genre pop
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Benson Boone brought his dynamic stage presence and first-class showmanship to Saturday Night Live on May 3.
Making his debut as the musical guest on the long-running NBC sketch comedy series, the 22-year-old pop sensation performed two tracks from his forthcoming sophomore album, American Heart.
Following an introduction from SNL host Quinta Brunson, Boone nailed one of his electrifying signature backflips before briefly serenading the actress and comedian with his song “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” which peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year.
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Later in the episode, the 2025 best new artist Grammy nominee returned to the stage for a performance of “Mystical Magical.” Dressed in a velvety purple ensemble, Boone delivered the jangly pop-rock track amid a dreamy backdrop of glowing pink and blue lights, supported by a full band and backup singers dressed in white.
“‘Cause it feels so mystical, magical, oh baby/ ‘Cause once you know, once you know/ My love is so mystical, magical, oh baby/ ‘Cause once you know, once you know,” he sings on the song, which interpolates “Physical,” an Olivia Newton-John classic, in the chorus.
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Boone’s SNL debut arrives ahead of the release of American Heart, scheduled for release on June 20 through Night Street Records/Warner Records. Both “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” and “Mystical Magical” appear on the forthcoming project.
His appearance at Studio 8H follows a standout run at Coachella in April, where he wowed audiences with high-energy sets packed with backflips — and even a surprise cameo from Queen guitarist Brian May during a cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” on weekend one.
Watch Boone’s SNL performances below. For those without cable, the broadcast streams on Peacock, which you can sign up for at the link here. Having a Peacock account also gives fans access to previous SNL episodes.
Lady Gaga performed to a record-breaking crowd during her free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday (May 3).
“Tonight, we’re making history,” she told the massive audience. “Thank you for making history with me.”
The concert began around 10 p.m. local time, with the 39-year-old pop icon opening with her 2011 track “Bloody Mary.” She followed it with a hit-filled set including fan favorites like “Poker Face” and “Alejandro,” as well as music from her latest Billboard 200-topping album, Mayhem.
Concert organizers estimated that approximately 2.1 million people attended the free Copacabana Beach show, according to Associated Press. The event is now the highest-attended concert by a female artist in history, surpassing Madonna’s 2024 performance at the same venue, which drew 1.6 million.
The largest concert crowd in history is still held by Rod Stewart, who drew 3.5 million fans to a New Year’s Eve performance at Copacabana Beach in 1994, according to the Guinness World Records.
Gaga’s performance drew over 1 million Brazilians and approximately 500,000 Little Monsters who flew in for the show, generating more than $100,000 for Rio’s economy, NPR reports. The city’s tourism department has announced that free concerts will continue to be held at Copacabana Beach at least through 2028.
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The Rio concert marked Gaga’s first performance in Brazil since 2012.
“I’ve missed you so much,” the superstar told the crowd during a soundcheck the night before the show, according to Rolling Stone. “I know that this is not the first show here, I know this is just a rehearsal, it feels like it’s the real show.”
In 2017, Gaga canceled her Rock in Rio performance due to “severe physical pain,” later revealing she had been hospitalized at the time.
Ava Max‘s new album Don’t Click Play is arriving this summer. The set, featuring lead single “Lost Your Faith,” will be her third full-length album. Max unveiled the album’s release date and its cover art on Thursday (May 1). Pop fans will be able to click play on Don’t Click Play on Aug. 22. The […]
Pop superstar Kylie Minogue capped her first arena tour of the United States and Canada on Friday night (May 2) as her Tension Tour touched down in Los Angeles at Crypto.com Arena.
“Good evening, Los Angeles! We are here!” the ever-gracious performer exclaimed to the packed house early in the evening. “Thank you so much each and every one of you for coming out tonight, and welcome to the Tension Tour.”
While the two-hour show took fans on a journey through four decades of Minogue’s hits, it also highlighted eight songs from her two most recent studio albums, Tension II (released in 2024) and Tension (2023). Among those choice cuts were Tension’s Grammy Award-winning “Padam Padam,” which was also a top 10-charting hit on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart in 2023, and the show-opening “Lights, Camera, Action” from Tension II.
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The Tension Tour is just the third traveling show Minogue has brought to the U.S. and Canada, having previously visited the country with Aphrodite Live in 2011 and the KYLIE trek 2009, with both staged before more intimate crowds as compared to the arena-sized audiences of the Tension Tour. Separate from her three tours, Minogue also mounted her first Las Vegas residency in 2023-24, with 20 dates at the 1,000-seat capacity Voltaire at The Venetian Las Vegas.
The Tension Tour kicked off on Feb. 15 in Perth, in Minogue’s home country of Australia, moved to Asia for a trio of dates (March 10-15) and then reached North America on March 29 in Canada. For the U.S. and Canada run, the Tension Tour played 16 shows between March 29-May 2, including a pair of nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden (April 4-5). The trek now moves to Europe on May 16, then to South America on Aug. 7, and then back to North America for its three final dates in Mexico (Aug. 22-26). By the close of the Tension Tour, Minogue will have played nearly 70 shows in more than 25 countries on five continents.
At one point during the Los Angeles show on Friday, Minogue paused and reflected, “Here we are in 2025 and I get to be on a world tour with these beautiful humans, beautiful intelligent humans — the ones you can see on the stage and off stage. And I get very emotional thinking about this, this… that I’ve… it’s been a lifetime and sometimes it just amazes me. So very, very grateful. Thank you so much for being here.”
That “lifetime” of a musical career was on display through the show, with Minogue offering up a bevy of hits like her first single, the 1987 cover of “The Loco-Motion,” along with “Better the Devil You Know” (1990), “Spinning Around” (2000, and joined onstage by the show’s opening act Rita Ora), “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (2001), “All the Lovers” (2010) and many more.
Before the final song of the night (“Love at First Sight”), a joyful Minogue shared a message with the crowd: “You’ve been beyond tonight. You’ve been here, present, ready, going — thank you so much for being here, for your beautiful energy, for being here for me in all different times of my career. For being there for each other! I just want to give a real shout-out to our entire crew because this has been an incredible run. We’ve loved it, so thank you.” After a moment of applause from the crowd, she then humorously added, “I’ve got some old friends here tonight. Look at me now!”
Lewis Capaldi made a rare onstage appearance at Tom Walker‘s charity concert in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Capaldi, who announced he was taking a step back from touring in 2023, was the surprise guest at a benefit show on Friday (May 2) for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) at Assembly Halls.
Fans at the benefit gig were told to stay for a special guest after Walker’s set, with the promise of another surprise appearance alongside him and Nina Nesbitt, the BBC reports. Concert-goers were then stunned when Capaldi stepped out onstage for a six-song performance that ended with his hit “Someone You Loved,” which spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019.
“Lewis Capaldi being a surprise guest was the best thing ever. What a gig,” one lucky fan wrote on X. Another added, “lewis capaldi coming out at tom walker oh i’m going to bawl.”
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Attendees at the show were asked not to film any of the sets, with their phones stored in sealed Yondr pouches.
Friday’s event, held ahead of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (May 12-18), marked the first of three phone-free gigs aimed at raising funds for CALM, a suicide prevention organization. The next show, on Tuesday (May 6), will feature Walker alongside Declan McKenna and Bradley Simpson at Stirling’s Albert Halls. And the final show will take place on May 10 at Glasgow’s Old Fruit Market, with performances by Nathan Evans, Saint PHNX and Caity Baser.
Capaldi announced he was taking a break from touring in a message posted to Instagram in June 2023, just days after struggling to perform “Someone You Loved” during his set at the Glastonbury Festival. Fans rallied to help him finish the song by lending their voices.
“Thank you to Glastonbury for having me, for singing along when I needed it and for all the amazing messages afterwards,” he wrote. “It really does mean the world.
Capaldi continued, “The fact that this probably won’t come as a surprise doesn’t make it any easier to write, but I’m very sorry to let you know I’m going to be taking a break from touring for the foreseeable future.”
The Scottish artist had previously been open about his struggle with Tourette’s syndrome, revealing his diagnosis in September that year. Months later, in an April interview with the U.K.’s The Times, Capaldi shared that he had been struggling to control his tics while performing, and admitted there may come a day when he would quit music because of it.
Anderson .Paak and Mariah Carey are working on new music together.
During a Friday (May 2) appearance on the social media series Track Star — where guests try to identify mystery songs — the 39-year-old singer-songwriter and producer correctly guessed Carey’s “Always Be My Baby,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1996.
“This would be Mariah Carey. The Mariah Carey,” said .Paak, who was wearing a T-shirt featuring Mariah’s face. “I remember in like 5th grade, or something, watching the music videos and having a huge crush. We’re working on some music on her new album.”
News of a musical collaboration between .Paak and Carey, 56, comes after the two were seen holding hands after the iHeartRadio Music Awards in March 2025, People reports. .Paak helped the superstar singer onto the stage as she accepted the icon award at the ceremony.
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“Thank you iHeart for this incredible honor,” Carey said during her speech. “As a kid, I used to listen to my favorite artist on the radio and dream of being on the airwave myself. Now, for those of you who may not know what airwaves are, think of it as the non-Wifi version of streaming, OK?”
Around the same time, the pair were reportedly also spotted leaving a restaurant together in West Hollywood. Prior to that, .Paak and Carey were seen holding hands following the conclusion of her Christmas tour in December 2024, according to People.
Carey, recently nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, confirmed in an early April interview with the Associated Press that she’s working on a new album, but she did not share additional details. Her most recent studio album, Caution, was released in 2018.
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey announced a special expanded edition of the album. The upcoming release will include bonus tracks, unreleased remixes and collaborations, instrumentals, a cappella versions, and live recordings. The two-disc vinyl edition is set to drop through Def Jam Records/UMe on May 30.
The owner of Las Vegas’ Sphere has hit Beyoncé with a cease and desist letter over fan-shot concert footage that shows the superstar picking up a computer-generated version of the iconic Las Vegas venue and briefly juggling it between her hands, Billboard has confirmed.
“Beyoncé — many orders of magnitude larger than the Sphere venue — leans over, picks up the venue, and looms over it,” the letter reads, according to the New York Post, which first reported the news, leading to “significant speculation that Beyoncé will end her tour with a Sphere residency.” (Billboard has not independently obtained the letter.)
The filmed sequence, which plays during an interlude at Beyoncé’s newly launched Cowboy Carter tour, irked Sphere Entertainment Co. executive chairman/CEO James Dolan because Sphere unsuccessfully lobbied the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer to perform at the venue in the past, sources with knowledge of the negotiations tell Billboard.
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Attorneys for Dolan, who is also the chairman/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Group, want Beyoncé to cut the brief sequence from her three-hour concert, which she performed for a second time at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday (May 1).
The letter is addressed to Beyoncé’s production company, Parkwood Entertainment, on behalf of Sphere Entertainment Group and authored by Kathleen McCarthy of the law firm King & Spalding. In the letter, Spaulding accuses Parkwood of using imagery of the Sphere’s likeness “without permission” and accuses the singer of misleading her fans.
“It has recently come to SEG’s attention that a Cowboy Carter tour interlude video contains the unauthorized use of SEG’s intellectual property,” the letter reads. “SEG is sure that multiple aspects of the interlude video, including other brands, clips and music, were duly cleared by the tour with rights permissions from the rights holders whose works were used in the video, as is common practice. SEG, however, was never asked and the prominent appearance and manipulation of SEG’s Sphere™ venue in the video is unauthorized.”
“SEG demands that the tour cease and desist from using the Sphere™ venue in the video immediately,” the letter continues, demanding that Parkwood “refrain from using this imagery on any merchandise, promotional or marketing materials, or in tour movies, etc. Should you fail to do so, SEG reserves all rights to take further action as SEG deems appropriate without notice to you.”
Beyoncé has never played Sphere in Las Vegas, although her representatives reportedly held talks with officials at Sphere Entertainment about a possible residency at the venue several years ago. Those discussions never materialized into bookings and Beyoncé has instead opted to play Allegiant Stadium when her Cowboy Carter tour stops in Las Vegas on July 25 and 26.
Billboard reached out to representatives for Beyoncé and tour promoter Live Nation for comment, but did not receive a response by press time.
Clairo proved the “Apple” doesn’t fall far from the tree at Charli xcx‘s tour stop in Brooklyn, New York on Wednesday night (April 30). In attendance for the first of Charli’s four sold-out nights at Barclays Center on the ongoing Brat Arena Tour, the “Sexy to Someone” singer was filmed doing the viral choreography to […]
Amidst all the gruesome killings on Only Murders in the Building, something else about the show stuck out to Kelly Clarkson: the onscreen romance between Meryl Streep and Martin Short’s characters, about which the musician wrote a new song called “Where Have You Been.” Released Friday (May 2), “Where Have You Been” finds Clarkson singing […]
Katy Perry proved she was in on the joke after The Onion took to social media on Thursday (May 1) to riff about the criticism the pop star has received as of late.
The exchange started when the satirical news site posted a photo of the singer with the headline, “Katy Perry Teases New Single ‘Stop Making Fun of Me.’” The caption to the post continued to poke fun at the star, attributing a made-up quote to her saying, “‘Working with Dr. Luke on my fav single in years—this is for the ladies out there who can’t catch a goddamn break even though they’re seriously trying their best.’”
The post also contained a sampling of lyrics to the fake song, with the caption concluding, “‘I’m not messing around anymore/ You’re killing my self-esteem with these cruel comments/ And it really hurts’ can be heard over a pounding four-on-the-floor beat.”
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The “I’m His, He’s Mine” singer took The Onion‘s post in stride, and even added to the gag by chiding, “This photo is clearly photoshopped I would never let my Botox go that long, do better The Onion!” in the comments.
The singer’s loyal Katy Cats also flocked to the comments section to defend their queen, with one writing, “CAME HERE CAUSE KATY’S COMMENT ENDING THIS FLOP ACCOUNT.” Another clapped back, “Katy Perry hate is so forced” while a third wrote, “She’s a queen after all.”
Perry has withstood multiple waves of backlash in recent months for, as The Onion‘s post implies, reuniting with Dr. Luke on her latest album 143, as well as her high-profile trip to space in April as part of the Blue Origin mission.
During the 11-minute space flight, Perry unveiled the setlist for her Lifetimes Tour live from zero gravity — giving the internet further fodder to turn into memes, gifs and running jokes.
Others in The Onion’s comment section couldn’t help but keep the bit going. “New single titled ‘girls just need space’ released with a music video featuring astronaut recently stuck in space for 9 months. Receives immediate backlash,” one Instagram user joked. “Involuntarily added to your playlists over on amazon music,” quipped another.
Check out The Onion’s joke and Perry’s response here.