Music

09 Aug 2024

‘CMT Giants’ Preps Alabama Salute With Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley & More

Blake Shelton fires up a new collaboration with country veteran Steve Wariner, covering “Old Flame” on the Aug. 15 premiere of CMT Giants: Alabama, to air at 8 p.m./7 p.m. CT exclusively on CMT. 

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A dozen artists — including Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean and Little Big Town — are slated for the special, paying homage to Country Music Hall of Fame group Alabama with live versions of the band’s classics. A rundown of the show, obtained exclusively by Billboard, also highlights performances by Alabama natives Jamey Johnson, Sam Hunt and Riley Green, who covers “Dixieland Delight,” a 1983 hit that has become a rallying cry for fans attending Crimson Tide football games.

Shelton’s collaboration with Wariner includes an appearance by Kara Britz, a supporting vocalist with Shelton’s road band.

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Following is a list of the songs on tap for CMT Giants: Alabama, taped during an invitation-only concert at Belmont University’s Fisher Center in Nashville:

Alabama – “Mountain Music,” “My Home’s in Alabama”
Jason Aldean – “Love in the First Degree”
Riley Green – “Dixieland Delight”
Sam Hunt – “Song of the South”
Jamey Johnson – “Angels Among Us”
Little Big Town – “The Closer You Get”
Old Dominion – “Roll On”
Brad Paisley – “Old Alabama”
Blake Shelton with Steve Wariner and Kara Britz – “Old Flame”
Pam Tillis and Lorrie Morgan – “Feels So Right”

Additionally, artists and celebrities including Luke Bryan, Evander Holyfield, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, and Lionel Richie will appear in-person and/or virtually to share their personal stories of Alabama’s enduring impact on music, while Alabama themselves will reflect on their decades-long career. The evening will also feature photos and performance videos of Alabama from throughout their career.

09 Aug 2024

Inglewood Mayor Addresses HARD Summer 2024 Noise Complaints: ‘Lessons Learned’

Following a flurry of noise complaints about HARD Summer 2024, Inglewood, Calif., Mayor James T. Butts Jr. has released a statement about the issues experienced at the electronic music festival that took place last Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 3-4) at the city’s Hollywood Park Complex at SoFi Stadium.

“We were perplexed at the sound propagation experienced in the South Bay, because there have been multiple outdoor concerts on the SoFi campus without this issue,” Butts wrote in a statement released by the Mayor’s Office Friday (Aug. 9) and provided to Billboard. “After meeting with representatives from the event promoter and the venue, we conducted a thorough review of the modifications and changes made between Saturday and Sunday of HARD Summer, specifically in response to noise complaints from neighboring communities.”

This is the first time HARD Summer, which has been happening at locations around Southern California since 2008, has been held at Hollywood Park.

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Butts’ statement continues, “It is important to clarify that the sound and vibration issues experienced over the weekend were related to certain bass frequencies,” adding that such frequencies can be affected by stage position, reflection off of buildings and weather factors like the wind.

Butts notes that bass vibrations were first reported in nearby El Segundo on Saturday afternoon, not long after the two-day festival began, although online commenters first reported experiencing the noise issues on Friday (Aug. 2) while the festival was doing sound checks. Local paper The Daily Breeze reported that “the El Segundo Police Department received so many complaints on the festival’s first night that the law enforcement agency posted a notice on the social media platform X asking residents to stop calling 911.”

HARD Summer is produced by Insomniac Events, which puts on many major global electronic music festivals including EDC Las Vegas. The HARD Summer 2024 lineup featured electronic artists including Disclosure, Major Lazer, deadmau5, Sub Focus, Chase & Status, Sofi Tukker and many more. The 300-acre Hollywood Park Complex adjacent to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood featured four stages during the festival, with one of them located in the Stadium’s American Airlines Plaza and the other three located around the Complex’s sprawling parking lot.

Butts’ statement notes that the stage in the American Airlines Plaza was “a major contributor to the issue” given that the area is elevated. He adds that no stages will be permitted in this area for future events and that “we will require even greater sound engineering with a more comprehensive plan when it comes to addressing sound and bass frequency management.”

Following the noise complaints, Butts writes that “city authorities engaged the event promoter and the venue and implemented several critical adjustments to each stage and established enhanced monitoring plans for overall sound and bass levels. Additional sound engineers were strategically positioned in areas of concern from Saturday afternoon through Sunday and were promptly dispatched to make necessary adjustments in real time. As a result, a significant decrease in call volume was observed on Sunday in the initially impacted areas.”

He continues that despite these changes, some in the area continued to experience the effects of the bass vibrations — including rattling windows and doors — adding that “with the lessons learned this past weekend, we are prepared to better monitor and supervise future event organizers to minimize the sound and vibration impact on the community outside the venue.”

Two other festivals are currently scheduled to take place at the Hollywood Park Complex: Fool In Love on Aug. 31 featuring Lionel Richie and Diana Ross and, in March 2025, Rolling Loud. The lineup for the latter event has yet to be announced.

“Over the past 10 years Inglewood has re-emerged as a premier hub for sports and entertainment,” Butts’ statement concludes. “That title comes with significant responsibility and we are committed to maintaining the highest standards.”

09 Aug 2024

Here’s Why Fans Think Latto Is Dissing Ice Spice on ‘S/O to Me’ From ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’

Latto made her return on Friday (Aug. 9) to serve up her anticipated Sugar Honey Iced Tea album. The 25-year-old’s fiery LP closer “S/O to Me” generated chatter among fans online as she sniped at potential targets with her lyrical barbs.

Apple Music’s Ebro Darden saw Latto trying to get into her “Jay-Z bag” while others thought “S/O to Me” was inspired by something in the vein of Drake’s famed timestamp series.

As far as Latto’s rhymes go, over smooth Saint Mino production, fans believe she took more shots at Ice Spice ,as it doesn’t look like this feud is stopping anytime soon.

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“Bye sis, funny thing about it, you can’t look me in my eye, sis,” she raps in an apparent jab at Ice using her government name, while later spewing: “Ice is just water when it melts/ Wipe you down, I got plenty towels on the shelf, it’s easy.”

Another bar that could be a stretch when related to Ice ties in the name of her 2022 “Karma” collaboration with Taylor Swift. “Karma will deal with you, though, I promise, your judgment awaits,” Latto ominously spews.

In another lyric, Latto raps, “You fighting for radio play, he fighting a government case,” which some took as a Nicki Minaj diss. Minaj has voiced her frustration with a lack of radio support and her husband, Kenneth Petty, is still dealing with the ramifications of a 1994 sexual assault case.

A fan wrote to X after hearing the menacing track: “Latto is at it again coming for the rap girls. Wordplay on Ice Spice name and another sub for her and Nicki. Latto takes me out she don’t care!”

However, Latto told Ebro Darden on Apple Music that she’s “exhausted” by the rap feuds she’s been entrenched in. “I’m exhausted. For real, I’m so over the beef. I’m gonna put this out there, Latto don’t got no problems with nobody,” she said.

When Ebro named some of the aforementioned lyrics that could be taken as shots at Ice Spice, Latto said she doesn’t look at the jabs as real “beef.” “That’s not beef though, that’s art to me. I think art is up for interpretation and that’s the beauty of it,” Latto added.

Ice Spice addressed the rumored feud in her Rolling Stone cover story, but she didn’t think there was any real static between Latto and herself. “I feel like if we ever spoke and I asked her, ‘What’s the issue?’ it’d be like a blank stare,” she stated. “It’d really be no issue whatsoever. Especially from me. I can understand a friendly competition, but I just feel like at this point it’s a joke that she’s just dragged out, and it’s just not even funny.”

Latto said she didn’t think Ice Spice was the kind of rapper who would want to engage in a rap battle that involved them exchanging full diss tracks. “If I was to do [a battle], it would have to be with somebody I feel like Imma go tit for tat with,” Latto told Billboard in her July cover story. “I really don’t mean it as shade. Would she even want to do that?”

Listen to “S/O to Me” below.



09 Aug 2024

Lil Pump Says He’s Leaving America If Kamala Harris Becomes President

Lil Pump — who has supported Donald Trump since 2020 and has a tattoo of the former president’s mugshot on one of his thighs — has promised to leave the country if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election.

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The Miami rapper recently gave his fans the news in a video shot in his car. “I swear on my dad’s grave, if this stupid-a– bi— Kamala Harris wins the f—ing election, I’m moving out of America, boy,” he said. “I swear on everything.”

He then claimed on X that he’s going to perform a diss track aimed at both President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris during Trump’s next rally. “I will be performing the joe Biden kamal Harris diss track at the next trump rally,” he tweeted.

After Harris was announced as the hopeful replacement for President Biden as the Democratic nominee, Pump took to X and to voice his displeasure, tweeting, “Kamala Harris isn’t even black… she’s Indian. She locked up over 1,500 people for weed related crimes and then laughed about it years later. The worst VP in American History. Trump 2024”

If you remember, back in 2020 during a rally, the former president introduced Lil Pump as “Lil Pimp.”

“Speaking of sound, music and other things, one of the big superstars of the world, Little Pimp,” he said. “There he is! How’s it going? Do you want to come up and say something?”

When Pump got onstage, he told the crowd, “I came here to say, Mr. President, I appreciate everything you’ve done for our country. You brought the troops home and you’re doing the right thing. MAGA 20, 20, 20. Don’t forget that! Don’t forget that. And do not vote for Sleepy Joe at all!”

09 Aug 2024

John Legend Drops ‘L-O-V-E’ Feat. Chrissy Teigen & Their Kids Ahead of Children’s Lullaby Album

John Legend is turning his music career into a family business with the release of his new single “L-O-V-E,” which features wife Chrissy Teigen and two of their kids and arrives ahead of the Grammy winner’s upcoming children‘s lullaby album My Favorite Dream.

The “All of Me” artist both announced the 15-track LP and dropped the cheerful new song on Friday (Aug. 9), sharing the cover art for both on Instagram. The album is fronted by a cute throwback photo of Legend from when he was a little boy, while the song’s artwork was illustrated by 8-year-old Luna, who is featured as a background vocalist on “L-O-V-E” alongside her mom and little brother, 6-year-old Miles.

“Special thanks to the artist, Miss Luna, for the beautiful artwork,” Legend wrote, also posting a muted video of him dancing with his 1-year-old daughter Esti. “All music is baby tested, baby approved.”

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Produced by Sufjan Stevens, My Favorite Dream features nine original family-friendly tunes written by Legend, plus covers of existing classics such as “Three Little Birds” and “You Are My Sunshine.” The Voice coach was inspired to release an album of lullabies when a video of him serenading Esti on the piano received warm feedback from fans, according to his post.

“I’m right in the thick of fatherhood,” stated Legend, who welcomed his fourth child with Teigen — a son named Wren — in June 2023. “My parents loved to sing around the house, making up bedtime songs for us and songs to motivate and inspire us. And Chrissy and I also love singing to our kids. We make up little jingles and ditties for them all the time. In our home, music is very important to the way we interact and communicate with them.”

“Once I started thinking about it, I decided I wanted to write a whole new children’s album,” he continued in a release. “I just took it on as a challenge to write some original lullabies and children’s songs that I would want my kids to hear, something we could share with kids and parents all over the world.”

My Favorite Dream arrives Aug. 30. Listen to “L-O-V-E” featuring Teigen, Luna and Miles below.

09 Aug 2024

Drake Is Redesigning His Air Drake Private Jet: Here’s a Sneak Peek

Air Drake is getting a facelift.

The Toronto rapper recently previewed Air Drake 2’s redesign on Instagram, and it features a message that confirms your suspicions: “Chances are she’s on board.” Air Drake’s first iteration had the message, “If you’re reading this we left,” a play on his classic 2015 mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.

The private Boeing 767 is a gift from cargo company Cargojet and can fit around 200 passengers if it were equipped like a commercial plane. Both iterations of the plane’s exterior were designed by the late Virgil Abloh. Air Drake 1’s paint job took inspiration from the cover of the rapper’s 2013 album Nothing Was the Same, with its blue sky and fluffy clouds. Air Drake 2, however, looks to be painted with a more overcast sky and lightning.

The cabin features three private suites, two living rooms, a business lounge, an entertainment room and a bathroom with a shower. All this is accented with gold and wood surfaces, carpeted floors and beige and light purple furniture.

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When Drake first showed off his plane back in 2019, he said he partnered with Cargojet because he wanted to support a Canadian business. “Supporting home grown businesses has always been a top priority of mine, so when an opportunity came up to get involved with a great Canadian company I was honored to do so,” he said in a press release.

Air Drake is almost 30 years old and was first bought in 1996 by Saudi Arabia’s Mid East Jet, according to chi-aviation.com.

09 Aug 2024

Watch Tate McRae & Megan Moroney Perform ‘Tennessee Orange’ in Nashville

Tate McRae had a special surprise for fans during her Nashville show on Tuesday night (Aug. 6).

The “Greedy” star took to TikTok to share that she brought out a surprise guest, Megan Moroney, and the duo performed Moroney’s breakthrough hit, “Tennessee Orange.” In the clip, the two singer harmonize on the chorus, singing together lyrics: “I met somebody and he’s got blue eyes/ He opens the door and he don’t make me cry.”

“Oh how I love her,” McRae captioned the post.

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Last month, Moroney cleared the air about her rumored romance with fellow country star Morgan Wallen, whom “Tennessee Orange” is rumored to be about. While on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alex Cooper directly asked her if she dated the “Last Night” singer. “Never exclusively,” Moroney replied. “I have tried to avoid that in every single interview I’ve ever done. But we’re here now and time has passed and all is well.”

She declined to confirm if “Tennessee Orange,” is about Volunteers fan Wallen as speculated, but she explained that she met the star right before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 while she was a senior in college. “We were friends for a long time. We were not just friends. And now we’re friends,” she explained. “I feel like he’s a very private person. We weren’t exclusively dating ever and I think that both of our schedules… when we tried to hang out it was like, ‘OK, we have this one day of the whole month where we’re both maybe in town and then the other has something going on.’”

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09 Aug 2024

Adele & Rich Paul Engaged: Singer Reveals She’s ‘Getting Married’ at Munich Concert

Wedding bells are in Adele and Rich Paul’s future, with the English singer revealing Friday (Aug. 9) that she’s engaged to the sports agent after three years of dating.

The unofficial announcement came during Adele’s concert in Munich, where she’s currently three shows in to a monthlong residency at a custom-built stadium that seats 74,000 guests a night. The 16-time Grammy winner appeared to read aloud a fan’s sign that said, “Will you marry me?”

“I can’t marry you,” she replied, holding up her left hand to indicate a ring on her finger as the crowd cheered. “‘Cause I’m already getting married.”

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Billboard has reached out to both Adele and Paul’s reps for comment.

The couple first started dating in 2021, with the businessman revealing in a New Yorker profile that he had been “hanging out” with “a major pop star.” They made their first public outing together two months later at game 5 of the NBA Finals in Phoenix.

“He’s just hilarious. And very smart,” Adele said of her beau in an interview with Oprah that November. “It’s quite incredible watching him do what he does,” she told Winfrey also sharing that she’s experiencing the first time she’s ever “loved myself and been open to loving and being loved by someone else.”

Proposal rumors swirled in 2022 when the “Hello” singer attended the BRIT Awards with a diamond ring on her left finger, something she confessed to having no intentions of clarifying for fans. “As if I would ever tell anyone if I was or wasn’t,” she said of the engagement speculation on The Graham Norton Show.

Adele was previously married to Simon Konecki, with whom she shares her only child Angelo. Her most recent album 30, which arrived in November 2021 and spent six weeks atop the Billboard 200, is predominantly themed around her experiences processing and recovering from the relationship with her son.

Watch the moment Adele announced she’s engaged to Rich Paul below.

09 Aug 2024

Adele & Rich Paul’s Relationship: A Timeline

A look back at Adele and Rich Paul’s relationship.

Adele and Rich Paul

Adele and Rich Paul attend the 2022 NBA All-Star Game at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on February 20, 2022 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Kevin Mazur/GI

There’s a fire starting in her heart — but instead of rolling in the deep, Adele has spent the past few years rolling up to basketball games, A-list wedding ceremonies and red-carpet events with Rich Paul.

The vocal powerhouse first shocked the world with news of her relationship in summer 2021, when she made a rare public appearance at a Phoenix Suns basketball game in July. Though that much-talked-about evening was one of the first times fans had seen one of history’s best-selling musical acts since she released her third studio album 25 six years prior, it was also so much more than a toe-dip back into the spotlight. Why? Because she took her seat in the crowd with Paul, an Ohio-based sports agent, close by her side.

That night was the beginning of their public-yet-private relationship — but before then, Adele had long become world famous for belting soulful, fiery ballads about devastating heartbreak and had spent much of 2019 as the subject of headlines scrutinizing her divorce from ex-husband Simon Konecki, with whom she shares her only child Angelo. Her album 30, which arrived in November 2021, is predominantly themed around her experiences processing and recovering from the relationship with her son.

No matter how it felt for her at the time, though, the pain Adele felt while writing the songs on 30 eventually yielded to a new romance, thanks to Paul. Only time will tell if the basketball entrepreneur one day inspires a record full of love songs, but for now, take a look at his and Adele’s love story below.

09 Aug 2024

Charli XCX Becomes First British Artist to Reach No. 1 on U.K. Singles Chart in 2024

Finally! We’re well into August and it took up until this week for a British act to reach No. 1 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart in 2024.

Charli XCX achieves the feat as her remix of “Guess,” featuring Billie Eilish, debuts at No. 1. It’s the first song by a British artist to top the Official U.K. Singles Chart since Wham!’s 1984 holiday perennial “Last Christmas” wrapped up a four-week run at No. 1 over the 2023 holidays. Since then, the No. 1 spot on the U.K. chart was held by seven American acts and one Irish act (Hozier, who led for two weeks with “Too Sweet”).

Sabrina Carpenter has held the top spot on the Official U.K. Singles Chart for a total of 12 weeks (so far) in 2024 – seven for “Espresso” and five for “Please Please Please.” The other hits by American acts that have topped the U.K. chart so far in 2024 are Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” (seven weeks), Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” (five weeks), Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” (two weeks), Taylor Swift feat. Post Malone’s “Fortnight” (one week) and Eminem‘s “Houdini” (two weeks).

“Guess” becomes Charli’s second No. 1 in the U.K. — and her first as a lead artist. She first topped the chart in 2013 as the featured artist on Icona Pop’s “I Love It.”

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“Guess” is the third U.K. chart-topper for Eilish, which is two more than she has had in her home country. (“Bad Guy” remains her only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 to date.) Moreover, “Guess” is Eilish’s first U.K. No. 1 that wasn’t from a film. Her two previous U.K. No. 1s are “No Time to Die” (2020) and “What Was I Made For?” (2023), her Oscar-winning songs from the James Bond film of the same name and Barbie, respectively.

“Guess” first appeared on the deluxe edition of Charli XCX’s album Brat, dubbed Brat and It’s the Same but There’s Three More Songs So It’s Not.

“Guess” has yet to appear on the Billboard Hot 100, but, writing in the weekly Trending Up column, Jason Lipshutz suggests that that will soon change: “Don’t be shocked if ‘Guess’ crashes the top 20 of the Hot 100 next week.”

Chappell Roan’s first full-length album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, reaches No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart in its 17th week. That’s higher than the album has climbed on the Billboard 200, where it inches up to No. 4 this week, its highest ranking to date.

Roan is the ninth American artist to reach No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums chart in 2024, following Green Day, Kahan, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Swift, Eilish, Gracie Abrams and Eminem.