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Puerto Rican superstar Rauw Alejandro announced on Monday (April 14) that he’s taking his 2025 Cosa Nuestra world tour to Latin America, revealing that his visit will make stops in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The Latin American tour — produced by Live Nation — will kick off on Oct. 14, in Chile and will travel […]
The first weekend of Coachella unfolded with a variety of Latin artists spanning genres as diverse as regional Mexican music, “trippy pop,” indie pop, EDM, and even classical music… with a twist. The lineup kicked off on Friday (April 11) with the eccentric Argentine duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, the Peruvian Amazonian cumbia band Los […]
Tale as old as time, true as it can be. Like countless parents every spring, Jelly Roll got emotional as he sent his daughter, Bailee Ann, off to her very first prom, with the teenager looking gorgeous in a yellow dress mirroring Disney’s Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
In a sweet clip set to Cody Johnson’s nostalgia-ridden track “Dirt Cheap” that Bailee posted to TikTok over the weekend, the “Son of a Sinner” singer looks choked up as he walks toward the camera with a bouquet of roses. It then cuts to Jelly and his firstborn standing side by side as the musician flashes a huge smile before spinning Bailee around.
“my built in best friend,” Bailee wrote of her dad in the caption.
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Jelly’s wife, podcaster Bunnie XO, also shared footage from the day, starting with Bailee’s getting-ready process. “You’re going to look like a little princess tonight!” Bunnie gushes as her stepdaughter — over whom she shares full custody with the country star — gets her hair done. “It’s your first prom, I’m so excited, oh my god.”
“I call her the Prom Pimp,” Jelly jokes right after. “That’s what I’m calling her: the Prom Pimp.”
Later, as Bailee and her friends take photos in their fancy outfits, Bunnie films her famous husband hugging a family friend with tears in his eyes. “Are you motherf–kers crying? You’re supposed to be the men of the family!” the Dumb Blonde host jokes as Jelly laughs. “What is happening?”
Bailee’s prom comes just a couple of weeks ahead of Jelly’s April 29 kickoff show in Salt Lake City with Post Malone on the Big Ass Stadium Tour. The trek follows the October release of the “Need a Favor” artist’s album, Beautifully Broken, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
But even with everything going on career-wise, Jelly — who is also Dad to a son named Noah — and Bunnie are currently in the process of trying to expand their family through IVF. The latter has been open about her journey with the treatments in recent months, telling listeners on a March podcast episode, “It’s very lonely … It’s just you and these hormones and the waiting and the egg retrieval. And like, you’re the only person who can go through that, you know? So it’s a lot to bear.”
Jelly has also been open about how far he’s come as a parent to Bailee, telling Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on the trio’s Smartless podcast in March that he had to fight for his chance to have a relationship with the now-teenager as he was incarcerated on drug charges at the time of her birth. “Her mother, at the time … rightfully so [because I was] a f–king criminal, wouldn’t let me see her,” the “Save Me” musician recalled.
“So I had to go to court,” he added at the time. “I had to get supervised visits through the courtroom … I just had to keep going to the court every six months and going, ‘Look, I’m continuing to prove I’m changing.’ Music, being famous, wasn’t even a thought then. I just wanted to be a good dad.”
Watch Jelly and Bunnie see Bailee off to her first prom below.
Having won the Grammy Award for best musical theater album in February, Hell’s Kitchen is celebrating another achievement: its one-year anniversary. Inspired by 17-time Grammy winner Alicia Keys’ life, the musical — which made its Broadway bow on April 20, 2024 — marked the upcoming anniversary with a VIP-attended performance at New York’s Shubert Theatre (April 9). And this fall, Hell’s Kitchen will launch a national touring production.
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“It’s kind of a magical experience to say, ‘Wow, look how this incredible idea that started as just a seed over 13 years ago is continuing to grow, take shape and touch people’s lives,’” Keys tells Billboard. “No matter who you are in the world or where you’re from, you’re going to see yourself in this show. You’re going to recognize your family, you’re going to recognize your own spirit, you’re going to recognize the relationship you’ve had with an important mentor in your life.
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“You’re also going to leave this show and feel not only uplifted but excited and touched,” she continues. “I love the remarks and notes from all the different people that come to see the show. We’re so excited for more people to continue to discover and fall in love with it.”
Among the celebs on hand for the recent anniversary performance and the post-show party at eatery Sei Less were Ava DuVernay, Norah Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Sherri Shepard, Busta Rhymes and Keys’ husband Swizz Beatz. The Empire State Building being lit in the play’s signature colors of blue and yellow also added to the festivities.
The current Hell’s Kitchen cast includes Grammy-nominated singer Durrell “Tank” Babbs, Tony Award winner Kecia Lewis, Jade Milan, Phillip Johnson Richardson and Jessica Vosk. Both Lewis and former original cast member Maleah Joi Moon won Tonys — for best actress in a featured role in a musical and best actress in a leading role in a musical, respectively — in 2024. Those nods were among the 13 Tony nominations the play received last year.
Alicia Keys
Tony Eaton
Produced by AKW Productions with a book by Kristoffer Diaz and music/lyrics by Keys, Hell’s Kitchen has achieved several other milestones during its first year. “Kaleidoscope,” one of the musical’s original songs, doubled as the anthem of the 2024 U.S. Open Tournament. Two Keys hits featured in the musical, “No One” and “Empire State of Mind,” were certified diamond by the RIAA, with “Empire” also celebrating its 15th anniversary. And through an ongoing partnership with the Keys co-founded organization Keep A Child Alive (KCA), Hell’s Kitchen has donated $1.3 million to date to provide aid for children across the globe.
Prior to the kickoff anniversary celebration for Hell’s Kitchen, Keys and the musical’s director, five-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif, talked with Billboard about the play’s successful first year and the upcoming October launch of its national touring production (hyper here) at Cleveland’s Playhouse Square:
What was the easiest and hardest challenge in bringing the musical to life?
Keys: The hardest challenge was just holding on to the vision and making sure that through all of the processes, all of the years, all the versions and integrations of different moments and people, that it really stayed pure. I think we did a really good job of that. I’m also proud of us finding the right team to support all of it. The easiest part was the creation. Although it was long, there was an ease to it because the creative team is so special and so aligned with myself, Michael, Kris Diaz, [choreographer] Camille Brown and [music supervisor] Adam Blackstone. There’s an ease to it when everyone is ready to bring their greatest and feels so attached to it.
Greif: You stole my easiest. [Laughs.] The process was creative, exciting and productive. We liked each other, really listened to each other, and we made each other better all the time. This group coming together was so special for me. The most difficult part is happening right now, which is all about maintaining the vitality, excitement and big heart of the show as we bring it out into the world. We have the great opportunity to make new companies and ensure that that special chemistry exists between these new companies.
Alicia, looking back what was more difficult: breaking into Broadway or the music industry?
Keys: It was equally hard. Holding on to your vision, your spirit and who you are, while having the tenacity to stay the course until it all comes together and happens, is hard — no matter what you’re doing and whatever business you’re doing it in. It’s never going to be easy, because if it was easy, everybody could do it.
And I would say it was equally challenging in different ways. One of the things I love about creating Hell’s Kitchen is that I was so much more connected to myself as a person, as a businessperson, than I was as a kid coming into the music industry. So in that way, it was better, because I had a real clear sense of what it was. All the funny stuff and mistakes had happened so now I was in more of a sense of power.
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz
Tony Eaton
And Michael, given your directing background with Rent, Dear Evan Hansen and other Broadway musicals, did this project feel like an immediate slam dunk?
Greif: You just go in and try your best. Even when everything is working, there’s something that’s just alchemical in a live performance; a magical combination of things coming together. It helps when you have a group of people who are looking at it and refining it all the time. But I thought this had a whole lot going for it with Alicia’s music and the story is fantastic. But you really don’t ever know. I think what this [Hell’s Kitchen] found was a unique look at what it is to begin to find yourself in the world. And that’s such a powerful and universal story.
Keys: It’s such a beautiful thing to see people put themselves on the line for the sake of a beautiful piece of work. So I did feel really confident and remain very confident in what this is. Like with a great song: you can sing that song with no music, and you feel it. You could sing it just on guitar, just on piano, and you can get a sense of the story and feel it in your heart. The same spirit lives with Hell’s Kitchen. That’s the beauty of what Kris was able to create, the direction that Michael’s been giving and the dancing is so emotional. Then the songs all tell the story in such an authentic way.
How far along are you in casting the national touring production?
Keys: We’re in auditions right now, finding ourselves back in the buildings where we began the original cast. It’s really an incredible experience being able to discover young actors that are just out of high school and offer them this chance of a lifetime. Powerful young actors about whom we’re going to be able to say in five, 10, 15 years that this is the beginning of where they started. And I love the way this story lends itself to such a diverse group of people who are really identifying with this story. And we’re so grateful for that.
Max Romeo, the beloved reggae singer best known for recording such widely sampled songs as “War Ina Babylon” and “Chase the Devil” died in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica on Friday (April 11) at age 80. A statement on the singer’s Facebook page read, “It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Max. We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of love and tributes and kindly ask for privacy at this time. Legends never die.”
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While no official cause of death had been announced at press time, according to The Guardian, the singer born Maxwell Livingston Smith died from heart complications.
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Born in St. D’Acre in St. Anne, Jamaica on Nov. 22, 1944, Romeo left home as a teenager to seek out a music career in Kingston in the late 1960s, where he met such future reggae superstars as Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and got his first small taste of success as part of the group The Emotions. Though he would later make a name for writing conscious, political songs such as “Let the Power Fall on I,” Romeo first burst onto the scene in 1969 with the explicit, lascivious “Wet Dream.” The tune on which he sings “Every night me go to sleep, me have wet dream/ Lie down gal, let me push it up, push it up, lie down,” became a British top 10 hit despite getting banned from BBC Radio stations due to its cheeky lyrics.
The accompanying 1969 album, A Dream, didn’t spawn any other hits, but Romeo returned in 1971 with the more politically focused Let the Power Fall, which mixed skanking covers of songs by Neil Diamond (“Crackling Rosie”) and Bob Marley (“Chatter Box”) with that album’s breakout anthem, “Let the Power Fall On I”; the song became the theme for Jamaica’s People’s National Party during its winning 1972 election campaign.
“I’m gonna put on an iron shirt/ And chase Satan out of Earth. I’m gonna put on an iron shirt/ And chase the devil out of Earth,” Romeo sang on the the steady rocking “Chase the Devil,” one of several hits from the pair of albums Romeo recorded with pioneering reggae producer Lee “Scratch’ Perry. The song has been widely sampled over the years by everyone from The Prodigy (“Out of Space”), to Jay-Z (“Lucifer”) and Cage the Elephant (“Ain’t No Rest For the Wicked (Wicked Devil Reggae Remix),” among many others.
The fruitful relationship between Romeo and Perry launched in 1975 on the album Revelation Time, with the Perry-produced reggae-fied take on the traditional children’s song “Three Blind Mice.”
By the next year, Romeo was all-in with Perry, using his crack studio band, the Upsetters, as his house band on the career-peak War Ina Babylon LP. Infused with Perry’s signature reverb-drenched dub style, the album opened with the hypnotic “One Step Forward” — a broadside against Prime Minister Michael Manley’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1976 — and included the pleading title track, which mirrored the political and social turmoil that gripped the island nation in the mid-1970s.
The song was part of a rising tide of roots reggae anthems commenting on the nation’s turmoil, with Romeo singing, “War ina Babylon/ Tribal war ina Babylon/ It sipple out deh [it’s slippery out there].” The album was considered to be the first in a “holy trinity” of LPs from Perry’s mystical, chaotic Black Ark recording studio, along with Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves and the Heptones’ Party Time.
After releasing 1977’s Reconstruction album, Romeo moved to New York where he co-wrote and starred in the musical Reggae, as well as providing backing vocals on the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue track “Dance (Pt. 1).” Stones guitarist Keith Richards co-produced and played guitar on Romeo’s next album, 1981’s Holding Out My Love to You.
Though he never managed a Marley-like breakthrough in the U.S., Romeo released nearly two dozen albums from the 1980s through his final studio effort, 2019’s Words From the Brave. In 2023, the singer filed a $15 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group and Polygram Publishing over what he said were improper royalty payments.
Listen to some of Romeo’s most beloved songs below.
Singer, actor, and mental health advocate Demi Lovato is set to perform at Caron Treatment Centers’ 31st annual New York Gala, which is set to take place April 21 at Cipriani 42nd Street. The event will benefit Caron’s Recovery for Life mission, increasing access to addiction and behavioral healthcare treatment.
The Gala will also feature an opening performance by Grammy winners (and married couple) Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal and will honor three philanthropists and advocates: Dr. Angelina Lipman, Monte Lipman and Jennifer Bandier.
“Recovery is possible – and I am honored to support Caron in helping individuals reclaim their lives and embrace a brighter future,” Lovato said in a statement.
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Lovato has received four nominations – more than any other artist – in the Video for Good category at the MTV Video Music Awards. The category is designed for videos that address current social and political subjects. She won in 2012 with “Skyscraper” and was subsequently nominated for “I Love Me,” “Dancing With the Devil” and “Swine.”
Dr. Angelina Lipman, psychologist and founder of Blocking the Noise, and Monte Lipman, founder and CEO of Republic Records, will be honored with the Thomas J. Moran Caron Music Award for their ongoing philanthropic efforts and support of Caron’s mission. The Lipmans serve on the founders board of The Neil Lasher Music Fund and are actively involved in a number of charitable organizations focused on health, education, and the arts.
Dr. Lipman, a social personality psychologist and former Columbia Business School professor, brings academic depth to their shared mission—applying her research on human behavior to drive meaningful change in education and social impact.
“Supporting Caron is personal for us,” Dr. Lipman said in a statement. “The work they do touches lives in meaningful, lasting ways.”
Jennifer Bandier will receive the Richard J. Caron Award of Excellence for her longtime support of Caron and her broader philanthropic impact. The award is presented annually to individuals demonstrating the care and compassion exemplified by Caron’s founders, Richard and Catherine Caron. A music industry veteran and founder of the luxury activewear brand BANDIER, Jennifer is also a dedicated mentor, advocate for women in business, and longtime Gala Steering Committee member.
“Being honored with this award is deeply meaningful to me,” Bandier said in a statement. “Caron’s work is essential, and I’m proud to support their commitment to transforming lives.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Demi Lovato and celebrate our incredible honorees,” said John Driscoll, president and CEO of Caron. “This evening reflects our shared commitment to recovery and a future filled with purpose, connection, and possibility.”
Funds raised at the Gala will provide scholarships and programmatic support for Caron’s work in New York and beyond, including outpatient services, family programming, alumni support, and prevention initiatives. Caron New York, which opened in 1996, serves as a hub for community engagement, education, and early intervention.
For tickets and sponsorships, contact caronnygala@buckleyhallevents.com or call 914-570-1000.
Caron Treatment Centers is a nonprofit dedicated to transforming lives through addiction and behavioral healthcare treatment, research, prevention and addiction medicine education. During its almost 70 years, Caron has helped thousands of individuals struggling with behavioral health issues, including substance use disorders.
Anchored by two medical centers on its Pennsylvania and Florida campuses, Caron is headquartered in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. In addition, Caron provides services in Wyomissing and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and New York City.
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2005 Week continues here a discussion of Ciara’s dominant 2005, a year full of huge, beloved hits that set the tone for mid-’00s pop music, but proved pretty hard for the breakout artist to later match.
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After hitting the mainsteram in late 2004, with her debut album Goodies and its Billboard Hot 100-topping title track, Ciara stayed winning all throughout 2005. From peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100 with the Missy Elliott-assisted “1, 2 Step” that January through to matching that success with her Ludacris-featuring spring smash “Oh!” to returning the favor to Missy on the latter’s smash “Lose Control” and teaming up with her real-life paramour Bow Wow on “Like You,” Ciara ended 2005 with five consecutive top five hits, and four top 30 entries on the year-end Hot 100. It was an incredible year, one that played a huge part in defining that era in pop — though, perhaps understandably, Ciara never equaled it again.
In this week’s Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by former Billboard writer and current freelance journalist (and Nothin’ But North Texas radio host) Natalie Weiner to officially kick off our 2005 week with a deep dive into The First Lady of Crunk & B’s biggest year. We start at the beginning of the Goodies era, when Ciara emerged as the ideal new pop star for a top 40 world that had become increasingly rooted in hip-hop and R&B, and run through her awesome streak of still-beloved smashes, and some of the collaborators who helped make her year what it was.
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And of course, along the way, we ask all the big questions about Ciara’s All-Star rookie season: What made her such a can’t-miss pop star for that moment in time? How weird was it that she was constantly cast as the one woman surrounded by a bunch of dudes? Did it hurt her in the long-term that she was never able to be a solo headliner on any of her early singles? How did Carmelo Anthony end up getting cast in the video for Goodies‘ lone flop single? And perhaps most importantly: Why don’t we ever seem to get pop star years as fun and simple as Ciara’s 2005 anymore?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from Ciara’s 2005, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider subscribing to the trans legislation journalism of Erin Reed, and giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.
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Source: Aaron M. Sprecher / Getty / Stephen A. Smith
The internet is screaming at Stephen A. Smith that no one wants him to run for president.
Stephen A. Smith is growing increasingly bored with dropping sports hot takes and being mad at LeBron James.
He is now setting his sights on the world of politics, as he has been making appearances on Fox News, The View, and NewsNation to express his disdain for the current Democratic party and Republicans, especially Donald Trump.
Appearing on This Week on ABC, Smith told co-host Jonathan Karl that he is so fed up with Democrats that he has “no choice” but to consider a run for the White House.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smtih said.
Smith claims that numerous people are, including his pastor, have come up to him, suggesting that he should run.
“Here’s the reality: People, literally people, have walked up to me, including my own pastor, for crying out loud, who has said to me, ‘You don’t know what God has planned for you. At least show the respect to the people who believe in you, who respect you, who believe that you can make a difference in this country, to leave the door open for any possibilities some to three years down the line.’ And that’s what I’ve decided to do.”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1911443893637230820
Sure Stephen.
Social Media Does Not Want Stephen A. Smith To Run For President
Following the segment, folks have hopped on X, formerly Twitter to ask WHO are these people telling screaming Stephen to run for president and to let the First Take host that no one with an ounce of common sense wants him to run for the highest office in the land.
“I’m at the gym where Fox News is on. The headline says “Stephen A. Smith leaves door open for a 2028 presidential bid.” My first reaction: Who? So I look him up,” one user on X wrote.
Author Dan Winslow wrote, “Dear @stephenasmith This country cannot afford another TV personality. Please save your BS for TV and radio.”
“If you vote for Stephen A Smith in an type of presidential race, somebody gotta shoot you in both hands dawg,” another post read.
Yeah, so basically, no, we don’t need a another loud mouth celebrity to be president.
https://x.com/2Strong2Silence/status/1911782352423911497
You can see more reactions from the gallery below.
In 2025, Billie Eilish is one of the most famous monikers in the entertainment industry. But a decade-plus ago, it was simply the name of a young girl who wanted to be called anything else, with the star revealing in a new British Vogue cover story that she “absolutely hated” her first name when she was growing up.
More than a dozen famous friends — from Sabrina Carpenter to Chappell Roan, SZA and Greta Gerwig – interviewed her for the piece published Monday (April 14), but Eilish was especially candid when Idris Elba asked whether she was proud or embarrassed of her unusual name when she was younger. “I absolutely hated my name when I was a kid,” the two-time Oscar winner replied. “‘I thought Billie was a boy’s name.’ That’s all I ever heard every day of my life.”
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“I remember just being so mad, and all I wanted was to have a girly name, like Violet or Lavender, some sort of, you know, pretty flowery name,” she continued. “And it’s so funny because now there’s no other name in the universe that could be my name besides Billie. I love my name so, so, so much. It really is the only possible choice for who I am.”
Noting that she was named after her grandfather, William, Eilish added that she found more confidence after realizing that an actress in one of her favorite shows shared her name. “The first female Billie I think I knew of was Billie Piper, from Doctor Who,” she told the publication. “I loved Doctor Who, so I was very, very excited about that. But then at the same time I was jealous and mad because I was like, ‘Why would anybody say my name and mean someone else? Unacceptable!’”
Though she fully embraces her name now, the nine-time Grammy winner also said in the piece that she still struggles with self-confidence. In response to a question from Nicki Minaj — who observed that Eilish sometimes seems “uncomfortable with how beautiful” she is — about whether she ever worries her physical attributes might “overshadow” her music, the “Lunch” singer replied, “Nicki, this question made me tear up a little.”
“I’ve never really felt very beautiful or seen myself in that way, so I definitely never struggled with the idea that it would overshadow anything, since I didn’t even really see it myself,” she continued. “I’ve had to really convince myself that I am beautiful.”
Eilish added, “Being a woman is hard.”
The interview comes a couple days after the singer-songwriter joined Charli XCX onstage at Coachella 2025 for a surprise performance of their Billboard Hot 100 No. 12 duet “Guess,” after which the “Von Dutch” artist shared a photo on Instagram of herself posing with her collaborator as well as fellow special guests Troye Sivan and Lorde. Eilish’s third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, arrived in May last year and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
See Eilish on the cover of British Vogue below.
Country music songwriter Larry Bastian, known for penning songs including Garth Brooks’ “Unanswered Prayers” and “Rodeo,” died on Sunday (April 6) at age 90, Billboard has confirmed. Bastian’s passing was previously reported by the Porterville Recorder.
Bastian, a longtime writer for Major Bob Music, was born Sept. 1, 1934, in Porterville, Calif. He was born into a family who farmed in California’s San Joaquin Valley. After graduating from Porterville High School in 1952, he went on to work as a biologist for 15 years at the Department of Agriculture in Kern and Tulare counties. He also harbored a love for music and songwriting.
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He launched his songwriting career in the 1970s, when he connected with Bonnie Owens and other musicians forging the Bakersfield Sound. He soon became friends and cowriters with Jim Shaw, and together they wrote a song called “This Ain’t Tennessee and He Ain’t You,” that was recorded by Janie Fricke and released in 1980 (Eddy Arnold and Tom Jones would later also record the song).
He has written songs recorded by Merle Haggard and David Frizzell (“Lefty”), Tammy Wynette (“Back to the Wall”), Conway Twitty (“Saturday Night Special”), Tracy Byrd (“Why”) Sammy Kershaw (“If You’re Gonna Walk, I’m Gonna Crawl,” “Yard Sale”), Reba McEntire (“The Girl Who Has Everything”), Rhett Akins (“Somebody Knew”), Moe Bandy (“Nobody Gets Off in This Town”), George Jones (“Forever’s Here to Stay”) and Craig Morgan (“Look at Us”).
Some of his biggest country chart successes came in the 1990s as a writer on Brooks’ “Unanswered Prayers” and “Rodeo.” Bastian solo wrote the latter, which, according to Garth Brooks: The Anthology Part 1, was originally titled “Miss Rodeo” and written for a female artist.
“This was a song I had written probably six or seven years before I met Garth … it was about a gal lamenting the fact that her guy was in love with the rodeo rather than her,” Bastian wrote in the Brooks anthology. “Finally, Garth said to me, ‘I’m going to record it.’ I said, ‘You can’t record it. It’s a girl’s song.’ He said, ‘Just watch me.’” The song became a top five Billboard Country Airplay hit in 1991.
Garth Brooks: The Anthology Part 1 also notes Bastian provided a key lyrical hook for “Unanswered Prayers” (co-written by Brooks and Pat Alger), which became a two-week Country Airplay chart No. 1 in 1991. Beyond those hits, Bastian also wrote and/or cowrote other songs recorded by Brooks, including “I’ve Got a Good Thing Going,” “The Old Man’s Back in Town,” “Cowboy Bill,” “Nobody Gets Off in This Town” and “Man Against the Machine.”
“That type of drive, first off you have to know that you can do it,” Bastian said during an interview on The Paul Leslie Hour in 2020. “There was no doubt in my mind that I could write a song. I think you have to be that driven to succeed, and then there’s a lot of luck. They have a saying, ‘You can’t get out of the way of a hit song,’ and that’s so right.”
A celebration of life is pending.