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Beyoncé closed out the final night of her Cowboy Carter tour’s six-show run at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Monday (June 16) with a heartfelt message to fans and a tribute to one of England’s most iconic songwriters.
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“Thank you, Sir Paul McCartney, for writing one of the best songs ever made. Every time I sing it, I feel so honored. And it is a full circle moment to wear your beautiful daughter’s design,” Beyoncé wrote in an Instagram post, referencing her Cowboy Carter rendition of the Beatles’ 1968 classic “Blackbird.”
“Thank you, London, for creating unforgettable memories for me and my family,” she continued. “Holla at ‘ya when I come on tour again!”
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Her version of the song, stylized as “Blackbiird,” reimagines the original with string flourishes and vocal contributions from four rising Black female country artists: Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy. The cover is one of two reinterpretations featured on Cowboy Carter, alongside her take on Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
McCartney praised Beyoncé’s version earlier this year, calling it a “magnificent” interpretation that reinforces the civil rights message that inspired him to write it. “I think Beyoncé has done a fab version and would urge anyone who has not heard it yet to check it out,” he wrote on Instagram. “You are going to love it.”
The Beatles’ “Blackbird” was originally written in response to the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students who faced violent resistance while integrating an Arkansas high school in 1957. McCartney has said the song was written as a message of hope and encouragement to Black women facing injustice.
McCartney, whose original master recording is used in Beyoncé’s version, according to Variety, also revealed that he had the chance to speak with the pop icon about her take on “Blackbird.”
“I spoke to her on FaceTime and she thanked me for writing it and letting her do it,” wrote McCartney, who attended Beyoncé’s record-breaking Renaissance World Tour last year. “I told her the pleasure was all mine and I thought she had done a killer version of the song. When I saw the footage on the television in the early 60s of the black girls being turned away from school, I found it shocking and I can’t believe that still in these days there are places where this kind of thing is happening right now. Anything my song and Beyoncé’s fabulous version can do to ease racial tension would be a great thing and makes me very proud.”
Released in March 2024, Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top the Top Country Albums chart. The project also won her the Grammy for best country album earlier this year.
Good Charlotte are officially back. The pop-punk icons announced Monday (June 16) that their eighth studio album, Motel Du Cap, is due out Aug. 8, marking their first full-length release in seven years.
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The band teased the comeback in classic GC fashion: with a cryptic billboard on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles featuring a photo of the band, the album title, and the release date, as per Rolling Stone. While no additional details were included, it was enough to spark buzz across social media.
Alongside the billboard, Good Charlotte also shared a teaser video on Instagram featuring the mysterious ‘Motel Du Cap’, alongside the caption, “Waldorf’s best kept historical landmark since 1996. Come stay with us and bask in the beautiful Maryland sunshine! Book your reservation at goodcharlotte.com.” The hometown reference nods to their roots in Waldorf, Maryland, where the band originally formed.
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Motel Du Cap is set to follow 2018’s Generation Rx, the band’s seventh studio album, which arrived two years after their 2016 comeback record Youth Authority. That project debuted and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, marking the group’s highest charting effort since 2004’s The Chronicles of Life and Death, which reached No. 3 on the chart.
Hints of a new era began to emerge earlier this year when Good Charlotte posted a nostalgic teaser video featuring archival footage of the band and the caption “GC 2025.” Since then, they’ve announced several major festival appearances — including Ocean’s Calling and Aftershock — and last month played Welcome to Rockville, marking their first live performance since 2023.
In the years since Generation Rx, the band have released only one standalone single — 2020’s “Last December” — while brothers Joel and Benji Madden have shifted their focus to business ventures including the artist management and development company MDDN, the livestreaming platform Veeps, and Joel’s Artist Friendly podcast.
The Maryland-bred band first broke through in the early 2000s with albums like The Young and the Hopeless, which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and spawned pop-punk anthems including “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” and “The Anthem.”
Motel Du Cap is set to arrive Aug. 8.
Lenny Kravitz is heading Down Under for his first run of Australian dates in over a decade.
Announced on Monday (June 16), the Australian leg of the four-time Grammy winner’s Blue Electric Light Tour will launch in November 2025, with a six-date run of shows.
Alongside expected headline dates in cities such as Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, Kravitz will also be visiting Newcastle and the South Australian capital of Adelaide to perform at the bp Adelaide Grand Final motorsports event.
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Most notably, Kravitz will also be visiting the regional Victorian city of Mildura which – according to the 2021 census – boasts a population just shy of 35,000. Though not a location completely devoid of live performances, it’s a city that rarely features on the itinerary for international artists.
“We are so excited to once again be hosting an international act at the Mildura Sporting Precinct,” said Mildura’s City Council Mayor Helen Healy in a statement to the press. “This is a major win for our region and a testament to the success of hosting world-class events like the Kings of Leon concert in 2022.”
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The forthcoming run of tour dates will be the first time Kravitz has visited Australia since 2012. That visit was itself many years in the making, with his only other visits to the country taking place in 1993 and 1994.
Since his last visit, Kravitz has released three further albums, including 2014’s Strut, 2018’s Raise Vibration, and 2024’s Blue Electric Light. Additionally, in 2024, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and also received his first nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though he was not inducted.
Lenny Kravitz – Blue Electric Light 2025 Australian Tour Dates
Nov. 18 – Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney, NSWNov. 19 – Newcastle Entertainment Centre, Newcastle, NSWNov. 21 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, QLDNov. 25 – John Cain Arena, Melbourne, VICNov. 28 – Sporting Precinct, Mildura, VICNov. 29 – bp Adelaide Grand Final, Adelaide, SA
The collective hopes of fans longing for a collaboration between Nick Cave and Morrissey have been dashed, with the former revealing he turned down the opportunity to do so last year.
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Cave’s revelation arrived by way of his Red Hand Files website, where he responded to a fan asking if he had ever met the former vocalist of The Smiths.
Labelling Morrissey a “complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in p–sing people off” and “probably the best lyricist of his generation,” Cave admitted that he had not had the chance to cross paths with the singer, adding that may be why he remains a fan.
However, Cave also added that Morrissey had approached him via email in 2024 to perform on a new song that he had written. “I would have been happy to do so, however, while the song he sent was quite lovely, it began with a lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro,” Cave explained.
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“It also seemed that he didn’t want me to actually sing on the song, but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written.”
While Cave did not share any specific details in regard to the lyrical content of Morrissey’s track, he explained that it was enough for him to “politely decline” the offer.
“Although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn’t my thing,” Cave explained “I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve.”
Morrissey’s most recent solo album, I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, arrived back in 2020. In November, the singer claimed that his as-yet-unreleased album, Bonfire of Teenagers, has been shelved so far because of his various controversial statements.
“As you know, nobody will release my music anymore,” Morrissey told a crowd in New Jersey. “As you know because I’m a chief exponent of free speech. In England at least, it’s now criminalized.”
As Australian youth broadcaster triple j recovers from its 50th birthday celebrations in January, they’ve announced the festivities will continue with a newly-detailed Hottest 100 poll.
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Officially dubbed the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, the new countdown will take place on July 26, with voting open to the public, who can select their favorite songs performed by Australian artists.
As usual, there are a few eligibility caveats. Firstly, eligible songs are any tracks which were released prior to Jan. 19, 2025, and must feature a minimum 50% of Australian artists. As a result, New Zealand artists (who are often considered honorary Australians) are ineligible, though Crowded House are eligible, despite being formed by Neil Finn after the dissolution of Split Enz and his move from New Zealand to Australia.
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Notably, tracks recorded for triple j’s long-running Like a Version cover series are not eligible either. Though perennial favorites of triple j’s annual Hottest 100 countdown, the series received its own poll back in 2023, with DMA’S reigning supreme with their acoustic cover of Cher’s “Believe.”
triple j – which launched on Jan. 19, 1975 as the result of new policies by then-Prime minister Gough Whitlam – first kicked off their Hottest 100 countdown in 1989, with the first three years allowing listeners to vote for songs from any year.
In 1994, the station rebooted the concept, this time opening the polls only to songs which had been released the year prior. It’s since become known as – as triple j have labelled it – “the world’s greatest music democracy,” with an average of almost 2.5 million votes being cast each year.
In the ensuing decades, the list of winners has been plentiful, featuring Australian acts such as Spiderbait, The Wiggles, and two-time winners Powderfinger and Flume. Numerous international acts have also taken out the top spot, such as Oasis, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar.
The most recent poll was announced in January 2025, with Chappell Roan being crowned the victor with “Good Luck, Babe!”
Notably, the latest countdown also left a sour taste in the mouth of Australian music-lovers, with the full list featuring the lowest number of homegrown artists in almost three decades. With only 29 Australian artists appearing across the full list of songs, it was the worst showing for Aussies since the 1996 list. Only the debut poll in 1993 and its 1994 follow-up are worse, with 24 and 26 Australian artists, respectively.
Alongside the annual poll, other one-off countdowns have been held over the years, with 1998 and 2009 seeing the release date restrictions lifted once again, 2011 focusing on Australian albums, 2013 allowing songs released in the past 20 years, and 2020 focusing on songs released in the 2010s.
The latter poll may give an indication of what may rank highly in the upcoming countdown, having been topped by Tame Impala‘s “The Less I Know the Better.”
Robin Thicke is the latest music industry figure to face a copyright infringement lawsuit for supposedly posting paparazzi pictures of himself on Instagram without paying to license the images.
Thicke is the target of a federal lawsuit filed on Monday (June 16) by celebrity photo agency BackGrid USA Inc., which claims to own the rights to two paparazzi shots that the singer and music producer posted to Instagram in 2022.
One of the images in question shows Thicke riding shotgun in a convertible, and the other depicts him leaving the restaurant Catch Steak with his now-wife, April Love Geary. These photos are no longer available on Thicke’s Instagram page, but the lawsuit attaches screenshots of these seemingly deleted social media posts.
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“Defendants violated federal law by willfully infringing BackGrid’s copyrights to at least two photographs,” write BackGrid’s lawyers. “By uploading the Thicke photographs to the Instagram account, defendants encourage their fans to ‘share’ the photograph, thus causing others to also willfully infringe and multiplying the harm to BackGrid.”
BackGrid claims Thicke should have known better than to post these photos without proper licenses, since he’s a “sophisticated creator of copyrighted works” who himself owns more than 100 copyright registrations. The photo agency also points out that Thicke is no stranger to intellectual property law, having faced lengthy copyright litigation over his 2013 hit “Blurred Lines.”
The new lawsuit seeks a court injunction blocking Thicke from infringing BackGrid’s copyrights again, as well as monetary damages for the alleged wrongdoing. The agency notes that it “made exhaustive efforts to resolve this lawsuit with defendants prior to filing this action.”
A rep for Thicke did not immediately return a request for comment on the claims.
The lawsuit comes a month after BackGrid brought a similar case against Jennifer Lopez for allegedly posting two paparazzi pictures of herself outside a Golden Globes pre-party this past January without licenses.
Lopez and Thicke are far from the first celebrities to encounter this type of legal action over pictures of themselves on their own social media accounts. Artists including Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa and Justin Bieber have all faced similar lawsuits in the last few years.
As Billboard wrote in 2022, U.S. copyright law is on the side of photographers and image licensers. Though it may seem unfair, celebrities do not automatically co-own images of themselves and therefore don’t have the right to repost them for free.
Backed by science and heart, Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group whose goal is to protect clean air and children’s health — and EcoMadres, their Latino community outreach program — educates families about why they should care about climate disruption, air pollution and toxic chemicals, and engages them in taking action to preserve their futures — all with the help of music.
With data that Latinos in the United States are disproportionately impacted by climate change, an initiative called EcoMusica was born.
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As part of EcoMusica, SonTierra, a multi-ethnic ensemble of Latino musicians whose name means “we are the Earth,” perform tunes that offer hope and encourage listeners to reach out to legislators and leaders. The music played at outreach events incorporates a number of Latin music styles: cumbia, banda, bolero, merengue, balada and Andean folk.
They will be performing at the annual EcoMadres Summit in Las Vegas on Sept. 12, Moms Clean Air Force tells Billboard Family.
Who is SonTierra? With an age range of about 11 to 64 years old, the multi-generational band includes Edgar East (Panamanian), Edgar Solís (Mexican), Gabriela Valdivia (U.S.-born; Brazilian mother, Mexican father), Karen Stein (Colombian), Leo Roldán (Argentinean), Marián Vivas (Venezuelan), Stephanie Rivera (Cuban), Valentina Weihe (U.S.-born; Mexican mother, Puerto Rican father), Valery Figueroa (Venezuelan) and Víctor Lara (Mexican).
“I wanted SonTierra to include youth and children at a professional, quality level because we are working for their future,” Stein, both a performer and the group’s manager, shares in an interview with Billboard Family. “And if we’re going to gain trust with Latino communities, we don’t just have to come in and sing at them. We have to sing with them. Including people of various generations and of various ethnicities, it is important to make Latino communities feel like, ‘Oh, we could be [a part of this].’ They can identify with someone on stage.”
The collective of musicians released a 12-track, mostly Spanish-language (with some English, on a few bilingual songs) album of originals and covers, titled EcoMadres, on Earth Day 2023. The album is available to stream on SoundCloud.
Stein had a hand in penning nine of the dozen songs, all of which address climate change, air pollution, ecosystem destruction, environmental justice, taking action and finding hope.
EcoMadres tunes include “Mama,” which she says was written inspired first by her musician mother who sang to her, and then by Mother Earth, with the lyrics “Hoy este arrullo es para la madre tierra/ Que tiene fiebre, que tiene fiebre y no la escuchan, no la escuchan/ En su agonía, en su agonía” (“Today this lullaby is for Mother Earth/ She has a fever, she has a fever/ And we aren’t hearing her agony”).
Other album tracks include “Corrido p’al Congreso” (“A Corrido for Congress”), a message to the U.S. government in mariachi style with corrido and ranchera rhythms, and “Legado” (“Legacy”), written from the perspective of children looking ahead to their future, in the style of bolero. “El pico del tucán (“The Toucan’s Peak”) is set to a cumbia beat and tackles a tough topic: solving “the dilemma between what humans want and what the earth needs to continue to sustain us.”
Born and raised in Colombia, Stein is the Iowa field coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres. Her heart and roots are in music.
She grew up on a rural farm. On a call with Billboard Family, she cites she’s from and her mother as the reasons she’s a musician.
“The location where we grew up was so isolated, [with] no electricity, so there were very few distractions. I grew up paying a lot of attention to sounds,” including the sounds of nature, animals, and the men on the farm milking the cows, says Stein. “They’d talk to the cows and oftentimes they would sing to the cows. They would just hum,” sometimes to pop music and sometimes to traditional songs.
Meanwhile, her mother was a trained classical pianist who “ended up in this godforsaken corner of Colombia,” Stein jokes. “Of course she hauled a piano down into the farm, right?”
As a young child, Stein would pick up her mom’s knack for music.
“She discovered that since I was young I was able to carry a tune, and so she would harmonize with me since I was very, very little, and that trained my ear to maintain a melody,” says Stein.
Her family ended up moving to Costa Rica, where Stein had music lessons and sang with the Costa Rican Symphony Choir, and she was awarded a scholarship to attend Grinnell College in Iowa. Before she uprooted, she learned as much as possible in traditional guitar technique from the enclave of Latin-American artists who were living in San José at the time. “It was at a time when there were a lot of military dictatorships in Latin America, in the early to mid ’70s,” she recalls. “Costa Rica was a politically neutral country. A lot of the artists who were outspoken against governments, they were musicians. They were theater people. They were writers. They ended up in Costa Rica. I had a lot of mixed feelings about the States because of the United States’ involvement in supporting some of these governments that were making artists escape. But I was at the same time fascinated. It was just, you know, everybody wants to try to understand this country.”
“That’s the beginning of why I consciously connected to music,” she says, “though I studied biology and French. And as soon as I got my master’s in the sciences and horticulture, I decided to switch back to music and become a full-time musician. Those are the roots: rural upbringing and political. The timing of political upheaval in Latin America put me in the path of a deep connection with a large variety of Latin music styles.”
“It’s been home again to go [back] to music,” says Stein, who’s the founder and director of Artes Latinas, a consortium of several different ensembles.
Since 2019, she’s been involved with Moms Clean Air Force, who eventually asked her to join the EcoMadres initiative.
“This is a powerful group of women,” Stein tells Billboard Family, adding that they act on just the right balance between “the heart and the brain.” “I think it has to do with our work being centered on children. I mean, it keeps us vulnerable. We’re not afraid of being vulnerable as human beings while we’re being purposeful and organized and professional in our environmental work. The combination is very powerful.”
Stein says, “The Latino community, whether they still speak Spanish at home or not, or Portuguese … Whatever region or country — you know how diverse Latin America is, it’s incredibly diverse … But regardless of where we’re from, there’s one thing that we respond to, and that is music. In a visceral way.”
EcoMusica’s use of live performance at community outreach events concerning climate crisis has become “a tool to build trust in the Latino community,” she explains.
“This is a tool to start reaching the Latino and Latina community a little more widely than we had been, because that was also on the mind of Moms Clean Air Force at the time. How do we expand? How do we make our program relevant to Latino and Latina communities who are disproportionately affected by these things that we’re working on, the air pollution and the environmental justice issues and climate effects?”
The team’s hope is that the music naturally resonates with those most impacted by climate crisis.
As Stein points out, the group can “recognize the other reality is that the communities that are most impacted by the climate crisis and by pollution are people who for whom acting on climate is a luxury.”
“We have to understand this,” she says. “They’re not at the level of being able to devote 10 hours a week to fighting climate crisis. No, they just stopped at the supermarket and bought 30 bottles of bottled water feeding the problem that we’re having, because they’re afraid of the water pollution coming from their faucet. They just came home from working three jobs. How do we get them to sign a petition? The trust has to come first.”
Stein emphasizes that the environmental justice work they’re collectively doing “resonates with every member” of SonTierra, and praises each musician’s contributions.
Gabi Valdivia, the youngest member of SonTierra, performs with the group at the 2024 EcoMadres Summit in Phoenix, Arizona.
Courtesy of EcoMadres
“I want to say that what stands out to me is how remarkable every individual in the group is, and how honored I am to have them there because they’re not just good musicians,” says Stein. “And I’m talking about the 11-year-old girl. And I’m talking about this 18-year-old young woman and the 22-year-old young woman, and then us geezers … The rest of us are seasoned touring musicians. But each one of us has a purpose for being in SonTierra.”
Stein adds, “I would like to tell all the communities who read this: You don’t have to be Latino or Latina if you want to bring us to your community because you want to work on climate issues or environmental justice issues as a field organizer for EcoMadres and Mom’s Clean Air Force. If they want to invite SonTierra to the community, it doesn’t have to be a Latino community. It can be any community. It can be an African American community. It can be an African community. It can be an Asian community. It can be, you know, the Methodist Church in New York City.”
Those who wish to learn more, or to join Moms Clean Air Force’s fight against climate disruption, can find resources and learn about action points at the organization’s official website.
Addison Rae recently released her debut album ‘Addison,’ and we’re taking you behind the scenes of how Addison blew up from “Diet Pepsi” to releasing her first album. What do you think of ‘Addison’? Let us know in the comments! Tetris Kelly: Addison Rae is everywhere. From “Diet Pepsi” to her interviews with Zane Lowe, […]
Three hours of prime time real estate, more than 30 musical acts bookended by lightly rehearsed comedy bits and a Radio City Music Hall’s worth of huge stars. What could go wrong?
Potentially everything, actually. But somehow, SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert director Beth McCarthy-Miller not only managed to land the plane with the February special, but she corralled some of the biggest stars in the world for one of the most dazzling, surprise-filled nights of music in recent memory.
And, not for nothing, it all happened with way less rehearsal time than you could ever imagine.
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“They called me a year and a half ago and asked me and I absolutely said ‘yes’ right away. … I’m a total music and comedy nerd,” Emmy-nominated director McCarthy-Miller tells Billboard about her return to multi-cam TV after a career that has included stints behind the camera for episodes of Veep, The Good Place, Modern Family, 30 Rock and an 11-year run as SNL‘s director. “I would do anything for [SNL creator/producer] Lorne [Michaels], who was so instrumental in my career. It was like going back for a high school reunion.”
Sure, if your high school class included Lady Gaga, Eddie Vedder, Bill Murray, the Backstreet Boys, Miley Cyrus, Bad Bunny, Post Malone, the living members of Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Jelly Roll and Cher.
Those are just some of the acts that McCarthy-Miller juggled on show night in the penultimate prime-time celebration of the beloved sketch series’ 50th anniversary. The programming also included the three-hour SNL50: The Anniversary Special that aired two days later, as well as the earlier mind-bending Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music documentary directed by The Roots’ Questlove and the four-part SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night docuseries on Peacock.
In other words, tons of competition for booking and viewers’ eyeballs.
Beth McCarthy
Barry Goldenberg
McCarthy-Miller knew it was a monumental task, but she was up for it and, frankly, after working with Michaels to see who was available (and not) and putting the million little pieces together, she can now confidently say that “there is nothing I would change.”
Billboard hopped on the phone to chat with McCarthy-Miller about the show and to find out why she is now fully convinced that The Roots can play any song ever recorded.
You worked on the legendary MTV Unplugged with Nirvana, but whose idea was the surprise Post Nirvana performance with Post Malone and the living members of the group?
Dave Grohl was involved early on, and there was always interest in the Foo Fighters and possibly [Nirvana bass player] Krist [Novoselic] joining them. I know during COVID, Post did a YouTube Nirvana show with Travis Barker, and I think it became a natural segue. Dave and Krist had used St. Vincent and other singers before for the FireAid show and the guys just really enjoyed playing with him. After rehearsal, I went back to check on everything with [guitarist] Pat [Smear] and Dave, and they were like, “That was fun!”
The unexpected collabs really ruled the night. You also had Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard doing a Queen cover (“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”) at the top. How involved were you in piecing those together?
The Miley thing was a combination of everyone asking, “What would you want to see?” I think Miley wanted Brittany, and that was a Lorne and Miley thing. … [show co-executive producer] Mark Ronson had a lot do with the pace of the show and where people should go and when. It was definitely a combined effort.
I have to ask, were there any of those collabs that didn’t happen that you went for? Frequent SNL guest Justin Timberlake couldn’t make it because he’s on tour, but who else did you reach out to?
There were people who were just not available who would have been great. Timberlake, not available and also for the Sunday show. I think Bruce Springsteen wasn’t available and people who were asked who made their mark on the show but were just not available. It was definitely tricky to try to represent as much as you could without being able to represent everybody obviously and represent different genres. I thought it all kind of worked out beautifully.
I saw someone ask, “Why didn’t they have Ashlee Simpson come back for a redemption arc?“
[Laughs] I’m sure Ashlee wouldn’t have enjoyed that phone call either. Or just have her come out and do a little hoedown dance during someone else’s number? I think we left the comedy to the comedians on that show, which was great. Everyone was having so much fun and would show up early for rehearsals to watch. Bill Murray hung out almost the whole day when he was rehearsing. So he rehearsed his [Nick the Lounge Singer bit] all day with the girls [Maya Rudolph, Cecily Strong and Ana Gasteyer], and then he came out and was just hanging out watching the rehearsals when Backstreet Boys were rehearsing and he was singing at the top of his lungs in the empty Radio City Music Hall along to the Backstreet Boys. Everyone was so happy to be there and be part of the show.
Another highlight was Lady Gaga doing “D–k in a Box” with Andy Samberg. Did Gaga need convincing to join in on that? It was also fun to see cast members incorporated into musical numbers, like Fred Armisen playing drums for Devo and the B-52s.
Gaga was in for that and she was not necessarily performing. She was definitely doing the “D–k In a Box” bit and we had somebody fall out and she then performed [“Shallow”]. We had T-Pain and Bad Bunny, and Eddie Vedder was so funny as Captain Jack Sparrow.
What was the rehearsal time to swap Gaga in for that bit?
You mean besides no rehearsal? We rehearsed that whole show in two days. So we had about 45 minutes to rehearse that [Lady Gaga] bit. I had pre-blocked it with stand-ins just so I knew where we were going. Then we literally got everybody [Gaga, Samberg, Eddie Vedder, Lonely Island, T-Pain, Bad Bunny] up there for 45 minutes and they did a run-through. I think T-Pain didn’t even come to the run-through.
Were there any worries about catching a stray by dipping into the Drake/Kendrick beef with the Marty and Bobbi bit singing “Not Like Us” with Will Ferrell and Ana?
No. I thought it was hilarious. If anyone is gonna take that as a diss, they need to find a sense of humor somewhere because that was so funny. Will and Ana threw that together with [longtime SNL writer] Paula Pell in about 24 hours.
More than 600 musical acts have performed on SNL over the years, so how do you start cutting down the list for your show?
Well, you start cutting it down by the people who say no. [Laughs] No, but it’s really hard and thank God they had done that great documentary that Questlove did, because it really encompassed how important music is to SNL. Because everyone was really represented quite well in that. So then it was just decisions on what was going to be on the main show and what was going to be on Friday night show. I thought the Paul Simon/Sabrina Carpenter thing was perfect for the Sunday show. I think for a minute that was on the Friday show, then it went to the Sunday show, and Paul on the Sunday show was perfect, just where it should have been.
Who was your must-have? Who did you chase to no avail?
A few, of course. There were definitely people who weren’t able to be there who would have been great: Mick Jagger, Springsteen, Stevie Nicks. But the other side of it is, you couldn’t get everybody and I thought every genre on music that’s been on SNL was represented in that show.
Jimmy Fallon worked his ass off in that opening “Soul Man” bit.
He was working very hard and very out of breath.
Did it feel mean in retrospect to make him host and talk so much right after that?
[Laughs] It was always his idea to do some opening number, and I thought that was the perfect representation and Jimmy does stuff like that better than anybody else. It was a little difficult for the poor guy to do that, but he did do it in run-through, but I don’t think he hit it as hard. He was, literally, out of breath. But every comedian or musical performer, you put an audience in front of them and they take it up to 11.
Tell me about something we didn’t see onscreen that blew your mind. Or something that really captured the vibe of the moment for you.
In general, the whole thing felt like a family reunion. People were sticking around to watch other people rehearse, and people were coming over from 30 Rock to Radio City to see other people rehearse. The unsung heroes of that Friday night show were The Roots. Those guys worked their butts off and were literally thrown into the fire a couple of times and having to work out and learn songs in 15 minutes, get off stage and then come back in half an hour. And then, on the live show, Brittany Howard’s guitar went out and stopped working and the guitar player from The Roots [“Captain” Kirk Douglas] picked up that guitar solo on the fly. It was amazing. They can pick up a song in five seconds and they were also playing in all the musical comedy bits too!
There were so many A-listers in the audience that it could have been a typical stuffy awards show vibe. So were you surprised by their freakout over Backstreet’s “I Want it That Way”? Tina and Amy were singing like high schoolers, Adam Sandler, Paul Rudd were shouting along. Even Jerry Seinfeld got in on it.
When they rehearsed and they do what they were gonna do, and they said, “Now you sing,” I was like, “Oh no! It’s an industry crowd, I hope they’re gonna sing!” But literally every person knew every word. Paul Rudd, Pedro Pascal, Jerry Seinfeld was singing with Brian [Littrell]. It was nuts. Every time I cut to the audience, I’ve never, ever had a better cut-away experience in my life where every time I cut to a shot there was some incredibly famous person singing at the top of their lungs having the greatest time of their life.
What do you think it was about them that go everybody so excited?
I think everybody was so psyched for that experience. I said to Lorne, “You’re literally watching your legacy in front of your eyes.” It’s kinda nuts. I think everyone has a deep appreciation for Lorne and what he’s accomplished, and I think everyone just came to have fun.
One of the things that really grabbed people was Pedro Pascal just losing it to DEVO. When you saw that, were you like, “Oh, we need to cut that immediately”?
Yes, it was nuts, it was crazy. Every time I cut to the audience they were having the time of their lives. Pedro literally gyrating to DEVO was, I think, my favorite cut-away of the whole night.
Was there anything that did not go as planned that was a pleasant surprise or an “oh sh–” moment?
I think almost everything happened the way it was supposed to happen magically, which I will tell you did not happen in run-through. The fact that on-air it all happened the way it was supposed to was a Christmas miracle. We made every changeover, but there was one really big changeover where we had Jimmy in the audience and he was supposed to go over to talk to Sandler, and Sandler wasn’t in his seat because he’d just done the Post Nirvana intro and he was backstage talking to people. So then he just freewheeled it, which was amazing, and we were able to make the turnaround a little faster on the night of the show so he wasn’t there laying with egg on his face for too long. Other than that, everything happened the way it was supposed to happen.
I still sing “Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars” all the time, so tell me how the Bill Murray lounge singer bit came together?
I think [longtime SNL writer] Jim Downey wrote it for Billy, and then Billy asked for three of the girls and they tried to get who was available. Ana, Maya and Cecily agreed to do it and they rehearsed it in the lobby of Radio City and then came onstage and rehearsed it the day before the show.
The four-part series showed you how tight rehearsal and writing is on the show, but it sounds like your show was just as harried, if not more.
It was crazy nutty. It was two days of rehearsal and then show day, and we did a little rehearsing on show day before we did a run-through. We ran through the whole show just once.
It seems like you tried to pay tribute to so many through the song choices, like Eddie Vedder tipping his hat to Tom Petty with “The Waiting,” or David Byrne doing “Heroes” or Chris Martin with Bonnie Raitt…
It was definitely a conscious decision and Eddie [Vedder] was going to do “The Waiting” and we asked if he could say something about Tom [Petty] at the end of the song. He said he would do it in the middle during the break and then he said something completely different at run-through than he did during the show! He mentioned more of the musical artists on the show [during run-through], and then on air he did a tribute to the cast members.
What does it take to get Cher to put on those assless chaps again?
C’mon! How crazy is that? That she looks like that at her her age. I’m embarrassed of myself because I don’t look like that and I’m a lot younger. And how amazing did she sound?
The cast are used to staying up all night writing and long hours to get the show on air each week. But when you think about putting together this show, what was the biggest challenge now that you’ve had time to think about it?
The most challenging part was just getting the show rehearsed and on the air without any disasters. Also the difference between an hour and a half and three hours and also the difference in doing it at Radio City and having these huge band changeovers. It was logistically a lot more difficult… just putting all the pieces together. It was like a Tetris puzzle, so if one piece fell out you were in big trouble. Like when Brittany’s guitar stopped working, I said, “Oh God, I hope this doesn’t keep happening to us tonight.” And it didn’t and we were all good.
Shortly after filing for divorce, Cardi B and Offset welcomed their third child, Blossom, in September 2024. While she’s let her baby’s name slip during various social media posts, Cardi gave the Bardi Gang their first official glimpse of Blossom when posting a series of photos of her three kids to Instagram on Monday (June 16).
“It is you Miss Blossom Belles,” she captioned the pictures. It was a Louis Vuitton-filled pool day for Cardi and the family at home. Sporting a million-dollar smile, Blossom stars in the first photo while wearing a pink onesie and an LV scarf with pink bow socks.
Cardi was twinning with her daughter, Kulture, who posed poolside in a matching LV headband and handbag. She also showed some love to son Wave, as he looked unbothered while messing around on his phone and rocking a pair of Timberland boots.
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Motherhood could be in Latto’s future, as the Atlanta rapper hopped into the comments section saying she’s suffering from “Baby feverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr wtffffffff.” Anycia, GloRilla and Stefflon Don also gushed about the family Cardi’s built.
Cardi B’s new boo, Stefon Diggs, wasn’t present for the pool day, but the couple appears to be going strong heading into the summer.
On the legal side, the Grammy-winning rapper and Offset are still sorting out a bitter divorce after Cardi filed for the second time last August.
Last month, Offset filed for spousal support in the divorce proceedings with Cardi. The Migos rapper amended the filing with a request for an unspecified amount of alimony. Days later, Cardi went off on Offset during an explosive X Spaces.
“You such a f—ing p—y a– n—a,” she slammed her ex. “Word to my mother, I want you to die, but I want you to die f—ing slow. When you die, I want you to die slow in the bed. And when you die, n—a, you gotta think of me.”
Find Cardi’s family photos here.
