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Watch Doechii take a light day with Samsung for its latest campaign. In celebration of the Galaxy S25 Edge launch, the video features the “Anxiety” singer deciding to have a chill day by the pool with her favorite alligator, Coconut, who was featured on the iconic cover to her award-winning hit mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal. The two showcase the phone’s impressive 200MP main camera and offer an inside look at how Galaxy S25 Edge can fit into your day.
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“Music and fashion are some of my favorite creative outlets because they let me push boundaries and express myself in a way that feels authentic,” Doechii said in a statement. “With this partnership, I want to encourage people to have fun, try something new, and know that the creative voice inside them is valid and something to lean into.”
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“As a champion for those who don’t always conform to the status quo, Doechii exemplifies the same forward-looking spirit that Samsung is known for,” Samsung stated in a press release. “The latest example, Galaxy S25 Edge, creates a unique experience for users while retaining the style, creative features and powerful performance that users expect from the Galaxy S series.”
Unveiled earlier this month, the Galaxy S25 Edge is similar to Samsung’s flagship S25 series, but with an incredibly light, durable, and thin design. The phone features a titanium frame with a bright OLED display and a big 200MP main camera, along with a 12MP ultra-wide cam. Under the hood, the Edge is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB storage options. And like the rest of S25 family, this model includes a Galaxy AI experience. Shop the new Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone below.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
In addition to the campaign video, Doechii is throwing an exclusive private performance at Samsung Galaxy’s VIP event at Edge NYC in Hudson Yards celebrating the launch of Galaxy S25 Edge. Fans can catch the livestream of her performance at Edge NYC on Samsung’s website on May 30 at 8 p.m. ET.
Watch out, Fockers! Ariana Grande is adding another role to her big-screen resumé by joining the cast of Meet the Parents 4. According The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, the superstar will show off her comedy chops opposite Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, both of whom have starred in the hit franchise since Meet the […]
Justine Skye is beginning her next musical era with a fresh sound and a new label home: on Friday (May 30), the singer-songwriter released “Oh Lala,” a thumping dance collaboration with Kaytranada that re-imagines her R&B aesthetic and kicks off her stint at Warner Records.
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“I’m so excited to be part of the Warner family,” says Skye, who previously spent time signed to Atlantic Records and Republic Records, in a statement to Billboard. “From the beginning, they’ve truly seen the vision for this new era of my music and have been incredible partners in bringing it to life. ‘Oh Lala’ is a reflection of that creative freedom and support. The track builds a world where tempo and dance are the leading force.”
The Brooklyn native released her debut album, Ultraviolet, in 2018, and the Timbaland-produced Space & Time followed in 2021. As “Collide,” her 2014 collaboration with Tyga, was going viral on TikTok in 2022, Skye was already considering her next sonic pathway, with a desire to incorporate faster tempos in her studio output.
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“After going through so much emotionally, I hit a point where I just wanted to feel good again,” she explains in a press release for “Oh Lala.” “For me, that happened on the dance floor, being carefree with like-minded people — whether in Brooklyn, L.A., or Ibiza. I wanted to make music that matched that energy. Something sexy, something free, something that lets you forget everything but the moment you’re in.”
The “Oh Lala” music video was filmed at the famed (and now shuttered) Brooklyn nightclub, Paragon, with Kaytranada appearing alongside Skye. The new single was first teased in Nike’s new Air Max campaign featuring the singer.
Skye is being supported by both Warner and the label’s flagship dance imprint, Major Recordings. Her in-the-works label debut is being A&Red by Ericka Coulter (svp, A&R, Warner Records and GM, Free Lunch Records) and Chris Morris (svp, A&R, Warner Records).
It’s a Tuesday evening in May at Nightbird Studios, the recording complex nestled within L.A.’s Sunset Marquis. Within this infamous hotel rock and roller hotel, where Keith Richards once got behind the bar and poured drinks during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, Anyma is tinkering away on a new album intended to end the current phase of his career.
A space packed with production equipment is certainly like a second home to the artist, but for him this place must also feel relatively mundane, given how much time he’s recently spent at Sphere. During a 12-date residency spanning this past December, January, February and March, the Italian American producer became the first electronic artist to headline the Las Vegas venue.
While already a longtime star of the global underground via his solo work and previously as part of the duo Tale of Us, this high-profile gig naturally pushed the producer to a new level of ubiquity, with his name suddenly alongside fellow Sphere residents including U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Phish. When asked how life is different now than it was on Dec. 26, the day before his residency started, he’s forthright.
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“Well,” he says in his thick Italian accent, “I’m less stressed.”
But those who’ve witnessed the not casual themes of heaven and hell, creation and destruction, humanity and transhumanism woven into his Sphere show and other previous visual output are right to assume the artist born Matteo Milleri is a deep thinker. Tonight, posted up on the couch in the studio’s dimly lit lounge, his webby tattoos peeking out from the sleeves of his hoodie, he elaborates on how the Sphere experience did, in fact, change him. And in fact, he’d hoped it might.
“I think if I would feel the same, it would not be a success for me,” he offers. “Because I put my ideas out there, so that they reflect back on me once they’ve been absorbed by the world. For me as an artist, it’s very important to feel like I’ve changed, evolved, improved my craft.”
Anyma is talkative, polite and emits a sense of gravitas while talking about his work, altogether seeming older than his 37 years. He began the Anyma (pronounced “ah-nee-ma”) project in 2021, fusing the work with both tech and lofty ideas about humanity, spirituality, technology, the past and the future. This Friday (May 30), Anyma releases The End of Genesys, the third and final LP in a trilogy, following 2023’s Genesys and 2024’s Genesys II.
This new music, Anyma says, “was scored to the Sphere opera movie, so it was really written with a very big inspiration.” The tens of thousands of people who saw the show witnessed this inspiration in wild and often surreal visuals that depicted scenes of space, verdant forests, deserts, burning cities and a pair of recurring characters — a human man and a chesty cyborg who who meet in various landscapes, with him eventually plugging a heart into her chest, a moment that drew cheers.
For Anyma, the project was a natural extension of his longtime goal of creating something different in the live electronic world. “The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” he says. “Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing. I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”
His goal was to make a more intentional visual presentation that “you can just basically augment your purpose and your art with it… That was the whole idea behind everything.” In this way, Sphere was simply the most powerful tool for him to express ideas he’d long been considering. (Having a pre-existing visual identity also helped the team save money on the Sphere show’s mighty production costs.)
“Of course I’m happy it ended in Sphere,” he continues, “but it was supposed to exist even on its own on a world tour. I want people to think and to like, feel, you know? Maybe go home the next day and reconnect with a loved one or something, because they were moved.”
His goal for for The End of Genesys is roughly the same. But while anyone who saw the Sphere show has effectively already heard the album, listening to these 15 tracks in your headphones — with no eye-pummeling visuals or seats shaking in time with the kick — is a different experience. Separated from its corresponding visual identity, the ears better grasp the music’s nuances.
The project includes several marquee collaborations, with the album’s banger of a lead single, “Hypnotized,” featuring vocals from dance icon Ellie Goulding. “Taratata” features previous collaborator and fellow tech enthusiast Grimes, “Human Now” has Empire of the Sun’s always-heady Luke Steele, and other songs recruit 070 Shake, Rezz, Sevdaliza and Yeat.
Anyma’s music has historically existed in the heavy and often cinematic realms of melodic techno, a genre that’s bubbled up in popularity in the broader dance scene over the last few years, a trend that’s partially a function of the success of Anyma and Tale of Us. (The topic of the duo is off limits, although Anyma’s agent, CAA’s Ferry Rais-Shaghaghi, told Billboard in February that “both guys are super-focused on their solo projects right now.”) But via the collabs and song structures, The End Of Genesys often adopts a more pop lean. This was kind of the point.
The previous two Genesys albums came at “a transitional part of my career, when I was still trying to understand how to crack the code with pop, electronic and dance,” says Anyma. And now? “I feel like I did it.”
“It’s the final evolution of the sound,” he says, “with the best artists I know, most of whom are my friends. It’s inspiring that I could connect all my knowledge and influences into a record and make it contemporary and potentially timeless. That’s not up to me, but I think some of this record is really timeless, and that’s what really exciting.”
Balancing all of these factors was tricky he says, “because these days people want very simple things on the dance floor, social media needs to be fast and that’s what’s really resonating with the younger generations.” He instead aspired to make music in the grand tradition of artists like The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Massive Attack who made songs, he says, “that you could kind of vibe and dance to, but you could also sing. It was one cohesive artist statement with an edge of the rave culture behind it.”
Anyma
Courtesy of BT PR
The music will serve as material for Anyma’s many upcoming DJ sets, with his summer shows happening largely in Europe. The run includes an eight-week residency at Ibiza’s newest venue [UNVRS], a 15,000 capacity mega-club tricked out with a ton of technology.
He describes these upcoming performances as encompassing two worlds. The first is “DJ curation, longer sets, community and more forward thinking, exciting music… Then the big headline stuff and the bigger shows are more of a spin-off of the last act of Sphere, that aesthetic and those sonics.” He also says some of the new visuals will be AI-driven, with the use of AI currently a major focus of his work.
With all of these huge projects and big ideas, it’s hard to imagine Anyma in Netflix and chill mode, although he says it does happen. He’s based in Ibiza, where he enjoys the quiet of the farmland and the goats and the sea. Vacation for him is staying home, watching TV, listening to music and exercising for at least an hour a day, a habit that techno legend Sven Väth encouraged him to adopt. (“He saw me on tour and was like ‘You look a bit tired,’ and I was like, ‘You look great.’”)
But after the intense demands of Sphere, he says the most straightforward form of relaxation currently on his calendar is “going back to being a normal DJ.”
“This has been years of my life, of thinking, of my philosophy in the show. But creatively I also need to take a break — no artist creates just because there’s a screen. I don’t think I can do anything meaningful that way.”
Under president/CEO Ben Vaughn, Warner Chappell Nashville consistently dominated country music publishing. In 2024 alone, WCN was crowned publisher of the year at the SESAC Nashville Music Awards and at the BMI Country Music Awards (for the fifth time).
But all those accolades aside, Vaughn, who died Jan. 30, stood out due to his respect for and belief in songwriters. With an unwavering confidence in those he worked with at WCN, Vaughn guided them to where they needed to go creatively and professionally.
To honor his memory and his love of songwriters, Billboard has created the Ben Vaughn Song Champion Award, presented to an artist who uplifts songwriters just as Vaughn did.
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The first recipient is Little Big Town, whose relationship with Vaughn, Billboard’s 2020 Country Power Players Executive of the Year, goes back more than 25 years to when it was just a nascent band and Vaughn a Belmont University student running Scott Hendricks’ Big Tractor publishing company. “We all were kids,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild recalls. But even then, Vaughn had a way of connecting with songwriters. “He just was always so vibrant, and his personality just always so encouraging.”
Years later, shortly after Vaughn moved to WCN in 2012 following a long stint at EMI, LBT’s publishing deal at WCN was set to expire — and the band was determined to leave. “Ben was like, ‘What would it take? Let me take you to dinner and let’s discuss,’ ” Fairchild remembers. “Ben and [then-Warner Chappell Music chairman/CEO] Jon Platt reworked our deal, but Ben was definitely the catalyst. He was our champion. He had our catalog there and he believed in all those songs. People can sign you and be vacant, and Ben was never that guy.”
“He listened to our hearts and to our music and said, ‘I’m going to give this band what they deserve,’ ” LBT’s Kimberly Schlapman recalls. “He made us feel so good because he gave us value at Warner Chappell, not only as an artist but as songwriters. We felt like he wholeheartedly had given us his endorsement, his adoration and respect. We never thought again about going anywhere else.”
Vaughn took a hands-on approach in helping the group find outside songs for its fifth album, 2012’s Tornado, which included “Pontoon,” LBT’s first platinum single. It marked the first time the quartet, which also includes Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, worked with noted songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean. “He was always sending songs and [suggesting] collaborations and asking who we wanted to write with,” Fairchild says. “Just an encourager creatively, giving us renewed hope, and that’s very, very important when you’re diving back in and making a record.”
Vaughn frequently sent the band members songs from writers they hadn’t previously worked with, including “Next to You,” which opens LBT’s 2020 Grammy Award-nominated album, Nightfall. “ ‘Next to You’ was a total Ben moment,” Fairchild says. “Ben sent it to me first and said, ‘Listen to this song. You’re gonna die.’ It was some L.A. writers that we wouldn’t have known, but he just heard all the harmonies and he’s like, ‘This is going to be so epic.’ It was the cornerstone of Nightfall.”
Vaughn also suggested that Fairchild and Schlapman write with the Love Junkies (Hemby, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna), who penned some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Sober” and “Girl Crush.” “He always encouraged us to write with them because he loved what those three ladies and Karen and me were doing together,” Schlapman says. “He has a huge hand in that relationship.”
At Billboard’s Country Power Players cocktail event on June 4, the group will perform “Rich Man” in tribute to Vaughn. “Ben was rich in so many ways,” Schlapman says, “and he gave away his richness to others through his kindness and his encouragement and his love.”
Accepting the award is bittersweet for the band members, but they’re honored to pay their respects to Vaughn’s legacy. “I hope his family knows what an indelible mark he has left on all of us,” Fairchild says. “Just what a good publisher, friend and human he was.”
Vaughn “elevated the entire town,” Schlapman says. “He made the songwriters shine, and especially in this day when they don’t get nearly the credit and the money and the accolades that they deserve, he made them feel like superstars. He made everybody believe in themselves because he believed in them and the power of their music.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Hundreds of entertainment industry leaders, including several from the music world, have signed an open letter issued by the non-profit Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), calling for a rejection of extremist rhetoric and misinformation surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The letter comes in the wake of the fatal shooting of two young people outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., during which the assailant reportedly shouted “Free Palestine.” This act, the signatories argue, underscores the real-world consequences of anti-Israel rhetoric.
Signatories include major music industry figures such as Warner Records CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck, former Atlantic Music Group chief Julie Greenwald, Roc Nation’s Andrew Gould, YouTube’s Lyor Cohen, Rhino’s Mark Pinkus and UTA’s David Zedeck, among others. Other signatories include manager/TV host Sharon Osbourne, songwriter Diane Warren, producer Ron Fair, and actors Mayim Bialik and Julianna Marguiles.
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The letter responds to a series of open statements from the entertainment and literary communities — including one this week addressed to the U.K. government — that the CCFP says contain false claims and inflammatory accusations. It accuses Hamas, Iran and others of spreading antisemitic propaganda since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people.
In the open letter, the CCFP calls on public figures to reject extremist rhetoric and misinformation targeting Israel and the Jewish people. The letter condemns Hamas, Iran, and their allies for spreading false narratives since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, accusing them of manipulating well-meaning celebrities into amplifying falsehoods. The letter highlights how such misinformation incites real-world violence, referencing the May 21 killing of two people in D.C. The letter denounces Hamas for endangering civilians and using human shields, while accusing those critical of Israel of co-opting social justice causes to vilify the country. The signatories urge their peers in entertainment to reject falsehoods and work toward a lasting peace.
CCFP chairman David Renzer and executive director Ari Ingel highlighted the urgency of the message and warned that without responsible use of social media platforms by influential entertainers, anti-Israel rhetoric could lead to more violence and antisemitic targeting.
The letter concludes with a call for peace, urging colleagues to stand against misinformation and extremism in order to support a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in dignity.
The conflict began with Hamas’ attack in 2023. Since then, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has resulted in an estimated 54,000 Palestinian deaths, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties. The Associated Press reports that of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, Israeli officials believe about one-third may still be alive.
Read the open letter signed by Greenwald, Cohen, Bay-Schuck and more here.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty / RFK Jr. / MAHA
This latest mess involving RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” commission report highlights just how dysfunctional and stupid the Trump administration is.
We already know that RFK Jr. is a certified quack and conspiracy theorist who has no business being the head of Health and Human Services, and he continues to show us why.
The MAHA report, which is intended to address the reasons for the decline in US life expectancy, is currently being criticized because all signs indicate that it was generated using AI, specifically ChatGPT.
An investigation by NOTUS revealed that the MAHA report is marred by errors, including broken links, missing or incorrect authors, and incorrect issue numbers.
Other damning revelations highlighted by NOTUS included some studies in the report being misstated to support the report’s claims, as well as studies that didn’t exist.
NOTUS found that at least seven of the cited sources weren’t even real.
But Wait… There’s More
The Washington Post conducted its own investigation and found that 37 of the 522 citations appeared numerous times in the report. URLs in the report were found to contain “oaicite,” a marker used by OpenAI and applied to responses provided by AI models, such as ChatGPT, which is a strong indication that Kennedy and HHS used AI to make the report.
Another giveaway that the MAHA report is nothing more than the product of blatant AI use is the presence of “hallucinations” throughout it, a term used to describe the false information that artificial intelligence models tend to produce.
There is also the fact that RFK Jr. hasn’t been shy about what he describes as the “AI Revolution” and said during a House Committee meeting in May that HHS is “already using these new technologies to manage health care data more efficiently and securely.”
The White House Claims It Was Just “Formatting Issues”
When pressed on the report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to the errors as “formatting issues,” while avoiding discussion of the use of AI tools.
Leavitt, who has put on a masterclass in lying like her boss since taking on the role of press secretary, also added that the MAHA report is “backed on good science that the federal government has never recognized.”
NOTUS: A NOTUS investigation found that the MAHA commission report cites studies that appear to not exist. Does the WH have confidence that the info coming from HHS can be trusted?
LEAVITT: Yes. I understand there were some formatting issues, but it does not negate the substance… pic.twitter.com/i1d5SMlGYy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 29, 2025
The Washington Post says the report has since been “updated” with some of the oaicite markers being removed and the nonexistent sources replaced with alternate citations.
In a statement sent to The Washington Post, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”
Social media isn’t shocked by these developments because of RFK Jr.’s reputation for being a liar and a pusher of medical falsehoods. He also claimed he would find the cause of autism by September.
If you know anything about RFK Jr the fact that he falsified the MAHA report should not surprise you in the least. pic.twitter.com/hNvIQHLC5M
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) May 30, 2025
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Welp
FRAUDULENT—RFK Jr’s report on “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) cited completely FAKE studies that do not even exist, & completely misinterprets others. Truly wild. This is the same guy who bypassed all CDC scientists to put out anti vax nonsense. https://t.co/kxdUbhJd2O pic.twitter.com/NvDXxNtv5l— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) May 29, 2025
2. Bruh
RFK Jr.’s ‘MAHA Report’ includes at least 7 cited sources that do not appear to exist.One scientist stated that “the paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” when informed of the report. pic.twitter.com/p45tYX8D9v— FactPost (@factpostnews) May 29, 2025
3. Make it, make sense
A 600 million dollar grant to research a vaccine for bird flu was canceled yesterday after RFK Jr turned in a HHS report that was riddled with untruths! Numerous studies in it were not correct and it’s said to have been made by using Chat GBT! 😡😡😡 pic.twitter.com/QtRBfScGO8— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) May 30, 2025
4. Exactly
RFK: journals are fraudulentMAHA report: AI generated without human review, uses studies that don’t exist and cites authors saying things they never said.This would be a career-ending scandal in any other universe. https://t.co/mc2qYdiu72— Tyler Black, MD (@tylerblack32) May 29, 2025
5.
The MAHA report, promoted by RFK Jr. as “gold-standard science,” is riddled with bogus citations:⭐️ 7 studies don’t exist — one author: “The paper cited is not a real paper.”⭐️ Key conclusions misquoted⭐️ One study exists only in the report⭐️ Dozens more have broken links or… pic.twitter.com/nohSQc7EDR— Carolyn Barber, MD (@cbarbermd) May 29, 2025
6.
I have just read the MAHA report in full.I want to make my position on this clear: The impact of this report, if actually taken seriously, will (on net) make America less healthy.Many have already pointed out that the report had erroneous citations. But this isn’t even the… pic.twitter.com/6L7C0w2tfK— Avi Bitterman, MD (@AviBittMD) May 29, 2025
7.
RFK Jr.’s MAHA report cited some studies that don’t exist to justify its recommendations for America’s 74 million children. The White House called it “formatting issues.” Anderson is Keeping Them Honest. pic.twitter.com/RuyMIUtNK0— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) May 30, 2025
8.
On @ac360, discussed how White House reports usually have dozens of people read and re-check every word and referenceReports are then run by real experts to make sure substance is rightMAHA Report appears to have done none of thatThe level of incompetence here is shocking https://t.co/qiJWjh5mhq— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) May 30, 2025
9.
Fabricated and Misleading Citations in the MAHA ReportThe “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) report claims to be grounded in science. But when you dig into the references—it starts to fall apart. Let’s take a look. 🔍👇 pic.twitter.com/zfDiX5Y0Oi— IntegralAnswers (@IntegralAnswers) May 29, 2025
10.
The academic fraud perpetuated by the MAHA report is extraordinary. There isn’t a student who wouldn’t fail and be subject to disciplinary action or an academic who wouldn’t lose their faculty position over something like this.— Michael Ostacher, MD, MPH (@RecoveryDoctor) May 29, 2025
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President Donald Trump has a penchant for using nicknames and hurling insults at folks, especially those who aren’t politically aligned with him or his administration. TACO, an acronym that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” is gaining traction online, and as a result, TACO is getting the meme treatment across social media.
TACO, coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armsrong, made its way to the ears of President Trump during a press event on Wednesday (May 28). A reporter asked Trump about the acronym, sparking a furious reply from the president, who demanded that he never get asked about the acronym again.
Because of Trump’s visible distaste for the acronym, savvy social media users and those who oppose President Trump seized upon the opportunity to dig in their heels with jokes, commentary, and memes as mentioned above.
In an interview with CBC Radio’s As It Happens, Armstrong was asked if it were a dream that the acronym got floated during the midweek press event at the White House.
From CBC:
It’s not the dream, it’s the nightmare. The thing about Trump chickening out is that it’s good.
Trump’s tariff policies are very bad and destructive, right? When I talk about TACO and Trump chickening out, I’m like, “There’s this good thing happening where he doesn’t follow through on these bad ideas.”
I don’t think this is gonna happen, but I have this slight worry that now he knows the phrase, and it’s banging around in his head, he’ll stop chickening out, which is exactly the outcome I don’t want.
As it stands, TACO is growing legs, especially on social media apps like X and Blue Sky. We’ve got some of those memes listed below.
—
Photo: The Washington Post / Getty
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After six long years and four album re-records, Taylor Swift has finally won back control of her masters. But what does that mean for the long-awaited, highly anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version)?
In a letter on her website announcing that she’d finally been able to purchase back the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capital Friday (May 30), the pop star addressed just that. “I know, I know. What about Rep TV?” Swift began in her note.
“Full: transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” she continued. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it.”
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For those reasons, Swift says she “kept putting it off” when it came time to re-record Reputation. Now that she owns the masters to the original album, she doesn’t technically need to remake it — but she did add, “There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
After releasing new versions of her Fearless, Speak Now, Red and 1989 albums over the past few years, Reputation was one of two albums left for her to re-record in the series of six LPs she’d made while still signed to Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group. One of the biggest feuds in music history erupted into the court of public opinion in 2019 when Borchetta sold the company — along with Swift’s catalog — to Scooter Braun, something the “Fortnight” singer at the time called her “worst case scenario” due to Braun’s “incessant, manipulative bullying” she accused him of directing her way over the years.
Her catalog later traded hands again when Braun sold it to Shamrock in late 2020, while Swift has kept fans on their toes with the unveilings of each Taylor’s Version album — each of which has featured a handful of “From the Vault” tracks written in years past that were never previously released. Besides Reputation, the only other album she still had left to re-record was her 2006 self-titled debut, about which she wrote in Friday’s letter, “I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now.”
“Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about,” she wrote of Reputation and Taylor Swift. “But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
It’s around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, a few hours before Riley Green’s Duck Blind will open, and its eponymous proprietor is giving a tour of his Nashville bar and restaurant. The multistory complex in Midtown features a few private areas where the singer-songwriter and his friends can hang, including a small lounge that doubles as a podcast studio and a cozy outdoor porch with recliners where Green intends to hold screenings of some of his favorite movies, like Tin Cup, Secondhand Lions and Bull Durham.
Though he’s only 36, Green laments that the younger generation, raised on TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, doesn’t have “the temperament to sit down and watch Shawshank Redemption. And because they don’t, they’ll never be decent people,” he says. That’s a strong indictment and he’s kidding — but only slightly: “You don’t think that at some point in your life you’re a better person because you watched that movie?”
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The get-off-my-lawn rant is ultimately good-natured; Green admits he’s a bit of an old soul, which he credits to his upbringing in Jacksonville, Ala. (population: 15,000). “The majority of my [youth], all four of my grandparents I saw every day. My great-grandmother was alive until 2020,” he says. “I think that’s where I get a lot of the more traditional values.”
A nostalgia for simpler times is reflected in Green’s back-to-basics country sound and in many of his songs — most notably his 2019 triple-platinum smash, “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” (Though both had died by the time he wrote it, he gave his two grandfathers songwriting credits “as a sign of respect,” he says.)
But in the past year, Green has also leaned into his playful, romantic side — and it has kicked his career into overdrive. His flirty duet with Ella Langley, “you look like you love me,” which recalls classic country songs from the ’70s and ’80s like Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with its spoken interludes, won musical event of the year at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards and three trophies at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards, including single of the year. Green admits he wasn’t sure the track (on which he’s the featured artist) would do well, but it reached No. 1 on Country Airplay and No. 30 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. “I thought the talking verses were probably too traditional to be a big hit on country radio,” he says, “and I’m so glad I was wrong.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
With fans looking at him in a new light, Green and his camp smartly followed “you look like you love me” (and its sultry video) with “Worst Way,” a sly, sexy song with an even steamier video that plays up Green’s leading-man charisma (and re-creates a love scene from Bull Durham).
Though he played guitar in high school, it wasn’t until Green was in college at his hometown’s Jacksonville State University (where he was also quarterback on the football team) that he got serious about music. He started playing four-hour shifts in local bars and restaurants, filling his sets with covers of songs like Jamey Johnson’s “In Color,” which he still plays every show. (In a full-circle moment, Johnson will open for Green on tour this fall.) But Green didn’t rely on outside material for long. “I never thought of myself as a great singer, [but] I knew how to entertain people,” he says. “When I started writing songs, that was how I saw I could set myself apart from somebody who was more talented as a singer or player.”
While Green writes with many top-tier country songwriters, some of his most acclaimed and diverse songs were penned solo, including “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” “Worst Way,” “Don’t Mind If I Do” (another Langley duet) and “Jesus Saves,” about a homeless veteran. “From a songwriter standpoint, Riley has really embraced his versatility,” says Jimmy Harnen, president/CEO of Green’s label, Nashville Harbor/Big Machine Label Group. “He’s at the point in his career where he’s not afraid to express what he’s feeling and seeing around him.”
BMLG founder and CEO Scott Borchetta recalls a conversation he had with Green two years ago that helped focus the artist for the future. “He said, ‘I’m writing so much and I need to get it out.’ So we set it up to where he could go into our studio anytime he wanted to just start letting all of this music out, and then that led to trying some different production styles. We really focused on his vocals more than ever and had him try a couple different things. And through this, I think he discovered a new voice and discovered his own attractiveness and sexuality, and that wasn’t there when we signed him.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Groundbreaker, who had never been on a plane before he signed his record deal with Nashville Harbor in 2018, is now expanding his audience beyond America. He opened for Morgan Wallen in front of 50,000 people at London’s BST Hyde Park last July 4, played several shows in Australia in October and headlined a string of Canadian dates this spring. He jokes that Canadian fans were severely disappointed that his Instagram-famous dog, Carl the Cowboy Corgi, didn’t tag along: “Everywhere we went, in my meet-and-greet people would come in, they’d be looking at my feet to see if he was there. They didn’t care about me at all.”
Carl and Green’s other two dogs were at his 680-acre Alabama farm, which Green only managed to visit five times last year. His trips there could become even less frequent. “Riley called me about a year ago and asked about Tim McGraw and how did Tim [get into acting],” Borchetta says. “That’s something that he is going to spend some energy on, and I think we could see another gear with him in that space.”
“When things are going well, you’ve got to go. ‘Make hay while the sun is shining’ is what Granddaddy would say,” Green says. “And I feel like that’s where I am. Things are going really well.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
