State Champ Radio Music
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Bruce Springsteen is doubling down on his stance that the United States government is “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous,” even after his remarks on the subject at a Manchester concert infuriated President Donald Trump last week.
One week after criticizing the Trump administration during a speech at his European tour kickoff show in England — leading the twice-impeached POTUS to launch into a series of vitriolic posts targeting him on Truth Social — the Boss has released a Land of Hopes & Dreams EP featuring a recording of the address as its opening track. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” he says in the audio snippet. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
The rocker then dives into 2001’s “Land of Hopes & Dreams,” which is also the name Springsteen’s ongoing tour.
In addition to the politically charged speech, the six-track project also features live takes of the musician and his band performing “Long Walk Home,” “My City of Ruins” and “Chimes of Freedom” in Manchester. There’s also a three-and-a-half-minute recording of Springsteen once again critiquing the state of American politics later in the show.
“In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on American workers, they’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and moral society,” he says in the clip. “They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.”
The EP comes shortly after Trump responded to Springsteen’s onstage remarks by calling him “highly overrated” and “dumb as a rock” on Truth Social, adding at the time, “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’”
Later, the billionaire accused the “Born in the U.S.A.” singer — along with Beyoncé, Oprah and Bono — of taking part in an “illegal election scam” for Kamala Harris, alleging that he accepted an undisclosed payment from the 2024 Democratic nominee to endorse her for president. (Campaign finance records do not support this claim, and Harris’ campaign has denied paying any artist for their support in last year’s election.)
Trump still hadn’t let the matter go as of Wednesday, when he shared an edited video of himself golfing — and appearing to hit and knock over Springsteen with his ball — on Truth Social hours after the Land of Hopes & Dreams EP dropped.
But despite Trump’s counters, Springsteen hasn’t ever backed down on his firm stance against the president’s policies. The E Street bandleader has long been vocal about his beliefs, telling The Atlantic in 2020 that he believed Trump — who in May 2024 was convicted of 34 felony counts in a hush money trial — to be a “threat to our democracy.”
Also in 2024, Springsteen proudly endorsed Harris and played at a number of her campaign events. He also appeared in an advertisement for the former VP’s campaign, telling viewers, “This election is about a group of folks who want to fundamentally undermine our American way of life … Donald Trump does not understand this country, its history, or what it means to be deeply American.”
Cardi B will receive the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Voice of the Culture Award, recognizing her groundbreaking influence on music and culture. On Wednesday (May 21), ASCAP announced that Cardi would be honored with the award for 2025, which comes after Usher received the award last year. “Cardi B has left an […]
President Donald Trump is once again letting his distaste for Bruce Springsteen be known after the musician slammed him and his administration during two recent concerts.
This time, an altered video Trump shared via his Truth Social platform on Wednesday (May 21) shows the commander in chief in a red Make America Great Again cap as he takes a big swing and hits a ball on the golf course as onlookers cheer him on. The video then cuts to a scene of The Boss walking on stage during a concert, as a white dot representing the golf ball suddenly sails into the shot, hits the musician in the back and knocks him down as audio of onlookers clapping and saying “nice shot” plays. Trump did not caption the video, but also shared it on X.
Billboard has reached out to Springsteen’s reps for comment.
This latest dig at the 20-time Grammy winner comes after Springsteen spoke out against the twice-impeached president on his ongoing tour. “[America] is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” the rocker, who endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, said during his first Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour in Manchester, England, on May 14. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Trump, who in May 2024 was convicted of 34 felony charges in his hush money trial, responded in a lengthy Truth Social post on May 16 calling the artist “dumb as a rock” and going on to insult his talent. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare,’” Trump wrote the same day he also insulted Taylor Swift, who also endorsed his opponent in the election. “Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Springsteen continued his criticism of the president during his May 17 show in Manchester. “In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” the musician told concertgoers. “The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
Those same comments from his two concerts are included in a new six-track EP also titled Land of Hopes & Dreams, which arrived on Wednesday.
Since the back-and-forth, the president has called for investigations into Springsteen as well as other stars for allegedly joining in on an what he calls an “illegal election scam” he claims was orchestrated by Harris’ campaign. In May 19 Truth Social posts, Trump accused The Boss, Beyoncé, U2’s Bono as well as Oprah Winfrey of illegally accepting undisclosed payments to appear at the former VP’s rallies and endorse her. FactCheck.org previously disproved those allegations when they first surfaced in 2024.
After Trump initially insulted Springsteen and Swift on May 16, the American Federation of Musicians International stepped up to defend the artists. “The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada will not remain silent as two of our members — Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift — are singled out and personally attacked by the President of the United States,” Tino Gagliardi, the organization’s president, said in part in a statement that day. “Musicians have the right to freedom of expression, and we stand in solidarity with all our members.”
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are reporting two deaths that happened amid EDC Las Vegas 2025, the dance music mega-festival that happened at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway this past weekend, May 16-18. A statement provided to Billboard by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) says that “after discussions with the coroner’s office, LVMPD will be […]
A English hard rock band that performs in masks and cloaks is not the type of artist that regularly visits the top of the Billboard 200 — yet anyone who had been paying attention to Sleep Token’s rise over the past few months knew that their fourth studio album, Even in Arcadia, was going to have a strong debut.
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After years of building a fan base, expanding their lore and inching onto the Billboard charts with increasingly higher peaks, the group kicked off the year by scoring their first career Hot 100 entries, as well as quickly selling out a slew of fall arena dates. When Even in Arcadia was released on May 9, its album tracks flooded streaming charts, a clear sign that the early enthusiasm around the album had coalesced upon its release.
Yet when the dust settled on its debut week, even the most bullish Sleep Token fan had to be pleasantly surprised: Even in Arcadia debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated May 24 with 127,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate — good enough to not only score Sleep Token’s biggest chart week ever, but the biggest total for a hard rock album in nearly two years, as well as the largest streaming week ever for a hard rock album. It’s the type of debut that blows away even the most hyped-up prognostications, and immediately makes Sleep Token one of the biggest stories in rock this year.
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The performance of this album cycle has “by far” surpassed expectations, RCA Records COO John Fleckenstein tells Billboard. Sleep Token — which debuted nearly a decade ago and has always remained under cover of anonymity, with band members never revealing their identities or speaking to the press — signed with RCA in early 2024 following the release of third album Take Me Back to Eden. That album became the band’s first to hit the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 16 in May 2023, and produced some of its first songs to hit the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.
Yet when “Emergence” — the six-and-a-half minute, multi-part prog-metal epic that opened the Arcadia era in March — debuted at No. 57 on the Hot 100 in March, thanks in part to some mind-boggling streaming numbers (9.9 million official U.S. streams from March 14-20, according to Luminate), RCA had to adjust its forecast for the commercial prospects for its host album, says Fleckenstein.
“We knew they were great, and they were potent,” he says. “But when ‘Emergence’ came out, that’s when we saw the reality of where the numbers had gotten to.”
“Emergence” was followed by “Caramel” — a more radio-friendly (yet no less audacious) single that somehow pulls off a fusion of rhythmic pop, shuffling reggaeton and a shrieking metal breakdown — and “Damocles,” Sleep Token’s version of a power ballad with twinkling pianos that morph into thundering guitars. Both of those songs hit the Hot 100 as well, at Nos. 34 and 47, respectively — and the fact that the second and third songs released from Even in Arcadia peaked higher than the first on the Hot 100 indicated to RCA that the host album was going to be a monster.
“Everyday along the path into this album, we were more and more confident that this was a big deal,” says Fleckenstein. “We just don’t see that kind of fan behavior and consistency, in terms of new music coming out.”
When RCA signed Sleep Token last year, Fleckenstein says that the two biggest indicators of the band’s upward trajectory were its rapid growth as a live act — the group leapt from clubs to theaters, and now to arenas, with strong ticket demand for each live run — and the online dedication of its fan base. The London natives have crafted a complex backstory over the year, with Sleep Token leader Vessel speaking of a higher power called Sleep and causing fans to parse through lyrics and messages to unlock new mysteries from their world.
For the band’s new major-label partner, Sleep Token’s anonymity has felt “liberating” as a promotional tool, says Fleckenstein, particularly in an era of artists oversharing on social media platforms. “So much of it is about the art that the band makes,” he notes. “The world that’s being created is being driven by the fans, and as we were building [the rollout] with the band, the part that was so rewarding was that we could not get more clever than this fan base.”
Case in point: in February, before the album cycle had truly started, the band launched a teaser site full of jumbled numbers and letters, which fans quickly found out related to the geographic coordinates of an 18th century monument in England. “It all happened in a blink!” Fleckenstein says with a laugh. “It’s because you’ve got a fan base that is undyingly passionate about this band.”
Now that Even in Arcadia is here, fans’ attention will now turn to how the album will be presented live: Sleep Token will perform the new material for the first time next month at a handful of European festivals before their U.S. arena tour kicks off on Sept. 16. In the meantime, the noise of this album debut has already unlocked opportunities for Sleep Token that aren’t normally reserved for hard rock acts: Vessel was featured as the main image of Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist on release day, for instance, and all 10 of the album’s tracks have made the Hot 100 chart. Combined with Ghost’s new album Skeletá debuting atop the Billboard 200 two weeks prior to Arcadia, a brand of new-school hard rock with baked-in mystique and accessible hooks is experiencing a mainstream boom that’s been years in the making.
“The numbers here are basically in line with high-caliber pop artists, in terms of consumption level,” says Fleckenstein of Sleep Token. “Up until this point, the focus has been on the fan base, and that won’t change — they’re the reason why we’re here… But in a lot of ways, the story from here will probably be that this isn’t some niche thing. There’s definitely a broader awakening here among media and partners that are looking at this in a different kind of way.”
A similar effect is trickling down to pop fans, too. “There are people that haven’t discovered this band yet, because they haven’t been part of the lore and they perceive it as metal, which may not be their genre of choice,” Fleckenstein says. “But it’s great music. And I think that’s going to be the road ahead.”
Three decades after composing the iconic Windows 95 startup jingle, Brian Eno has published an open letter to Microsoft, calling out the company for selling technology to Israel amid the country’s highly criticized war against Hamas.
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In a statement titled “Not in My Name: An Open Letter to Microsoft From Brian Eno” posted to Instagram Wednesday (My 21), the producer began by writing, “In the mid-1990s, I was asked to compose a short piece of music for Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.”
“Millions — possibly even billions — of people have since heard that short startup chime, which represented a gateway to a promising technological future,” he continued. “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
Eno’s words come a few days after Microsoft acknowledged in an unsigned blogpost that it sold advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military — as well as aided in efforts to locate and rescue Israeli hostages — amid the war in Gaza. Violence has run rampant in the city ever since Hamas attacked and killed about 1,200 Israeli people while taking more than 250 hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing war against the terrorist group has since led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In February, the Associated Press released an investigative report that found the Israeli military used Microsoft’s Azure platform to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance in its war efforts, among other previously unreported details about the company’s partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
After hearing concerns about its reported relationship with Israel from employees and members of the public, the tech giant stated in its blogpost that an internal review had been conducted. “We have found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct,” it reads. “It is important to acknowledge that Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.”
Regardless, Eno says the company has an “ethical responsibility” to suspend its business relationship with Israel. “These ‘services’ support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organizations, the United Nations experts and increasing numbers of governments from around the world as genocidal,” he wrote. “Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not ‘business as usual.’ It is complicity.”
The musician ended his letter by pledging to donate the fee he originally received for his Windows 95 composition to support for victims of attacks in Gaza. “If a sound can signal a real change,” he concluded, “let it be this one.”
Billboard has reached out to Microsoft for comment about Eno’s open letter.
The composer has been an important figure in Microsoft’s history for 30 years now, with his ethereal seconds-long theme soundtracking the startup process of countless people’s very first home computers all over the world. In 2025, the U.S. Library of Congress added the jingle to its National Recording Registry, which documents and preserves nationally significant recordings.
See Eno’s full statement below.
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could follow up the success and cultural dominance of Charli xcx‘s Brat. But in a new interview, the British pop star said that she’s sidestepping that concern altogether.
Speaking to Culted at the Cannes International Film Festival, Charli opened up about the “pressure” to top her critically acclaimed sixth studio album in a piece published Tuesday (May 20). “I don’t really feel the pressure to create another record like Brat, because when I was making it, even though I really believed in it and totally knew what I wanted to do with it, I had no idea how it would be received,” she began.
“I was really doing it for myself and marketing it in the way I wanted to for myself, but I had no clue that people would kind of connect to it in the way that they did,” she continued. “So yeah, I don’t really feel the pressure, because I feel that you can never really do the same thing twice, and my next record will probably be a flop which I’m down for to be honest.”
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Released in June 2024, Brat reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — Charli’s highest career peak on the chart to date. From its meme-fueling lime-green cover to its moment at the center of the 2024 United States presidential race, the album made the “Apple” singer a bona fide pop A-lister after spending years as a smaller cult-favorite artist.
Now, Charli has been focused on touring the album — she wrapped four sold-out nights at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier in May — and onscreen opportunities, including a movie she conceptualized for A24 called The Moment. Almost a year after Brat‘s release, she’s also been enjoying a resurgence of one of her older songs: “Party 4 U,” which has taken off on TikTok five years after it was released on 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now.
“It takes me back to the time of the pandemic, really, because that’s when I was recording the vocals,” she told Culted of the track, for which she recently dropped a music video. “It actually started a while before that — the initial idea. But we kind of never — I never really took it anywhere. So, yeah, now when I think of the song, I just think back to five years ago and how different the world was then. We were all inside. No one was hanging out. You know, it was kind of lonely.”
The 2025 American Music Awards will showcase a wide range of performers, from 22-year-old Benson Boone, who has back-flipped his way to stardom in the past year, to 80-year-old Sir Rod Stewart, who is set to receive a lifetime achievement award. This will mark Stewart’s first time on the AMAs stage since 2004.
The show, which is being held on Memorial Day for the first time, is set to kick off summer from the Fontainebleau Las Vegas on Monday, May 26. The 51st AMAs will air live coast to coast at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS, and stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
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This will mark the first regular American Music Awards broadcast since the show that aired in November 2022, and the first one to air on CBS. The show was a fixture on ABC from 1974 to 2022, and it will mark the first one not held in the Los Angeles area.
Jennifer Lopez is hosting the show for the second time. She previously hosted in 2015, when she opened the show with a performance of her 1999 hit “Waiting for Tonight” leading into a dance medley of the year’s biggest hits.
Two other performers on this year’s show are past AMAs hosts. Stewart co-hosted in 1989 with Anita Baker, Debbie Gibson and Kenny Rogers. Gloria Estefan co-hosted in 1990 with Alice Cooper, Anita Baker and The Judds, and in 1993 with Bobby Brown and Wynonna. Estefan will mark her first performance on the AMAs in 32 years, celebrating five decades of her career in music.
As previously announced, Janet Jackson will receive the Icon Award, which recognizes an artist whose body of work has marked a global influence over the music industry. The 11-time American Music Award-winner will also take the stage, marking her first television performance since 2018.
Gwen Stefani will perform a medley celebrating the 20th anniversary of her debut solo album Love.Angel.Music.Baby, including her Billboard Hot 100-topping smash “Hollaback Girl,” and a song from her newest album, Bouquet, which was released in November.
Fresh from winning four awards at the 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards, country music star Lainey Wilson will perform.
Breakout artist and first-time American Music Award nominee Benson Boone will perform his latest single, “Mystical Magical,” from his upcoming sophomore album American Heart, which is due June 20.
Three-time American Music Award winner Blake Shelton will make his AMAs performance debut with a track from his new album, For Recreational Use Only, which was released on May 9.
Reneé Rapp will also make her AMAs debut, performing new music off her upcoming sophomore album.
The American Music Awards is the world’s largest fan-voted award show. Tickets to the show are available now on Ticketmaster.
Kendrick Lamar leads this year’s nominees with 10 nominations, followed closely by Post Malone with eight nods, and Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Shaboozey with seven each.
Nominees are based on key fan interactions — as reflected on the Billboard charts — including streaming, album and song sales, radio airplay and tour grosses. These measurements are tracked by Billboard and Luminate, and cover the data tracking eligibility period of March 22, 2024, through March 20, 2025.
Fan voting is now closed with the exception of collaboration of the year and social song of the year, which will remain open for web voting through the first 30 minutes of the AMAs broadcast via VoteAMAs.com.
The AMAs and Easy Day Foundation, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit organization committed to helping veterans transition to civilian life, will partner to present several in-show moments that celebrate veterans while raising funds for a variety of national and local organizations.
The 2025 American Music Awards will re-air on MTV (Tuesday, May 27, at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT), CMT (Wednesday, May 28, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT) and BET (Thursday, May 29, at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT).
The show will also livestream on Harmony, Penske Media’s proprietary live streaming platform that can be viewed across Penske Media’s owned and operated websites, including Variety, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, WWD, Deadline, Vibe, IndieWire and Gold Derby.
The AMAs have also identified additional presenters and participants, including Nikki Glaser, who hosted this year’s Golden Globe Awards and has already been tapped to host next year’s show. Other presenters and participants include Tiffany Hadish and Wayne Brady, who have hosted other awards shows, and Shaboozey, who amassed seven AMA nominations this year.
Here is a list of performers and presenters on the 2025 American Music Awards. Additional names will be added as they are announced.
Performers
Benson Boone
Blake Shelton
Gloria Estefan
Gwen Stefani
Janet Jackson (Icon Award recipient)
Jennifer Lopez (host)
Lainey Wilson
Reneé Rapp
Rod Stewart (Lifetime Achievement Award recipient)
Participants & Presenters
Alix Earle
Cara Delevingne
Ciara
Dan + Shay
Dylan Efron
Jordan Chiles
Kai Cenat
Megan Moroney
Nikki Glaser
Shaboozey
Tiffany Haddish
Wayne Brady
The American Music Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.
SZA is for the children. The Grammy-winning artist took to her Instagram Story on Tuesday (May 20), saying that she convinced a young fan to throw away his whippets canister in exchange for taking a photo or video with them. “Literally talked a CHILD into throwing away his whippet drugs in exchange for a picture/video […]
As the debate over narcocorridos heats up, the original masters of the genre, Los Tigres del Norte, are back with a new EP that’s slyly more provocative than anything currently under scrutiny.
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La Lotería, dropping May 22, features five songs that tackle topics like the effects of divorce on kids, and the title track, “La Lotería,” a corrido with biting social commentary where the devil card in the video bears the face of President Trump.
For Los Tigres—brothers Jorge Hernández, Hernán Hernández, Luis Hernández, Eduardo Hernández, and their cousin Oscar Lara—this is about staying true to their roots. “We’ve always tried to raise awareness with our music, and our goal has been to make songs that stand the test of time. That’s why “La Reina del Sur” is still relevant. That’s why “Jefe de Jefes” is still relevant,” says Luis Hernández, referencing two of their most iconic corridos from their over 40-year career. “One thing Arturo Pérez Reverte [author of the novel La Reina del Sur] said: ‘If you want to understand Mexico’s history, you need to take a look at Los Tigres del Norte’s discography.’”
The songs on La Lotería (Fonovisa) come with cinematic music videos directed by filmmaker Sergio Arau, who brings a visual storytelling flair to Los Tigres’ stories. The release coincides with Los Tigres’ concert at Madison Square Garden in New York on May 24, as well as the naming of a street in the city in their honor. Ahead of the EP’s launch, Billboard sat down with Los Tigres in Miami for an exclusive interview where they opened up about pretty much everything.
Here are three key takeaways. Watch the full interview above.
On the ban of narcocorridos in Mexico
“We’ve always told stories through our corridos. We don’t focus on the characters,” says Jorge Hernández. “We talk about the events that happen, the realities. With the younger generations, they have a completely different language and imagination when it comes to corridos. For us, corridos are about expressing yourself naturally—like delivering the news. Their language is more about imagination, but it means something to their generation. That’s why the government intervenes and all this controversy exists. We’re not for or against what any musical group does. But the most important thing is that, banned or not, you have to stay within the bounds of the law.”
On Trump and his immigration policies
“When [songwriter Luciano Luna] wrote ‘La Lotería,’ what’s happening now hadn’t even started,” says Hernán Hernández of the spicy single. “For people who don’t have the means to live in another country, they want to come to the U.S. That’s the reality. And every president—not just this one, though he’s the most infamous—has tried to crack down on immigration. But laws aside, you’ve got to have a heart. Trump uses laws from as far back as the 1800s to justify his policies. But being a leader isn’t just about laws—it’s about compassion. If the world’s powers don’t lead with love, the world’s going to fall apart.”
Their message to immigrants
“The message is simple,” says Luis Hernández. “Most people who come to this country are just trying to find a better life. For years, Latinos have been the backbone of this country’s growth because the work we do here, no one else does. And as generations have progressed, we’ve gotten educated and moved forward. We need to keep improving, especially now that the minority has become the majority. We need to focus on education, teach those coming after us to vote, and remind them of their roots. This generation, as they say, isn’t from here or there. But once you understand your roots, it’s much easier to understand the message.”
Watch the full video here.
