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Trending on Billboard Olivia Rodrigo‘s dreams came true this summer when Weezer joined her on stage during her headlining set at Lollapalooza in Chicago. She loved it so much that on Tuesday (Nov. 11) the singer surprise released a limited edition 7″ vinyl single commemorating the pop-rock summit. Explore See latest videos, charts and news […]
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AJ McLean is obsessed. The target of his obsession for the past few weeks is creator Lydia Getachew’s viral remix of Taylor Swift‘s “Elizabeth Taylor” and the Backstreet Boys‘ iconic 1997 hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back),” which, not for nothing, were both produced by pop savant producer Max Martin.
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Back on Oct. 10, Getachew posted her original video in which he vibes out to her perfectly perfect melding of the Swift song over the BSB beat, writing, “My brain immediately heard the drop in ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ and I was like wait the bass is giving a drop in BSB… lo&behold, Max Martin produced both songs!
A week later, McLean posted a video in which he rocked out to the remix, commenting, “Come on now you know one of us had to! @taylorswift!” Swift immediately jumped into the comments, responding, “OH HI AJ OH MY GOD.”
To date, the remix — which Getachew posted in full on Soundcloud a short time later — has been view more than one million times on TikTok and streamed more than 665,000 times on Soundcloud. And now McLean is hoping to recreate that magic on stage at the BSB’s Into the Millennium residency, which recently announced seven more shows for December and January.
TMZ caught up with McLean on Tuesday (Nov. 11) and asked who he’d like to see take the stage at the mind-bending Sphere after he, Kevin Richardson, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell and Nick Carter move on from Las Vegas’ favorite new high-tech venue. AJ’s wish list of potential next residencies included some big names — Coldplay, Lenny Kravitz, Red Hot Chili Peppers — but one stood out.
“I don’t know if she’d ever do it, but I think Taylor [Swift] would absolutely destroy it,” he predicted of a fantasy Swift Sphere stint. “She is a fan, and we’re a massive fan of hers. I mean, she’s the sweetest. She’s been so kind to my daughters anytime that we’ve had a chance to hang out and meet her at her shows. She’s just the best.”
Given how popular the mash-up is, McLean said it would “break the planet” if Swift did a pop-in to perform it live with his crew. “Fans are hoping she’ll do ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ while we do ‘Backstreet’s Back,’” he said. “Taylor, if you want, come see the show first, so you know what’s going on. And then you can figure out if you want to come up with up with us,” he said. “We’re not going to say no.”
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It’s rare that the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical is not No. 1 on Billboard’s weekly Cast Albums chart. (After all, it’s been No. 1 for 454 weeks out of the 528 it has been on the chart since its debut in 2015.) So when Hamilton is not No. 1 — as is the case this week — it’s notable.
But the title that bumps Hamilton down to No. 2 this week is actually another album related to the show. A 10-song highlights edition, Hamilton: 10 Shots, arrives at No. 1 on the Nov. 15-dated chart, with 17,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate.
The original Hamilton debuted at No. 1 on the Cast Albums chart dated Oct. 17, 2015, and has never left the chart.
Hamilton: 10 Shots was issued as a streaming set, digital download, CD and on an array of vinyl variants. It also debuts on a number of other Billboard charts: No. 3 on Vinyl Albums, No. 5 on Indie Store Album Sales, No. 6 on Top Album Sales, No. 6 on Top Current Album Sales and No. 28 on the overall Billboard 200.
Meanwhile, as for the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton, it is No. 69 on the latest Billboard 200, spending its 528th consecutive week on the chart. It extends its record for the most weeks on the chart ever for a cast recording. It peaked at No. 2 in 2020, marking the highest-charting cast recording since Hair hit No. 1 in 1969.
The Billboard 200 and Cast Albums charts rank the most popular overall albums, and cast recordings, respectively, of the week in the U.S. based on multimetric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
Trending on Billboard It’s not officially Grammy season until there’s some spirited debate about this year’s nominations — and here we are. On this week’s Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are chatting through the 2026 Grammy nominations, starting with the Big Four categories (album, record and song of the year, plus best new […]
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During last year’s Wicked press tour, Ariana Grande earned viral moments at the drop of a hat — and one of her funniest clips found her somewhat playfully challenging the validity of the 1969 moon landing during a Vanity Fair lie detector test. Back on the promotional circuit for Wicked: For Good, Grande encountered the moon landing question a second time, with co-star Bowen Yang lobbing the inquiry instead of Cynthia Erivo.
“I feel like we have some air to clear,” Grande said as she got hooked up to the polygraph. “That moon thing doesn’t sit well with me. I think sometimes I get nervous. Is it picking up truth or lie, or is it picking up waves of panic? The moon landing has happened! And f— off if it didn’t!”
After Yang reminded Grande that her last moon landing answer was ruled “inconclusive,” he asked the “Twilight Zone” singer a second time. She responded, “I wanna move past it,” before her Wicked: For Good co-star asked if she believed Gayle King and Katy Perry went to the moon earlier this year. “No, because they didn’t,” she replied. “They orbited the Earth… or went for a few minutes up and down.”
While Grande was correct in this specific instance (the Blue Origin crew went 60 miles above the Earth), Yang continued his intergalactic line of questioning, asking Grande if she would sing for her “fellow travelers,” as Perry famously did, should she ever have the opportunity to visit space. “No, I wouldn’t sing in space,” she promptly responded. “I wouldn’t do that trip, personally. I do love space, but I’m staying right here for now. I think it makes sense. I’ll look from my yard or from a plane, not breaking certain layers.”
Like any great investigator, Yang gave Grande a brief break to talk about potentially confronting impersonators before returning to the moon. “Do you believe that there is a flag planted on the moon?” he asked, to which Grande replied, “Bowen… I hear both arguments. The truth is: I don’t give a rat’s ass! I’m worried about Earth, goddamn it! We’re burning alive! We’re killing each other! Can we worry about Earth for five minutes? Who gives a f— about the moon and the flag! How did you get me here again? You guys!”
Safe to say, Grande handled this lie detector test a bit more smoothly than the last one. And she also got a chance give some of the Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live star’s energy right back to him. “Did you enjoy kissing me?” Ariana asked in reference to the smooch the pair shared during a 2024 SNL episode. “It was the only time I kissed someone where a crowd screamed in horror, so I think I liked it?”
Taking it one step further, Grande then asked if she was a better kisser than Sydney Sweeney, whom Yang kissed in another SNL episode. “You were,” he replied. “Because she and I did it in a very rushed way. We had an intimacy coordinator, lovely woman, who was like ‘Keep the lips closed, no tongue,’ and I was like ‘Got it.’”
Grande and Yang’s lie detector marathon arrives just over a week before Wicked: For Good, the sequel to 2024’s Oscar-winning Wicked, hits theaters on Nov. 21. Alongside favorites from the Broadway musical’s second act like “For Good” and “No Good Dead,” the show’s legendary composer, Stephen Schwartz, penned two new songs for the Jon M. Chu-helmed film. Grande’s Glinda will perform “The Girl in the Bubble,” while Erivo’s Elphaba will sing “No Place Like Home.” Last week, Grande, Erivo and the entire Wicked cast mounted a television special titled Wicked: One Wonderful Night to celebrate the release of Wicked: For Good.
Check out Grande and Yang’s complete lie detector test below.
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In March 1984, “Thriller” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming the seventh top 10 hit on Michael Jackson‘s blockbuster album of the same name, a then-record on the chart. On this week’s Hot 100 (dated Nov. 15), the song reaches the top 10 again for the first time since that run, bounding 32-10.
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The reason for the 40-plus-year-old song flying up the chart is simple: It returns annually around this time of year, having re-charted on the Hot 100 in 11 of the last 13 Halloween seasons (dating back to 2013), and in every such season since 2018. With its spooky production, suspenseful lyrics and iconic mini-horror movie music video, “Thriller” has become an obvious Halloween soundtrack staple, with its radio airplay and streams spiking every late October (often bleeding into early November) as a result.
But before this year, the song had never re-charted higher than No. 19 — where it landed on the Hot 100 in 2021, followed by three straight years re-charting somewhere in the 20s. So if it made the top 10 this year, that must mean the song received an even bigger bump in streaming and sales than usual, right?
Not exactly. In its biggest 2024 week of Halloween-boosted performance (the tracking week ending Oct. 31), “Thriller” racked up 17 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate — its highest weekly tally of the 2020s — along with 5,000 in digital song sales. This year, “Thriller” amassed 14 million streams in its biggest week (for the week ending Nov. 6, as reflected on the latest Hot 100), with 3,000 in sales.
The simplest explanation for the downtick isn’t that “Thriller” suddenly got less popular: It’s more likely just a matter of timing. In 2024, the tracking week (which always runs from Friday to Thursday) ended with Halloween that Thursday — which means that “Thriller” got to count consumption from both Halloween night and the six days of build-up to it, when Halloween songs are usually already heating up.
This year, with Halloween on a Friday, that build-up was all counted towards the prior tracking week (Oct. 24-30), with the song’s daily streams and sales dropping off immediately following Halloween night, and all but returning to usual levels following Halloween weekend. You can see the disparity for “Thriller” in the respective weeks immediately prior to its biggest week of the year: In 2024, it earned 17 million streams the week of Halloween, but only 5.8 million the week before; for 2025, it earned 14 million streams during Halloween week but 8.9 million the week before. (Combine the two weeks into one overall Halloween season and “Thriller” is close to even on streaming year-over-year.)
So how do we explain the chart jump in 2025? It seemingly has less to do with “Thriller” than with the competition it’s facing. With Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl songs receding from their spectacular streaming debuts a month earlier, and few new hits speeding in to replace them, the top streaming (and selling) songs are performing at a lower rate than they were the past two years at this point in the calendar.
This week, “Thriller” ranks sixth on our Streaming Songs chart and fifth on Digital Song Sales, with 14 million streams and 3,000 in sales. In both 2023 and 2024, those numbers would not have been strong enough to make the top 10 of either chart.
Also helping with the “Thriller” bump: With Billboard updating its rules in October for songs on the chart going recurrent, several long-lasting songs that might have otherwise been in its way in the Hot 100’s top tiers — including Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” — have since been deemed ineligible for the latest list.
So with fewer songs performing at a particularly high level in streams or sales, and a handful of those songs no longer eligible to chart anyway, there’s simply more room for revived hits like “Thriller” to zoom toward top of the chart. And it’s not the only song taking advantage of the extra opportunity: A little lower on the Hot 100, fellow Halloween perennials from Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (“Monster Mash,” No. 21), Ray Parker Jr. (“Ghostbusters,” No. 22) and Rockwell (“Somebody’s Watching Me,” No. 24) all also make the chart’s top 25 for the first time in the streaming era.
It’s also worth pointing out that while the competition from brand-new releases was minimal for Halloween songs on this week’s Hot 100 — the highest debut on the chart comes at No. 93 (Yeat’s “Come n Go”), though a couple Christmas songs also make an early re-appearance in the 30s and 40s — it was more formidable the past couple spooky seasons. Indeed, “Thriller” and its ilk might have threatened similar streaming-era chart peaks to their performances this year if not for the release of Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia before the Hot 100 dated Nov. 9 in 2024, or (again) Taylor Swift, with 1989 (Taylor’s Version) right before the Hot 100 dated Nov. 11 in 2023 — both of which charted numerous songs across the top 20.
Will this trend continue, with “Thriller” and its Halloween cohorts continuing to scale higher and higher on the Hot 100 until one day potentially competing for the No. 1 — like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and its Christmas compatriots do annually around the holiday season? Possibly, but the answer to that may lie more with the performance of the rest of the non-holiday music industry than with “Thriller” and friends themselves.
Trending on Billboard Katy Perry got some new ink in honor of The Lifetimes Tour, which has just eight shows left before wrapping up. The pop star continued her tradition of getting a tattoo to commemorate each of her tours, showing off her butterfly wing tattoos that she and her team got in an Instagram […]
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Barry Manilow released a new video on Tuesday (Nov. 11) for his new single “Once Before I Go.” In the video, Manilow portrays a character who sacrifices a traditional family life to pursue his dream as a performer. Filmed at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, home to Manilow’s long-running residency, the video was directed by Jamie Thraves, who has helmed such clips as Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” and Coldplay’s “The Scientist.”
Thraves’ video for “The Scientist” received a Grammy nomination for best short-form music video 22 years ago. Manilow has received 15 Grammy nominations, winning best pop vocal performance, male in 1979 for “Copacabana (at the Copa).” He also received record of the year nods for “Mandy” and “I Write the Songs” and an album of the year nod for Even Now.
Manilow’s first video with a narrative storyline was “Read ‘Em and Weep” in 1983, when video ruled the music business. Bob Giraldi directed the clip.
“Once Before I Go” was coproduced by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and Demonte Posey, and cowritten by Peter Allen and Dean Pitchford. The song was first recorded by Allen in 1983 on his album Not the Boy Next Door. Other artists who have covered it include Patti LaBelle, Hugh Jackman (in the Broadway show The Boy From Oz) and Johnny Mathis (on his most recent non-holiday studio album, Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook – which was also produced by Babyface).
Manilow has had two No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, nearly 30 years apart – Barry Manilow Live! (1977) and The Greatest Songs of the Fifties (2006). He has had three No. 1 hits on the Hot 100 – “Mandy,” “I Write the Songs” and “Looks Like We Made It.” Manilow has won two Primetime Emmys, a Grammy and an honorary Tony. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and has received the BMI Icon Award.
In April 2026, Manilow will be presented with the American Advertising Federation’s 2026 President’s Award at the AAF’s Advertising Hall of Fame induction ceremony for his early work in advertising. Manilow has produced, composed, and performed some of the most iconic commercial jingles of all time for companies and brands such as State Farm, Band-Aid, KFC, Pepsi and McDonald’s.
The new music video arrives as Manilow prepares for a series of farewell performances in nine U.S. cities this January. These dates mark his final concerts in each market. For all dates, tickets, and VIP packages, visit Manilow’s site.
Watch Manilow’s video below:
Trending on Billboard As the holiday season gets underway, an ultra-rare Mariah Carey demo tape is coming up for auction. This centerpiece of an historic archival release sourced from the collection of legendary producer/DJ Arthur Baker, the demo tape is being auctioned by Wax Poetics. The auction preview opens today (Nov. 11) with bidding going […]
Trending on Billboard Before they were adored by millions of EYEKONs, the ladies of KATSEYE had their own pop icons — such as Britney Spears — to look up to. And in a new video, two of the girl group’s members paid homage to the superstar. In a clip posted to Instagram and TikTok on […]
