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It has been (another) good year so far for Bailey Zimmerman. The country artist reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 this spring with his feature on BigXthaPlug’s “All the Way” from the latter’s forthcoming country collaboration project. Then, Zimmerman followed that with “Backup Plan,” his inspirational new single featuring Luke Combs, which became his ninth career Hot 100 entry and has reached a No. 36 high in its six weeks on the chart.
Zimmerman and Combs debuted the stomping “Backup Plan” during Combs’ headlining set at Stagecoach in April — though the song’s roots were planted well prior to that performance. According to the track’s producer, Austin Shawn, it was initially created because people compiling the soundtrack to 2024 film Twisters asked Zimmerman to send along songs for consideration. “We sent that one, but ‘Hell or High Water’ landed better for the movie,” Shawn, 27, tells Billboard.
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“Backup Plan” is just the latest extension in the winning partnership between Zimmerman and Shawn, which started with the former’s first EP, Leave the Light On, and includes the hit songs “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Fall In Love.”
Below, Shawn talks about creating “Backup Plan,” his working relationship with Zimmerman and what listeners can expect on his second album.
What did you think the first time you heard “Backup Plan”?
We heard it around early 2023, and I immediately loved the song because it reminded me of “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. It had a bit of red dirt, a bit of country, a lot of the hookiness of modern country, which is exactly what me and Bailey tend to lean [to] when we make songs. The original demo was just an acoustic guitar and a vocal that Tucker Beathard [co-writer, along with Jimi Bell and Jon Sherwood] did.
Were you involved in the decision to add Luke Combs to the song?
It worked out really well because when Bailey did the vocals, we were thinking, “Who could feature?” When I finished the first rough mix on it, Bailey was like, “Should I text it to Luke?” Luke didn’t get back to him for a month — he was probably just living with it. And then he was like, “Song rips, I’m in,” out of nowhere. We had not gone to anyone else. It was either Luke or nothing.
Were you together in the studio for Combs adding his part?
Luke is, first of all, one of the best dudes in the world. I sent the session over to [his producer] Chip Matthews and then me and Bailey went over to Chip’s house and Luke cut the vocal. We spent about two hours talking and rambling on and laughing and telling jokes — and about 10 minutes doing the vocal. It was mostly just a big hangout session; barely any work was being done. Luke is so good, he can do three passes of the song, and it sounds like it’s a finished thing.
Thematically, it’s like Combs’ song “Doin’ This,” in that if being an artist is your path no matter what, you cannot have a backup plan. Is the end result similar to what the demo sounded like?
The original demo was just an acoustic guitar in a voice memo that Tucker Beathard did. Tucker is one of our good buddies, too, and we write a lot of songs with him, so he usually just plays his guitar and his vocal and sings it into his phone.
From the very beginning, the song felt like an overcoming adversity type of song, so we wanted it to be big. We wanted it to be like an anthem. We wanted it to be something that is charged up. We had to paint the picture from there and carry it into that big, beat-your-chest type of energetic song.
So that stomp feel wasn’t there, but you heard the possibility of that.
It was completely different. It was like someone sitting here in your living room just playing it for you or around the campfire. It was good, though, because the sentiment was there and it gave us all the runway to paint the picture the way we wanted to.
You’ve been collaborating with Zimmerman since the beginning. How has your working relationship evolved?
When you work on so much music together over the years, you learn how to communicate and decipher each other’s emotions, feelings, words — I know when Bailey loves a song, doesn’t love a song. He’ll know when I think a decision that he wants to make is good or when I don’t. That helps us get round the bend on songwriting, production, direction. We’re like brothers. He’s gone through a lot in his personal life; I’ve gone through a lot in my personal life. We’ve been there for each other outside music, too.
This is the second song we’ve heard from Zimmerman’s second album, Different Night, Same Rodeo, which is due out Aug. 8. Anything else you can tell us about the album?
Absolutely. A lot of the stuff is familiar, and then there’s a good batch of songs that go outside of the box where we’ve really pushed the boundaries. There’s a couple of awesome features on the record. There’s familiarity, there’s evolution and there’s a little bit of something for all demographics of music too, not just country.
A version of this story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
When Atlantic Records’ Kevin Weaver was approached about the soundtrack to F1, he says the label didn’t face much competition. “The successes that we’ve had speak for themselves,” he notes, which include recent smash soundtracks to films including Barbie and Twisters. Both boasted chart-topping superstars and spawned multiple hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — and, in the case of Barbie: The Album, even landed three Grammys and an Academy Award. Which is partly why, Weaver adds, “We do get a lot of opportunities to see things early and first.”
Weaver, Atlantic’s president of the West Coast, was first approached about F1 last fall by David Taylor, head of music at Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films. He was then introduced to director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who showed him several scenes from the Brad Pitt-starring Formula 1 racing drama and discussed opportunities for music. “At that point, it felt undeniable to me,” Weaver recalls. “We knocked the deal out in less than a week — that is unheard of.”
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Weaver oversaw and produced F1: The Album — which received a kickoff at the Miami Grand Prix in April and will arrive June 27 alongside the film — with Atlantic executive vp/co-head of pop/rock A&R Brandon Davis and senior vp of A&R and marketing Joseph Khoury. This will be Atlantic’s first soundtrack release since restructuring as Atlantic Music Group, with Weaver sharing his gratitude for the “trust and support” from the new leadership team, including CEO Elliot Grainge, GM Tony Talamo and COO Zach Friedman. “From the very start with our launch at the Miami Grand Prix through each weekly single release, we’re lucky to have a team that is so dialed in,” he says.
Still, Weaver believes securing the deal might have been the easiest part of a process that has yielded one of the more genre-diverse soundtracks in recent memory, with contributions from Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Chris Stapleton, Myke Towers, Tate McRae, Burna Boy and more. “We try to look into a crystal ball,” he says. “And so as much as we go with the staples like the Ed Sheerans, trying to forecast artists that are going to be having the biggest moments around when we’re releasing the project and when the film comes out is always of critical importance, too.”
Plus, as Weaver says, Formula 1 is a “very global” brand, with the average F1 fan having music taste that is equally wide-ranging. “I went to a bunch of races. I got to spend time with drivers and team principals and immerse myself into the sport. A big part of general strategy was, ‘What are we doing that has a global feel?’ A big part of it was, ‘What kind of music would you hear when you’re in the paddock at an F1 race?’ ”
Kevin Weaver (second from left) and Rosé.
Evan Hammerman
The A&R experience, as a result, was much different compared with last year’s soundtrack to Twisters, which primarily featured country stars — fitting for a film about chasing tornadoes in central Oklahoma. (Twisters: The Album debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.)
Only one artist appears on both projects: Stapleton had an existing song in Twisters and contributed the original track “Bad as I Used To Be” to F1: The Album. “Part of what was exciting was [it would] put Chris on an album and a platform that played in a much broader way than the lane and genre of country music,” Weaver says. “Same thing when I went to Dom Dolla and Tiësto and Peggy Gou: These seminal dance artists saw an opportunity to sit on an album with other global superstars across a lot of different genres, and I think that was part of the coveted nature of why artists really wanted to be a part of this thing.”
For Sheeran in particular, his aptly titled track, “Drive,” came together quickly while he was in the studio with John Mayer and producer Blake Slatkin, saying that “the song fell out of us” after he had seen some of the film. (Dave Grohl is also on the track.) Sheeran recalls how Mayer “just whacked an octave pedal on and went wild” to come up with the song’s riff.
“Movies are my hobby and probably the only thing other than sport that I get, like, starstruck to be part of,” Sheeran adds. “Not just directors or actors or whatever, but being a part of the journey of a movie is so exciting for me.”
Of the album’s 17 tracks, seven singles are already out. McRae’s “Just Keep Watching” has become the first to enter the Hot 100, at No. 33. The song also scored her another No. 1 on the Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart.
“We set out to have multiple hits and to move culture. We always have our own odds of what we think are going to be the records, but then other records come out of nowhere,” Weaver says. “We always felt like the Tate song was going to be big. We always knew the Rosé song [“Messy”] was going to be special and really important. I feel really bullish about the Ed Sheeran song, the Burna Boy song [“Don’t Let Me Drown”], Tiësto and Sexyy Red [“OMG!”]. We have a lot of really strong records here. It boils down to which raise their hand.”
Until then, Weaver is already on to his next project — in fact, his next three are locked in. “I have one I can’t talk about specifically, but all I can say is we are doing the soundtrack for probably the most highly anticipated relevant global media [intellectual property] of our generation,” he teases. “And I think that is going to be a monster.”
This story appears in the June 21, 2025, issue of Billboard.
It’s 2 a.m. on a May morning in Aguascalientes, Mexico, long past most people’s bedtimes. But inside the Palenque of Feria de San Marcos — a venue in this central Mexican city — Carín León is entering the third hour of a performance where he has sung nonstop while pacing the small 360-degree stage like a caged lion.
Palenques, found in most Mexican cities and towns, were originally designed and used for cockfighting, and most have been transformed into concert venues that put artists in shockingly close proximity to their fans, with no ring of security around the tiny stage. The palenque circuit is de rigueur for Mexican artists, even a superstar like León — a burly man who tonight looks even bigger thanks to his ever-present high-crown cowboy hat.
Nearly 6,000 fans surround him in arena-style seating, the steep, vertical layout allowing everyone a close view of the man below, flanked by his backing ensemble: a norteño band with electric guitars, a sinaloense brass section, backup singers and keyboards — nearly 30 musicians in all, who wander about, grab drinks, chat and return to the stage throughout the show. León leads the organized chaos, traversing repertoire that, during the course of the evening, goes from corridos and norteño ballads to country and rock’n’roll.
“I think it’s the most Mexican thing possible in music, a palenque. I always say you have to see your artist play in a palenque to understand it,” León tells me a few hours before the show. He has been playing them for years throughout the country, like most regional Mexican artists do. They’re places of revelry and drink, a rite of passage, and the place to test new sounds.
“As artists, we appreciate that experience,” he adds. “We love it because you have people so close to you. You can be with them, have drinks with them — it’s a very interesting artist-fan communion.”
We’re chatting between sips of tequila at a country house on the outskirts of Aguascalientes, and despite the stifling afternoon heat, León keeps his hat on, looking stately in his boots and black jacket with metal buckles. Soft-spoken but emphatic, the 35-year-old música mexicana star alternates between Spanish and English, which he speaks with the American-sounding but accented cadence of someone who learned it by ear from transcribing songs by hand, but never in a classroom.
“I always had trouble with my accent when I sang,” he says. “But I didn’t want to lose the accent because it makes you unique. [An accent] is more valid now. I always want to ensure the music is good, refine it, make it better. But we’re coming from the 2000s, when music [production] was perfect. Now value is given to what’s natural, and that includes having an accent.”
Christopher Patey
While at his core León is a regional Mexican artist who performs contemporary banda and norteño, he loves collaborating with artists spanning many genres and incorporating regional sounds from around the world into his music: Spanish flamenco, Colombian vallenato and salsa, Puerto Rican reggaetón. And as he blends these sounds in unexpected ways, León has found an avid and growing audience.
In 2024, he crisscrossed the world on his Boca Chueca tour, playing 81 palenque, arena and stadium dates in the United States and Latin America. Of 1.3 million total tickets sold, according to his management, 374,000 were reported to Billboard Boxscore for a gross of $51.2 million, making it one of the year’s most successful Latin tours. This year, he’s scheduled to play 40 more shows, including Chilean and Colombian stadiums, Spanish arenas and German theaters — a leap few regional Mexican acts, whose touring is usually restricted to the United States and Mexico, have accomplished at such a scale.
But León has transcended mere geographic borders. Last year, after releasing singles with country star Kane Brown and soul musician Leon Bridges, León became the first artist to perform mainly in Spanish at the Stagecoach country music festival, just a couple of months after making his Grand Ole Opry debut. On June 6, he became the first regional Mexican artist to play CMA Fest, as a guest of Cody Johnson, who invited him to perform the bilingual “She Hurts Like Tequila” with him as part of his set at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium.
“What struck me most was how effortless it felt,” Bridges says of working with León on the bilingual duet “It Was Always You (Siempre Fuiste Tú).” “We come from different musical backgrounds, but the emotion, the storytelling — that was shared. Collaborating with him wasn’t about chasing a fusion — it was about two artists trusting each other to make something honest. Going down to Mexico and being immersed in his world was a powerful reminder of how universal that connection through music really is.”
From a purely commercial standpoint, León has no need to take musical risks like this beyond the Latin realm. In the past five years alone, he has notched three entries on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart, including Colmillo de Leche (2023) and Boca Chueca, Vol. 1 (2024), which both reached the top 10. He has placed three No. 1s on the Latin Airplay chart, seven No. 1s on Regional Mexican Airplay and 19 entries on Hot Latin Songs, including three top 10s. He’s a widely sought-after collaborator for pop stars (Camilo, Maluma, Kany García, Carlos Vives), Spanish stars (Manuel Carrasco, El Cigala), Mexican legends (Pepe Aguilar, Alejandro Fernández) and fellow current chart-toppers (Grupo Firme, Gabito Ballesteros) alike.
But regardless of what sounds he’s working with, or whether his collaborator is an established name or an untested act (a particular favorite of his), León knows what he likes. That confidence is at the core of his and manager Jorge Juarez’s strategic plan to make him a truly global artist — and for the past year, they’ve set their sights on country music, hoping to bridge the divide between two genres that, despite their different languages, are in fact remarkably similar.
“It’s something that fills me with pride and something that’s been very difficult to achieve as a Mexican and as a Latin: to reach the center of the marrow of this country movement,” León says. “To get to know this [country music] industry and start moving the threads to act as this missing link between regional Mexican and country music.”
Carín León photographed April 29, 2025 at Gran Ex-Hacienda La Unión in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Christopher Patey
León first tested the country waters back in 2019 with a Mexican/country version of Extreme’s “More Than Words,” recorded in English and Spanish. Though it now has 14 million streams on Spotify, “it’s kind of lost because there was so much other stuff happening at the time,” he says. It was a risky move, especially coming when León was not yet the established star he is today. But to him, it was one worth taking.
“It was the perfect excuse to show something different,” he says. “And it was amazing. It was so liberating. Because I was trapped in this box that was regional mexicano at that time, and [this song] was very fun for me.”
Country and regional Mexican are, truly, natural siblings. Both genres are anchored in storytelling, with acoustic instrumentation and guitars central to their sound. Boots, hats and fringe jackets are staple outfits for artists and fans alike. And though they stem from different cultures, both are, as León puts it, “roots genres” with their foundations in regional sounds.
Unsurprisingly, other Latin artists have forayed into country before — but none have brought León’s existing level of Latin music stardom, nor have they generated the buzz and impact that he has since releasing his first country team-up, “The One (Pero No Como Yo),” with Brown in March 2024. Since then, he has spent weeks in Nashville, working with local producers and songwriters for a country-leaning album featuring other major names that’s slated for a 2026 release.
For country music, that’s good news. According to the Country Music Association’s 2024 Diverse Audience study, 58% of Latino music listeners consume country music at least monthly, compared with 50% when the last study was conducted in 2021. Finding the right opportunity to tap that market had long been in the Grand Ole Opry’s sights. “And then,” says Jordan Pettit, Opry Entertainment Group vp of artist and industry relations, “the opportunity with Carín came up.”
At León’s Opry debut in 2024, “we had a lot of audience there, more than normal,” Pettit recalls. “The show itself absolutely blew my expectations.” The plan had been for León to play three songs, but the crowd clamored for more, and the musician obliged with a fourth. “I can think of only one or two occasions in my seven years here where I’ve seen an artist get an encore,” Pettit says. “It was really, really awesome to see the worlds collide.”
León’s worlds have been colliding since he was born Óscar Armando Díaz de León in Hermosillo, Mexico, a business hub and the capital of the northwestern state of Sonora, located 200 miles from the U.S. border at Nogales, Ariz. That proximity, coupled with his family’s voracious appetite for music, exposed him to a constant and eclectic soundtrack that ranged from Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodríguez and corrido singer Chalino Sánchez to country stars Johnny Cash and George Strait to rock mainstays like Journey, Paul McCartney and Queen.
“What’s happening now in my career is the result of the music I ingested since I was a kid,” he says. “Music gave me the incentive to learn about many things — the origin of other countries, political movements linked to music, cultural movements. I’m very freaky about music. Everything I have comes from the music I listened to.”
When León finally started dabbling in guitar, he gravitated to the music closest to his roots, regional Mexican, and eventually adopted his stage name. By 2010, he was the singer for Grupo Arranke, which through its blend of traditional sinaloense banda brass and sierreño guitars eventually landed a deal with the Mexican indie Balboa. After a slow but steady rise, Grupo Arranke garnered its sole Billboard chart entry, peaking at No. 34 on Hot Latin Songs in 2019 with “A Través del Vaso,” penned by veteran songwriter Horacio Palencia.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and León switched gears: He went solo, signed to indie Tamarindo Recordz and began releasing music at a prolific pace, launching what he now calls his “exotic” cross-genre fusions.
He scored his first top 10 on a Billboard chart with “Me la Aventé,” which peaked at No. 6 on Regional Mexican Airplay in 2019. But his true breakouts were two live albums recorded and filmed in small studios during lockdown, Encerrados Pero Enfiestados, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (Locked Up, but Partying). The bare-bones sets, featuring León singing and playing guitar with a stripped-down accompaniment of tuba and guitar, struck a powerful chord. At a time when teenage performers with gold chains and exotic cars were propelling corridos tumbados and música mexicana with hip-hop attitude up the charts, this 30-year-old relative unknown with a poignant tenor that oozed emotion was performing regional Mexican music with a Rhodes organ, a country twang and, with his cover of ’90s pop hit “Tú,” a female point of view. No one else sounded like him.
Christopher Patey
Those acoustic sessions “were the first things I realized could make the audience uncomfortable [and] question what they were hearing,” León recalls. “Wanting everyone to like you works, but it doesn’t let you transcend. I think things happen when you change something — for good or bad — and you get that divided opinion. All my idols — Elvis, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash — were people who swam against the current. And not in a forced way, but in a sincere way, exposing vulnerabilities. We knew it was good stuff. And things began to happen.”
During the pandemic lockdown, León had the time and creative space to experiment and explore a new openness within regional Mexican music, a genre where artists used to seldom collaborate with one another. In 2021, he notched his first No. 1 with “El Tóxico,” a collaboration with Grupo Firme that ruled Regional Mexican Airplay for two weeks.
Then, Spanish urban/flamenco star C. Tangana DM’d him on Instagram and invited him to collaborate on “Cambia!,” a song from Tangana’s acclaimed album El Madrileño that also featured young sierreño star Adriel Favela and can best be described as a corrido flamenco. The track “blew my mind,” León says — and exposed him to a completely different audience. “It taught me divisions are literally only a label. When I heard that album, I understood music has no limits. C. Tangana is to blame for what’s happening with my music now.”
Collaboration requests from artists seeking León’s unique sound (and sonic curiosity) started to flow in at the precise time that he was itching to explore and globalize his music. In 2022, after recording the pop/regional Mexican ballad “Como lo Hice Yo” with Mexican pop group Matisse, he met the band’s manager, Jorge Juárez, co-owner of well-known Mexican management and concert promotion company Westwood Entertainment. The two clicked, and when León’s label and management contract with Tamarindo expired in early 2023, he approached Juárez.
“There comes a time when managers and the artist have to be a power couple,” León observes. “I found the right fit with Mr. Jorge Juárez. He’s a music fiend; he has a very out-of-the-box vision. That’s where we clicked. And he had huge ambition, which is very important to us. He’s the man of the impossible. We want to change the rules of the game.”
In León, Juárez says he saw “a very versatile artist who could ride out trends, who could become an icon. He wasn’t looking to be No. 1, but to be the biggest across time. He had so many attributes, I felt I had the right ammunition to demonstrate my experience of so many years and take him to a global level.”
Juárez, who shuttles between his Miami home base and Mexico, is a respected industry veteran who has long managed a marquee roster of mostly Mexican pop acts including Camila, Reik, Sin Bandera and Carlos Rivera. He’s also a concert promoter with expertise in the United States and Latin America. He sees León as having the potential to become “the next Vicente Fernández,” he adds, referring to the late global ranchero star.
Because León had parted ways with Tamarindo, which kept his recording catalog, he urgently had to build a new one. He and Juárez partnered in founding a label, Socios Music, and began releasing material prolifically, financing the productions out of their own pockets. Since partnering with Juárez, León has released three studio albums: Colmillo de Leche and Boca Chueca, Vol. 1, which both peaked at No. 8 on Top Latin Albums, and Palabra de To’s, which reached No. 20. Beyond the catalog, they had three other key goals: finding a tour promoter with global reach, building the Carín León brand and expanding into country.
AEG, which León and Juárez partnered with in 2023, could help with all of it. Last year, the promoter booked León’s back-to-back performances at Coachella and Stagecoach — making him one of very few artists to play both of the Southern California Goldenvoice festivals in the same year — as well as his slot opening for The Rolling Stones in May in Glendale, Ariz. AEG president of global touring Rich Schaefer says they sold over 500,000 tickets for León headline shows in the United States since they started working together, including a 2024 sellout at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium.
“There are few artists who put out as much music as Carín does on a regular basis,” Schaefer adds. “He’s able to sing and speak fluently in two languages, which has already opened a lot of doors both in the States and abroad. Our team works very closely with Jorge and his team, and he has a deep understanding of how to approach international territories. With a little luck, Carín is poised to take over the world.”
Carín León photographed April 29, 2025 at Gran Ex-Hacienda La Unión in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Christopher Patey
That international viewpoint also informed León’s approach to recording. When Juárez set out to unlock country music for his client, he first contacted Universal Music Publishing Group head Jody Gerson — “our godmother,” as Juárez likes to say. “She opened so many doors to us.”
Gerson first met León in 2023, after Yadira Moreno, UMPG’s managing director in Mexico, signed him. “It was clear from my first meeting with him that he possessed an expansive vision for his songwriting and artistry that would take him beyond Mexican music,” Gerson says. “Before signing with us, he wanted to make sure that we were aligned with his ambitions and that he would get meaningful global support from our company, specifically in Nashville. Carín actually grew up listening to country music, so his desire to collaborate with country songwriters is an organic one.”
Beyond opening the door to working with Nashville producers and songwriters, Gerson also connected Juárez and León with Universal Music Group chief Lucian Grainge, who in June 2024 helped formulate a unique partnership between Virgin Music Group, Island Records and Socios Music. Through it, Virgin and Island distribute and market León’s music under Socios, with Virgin distributing and marketing to the U.S. Latin and global markets and Island working the U.S. mainstream market.
The agreement encompasses parts of León’s back catalog as well as new material, including 2024’s Boca Chueca, Vol. 1, which featured his bilingual collaborations with Brown (“The One [Pero No Como Yo],” which peaked at No. 46 on Hot Country Songs) and Bridges.
He plans to deliver Boca Chueca, Vol. 2 before the end of the year and just released a deluxe version of Palabra de To’s that includes new pairings with Maluma (their “Según Quién” topped the Latin Airplay chart for four weeks in 2023 and 2024) and first-time duets with ranchera star Alejandro Fernández and flamenco icon El Cigala.
While flamenco is another passion point for León, the country album — his “first magnum opus,” he says — is his most ambitious goal. Already, he has worked in Nashville with major producers and songwriters including Amy Allen, Dan Wilson and Natalie Hemby. On the eclectic project, he says, “Some stuff sounds like James Brown, some stuff sounds like Queen, some stuff sounds like regional Mexican with these corrido tumbado melodies, but in a country way. It’s very Carín. It’s what’s happening in my head and in my heart.” He won’t divulge all of its guests just yet, but he says it includes friends like “my man Jelly Roll” and other big stars he admires.
It’s new territory for a Latin act, and León is acutely aware of the fact. But he’s approaching it from a very different point of view. “I’m not a country artist,” he says flatly. “I’m a sonorense. I have regional Mexican in my bones. But I love country music, and I’m trying to do my approach with my Mexican music and find a middle point. It’s not easy. You have a lot of barriers because of the accent, because of the language, the racial stuff.”
For some successful regional Mexican artists who tour constantly and make top dollar, the trade-off is not worth it; financially speaking, they don’t need to open new territories or genres and the audiences that come with them. But for León, “the money trip passed a lot of years ago,” he says with a shrug, taking a last sip of tequila and adjusting the brim of that ever-present accessory he shares with his country friends. “I need to change the game,” he adds. “I’m hungry to make history, to be the one and only. I’m so ambitious with what I want to do with the music. It’s always the music. She’s the boss.”
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In 2015, Dana Biondi was looking for the future.
The frat-rap and weed-rap crazes in the early 2010s catapulted artists like Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y to fame, but by the middle of the decade, Biondi — who had promoted shows at New Haven, Conn., club Toad’s Place and had some rap management experience — sensed a different energy on hip-hop’s horizon. “I had really seen a lot of the fans sit at shows and just kind of bob their head,” he recalls. “I knew that the industry was pushing toward a new movement.”
Biondi found that future in $uicideboy$. At the dawn of what would come to be known as the SoundCloud rap era, the New Orleans hip-hop duo, consisting of cousins $crim and Ruby da Cherry, had quickly attracted a passionate cult following with their strikingly personal lyrics, rock-influenced sonics and attitude, and, particularly, their riotous live shows. “The first show that I went to to see them was at the Roxy [in Los Angeles] — and it was chaos like I had never seen before,” says Biondi, now 36. “Between the mosh pits and the fandom and the overall show just being… chaotically beautiful, in a way. I [knew] that they were really special.”
He started managing the Boy$ shortly after — along with longtime friend Kyle Leunissen, who introduced him to the duo — while also serving as music manager for G59 Records, the cousins’ own label. Distributed by The Orchard, G59 now boasts a battalion of similarly minded artists like Shakewell, Germ and Night Lovell who have since cultivated their own fan bases. But the empire all revolves around $uicideboy$, who have not only hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 with each of their four official studio albums but also become a popular arena act with their annual Grey Day Tour (which in 2024 grossed $50.7 million, according to Billboard Boxscore) and a dominant brand in artist merchandise. (Biondi cites merch sales of over $30 million in 2024 alone.)
Trending on Billboard
Biondi initially endeared himself to $uicideboy$ and proved his capabilities by helping organize their early merch operations. But his versatility is what made him indispensable; now a G*59 label partner, he finds himself “jumping from a marketing call to a merchandising call to a call directly with the artist, to a call with the artist’s family, to a call with a major label, to a call with a lawyer,” wearing many different hats for both artist and label. (In a more literal hat-wearing sense, during his Zoom call with Billboard, Biondi reps the brand with a GREY59 skull-and-crossbones cap that complements a G59 RECS hoodie.)
And as Biondi has helped the duo build its empire, they’ve mostly avoided traditional pathways to mainstream success: The pair, which has no real conventional hits and only reached the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in 2024 (with “Us vs. Them,” which peaked at No. 96), has minimal radio promotion and does few media appearances. But Biondi is proud of what he has achieved with the Boy$ — who’ve already surpassed 1 billion on-demand U.S. streams in 2025 alone, according to Luminate — largely outside of the broader industry machine, and he believes it will only get easier for artists like them to blaze their own trails.
“If you’re a phenomenal artist and you’re very creative and you wrap the right team around you, the world’s yours,” he says. “I think that the future is indie.”
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
When you saw $uicideboy$ the first time, could you see parallels between them and any other artists?
At the time, the fandom is what caught me. I saw how the crowd was chanting “G59.” I saw how mesmerized these fans were. There was only, what, 300 or 400 at the show? Maybe even less than that. But they were so engaged — and I just recognized early on the brand [strength]. And to me, that’s the most important thing: creating a brand and creating the stickiness of a brand with fans. That’s what will keep you around forever.
As far as comparing them [to other artists], I saw a combination of a hard-rock audience that was wearing black — and that was like skaters and more alternative — but then, obviously, they’re rappers, so I was able to hear the hip-hop influence of Three 6 Mafia and Bone [Thugs-N-Harmony]. It was kind of the perfect mesh of both genres, and that was really appealing to me because I had grown up listening to a lot of Bone Thugs and a lot of different alternative music.
They’re obviously much bigger now. When was the first moment that you went, “OK, this isn’t just something that can happen — this is something that is currently happening”?
When we started working full-on together, one of the first things I did was I brought them overseas and had them play proper club rooms. That was kind of a defining point — I was in the middle of Europe and the fandom was insane. I was like, “Man, this is going to work on a very big level, both here and domestically.”
A large part of our early success was doing a proper tour with proper routing overseas, in Australia and in Europe, and kind of showing the U.S. fans that this was a cultural movement and it was worldwide… and they were pulling the same amount, if not more, of people overseas than they were pulling in the U.S. The U.S. had to play a little bit of catch-up.
It’s pretty unconventional for mainstream acts to do an annual outing like the Grey Day Tour, as opposed to touring in conjunction with an album or a promotional cycle. What made you confident that this was the best touring strategy?
Growing up, I had always loved the concept of Warped Tour and how they went to so many different cities and brought so many different people around. It really created a yearly concert that each fan, no matter what, just signed up for. They were like, “We trust the Warped team to give us a great bill.”
The year that we started Grey Day [2019] — the year before was the last year of Warped. I saw a void in the marketplace, and that’s where Grey Day came from. Our lane was emerging, and it was very similar to that hard-rock, Warped lane — but it was obviously much more focused on hip-hop.
So I said, “Let’s just create our own yearly [tour], and let’s always look at some new artists that are up-and-coming — some friends that we just like to work with and like to tour with — and continue to keep it fresh and new and give the fans what they want.”
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
Earlier this year, Billboard reported that you guys were shopping the catalog. Why did you think now’s the time for that, and has anything come of it yet?
It’s something that we are doing, and we just felt like it was a good time to try and gauge interests, really, and see where the market was for it. The guys have put out a lot of great music, and we plan on putting out a lot more albums and a lot of other great music. We look at the new music, starting this year, as the next phase of $uicideboy$. We’re just interested in the reach of the old music and looking for a partner to possibly consider for that.
But nothing firm there yet?
We have something firm, but it’s not done yet. So I can’t really speak on that.
Are there specific goals that they or you and the team have for the next few years?
We’ve hit so many different home runs in terms of touring and ticket sales and merchandise sales and streaming numbers. It would be nice to finally get some notoriety on the awards side of things, just because we feel like we are one of the biggest artists in music and our numbers and all of our credits show it.
And then, other than that, just continuing to make the Grey Day Tour bigger and continuing to get more eyes and views on the music. There’s still so many times where somebody will ask me what I do and I’ll tell them, and they’ll say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of those guys.” Which means that there’s more fans for us to attract. It’s always something that I enjoy hearing and shows that we still have some more work to do.
Would $uicideboy$ play the Grammys?
(Laughs.) I think so. They would definitely do it their own way because that’s how we do it. But I think they would. I think they would rock the house, and I think the rest of the world would view that performance as something really different and something that they might enjoy themselves. A lot of people would discover the $uicideboy$ on a stage like that.
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
As $uicideboy$ become $uicidemen, have you had a conversation with them about what the next 10 or 20 years look like? So much of what they’ve done so far is centered on youth culture and around their fans discovering them at a formative time in their lives. And I’m sure that’ll continue. But as the guys enter their 30s and 40s, have you talked about how to keep the brand vital?
We like to focus on about a year or two at a time. It just helps us stay more on the pulse. I mean, nobody knows how or where music is sonically going – and they don’t focus too much on the overall sound of everything. But I think our focus is always about a year or two out, and we kind of plan our moves accordingly. Like I said, they’re going to be around forever. What that looks like in five to 10 years? I don’t know.
Time will tell. We’ve worked at a really fast pace to this point between doing 50-, 60-, 70-plus shows a year and traveling the world and putting out two to three albums a year. Their pace has been phenomenal. At a certain point, it’s got to let up. But for now, we have a lot of great releases and a lot of really good plans in the future for the next couple of years.
What advice would you give young artists or labels that are just starting to catch their footing?
Picking the right people around you and formulating a team is the most important thing for me. Having everything from an agent to a lawyer to a marketing guy… It’s not just a one-man show — it’s a whole team, and everybody has responsibilities on that team to move the ball downfield. I would also say concentrating on your fans and continuing to develop your brand.
There has been a lot of discourse about the lack of developed hip-hop superstars in the past five years — but it seems like when people have those conversations, they’re mostly talking about the top-level crossover hit-makers of the last 30 years. Do you think cult stars like $uicideboy$ are the future of hip-hop stardom? Is the future of hip-hop independent?
I think so. Fans are now just focused on what they want to listen to. We did so many years of going on a playlist, like a RapCaviar, and finding out about songs. And now I think word of mouth is back and hearing about songs — whether it’s through quick videos like Instagram or TikTok or friends that are listening and hearing about new sounds — I think it’s back to the streets, even though the streets are in a different form these days.
Digital streets.
Yeah, the digital streets — and I think that’s the key to the future. People will take notice over time. It might not happen immediately — or it might happen immediately — but people will take notice. It’s all about developing that brand and creating something that has stickiness and has power.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
There are few things more daunting for a rising star than following a breakthrough hit that just won’t stop breaking through. Such is the case for Benson Boone, whose 2024 smash “Beautiful Things” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, ended as the No. 1 song on the year-end Global 200, and, 70 weeks into its Hot 100 run, is still in the chart’s top 10.
But Evan Blair, the song’s co-writer and producer — and a regular collaborator of Boone’s, along with co-writer Jack LaFrantz — says that when the “Beautiful Things” dream team reassembled in the studio, they couldn’t feel the specter of their previous smash hanging over them.
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“I’ve been in situations in the past where [following such a big hit] has sunk us, and we haven’t been able to get out of the shadow,” Blair says. “But for whatever reason, [when we got back together], I don’t think we one time even talked about it.”
It also helps, of course, when you come up with new songs like “Mystical Magical.” Crafted toward the end of the recording sessions for Boone’s upcoming new album American Heart, the sparkling “Mystical Magical” finds Boone leaning into his increasingly fantastical stage persona, with a falsetto-laden chorus, lyrics about “moonbeam ice cream” and chirping synths reminiscent enough of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” that that song’s scribes were also given writing credits along with Boone, Blair and LaFrantz. (“Damn, it does sound like that,” recalls a laughing Blair of the group’s reaction when the similarity was first pointed out to them.)
The early response to the group’s new effort has been very positive. Despite the refusal of “Beautiful Things” to recede from the Hot 100’s top 10 — and despite the positive momentum behind his prior single “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” which has climbed into the chart’s top 30 — “Mystical Magical” became Boone’s fourth song to crack the top 40, and is still hanging around at No. 42, seemingly waiting its turn to officially become Boone’s single of the moment, as he backflips from one high-profile cultural moment to the next.
“I think that is a testament to Benson as an artist — he’s existing in culture in such a way that culture is interacting with him,” Blair says of the way his star collaborator has been able to move on from his breakout hit, even as his breakout hit has refused to move on from him.
Below, Blair talks about his work catching “lightning in a bottle” as Boone’s collaborator, why he never feels like he has to tell Benson no, and what fans might be able to expect from the rest of American Heart, out June 20.
Your relationship with Benson goes back further than “Mystical Magical.” How did you two come into each other’s orbit?
Benson is with Warner Records, and I’ve done a lot of stuff with them in the past. His A&R Jeff Sosnow has been a big part of my music career — and the first person to ever really give me a shot years ago — and he thought Benson and I would get along really well. He was right: The first session we ever did was “Beautiful Things.”
What was it about the two of you that clicked?
The main thing that drives it is that both of us put a priority on being friends as well as being musical partners. I can definitely take making music very seriously, and Benson…
Less so?
Well, Benson can too. But I think there’s something about the two of us — and then the three of us, with Jack [LaFrantz] — there’s an environment of like, “Let’s also have some fun.” Benson is such a musical super force that he’s almost like this lightning in a bottle that I have to try to catch every day in the session. He’ll sit at the piano, or him and I will start creating something that seems to come from nowhere. He’s one of those artists where you don’t know where he’s getting these ideas. It’s like he’s got some sort of channel that [only he’s] getting. It’s my job every day to try to capture it and make it into something that sounds good and can be recorded.
“Beautiful Things” [is] a great example — with time signature changes and very bizarre arrangements. I get to let him just kind of go wild, and it really tests musical ability and years of production experience to be able to not mess with that, but also to put it in a container and somehow harness it. And for me, it’s the most fun challenge, because he’s just straight inspiration. And I get to play with it.
You said that you guys recorded “Beautiful Things” on the first day that you worked together. Have you been working together regularly since then?
It’s been pretty consistent since then. I knew from the first time we worked together — and Jack also being a part of that — that there was something really special here. The creation part of it felt very easy, which is not a feeling that comes very frequently. There was just something about the chemistry between the three of us where it seemed pretty clear that we were only at the beginning of something.
“Beautiful Things” was done at the tail end of his last album, and then there was a break where he went on tour. We were continuing to work together a little bit after that, but he wasn’t really around for a lot of writing until later when we started on this album. We worked together a lot for the last year.
In what part of the process did “Mystical Magical” come into it?
Towards the end, actually. [At] the beginning of the process, we got a good chunk of the best work. There was so much inspiration, and Benson had such a clear idea of what he wanted to do. And then “Mystical Magical” was kind of the last one that we put in the pile. I don’t remember ever saying, like, “Oh, this has to be a single.” We try not to say that kind of thing — but we all knew it was really great.
We were in Utah at June Audio [Recording Studios], and at that time, we were supposed to be finishing songs. All of the powers that be were calling me before the session, and they’re like, “You guys got to buckle down and finish these songs.” And I was like, “Don’t worry. We’ll do it.”
Just the way that the three of us work together — we’re almost always going to try to start something new, even if we are supposed to be doing something else. We’ve had so much luck together that it would be almost stupid not to try. What if the next “Beautiful Things” happens? It feels possible every time we’re together.
I don’t know that it was always apparent that Benson had this kind of flair to him. It seems like, as he’s kind of coming into his own as a performer, the music is starting to match that a little bit better. Could you tell that he had this more fantastical side to him?
Not in such a hyper-specific way where I could be like, “I feel like you’re going to be a little bit more jumpsuit-y on the next album.” But there’s something so alive in him that is very apparent when you meet him, that it doesn’t at all feel surprising when you’re like, “Oh, he wants to do that? He’ll be great at it.”
When [other] artists come to me and they’re like, “I’m going to do this,” you can kind of be like, “I see what you want to do, but maybe we could go somewhere else.” With Benson, he’s so easily able to accomplish things that it felt very natural to me. Even as far down to his piano playing — a lot of the best songs on this album came from him sitting down at the piano, and he would play these little riffs that were like, “Did you just make that? I could have sworn it was, like, a Hall & Oates classic piano [riff].”
What was the first part that poured out of him that ended up becoming “Mystical Magical”?
On that Utah trip, I think we had four days in a row at the studio. The first three, candidly speaking, were not that fruitful. We weren’t finding the answer to some of these songs, and we were having a lot of fun as friends, but we weren’t really getting done what we needed to get done. On the fourth day, perhaps through a bit of frustration, we just said, “You know what? F–k it. Let’s just have some fun and get back to what we do best.” It ended up being the very beginning of “Mystical Magical.”
It started out very differently from how it ended up, but the bass line in it was something I was playing — and it almost felt like a My Morning Jacket song or something. That bass line is now what is in the verse of the song, and it’s a midtempo, funky sort of thing.
We couldn’t really get out of the verse into a chorus that that excited us for a long time, and then Jack and Benson said, “Let’s just try the piano.” Benson starts playing it with these staccato eighth notes high up on the piano. They looked at me, I looked at them, and I said, “When you’re right, you’re right, boys.” We record that plucky piano, and it just made sense all of a sudden. We got Benson in the booth to start singing it, and as he went on, this performance got more whimsical — and I answered that in the production.
A day that started in frustration ended in being one of the best music making days we’ve ever had together. It felt like when that chorus moment happened, it was just unfolding in front of our eyes.
Who came up with “moonbeam ice cream” lyric?
I can’t recall exactly, but I’m going to say Jack. Jack is often coming up with these very bizarre things that you’re like, “Is that a thing? Because if it’s not, it should be.” That happened a number of times on this album.
When you heard that, were you guys just like, “Yes, absolutely, let’s go with that”?
Absolutely. We all had that moment where we’re like, “Does it make sense? Does it matter?” And you know, to us, it made sense. But I’m also big on letting people decide on their own what it means.
Is it difficult to make headway with a new song when your older song is still percolating the way “Beautiful Things” is?
It can be, but with Benson, no. With Grammys performances and Coachella, he’s carving a lane so effectively that it doesn’t feel like that at all. I tell this to people all the time: [They say,] “Oh, congratulations on ‘Beautiful Things.’ ” And I’m like, “You can have an amazing song that’s going to be a hit — but do you have the artist that can carry it?” Benson carried it and then threw it into the stratosphere like a Hail Mary. Having Benson behind the songs every time feels like you’re doing something new and meaningful. So we’re kind of immune to that so far because of the artist we have.
I know you say you can’t really talk that much about the rest of American Heart, but do you feel like it comes from the same place as “Mystical Magical”? Or is it a little bit more of a swerve than people realize?
I wouldn’t say it’s a swerve. “Mystical Magical” is the most mystical and magical song on the album. It is definitely the most of that thing; it’s as far as we go in that direction. My two favorite songs on the album are still yet to come, which is super exciting. But I think in terms of a sonic palette, there’s still a lot of synths, there’s still bold choices. I think people who like the first two [singles] will only love the forthcoming ones even more. There’s some that are a little more emotional, for sure. I’m just super-pumped for people to hear them.
A version of this story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Over two distinct sonic eras, The Doobie Brothers — led by singer-guitarist Tom Johnston and singer-pianist Michael McDonald — have sustained a genre-agnostic, commercially viable career since the early 1970s. That includes nine top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 and 10 top 20 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as hits spanning the rock, adult contemporary, R&B and country charts.
But what truly defines the band is that “it’s a democracy,” according to Karim Karmi, its comanager of a decade alongside Irving Azoff.
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Now, 50 years in, the Doobies are proving just that with Walk This Road, their first album to feature significant contributions from all three principal songwriters (Johnston, McDonald and Pat Simmons). Produced by pop-rock stalwart John Shanks, the project is McDonald’s first appearance on a Doobies album in 20 years and will arrive a week before he, Johnston and Simmons are inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (alongside George Clinton, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Ashley Gorley, Mike Love and Tony Macaulay) on June 12. After which, McDonald teases, the Doobies “might even do another” album.
How did working with John Shanks affect your songwriting process for Walk This Road?
Michael McDonald: We found ourselves revisiting old ideas that might have never gotten recorded — in my case, songs that I might have demoed, gosh, 10 years ago, that I would every once in a while run across in my phone. And then some of the stuff was more immediate, where we just sat down with John and came up with a song in a moment.
Tom Johnston: John’s a hell of a guitar player, and he has good ideas on sound. He’s got a place up in the Hollywood Hills overlooking part of the San Fernando Valley and he’s got a lot of toys, so you can try pretty much anything you want to try and that’s liberating.
McDonald: It’s every musician’s fantasy man cave — literally every kind of keyboard, keyboards I never even knew existed.
A sense of social conscience is central to the band’s music, especially on this album’s title track with Mavis Staples. Do you feel a responsibility to address current times in your writing?
Johnston: The civic duty bit that you express when writing, that’s something that you just feel — it’s an organic thing.
McDonald: With “Walk This Road,” I think John had the original idea for the title — of us getting back together, here we are still trudging the same road all these years later. But it immediately took on a bigger meaning, and I think bringing Mavis onto the track cemented that idea because she is an ambassador of the gospel of humanity. The sound of her voice and her intent made it clear what we might be talking about in the bigger sense, which is, we’re all here together. As a band, we hope to appeal to the collective better nature of people.
You have a long track record on the Billboard charts. What does it take to write a hit?
Johnston: When you’re writing a song, you’re not thinking about that; you’re just trying to put into it what you feel at that moment. The only time I ever even thought [about] that was on “Listen to the Music.” You just want to do the best you can.
McDonald: We came up in the middle of the ’60s and the ’70s, when recording artists were starting to exercise a lot more latitude in terms of style and genre, and the Doobies were always a very eclectic band; we were free to do what we wanted or whatever we thought we could be sincere at portraying musically. I always felt fortunate that we came up in a time when there were a lot less limitations set on artists to stay in their lane.
HBO’s Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary highlights that aspect of you and your contemporaries — as well as your habit of turning up in unexpected places, Mike, both in the Doobies and as a solo artist. What’s the most unexpected place or collaborator you’ve found yourself around recently?
McDonald: I wrote a couple songs recently with a kid named Charlie Puth, who’s a really talented musician. And I find that I’m being taken more places than I would ever have gone on my own. I’ve been trying to co-write with people, which I always do with a little bit of mixed feelings. I never really know if what I’m writing is good or not. You start to compare yourself to everything else, and it gets a little scary sometimes. But I do like co-writing because it gets me out of the house and it makes me do something rather than watch another episode of HGTV. (Laughs.)
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Am I the first person to feel strange calling you ‘weird’?”
John Mayer — bespectacled, grinning goofily, very much nerding out — is sitting across from “Weird Al” Yankovic, interviewing the Hawaiian shirt-clad parody music king, who is sitting across from him for his SiriusXM show, How’s Life With John Mayer.
“You can call me Al, like Paul Simon says,” Yankovic says with smile, before adding that the most normal thing about him is, probably, his pancreas.
It’s a funny quip, but also an understatement. Let’s just get this out of the way: “Weird Al” Yankovic is, beneath his accordion-playing, polka-loving surface, exceedingly normal. He likes long evening walks to get his steps in. He enjoys seeing movies and trying out new restaurants with his wife and daughter, who just graduated college. He grumbles good-naturedly about the ongoing renovation of his home in the Hollywood Hills. (“It’s going to look almost exactly the same as it did before, except it cost a fortune!”) The 65-year-old artist’s one attempt at rock star behavior, back in his early-’80s heyday, was comically un-vain: On a touring rider, he requested, in the spirit of Van Halen’s famed ban on brown M&M’S, “one really horrible Hawaiian shirt for every show I did.” (On that run, he did 200, and a collection that now extends to a storage unit somewhere in greater L.A. began.)
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Still, if not precisely weird, Yankovic is truly singular. His catalog can be divided into two types of songs: intricately crafted, meticulously arranged, hilarious yet never mean-spirited parodies of hits by acts ranging from Michael Jackson to Coolio to Nirvana to Lady Gaga, and original pastiches, for which he deep dives into artists’ catalogs to create songs that, with eerie accuracy, mimic the sounds and idiosyncrasies of those genre-spanning artists.
Between the two, he has accomplished feats usually reserved for the very artists he parodies. During each of the first four decades of his career, he has had entries on the Billboard Hot 100, and eight of his albums have reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200 — including his most recent studio release, 2014’s Mandatory Fun, which became his first No. 1 on the chart. He has won five Grammy Awards and an Emmy. Billboard estimates he has sold 12 million albums in the United States (based on RIAA certifications pre-1991 and Luminate data from 1991 on).
Incredibly, he’s done all this without ever changing his essential “Weird Al”-ness. “From day one, there was never even a discussion that would not be about following his singular vision,” says Jay Levey, Yankovic’s manager of 43 years and sometime creative collaborator (notably, they co-wrote the now nerd canon comedy UHF, which Levey also directed). “It’s hard to find any career where there’s literally no compromise, but we might be able to count on one hand the number of compromises he’s made in his career.”
Joe Pugliese
Sometimes, that’s meant turning down lucrative deals, like the $5 million beer endorsement that Yankovic passed on in 1990 because, he feared, the brand was “trying to make me into Joe Camel.” Many times, it’s meant standing up to record-label executives, like when, amid his “draconian” first album contract with Scotti Brothers (an indie then distributed by CBS), he was asked to shoot 10 music videos on a $30,000 budget simply because he’d proved he could do one for $3,000. (“I’m like, ‘No. No, I can’t!’ ”)
But just as often, it’s meant embracing an open-to-anything spirit that seems to almost always work out in his favor. Yankovic decided very early in his career to ask permission of any artist he parodied — not because the law required it (it doesn’t) but because he simply had no interest in making enemies. With very few exceptions, it turned out, the artists said yes, even supposedly impossible-to-convince ones like “American Pie” scribe Don McLean, who OK’d “The Saga Begins,” Yankovic’s 1999 parody that essentially summarizes the plot of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. “When I heard his version, I thought it was better than the original. The sound quality was superb,” says McLean, who calls Yankovic a “straight-ahead good boy” who “could be on Leave It to Beaver.”
Thanks to that combination of earnest good intentions, work ethic, backbone and obsession with quality, Yankovic finds himself in an unusual position today: He’s no novelty relic of the ’80s, but a truly cross-generational artist. In the past six years alone, he’s portrayed Rivers Cuomo in Weezer’s “Africa” music video, played accordion (and appeared in the video) for teen rock band The Linda Lindas’ 2024 single “Yo Me Estreso” and lip-synced dramatically in a tux in Clairo’s “Terrapin” video. “Growing up with his videos was a massive thing in my generation,” says Clairo, 26. “Back when YouTube was really simple, it really hit home for us in middle school to watch his parodies. He always knew how to draw people in.”
He and his team will prove just how true that still is when Yankovic heads out on the Bigger and Weirder Tour this summer. It’s his fastest-selling, biggest-grossing tour yet, according to his agent, Wasserman Music’s Brad Goodman, and his biggest by other metrics, too: an eight-piece band (his largest yet) onstage; first-time venues bigger than any he’s played before, including New York’s Madison Square Garden and L.A.’s Kia Forum; a mini-Las Vegas residency (the tour will open June 13 with six sold-out nights at The Venetian); and stops both expected (Red Rocks Amphitheatre) and less so (Riot Fest) on the route. And the concert itself is a trademark Weird Al spectacle: part rock show, part revival tent, part Broadway musical, all “joy bomb,” as actor and longtime fan Andy Samberg puts it.
Whether it becomes a springboard for the next Weird Al era is anyone’s guess — including Yankovic himself. Right now, he has no further plans to release albums; and since Mandatory Fun arrived over a decade ago, he’s only sporadically released new music, most recently the 2024 “Polkamania!” single (the latest in his long-running series of madcap polka medleys, this one recapping the past decade’s pop highlights, all sung in Yankovic’s manic tenor). Around that time, his contract of roughly 20 years with Sony ended, and he decided not to renew with the label, or sign with anyone else.
“Nobody owns any piece of me,” he says, exhaling. “I’m at a point in my life where if something isn’t going to be fun or a pleasant experience, I have no problem saying no, even if it’s a lot of money or a lot of eyeballs. I can do literally whatever I feel like doing.”
Then again, for Yankovic, that’s always been true.
“When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about being the next Weird Al, like it’s a position he applied for and got,” says Lin-Manuel Miranda, a lifelong fan who’s now also friends with Yankovic. “And then you grow up and realize, ‘Oh, there’s only one of that guy.’ We’re not going to see another Weird Al.”
On an overcast April afternoon a few days after the Mayer taping, Yankovic meets me for lunch at Crossroads, a vegan spot in West Hollywood where, years ago, he ate his first Impossible Burger. He’s quick to jokingly note that he is not a member of the city’s “vegan elite” — still, as he walks in, a man walking a golden retriever stops his phone conversation to stare and declare, “It’s that Al Yanko-vich guy!”
Despite his talent for writing songs about junk food (“My Bologna,” “The White Stuff”) and the fact that he once consumed the world’s most ungodly snack, a Twinkie Dog, in UHF (watch and barf a little), he’s been vegan since the early ’90s.
Chalk it up to veganism, staying out of the sun (“I melt in direct sunlight”) or following the directions of his longtime hair stylist, Sean James, very well (he never blow-dries those famous ringlets, hence their eternally bouncy and well-defined nature), but Yankovic has an ageless quality that lends many of his fans to liken him to mythological figures. “He’s Santa Claus for nerds of a certain stripe,” Miranda says, a comparison Mayer had also made (as well as to Forrest Gump). His curls may be a little grayer, but his ultra-expressive face — acrobatic eyebrows in particular — reflects his eternal curiosity and up-for-anything-ness.
As we settle in for almond ricotta-stuffed zucchini blossoms and meatless bolognese, Yankovic is particularly animated recounting his previous weekend, when he made his latest surprise appearance: his Coachella debut. To close out its surreal set, the crew from the cult-favorite kids show Yo Gabba Gabba! brought out a cast of characters both human (Thundercat, Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley) and not so much (cartoon mascots like Sleestak, PuffnStuf and Duo the Duolingo owl) to sing “The Rainbow Connection” with its composer, Paul Williams — and, on lead vocals, Yankovic.
“I’ve had a pretty bizarre life, so it wasn’t like, so unusual,” Yankovic reflects. “But it was definitely a little bit of an out-of-body experience.” He admits that the “hey kids, let’s put on a show” energy was fun and that the invite wasn’t a total shock (having appeared on a season-three episode as an accordion-playing circus ringmaster, he’s tight with the Gabba group). Still, he speaks of such invites with a kind of humble awe.
“Nothing I’ve ever done was me thinking, ‘Boy, I hope kids discover this 40 years from now,’ ” he says. Starting in the ’80s, he released an album almost every year “because I was afraid I would be quickly forgotten. It was drilled into me: ‘You’re a comedy artist, you’re a novelty artist, you’re lucky if you’re a one hit-wonder — you’re not destined to have a long career.’ I wanted to grab that brass ring every time I went around.”
Joe Pugliese
Coming up concurrently with the birth of MTV, and savvily taking advantage of it, helped Yankovic snatch that ring. He had a keen ear for (and good taste in) hits at a time when, thanks to both MTV and top 40 radio’s prevalence, a monoculture reigned — and perhaps even more importantly, he knew the power of a viral video before such a thing existed.
Tweaking hits like Jackson’s “Beat It” (“Eat It”) and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” (“Like a Surgeon”), Yankovic created new songs that, thanks to his painstaking re-creations of their arrangements, were immediately recognizable but rewarded repeated consumption — as did their accompanying videos, in which Yankovic demonstrated his incredible eye for detail and formidable acting chops. “MTV was on like video wallpaper in the background 24 hours a day,” he says of that time. “They were hungry for content, and I was anxious to give them content.”
Since then, Yankovic’s understanding of the promotional power of visuals has remained prescient — take when, leading up to Mandatory Fun’s arrival, he insisted on releasing a music video on YouTube each day (not all at once, as some advised) to whet fans’ appetites for the album. And his genre-agnostic approach to making music has proved ahead of its time, too. Before hip-hop was widely accepted as pop, he was especially drawn to rap. “A lot of pop songs are very repetitive,” he says. “How can I be funny in seven syllables, you know? But rap songs, I mean, it’s nothing but words, and it’s easy to craft jokes that way.”
Parodies like “Amish Paradise” (Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”) and “White and Nerdy” (Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Dirty”) are among his most streamed — though he’s been equally adept at literally any microgenre he takes on, from just-electrified Bob Dylan (“Bob,” entirely comprising palindromes) to arty new wave (the Devo pastiche “Dare To Be Stupid”) to crunchy Detroit garage rock (“CNR,” a tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly through the lens of The White Stripes).
“The more you listen to him, the more you get access to making [any genre of parody] sound legitimate,” says Samberg, who calls Yankovic the biggest influence on his own comedic music group, The Lonely Island. “The nature of what he does is incredibly populist. He’s not snooty about it; he’s like, ‘This is what the kids like, and as long as I have a good angle comedically, I’m going to do it.’ And because of that, it’s always appealing to young people.”
Growing up in Compton-adjacent Lynwood, Calif., Yankovic listened to rock radio, but as a teenager found playing the accordion a bit solitary. (His friends’ rock bands weren’t really interested in an accordionist joining up.) “When you take accordion lessons, I think the high-water mark is ‘Maybe someday I’ll play in an Italian restaurant or at a wedding,’ ” he says with a laugh. “I guess I was shameless. I grew up a complete nerd in high school. And when you’re not somebody that’s socially acceptable, you kind of have nothing to lose. I kind of held on to that mentality: Like, you know, ‘Who cares?’ ”
“Weird Al” Yankovic photographed April 17, 2025 at Dust Studios in Los Angeles.
Joe Pugliese
He didn’t look to any particular musician’s career trajectory as one he could follow. “It was more cautionary tales” — and one was especially haunting. One of his idols was Allan Sherman, the satirical singer best known for his 1963 summer camp send-up, “Hello Muddah Hello Fadduh!” “He was the last person to have a No. 1 comedy album before me,” Yankovic continues. “He had three No. 1 albums on, like, the pop charts — incredible! But within a few years, he completely burned out. He made some terrible choices in his personal and professional life and just went off into obscurity and sadly died a few years later. So I was always more concerned about, ‘Don’t mess it up. Keep doing what you’re doing and just try not to make bad choices.’ ”
“In a way, we’re almost always looking over our shoulders at that,” his manager Levey says. He cautiously admits that he and Yankovic have finally reached a level in his career where they’re “no longer at the point where every year [of continued success] is a surprise,” then adds, “I don’t actually even like saying that out loud because it sounds like you’re taking something for granted.”
But if Sherman was a rocket that blasted off only to burst into flames, Yankovic has been the opposite: one that, as Levey puts it, has kept steadily traveling through space — maybe sometimes at a slower speed than others, but never plummeting back down to Earth, buffeted by the most unexpected boosters. Like, say, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, the 2022 parody of a music biopic that Yankovic co-wrote, starring Daniel Radcliffe in the titular role. Despite at first airing only on the Roku Channel, it won almost universal acclaim and a prime-time Emmy, while expanding Yankovic’s universe yet again.
“His longevity is a testament to his ability to be himself and stick to what his taste is, because it’s so specific,” Radcliffe says. (“Bob” is his favorite Yankovic track, and he took the opportunity on set to ask his hero how he came up with all the palindromes.) “He threads a really hard-to-thread needle between wholesome fun and something … genuinely deranged and very, very strange. And in a way that is not affected.” At a time when the culture values authenticity above all else, Yankovic is a walking example of it — never not himself.
Unwittingly proving the point, Yankovic gasps in glee as our lunch ends. “Mochi doughnuts!” He shows me a photo his wife has just texted him: a box of the treats for dessert later. Somewhat sheepishly, he explains the occasion: “Eric Idle is coming over for dinner tonight. That’s my big flex for today.”
Later that afternoon, Yankovic meets me in a park near Coldwater Canyon called Tree People. He looks a little like a more aged version of his faux-Indiana Jones in UHF: Hawaiian shirt (a Goodwill buy), sensible shoes, safari hat shielding the waning sun.
“I’m gearing up for a big tour, so I’m mostly just making sure I don’t have a heart attack onstage or pass out or something,” he says of the walks he takes in spots like this. “I think I’ve lost 20 pounds in the past couple months just because I’m not, like, eating junk food at midnight anymore.”
Yankovic’s last tour outing didn’t require much of a physical regimen. In 2022 and 2023, he took to smaller venues for The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, a follow-up to the first Vanity Tour in 2018. The idea, he recalls, occurred to him when “I was putting on my ‘Fat’ suit for the thousandth time and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it just be nice to like, go out onstage and play the songs, sit on a stool and have an intimate evening with fans?’ ”
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So Yankovic eschewed the usual production level of his tours — costumes, wigs, the parody hits — for a concept, his agent Goodman says, that the musician himself wasn’t entirely convinced would work. Instead, it allowed him to visit new, smaller major-market venues (Carnegie Hall, Tennessee’s The Caverns) and strengthen his presence in off-the-beaten-path markets (like, say, Huntsville, Ala.) while superserving his ride-or-die fans. When the concept returned in 2022, he played 162 Vanity shows globally (extending into the next year).
“I loved it, the band loved it, the people who showed up loved it, and it definitely scratched that itch,” Yankovic says. “And now,” with the Bigger and Weirder Tour, he’s back to “doing a show for everybody.”
For Bigger and Weirder, Yankovic is in self-described “overpreparer” mode, the hyper-organized creative core of his team. “I came up with the setlist a year ago. I gave the band” — three of whom, as of our meeting, he has yet to meet — “their marching orders and said, ‘Here’s the setlist, here’s your charts, here’s the demos, here are the rehearsal days.’ ” He personally chooses and edits all the show’s video content — clips of Weird Al in Pop Culture (say, on The Simpsons or 30 Rock) over the years that will play between songs and give him and the band time for the most frantic element of the show, which the audience never sees.
“We have stage props, wigs, a lot of costume changes, and a big portion of what we need is a quick-change area behind the scenes onstage, usually 40 by 20 feet,” says Melissa King, his tour manager of nearly 20 years. On Bigger and Weirder, Yankovic will do 20 costume changes, give or take a jacket or hat; his band members will do nine; and all will occur in 45 seconds maximum.
That backstage planning ensures that in front of the audience, the man who has spent his career parodying rock and pop stars is free to embody one himself. “When I speak to [talent] buyers and say, ‘Have you seen the show?,’ if there’s a pause, for sure I know the answer is no,” Goodman says. “Because if you’ve seen the show, it’s just an immediate ‘Yeah, of course, it’s incredible.’ ”
Onstage, Yankovic isn’t just physically “working his ass off,” as Samberg says. “As a vocalist, he’s f–king incredible,” Radcliffe marvels. “He has this amazing, clear tone. His range is so impressive — he does things to his voice that, as somebody who sings a bit in musicals sometimes, if I tried that I’d hurt myself.”
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Despite the “bigger” aspects of this tour — like how it will use three trucks instead of the usual one — King is still one of just 11 people comprising the crew. “It’s very lean, but it works because we all work together,” she says. “Al’s a genuine, kind person, and because he is, that’s the way everyone in our camp is.” That ethos extends to both the fans who’ll attend (“There aren’t many arseholes who are Weird Al fans,” Radcliffe observes) and how Yankovic treats them: According to Goodman, he’s kept maximum ticket prices for Bigger and Weirder to $179.50 and has always refused to engage with platinum ticketing.
Right now, the tour is Yankovic’s focus. When he decided against renewing his Sony contract, Levey says, they tested the waters with “very limited outreach” to a mix of indie and major labels. “And we got great offers and I brought those offers to him, and he thought about it and said, ‘I’m really loving this feeling of not being under contract to anybody … Please tell these people how appreciative I am of their generous offers and we’re just not going to accept any of them.’ ”
He’s now independent in the truest sense: He has an imprint, Way Moby, that’s technically now his label, but he describes it more as existing for theoretical recording purposes. He figures he’ll put out a single here and there, contribute to soundtracks if he’s asked and, as always, remain open to what may come — like making a surprise appearance last November to duet with Will Forte on Chappell Roan’s “Hot To Go!” at a charity event or developing a Broadway Weird Al jukebox musical that he says is in the very earliest creative stages, a “bucket list” project.
“When [he had] the No. 1 album in the country, that was such a triumphant moment. I remember us celebrating,” Samberg recalls. “It just shows you — I don’t think anyone else will really touch that space. It’s his space. No one is going to say, ‘I’m going to do what Al does,’ ’cause good luck. He owns that until he doesn’t want to do it anymore.”
The world, Yankovic knows, is also not the same as when he first became famous. “I got a record deal, I got on MTV, and I kind of had the market to myself,” he reflects. “Now the playing field has been so leveled that anybody can upload their material to YouTube or various portals like that. And if the stuff is good, chances are people will eventually see it. I’d like to think that if I was coming up now, I’d still do OK, but it would just be more of a challenge.”
It’s a generous sentiment, a reminder that, as Miranda puts it, one of Yankovic’s many talents is also “reading the room.” But in its humility, it’s also a reminder that, flooded as the market may now be with funny people on the internet, none of them, still, are doing it like Weird Al: the 65-year-old who once thought he’d play accordion at weddings and Italian restaurants, who’s about to make his Madison Square Garden debut.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, of Billboard.
This May, 88rising unveiled its latest girl group: no na. The Indonesian quartet — made up of members Christy, Baila, Esther and Shaz — debuted with the soaring single “Shoot,” illustrating the group’s knack for vocal harmonies and love of R&B.
Its second single, “Superstitious,” leaned more into pop, and the group says that sweet spot between the two genres is where no na will thrive. The foursome made its live debut this month as 88rising’s annual Head In the Clouds: L.A., their adoptive home after relocating from Indonesia last year to focus on music full time.
Foundation
In December 2022, 88rising brought its celebrated Head in the Clouds festival to Jakarta, Indonesia — marking the event’s first time in Asia and also becoming the unwitting origin story of the label’s newest girl group, no na. Members Baila, Shaz and Christy all met at the festival — and exchanged quick, tepid handshakes, they joke today. While Shaz and Christy come from dance backgrounds, Baila was pursuing music as a solo act at the time, having competed on Indonesian Idol Junior. Six months later, Esther, a singer who had competed on season 10 of Indonesian Idol, completed the quartet, and they started training together in Jakarta with joint dance and vocal lessons. “That’s when we started spending every single day together,” Esther says. Baila adds: “Indonesians are pretty easygoing, and it was so easy for us to get along. We didn’t have to try to like each other.”
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Discovery
The four members of no na were all stealthily scouted by 88rising, an effort helmed by founder and CEO Sean Miyashiro. But when one particular project manager reached out, “We didn’t know that she was from 88,” Esther recalls with a laugh. “They just mentioned, ‘Would you like to be part of a global girl group?’ That kind of scared us at first.” But Shaz jokes, “We stalked her,” and found out that they had a legitimate offer to not only form a global girl group but also move halfway across the world to Los Angeles. (The four members moved there in 2024, sharing an apartment.) While they were immediately aligned on their influences — “pop, reggae, jazz; we all love R&B,” Esther says, shouting out Victoria Monét and FLO as well as “the classics” like Janet Jackson and Diana Ross — they struggled to agree on a group name. After combing through more than 200 options, they agreed on “no na” — a riff on nona, which means “miss” in Indonesian.
Future
Spotlighting its native country is a priority for no na — from the group’s visuals, like filming the stunning music video for debut song “Shoot” back home, to its lyrics, which will incorporate Indonesian phrases. “We want to represent our country to the world, where not a lot of people are familiar with everything about Indonesia,” Shaz says. The act has started to spread the word worldwide: In May, it made its live debut at Head in the Clouds: L.A., which was a full-circle moment. As Esther says: “A dream came true for us.”
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Russ discovered TuneCore by accident: Nearly 15 years ago, he watched his close friend, the rapper Bugus, Google “How do I get my song on iTunes,” and it led him to the New York-based distribution, publishing and music licensing service. Today, Russ is the face of TuneCore — and a blueprint for independent artists looking to play in the big leagues.
“I was getting 20 cents a month [from my music] in 2011,” he recalls while sitting outside his Atlanta home. “TuneCore was a lifesaver… As streaming started to take over and my music started to gain more traction, TuneCore was paying the bills. It was how I was able to take care of my family when s–t went left.”
These days, the 32-year-old rapper is cashing six-figure checks every week from TuneCore — and he isn’t afraid to show off the impressive receipts on social media. “This is what it looks like when you own your music and you have an extensive catalog and you’re distributing it independently,” he boasts.
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While rap’s mainstream has never embraced Russ or bestowed him glossy awards and accolades, he has still managed to build a successful and lucrative career with a rabid fan base. And his numbers can’t be denied: According to the RIAA, the New Jersey-born rhymer passed 35 million units sold earlier this year. In 2022, he became the first solo rapper to perform at the pyramids of Giza.
“I think it’s a testament to having an extensive catalog and having a loyal audience, [and] the music being timeless,” he says. “I try to tell artists you don’t have to try to get a song that immediately takes off. I have damn near 500 songs out and I think three of them have.”
Russ, whose next project, W!LD, will drop June 27 (an accompanying headlining tour with Big Sean opening is planned), has bucked plenty of music industry conventions on his way to stardom. He believes in flooding the market and has often spent monthslong stretches releasing singles rather than stockpiling them for albums and their corresponding cycles.
“The reason I’m not a big believer in the traditional way of putting out music is because it puts too much pressure on you,” he explains of his singles-based strategy, even if he admits “the album is still God.”
“When you’re putting out a song a month, you move on pretty quickly,” he continues. “It’s good spiritually. Just put the s–t out and give yourself a chance to be discovered.”
When you think about your journey to selling 35 million units, what runs through your head?
Just build a catalog that your fans can live with over the course of time. I think that’s what my catalog has done. It’s songs about my life, and fans have incorporated them into their lives. Maybe it didn’t go platinum in the first year, but over time, people keep listening to the s–t.
What advice do you have for indie artists today?
Stay in the studio and perfect your craft. Stock up on as many great songs as possible, put them out consistently and detach from the results. The traditional way of putting out music puts too much pressure on you. If you do the whole “I take two years off and I come back with a 13-song album,” that shit better be it. You take two years off and you come back with 13 songs and it doesn’t even resonate, it’s like, “Now what?”
It’s crazy that 2017’s There’s Really a Wolf, the first of three albums you released while you were signed to Columbia, is the first platinum album to be completely written, mixed, mastered, recorded and arranged by one person. What does that represent for you?
It’s a constant reminder that I’m enough. No matter what, I know I can do all this s–t when it comes to the music-making process and reach the mountaintop. A platinum album is still the pinnacle of success, as far as a metric in the music business. Knowing I can sit in the studio, make all the beats, mix it, master it, write everything, put it out and it goes platinum is a big confidence boost. I know that the reason I have the fans I do is because of me and my taste. It’s a reminder that people f–k with me for me.
What can you tell us about your new album, W!LD?
It’s my favorite offering of music. It has my favorite elements of all my albums: the depth and introspection of Santiago, the sonic freedom and versatility of There’s Really a Wolf, the grit that Zoo has and the bars that Chomp has. It’s me at my best.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I think in 10 years, I’m going to be primarily acting. I got a movie coming out [Don’t Move will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September]. I really love acting … it’s a different level of community I don’t get from music. [I don’t think I’ll be] touring nearly as much [but] still putting out music. It’s probably going to go to that traditional place where it’s like you don’t hear from me musically for two years and then I drop an album. Knowing me, I’ll just be putting out songs randomly and it will lead to an album.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
