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Bunnie XO is opening up about a terrifying “death scare” that she went through recently.
The 44-year-old model shared on the newest episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast that she sought medical advice after suffering with frequent headaches. “I noticed that it was kinda, like, after I would eat certain foods. I don’t know if it was, like, high in salts or something because I don’t eat bad,” she explained, noting that she follows a healthy diet because she’s “trying so hard to just rewind all the … drug-induced trauma I did to my body, and alcohol trauma I did to my body growing up.”
Bunnie, who is married to Grammy-nominated star Jelly Roll, revealed that a TikTok a friend sent to her about aneurysms gave her a “panic attack,” which prompted her to reach out to her doctor at 2 a.m. to book an MRI. “My mom had an aneurysm, and it ruptured. And she almost died,” she explained of her history with the blood vessel condition.
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When she received the results, Bunnie said she was told that “they might have found an aneurysm on your carotid artery,” adding that the news was “one of my biggest fears coming to fruition.”
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She continued, “There was just so many things that went through my mind. And I instantly just hit my knees and started praying. I bawled my eyes out. I cried so hard, I pulled a muscle in my neck. I cried for three days.”
She ultimately went for another scan, which led to a diagnosis of a “two-millimeter aneurysm on your carotid artery,” which are the arteries located on the sides of the neck. However, Bunnie sought another opinion and went to a neurologist, who told her that it actually wasn’t an aneurysm.
“He said, ‘I wish you had an aneurysm so I could fix your headaches.’ And I was just like, ’Hey, homie. Slow your roll.’ I was like, ‘I’m good,’” she recalled. The podcaster then went to a vascular surgeon, who confirmed that she didn’t have an aneurysm.
She explained that the doctor told her, “‘I am clearing you.’ He said, ‘It’s a blood vessel that matches on the other side of your carotid artery on the other end.’ And he said, ‘This was just one of these things where I get to deliver good news.’ He said, ‘If you wanna go play tackle football, you can.’ ”
Bunnie has since found a silver lining from the difficult situation. “It made me appreciate life so much. And, like, I know it sounds dramatic, but … it just really made me realize that, like, none of this s— f—ing matters, man,” she shared. “Family and the people that you love and the people that you surround yourself with every day is all that f—ing matters, dude. I snuggled up so much to my husband these past few days.”
Listen to the full episode of Dumb Blonde here.
Language, like music or fashion, evolves — and as a result, the use of some words or phrases makes it look like the speaker has not.
“Groovy,” “makin’ whoopee” and “the cat’s meow” had their day, and even earlier, so did “Heavens to Betsy,” an exclamation associated with older Southern ladies that seems more appropriate for the Roaring ‘20s than the 2020s. Etymologists don’t know for certain who Betsy is or when she first arrived in the lexicon, though the phrase has been traced back to the 19th century. Thus, word nerds can be forgiven if they’re skeptical of Jackson Dean’s new single, “Heavens to Betsy,” which sounds dated to anyone familiar with the title.
But the phrase is also old enough that many listeners may not have heard it before; Dean had not when the title first came up in a March 2021 songwriting session. “That line has never been used around me growing up or anything,” Dean notes. “I took it very literally.”
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“Heavens to Betsy” came up during a March 2021 songwriting session with Benjy Davis (“The Painter,” “Made for You”) and Driver Williams (“Smoke a Little Smoke,” “Hang Tight Honey”) at Little Louder Music in Nashville. Williams floated the “Heavens to Betsy” title, assuming they could give it a classic sort of twist.
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“My original thought was more country and lighter,” Williams recalls. “In subject matter, it was more like, you know, this girl named Betsy doesn’t need all the finer things in life. She just needs a home and a good man. That’d be Heaven to Betsy.”
That only worked, though, if they could shave the “s” off “Heavens,” but without that one letter, it no longer referenced the original phrase. Dean’s literal interpretation took it in a different direction – he pictured a father in Heaven communicating with his daughter, Betsy, via walkie-talkie or C.B. radio. They all found that idea intriguing.
“It had to be dark,” Williams says, “because whoever was in Heaven, you know, he’s obviously dead. And it’s just like, ‘Man, how dark can we get with this?’ And we went really dark with it.”
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The title became the opening line. Davis started strumming a guitar as the father reveals just enough in the first verse to let a first-time listener know the protagonist is communicating to someone about a drinking problem that “put you through hell.” That brooding stanza then opened into a brighter-sounding chorus that fully reveals the man is reaching out from the afterlife.
“I feel like the verses are the apology,” Davis says. “The chorus is sort of like the redemption, trying to make good on it.”
Verse 2 gave even more character clues, recalling a memory of Betsy when she was “knee high to a stump” – another dated phrase that was new, this time, to Davis. He injected a line about pink rain boots that made that verse even more vivid while drawing on his own past.
“I lived next to a family with some kids, and one day, the dad’s truck stopped showing up,” Davis remembers. “Over time, it became obvious that they were having some sort of issues. But [pink rain boots], that’s a really, really specific image. But that’s kind of what I had.”
Dean related to father abandonment from his own experience. “Both of my best friends growing up slept on my couch for probably two years, on and off,” he says. “I remember Dylan’s dad never being in the picture until we were 16, 17 years old, so I had that little bit of connection with it. And I’ve seen so many situations like that.”
“Heavens To Betsy” came together quickly, though it took longer for the sound to fully evolve. They cut a guitar/vocal work tape that day. Dean would later bring the song to Boy Named Banjo banjoist Barton Davis, who brought a bluegrass undercurrent to it. Dean later worked it up again with his band, who gave it an edgier sound that Williams compares to Kings of Leon.
Dean’s performance of “Betsy” on the 2023 album Live at the Ryman received play on SiriusXM’s The Highway and emerged as a fan favorite. Thus, as Dean went to work on his next album – On the Back of My Dreams, due Sept. 6 – Big Machine Label Group president/CEO Scott Borchetta suggested he record a studio version. Producer Luke Dick (Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town) assembled a group of session players to re-cut it last fall at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios, intent on keeping the same slow-building spirit as the Ryman release.
“I had worked loosely with Jack on the live record,” Dick says. “I was familiar with the arrangement, and when they said they wanted to record it, I felt like the arrangement had an energy to it that I didn’t want to stray too far from or rethink what should be or shouldn’t be. It already had movement to it that I liked.”
After attempting it first with a metronome-like click track, they dropped that crutch and let drummer Fred Eltringham carve out the rhythm and pace in conjunction with Dean’s vocals. The track gets just a hair faster as it evolves, reflecting the intensity as Dean and the musicians worked together.
“I love when Jack is in a booth with a song that he has played a lot, a song that he knows in his bones,” Dick says. “That allows him to emote on the day and to communicate with the band without speaking. That’s what I feel like was the most compelling thing about recording that song is Jack being able to get his visceral energy into the song. It’s what you’re shooting for as a producer.”
The end product splices parts of that recording with previous versions. Studio guitarist Rob McNelley’s slide guitar solo was melded with a solo previously played by Dean’s road guitarist, Brandon Aksteter. Dean recorded his final vocal this spring, emphasizing the distinctions between the verses’ heavy mystery and the chorus’ hopeful promise.
“I wanted the changes to be not only noticed, but drastically felt,” he says. “You get to right after the first chorus and you get to the hold, and then you drop right into the second [verse], it’s a completely different dynamic change. And then you get to the build, I mean, all those changes are physically moving you.”
Big Machine released “Heavens To Betsy” to country radio via PlayMPE on Aug. 2 with an Aug. 19 add date, with high expectations. Dean had it edited for broadcasters, snipping a reflective ending so that it ends cold on an ascendant high note. It’s a sonic cliffhanger, mirroring the dramatic uncertainty in the “Betsy” plot. It’s a twist that, unlike fashion or language, rarely grows old.
“Every PD in the country that I’ve ever been in contact with has heard that song and knows it and has asked me about it,” Dean says. “It kind of seems like a no-brainer: Just give them what they want and see what this does for the people.”
Taylor Swift fans are combating fear with joy following the cancellation of the pop star’s Eras Tour shows in Vienna, which had been the target of a terrorist attack plot discovered just in time by authorities earlier this week. The first of Swift’s three previously scheduled shows at Ernst Happel Stadium had been set for […]
If you can tell an actor is acting when you watch them on the screen then they’re probably not doing a great job. But if you couldn’t discern that Stranger Things star Sadie Sink had never really been in love despite certainly acting like it in Taylor Swift‘s All Too Well: The Short Film, then that’s because Sink did some deep-dive research to get into character as her half of the dysfunctional, age-gap relationship with actor Dylan O’Brien.
“At that point, I had never been in love,” Sink told Variety magazine about getting cast in the video as, basically, a stand-in for a 20-year-old Swift when she was dating actor Jake Gyllenhaal, then 29. “I had never been through a breakup that intense. It was all foreign territory for me. I had to rely on just my years of research as a Swiftie.”
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Sink said she connected to herself in a profound way — like many Swifties — through the singer’s confessional lyrics, especially the song’s biting kiss-off line, “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise.” In the break-up scene, as that lyric unfolds, Sink is shown curled in a ball on her bed weeping as her phone lights up in the nearly 15-minute mini-movie written and directed by Swift.
“As I was going, things from my personal life kind of came forward, which fueled it even more,” she said of the tricky actor’s task of trying to focus on what’s going on with their character rather than tapping into their own life experiences to find the right emotional tone for a scene. “Then I was like, ‘Whoa. Maybe I should do some work on Sadie in these areas.’”
While the now-22-year-old star didn’t go into detail on what that work entailed, she did note that she’s since cut “All Too Well” from her “wind-down song” playlist while working on the anticipated upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things. “It holds this incredibly nostalgic feeling for me now that I feel physically in my body,” she said as she wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s too intense.”
Sink talked about getting cast in the short film in Jan. 2023 with Seth Meyers, calling the process “bizarre.” The actress said she was already a fan when Swift’s team reached out to say the singer had her in mind for the role. “You would never think that our paths would really cross, someone being in the music industry and then in the film industry,” Sink said of the “trippiest” offer she’s had to date. “It was like two different worlds. It was kind of a bizarre mashup, but everyone was very excited.”
Watch All Too Well: The Short Film below.
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Selena Gomez can’t keep her hands to herself in new photos with Benny Blanco, which the pop star shared on Instagram Thursday (Aug. 8). In the first picture, the couple poses in front of the ocean, with the producer grabbing Gomez’s rear end, the “Lose You to Love Me” singer sticking out her tongue at […]
Snoop Dogg has been everywhere in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics, and has stolen the show over and over again. But the Doggfather took some time out of his busy schedule and gave the women who medaled at the 200m race a surprise phone call on Wednesday (Aug. 7). Two Americans were at the […]
Ariana Grande has complicated relationships with hot sauce and some of her old songs, but she powered through both on the latest episode of Hot Ones.
Appearing on the series’ season finale Thursday (Aug. 8), the pop star began by asking host Sean Evans for his expert opinion. “Where do you think I’ll sit on the scale from DJ Khaled to Lorde?” she asked. “I do my homework.”
Grande went on to barely break a sweat while eating the spicy vegan wings, save for an inaudible burp here and there. She kept her composure even as the Scoville levels increased, but at one point she admitted, “I think I’m learning that I don’t like hot sauce.”
The Grammy winner also answered questions about her Billboard 200-topping new album, Eternal Sunshine, working with Max Martin and doing stunts on the set of the Wicked films, the first of which arrives this November. “There was lots of bubble singing, which was very high up, and I wasn’t harnessed — I was just kind of there,” she revealed. “I had a lot of stunty singing, but nothing compares to Cynthia Erivo.”
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“Watching Cynthia in her harness with a broom, a hat, wig, corset, dress — the whole thing — flipping upside down, flying around the set, singing ‘Defying Gravity’ every take like it’s nothing … just the most phenomenal thing I’ve ever seen,” Grande, who plays Glinda opposite Erivo’s Elphaba, continued. “We had to do some really insane and beautiful things for this film.”
The “We Can’t Be Friends” vocalist went on to open up about the “disheartening and disappointing” experience of having her unreleased music leak online. “It sucks,” she put it plainly. “And I am constantly trying to get to the bottom of like how people get stuff … that is very frustrating and feels very dehumanizing, and then the other side is like but I’m so grateful to be an artist that people care about and my fans want more of me so they’re going to these extremes to steal and break in.”
Toward the end of the episode, Evans asked Grande whether she’s tired of performing any of her old songs. The Victorious alum has been releasing music for more than a decade at this point, with nine of her songs reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since her debut record, Yours Truly, dropped in 2013.
“That’s a natural thing that all artists can relate to,” she replied. “There was a time when it was hard for me to feel that same gratitude that I do now for certain songs and for the music … becoming a pop star is insane at 19 or 20, and I think that experience was sort of married to some of the songs a little bit. Or some of the songs that are more emotional, the experience that inspired them can be married to the music. But with time and therapy, we sort of are able to re-embrace, so I feel just really proud and grateful and happy when i hear them, where as I used to maybe hear it and cry.”
Watch Grande on Hot Ones above.
If you’ve ever seen video of Charlie Puth breaking down his songwriting process you know that the 32-year-old singer is a mad scientist when it comes to meticulously crafting his songs in the studio. As he works on the follow-up to his 2022 Charlie album — which topped-out at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart –Puth is once again turning to Taylor Swift for inspiration.
In a chat with People magazine, Puth said that as he works on his upcoming fourth studio full-length he’s thinking of changing things up thanks to some helpful tips from his fellow pop star. “You can expect what you always expect from me, which is chords and key changes and what I think are interesting kind of rhythms in production sense,” he told the magazine. “I always think about what I’ve lacked every time I start a new project and one thing that I’d like to enhance even more is the storytelling of things. And maybe that lies in the lyrics and making the lyrics a little bit more less A, B, C, D.”
In his effort to refashion his lyrics in a more personal way, Puth is leaning into Swift’s intricate, intimate lyrical style. “Taylor Swift kind of nudged me to do that as well,” he said. “And i think that’s how she approaches her songwriting and that’s how I’ll approach this next album.” For now, Puth said he’s planning to working on “the whole thing” by himself, a tactic that has made things more challenging as he sometimes spends his days “wait[ing] for the melody to appear… but it’s really, really worth it when it all comes together.”
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Back in May, Puth dropped the single “Hero,” which he described at the time as being “about when you see someone you love hurting themselves, ruining the things in their life that are good, but you just can’t save them… I’m very excited to share my next album with you, especially this song because it’s a great representation of what’s to come.”
Puth added that he decided to put the song out after Swift famously shouted him out on the title track to her The Tortured Poets Department album when she sang: “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.” A few weeks after that unexpected pop star plaudit, Puth teased “Hero” on TikTok.
“I’ve never put out a song like this before,” he wrote about the Swift influence on “Hero.” “It’s very different for me, but I want to thank @taylorswift for letting me know musically that I just couldn’t keep this on my hard drive any longer.” He added, “Sometimes I get a little nervous being overly honest in my music which is why this was sitting on my hard drive for awhile,. But I think someone out there was giving me a sign that I needed to release it.”
“Hero” came on the heels of Puth’s other recent singles, “Lose My Breath” with Stray Kids, “Lipstick” and “That’s Not How This Works” with Dan + Shay and Sabrina Carpenter. Puth also told People that while “Hero” won’t be on the upcoming untitled album, the LP “will make a lot of sense” once you hear the whole thing. “I want them to hear [the album] and be like, ‘Ah, I know what she was talking about,’” he says of Swift’s praise-filled lyric.
“I’m perfectly happy with the level where I’m at, but if being a bigger artist means I get to inspire more people who want to do what I do, then that’s great.”
In a year brimming with highly acclaimed releases from women in Nigerian music, Qing Madi’s voice is hard to ignore, set apart by its youthful resonance.
Before her emergence on the Afrobeats scene, Qing Madi (real name Chimamanda Pearl Chukwuma) had regular life plans like most young people: get a degree, then get a job. She had just moved from her birthplace of Benin City to Lagos with her family. This move brought on more opportunities in the form of songwriting gigs for artists such as Skales, Iyanya and Larry Gaaga.
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“One day, I was asked to do backup for Blaqbonez and showed up for the vocals. I met his producer Ramoni, and he played me this beat that I thought was so beautiful,” she tells Billboard via Zoom. “I asked to do a freestyle to the beat and titled it ‘See Finish.’”
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She uploaded it onto TikTok in 2022. “I used to post cover videos on TikTok and some of them would blow up,” Madi says, citing her renditions of “Overloading (OVERDOSE)” by Crayon, Ayra Starr, LADIPOE, Magixx and Boy Spyce and Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran’s “For My Hand” as examples. “I never put out anything original because I wasn’t bold enough and didn’t think people would like it.”
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But as “See Finish” went viral, Madi says she was swarmed by DMs from different local and international record labels. “My mom was so overwhelmed by what was happening from just this one freestyle, but we eventually decided that I would get signed to Jton Music and Columbia/Bu Vision,” she says. “The next step was to release an EP with songs I’d worked on.”
Released last November, her seven-track self-titled EP carries relatable reflections on great first loves, independence and a wide range of emotions one experiences on the journey to a fully-formed identity. On “Madi’s Medley,” she asserts strength in difficult situations. “Why” explores what it’s like to be your own person amid pressure to conform. Eight months later, Madi released its deluxe version featuring three new songs: the “Vision” remix with Chloe Bailey, the Kizz Daniel-assisted “YBIL (You Believe in Love)” and “Sins For U”.
Since then, Madi has performed in the U.S. for the first time as part of BNXN’s tour, gained co-signs from Afrobeats superstars Wizkid and Ayra Starr (with the former tapping her for background vocals on his “Diamonds” track last year) and earned a spot on Billboard’s 2024 21 Under 21 List. Still, the 18-year-old singer-songwriter admits she has moments where she can’t believe it’s all real. “Seeing the crowd screaming my songs back to me affects me in a big way,” she says. “I’m really writing songs for the whole world to listen to.”
Qing Madi spoke with Billboard about her mainstream success, the upsides of delusion and why she never feels the pressure to fit in.
In some interviews you refer to your music as “Afro-delulu.” How does this describe your sound?
Most of the stuff that I sang about on the EP was not part of my reality at the time. In “American Love,” I sang about traveling around the world, when I’d never even crossed the border. I was looking to the future and then it just started manifesting with all my current travels. I can be delusional, but I like to talk a lot about the things that I want, and somehow they always come to be. And “Afro-delulu” wasn’t even a term I came up with, my fans created that for me and I liked it and went with it.
Your music touches on themes like love and heartbreak in a relatable way. How do you bring these ideas to life?
Besides being delusional, I also write about things that happen to me or my friends. “See Finish” came from a friendship breakup that hurt me, and no one really talks about those, because they’re not supposed to hurt as much as heartbreak from romantic relationships. I’m not a confrontational person – so if I have an issue with someone, I’ll probably make a song about it, because it’s the easiest mode of expression for me.
This year, Afrobeats has been largely defined by women, each with their own distinct sound. What’s it like to be part of a rising crop of artists who decide to prioritize their own vision and go outside of the norm?
It’s beautiful. I’m more proud of the audience than I am of the industry because the crowd is opening their ears to us. There have always been women with different sounds, but some never got the opportunity to be heard because the audience would be like, “This music is too slow, this isn’t what we want.” We’re all growing to the point where everyone has a genre that they truly enjoy, and since they’re more accepting of other kinds of music, we don’t have to subject ourselves to a particular pattern. It also helps that Nigerian music is more global than ever before, so I’m proud to be part of it, being on the inside and getting to watch the growth up close.
There’s some pressure on artists to have the perfect brand or to present themselves in the most appealing way to the public. How do you put your own perspective first?
When people think of a female artist, they usually picture someone whose style and appearance is very “feminine.” I’m not really trying to fit into that ideology, because that’s not who I am. Sometimes people say things like, “You’re a pretty girl! Why not dress more like this?” Or “If you change your style, you’re going to get a lot more [public approval].” But I try to stay true to myself and not become somebody else. There are people who are more accepting of a different kind of look and girls who just want to be comfortable. I’m trying to use my image to speak for them.
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Young artists today are also burdened with the focus on numbers, branding and engagement around their music. How do you handle these expectations?
I don’t focus on what people expect of me, because there’s always going to be criticism. My music is always from my heart, so if it doesn’t feel genuine to me, it won’t be released. When I put out “See Finish,” people were like, “She’s a one-hit wonder, she’s not going to do it again.” And when “Ole” [featuring BNXN] came out, they said, “You just got lucky with a major feature.”
If I listen to the negatives, it would mess with my mind, and if I rely on the positives, it would make me too comfortable and I would only stick to a particular sound and style. So I block everything out and I never read comments on anything. My focus remains only on creating.
As your music continues to attract audiences worldwide, what is your outlook for the future?
There has been a lot of growth, and I don’t think about limitations because of the fast pace at which we’re growing. Everything is falling in place and I’m just really hopeful. I only care about how my music is being received, how it resonates among the audience and how it contributes to the growth of Nigerian music and women in general. I feel like my album will be in the works soon, and it’ll represent how I feel and what I speak for.
Kelsea Ballerini is set to release her upcoming fifth studio album, Patterns, on Oct. 25. The four-time Grammy nominated singer-songwriter will preview the album with a new song, “Sorry, Mom,” which arrives Friday (Aug. 9) at midnight. “let’s start unpacking…,” Ballerini captioned the album’s cover art on Instagram. That image depicts her seated atop a […]