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ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” rules the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart for a record-extending 17th week. The collaboration first led the list in November.
Meanwhile, Lady Gaga and Mars’ “Die With a Smile” posts an 11th week atop the Billboard Global 200 chart, dating to its first frame at No. 1 last September.
The Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
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Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
“APT.” holds atop Global Excl. U.S. with 84.2 million streams (down 5% week-over-week) and 7,000 sold (down 9%) outside the U.S. Feb. 28-March 6.
“Die With a Smile” is steady at No. 2 after 10 weeks atop Global Excl. U.S. beginning last September; Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” keeps at its No. 3 best; Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” ascends 5-4, after three weeks on top in August; and Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” dips to No. 5 from its No. 4 high.
“Die With a Smile” continues atop the Global 200 with 112.4 million streams (down 6%) and 8,000 (down 3%) worldwide. The song ties for the fifth-longest No. 1 run since the chart began, matching The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay.” The only hits to lead longer: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (19 weeks), Harry Styles’ “As It Was” (15), Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” (13) and ROSÉ and Mars’ “APT.” (12, beginning in October).
The Global 200’s top five is static, with “APT.” at No. 2; “Luther” at its No. 3 high; “Not Like Us” at No. 4, following four weeks at No. 1 beginning last May; and “Birds of a Feather” at No. 5, after three weeks at No. 1 last August.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated March 15, 2025) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, March 11. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
After a difficult 2024 in which a number of major festivals closed their doors for good, Coachella sales were down and Burning Man didn’t sell out, WME global head of festivals Josh Kurfirst says, “Protecting the health of the festival business has become central to everything we do.”
“It’s no longer an incoming call business,” says Kurfirst, the son of Gary Kurfirst, former manager of Talking Heads, the Ramones, Blondie, The B-52s, Jane’s Addiction and Garbage. Early on, the job of most festival agents, Kurfirst explains, was to field offers from festival talent buyers for artists on the WME roster, negotiate where the artist’s name would appear on the festival poster and review daily ticket sales drops. But as the market matured and evolved, he instructed his staff to get more aggressive about pitching WME acts to prospective buyers and finding opportunities for them to bookend tours and live shows around festival appearances.
“Everything is strategic,” he says. “It’s not, ‘Let’s just throw 300 bands on this festival because it’s easy.’ We don’t do things easy.”
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Despite the cancellations of such once-popular festival brands as Faster Horses, Sick New World, Something in the Water and Alter Ego, Kurfirst and his team have plenty of success stories to tell. This year, his team helped land Zach Bryan his first headliner date atop the Stagecoach festival, secure newcomer Benson Boone a top slot on the Coachella lineup, book The Killers as headliners for Lollapalooza and secure headliner slots for Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier and Queens of the Stone Age at Bonnaroo.
2024 was a tough year for festival sales. What happened?
First, it’s important to acknowledge that the festival market has significantly increased in size in the last decade. When I first started, there was a smaller group of giant festivals that had most of the market share. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of a middle tier, a lower tier, a genre-specific tier and a lifestyle branch of festivals. And those have taken some market share away from the crossover contemporaries — the Coachellas, the Lollapaloozas and the Bonnaroos of the world. There’s really something out there for everyone now as long as you’re willing to travel. Look at Morgan Wallen’s new Sand in My Boots festival on the same site as the old Hangout Festival, which had been a steady market for years. Some years it sold out. Some years, it came close, but it never blew out on the on-sale. All of a sudden, Wallen comes in and launches his own festival on the site and it sells out instantly.
Atop a bowl of all-access festival and tour laminates, Kurfirst displays a copy of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s Music in the ’80s book, open to a shot of the Talking Heads, whom his father, Gary, managed.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
What did Wallen do differently from Hangout Festival?
Instead of trying to create an event that appealed to as many people as possible, Wallen created an event that overdelivered to his fan base. He rebranded the festival under his own name and booked more than a dozen similar artists that he believes will connect with his fans. [This year’s lineup includes Bailey Zimmerman, Post Malone, Wiz Khalifa and The War on Drugs.] If you’re a fan of Morgan Wallen, then you won’t want to miss out on the Sand in My Boots festival. And, by the way, if you live in the Southeast, it might be your only chance to see him play this year.
How are overall festival sales so far, compared with 2024?
Last year was interesting. It wasn’t just straight down. It was choppy water. This year is still early. Most of the festivals just announced their lineups, and from what I’m hearing, it’s been positive. The overall market feels like a bounce-back year, and a lot of that has to do with the headliners. We’ve had a solid crop emerge — Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier, for instance. To a young artist like Olivia, these festivals mean something. It’s a notch on her belt and a way to do something in her career that she hadn’t done before.
Kurfirst’s mother, Phyllis, created this framed collage that, in addition to ticket stubs from concerts that Gary promoted, depicts (clockwise from top) Phyllis and her pet huskies; Gary and Phyllis at his parents’ house; and at their alma mater, Forest Hills High School.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
How do you judge success at WME?
It’s not based on quantity or how many festival slots WME artists are on. We’re very selective. We’re building careers. And we want to make sure when it’s our clients, they’re in the right cycle in terms of their music cycle. Typically, that means the artist has new music ready for the fans to discover and plans for either touring or other dates that they want to build momentum behind. They’re going to play the right slot, they’re going to get the right billing, they’re going to get the right money. That’s the time to play the festival. If any of those things are off, we’ll just do our own thing — meaning, we’ll work with a promoter, headline our own tour and continue building their hard-ticket business, which is incredibly important for all our artists.
Are festivals still a healthy launching pad for an artist’s career?
They are a good developing mechanism for new artists, but again, it has to be the right moment. I don’t know that it would make sense to just throw a new artist that doesn’t have any music out on a festival [stage] at 12:30 p.m. when the doors open. That’s a wasted booking. It would be better for that artist to be in cycle, have music out, have some press, garner some reviews ahead of time, so people actually have the ability to do their research and [want to] show up in front of their stage.
Pillows commemorating Madison Square Garden shows by artist clients whom Kurfirst represents in addition to overseeing WME’s festival division.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
The festival market has had an uptick in cancellations in recent years. In that environment, how does WME maintain a positive relationship with promoters?
We look at the promoters as our partners. They’re not on the other side of the table; they’re on the same side of the table. We want them to succeed, and we have their backs. In return, they have our backs, too.
What does it mean to have each other’s backs?
With festivals, artists sometimes have to cancel. Sometimes they get sick, they break a leg, the album gets pushed. Sometimes it’s our clients. Sometimes it’s clients from other agencies. What we do in those situations is we don’t bury our heads in the sand. If it’s a Saturday at 3 p.m. or 7 p.m. or 7 a.m., we’re there for our buyers to fill that slot that suddenly becomes open. And because we book things through one point of contact, the buyer only has to contact one person at WME. That’s his partner, his festival agent, and that festival agent then canvasses the entire roster and can come back with real-time avails within hours.
Kurfirst with his four kids, from left: Landon, 17; Ariela, 11; Eden, 11; and Lucas, 21.
Courtesy of Josh Kurfirst
Are you bullish on the long-term prospects of the festival business?
It’s a very Darwinian environment out there and the strong will survive. There are times where we have to have tough conversations with our promoter partners and come to a fair settlement where our clients feel good, but where we don’t put the promoter out of business. Because that doesn’t help anyone. Make no mistake: When we do a deal, our clients are entitled to 100% of the money if a festival cancels due to poor sales. There are some reasons why a promoter can cancel, like a pandemic. But in most cases, if a festival is canceled, it’s due to poor sales or some sort of promoter breach, and our clients are entitled to 100% of the money. It’s our job to come up with a fair settlement where the client feels good and the promoter is able to get back up on their feet.
What’s one of the most important lessons your father taught you?
He taught me that loving what you do is the single most important decision we make as adults. If you don’t, you can’t bring passion to the job every day. He also taught me about not trying to be someone else. Don’t just go with the trend. He equated that in how he chose the artists he wanted to work with, whether it be the Talking Heads, the Ramones, The B-52s, the Eurythmics, Jane’s Addiction and Mountain. These bands weren’t genre-defining — they invented their genres.
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Two of the core members of sprawling K-pop boy band SEVENTEEN, vocal unit leader and producer/singer WOOZI and performance unit leader and dancer/rapper HOSHI, have teamed up to release their first single album, Beam. The three-track EP from the group’s “mastermind duo” dubbed HOSHI X WOOZI dropped on Monday (March 10) as the logical follow-up to “Bring It,” a B-side from SEVENTEEN’S second studio album, 2017’s Teen, Age.
The collection kicks off with the slinky “PINOCCHIO,” a Billie Eilish-like whispery ballad that features additional vocals from SE SO NEON’s SO!YoON!, which slides into the banging lead single, “96ers.” With a mix of boy band pop and hip-hop bounce, the song is accompanied by a video in which the men dance and pose like art pieces in a swank gallery as they relish being on display, singing about first meeting as “runny-nosed kids” in middle school, then graduating from newbies to OGs.
“WOOZI and I have always been inseparable since we were young,” HOSHI said in a statement. “We’ve long dreamed of working as a unit, and now that we can finally present BEAM to the world, I’m beyond excited. This album truly reflects the kind of music we want to create, so we’re planning to fully enjoy ourselves on stage.”
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WOOZI added, “It’s an incredible experience to release a new album with my closest friend in life. We had an absolute blast working on it, and I believe that energy is what makes this album so honest and true to us.”
The EP wraps up with another high-energy, dance floor-ready house track, “Stupid Idiot.”
This year marks the 10th anniversary for the SEVENTEEN — which also features S.COUPS, JEONGHAN, JOSHUA, JUN, WONWOO, THE 8, MINGYU, DK, SEUNGKWAN, VERNON and DINO — who earlier this year released “Bad Influence,” their collab with Pharrell Williams that soundtracked the producer’s Louis Vuitton 2025 Paris menswear show. Last year, SEVENTEEN released their 21-track greatest hits collection, 17 Is Right Here, followed by the Spill the Feels EP in November.
Listen to Beam and watch the “96ers” video below.
On Thursday, March 6, Hamilton Leithauser kicked off his annual residency at Cafe Carlyle, the intimate posh supper club known primarily for its Marcel Vertès murals, martinis and cabaret and jazz performances by Peter Cincotti, Jeff Goldblum, Sandra Bernhard and others. The residency, which The Walkmen frontman began as an against-the-grain lark — he skipped 2020 because of the pandemic — has grown into a hot ticket. This time around, Leithauser will perform 15 dates through March 29 (his most ever), and unveil some surprises along the way.
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Opening night took place on eve of the release of Leithauser’s new album, This Side of the Island, a hook-heavy pop-rock record that he co-produced with his wife Anna Stumpf (who also plays keyboards in the band), and an assist from his friend, The National’s Aaron Dessner. This Side of the Island is a more concise and conceptual effort, compared to his last full-length, 2020’s The Loves of Your Life, which is a masterpiece of musical storytelling. And initial chart results for the single, “Knockin’ Heart,” indicate the new music is resonating: The song is currently No. 16 on Adult Alternative Airplay chart for a second week — Leithauser’s highest peak yet on the chart. “Knockin’ Heart’ also debuted at No. 42 on Rock & Alternative Airplay, Leithauser’s first time on that chart.
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If the crowd’s response to Leithauser’s opening-night performance is any indication, “Knockin’ Heart” won’t be the only song from This Side of the Island to chart. Here were some of the evening’s highlights.
More New Songs (And They Didn’t Come Easy)
Leithauser previewed three new tunes on This Side of the Island at last year’s residency: “Fistful of Flowers,” “What Do I Think?” and “Ocean Roar,” an ode to his late friend, the singer-songwriter and producer Richard Swift. This time, the audience got to hear all nine of the album’s songs, along with music from his past albums, such as “In A Blackout,” “A 1,000 Times” and “The Garbage Men.”
Leithauser says the album’s title was sparked when his two daughters read Jean Craighead George’s young adult novel, My Side of the Mountain — about a boy who runs away from his parents home in New York City and learns to survive in the Catskill Mountains. “It’s another way of saying, ‘From my perspective,’” he explains, adding he was “very isolated” when he was writing and recording This Side of the Island at his studio, the Struggle Hut. It’s an appropriate name given the length of time he wrestled with the music. “I literally recorded the piano and guitar “Fist of Flowers” when Barack Obama was president. This was at my old apartment, which I sold in 2017.”
Leithauser has no explanation for his delays. “If I knew, I would be so happy to know how to avoid it next time,” he says. “I had been working by myself for so many years, and I didn’t know what I had. When you’re really trying to finish something and you can’t it’s so frustrating. It gets kind of scary because your livelihood depends on it. You’re like, ‘What am I doing with myself? I’m wasting my life here.’
“I fought through it,” he continues, “and at the very end went upstate to work for one and a half days with my friend Aaron Dessner. He was the only outside person I had ever played anything for — even my wife. It could have been one of those moments where he could be like, ‘Dude, this ain’t happening. Just go to law school.’”
Instead, Dessner “was so complimentary, excited about it, and he wanted to play on some of it,” Leithauser says. “I was like, ‘Please, anything to change my perception, change my idea of what it is.’ He started putting little things on it and added a modern sound.” Leithauser left Dessner’s studio confident that This Side of the Island was ready to be released. “I was like, ‘Man, I want people to hear this.’”
Leithauser Goes Electric
An electric guitar has always featured in Leithauser’s Carlyle shows, but it’s usually played by one of his band members — most recently by master of subtlety Larry Oliver – while the man himself strummed an acoustic six-string. On this run, Leithauser’s breaking out his black 1961 Fender Jazzmaster and 1960 mapleglo natural Rickenbacker Capri 360 to reproduce the bright rock sound of This Side of the Island. Although he told the crowd that ear plugs were available, the volume was suited to the room, and it was a gas to see the packed crowd rocking out in sportcoats and evening wear as they sipped their martinis and goblets of wine.
A Rockin’ Wedding Standard?
“Knockin’ Heart”‘s lyrics and Leithauser’s full-throttle performance of it on the record makes it sound like fervent pledge of unconditional love: “From the courtship to the chapel, from the branches to the apple, to the elegy in the bone yard — you’ll be knockin’ in my heart.” Told that the song could be a wedding-reception staple, given the right band or DJ, Leithauser laughs. “I’d love to go to that wedding,” he says, adding that while the song’s message is, “I’ll love you through time. Actually, the person in the song can’t get through to the person they’re looking for. The idea is there’s a guy driving home from the party. He’s stoned and drunk and wishing he can say this to the person. But the person is not there.”
A (Psycho) Killer Cover
Leithauser’s Carlyle sets always include at least one cover, and on March 6, he chose the Talking Heads classic “Heaven” — which, he says, is one of his all-time favorite songs. (He also said elsewhere that he listened to Fear of Music, which includes that song, a lot while making This Side of the Island.) The choice was all the more appropriate, because former Heads frontman David Byrne has recruited Leithauser for his latest project. “It’s crazy,” Leithauser says. “When he contacted me, I thought I was being punked.”
Surprise Guests
Opening night belonged solely to Leithauser — as an ad-hoc record-release show should be — but he says that “a lot of well-known musicians are going to be coming out over the course or the four weeks” to join in on the fun. He’s keeping the names under wraps, “Because I want them to be surprising.”
Leithauser is the Kevin Bacon of indie rock, with a deep network of friendships with other musicians, so the surprises should be genuinely surprising. At his March 8 show, J Mascis was Leithauser’s special guest, and imagining the Dinosaur Jr. frontman at a strait-laced place like Cafe Carlye is mind-blowing on its own.
Jordan Firstman did not set out to turn videos of him reading inherently ridiculous sentences into a running, viral piece of internet lore — it just turns out he’s exactly the right person to spin twisted confessions into comedy gold.
“I think I just have the kind of personality where nothing really shocks me,” he tells Billboard over Zoom, before quietly chuckling to himself. “I think I have something wrong in my brain where I cannot understand that people would be shocked over something.”
Firstman has been posting his Instagram series Secrets — in which his followers submit anonymous sentences disclosing some of their wildest personal tidbits — since the pandemic. Taking simple messages ranging from the mundane (“I voted third party”) to the truly absurd (“I k-holed in a guys bathroom on the 1st date n robbed him”), the comedian started to slowly transform some of his favorite secrets into short songs. Next month, the singer will bring his long-running gag to a brand new format with his debut album.
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Secrets, due out Friday, April 4th via Capitol Records, takes those same direct messages from fans and transforms them into brand new songs — the first of which (“I Wanna See My Friends’ D–ks”) fans will get to hear on Thursday (March 14). Spanning genres and subject matters, the album plays back to front as a raunchy, raucous ride through Firstman’s unique comedy lens. Plus, he adds: “The songs sound f–king amazing.”
Below, Firstman chats with Billboard about the origins of his Instagram series, how he scored a major label record deal and why modern pop stardom requires singers to have comedy chops.
Take me back to how the Secrets Instagram series started: what made you want to take your followers’ deepest, dumbest secrets and turn them into content?
It was a very pandemic thing; I had the idea to use the questions box to ask [for secrets]. I actually was kind of making songs out of them pretty immediately, just by myself with no beats or anything. I think the character limit means you cannot get into full stories, so they just felt like these little soundbites that were great to make fun of. To this day, who knows what’s real and what’s not, but I try to just use the ones that feel real.
I know you’ve referred to this as your “indie” series behind something like your very successful Impressions series — at what point did you realize that Secrets was really hitting a nerve with your audience?
It’s such a social media answer, but this was a way to just have this immediate connection with your following. I’m far from the first person to do this — there was stuff like PostSecret back in the day. Kind of like comedy, you cannot own the style, but you can own how you do it. So, I think what’s made it stick with my followers is just, I guess, my own sensibility and my own take on things.
At what point did the idea occur to you that those songs you were making could become an album?
I guess about a year or two ago, I had just been compiling these free MIDI files of different genres, and I would just play them in my apartment when I was bored. I have this friend, Brad Oberhofer, who is a brilliant musician, and I asked him if he would want to do one live with me, and that was the beginning of the new era of Secrets. We just kind of became a great team, and the songs were really fun. It wasn’t until this summer that I was like, “Ok, so we should start recording a couple of these and see what we get.” It became clear within a week or two that there was something there. I asked a couple other friends to start helping out, and within that first month, I think I had 10 or 12 songs recorded, I had a record deal, and it all happened really fast.
How do you go about selecting which submissions make for the best songs, versus which ones are just good for normal Secrets submissions?
When I’m doing them with Brad, I probably get anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 secrets every time I do it. And so there is this kind of pressure every time we do it, so I do get drunk. [Laughs.] It’s kind of the only way I can move that fast, because we usually do these in about an hour, and we’ll do anywhere from 10 to 20 mini songs. The more we’ve done, the more we’ve wanted more production in there, so it’s not just us and a guitar, it’s us having this very fast live setup. We just scroll really fast, and whatever pops up, we just do it. It’s become a very instinctual thing. Like, yeah, “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill” is obviously a country song. Obviously! But we’re working so fast that we don’t have time to think about it.
But then on the album, luckily, all of the secrets are logged [on Instagram]. So I’ve gone through my archive and I found so many good ones. I’d say a little less than half of the album are secrets that I haven’t made songs out of yet, but that I was like, “Oh, this is a perfect premise for a song.”
In working with Brad, as you’ve been putting these together, have you started to kind of find the sound that you’re most comfortable with? Or is the eclectic genre approach very much the point?
There is a major level up that happened on the album. It’s truly every genre — there’s an amazing jazz song, there’s a Nirvana-style song, there’s a funk song, there’s a post-punk song, there’s a Central Cee-type song where I rap. We’re probably missing, like, classical? But on the deluxe, I do want to have an insane song title, and then just have it be classical music with no lyrics.
Was there any part of this process that proved to be a challenge for you?
The songs are kind of gendered, and the titles immediately tell me if it’s a boy or a girl singing it, and so there are some songs that are absolutely girl songs. I do, however, have a male voice, so it became a question of, “How do I sing this song from a woman’s POV?” On at least one of the songs, we do pitch me up a little bit, but it’s still my cadence. There’s one almost-Lilith Fair-style ’90s lesbian song that was really challenging to find the right vocal tone for.
Let’s talk a little about the record deal — how did that process start, and why did you go with Capitol?
So basically, I have four main producers now — Brad, Blake Slatkin, Zach Dawes and Sega Bodega. I have really good people, so now the songs sound f–king amazing. But Blake and I had a session, and within an hour, we had the single, done and ready to go. We knew it was a f–king smash. After that, we sent the record over to Capitol. I went in literally the next day to play them a couple of songs, and then they were just like, “Yeah, we would like to do this with you.” I didn’t even really meet with other people, because it was like, “They get this, and they’re going to do it in the right way.” They understood it so well immediately, so we just went for it.
I remember the next week, I went into a big boardroom with the chairman of Capitol and president and the vice president, and I played them “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill.” And they got it! It was very aligned, the whole experience just felt right. I don’t know, sometimes there’s this rhetoric [from artists] of “F–k the labels,” and I’m sitting here like “I don’t know, they’ve been great!” [Laughs].
Comedy music has been picking up some steam over the last couple years, with people like Bo Burnham and Tom Cardy earning big viral songs in the genre. Why do you think this genre is having that moment right now?
I think music is now bigger than it’s ever been, and then comedy is so inherent to music right now. Like, you can’t really be a musician right now if you don’t have a sense of humor. Look at Sabrina Carpenter — in a way, she is making comedy songs! And Lil Nas X! With social media, everyone has almost had to turn into a comedian to thrive.
It’s interesting — this is definitely a comedy album, for sure, but it’s almost some songs more than others [are comedy songs]. When I think about what I’m doing, to me, it’s not in line with most of the comedy albums that have been out lately. I would actually compare it more to something like Bloodhound Gang — they’re real songs that are also funny. The joke isn’t the main part of the song, but they are still funny.
This is a huge time for you with this album, the success of English Teacher, your upcoming role in Rachel Sennott’s comedy series — what are some things that you’re still hoping to accomplish in the months and years to come?
It’s a big year of firsts for me, and I kind of just have to do the work. I’m excited to see what sticks. You can’t be attached to any real outcome, but I don’t know. Everyone who hears this music just really likes it, and so I have a good feeling about this. It’s been a slow and steady build, and it’s starting to feel like the projects this year are the things that I’ve been really prepared for. So, I’m just excited to see the response.
Will Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga take No. 1 from Kendrick Lamar and SZA? Tetris Kelly:This is the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 for the week dated March 15. Back in the top 10 is “Nokia.” At nine is Teddy Swims. Chappell Roan holds on to eight, as does Billie Eilish to No. 7. “APT.” to […]
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Dolly Parton leads this week’s crop of new music, with her tender tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean, after his passing at the age of 82 on March 3. Kelsea Ballerini continues unpacking emotions the deluxe version of her album Patterns, while Brad Paisley teams with Dawes for a new track that takes a unflinching look at mental health.
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Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of the top new country, bluegrass and Americana songs of the week below.
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Dolly Parton, “If You Hadn’t Been There”
Country Music Hall of Famer Dolly Parton pays elegant homage to her late husband Carl Dean on this tender song. With a classic country feel, underpinned by piano and fiddle, finds Parton chronicling the ways he served as her constant source of support. “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been there/ Pushing me on when I was scared,” she sings, and her expressive soprano builds from whisper-soft, sounding slightly ragged around the edges with grief, to ringing powerfully with love.
Kelsea Ballerini, “Hindsight Is Happiness”
Last year, Ballerini issued her biggest-selling album to date with Patterns, and returns with five new songs on the deluxe version of the project. One of the standouts in this new handful of tracks is “Hindsight is Happiness,” a peaceful ballad looking back on the wreckage of a decimated relationship and realizing both parties have matured and moved on. “I never should’ve tethered in my 20s, my bad,” the now-31-year-old Ballerini sings, before wishing happiness and love for her ex-flame on the road ahead.
Brad Paisley and Dawes, “Raining Inside”
Brad Paisley and Dawes recently performed together at the Grammys earlier this year. Now, the two pair their boundary-less creative freedom and turn it toward providing a mirror to modern-day afflictions, on this brooding look at mental health and depression. “No one’s sick and no one died, no one’s left and no one’s leaving/ But it’s raining inside,” they sing, highlighting the prevalence mental health struggles regardless of the presence or absence of situational hardships. The song’s pop-rock oriented stylings, highlighted by grizzled guitar work, elevates the song’s poignant message.
Tim McGraw feat. Parker McCollum, “Paper Umbrellas”
McGraw refreshes a fan favorite from his 2023 project Standing Room Only by welcoming McCollum. Together, they blend neo-traditional country sounds with a slight islands vibe to create a song that feels tailor-made to become a summer anthem. The intergenerational pairing of 57-year-old country standard-bearer McGraw with surging 32-year-old McCollum also evinces the enduring power of a song that melds a timeless, relatable story arc of post-breakup solace with breezy instrumentation and a melody that highlights the warm, laid-back charisma these two vocalists share.
Caroline Owens, “You’ve Still Got It”
Caroline Owens, a three-time IBMA Awards nominee who has performed with bluegrass luminaries including Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs and Rhonda Vincent, offers up softly beguiling vocals on her debut single for Billy Blue Records. Her soft-focus voice floats over trilling mandolin picking and reserved fiddle. Written by Jerry Salley and John Pennell, “You’ve Still Got It” centers on a sturdy love. Her full album, with production from Salley and Darin Aldridge, is set for later this year.
Rob Williford, “Johnny”
“How far can a man bend before he breaks?” It’s a haunting question at the center of the latest song from Williford, known for his work as a songwriter crafting hits for Luke Combs (“Beautiful Crazy” and “Forever After All” and Tim McGraw (“Fool Me Again”) and as a longtime bandmember for Combs. Williford previously released the solo project Wildcard in 2023, but fully steps into his own on his latest song. “Johnny” is a tale of addiction to moonshine and pills that leads to betrayal and murder, depicting how addiction and a string of poor choices can decimate a family generation after generation. His growling vocal lays out this destructive storyline over driving, rustic acoustics, evoking a unfiltered, country-rock vibe.
With RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing back their Rate-a-Queen system for season 17, Billboard decided to rate each of the new queens every week based on their performance. Below, we take a look at the roast challenge to see which queens delivered the best jabs. Spoilers ahead for episode 10.
Even seasoned comedians will tell you that the format of a roast is inherently hard. But RuPaul’s Drag Race has never shied away from giving their queens a tough challenge. So, in the infamous words of Farrah Moan: “Let’s get this roast a-cookin’!”
On last week’s episode (aired Friday, March 7), RuPaul invited the eight remaining queens of the season to perform in the show’s inaugural Villains Roast. Bringing back recent alums Kandy Muse, Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Plane Jane as the guests of dishonor on the show’s format, Ru tasked the queens with writing up their rudest (and funniest) material to lampoon the villains of seasons past.
You would expect comedy killers like Onya Nurve and Suzie Toot to be the shining stars of this episode, but Lana Ja’Rae and Lydia Butthole Kollins proved that, even at this late stage of the competition, big swings can pay off. Both queens skewered the villains dais with ease, surprising both the judges and the audience at home with their quick-witted jokes on the main stage, where Lydia ultimately took home the win.
Yet even in an episode where two previously faltering queens proved themselves, all eyes were fixed on the drama of the week between Jewels Sparkles, Arrietty and Lexi Love. After Jewels gave both of the queens starting positions in the performance lineup that they didn’t appreciate, both Lexi and Arrietty took two different approaches to their performances. Lexi, ever the victim of her inner saboteur, spent the entirety of this episode wrapped up in her head, failing to deliver on her jokes on the main stage.
Arrietty, meanwhile, leaned hard into her derailment by stealing Jewels’ jokes, effectively dragging her former friend down with her into the bottom two. In a fiery Lip Sync For Your Life to “YA YA” off Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Jewels stormed the stage, channeling all her fury into her stellar performance and leaving Arrietty as the latest queen to get the chop.
Below, Billboard takes a look back at episode 10 and ranks where our remaining contestants lie based on this episode and the season as a whole:
ELIMINATED: Arrietty
Image Credit: Courtesy of MTV
The upcoming season of You can’t come soon enough for Cardi B, who was almost speechless after seeing the trailer for the Netflix show’s fifth and final chapter arriving this spring.
On Sunday (March 9), the rapper helped announce that the first full-length preview of the April-slated season would be dropping the next day in a video posted to You‘s official Instagram. “Girl, I am shook — I just saw it,” she says in the clip, which came one day before the trailer dropped.
After giving fans the smallest taste of what to expect — “Joe got some money! He got a girl with money, chile,” she revealed — Cardi gave her ecstatic review. “I cannot wait for you guys to see the trailer,” she cheered, clapping her hands. “Y’all gonna gag! Got me gagging. Gagging!”
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The two-and-a-half-minute trailer, which has since dropped on Netflix’s YouTube, opens with Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg back in the same place he started five seasons ago: New York City. This time, though, the fictional stalker-murderer is a famous, wealthy socialite thanks to his relationship with Charlotte Ritchie’s Kate. However, the horrors of his dark past continue to threaten to come to light and disrupt his new lifestyle, especially as he falls in love yet again with a new woman played by Madeline Brewer.
The preview reaches a tipping point when Joe declares, “There isn’t a line I wouldn’t cross to protect this family,” at which point Kate stops him in his tracks. “You want us to kill everyone who is suspicious of us for the rest of our lives?” she asks incredulously, to which he sinisterly replies, “Is that so wrong? If it’s for the right reasons?”
The trailer then devolves into a montage of Badgley’s character committing a number of violent atrocities, from choking one person to bashing someone else with a concrete brick. “The killer finale you never saw coming,” onscreen text teases viewers.
The fifth and final season of You is set to premiere April 24 on Netflix. It will arrive seven years after the show first debuted on the streaming service.
And if you’re wondering why the “WAP” rapper was the one to announce the new trailer’s arrival, Cardi is a longtime fan of the show. In 2021, she fangirled over its leading man on X — which was then still known as Twitter — before both the musician and Gossip Girl alum hilariously changed both of their profile pictures to photos of each other.
Later, Cardi’s Billboard Hot 100-topper “I Like It” was featured in the first episode of You‘s fourth season, which dropped in 2023. That year, Badgley told Rolling Stone that he would absolutely want the hip-hop star to make a cameo in the show, but only if the role was right.
“Would I want her to be in You? Yeah, if it worked,” he told the publication. “I wanted her to be in season four. But it has to work. You know? How could she be anybody but Cardi B?”
See Cardi’s video and watch the trailer for You Season 5 below.
