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Teyana Taylor is ending her five-year musical hiatus, announcing Wednesday (June 4) that she’ll drop her new Escape Room album in August. And Taylor is giving fans a spicy taste of the new music with the release of her new single “Long Time” and its red-hot music video, starring actors LaKeith Stanfield and Aaron Pierre. […]
With his show at Sphere, Anyma created one of the dance world’s most talked-about live experiences in recent memory.
As the Italian-American producer tells it, this show and the sprawling visual world he’s long been focused on creating in tandem with his music is a response to what he was seeing elsewhere in the world of live dance and electronic shows.
“The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” the artist born Matteo Milleri told Billboard in a recent feature story about his work and his just-released album, The End of Genesys.
“Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing,” he continues. “I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”
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His idea was instead to create visuals that would allow him to “basically augment your purpose and your art with it. … That was the whole idea behind everything.”
The idea crystallized dramatically during the artist’s 12-date residency at Sphere, running from December through March. Fusing his own longstanding penchant for technology and boundary-pushing tech capabilities at the venue, which is built around a 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and reaches a height of 240 feet, Anyma and his team created a visually stunning production that incorporated themes of technology, nature, love, life and more.
The show’s head creative Alexander Wessely told Billboard that co-creating the show “was like re-learning a language while simultaneously writing poetry in it, trying to shape something new while staying in control of the chaos.”
But Anyma’s ambition to create something different did ultimately work. Not only was the show well-received by the hundreds of thousands of fans who saw it, its first eight alone grossed $21 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.
50 Cent wasn’t feeling Cam’ron bringing up his ex Daphne Joy during a conversation with a male sex worker involved in the Diddy trial. During a recent episode of his Talk With Flee podcast, Cam’ron had on escort Sharay “The Punisher” Hayes to talk about his alleged exploits with Diddy and Cassie, and after Hayes […]
Cardi B, Bhad Bhabie & Lily Allen have all made accounts on the platform.
Young Thug and Mariah The Scientist have been going strong for four years — even remaining together through Thugger’s two-plus-year incarceration — but their relationship may have never gotten off the ground if the YSL rapper didn’t remain persistent. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Thug and Mariah […]
BE:FIRST’s “GRIT” blasts in at No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, on the chart released June 4.
The CD version of the track went on sale on May 28, two days after being dropped digitally. The song launched with 105,783 copies to hit No. 2 for sales, while dominating downloads, radio airplay, video views and coming in at No. 4 for streaming.
“Muchu” by the boy band also jumped 15-8 to break into the top 10. It’s a track off the group’s ”GRIT” single and was digitally released ahead of the title track on Apr. 25. It topped downloads on the chart released Apr. 30 and debuted on the Japan Hot 100 at No. 13. This week, the release of the CD version fueled the track and downloads gained 180% compared to the week before, while streaming is up 102%, and video up 135%.
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Hey! Say! JUMP’s “encore” bows at No. 2. The eight-member boy band’s 35th single is being featured as the theme song for the drama series starring member Keii Inoo. The track rules sales with 213,556 copies sold in its first week, while hitting No. 16 for downloads, No. 63 for streaming, No. 23 for radio and No. 21 for video.
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Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “KUSUSHIKI” rises a notch to No. 3. Streams, downloads, and karaoke for the track gained this week, possibly powered by the new YouTube Premium commercial featuring the song, released May 28.
At No.4 is the title track of OCTPATH’s seventh single, “Mata Natsu ni Kaerou” (Let’s go back to summer again). The track written by RYOJI from Ketsumeishi sold 75,111 copies in its first week to hit No. 3 for sales.
HANA’s “ROSE” is up a position to No. 5. Karaoke and radio for the new girl group’s debut single gained 106% and 110%, respectively. HANA made headlines recently when awarded the Best New Artist (Singer) award at the ASIA STAR ENTERTAINER AWARDS 2025 Presented by ZOZOTOWN.
In other chart moves, CANDY TUNE’s “BAIBAI FIGHT!” soars 62-19. The song was released in April 2024, but the seven-member ASOBISYSTEM girl group performed it on YouTube’s THE FIRST TAKE (May 23) and also at the KAWAII LAB. SESSION Vol.14 in Makuhari event on May 25. Streams are up 148% compared to last week and video soared 317%, placing the song in the top 20 for the first time.
The second half of the year begins this week for Billboard Japan’s charts, and recurrent rules have been implemented on the Japan Hot 100 and Hot Albums tallies. The Streaming Songs chart is exempt from the recurrent criteria, and will be calculated in the same way as it has been up to the 2025 mid-year list.
The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.
See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from May 26 to June 1, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English X account.
“My mother always wanted me to be a doctor,” Barry Manilow quipped on stage Tuesday (June 3) night at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena. “She would be so proud!”
Manilow indeed became a doctor during his Detroit tour stop, when six cap-and-gowned faculty members from Chicago’s VanderCook College of Music (the only U.S. school that specializes in teaching music educators) presented him with an honorary Doctor of Music Education honoris causa. The honorary degree, according to VanderCook President Kimberly Farris, recognized “your enduring dedication to music education,” which, she added, “resonates deeply with our mission.” The degree specifically saluted the Manilow Music Project, which he says has spent $10 million during the past 15 years providing musical instruments to schools and honoring music educators. On Tuesday, Manilow presented a $10,000 grant to a teacher from Detroit’s Cass Technical High School.
Donning his own cap and gown and accepting the degree, Manilow explained that “the VanderCook College stands for everything I believe in. Their commitment to music teachers and my passion for getting playable instruments for young people go hand in hand. That’s why it really speaks to me.” He gave special thanks to his drummer, Yolandus “YL” Douglas, for spearheading the honor.
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“This is such a meaningful honor,” Manilow continued. “I’ve gotten awards before — Emmys, Grammys, People’s Choice Awards. Most of them were always honoring me as a singer, songwriter and performer, and they were always great. I’m always so grateful for them. But this is the first time that anybody has acknowledged me as being a musician, so thank you all…I’ll never forget this.” Manilow then tossed his mortarboard into the crowd as his band played “Pomp and Circumstance.”
The show was part of the 81-year-old Manilow’s continuing The Last Concerts series he’s playing in “these cities that have been so supportive” during his 52-year recording career. Prior to the Detroit stop he told Billboard that the endeavor has put him in a reflective space. “It’s like, ‘What? Am I the only one left?’” he says. “It’s Billy Joel, and Elton (John) is not well and Rod (Stewart) and Neil (Diamond). Diana Ross is still in great shape I think. There must be only a handful of people in my world that are still there. I’m still healthy. I’m strong and I’ve still got my voice and my energy. The night I can’t hit the F natural on ‘Even Now,’ that’s the night I throw in the towel. But I can still do it.”
Though he “never got to know” Joel, Manilow adds that he wishes that Piano Man well in his struggle with the brain disorder Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) that has taken him off the road. “Oh, it’s so horrible, so horrible,” Manilow says. “It just broke my heart when I heard about Billy Joel. I’m such a fan of his work. I really hope he’s able to get back to it.”
Manilow’s work, meanwhile, isn’t just onstage these days. By the end of the summer Manilow hopes to release a new album, his first since Night Songs II in 2020. “This’ll probably be my last album,” he notes, adding that, “I’ve been working on it for a long time…for so long that the style of music has changed. [laughs] I had to go back and redo (the songs) so they sounded a little more contemporary. I had to take all the strings out, all the background vocals out ‘cause they don’t do that anymore. They don’t use strings and background vocals and all that. Even I heard that it sounded dated, so we had to go back and redo it.”
The result, he says, is “a Barry pop album. I think people who like what I do will like this album; I don’t know about everybody else who likes today’s music, but it’s a solid album.” Manilow adds that he’s not trying to compete with the current crop of chart toppers and Grammy winners.
“The songwriting has changed,” he notes. “Young people don’t write the way I was trained to write. There’s no verse which goes into the chorus which goes back to the verse which goes to ending, and you change keys. They don’t do that. They start the song and then they just…it feels like a run-on sentence to me. I can’t find the hook. I can’t find the chorus. It just keeps on going, and then it ends. That’s not what this album is, and that’s not the way I know how to write, and I think my contemporary songwriters and people I work with would say the same.”
This year, in fact, marks 50 years since Manilow scored his first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit, “Mandy,” while January will mark 50 years since his second No. 1, “I Write the Songs,” which was penned by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. Both were recommended to him by Arista Records then-chief Clive Davis, and Manilow laughs as he recalls their professional relationship. “Every time Clive gave me an idea I would turn it down — every single time I would turn it down.” His objection to that one, in particular, was pointed: “I can’t sing a song where it says, ‘I write the songs’; people will think I’m this egomaniac. I won’t do it! Same thing with any of the other ones. I turned them all down. But Davis was relentless; ‘You’ve got to try it. You’ve got to try it!’ So I would put my arranger hat on and crawl into these songs and figure out how I can do these songs so I can be proud of it.”
“I Write the Songs,” of course, remains cemented into Manilow’s setlists, including his “lifetime” residency at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, which resumes on June 12. There’s no end date in sight, he insists, but having already done a One Last Time! tour back in 2015 Manilow insists that he’s not kidding about each stop being the final performance in each city.
“It’s a bittersweet experience for me because I know that I’m not coming back here and (the fans) know I’m not coming back here. And when I finish and I say ‘goodbye’ it is goodbye,” he says. “I’ve never felt that before. Usually I know that (on) the next tour, I’ll probably come back here. But this time I know I’m not coming back to these cities. I’ve been doing this for so many years, and I’ve done these cities over and over and over, but this is it.”
It’s an understatement to say it was a dream come true for Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying to write and record the new song “Great Rainbow” for the 70th anniversary of the Disneyland Resort.
The Grammy winner tells Billboard he’s a “Disney stan, deep down.” But Hoying didn’t stop with one song: He can be heard throughout the new Disney California Adventure Park nighttime spectacular World of Color Happiness!, including harmonizing on new renditions of familiar Disney favorites like “I 2 I” (from A Goofy Movie) and “Nobody Like U” (from Turning Red).
World of Color Happiness! is a razzle-dazzle show that, per Disney, “explores happy through a kaleidoscope of emotions,” as told through visual projections on choreographed fountains enhanced with lighting, lasers, flames and of course, a musical soundtrack.
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The entire show, staged on Paradise Bay, is hosted by Joy and the other Emotions from the animated film Inside Out 2, while a pre-show moment kicks off with The Muppets – who, like Disneyland, celebrate their 70th anniversary in 2025. (In the show, Boyz II Men are heard singing The Muppets’ iconic tune “The Rainbow Connection.”) Then, following the show, Hoying’s soaring “Great Rainbow” is heard in full while the fountains and lights in the Bay dance along to the tune. The track was created by an army of more than 100 musical individuals – including an orchestra, choir and a team of production technicians and wizards.
Much of the music from World of Color Happiness!, including “Great Rainbow,” can also be found on the recently released album from Walt Disney Records, Music From Disneyland Resort 70th Celebration.
So what does it feel like for Hoying to quite literally be part of a show at a Disney park, where his voice is heard by guests most every night?
“I don’t even have the words to accurately explain. It is such a dream of mine. There’s videos of me at [age] 3 singing ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ [from The Lion King] for anyone that would listen. I am such a Disney stan, deep down. I know the catalog through and through.
“To help create the soundtrack to such amazing memories that kids get to have – it’s just a dream,” he adds. “It gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment that’s really, really meaningful.”
Hoying found his way to World of Color Happiness! thanks to his work on Walt Disney World’s Epcot spectacular Luminous: The Symphony of Us. That show, which premiered in December 2023, featured a song Hoying co-wrote (with A.J. Sealy and Sheléa, performed by Sheléa) titled “Heartbeat Symphony.” Perhaps surprisingly, the song was selected for the show in a “blind” audition, so to speak, where the writers were not revealed during the initial selection process.
Stef Fink – who was the music producer for Luminous and World of Color Happiness! – invited Sealy and others to “blind submit” songs for Luminous. Sealy called up Hoying (whom Fink did not know personally at the time), and the pair submitted a track, which was among the songs the Disney team initially selected for consideration. Then, Sheléa teamed with Hoying and Sealy, and the three tinkered with the track and added Sheléa’s vocals to the demo, and Disney ultimately selected the song for the show.
So when it came time for World of Color Happiness! to begin production, the relationship Hoying and Fink had built with Luminous graduated to a new level. Knowing that World of Color Happiness! was going to be a “more vocal-forward and a more pop-forward show,” Fink thought of bringing Hoying into the creative process. “I like to surround myself with people who are smarter and musically better than I am, so I was like, ‘Scott, what are you doing?’”
On this show, Scott “stepped into so many different roles creatively, by himself and alongside me,” Fink says. “He’s not just a singer on the show and he’s not just a vocal arranger – he really informed a lot of our fun decisions, along with our incredible creative director Steve Davison and our entire team over at Disney Live Entertainment.”
The creative synergy between Fink and Hoying extended to the new song “Great Rainbow,” which the pair wrote and produced together, with Hoying singing the track alongside an orchestra and choir.
Recording the song with a live orchestra was “one of the best parts of the whole experience and why I have so much respect for the Disney Music team, because they don’t cut corners,” Hoying says, stressing the lengths Disney will go to for authenticity and accuracy in their music production.
“It’s so cool to work on a project that has so much integrity for music. … I don’t get to record with an orchestra very often – obviously, Pentatonix is a cappella – and it was so magical. As magical as you’d think it’d be. I was just bawling [in the studio] to the point where I was like, ‘All right, it’s kind of cute to cry for a second, but now it’s kind of getting crazy.’ [Laughs] I was just so moved. It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard.
“And the concept of the show is about connection, and to see 70 people who all dedicated their life to their instrument come together and play an arrangement that I worked on and they loved to play, and it made this beautiful sound… and I was like, ‘Humans, we’re all connected!’ I was just in my feels and just going through it. It was just magical.”
803Fresh’s “Boots on the Ground” is flying high on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart as it rises from the runner-up spot to top the list dated June 7. The viral, line-dance track ascends by becoming the most played song on panel-contributing adult R&B radio stations in the United States in the tracking week of May […]
After battling Parkinson’s disease for some time in private, A-ha‘s Morten Harket is now sharing his diagnosis with the public.
By way of a letter written by the band’s biographer, Jan Omdahl, the singer broke the news to fans that he has been receiving treatment for the neurological disorder “in recent years,” undergoing surgeries last June and December to implant symptom-reducing electrodes on both sides of his brain. Harket also said that he’d been having conflicting feelings for quite some time about whether he should go public with his diagnosis.
“Part of me wanted to reveal it,” he told Omdahl. “Like I said, acknowledging the diagnosis wasn’t a problem for me; it’s my need for peace and quiet to work that has been stopping me. I’m trying the best I can to prevent my entire system from going into decline. It’s a difficult balancing act between taking the medication and managing its side effects.”
“It used to bother me to think about my sickness becoming public knowledge,” Harket added. “In the long run, it bothers me more to have to protect something that is strictly a private matter by treating it as a secret.”
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According to the Mayo Clinic, Parkinson’s is a “movement disorder of the nervous system that worsens over time,” often causing tremors and affecting the motor skills of patients. There is no cure for the degenerative disease, but medicines and surgery can help ease symptoms.
For Harket, both treatment paths have “led to a dramatic improvement in his symptoms,” though he still faces regular exhaustion and strain. He also said that his singing abilities have been affected, but it’s not of primary concern for him right now.
“I don’t feel like singing, and for me that’s a sign,” he told Omdahl. “The question is whether I can express myself with my voice. As things stand now, that’s out of the question … I see singing as my responsibility, and at certain moments I think it’s absolutely fantastic that I get to do it. But I’ve got other passions too, I have other things that are just as big a part of me, that are just as necessary and true.”
Even so, the Norwegian singer has been working on new music throughout his journey with Parkinson’s, revealing that he has “great belief” in the material that’s sprung out of this period in his life. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish them for release,” Harket said. “Time will tell if they make it. I really like the idea of just going for it, as a Parkinson’s patient and an artist, with something completely outside the box.”
He also added that — while appreciative of the concern fans will undoubtedly have for him as they learn of the news — he’s already weary from the anticipation of all the messages of sympathy and unsolicited advice headed his way. “Don’t worry about me,” he said when asked what he wants listeners to know at this time. “Find out who you want to be — a process that can be new each and every day. Be good servants of nature, the very basis of our existence, and care for the environment while it is still possible to do so.”
Harket added, “Spend your energy and effort addressing real problems, and know that I am being taken care of.”
Over the past couple of decades, cases of disability and death caused by Parkinson’s have been “rapidly spreading,” according to the World Health Organization. As of 2019, an estimated 8.5 million people had the disease, an ever-growing population that also includes stars such as Michael J. Fox, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner’s Mick Jones, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt and Marc Cohn, who have all been open about their diagnoses.
A-ha was one of the defining pop groups of the 1980s, landing three entries on the Billboard Hot 100 in the second half of the decade: “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.,” “Cry Wolf,” and No. 1 hit “Take on Me.” The group is comprised of Harket and friends Magne Furuholmen and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, who formed the group in Oslo in 1982.
