Music
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As Disney fans flocked to the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. on Sunday evening (Aug. 11) for the Disney Legends Ceremony, one thing was clear: this was not the average award show. (Perhaps the biggest spoiler was the abundance of Mickey Mouse ears.) The star-studded evening served as the finale to D23, a three-day event […]
Donald Trump has another lawsuit on his hands, this time from the estate of Isaac Hayes.
Lawyers for Isaac Hayes Enterprises filed a notice of copyright infringement, stating that the late artist’s song “Hold On, I’m Coming” was used on “multiple occasions during various political rallies,” without authorization.
The paperwork, dated Monday, Aug. 11, identifies 134 counts copyright infringement at campaign rallies from 2022-2024.
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“We demand the cessation of use, removal of all related videos, a public disclaimer, and payment of $3 million in licensing fees by August 16, 2024. Failure to comply will result in further legal action,” reads a statement posted on Hayes’ son, Isaac Hayes III.
However, given no choice, the paperwork reads, that legal action could extend to “federal litigation.”
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We the family of @isaachayes Isaac Hayes Enterprises, represented by Walker & Associates, are suing @realDonaldTrump and his campaign for 134 counts copyright infringement for the unauthorized use of the song “Hold On I’m Coming” at campaign rallies from 2022-2024. We demand… pic.twitter.com/GOBLz7ejYL— Isaac Hayes III (@IsaacHayes3) August 11, 2024
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has been here before. Scores of top artists and songwriters have objected to his campaign’s use of their songs at political rallies since he first ran for president in 2015 — among them The Rolling Stones, Adele, Rihanna, Sinead O’Connor‘s estate and Aerosmith‘s Steven Tyler.
Yet as recently as July 31, in Harrisburg, Pa., Trump has been using “Hold On, I’m Comin’” to close his rallies — prompting this legal action.
“It is most unfortunate that these artists have publicly posted on their social media and asked Team Trump and other candidates not to use their music — and yet their candidates keep using their music,” James L. Walker Jr., an attorney for Hayes Enterprises, previously stated.
The Rolling Stones, Adele, Rihanna, Sinead O’Connor‘s estate and Aerosmith‘s Steven Tyler are among the artists who’ve objected to use of their songs at political rallies since Trump first ran for president in 2015.
Hayes died Aug. 10, 2008, at the age of 65. For the “Theme from Shaft,” he was awarded the Oscar for best original song in 1972, making him just the third Black person, after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier, to win an Academy Award in any competitive field.
Hayes and David Porter wrote “Hold On, I’m Coming,” which was recorded by soul duo Sam & Dave and issued on the Stax label in 1966, peaking at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100.
On Sunday night (Aug. 11), the 2024 Disney Legends Ceremony took place in Anaheim, Calif. and welcomed 14 new members into the prestigious group — including the youngest yet, Miley Cyrus.
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Host Ryan Seacrest noted that Cyrus entered the Disney family when she was just 13 years old (she is currently 31) and quickly took the network — and the world — by storm. A highlight reel of Cyrus’ history-making career then played, which included clips from her 2023 Disney+ special Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions), memorable scenes from Hannah Montana, early interviews and more.
As the reel wrapped, a band glided onto the stage fronted by country superstar Lainey Wilson. “Miley, you might not know this but I am truly one of your biggest fans. My very first job was taking my portable sound system and a wig…and impersonating Hannah Montana,” she recalled. (Wilson talked about the experience in her Billboard cover story). “You inspired me to believe in myself. That I, too, could be an ordinary girl living in an extraordinary world. So on behalf of Hannah Montana fans everywhere, I’d like to dedicate this song to you.”
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Wilson then ripped into a passionate cover of the Hannah Montana theme song “The Best of Both Worlds.” She even added a bit of her own present-day observations on lines like, “You go to movie premiers,” swapping out “is that Orlando Bloom?” for “is that Glen Powell?”
After the performance (which Wilson called “a dream come true”), she thanked Cyrus for “never being afraid to step outside the box, always staying true to yourself and most of all for kicking butt, no matter what, girl.”
Cyrus — who was seated alongside her mom Tish in the front row, next to other honorees such as Jamie Lee Curtis, Angela Bassett, Harrison Ford and more — then walked on stage and pulled Wilson into a warm hug. As Cyrus stepped up to the mic, she told the crowd of nearly 20,000 fans, “I am definitely going to cry,” which only warranted an even longer and louder and standing ovation.
“Before we get started,” she continued, “I’m going to let everybody in on a little Disney Legends’ secret — I’m the one that tells you what you’re not supposed to know. And what I want to say is that legends get scared too. I’m scared right now…It’s legendary to be afraid and do it anyway. There’s no such thing as failure when you try.”
Cyrus then unveiled two different speeches she prepared: “One long, if I’m the badass I’m supposed to be. And one short, if I get scared.” (Her speech spanned just over five minutes; needless to say, she chose the badass route.)
“In 2005, Disney was on a mission to rebuild and reimagine the company — that’s why they hired [Disney CEO] Bob Iger and me,” she said with a chuckle, earning a big laugh from the audience. She then recalled the “buzz” in the Burbank office where she auditioned for the role of Hannah Montana many years ago — the same office where, as she joked, “it’s rumored they create all of us Disney kids…I definitely wasn’t created in a lab, but if I was, there must’ve been a bug in the system which caused me to malfunction somewhere between the years of 2013-16.”
Joking aside, Cyrus then detailed a much earlier era in her storied life when she moved from Nashville to Los Angeles to start her career. After sharing how she got the part of Hannah Montana, she recalled her first performance as the fictional star, which took place for free at the Glendale Galleria. “The first song I opened with was titled ‘This Is The Life,’” she said. “Which of course, no one knew. Because in reality I was a little girl in a blonde wig at the mall with a big dream. But in my heart, I was Hannah Montana. And I was so proud to be her.”
“A little bit of everything has changed since that day, but at the same time, nothing has changed at all. I stand here still proud to have been Hannah Montana. Because she made Miley in so many ways. This award is dedicated to Hannah and all of her amazing, loyal fans and to everyone who has made my dream a reality. To quote the legend herself: ‘This is the life.’”
Charles Cross, the celebrated music writer who penned books on Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix, and editor of influential Seattle magazine The Rocket, died Friday, Aug. 9. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “We are sorry to share that Charles Cross has passed,” reads a statement from his […]
The Red Hot Chili Peppers wrapped their multi-year, multi-continent tour with the biggest business of their multi-decade career. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Unlimited Love Tour sold 3.4 million tickets over 86 shows.
Among rock tours, it finishes as the third best-selling trek this decade, only behind Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour and Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour.
Though not eligible for Boxscore reporting, the Red Hot Chili Peppers closed out this touring cycle with a performance tonight (Aug. 11) at the LA28 handover celebration at the Closing Ceremony of 2024 Olympics, where Paris passes the torch to the Chili Peppers’ hometown of Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Boxscore totals only include grosses for ticketed headline shows, whereas the Olympics performance is part of a larger televised event.
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The Unlimited Love Tour supported its namesake album, which was released in April 2022, as well as Return of the Dream Canteen, which followed in October of that year. Both sets led the Top Rock Albums chart, and the former crowned the all-genre Billboard 200.
The Unlimited Love Tour kicked off on June 4, 2022 with a performance at Estadio de La Cartuja in Sevilla, Spain. That show launched a 12-show leg in Europe that sold 659,000 tickets. Next was 19 shows in the U.S. and Canada, adding 807,000 tickets. That remains the highest-grossing and best-selling leg of the tour.
What followed was a parade of shows in Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, plus returns to Europe and North America before closing on July 30 in Maryland Heights, Mo. While the first stateside run claimed top honors for cumulative gross and attendance, the Chili Peppers’ string of eight shows in Australia and New Zealand (January-February 2023) boasted the best per-show ticket sales, averaging 47,326. Those dates were helped by the presence of Post Malone, joining while on his Twelve Carat Tour.
As for individual engagements, the biggest was a double-header at England’s London Stadium on June 25-26, 2022. Those two combined for 142,000 tickets sold. Among one-night-stands, it’s the Nov. 10, 2023 concert at Estadio do Morumbi in Sao Paulo, where the band played to 71,000 fans.
These final figures represent an entirely new peak in the Chili Peppers’ career. Though the band had dabbled with stadium shows before, this was its first full tour in the top-capacity venues. The tour’s 3.4 million attendance total is about 3.5x the group’s previous best, when the By the Way World Tour sold 979,000 in 2002-03. On average, the tour paced 39,761 tickets per show, up from 14,291 on the 1995-96 One Hot Minute Tour.
Dating back to a 1985 Halloween show at New York’s The Ritz, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have sold 8.6 million tickets over 498 reported shows.
Billie Eilish performed “Birds of a Feather,” Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre teamed up for “The Last Episode,” and the Red Hot Chili Peppers played “Can’t Stop” in highlights from the 2024 Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony Sunday night (Aug. 11) in Los Angeles, where the next Olympics will be held four years from now. As […]
An exhibition at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture has sparked a heated conversation about the real-life use of the slang term “un-alived,” which was spotted on a MoPOP placard that says Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain “un-alived himself at 27.”
Cobain died by suicide at age 27, on April 8, 1994. The Seattle museum shared this fact on an information card about the “27 Club” (a grouping of artists who all tragically passed away at the young age of 27), patrons have reported.
But in place of “died by suicide,” MoPOP printed the internet slang “un-alived.” The Museum of Popular Culture additionally put up a placard about the social context of the term’s usage in the digital age, also noting that “the Guest Curator has chosen to utilize the term as a gesture of respect towards those who have tragically lost their lives due to mental health struggles.”
On Saturday (Aug. 10), Stereogum pointed out many on social media were likening saying the word “un-alived” in real-life discussions regarding mental health — rather than using it only to circumvent censorship from algorithms on internet platforms like TikTok — to the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984, despite the museum’s explanation.
Orwell wrote of “Newspeak,” a simplified, government-directed language intended to limit critical thinking, in the novel. One element of the fictional Newspeak grammar included tagging the simple prefix “un” onto words, instead of developing an expanded vocabulary.
“this is what george orwell was warning us about with 1984,” read one comment on X (formerly Twitter) posted Friday about the museum exhibit material using the word “un-alived.”
“That moment when it wasn’t the government but youtube and social media which caused newspeak from 1984 to become a real thing lmfao,” another person on X added. “And people still say that ‘these are private companies, they don’t have to allow speech they don’t want!’ Yes they do, they are the town square now.”
Meanwhile, another user on the platform offered a different perspective: “It’s MOPop who cares. Their exhibits talk in internet lingo all the time because it’s about pop culture. It’s basically a glorified collection showcase. Twitter people saw the word ‘museum’ and lost their s—.”
Meanwhile, someone else quipped, “This will help them [the museum] go viral on tiktok.”
By Sunday evening, the conversation thread had a new reply with an updated photo — one that showed the wording on the placard has apparently been changed, with “un-alived” being edited to “died by suicide.”
There’s a placard next to it that talks about the social context of “unalive” in how people talk about mental health but this is still stupid pic.twitter.com/iKA30ECUW7— ブランドン (@burandon_sama) August 9, 2024
Madonna is wishing her oldest son a happy birthday. On Sunday (Aug. 11), the Queen of Pop shared a sweet tribute on social media in honor of her son Rocco Ritchie’s 24th birthday. To commemorate the special occasion, she shared 20 age-spanning photos and videos of Rocco, whom she shares with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. “HAPPY […]
Shawn Mendes‘ “Why Why Why” has topped this week’s new music poll that features artists in various genres of music. Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (Aug. 9) on Billboard, choosing the 26-year-old pop star’s comeback single as their favorite new music release of the past week. “Why Why Why” brought in 50% […]
Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department clocks a 14th week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Aug. 17), with 142,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 8 (up 98%) according to Luminate.
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The last album to spend at least 14 weeks at No. 1 was Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, which logged 19 total nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 between March 2023 and this March. The last album by a woman to spend at least 14 total weeks at No. 1 was Adele’s 21, which earned 24 nonconsecutive weeks on top in 2011-12.
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 debuts at No. 2 with 107,000 equivalent album units, marking the 13th Ye album to reach the top two (his entirety of charting releases), while Ty Dolla $ign ups his tally of top 10s to three.
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The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Aug. 18, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Aug. 13. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Of The Tortured Poets Department’s 142,000 units earned in the week ending Aug. 8, album sales comprise 84,000 (up 606%), SEA units comprise 57,500 (equaling 75.43 million on-demand official streams of the set’s widely available deluxe edition’s 31 songs) and TEA units comprise 500. Poets is No. 2 on the Top Streaming Albums chart (behind Wallen’s One Thing at a Time) and No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.
Poets’ album sales in the latest tracking week were bolstered by a number of drivers. The set was released in five new digital album variants via Swift’s official webstore for a limited time, each containing the standard album’s 16 songs, along with one exclusive bonus track for $4.99 each (one album contained a “first draft phone memo” version of “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” while the other four contained one live track each from recent stops during her The Eras Tour). In addition, for a limited time, the store restocked three previously available digital album variants with exclusive bonus cuts, and a signed CD edition. Her store also staged a brief sale pricing promotion, whereby 16 previously available physical variants of the album were all discounted by 13% (as 13 is Swift’s favorite number).
With Poets — Swift’s longest-leading album on the Billboard 200 — she adds her 83rd career week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, extending her record among soloists. (Elvis Presley has the second-most among soloists, with 67.) The total encompasses her 14 No. 1 albums. (She’s tied with Jay-Z for the most No. 1s among soloists.)
At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 swoops in with 107,000 equivalent album units earned. The album was released on Saturday (Aug. 3). It’s the long-awaited sequel to the chart-topping Vultures 1, which opened atop the Feb. 24-dated chart with 148,000 units. Of the new album’s first-week figure, album sales comprise 60,500 in album sales, SEA units comprise 46,000 (equaling 50.44 million on-demand official streams of the standard set’s songs) and TEA units comprise 500 units. Vultures 2 also bows at No. 6 on the Top Streaming Albums chart and No. 2 on the Top Album Sales chart.
The opening sales of Vultures 2 were aided by its availability across a widely available standard explicit edition, and a late-in-the-week-released clean edition (on Aug. 8). Ye’s official webstore also issued five additional explicit digital album variants on Wednesday (Aug. 7) and Thursday (Aug. 8), each containing the standard album’s 16 tracks, along with one exclusive studio bonus track per album. All digital albums on Ye’s webstore sold for $5 each. The Vultures 2 album, both clean and explicit, was also discounted to $4.99 in the iTunes Store in the tracking week.
Vultures 2 was originally slated for release on March 8.
Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess climbs to a new high, as it rises from its prior No. 4 best to No. 3 with 64,000 equivalent album units earned (up 20%). The album’s ascent comes after Roan’s rousing reception at Lollapalooza on Aug. 1.
Wallen’s chart-topping One Thing at a Time dips 2-4 with 63,000 equivalent album units (down 2%), while Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft is steady at No. 5 with 57,000 units (up 8%).
Charli XCX’s Brat bolts 9-6 with 56,000 equivalent album units earned (up 39%), following the release of the album’s “Guess” remix with Eilish on Aug. 1.
Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene falls 3-7 (51,000 equivalent album units; down 16%), Wallen’s former leader Dangerous: The Double Album rises 11-8 (just over 37,000; down less than 1%), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season lifts 10-9 (a little more than 37,000; down 5%) and the Twisters: The Album soundtrack drops 8-10 (37,000; down 16%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.