Music
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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.
Fuerza Regida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz (JOP), Gabito Ballesteros and Lupillo Rivera join the new reality show Pase a la Fama, set to premiere Sunday (June 8) on Telemundo. The three Mexican artists will form part of the music competition series — focused on discovering the next great regional Mexican band — as mentors, where they […]
It’s officially Lil Wayne week. Weezy is set to return with the sixth installment of arguably rap’s most decorated album series with Tha Carter VI arriving on Friday (June 6).
Seven years after C5, Wayne hopes to make more history and add to his decorated legacy. The project’s slated to be another star-studded affair with a range of rumored features from Miley Cyrus, Bono, MGK, Wyclef Jean, Andrea Bocelli and more.
Three decades into a hall-of-fame career, Lil Wayne changed the aesthetic of rappers and the genre’s sound in the 21st century. Take a look at all the “Lil”s in the rap game, the tattoos and dreadlocks, that can be attributed to Weezy’s influence. His intoxicating Auto-Tune-laced rhymes and witty punchlines that seemingly never end ushered in a new archetype of rapper.
“Before I stepped into music, everyone looked a certain way and everyone did a certain thing. Look at me. Now look at music. They all look like me,” he said in 2020. “I love it.”
At the end of every concert, Lil Wayne expresses gratitude to his fans, saying, “I ain’t s–t without you.” But Weezy wouldn’t but the artist he is without Tha Carter series—a staple in his discography and an artifact of hip-hop history. “Welcome back hip-hop, I saved your life,” he raps on Tha Carter 3’s “Dr. Carter.”
Lil Wayne’s prime heading into C3 circa ‘07-’08 was something you had to see to believe. In a genre with goliaths like Kanye West, Jay-Z and Eminem dominating, Weezy stood tall at 5’5”, in a league of his own. At times, his greatness was impossible to measure through sheer commercial numbers, with the droves of leaks and mixtape files being shared online between fans in a pre-streaming world.
“You scare me, man, every time you spit,” Ye told Wayne on stage at the 2008 BET Awards while referring to Weezy as his “fiercest competition.”
The New Orleans rap deity will take a bow and a well-deserved victory lap on Friday night when he celebrates Tha Carter VI’s arrival with his first headlining solo show at Madison Square Garden. How is that possible?
Billboard sifted through all five installments of Tha Carter and attempted to do the impossible, filing down a list to the 10 best tracks from the acclaimed series. (And a quick honorable mention to “Mirror,” “This is the Carter,” “I Miss My Dawgs,” “Got Money,” “Mona Lisa,” “Fly In” and “Comfortable.”)
“Tha Mobb”
Audra McDonald has won six Tony Awards, more than any other performer, and she has a good chance to extend her record at the 2025 Tonys on Sunday (June 8). The Broadway legend is nominated for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for her portrayal of Mama Rose in […]
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip.
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This week: Each of Taylor Swift’s Reputation tracks are up following her announcement of having acquired the masters to her Big Machine-era albums — but which are up the most? Plus, a Kellyoke outing helps a Texas singer-songwriter get a break, and TikTok pettiness helps mint another fun new country hit.
Taylor Swift’s Surging ‘Reputation’: Which Songs Are Getting Streamed the Most?
Following Taylor Swift’s announcement on Friday (May 30) that she had bought back the master recordings of her first six albums, the superstar’s entire catalog posted sales and streaming gains, as Swifties rushed to celebrate the hard-fought victory. In addition to her five most recent studio albums and four Taylor’s Version re-records receiving boosts, her first six full-lengths naturally saw spikes in listenership — particularly Reputation, her 2017 opus which had not yet been given a Taylor’s Version treatment (and possibly never will).
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Reputation has experienced the biggest gain in consumption since Friday’s announcement, averaging 8,000 equivalent album units between Friday and Saturday, according to Luminate, and challenging for a return to the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 next week. Digging into the individual songs, every single track on the album earned a increase in daily U.S. on-demand audio streams of at least 70 percent in the four days after the announcement (May 30-June 2) compared to the same tracking period during the previous week (May 23-26), with “So It Goes…” getting the biggest percentage bounce by rising to 983,000 streams in those four days, up a whopping 262% from the previous week.
The biggest hits on Reputation earned big boosts as well: lead single and Hot 100 chart-topper “Look What You Made Me Do” rose 70% to 2 million streams between May 30-June 2, while “Delicate” was up 85% to 2.02 million streams over those four days. The most-streamed song on Reputation, however, was the opener, “…Ready For It?,” which earned 2.21 million streams over that four-day period (up 80%). When Swifties wanted to finally return to Reputation, they clearly wanted to start at the top and savor the whole thing. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Elizabeth Nichols Has ‘Got a New’ Hit Following ‘Kellyoke’ Cover
While pop star-turned-TV host Kelly Clarkson has made the ‘Kellyoke’ covers segment on her eponymous talk show a pop institution largely taking on a combination of established classics and contemporary hits, occasionally she likes to look to the future a little. That’s what she did last week, when she took on Texas country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nichols’ late-2024 single “I Got a New One,” a clever sung-spoken ditty that sees her responding to childish romantic ultimatums by calling “next” on her partners. “I love [that song] so much, it’s so funny,” raved Fort Worth native Clarkson after her performance. “I always love shining a light on a fellow Texan.”
And indeed, the spotlight has been on Nichols and her winning debut single in the days since. In the four days following Clarkson’s performance, “I Got a New One” racked up 549,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in total, according to Luminate – a 462% gain on the four-day period prior to the cover. Even more impressively, the song shot to the top tier of the iTunes chart on the back of nearly 3,200 in sales over that same period, up over 63,000% from a negligible amount the prior period.
Given the way the country world deemed Ella Langley a star following her breakout success with her similarly sung-spoken Riley Green duet “You Look Like You Love Me” just last year, it might not be long before Nashville decides it’s got a new one in Elizabeth Nichols. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Vengefulness Propels Blackly Comedic Kaitlin Butts Single to Viral Success
“F*cking finally!” proclaimed the country newsletter Don’t Rock the Inbox about the long-overdue viral success of Oklahoma singer-songwriter Kaitlin Butts and her song “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me).” Indeed, the darkly funny highlight from Butts’ acclaimed 2024 album Roadrunner has belatedly hit TikTok paydirt, thanks to a couple sounds from it – including the chorus chant, and the spoken-word pre-chorus breakdown (“You know, I think I have heard of that man… I think I heard he got run over by a train, mauled by a bear, maybe? Hopefully”) – catching on with users sharing the reasons they’ve prematurely called a TOD on an ex.
Butts herself has helped accelerate the moment on her own TikTok, sharing some of the more unseemly examples and dueting along with high-profile cosigners like Internet celebrity Brianna Chickenfry and – once again – country star Ella Langley. Consequently, the song has begun to cross over to DSPs, racking up 473,000 official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending May 29, according to Luminate – a 3,342% gain from two weeks earlier, when the song netted just under 14,000 streams. As the song continues to rise, it just proves that the combination of a good, funny country song and the power of online vindictiveness is never to be underestimated. – AU
Jamie Foxx is not pulling punches when it comes to his thoughts on the Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ New York sex trafficking and racketeering trial. During a recent appearance at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, the actor/singer lashed out at the disgraced former music mogul who he once honored at Diddy’s 2008 Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony.
“Diddy is fu–in’ crazy, huh?” Foxx said in footage shared by Urban Hollywood. “I don’t know if he is going to jail, but he is a nasty motherf–er. Am I right? Especially for us… white people like, ‘It’s cool,’ but for Black people… that was our hero. All that g–damn baby oil, boy! Why you so nasty, Diddy?” When officers raided Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami last March prosecutors said they found drugs as well as more than 1,000 bottles of lubricant and baby oil.
The comments from Foxx about the shocking testimony in the Combs trial in reference to the rapper’s marathon “Freak Off” sex parties is relevant because in 2023 rumors circulated that Combs allegedly poisoned Foxx, leading to the actor’s hospitalization for what was later confirmed to be a stroke.
Foxx opened up about the rumors surrounding his mystery illness last month in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, shooting down the allegations that Diddy tried to have him killed via poisoning. “I’m in f—ing perfect shape. [I saw things like,] ‘Puffy tried to kill me.’ No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me. When they said I was a clone, that made me flip,” Foxx said. “I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, ‘These b—h-a– motherf—ers are trying to clone me.’”
While a spokesperson for Combs did not reply to Billboard‘s request for a comment on the allegations, his team has repeatedly said the rumor was false and unfounded.
Foxx also addressed the allegations in his What Had Happened Was… Netflix special in December, in which he said, “The internet said Puffy was trying to kill me, that’s what the internet was saying. I know what you thinking, ‘Diddy?’ Hell no, I left them parties early. I was out by 9. ‘Something don’t look right… it looks slippery in here!” The Combs trial is in its fourth week and on Wednesday (June 4) Bryana Bongolan, a friend of Diddy’s ex, prosecution star witness Cassie Ventura, alleged that Diddy dangled her over a 17th-floor apartment balcony in 2016 before shoving her into the balcony’s furniture.
Combs is facing five criminal counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution, charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life; Combs has denied the allegations against him.
In recent weeks, The All-American Rejects have been going viral for performances at small house parties. And now, frontman Tyson Ritter is taking his talents to an even more intimate space: OnlyFans.
As revealed Wednesday (June 4) through an interview with GQ, the rock singer has decided to set up an account on the creator-focused online subscription platform, which has become known for its NSFW content. According to Ritter, he’s more focused on using the website to build a closer, more direct relationship with fans — but they might be able to expect a little bit of the risqué on top of it.
“I don’t think anybody would have expected the All-American Rejects to make a ripple in the water ever again,” began Ritter of his band, which dominated the pop-rock landscape in the 2000s before fading from the mainstream in the 2010s. “So the excitement behind this whole thing is like, ‘Where else can we be disruptive?’”
“We’ve always been a band who’s got a tongue bursting through the cheek when it comes to our music,” he continued. “So why not, you know, do a little peen bursting through a zipper?”
The musician remained vague about what his subscribers are in for, divulging only that they “can expect full-frontal rock n’ roll with all access.” Adding that he doesn’t plan on making fans pay very much to access his content — “If anything, maybe you’ll pay 69 cents, just because we’re little cheeky cats,” he quipped — Ritter said that bandmates Nick Wheeler, Mike Kennerty and Chris Gaylor are totally supportive of his new venture.
At press time, Ritter’s OnlyFans account did not appear to have launched yet.
The band’s latest “disruptive” move comes as the All-American Rejects have been experiencing a renaissance online thanks to their string of viral house-party performances. According to Ritter, the streak (of smaller shows, not the other kind) began about a month prior to the interview, when the band somewhat spontaneously accepted an offer to perform at a college rager near the University of Southern California. One of their recent performances at a house party near the University of Missouri was shut down by police — but not before the responding officers stopped to listen to a few more songs, per CNN.
Ritter is far from the only star to have joined OnlyFans, with several other musicians having turned to the platform as an additional source of income — or as a way of engaging more personally with listeners — over the years. Cardi B, Rico Nasty and The-Dream have all created accounts on the platform, while Lily Allen joined the platform last year to sell pictures of her feet.
“I think most people don’t realize that OnlyFans was a product of the pandemic that started as a Patreon for artists,” Ritter added to GQ of the site. “And then it was infiltrated by a genre that made it become a bit of a trope. It’s a platform that is offering an experience where the artist can set the price, and it’s artists-to-fans. There’s no middleman.”
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated June 14, we look at a handful of albums likely to impact the top tier of the chart – a couple brand new, and a couple recently revitalized, led by a likely rebound from the biggest pop star in the world.
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Taylor Swift, Reputation (Big Machine): On a day of big new releases, last Friday (May 30) was still dominated by the news that Taylor Swift had officially acquired her own masters. Billboard reported from sources that she paid around $360 million for the acquisition from private equity firm Shamrock Capital, which had acquired the catalog in late 2020 from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, after Braun had bought Swift’s old label Big Machine the year before. Braun’s initial purchase, and Swift’s negative reaction to her professional adversary having such a big stake in her history, had of course inspired the entire Taylor’s Version project — which led to Swift re-recording four of her first six albums over the course of 2021-2023, along with a number of period-appropriate rarities. That endeavor not only proved wildly successful for Swift, but played a major part in her 2020s ascension to a level of solo superstardom not seen before this century.
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One of the two Big Machine-era albums she had yet to get to with her Taylor’s Version series was Reputation, the divisive 2017 album that followed both her ultimate pop breakthrough with 2014’s 1989 and the backlash that ensued, particularly after her back-and-forth feuding with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Along with the announcement of the acquisition of her masters, Swift also revealed that Reputation (Taylor’s Version) had been the most challenging of the series for her to put together, as she found it difficult to get back into the headspace of that album era — and thus had not even finished re-recording a quarter of it. Fans could infer from her letter that now that Swift’s back catalog was once again her own, she would be unlikely to finish re-recording the rest of it anytime soon.
But while some fans may have been disappointed that they would not get the full Reputation (Taylor’s Version) package anytime soon — which was so long-anticipated that the original album got a consumption bump a couple weeks ago merely based on rumors that she might reveal something about it on the AMAs — most were ready to revisit the original album anyway. With no re-recording imminent, and Swift once again the owner of her back catalog, fans flocked to the original Reputation, resulting in it leaping to the top of the iTunes albums chart, and launching five of its tracks back onto the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart for Saturday (May 31).
The major bump in sales and streams, for an album that was still ranking at No. 78 on the Billboard 200 in its 349th week on the chart, could see the album make a major rebound next week. It’s unlikely to supplant Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem — but no album is, as Problem posted 286,000 units this week (according to Luminate) in its second week atop the chart, and is likely to still be comfortably in the six figures in its third week, thanks to the 37-track set’s gargantuan streaming numbers. But it could get as high as the top five, maybe even to the runner-up spot, if fan enthusiasm maintains the further we get away from Swift’s Friday announcement. (Swift could also perhaps give sales a boost if she made the album available for sale on her webstore — as of publishing, it was still not listed there.)
Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful (Columbia): Perhaps Swift’s main competition for the biggest chart-crasher this week is her old Hannah Montana: The Movie co-star Miley Cyrus. The veteran pop superstar returned on Friday with her new LP Something Beautiful, the audio part of a visual album project whose film accompaniment is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday (June 6).
Something Beautiful follows 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation, and its galactically successful lead single “Flowers,” which became the biggest chart hit of Cyrus’ career and won her her first two Grammys. So far, none of the advance releases from Something Beautiful appear to be on anywhere near a “Flowers” trajectory, however — the only one of them to even reach the Billboard Hot 100 so far was official lead single “End of the World,” which debuted at No. 52 and fell off the chart after just four weeks.
While Something Beautiful is unlikely to be an immediate streaming blockbuster — as of midweek, none of its tracks appear on either the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA or the Apple Music real-time charts — it should sell relatively well. To help with that, the album is available in six different vinyl variants (including an artist webstore-exclusive signed version), as well as standard and signed CDs and two deluxe branded boxed sets with the CD and branded merch. At the very least, the set should extend Miley’s streak of top five albums on the Billboard 200 — which encompasses every one of her official studio releases dating back to 2007’s Meet Miley Cyrus, excepting 2015’s Miley Cyrus & Dead Petz, which was not initially given a commercial release.
SEVENTEEN, SEVENTEEN 5th Album ‘Happy Burstday’ (Pledis/YG Plus): Also aiming for the top five next week is an act with less stateside household-name recognition as Swift and Cyrus, but nearly as much of a presence on the albums chart. SEVENTEEN has reached the Billboard 200’s top 10 six times already in the 2020s, and even gotten as high as No. 2 with two 2023 releases, the EP FML and the mini-album Seventeenth Heaven.
The 13-member group is likely to return to the top 10 next week with its fifth full-length album, Happy Burstday — a 16-track effort that includes contributions from two of the biggest U.S. hitmakers of the early 21st-century in Pharrell and Timbaland. While SEVENTEEN has never been a major force on streaming in the U.S., the group are reliable high-sellers, and Burstday is available for purchase in a whopping 14 CD variants — all of which contain collectible branded paper ephemera, some of which is randomized. It should be enough for Burstday to be a real contender for the Billboard 200’s runner-up spot, along with the Swift and Cyrus sets.
Xavi and Manuel Turizo unite for their first No. 1 together as “En Privado” advances from No. 3 to lead Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart (dated June 7). The song leads with 8.7 million audience impressions, up 27%, earned in the United States during the May 23-29 tracking week, according to Luminate.
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Xavi secures his second No. 1 on the overall Latin Airplay chart as “En Privado” climbs to the penthouse. The Mexican artist first conquered the chart in 2024, when his track “La Diabla” reached No. 1 in just its third week. Meanwhile, the collaboration also propels Turizo back to the summit for a ninth total time. He most recently led the list with “Copa Vacía,” with Shakira, in 2023.
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“En Privado,” released Feb. 5 on Interscope/ICLG, receives strong radio support by three Univision stations, led by KVVF-FM (San Jose), KQMR-FM (Phoenix) and KDXX-FM (Dallas).
Beyond its Latin Airplay coronation, “En Privado” also lands at No. 1 on Tropical Airplay, marking Xavi’s first chart-topper and Turizo’s fourth.
Meanwhile, Natti Natasha’s “Desde Hoy” spends a fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 2 on Latin Airplay (8.3 million in audience, up 11%). The last song to spend at least four weeks at No. 2, without ever going to No. 1, was in July 2017, when Shakira’s “Me Enamoré” spent its fifth and final nonconsecutive week at No. 2.
However, the most recent song to spend at least four weeks at No. 2 — only to later to go on to No. 1 — was Shakira’s “Soltera,” which spent seven nonconsecutive weeks at No. 2 before it climbed to No. 1, for one week, on the Jan. 4, 2025-dated chart.
Luis Figueroa Breaks into the Top 10 on Tropical Airplay
Elsewhere on Tropical Airplay, Luis Figueroa secures a spot in the top 10 with “Más Que Un Beso” as the song jumps 12-10 with 3 million audience impressions (up 22%).
As “Más Que Un Beso” ascends, Figueroa surpasses Marc Anthony to claim ownership of the third-most top 10s in the 2020s, with a total of 11. He trails only Prince Royce, who leads with 14 top 10s this decade, and Romeo Santos, who holds 12.
The song, the first single from Figueroa’s new album GRIS, also debuts at No. 47 on the Latin Airplay chart, where Figueroa earns his 10th career entry.