and feel like happiness is an accident when it happens.”

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Harlequin isn’t a typical film soundtrack but rather a concept record, as Gaga explained during her chat with Kimmel. “It’s not the soundtrack,” she said. “It’s a concept record and it’s a companion piece to the film. So, whether you listen to it before you watch the movie or after, it’s like an extension of the world.” This unique approach, blending music and cinema, is classic Gaga, who’s never shied away from pushing boundaries.

Discussing her role in Joker: Folie à Deux, Gaga shared the challenges of playing Harley Quinn, particularly how she had to find a different voice for the character’s musical moments.

“Harley’s not a trained singer,” she said. “So I worked a lot on developing her voice and finding what was natural and raw to her. There’s a kind of brokenness in her. She’s got an inner storm, and I wanted it to come from there.”

Gaga’s conversation with Kimmel wasn’t all about the film and album, though. The pop icon also gave fans a peek into her personal life, recounting the story of her fiancé Michael Polansky’s unexpected proposal.

“He proposed to me right after my birthday,” she revealed, adding that Polansky, in true “Minnesota nice” fashion, asked for her permission before actually popping the question. “He wanted to know if it was okay to propose before he proposed. And I was like, ‘Yes, it’s so okay!’” she laughed.

The couple, who have kept much of their relationship private, might be planning a wedding, but Gaga teased that they’ve also talked about “just going to a courthouse and ordering Chinese food.”

Watch Lady Gaga on Kimmel below.

Saddle Up: Jack Antonoff Confirms He’s Working on Lana Del Rey’s ‘Lasso’

Lana Del Rey is going country with her upcoming album Lasso, and she’s bringing her trusty collaborator Jack Antonoff along for the ride.

In a new interview with Time, confirmed he’s saddling up for Lana’s latest project. “We have… yeah,” he said. “[It’s] a story for another time,” he said, staying tight-lipped on further details about the LP. “The reason why I don’t talk about things until they’re out is very succinct: I like to let the music be the first entry point for people.”

“I don’t want to rob anyone of their experience of hearing it without context,” he added. “The second you start talking about work that is coming, you’re planting these seeds in people’s head.”

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Antonoff and Del Rey have been hitting the studio trail together since 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell, followed by Chemtrails Over the Country Club in 2021, and last year’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd — all of which lassoed top spots on the Billboard 200, while Tunnel reached No. 3. Now, it seems they’re roping in country influences for Del Rey’s newest project, which she first teased back in January during Grammys week.

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“If you can’t already tell, the music business is going country,” Lana announced at the Billboard and NMPA Songwriter Awards. “We’re going country. That’s why Jack has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi over the last four years.”

Get ‘Taylor Swift Style,’ Watch ‘The Wild Robot’ in Theaters and More Billboard Family Hits of the Week

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

The Billboard Family Hits of the Week compiles what’s new and worth your family’s time in music, movies, TV, books, games and more. Forget the mind-numbing scrolling and searching “what to watch for family movie night” … again. The best in family entertainment each week is all in one place, in this handy guide. Isn’t it satisfying to cross something off your list?

Dear readers, it’s October! Before your living room is lost in a Hocus PocusHalloweentown loop, catch up with what your family might have missed over the weekend — and get the scoop on some new releases sure to keep almost everyone entertained.

Whether you’ve got one fan in your family, or a full house of ’em (as some of us do), Taylor Swift lovers will be curious to flip through the soon-to-be released Taylor Swift Style: Fashion Through the Eras, a new book full of fashion photos and details on the pop icon’s looks over the years. It’s been a long time coming from the creator of @taylorswiftstyled, a go-to source on the internet for identifying the pop icon’s clothing, shoes and accessories on the double.

Before getting your hands on that, have a family movie night. Movie theater-goers will find a solid pick in DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot. For those in the parenting era where you’d rather not pay for tickets to see a movie you can’t pause for popcorn refills and restroom breaks, stream new animated special The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist at home on Netflix this week.

Make it through your to-do list this week while listening to Lady Gaga‘s surprise Harlequin album. Here’s the family-friendly thing about Harlequin: You don’t really need to know anything about the Joker sequel it’s a companion to, or know the name of a single Gaga song, to vibe to the revived standards on this collection. But play it on repeat and you, or someone close to you, just might turn into a Little Monster.

Speaking of new tunes, there’s a single dropping later this week that’ll satisfy the K-pop fan of the fam and those of us who lived and breathed ’90s pop radio.

Find more about this week’s top picks in the Billboard Family Hits of the Week below:

‘Saturday Night Live’ Season 50: A Very Musical Premiere & Dream Performers

When Jelly Roll performed on the season 50 premiere of Saturday Night Live, his two songs were far from the only musical moment on the show. Bowen Yang brought two of the leading ladies of pop music to the episode by playing Charli XCX hosting a political talk show (alongside DJ/sidekick Troye Sivan) and channeling Chappell Roan when he played viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng on Weekend Update.

And that was just the first episode of this landmark season. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking about the season premiere; who’s up next as hosts and musical guests (Stevie Nicks! Ariana Grande! Chappell Roan!); and who we’d like to see pop up later on, from returning season 1 performers to legends who have somehow never graced the SNL stage.

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Listen to the new episode below:

Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Future makes chart history — yet again — atop the Billboard 200 with his latest album Mixtape Pluto, how Katy Perry notches her sixth top 10 album with the arrival of 143, and how Chappell Roan tops the Top Album Sales chart and the Artist 100 for the first time, thanks to promotion surrounding the first anniversary of her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)