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President Donald Trump is once again letting his distaste for Bruce Springsteen be known after the musician slammed him and his administration during two recent concerts.
This time, an altered video Trump shared via his Truth Social platform on Wednesday (May 21) shows the commander in chief in a red Make America Great Again cap as he takes a big swing and hits a ball on the golf course as onlookers cheer him on. The video then cuts to a scene of The Boss walking on stage during a concert, as a white dot representing the golf ball suddenly sails into the shot, hits the musician in the back and knocks him down as audio of onlookers clapping and saying “nice shot” plays. Trump did not caption the video, but also shared it on X.
Billboard has reached out to Springsteen’s reps for comment.
This latest dig at the 20-time Grammy winner comes after Springsteen spoke out against the twice-impeached president on his ongoing tour. “[America] is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” the rocker, who endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, said during his first Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour in Manchester, England, on May 14. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Trump, who in May 2024 was convicted of 34 felony charges in his hush money trial, responded in a lengthy Truth Social post on May 16 calling the artist “dumb as a rock” and going on to insult his talent. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare,’” Trump wrote the same day he also insulted Taylor Swift, who also endorsed his opponent in the election. “Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Springsteen continued his criticism of the president during his May 17 show in Manchester. “In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” the musician told concertgoers. “The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
Those same comments from his two concerts are included in a new six-track EP also titled Land of Hopes & Dreams, which arrived on Wednesday.
Since the back-and-forth, the president has called for investigations into Springsteen as well as other stars for allegedly joining in on an what he calls an “illegal election scam” he claims was orchestrated by Harris’ campaign. In May 19 Truth Social posts, Trump accused The Boss, Beyoncé, U2’s Bono as well as Oprah Winfrey of illegally accepting undisclosed payments to appear at the former VP’s rallies and endorse her. FactCheck.org previously disproved those allegations when they first surfaced in 2024.
After Trump initially insulted Springsteen and Swift on May 16, the American Federation of Musicians International stepped up to defend the artists. “The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada will not remain silent as two of our members — Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift — are singled out and personally attacked by the President of the United States,” Tino Gagliardi, the organization’s president, said in part in a statement that day. “Musicians have the right to freedom of expression, and we stand in solidarity with all our members.”
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are reporting two deaths that happened amid EDC Las Vegas 2025, the dance music mega-festival that happened at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway this past weekend, May 16-18. A statement provided to Billboard by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) says that “after discussions with the coroner’s office, LVMPD will be […]
A English hard rock band that performs in masks and cloaks is not the type of artist that regularly visits the top of the Billboard 200 — yet anyone who had been paying attention to Sleep Token’s rise over the past few months knew that their fourth studio album, Even in Arcadia, was going to have a strong debut.
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After years of building a fan base, expanding their lore and inching onto the Billboard charts with increasingly higher peaks, the group kicked off the year by scoring their first career Hot 100 entries, as well as quickly selling out a slew of fall arena dates. When Even in Arcadia was released on May 9, its album tracks flooded streaming charts, a clear sign that the early enthusiasm around the album had coalesced upon its release.
Yet when the dust settled on its debut week, even the most bullish Sleep Token fan had to be pleasantly surprised: Even in Arcadia debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated May 24 with 127,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate — good enough to not only score Sleep Token’s biggest chart week ever, but the biggest total for a hard rock album in nearly two years, as well as the largest streaming week ever for a hard rock album. It’s the type of debut that blows away even the most hyped-up prognostications, and immediately makes Sleep Token one of the biggest stories in rock this year.
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The performance of this album cycle has “by far” surpassed expectations, RCA Records COO John Fleckenstein tells Billboard. Sleep Token — which debuted nearly a decade ago and has always remained under cover of anonymity, with band members never revealing their identities or speaking to the press — signed with RCA in early 2024 following the release of third album Take Me Back to Eden. That album became the band’s first to hit the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 16 in May 2023, and produced some of its first songs to hit the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.
Yet when “Emergence” — the six-and-a-half minute, multi-part prog-metal epic that opened the Arcadia era in March — debuted at No. 57 on the Hot 100 in March, thanks in part to some mind-boggling streaming numbers (9.9 million official U.S. streams from March 14-20, according to Luminate), RCA had to adjust its forecast for the commercial prospects for its host album, says Fleckenstein.
“We knew they were great, and they were potent,” he says. “But when ‘Emergence’ came out, that’s when we saw the reality of where the numbers had gotten to.”
“Emergence” was followed by “Caramel” — a more radio-friendly (yet no less audacious) single that somehow pulls off a fusion of rhythmic pop, shuffling reggaeton and a shrieking metal breakdown — and “Damocles,” Sleep Token’s version of a power ballad with twinkling pianos that morph into thundering guitars. Both of those songs hit the Hot 100 as well, at Nos. 34 and 47, respectively — and the fact that the second and third songs released from Even in Arcadia peaked higher than the first on the Hot 100 indicated to RCA that the host album was going to be a monster.
“Everyday along the path into this album, we were more and more confident that this was a big deal,” says Fleckenstein. “We just don’t see that kind of fan behavior and consistency, in terms of new music coming out.”
When RCA signed Sleep Token last year, Fleckenstein says that the two biggest indicators of the band’s upward trajectory were its rapid growth as a live act — the group leapt from clubs to theaters, and now to arenas, with strong ticket demand for each live run — and the online dedication of its fan base. The London natives have crafted a complex backstory over the year, with Sleep Token leader Vessel speaking of a higher power called Sleep and causing fans to parse through lyrics and messages to unlock new mysteries from their world.
For the band’s new major-label partner, Sleep Token’s anonymity has felt “liberating” as a promotional tool, says Fleckenstein, particularly in an era of artists oversharing on social media platforms. “So much of it is about the art that the band makes,” he notes. “The world that’s being created is being driven by the fans, and as we were building [the rollout] with the band, the part that was so rewarding was that we could not get more clever than this fan base.”
Case in point: in February, before the album cycle had truly started, the band launched a teaser site full of jumbled numbers and letters, which fans quickly found out related to the geographic coordinates of an 18th century monument in England. “It all happened in a blink!” Fleckenstein says with a laugh. “It’s because you’ve got a fan base that is undyingly passionate about this band.”
Now that Even in Arcadia is here, fans’ attention will now turn to how the album will be presented live: Sleep Token will perform the new material for the first time next month at a handful of European festivals before their U.S. arena tour kicks off on Sept. 16. In the meantime, the noise of this album debut has already unlocked opportunities for Sleep Token that aren’t normally reserved for hard rock acts: Vessel was featured as the main image of Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist on release day, for instance, and all 10 of the album’s tracks have made the Hot 100 chart. Combined with Ghost’s new album Skeletá debuting atop the Billboard 200 two weeks prior to Arcadia, a brand of new-school hard rock with baked-in mystique and accessible hooks is experiencing a mainstream boom that’s been years in the making.
“The numbers here are basically in line with high-caliber pop artists, in terms of consumption level,” says Fleckenstein of Sleep Token. “Up until this point, the focus has been on the fan base, and that won’t change — they’re the reason why we’re here… But in a lot of ways, the story from here will probably be that this isn’t some niche thing. There’s definitely a broader awakening here among media and partners that are looking at this in a different kind of way.”
A similar effect is trickling down to pop fans, too. “There are people that haven’t discovered this band yet, because they haven’t been part of the lore and they perceive it as metal, which may not be their genre of choice,” Fleckenstein says. “But it’s great music. And I think that’s going to be the road ahead.”
Three decades after composing the iconic Windows 95 startup jingle, Brian Eno has published an open letter to Microsoft, calling out the company for selling technology to Israel amid the country’s highly criticized war against Hamas.
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In a statement titled “Not in My Name: An Open Letter to Microsoft From Brian Eno” posted to Instagram Wednesday (My 21), the producer began by writing, “In the mid-1990s, I was asked to compose a short piece of music for Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.”
“Millions — possibly even billions — of people have since heard that short startup chime, which represented a gateway to a promising technological future,” he continued. “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
Eno’s words come a few days after Microsoft acknowledged in an unsigned blogpost that it sold advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military — as well as aided in efforts to locate and rescue Israeli hostages — amid the war in Gaza. Violence has run rampant in the city ever since Hamas attacked and killed about 1,200 Israeli people while taking more than 250 hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing war against the terrorist group has since led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In February, the Associated Press released an investigative report that found the Israeli military used Microsoft’s Azure platform to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance in its war efforts, among other previously unreported details about the company’s partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
After hearing concerns about its reported relationship with Israel from employees and members of the public, the tech giant stated in its blogpost that an internal review had been conducted. “We have found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct,” it reads. “It is important to acknowledge that Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.”
Regardless, Eno says the company has an “ethical responsibility” to suspend its business relationship with Israel. “These ‘services’ support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organizations, the United Nations experts and increasing numbers of governments from around the world as genocidal,” he wrote. “Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not ‘business as usual.’ It is complicity.”
The musician ended his letter by pledging to donate the fee he originally received for his Windows 95 composition to support for victims of attacks in Gaza. “If a sound can signal a real change,” he concluded, “let it be this one.”
Billboard has reached out to Microsoft for comment about Eno’s open letter.
The composer has been an important figure in Microsoft’s history for 30 years now, with his ethereal seconds-long theme soundtracking the startup process of countless people’s very first home computers all over the world. In 2025, the U.S. Library of Congress added the jingle to its National Recording Registry, which documents and preserves nationally significant recordings.
See Eno’s full statement below.
This year, Kacey Musgraves will be honored with the Songwriter Icon award at the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) annual meeting. The NMPA will also honor longtime Nashville hitmaker Rhett Akins as its Non-Performing Songwriter Icon Award recipient this year for his three decades of contributions to country music, including songs performed by Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan and more. The meeting will also feature a keynote conversation with Apple Music head Oliver Schusser.
The NMPA annual meeting, which will take place at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on June 11 in New York, is known in the business as a state of the union for the music publishing sector each year and a gathering place for its top executives to mingle. Along with honoring some of the top songwriters in the industry, NMPA president/CEO David Israelite also gives a speech at each meeting, detailing how the publishing business is doing.
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Israelite has also been known to drop groundbreaking news every year in this speech. Last year, he targeted Spotify for cutting payments to songwriters and publishers by about 40% and announced his plan to send sending an official complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as letters to the attorneys general of nine states and a list of consumer groups — urging them to stop Spotify’s efforts to bundle music and audiobooks into its premium tiers. That built on top of previous news that the NMPA had sent a cease and desist notice to Spotify for alleged unlicensed lyrics, video and podcast content on the platform, and thatthe Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) had sued Spotify. (In January, the MLC’s case was dismissed by a judge who said Spotify’s move to cut payments was supported by “unambiguous” regulations. The MLC said it plans to keep fighting.)
Other previous bombshell announcements have included major copyright infringement lawsuits against Roblox, Twitter and more, and legal action against 100 different apps for allegedly skimming music from digital services without a license.
This year’s annual meeting will include a special segment dedicated to the Billboard Songwriter Awards, which were scheduled to take place during Grammy week but were postponed due to the Los Angeles wildfires. The award recipients will be announced at the event.
“We are thrilled to honor Kacey Musgraves whose music has always been driven by lyric and melody,” says Israelite. “A consummate songwriter, she is a successful solo hitmaker and renowned collaborator. Additionally, we look forward to celebrating the career of Rhett Akins whose songwriting has been central to the growth of country music.
“We are particularly excited to feature the Billboard Songwriter Awards after our GRAMMY Week event was postponed. The honorees are incredibly deserving, and it will be a phenomenal special segment of the program.
“Finally, Oliver Schusser has been an innovator throughout his career and we are eager to get his perspective on the myriad of opportunities and challenges for digital services in the streaming economy.”
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could follow up the success and cultural dominance of Charli xcx‘s Brat. But in a new interview, the British pop star said that she’s sidestepping that concern altogether.
Speaking to Culted at the Cannes International Film Festival, Charli opened up about the “pressure” to top her critically acclaimed sixth studio album in a piece published Tuesday (May 20). “I don’t really feel the pressure to create another record like Brat, because when I was making it, even though I really believed in it and totally knew what I wanted to do with it, I had no idea how it would be received,” she began.
“I was really doing it for myself and marketing it in the way I wanted to for myself, but I had no clue that people would kind of connect to it in the way that they did,” she continued. “So yeah, I don’t really feel the pressure, because I feel that you can never really do the same thing twice, and my next record will probably be a flop which I’m down for to be honest.”
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Released in June 2024, Brat reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — Charli’s highest career peak on the chart to date. From its meme-fueling lime-green cover to its moment at the center of the 2024 United States presidential race, the album made the “Apple” singer a bona fide pop A-lister after spending years as a smaller cult-favorite artist.
Now, Charli has been focused on touring the album — she wrapped four sold-out nights at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier in May — and onscreen opportunities, including a movie she conceptualized for A24 called The Moment. Almost a year after Brat‘s release, she’s also been enjoying a resurgence of one of her older songs: “Party 4 U,” which has taken off on TikTok five years after it was released on 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now.
“It takes me back to the time of the pandemic, really, because that’s when I was recording the vocals,” she told Culted of the track, for which she recently dropped a music video. “It actually started a while before that — the initial idea. But we kind of never — I never really took it anywhere. So, yeah, now when I think of the song, I just think back to five years ago and how different the world was then. We were all inside. No one was hanging out. You know, it was kind of lonely.”
The 2025 American Music Awards will showcase a wide range of performers, from 22-year-old Benson Boone, who has back-flipped his way to stardom in the past year, to 80-year-old Sir Rod Stewart, who is set to receive a lifetime achievement award. This will mark Stewart’s first time on the AMAs stage since 2004.
The show, which is being held on Memorial Day for the first time, is set to kick off summer from the Fontainebleau Las Vegas on Monday, May 26. The 51st AMAs will air live coast to coast at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS, and stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
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This will mark the first regular American Music Awards broadcast since the show that aired in November 2022, and the first one to air on CBS. The show was a fixture on ABC from 1974 to 2022, and it will mark the first one not held in the Los Angeles area.
Jennifer Lopez is hosting the show for the second time. She previously hosted in 2015, when she opened the show with a performance of her 1999 hit “Waiting for Tonight” leading into a dance medley of the year’s biggest hits.
Two other performers on this year’s show are past AMAs hosts. Stewart co-hosted in 1989 with Anita Baker, Debbie Gibson and Kenny Rogers. Gloria Estefan co-hosted in 1990 with Alice Cooper, Anita Baker and The Judds, and in 1993 with Bobby Brown and Wynonna. Estefan will mark her first performance on the AMAs in 32 years, celebrating five decades of her career in music.
As previously announced, Janet Jackson will receive the Icon Award, which recognizes an artist whose body of work has marked a global influence over the music industry. The 11-time American Music Award-winner will also take the stage, marking her first television performance since 2018.
Gwen Stefani will perform a medley celebrating the 20th anniversary of her debut solo album Love.Angel.Music.Baby, including her Billboard Hot 100-topping smash “Hollaback Girl,” and a song from her newest album, Bouquet, which was released in November.
Fresh from winning four awards at the 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards, country music star Lainey Wilson will perform.
Breakout artist and first-time American Music Award nominee Benson Boone will perform his latest single, “Mystical Magical,” from his upcoming sophomore album American Heart, which is due June 20.
Three-time American Music Award winner Blake Shelton will make his AMAs performance debut with a track from his new album, For Recreational Use Only, which was released on May 9.
Reneé Rapp will also make her AMAs debut, performing new music off her upcoming sophomore album.
The American Music Awards is the world’s largest fan-voted award show. Tickets to the show are available now on Ticketmaster.
Kendrick Lamar leads this year’s nominees with 10 nominations, followed closely by Post Malone with eight nods, and Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Shaboozey with seven each.
Nominees are based on key fan interactions — as reflected on the Billboard charts — including streaming, album and song sales, radio airplay and tour grosses. These measurements are tracked by Billboard and Luminate, and cover the data tracking eligibility period of March 22, 2024, through March 20, 2025.
Fan voting is now closed with the exception of collaboration of the year and social song of the year, which will remain open for web voting through the first 30 minutes of the AMAs broadcast via VoteAMAs.com.
The AMAs and Easy Day Foundation, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit organization committed to helping veterans transition to civilian life, will partner to present several in-show moments that celebrate veterans while raising funds for a variety of national and local organizations.
The 2025 American Music Awards will re-air on MTV (Tuesday, May 27, at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT), CMT (Wednesday, May 28, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT) and BET (Thursday, May 29, at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT).
The show will also livestream on Harmony, Penske Media’s proprietary live streaming platform that can be viewed across Penske Media’s owned and operated websites, including Variety, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, WWD, Deadline, Vibe, IndieWire and Gold Derby.
The AMAs have also identified additional presenters and participants, including Nikki Glaser, who hosted this year’s Golden Globe Awards and has already been tapped to host next year’s show. Other presenters and participants include Tiffany Hadish and Wayne Brady, who have hosted other awards shows, and Shaboozey, who amassed seven AMA nominations this year.
Here is a list of performers and presenters on the 2025 American Music Awards. Additional names will be added as they are announced.
Performers
Benson Boone
Blake Shelton
Gloria Estefan
Gwen Stefani
Janet Jackson (Icon Award recipient)
Jennifer Lopez (host)
Lainey Wilson
Reneé Rapp
Rod Stewart (Lifetime Achievement Award recipient)
Participants & Presenters
Alix Earle
Cara Delevingne
Ciara
Dan + Shay
Dylan Efron
Jordan Chiles
Kai Cenat
Megan Moroney
Nikki Glaser
Shaboozey
Tiffany Haddish
Wayne Brady
The American Music Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.
SZA is for the children. The Grammy-winning artist took to her Instagram Story on Tuesday (May 20), saying that she convinced a young fan to throw away his whippets canister in exchange for taking a photo or video with them. “Literally talked a CHILD into throwing away his whippet drugs in exchange for a picture/video […]
As attacks on reproductive freedom continue to rise in the United States, more than 250 public figures — including Harry Styles, Megan Thee Stallion and Olivia Rodrigo — have banded together to throw their support behind Planned Parenthood.
In a letter published as a full-page ad in The New York Times Wednesday (May 21), the British pop star, Houston rapper and “Vampire” singer were just three of the hundreds of musicians, actors, designers, athletes and influencers who signed their names next to the statement “I’m for Planned Parenthood.” Addison Rae, Chelsea Cutler, Clairo, Cyndi Lauper, Del Water Gap, Gracie Abrams, Jack Antonoff, Jason Isbell, King Princess, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Maggie Rogers were also among the musicians who endorsed the message, as were Meghan Trainor, Phoebe Bridgers, Rebecca Black, R.E.M., Remi Wolf, Sara Bareilles, Sharon Van Etten, Sheryl Crow, Soccer Mommy, St. Vincent, Stevie Nicks and Tegan and Sara.
In addition to aligning themselves with the nonprofit by adding their names, signatories also acknowledged that “Americans are losing more of our freedom to decide how we live our own lives” with their signatures. “1 in 4 people in the U.S. have been to a Planned Parenthood health center for care: birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams, STI testing and treatment, abortion, gender affirming care and more,” continues a message accompanying the letter on Planned Parenthood’s website. “I’m for you and me — not the government — deciding what care we need and where we can go to get it.”
Other stars who signed include actors Pedro Pascal, Mikey Madison, Scarlett Johansson, Christina Ricci, Ellen Pompeo, Laura Dern, Melissa McCarthy, Laverne Cox and Natasha Lyonne, as well as Jimmy Kimmel, Karlie Kloss, Shonda Rhimes, Gloria Steinem, Trixie Mattel, Sofia Coppola and Cara Delevigne. Visitors have the option of adding their name to the list of supporters online.
“Every day, Planned Parenthood health center staff open the doors of health centers to ensure patients — no matter who they are — can get access to the essential health care they need,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. “Planned Parenthood health centers play an irreplaceable role in our health system. I applaud these cultural changemakers and everyone across the country who have said, loud and clear: I’m for Planned Parenthood.”
The letter comes as reproductive rights are more at risk now than they’ve been in decades. Since re-entering the White House in January for his second term — two and a half years after Roe v. Wade was overturned — President Donald Trump’s administration has enacted a number of policies restricting access to reproductive healthcare, cutting public health programs centered around reproductive healthcare and removing legal protections for reproductive healthcare clinics and providers, all within his first 100 days in office, according to a report by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
It also comes about a month after Planned Parenthood rallied support while honoring Rodrigo at its 2025 Spring Into Action Gala in New York City on April 24. After accepting the Catalyst of Change Award presented by Lily Allen — who also signed Monday’s letter — the “Drivers License” musician delivered a speech emphasizing the importance of the organization’s work.
“When I play shows, I look out at crowds filled with young girls, and the bond I feel with them is profound,” she said at the event. “We live in a world that politicizes our bodies and uses harmful ideologies to deny us safety and healthcare, and it breaks my heart to think that, because of oppressive laws and outdated policies, some of those girls may not get to follow their dreams the way I was able to follow mine.”
She added at the time, “My greatest wish is that through organizations like Planned Parenthood and the action of everyday citizens, no woman will need to sacrifice her dreams, her health or humanity because of restrictive laws or lack of resources.”
See the list of people who signed the letter supporting Planned Parenthood below:
Rod Wave (born Rodarius Green) was arrested on Tuesday (May 20) in Georgia and booked into Fulton County Jail on aggravated assault and possession of a firearm charges. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to jail records viewed by Billboard, he was hit with 12 additional […]
