genre pop
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Selena Gomez dropped her new joint album with fiancé Benny Blanco, I Said I Love You First, on Friday (March 21), and fans believe the superstar took a lyrical page out of her best friend Taylor Swift‘s book on one of the tracks.
In the track “Younger and Hotter Than Me,” in which Gomez reflects on getting older and the insecurities that, at times, come along with it. “We’re not gettin’ any younger/ But your girlfriends seem to,” she sings in the chorus.
Upon hearing the song, fans called out that the line may be in reference to Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” in which she sings, “And I was never good at tellin’ jokes, but the punch line goes/ ‘I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age.’”
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“woah. the subject matter of this song is reminiscent of all too well a bit, especially with the ‘we’re not getting any younger, but your girlfriends seem to’ line. sonically it’s perfect for selena’s voice as well,’” one fan wrote on X, with another echoing the same sentiment, noting, “younger and hotter than me by Selena reminds me of All Too Well (10 Min Version) by Taylor.”
“All too well [hand shake emoji] younger and hotter than me,” another wrote, alongside side-by-side comparisons of the lyrics.
Gomez hasn’t confirmed that the lyrics were inspired by Swift, making it just a fan theory for now.
Gomez has previously opened up about sharing her music with Swift. Back in 2019, she recalled showing her first Hot 100 No. 1 hit, “Lose You to Love Me,” with her pop superstar bestie, noting that it made her and her mother Andrea Swift cry. It’s gonna make me cry thinking about it,” Gomez said. “Because it wasn’t just about how great the song was, which is a lot coming from her, it was just that they had been on that journey with me, intimately. And they were crying because of how proud they were for me stepping into a whole new era of my life, and it not involving the horrible things, the abuse, the emotional chaos, it felt like I had a huge sigh of relief.”
Swift has also been a massive supporter of Gomez’s music and beyond, often sharing her new releases to her Instagram Stories.
Kelly Clarkson is celebrating 1000 episodes of her popular daytime talk show, and is thanking fans for giving her comfort over the past five years of The Kelly Clarkson Show. “Our show premiered on September 9, 2019, with the help of some great friends,” she said at the beginning of the episode. “Over the next […]
*NSYNC fans got a special treat on Friday (March 21), when Vevo chose “Bye Bye Bye” as the subject of their newest Footnotes episode, giving an inside look at the beloved track on its 25th anniversary. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The song peaked at No. […]
Benson Boone achieves his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, as “Beautiful Things” rises a spot to the top of the survey dated March 29. The song leads in its 55th week on the chart, wrapping the longest climb to No. 1 in the list’s history. (The Adult Contemporary chart ranks songs by […]
Bad Bunny recently turned up the heat for a new series of Calvin Klein campaign photos, and Shawn Mendes gave the snaps his stamp of approval. In the photos posted earlier this week, the Puerto Rican superstar poses in the “Iconic from every angle” campaign, shirtless and stripped down to black and white briefs, giving fans […]
Influencer-turned-musician Alex Warren has secured his first No. 1 single in the U.K. with the viral hit “Ordinary” (March 21). The song ends the week as the most-streamed track in the country (5.6 million streams).
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It knocks Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” from the summit, which hit No. 1 on March 7, almost five years after its initial release in 2020. The track gave Roan her first-ever chart-topper in the U.K., besting her previous high of No. 2 with “Good Luck, Babe!” in 2024.
Warren, meanwhile, is on something of a hot streak in his musical journey. Having started his career in the mid 2010s as a YouTuber before becoming a co-founder of the collaborative TikTok group The Hype House during lockdown, the 24-year-old made his debut on the Official U.K. Singles Chart last year with “Before You Leave Me” (No. 80), and by the close of 2024, he’d netted two top 40 hits — “Carry You Home” (No. 23) and “Burning Down” (No. 33).
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“Ordinary,” his first release of 2025, began its ascent at the start of March after catching fire on TikTok. “Thank you to the U.K. for the No. 1 single of the week. I promise I won’t let you down — I’ll make you proud,” Warren said in a statement issued via the Official Charts Company.
Warren also appears twice more further down the chart. The aforementioned “Carry You Home” climbs to No. 20, while “Burning Down” finishes at No. 28.
Elsewhere, Roan scores this week’s highest new entry with “The Giver” landing at No. 2. The country-pop bop becomes her fourth U.K. top 10 single, and her first to debut inside the top 10 upon release.
Doechii’s “Anxiety” scales a new peak at No. 3, marking the rapper’s highest charting single in the U.K. to date. Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” follows at No. 4, while Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” rounds out the top five. Other notable appearances include alt-metal group Sleep Token, who celebrates its first-ever entry into the chart as “Emergence” hits No. 17. Following her first BRIT Awards win as a solo act, JADE’s “FUFN (F–k You for Now)” debuts at No. 25, while Ravyn Lenae’s breakout hit “Love Me Not’ earns a new peak of No. 26.
Most people would be floored to be in a room filled with celebrities such as Matt Damon, John Mayer and PinkPantheress, but in their loved-up music video for “Just Us,” Jack Harlow and Doja Cat are far too infatuated with each other to even notice the star power in their company. The visual takes place […]
Lizzo has long been a loud and proud advocate for embracing your body, no matter what size or shape it is. And after sharing earlier this year that she had reached her “weight release” goals and encouraging her fans that her journey is a reminder that “you can do anything you put your mind to,” the “Juice” singer told Andy Cohen on Thursday (March 20) that, frankly, she doesn’t think anyone really even understands what “body positivity” means anymore.
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“I think people don’t know what body positivity is because the body positivity movement was very political and it got taken and kind of commercialized and now body positivity to people is code word for ‘fat,’” Lizzo told Cohen on his SiriusXM show. “Like DEI is code word for Black… so they’re like, ‘Oh she’s not body positive anymore, I’m not fat anymore,’ but I’m still body positive because the body positive movement was actually created by a subgroup of people who were not put in the media, who were not praised, who were told we shouldn’t exist and we were not good enough because our bodies were bigger, or disabled, or even queer and trans.”
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Lizzo said all those traditionally marginalized communities were the latest wave of body positivity she said has been happening for “decades.” But she times her own engagement with the idea to 2016 when she began “bucking against society telling me I shouldn’t exist. I shouldn’t wear leotards and I shouldn’t like how I look.”
At that time she began speaking out about body positivity, hiring a group of plus-size dancers she named the Big Grrrls and, in 2020, telling Vogue magazine that, “I wan to normalize my body. And not just be like, ‘Ooh, look at this cool movement. Being fat is body positive.’ No, being fat is normal.”
Last year, Lizzo leaned into jokes she’d heard from people speculating that she was using one of the current popular weight-loss drugs as a helper in her health journey. She further tweaked haters by dressing up as “LizzOzempic” for Halloween in a costume inspired by a South Park episode from last May that parodied Lizzo’s well-known body positivity with a new medication: “Ask about the power of not giving a f— — with Lizzo,” the animated show joked in a commercial parody that claimed: “FDA-approved Lizzo makes you feel good about your weight, and it costs 90% less than Ozempic.”
She had a laugh about the episode, reacting by saying, “I just feel like, damn, I’m really that b—-. I showed the world how to love yourself, and now these men in Colorado know who the f— I am, and put it in their cartoon that’s been around for 25 years.” She promised, “I’m gonna keep on showing you how to not give a f—.”
You can (likely) hear all about it on the singer’s upcoming Love in Real Life album, which she announced this week is officially complete. Lizzo’s already released two songs from the upcoming LP, “Still Bad” and the title track and she’s slated to make her fourth appearance on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest alongside host Jon Hamm on April 12.
Watch Lizzo on Cohen’s show below.
“It’s beautiful, how I have nothing to lose,” Grace VanderWaal says. After winning America’s Got Talent as a precocious, ukulele-toting 12-year-old in 2016, VanderWaal was fast-tracked into a major-label pop career, which stalled following her 2017 debut, Just the Beginning.
Eight years later, VanderWaal, now 21, has prepared a very different follow-up: Childstar, out April 4 on Pulse Records. After releasing the single “Babydoll” last month, VanderWaal unveiled “Proud” on Friday (Mar. 21), as well as spring tour dates that kick off in Chicago on May 4.
Childstar is a concept album with dark edges that unpacks the uncomfortable truths of growing up in the spotlight — and provided some long-overdue catharsis. “I did whatever I wanted,” VanderWaal says, “and made something I was proud of.”
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When did you start working on Childstar?
A little more than a year ago, but I wrote the album stupid quick. That was unexpected, but I was at a point where, due to some trauma development, all of this s–t about my childhood started spilling out. It’s what my subconscious was doing, but I wasn’t mad at it. I thought it was raw and vulnerable, so I leaned into it.
On a song like “Proud,” you sing about seeking validation as a child and feeling controlled, and the listener can’t help but think about how your career began.
I wanted to talk about subliminal conditioning and how nothing is black and white. What makes something so complicated is when there’s no one to blame — that would be so easy. If you’re getting exposed to millions of people who are saying, “You’re great at this, you’re doing good,” while your brain is literally forming — of course there would be repercussions of that. But no one did anything wrong.
What made you partner with Pulse Records?
I brought the Childstar concept to every label you can imagine, and some people liked it and some people really didn’t like it. Then I went to Pulse, and they were the first ones to not only like it, but take it more extreme. I didn’t want to sign with people who would hold back an idea, but a lot of the art and visual ideas you see have been collaborative or fully from the Pulse team.
What would you tell longtime fans who are surprised by this album’s thematic focus?
I don’t know if they would be surprised. I think there’s a very small crowd that will feel like I’m stealing a narrative. As a child, I was very aware of the purpose that I served for people — I was this hope and happiness, this innocent angel. But it’s my story to tell, so whatever thoughts those people have, I don’t really care. I’m not a symbol for you.
This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Before her 2024 world tour had wrapped up, Tate McRae already had thoughts on how to level up her next live outing. “It’s a lot of back and forth and a lot of just brain dumping,” she says of her scattered ideating process with her creative director, Parker Genoway. “I come with a whole bunch of mood boards and random ideas… You dream as big as you can until you get the budget, then you have to narrow it down.”
Fortunately for McRae, that budget expanded, thanks to a massive first quarter of 2025. The 21-year-old singer’s So Close to What, her most mature and introspective album to date, arrived in February and gave McRae her first No. 1 entry on the Billboard 200, with 177,000 equivalent album units earned — which at the time was the largest debut week for a studio album by a woman artist in five months — according to Luminate.
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The chart-topping debut — along with a dozen Billboard Hot 100 entries from So Close to What and a high-octane performance of top 20 hit “Sports Car” on Saturday Night Live — helped cement McRae’s leap to pop’s A-list. It also set up her Miss Possessive arena tour, which began in Mexico City on March 18 and was followed by a handful of South American dates. She will head to Europe in May and will begin a North American run in Vancouver in August.
McRae pulled from a wide range of influences for her tour themes, including classic dance showcases. “It’s been really fun to dive into old musicals and old TV shows,” she says, “and bring out Fosse references and old Chicago references, and tap into that geeky musical side I think we all have.”
Meanwhile, Genoway — who collaborated with McRae on her Think Later tour and spearheaded her SNL and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon performances earlier this year — points to McRae’s “It’s ok I’m ok” music video as an example of the singer’s opposing aesthetics, showcasing the intersection of grungy and glamorous. McRae says, “I’m referencing rap shows, I’m referencing Kendrick [Lamar] shows, Post Malone shows, and then I want to feel like a glam pop girl. It’s finding a cool in-between.”
The new tour includes a “thrust stage” in the shape of a giant T, and there are also cranes involved. “You try to make people walk in and be like, ‘What are we looking at right now?,’ and create your own world in there,” McRae says. Genoway adds that McRae should “feel like she’s in the middle of everything” surrounding the show, which also includes a B-stage and a mix of stage elevations.
As for McRae’s dance skills, “[Her] technical ability is unmatched,” says Genoway, who works as part of Silent House Productions. “Tate levels everyone up who works with her. She’s going to be at rehearsals late at night and so are you. She’s going to work hard and so are you.”
And although McRae is playing her biggest venues to date, her preshow routine has remained consistent. “I always take one Grether’s Pastille and suck on it,” she explains. Prior to a group prayer and a moment of meditation, McRae will warm up her voice by performing the ad-libs to Rihanna’s “B—h Better Have My Money.” “My dancers probably think I’m f–king crazy,” she says with a chuckle.
This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard.