State Champ Radio Music News
Page: 671
For 38 years, the annual Footwear News Achievement Awards (FNAA), known as the “Shoe Oscars,” have celebrated style icons, compelling brand stories, dedicated philanthropists, rising talents, and seasoned industry leaders.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
On Dec. 4, 2024, in New York City, the star-studded red carpet and gala honored Kenneth Cole with the Lifetime Achievement Award, Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden as Person of the Year, and New Balance as Company of the Year, among others.
The evening was filled with joy, appreciation and a touch of drama. Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden stirred the crowd with a light jab at Nike while accepting the 2024 FN Achievement Award for Person of the Year.
“As I said last year when Nike was here — they’re not here this year, which is funny. It was a joke, it was a joke,” he quipped during his speech.
Trending on Billboard
As the night unfolded, memorable moments like this continued to make the 2024 FNAA an event to remember. Here are the five best moments from the evening.
Rihanna’s Surprise Appearance
Rihanna attends Footwear News Achievement Awards (FNAAs) 2024 at Cipriani South Street on Dec. 4, 2024 in New York City.
Craig Barritt/Footwear News via Getty Images
Rihanna attended the 2024 FNAA to support her partner, A$AP Rocky, who was honored alongside Puma as Collaborator of the Year. She graced the red carpet in a white dress paired with matching white gladiator sandals, turning heads with her effortless style.
It’s inspiring to see the couple continuously pushing each other to be the best versions of themselves. Rihanna, who previously won Shoe of the Year with Puma in 2016 for her Puma Fenty Creeper, has now passed the torch to Rocky, who is following in her stylish footsteps.
As one of entertainment’s favorite couples, Rocky and Rihanna were photographed together on the carpet, chatting about their children, their relationship, and the seamless connection between music and fashion.
Throughout the evening, Rihanna was a constant presence, cheering Rocky on from the background and allowing him to bask in his moment. She was the ultimate supportive cheerleader, ensuring he received his well-deserved flowers.
Law Roach Presents On With Brand of the Year Award
Law Roach speaks onstage during the the Footwear News Achievement Awards (FNAAs) 2024 at Cipriani South Street on Dec. 4, 2024 in New York City.
Craig Barritt/Footwear News via Getty Images
Law Roach was given the opportunity to present Trailblazing Brand On with the Brand of the Year award, bringing his signature humor to the stage. “Why is the glamorous Law Roach here — someone who has never run a marathon and doesn’t plan to — presenting an award to a sportswear brand?” he mused, drawing laughter from the crowd.
Before Roach took the stage, a promotional video played, showcasing the Swiss brand and its partnership with multi-hyphenate Zendaya, alongside other athletes wearing and running in On sneakers.
Zendaya, a Billboard Hot 100 artist, led Roach to the brand, sharing, “Zendaya, my muse, who is now their brand partner, as they have been creating inspiring campaigns that bring together community, movement and storytelling.”
Roach’s collaboration with Zendaya began in 2011, and he is now celebrated as the architect of her red carpet style. Their close connection adds to the authenticity of his role in presenting On with the prestigious award.
On, known for its innovative designs and high-performance footwear, has gained widespread appeal both in the athletic community and among fashion-forward individuals. Its ability to seamlessly blend function with style has made it a standout brand, especially in a footwear space traditionally dominated by older, more established companies.
Angel Reese Gets Honest
One of the best moments of the night came when Chicago Sky forward and WNBA All-Star Angel Reese took the stage to accept the award for Style Influencer of the Year. While Reese is often seen at her very best, that night, she decided to be vulnerable with the room full of style stars, footwear icons, and industry veterans.
“I’m 22 years old, I’m still figuring life out, but this is just the beginning,” she shared. She went on to explain that her first-ever signature sneaker with Reebok would be coming in 2026.
Reese took a moment to thank her family and team for their unwavering support, as well as her fan army, the “Reese’s Pieces,” and Reebok for helping bring her dreams to life.
“I want to give a huge shoutout to Reebok for just believing in me and bringing my visions to life. Everything I ever wanted with them — and I am continuing with them — my dreams have already come true. They’ve given me the platform to be myself, unapologetically myself, and I really love that.”
Snoop Dogg Surprises Martha Stewart with Icon Award Presentation
Martha Stewart was honored with the Icon Award, but little did the room know, it would lead to the surprise of two icons in one moment. To everyone’s surprise, a video began playing, and it was none other than Snoop Dogg himself introducing his good buddy Martha Stewart as the recipient of the 2024 Icon Award.
“My friend Martha Stewart is the ultimate boss,” Snoop began, sitting comfortably in his The Voice chair. “She’s an amazing footwear ambassador for the brand, expanding it for women along with her empire.” He continued, “Now it’s my honor to present my friend, the one and only, the diva, Martha Stewart with the Footwear News Icon Award.”
Martha took the stage and shared a story about asking Siri what an icon was. Siri responded, “A small on-screen picture that represents an app, a file, or a folder, on a computer or other device,” she read aloud. Martha jokingly expressed confusion about the kind of award she was receiving, bringing laughter to the crowd. Her speech was wholesome and funny, and the audience loved every moment of it.
A$AP Rocky Accepting Collaboration of the Year
A$AP Rocky is truly one of a kind. Only he could “talk a lot of s—t” while still giving everyone who deserves it their flowers.
“Yo, this is nuts,” he began. “Initially, I just wanted to come up here and talk a lot of s—t about how lit, how handsome I am, how we’re the best, but honestly, I’m very humbled by this whole experience. I would rather just speak from the heart and be genuine.”
We knew it was going to be a great night when Emory Jones, Head of Lifestyle at Roc Nation and co-founder of the Paper Planes apparel brand, introduced him.
Pretty Flacko’s speech was heartfelt, and he described the honor as “one of the best accomplishments ever.” He then shouted out his lady, Rihanna, who was also honored by FN in 2016. “I was inspired, I saw my lady receive this thing almost a decade ago.” This was definitely a full-circle moment for the couple.
Sabrina Carpenter fans dream-came-trued it for her this year, with the 25-year-old pop star’s hit single “Espresso” ending 2024 as the most-streamed song on both Spotify and Apple Music. And in a post on Instagram Thursday (Dec. 5), Carpenter made sure to give listeners a big thank you for all the love. “most streamed song […]
Rosé channels some seriously hot/cold vibes in the new video for her solo track “Toxic Till the End.” The Avril Lavigne-like emo pop single from the BLACKPINK singer’s eagerly anticipated debut solo album, rosie, stars Gossip Girl actor Evan Mock, who plays Rosé’s love interest in the visual about a couple who meet cute before flaming out.
“Call us what we are/ Toxic from the start/ Can’t pretend that I was in the dark/ When you met my friends/ Didn’t even try with them,” she sings over the track’s bubbling synths as the clip offers up the screen couple’s origin story. It opens with pink-haired Mock flagging down Rosé’s car on a country road after his bicycle pops a flat.
Trending on Billboard
Instantly intrigued, she gives him a ride and soon enough the couple embark on a classic rom-com montage of their early, happy days. They chase each other through the lush gardens of an estate, laughing and sharing romantic fireside snuggles and sharing a tender moment where the singer signs her beloved’s cast after he wipes out on his skateboard.
The song’s urgent lyrics, though, hint at the brewing issues just underneath the shiny facade. “Jealous and possessive/ So manipulating/ Honestly impressive/ You had me participating,” she seethes as the accompanying visuals hint at a fast-growing flame quickly fizzling out as Mock appears to cover his phone to conceal a rogue text that heralds the beginning of the end.
Rosé burns out in her car and laments the betrayal hinted at in the song’s title, raging, “I can’t forgive you for a lot of things/ For not giving me back my Tiffany rings/ I’ll never forgive you for one thing my dear/ You wasted my prettiest years,” even as she hints at a complicated love too hard to dismiss in the Ramez Silyan-directed video
“When I was running out of your place/ I said I never wanna see your face/ I meant I couldn’t wait to see it again/ We were toxic,” she adds as the song climbs to a raucous din, before downshifting as the messy couple appear to make up again and Rosé reveals that their “chance” meeting might not have been as serendipitous as it seemed.
In a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the song that was originally titled “The Ex,” the singer said she wrote the tune after discussing the difficult relationship that inspired it with her friends for years. “We’ve talked about the ex a bit too much, it’s about time that we write a song called ‘the ex’,” she said; she later changed the title to something that felt like a “better punchline.”
“It was actually easy for me to talk about it because it was the thing I was talking about all the time,” she told Lowe about the story she “hated” bringing up over-and-over.
The 12-track rosie includes the hit single “APT.” featuring Bruno Mars — which has spent six weeks so far at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 — as well as “Number One Girl,” “Game Boy,” “Drinks or Coffee,” “Stay a Little Longer,” Not the Same” and “Dance All Night.”
Watch the “Toxic Till the End” video below.
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
This week, ROSÉ tells her full story, Bad Bunny hints at a major new era and TWICE keep rolling out major moments. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
ROSÉ, rosie
The debut solo album from BLACKPINK star ROSÉ may be arriving shortly after her first top 10 hit, the Bruno Mars-assisted smash “APT.,” yet rosie doesn’t sound like a hastily constructed attempt to continue momentum — the 12-song collection is a thoughtfully considered portrait of relationship complications and personal complexities, impressively splitting the difference between intimacy and arena-ready pop.
Bad Bunny, “EL CLúB”
Trending on Billboard
While 2024 was ostensibly an off-year for Bad Bunny after a whirlwind multi-year run, the Puerto Rican superstar is seemingly gearing up for a major 2025: on “EL CLúB,” his second solo single of the year, he blends propulsive dance music with atmospheric contemplation, the beat hanging in air and never reappearing (although the song’s music video suggests that it will pick back up with a new Bad Bunny project soon enough).
TWICE, Strategy
Placing an exclamation point on another highly successful year, K-pop superstars TWICE toss out another crackling Megan Thee Stallion collaboration (“Strategy”), a surefire English-language standout (“Kiss My Troubles Away”) and a holiday confection (“Magical”) on their latest mini-album, which runs for 20 minutes but covers a good amount of new ground for the collective.
Quavo, Teddy Swims & Luke Bryan, “Georgia Ways”
Quavo, Teddy Swims and Luke Bryan have all followed wildly different professional paths since emerging from the Peach State, but the new collaboration “Georgia Ways” serves as common ground for the three, who bond over college football, Waffle House and late-‘90s Chipper Jones; Teddy Swims is the newest star of the three here, and punctuates the single with some soulful, swaggering crooning.
V x Bing Crosby, “White Christmas”
The sound of BTS member V joining Bing Crosby on this revamped version of the holiday classic “White Christmas” nods to the evolution of popular music as a more global, less time-constrained medium: with the blessing of the Crosby estate, V has made his own mark on a timeless recording, honoring its spirit while bringing “White Christmas” to a new generation.
Editor’s Pick: Khalid & Normani, “Personal”
When Khalid and Normani linked up six years ago on “Love Lies,” they scored a smash duet that lingered around multiple radio formats for months; “Personal,” a follow-up included on the deluxe edition of Khalid’s recent album Sincere, will have its commercial fate determined in the coming weeks, but hearing two gifted R&B singers weave their voices together again makes for a deeply satisfying fan service, and a reminder of both artists’ individual vocal powers.
Duo The War and Treaty are set to release a new album, Plus One, on Valentine’s Day. The 18-song set, which will release via Mercury Nashville, was primarily produced by the duo’s Michael Trotter Jr., and recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The duo’s Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter worked with their longtime live band on the album, and wrap in a blend of gospel, bluegrass, country, soul, symphonic pop and more. Along the way, they collaborated with producers including Jonathan Singleton (Luke Combs, Chase Rice), John Shanks (Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow) and Jesse Frasure (Jelly Roll, Kelsea Ballerini).
“We see this record as an open invitation to be a part of what we’re doing — it came from wanting to be the hope we believe people need right now, as well as the hope that we need for ourselves,” Tanya Trotter said in a statement.
Trending on Billboard
“One of our main intentions with this album is to inspire people to share themselves with others, and open themselves up to the possibility of being loved,” Michael Trotter Jr. added.
The album’s songs include “Drink From Me” featuring Billy Strings; “Love Like Whiskey,” which the Trotters wrote with Miranda Lambert; and the Black gospel-influenced “Called You by Your Name.”
Plus One follows the duo’s 2023 project Lover’s Game, which earned a Grammy nomination for best American roots song (for the album’s “Blank Page”), while The War and Treaty was nominated for best new artist.
Over the past year, The War and Treaty has opened shows for Chris Stapleton, Zach Bryan and The Rolling Stones. In March, the duo will also launch the Plus One Tour, which will visit 30 cities across the United States, including New York City’s Irving Plaza, The Howard Theatre in D.C., The Troubadour in Los Angeles, The Kessler Theater in Dallas and more. The tour begins March 26 in Minneapolis and will conclude on June 19 in Bristol, Tenn. General ticket on-sale opens next Friday, Dec. 13, at 10 a.m. local time.
See the tracklisting for Plus One below:
“Love Like Whiskey”
“Skyscraper”
“Can I Get an Amen”
“Called You by Your Name”
“Stealing a Kiss”
“Teardrops in the Rain”
“Leads Me Home”
“Carried Away”
“Drink From Me” feat. Billy Strings
“Reminisce”
“Save Me”
“Love Is on Fire”
“I Can’t Let You Go”
“Home”
“Love Light”
“Mr. Fun”
“Tunnel Vision”
“The Glorious Ones”
There’s nothing artificial about Mariah Carey, who has addressed rumors that her 2024 Spotify Wrapped video message to fans was AI-generated. “Bad lighting and a red lip have you all thinking this is AI??” the vocalist tweeted Thursday (Dec. 5), reposting the video in question from a fan account on X. “There’s a reason I’m […]
Rauw Alejandro is going on tour next year in support of his latest album, Cosa Nuestra. The Puerto Rican superstar unveiled the dates to his world tour on Friday (Dec. 6). The Live Nation-produced stint is set to kick off April 5 in Seattle, and will then visit major cities including San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, […]
Lance Bass has had an eclectic career since *NSYNC went on hiatus in 2002. He’s acted on TV in 7th Heaven and Dancing With the Stars, in the movies in On the Line, Zoolander and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and on Broadway in Hairspray, as well as hosting the drive-time radio show Dirty Pop with Lance Bass and training for an (ultimately failed) chance to blast off into space.
But the one thing the singer could not do, apparently, was play it straight for a sitcom at a time when he said that marriage equality was beginning to bubble up in the national conversation. In a chat this week on the Politickin’ podcast, the 45-year-old pop star opened up about his lost bid at a network role after he came out in 2006.
Trending on Billboard
“I had a sitcom with The CW at the time, and we were about to shoot the pilot and this came out and they were like, ‘We can’t do the show anymore. Like, they have to believe that you’re straight to play a straight character,’” married father of twins Bass said about the unnamed show. “Every casting director I knew, they’re like, ‘Lance, we can’t cast you because they can’t look past… You’re too famous for being gay now that they can’t look at you as anything other than that.’ So, I lost everything, agents, everything.”
Bass called it a “crazy scary situation,” because, he said, “all the examples I’ve ever had of anyone coming out, especially in entertainment, was that it’s a career killer.” Bass came out in a People magazine story in 2006 and told the pod’s host, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Super Bowl champ Marshawn Lynch and agent Doug Hendrickson that he continued to struggle to find work in Hollywood afterwards, though some of those same people have since cast him in other projects.
“I mean, I knew I was gay since I was, you know, 5-years-old,” he said. “But also knew at a young age that was something I was going to have to hide my whole entire life because, you know, it was dangerous, especially growing up in a state like Mississippi where there’s not one gay person, not one out person at all, because it, again, was dangerous.”
The singer also talked about *NSYNC’s financial struggles in the early days and their battles with late manager Lou Pearlman to get paid, which prompted Newsom to bring up the legislation he signed in September — championed by Demi Lovato — that ensures that child and teenage performers who make online content are protected from financial abuse. “Always have a great group of people around you… you have to trust someone,” Bass said.
Alex Warren‘s breakthrough hit “Burning Down” just got even hotter. The singer/songwriter teamed up with Joe Jonas on Friday (Dec. 6) for a new version of the track via Atlantic Records, and Billboard is exclusively sharing a performance video the duo filmed to accompany the song. In the clip, Jonas and Warren trade lines of […]
Dolly Parton wants to give you the chance to slip into her fabulous footsteps. On Thursday (Dec. 5), the country icon and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer announced an open internet casting call for her upcoming Broadway show, Dolly: An Original Musical. “Hey there, it’s Dolly, and I am so excited to share some […]
