State Champ Radio Music
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Chris Brown was denied bail during a court hearing for his assault charge in Manchester, England, on Friday (May 16), according to Reuters. The singer was taken into custody on Thursday (May 15) after being arrested at his Manchester hotel and charged with “inflicting grievous bodily harm,” which has been tied to a February 2023 […]
Slick Rick will soon drop off his first new body of work since 1999. On Thursday (May 15), Rick announced he’ll be delivering the follow-up to The Art of Storytelling on June 13. The new album, titled Victory, will be a visual album executive-produced by Idris Elba. The album will be accompanied by a 30-minute […]
EDC Las Vegas starts Friday (May 16) at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The three-day dance mega-festival will feature sets from more than 250 artists, with many of them being blasted out of Vegas and onto the internet via the festival’s free livestream.
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Fans can thusly enjoy EDC from the comfort of their couch by tuning into either Insomniac TV or the Insomniac YouTube page. Live coverage begins at 6:45 p.m. PT/ 9:45 p.m. ET daily, with the broadcast going all night and into the dawn Friday, Saturday (May 17) and Sunday (May 18).
The livestream will feature coverage from five of Insomniac’s nine stages — KineticField, CosmicMeadow, CircuitGrounds, NeonGarden and BassPod, with Insomniac TV dedicating a separate channel to each stage.
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While the exact coverage schedule isn’t known, the festival overall will feature performances from artists including Dom Dolla, Alesso, Afrojack, Alison Wonderland playing b2b with Kaskade, Illenium playing b2b with Slander, Sara Landry, Horsegiirl, Gesaffelstein, RL Grime, Martin Garrix, DJ Snake, Interplanetary Criminal, Rezz, Fisher, Eric Prydz and many, many more.
Produced by Insomniac Events, EDC Las Vegas is the biggest dance music festival in North America, welcoming more than 540,000 attendees over its three days. Myriad versions of EDC also take place around the world in countries including Mexico, Brazil, the U.K., China, India and South Korea.
Earlier this week, Insomniac announced that a new edition of EDC will happen in Medellín, Colombia, in October. The show will be produced in partnership with Colombian events company Páramo Presenta.
Sam Hunt rolls up his 13th top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated May 24, as “Country House” rises 12-10. The song advanced by 17% to 16.3 million audience impressions May 9-15, according to Luminate.
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Hunt co-authored the cut with Ross Copperman, Michael Lotten and Josh Osborne. It’s from his four-song set Locked Up. The single from the Cedartown, Ga., native follows “Outskirts,” which became his 10th Country Airplay No. 1, for three weeks beginning in April 2024.
In April 2022, “23” marked Hunt’s fourth straight Country Airplay leader, after “Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90’s” (May 2021), “Hard to Forget” (July 2020) and “Kinfolks” (February 2020). He launched his career with three consecutive No. 1s: “Leave the Night On” (November 2014); “Take Your Time” (May 2015); and “House Party” (September 2015). “Make You Miss Me” became his fourth leader in September 2016, and his crossover blockbuster “Body Like a Back Road” dominated for three frames in May 2017. It also ruled Billboard’s streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Country Songs list for a then-record 34 weeks.
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Currently touring, Hunt will perform at the Gulf Coast Jam on May 28 in Panama City, Fla.
Still a ‘Problem’
Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” tops Country Airplay for a fifth total and consecutive week (32 million, up 4%). It became the third No. 1 from his album of the same name, ahead of its May 16 release, following “Love Somebody” (three weeks in February) and “Lies Lies Lies” (one week, November). His latest single being promoted to country radio, “Just in Case,” rises 16-15 (13.4 million, up 21%).
“I’m the Problem” marks the fourth of Wallen’s 17 Country Airplay No. 1s to reign for five weeks or more. His longest-leading hit, “You Proof,” began a 10-week command in October 2022. It’s tied for the longest No. 1 run in the chart’s 35-year history with Nate Smith’s “World on Fire” (2023-24).
Donald Trump is not too happy with Bruce Springsteen, whom the president called “highly overrated” and “dumb as a rock” in a heated post on Truth Social after the musician slammed his administration during a concert in Manchester, England.
On Friday morning (May 16) — two days after Springsteen voiced his disdain for the United States government’s “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” leadership at the kickoff show of his 2025 European tour — Trump began by writing, “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States.”
“Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country,” Trump continued. “Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)?”
“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 added. “Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Billboard has reached out to Springsteen’s reps for comment.
The twice-impeached president’s comments come after The Boss greeted his Manchester crowd Wednesday (May 14) by saying, “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times.”
“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 continued before launching into 2001’s “Land of Hopes and Dreams.” “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.”
Springsteen — who also posted the speech on his Instagram — has long been open about his stance on American politics, endorsing Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Four years prior, he called the POTUS — who in May 2024 was convicted of all 34 felony counts in his hush money trial — a “threat to our democracy” in an interview with The Atlantic.
The “Born in the U.S.A.” singer is just one of many major music stars who has made their stance against Trump clear — and Springsteen also isn’t the only one of them whom the former reality star has put on blast recently. Also on Friday, Trump insulted Taylor Swift, writing that the 14-time Grammy winner is “no longer ‘HOT?’”
Doechii’s “Anxiety” rises a spot to No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart dated May 24.
The song becomes Doechii’s first leader on the list. She hit a previous No. 3 peak with her first entry, “What It Is (Block Boy),” featuring Kodak Black, in November 2023.
Notably, “Anxiety” interpolates Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” (featuring Kimbra), which ruled Pop Airplay for three weeks in 2012. It’s not the first Pop Airplay No. 1 to have reworked a prior leader; Latto’s 2023 No. 1 “Big Energy,” via a remix, samples Mariah Carey’s 1995 leader “Fantasy” (with both stemming from Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love”), while Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” from 2017, gives partial writing credit to three authors of TLC’s 1995 No. 1 classic “No Scrubs.”
(“Somebody That I Used to Know” itself samples Luiz Bonfá’s “Seville,” from 1967.)
Meanwhile, “Anxiety” follows the chart-topping crossover success of “Somebody That I Used to Know.” “Anxiety” led Rhythmic Airplay for two weeks earlier in May. It concurrently climbs 7-6 on Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, 15-14 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay and 21-16 on Adult Pop Airplay.
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Gotye’s smash ruled Adult Alternative Airplay, Adult Contemporary, Adult Pop Airplay, Alternative Airplay, Dance/Mix Show Airplay, Pop Airplay and the all-format Radio Songs chart. It dominated the multimetric Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks and finished 2012 as the year’s top song.
“Anxiety,” on Top Dawg/Capitol/ICLG, surged by 11% in pop radio plays May 9-15. (The Pop Airplay chart ranks songs by weekly plays on more than 150 mainstream top 40 radio stations monitored by Mediabase, with data provided to Billboard by Luminate.) Leading supporters for the song among Pop Airplay reporters include KMVQ and KYLD San Francisco, WBBM Chicago and SiriusXM’s Hits 1.
On March 29, Doechii was honored with the 2025 Woman of the Year award at Billboard’s Women in Music celebration. “I cannot believe it was just two years ago I stood on this stage and accepted the Billboard Rising Star Award,” she said in her acceptance speech. “And here I am … Always go full out, always go hard and always be fab.”
All charts dated May 24 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, May 20.
Snoop Dogg and Suge Knight haven’t seen eye-to-eye for years, and the Long Beach legend took his beef with his former boss to his new Iz It a Crime? album.
Snoop fired away at Knight on the explosive “ShutYoBitchAssUp,” on which he boasted about taking ownership of Death Row from Knight, and then went on to label the incarcerated former music executive a snitch.
“I can see why you mad/ I bought everything you own/ Now you in PC snitching on the phone/ But I can slap the taste out your muthaf–kin’ mouth/ Pull up on your n—a, make you wanna reroute/ And if he hit the main line, he gon’ see what we bout/ Oh b—h-ass n—a, I’m a rich-ass n—a,” he raps.
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Snoop Dogg’s abrasive bars come months after Suge Knight claimed Snoop was “destroying” hip-hop’s credibility along with Death Row during an interview from prison with The Art of Dialogue.
“You trying to create something that Suge Knight created, but instead of making something big, you disappointed the world by making everything flops,” Knight said in March. “When I put out Tha Dogg Pound, they sold records. You put out Tha Dogg Pound, they sold nothing — it flopped.”
He continued: “You don’t got to talk tough. We don’t got to talk about each other that gets [us] nowhere. One person or three or four people is not bigger than hip-hop. We should be trying to figure out how to make hip-hop better. Everybody destroying hip-hop — you guys are making it worse. If you have Death Row, you destroyed it. You messed up the name.”
While Snoop acquired the Death Row Records brand from the Blackstone-controlled MNRK Music Group (formerly eOne Music) in a February 2022 deal, Suge Knight still isn’t buying it.
Knight demanded that Snoop show some paperwork before Suge gives him his respect on that endeavor. “Snoop, you said I’m mad because you bought Death Row,” Knight said, also on The Art of Dialogue. “What you buy? Shut me up. Show me where y’all paid the money to buy it. Show me the paperwork — show me what you own.”
Suge Knight, 59, is currently serving a 28-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter charges that are tied to the death of businessman Terry Carter and injuries to his rival Cle “Bone” Sloan. The former rap mogul is eligible for parole in October 2034.
Iz It a Crime? arrived on Thursday (May 15) and features assists from Wiz Khalifa, Pharrell Williams and Sexyy Red.
Listen to “ShutYoBitchAssUp” below.
It was an understandably sensitive process for Carl Falk to complete the work on “Let’s Ride Away,” a previously unreleased Avicii track that’s officially out today (May 15) and comes seven years after the Swedish producer’s death at age 28.
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Falk, who was a frequent Avicii collaborator during the artist’s lifetime and who also helped complete some of the music for the 2019 posthumous album Tim, says that when he originally received the music for “Let’s Ride Away,” the experience was like being thrust back in time.
“It’s almost like you open someone’s drawer of clothes who’s not there anymore, and you look at the T-shirt like, ‘Oh, remember this old thing?’” Falk tells Billboard over Zoom from his home studio in Stockholm. “It’s kind of the same opening a song like this, because there were so many elements in it that were like, ‘Oh, the way he colored his piano chords, or the way that pick bass plays. It’s so simple, but so good.’ I was just listening and enjoying it for a second, like ‘I miss this; I miss this style of music; I miss making it, and I miss the blend of of organic and electronic elements.’ It was like a memory coming back.”
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“Let’s Ride Away” is defined by this collision of past and present. The track was originally written in Nashville circa 2017 by Avicii and Kacey Musgraves, along with prolific country songwriter Luke Laird, who’s penned music for a laundry list of greats, including Eric Church and Carrie Underwood.
“New [writing sessions], you just never know how they’re going to go,” Laird says in a video accompanying the song’s release. “I got in there and [Tim] couldn’t have been more welcoming and warm. Honestly it was very similar to a normal Nashville songwriting session. Sat down, started with the guitars, and then he just started doing his thing.”
The artist born Tim Bergling eventually layered up the song with a kickdrum and other electronic elements, Musgraves recorded the vocals and the trio named the track “Ride Away.” The song, however, was never released, although versions of it have leaked onto the internet over the years.
Now called “Let’s Ride Away,” the song is officially out of the vault and part of Avicii Forever, a new compilation that features many of the artist’s biggest hits, like “Levels” and “Wake Me Up,” with “Let’s Ride Away” being the project’s only previously unreleased track. (While a handful of Avicii remixes have been released since his death, “Let’s Ride Away” is the first original song to come out since Tim.)
Falk says Johnny Tennander of Sony Music Publishing Scandinavia reached out to him in October of 2024 to ask if he would complete the track. “[Johnny] said ‘Hey, no one knows this yet, but we’re going to do a best of album, and I think we found a song that could potentially be super good,’” Falk recalls. “‘He said, ‘I’m not going to jinx it or anything, but do you mind coming up to my office, just to to hear it?’”
Falk went to the office, where Tennander played him two versions of “Ride Away”, one at at a BPM familiar to the Avicii wheelhouse and another at a slower tempo. “One thing I instantly felt,” Falk says, “was the typical Tim thing of introducing a new instrument into his palette of sounds. I can tell by hearing the pedal steel that this is Tim for the first time trying out a new instrument, to try to make it an Avicii instrument.”
Given that Musgraves had bowed out of the song, there was also the task of finding a new vocalist. The team eventually landing on Elle King. In early 2025, Falk worked with King over Zoom while she was in the studio with another frequent Avicii collaborator, Albin Nedler. “Tim was really particular with his melodies,” says Falk, “and also when I listen to Kacey’s vocals, she had a specific style of singing — so I really wanted Elle to sing it in her own way, but also be respectful of the melody.”
King was keen to get it right. As Falk recalls, she was like, “‘Okay, whatever you need. One more take. One more take. One more take. I’m gonna try this, and I’m gonna go for this note.’ It was a really easy, fun process and such a relief to to hear like, ‘She gets the song.’ You don’t have to really transform it into something else. You just have to get it recorded, and it will be great.”
On the production front, Falk says he was given “a couple of different demo versions of the song, and they were slightly different. That was easy to hear, because I asked for all the files from anything I could get, to really dig in and listen to what exactly was in there.” He says a couple of elements were hidden low in the mix, with his completion work bringing them more to the fore.
“It was quite obvious what we should do,” he says. “It was more fixing and touching up. The whole idea was already there. For me, that’s the big challenge and big responsibility, to finish something. It was the same with the Tim album, where it’s like a guessing game, because usually you’re two people sitting in the same room.”
To aid the process, Falk opened a computer file in which he keeps roughly four dozen signature production elements Bergling used in his work: kick drums, bass drums, transitional sound effects and more. “I’m not going to use these sounds for anything else ever,” Falk says. “But in this case, they got used one last time.” He also returned to songs like 2015’s “Broken Arrows” and “Sunset Jesus” that he and Bergling worked on together, to recall how they’d made certain sounds. (Falk also has songwriting credits on songs including One Direction‘s “What Makes You Beautiful” and Nicki Minaj‘s “Starships.)”
Of course, finishing the work of your deceased friend and collaborator is both technically and emotionally delicate work. Falk says that compared to doing the work for Tim less than a year after Bergling died on April 20, 2018, he was more emotionally prepared this time, adding that the process “gave me a bit more confidence that this song is too good not to be heard.”
Many fans are celebrating the release of new Avicii music, and there are also critics who argue it would be better to cease new Avicii projects — which over the years have included the release of Tim, the opening of the Avicii museum in Stockholm, a photo book, a biography and a documentary released this past December. (In 2022, Swedish entertainment company Pophouse acquired 75% of the recording and publishing catalog, with the other 25% remaining with the Bergling family.)
But Falk says the opportunity in “Let’s Ride Away” is in how it meaningfully expands the Avicii repertoire. “It doesn’t sound like you’re just releasing something that sounds like 10 other things he’s done,” he says. Falk adds that his teenage children are just now getting into Avicii, and that he believes “Ride Away” and the Avicii Forever project are ways for new fans to potentially discover the late artist, his sound and his substantial catalog.
I suggest that there are few people who could do justice to the song better and more respectfully than someone who knew and worked with Avicii so closely while he was alive.
“I hope that’s the case,” says Falk. “It’s surely the case for for me, and my reason for doing it was exactly that.”
Justin Bieber‘s team has spoken out amid the ongoing federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who stands accused of sex trafficking and racketeering and faces potential life in prison for his alleged crimes.
In a statement shared with People Friday (May 16), the pop star’s spokesperson said, “Although Justin is not among Sean Combs’ victims, there are individuals who were genuinely harmed by him.”
The spokesperson added, “Shifting focus away from this reality detracts from the justice these victims rightfully deserve.”
Billboard has reached out to Bieber’s reps for comment.
The statement marks the first time the “Peaches” singer has directly discussed Combs since the Bad Boy Records founder was arrested in September, with federal prosecutors accusing him with running a large-scale criminal operation in which he “abused, threatened and coerced women” for decades, in part through drug-fueled sex parties known as “freak-offs,” according to the indictment.
Combs has denied all of the accusations, and in the defense’s opening statements at his trial in New York City Monday (May 12), his lawyer asserted: “Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case. We take full responsibility that there was domestic violence. Domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
Friday marks the fifth day of the trial, which has so far focused heavily on the days-long testimony of Cassie Ventura, Combs’ ex-girlfriend. It was her now-settled civil lawsuit in November 2023 — in which she accused him of years of rape and physical abuse — that first raised allegations against the hip-hop titan, sparking a flood of additional suits from others who claimed he abused them, and setting into motion the criminal probe that led to his indictment.
Amid Combs’ fall from grace, some of Bieber’s fans have remembered that the two musicians crossed paths in the past. In a 2009 video with more than 11 million views on the “Baby” singer’s YouTube channel, a then 15-year-old Bieber spends time with the producer for 48 hours, and the pair discusses cars and hitting on girls.
“Where we hanging out and what we’re doing, we can’t really disclose,” Combs says in the video. “But it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream.”
In 2010, the two would take the stage with a group of other musicians at the BET-SOS Saving Ourselves Help for Haiti Benefit Concert. In 2011, they appeared together on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, with Combs saying at the time, “We’ve become friends in a strange way … [Justin] knows better than to be talking about the things that he does with Big Brother Puff on national television.”
Bieber also attended Combs’ Deleon Tequila launch party in Atlanta in 2014. In one picture from the event, the Canadian pop star sits next to Ventura; in another snap, Combs poses with his arm around Bieber.
Bad blood is still brewing. Donald Trump made yet another jab at superstar Taylor Swift in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday (May 16).
Eight months after he shared on the same social media platform that he hates the 14-time Grammy winner, the twice-impeached president posted, “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.
The insult seemingly came out of thin air, as Swift has not spoken about Trump since endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president in September. Her support of President Joe Biden’s vice president came after the business mogul shared an AI image of the “Anti-Hero” singer falsely endorsing him for a second term in office.
“It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” the star wrote of the fake image at the time. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
Swift concluded that message — which was accompanied by a photo of her with her beloved cat Benjamin Button — by signing off as “Childless Cat Lady,” a dig at Vice President JD Vance’s comments about Democrats who don’t have kids.
Five days after the superstar backed his opponent, Trump posted on Truth Social in all caps, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
While they never had mad love for each other, Trump — who in May 2024 was convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money case — did previously appreciate the singer-songwriter. In August 2012, he wrote on X (then Twitter) to thank the star for a photo, closing his message with “you are fantastic!” Months later in October, he congratulated her on landing the co-hosting gig announcing the Grammy nominations special, ending his tweet with “Taylor is terrific!”
But once Swift began sharing her political leanings in 2018, when she urged the voters of Tennessee to vote against Republican Marsha Blackburn in the midterms, Trump’s opinion of the star shifted. “Let’s just say I like Taylor’s music about 25% less now, OK?” he told reporters at the White House.
