State Champ Radio Music
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Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” continues to dominate the U.K. Singles Chart as it notches a seventh consecutive week at No. 1 on May 2. The hot streak makes “Ordinary” the longest running chart-topper in the U.K. since Sabrina Carpenter’s nine-week reign with “Taste” in 2024. The news also coincides with continued success on the Billboard Hot […]
Welsh rock group Stereophonics has earned its ninth U.K. No. 1 album with 13th studio LP, Make ‘em Laugh, Make ‘em Cry, Make ‘em Wait, on May 2.
The band earned its first chart-topper in 1999 with Performance and Cocktails, and has appeared at the summit a further eight times with Just Enough Education to Perform (2001), You Gotta Go There to Come Back (2003), Language.Sex.Violence.Other? (2005), Pull the Pin (2007), Keep the Village Alive (2015), Kind (2019) and Oochya! (2022).
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The ninth No. 1 sees the four-piece leapfrog Oasis, Ed Sheeran and Led Zeppelin — all of whom have eight — and pulls them level with Bob Dylan and Take That on the all-time leaders list. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are the only British rock bands to have landed more No. 1s with 15 and 14, respectively.
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The group will headline a number of massive outdoor and stadium shows in the U.K. this summer, including at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and London’s Finsbury Park.
Swedish band Ghost has equaled its career high at No. 2 with its sixth album, Skeletá. The theatrical rockers, led by Tobias Forge under the Papa Emeritus persona, has hit the top 10 several times previously: 2018’s Prequelle (10), 2023’s Phantomime (8) and 2024’s Rite Here Rite Now (10).
Former X Factor winner James Arthur has netted a sixth top 10 with his new LP PISCES; he scored the top spot three times previously with 2016’s Back From the Edge, 2021’s It’ll All Make Sense In the End and 2024’s Bitter Sweet Love.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet nets another week in top five (No. 4) and Self Esteem hits a new peak with her third album, A Complicated Woman (No. 5). The new release saw the Rotherham-born artist sign to Polydor after years on indie labels with her previous band The Slow Club and earlier Self Esteem LPs. Speaking to Billboard U.K., she said, “This whole journey has taught me that what’s important is people and community. That’s what the music means to me.”
The Black Keys top Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for the eighth time as “The Night Before” lifts a place to No. 1 on the May 10-dated tally. The duo notches its first leader since “Beautiful People (Stay High)” led for two weeks in March 2024. In between its latest No. 1s, the act hit No. […]
Rebecca and Megan Lovell, otherwise known as the musical duo Larkin Poe, are the first to say they aren’t breaking new musical ground. “We’re all derivative,” Rebecca says to Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from a tour stop in Boise, Idaho. “There are very few original ideas.”
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Take “Easy Love Pt. 1,” an upbeat, Bonnie Raitt-styled number from the group’s new album, Bloom. “That’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s a song that is built upon basically the changes [of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s] ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” says Rebecca.
Then again, the Georgia-raised, Nashville-based sisters are taking the blues and Southern rock to unlikely places. In January, the sisters visited Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform “Easy Love Pt. 1.” Not many blues-based artists get a national television audience these days. And few women are winning a Grammy award for best contemporary blues album, which Larkin Poe did in 2024 for its 2022 set, Blood Harmony.
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Guitar-playing Rebecca and lap steel guitar-playing Megan deserve credit for crafting an accessible, modern spin on traditional music. The sisters have succeeded in honoring the histories of some great American musical genres without being afraid to finding their own approach to a familiar sound.
Over the years, the Lovell sisters, who began Larkin Poe in 2010, incorporated beats to their music and occasionally changed the lyric of a cover song. “I do think that there is this temptation at times for — and I hear it a lot in the blues, specifically on a lot of the festival touring circuit that we’ve done — you speak with the same metaphor. You are honoring the past, and you’re putting this whole genre of music kind of behind glass. And it’s a little museum. And we look at it, but we don’t engage, we don’t tweak it. And so I think, very respectfully, Megan and I, over the years, have done our best to get in there, and if we’re going to do a blues cover and there’s a lyric in there that we don’t agree with, we’ll change it. And and we do so with utmost respect, because we respect the songs, and we believe that art and genres of music, specifically traditional American music, needs to evolve.”
Bloom “is a little bit of a departure,” says Rebecca. “It embraces a lot of different types of Southern music that we previously were maybe limiting ourselves [to] a little bit in order to be a blues-fronted outfit. Because I do think [Bloom is] more driven by melody, whereas previous records were more driven by riffs.”
Following the release of Bloom, Larkin Poe reached No. 11 on the Top Album Sales chart, No. 16 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart, No. 20 on the Vinyl Albums chart and No. 66 on Billboard’s Artist 100 chart. Larkin Poe arguably has a stronger presence on the road, though, and has spent 2025 performing at mid-sized clubs and theaters across the U.S. In March, the band set sail on Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea cruise.
The sisters, who began their career in music as folk trio The Lovell Sisters with older sister Jessica, began their appreciation of blues music in their late teens. “We unbraided some of the hillbilly jazz influence of our bluegrass upbringing in order to allow more soul into the music,” says Rebecca. “And I do have to shout out Son House and Skip James, those two artists specifically as really capturing our imagination for turn of the century blues and showing us the possibility of a human voice and an acoustic or electric guitar.”
They were prompted to dig deeper into the blues when on tour with Elvis Costello, who Rebecca calls “a fount of knowledge.” Since Rebecca and Megan were listening to the Allman Brothers, Costello encouraged them to follow the group’s history and research its musical predecessors. “That definitely influenced us to go back and do our research about where these songs were coming from,” says Rebecca.
Listen to the entire interview with Rebecca and Megan Lovell using the embedded Spotify player below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
Neil Young is ready to roll again, but not if Elon Musk‘s company logo is on the hood. On his new song “Let’s Roll Again” released Friday (May 2), the rock star briefly takes aim at the billionaire’s electric car company amid lyrics imploring auto manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to build […]
At 62, Fito Páez maintains “the curiosity and desire” of the early years and an energy that doesn’t allow him to stop creating. Music above all, but also cinema and literature — passions he has been developing in parallel over the decades. And Novela, his latest album, might finally combine them all.
Created as a rock musical, the 25-song project — which Páez spent nearly 40 years writing and was finally released on March 28 under Sony Music Spain — tells the story of Villa Constitución, a town in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, where a strange circus arrives to revolutionize the lives of its inhabitants. Through songs such as “Universidad Prix,” “Cuando el Circo Llega al Pueblo,” “Superextraño” and “El Triunfo del Amor,” its unique characters are introduced: the school’s dean, Rectitud Martirius; the witches Maldivina and Turbialuz; the young lovers Loka (daughter of the circus owner) and Jimmy (singer of a rock band) and more.
“We’re already speaking with many producers to film the movie once the tour finishes next year,” Páez tells In Conversation with Billboard Español in New York. “And I’m also beginning an adaptation [to] perform Novela live in full, where the audience can go and see a show that isn’t a musical — it’s the band playing the album and everything happening at once.”
The release comes the same year as the 40th anniversary of Giros, the second studio album in his expansive discography and the one that truly launched his career, with classics such as “11 y 6,” “Cable a Tierra” and “Yo Vengo a Ofrecer Mi Corazón.”
“It’s similar to a beach, Giros. It’s like having arrived, after wandering so much in the river or the sea, and saying, ‘Ah, I’ve made it here,’” he reflects on what the 1985 set meant to him. “There are many elements there that define many things about the place where I was raised, where I learned music, where I was loved, and where I was shaped. It’s an album I care for deeply, and I think it was a strong first step in the direction of searching for a more personal voice.”
In this new installment of En Conversación, the singer of hits such as “El Amor Después del Amor,” “Tumbas de la Gloria” and “Mariposa Tecknicolor” also discusses current events such as the immigration policies that have led fans to avoid attending concerts in the U.S. out of fear of deportation (“It’s horrifying,” he says. “It reminds me of when, back in ’78, we were chased out of Serú Girán concerts during the military dictatorship, and they threw us in jail”); and the ban on narcocorridos in some states in Mexico (“It’s a cultural expression born from lived experiences … and now it’s the singers’ fault! No, guys, it doesn’t work that way”).
Watch the full interview in the video above.
Beyoncé had the whole family — including the the tens of thousands of Beyhive members at the second show of her Cowboy Carter Tour — congratulate Tina Knowles on her recent accomplishment Thursday night (May 1).
In a sweet moment from the performance at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer is joined on stage by her mom, whose memoir, Matriarch, debuted this week atop the New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestsellers list. Standing with an arm around her mom and joined by her own daughters, 13-year-old Blue Ivy and 7-year-old Rumi, Bey first praises the author for “working so hard on her book.”
“She has the No. 1 book on the New York Times bestsellers,” the 35-time Grammy winner continues proudly as Rumi jumps up and down excitedly, prompting big sister Blue to lovingly shush her. “Everybody, please say, ‘Congratulations, Mama T.’ One, two, three!’”
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As the crowd indulges Bey’s request, Tina blows a kiss before exiting the stage with her granddaughters, holding Rumi’s hand.
The day prior, the Destiny’s Child alum had also personally congratulated her mom with a post on Instagram. “The Mama T was that good??” Bey wrote Wednesday (April 30). “You deserve it, I’m so proud!”
Tina’s achievement comes a little over a week after Matriarch hit shelves, giving fans an intimate look into her life raising one of music’s biggest stars as well as the designer’s battle with breast cancer in 2024. In addition to NYT‘s nonfiction hardcover bestsellers, the book is also No. 1 on the publication’s combined print and E-book nonfiction list.
Thursday’s performance marked the second of five shows slated for SoFi, after which Bey will travel around the United States and Europe through the end of July. The Cowboy Carter Tour kicked off three nights prior on April 28, featuring cameos from both Blue and Rumi during “Protector.”
Watch Bey’s Cowboy Carter Tour crowd join her in congratulating Mama T below.
98 Degrees knows what you want. The long-running boy band has made heart-melting ballads its calling card since signing to Motown Records in the late 1990s.
Now, the quartet featuring brothers Nick and Drew Lachey and bandmates Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre are preparing to release their first non-Christmas album in more than a decade, Full Circle (May 9) — and to hear Nick tell it, Taylor Swift kind of had something to do with it.
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“She [Swift] was definitely an inspiration to us, and probably to a lot of musicians out there who felt like they just didn’t have ownership of their own creativity, of their own career to an extent,” says Nick, 51, in a recent group Zoom call with his bandmates about their decision to include six “98°’s Version” updates of their biggest hits on the album. The move follows Swift’s decision in 2021 to begin issuing “Taylor’s Version” remakes of (to date) four of her most iconic albums following the sale of the masters of her first six albums to former Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun.
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“We were certainly inspired by her to do it, to great success and acclaim [and] we felt it was the right time in our career to make that move and take some ownership back over the songs that have paved the way for our success over the years,” says Lachey of the band, which had a hand in writing a number of the songs on their initial four-album run from 1997-2000. Admittedly, like Swift’s re-records, the fresh 98 takes don’t sound radically different, and Timmons, also 51, says that was the point.
“We decided we wanted to keep them true to their original form that people fell in love with,” he says of the spruced-up recordings of their Billboard Hot 100 top 20 hits “I Do (Cherish You)” (No. 13), “Invisible Man” (No. 12), “Because of You” (No. 3), “The Hardest Thing” (No. 5) and “Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche)” (No. 2).
“Over the past 20-plus years we’ve developed vocally in different ways, but we wanted to keep the songs with the integrity of the originals, because that’s what people fell in love with,” says Timmons, admitting that sometimes fans will give them feedback if the group messes around with the arrangements or melodies of its top hits. “We wanted them to sound almost exactly like the originals.” He also stresses that there was “no dispute” with former label group Universal Records that led to the decision, but rather a desire to have more control over how and where their most cherished songs appear.
“Some of the things that started irritating me was if I wanted to use my own music, our own music on a video post, Universal striking my own post for copyright infringement… it’s our own songs!” Timmons says. Like with the Swift remakes, Nick Lachey says he thinks it would be “great” if these new takes become the standard versions for their fans.
In addition to the revamps, the album features the first new non-holiday songs from the guys since their 2013 2.0 album. Again knowing their lovestruck lane and happy to hang out in it, they say the five ballads are 100% fan service. The album kicks off with the mid-tempo bubbler, and recently released single, “Stranger Things (Have Happened).” The bouncy pop tune was inspired by Netflix blockbuster Stranger Things and, like that show, it employs vintage synths alongside the quartet’s signature interwoven vocal melodies.
The classically keening 98 ballad, “Got U,” was co-written by Nick along with Soulshock & Karlin (Usher, Whitney Houston) with Alex Cantrall (JoJo) and produced By Anders Bagge (Madonna, Jennifer Lopez), while “Same Mistake” and “Tremble” are heartbreaking tales of regret over the one(s) that got away.
One of the most intriguing fresh cuts is “Mona Lisa,” which plumbs the mysteries of Leonardo da Vinci’s smiling painting in a super 98 Degrees way. “A portrait of a fairytale/ So we cover canvas like/ The colors mask the pain/ We only ever let them see/ The picture that we paint,” they sing before the uplifting chorus, “Is Mona Lisa smiling, or is there pain in her eyes/ Is it just an illusion?/ What is she hiding behind?/ Was she trying to put on a show?/ Not let Leonardo know/ That in between the cracks of the brush strokes/ Lies the truth only Mona Lisa knows.”
That song also features additional vocals from Filipino vocalist Janine Teñoso in what Timmons says is a nod the one of two territories where the band first broke nearly 30 years ago; the other one is Canada. “We didn’t break in the U.S. right away… and we wanted to get back into the Philippines because we knew we were going to tour there,” he says of the band’s upcoming first shows in the country that has been a stalwart supporter for decades.
The album also spotlights another team-up with a Filipina singer, Katrina Velarde, on a Taglish version of “I Do (Cherish You),” which should get the crowds on their feet when the guys perform in Manila on May 30 and 31. “They love love songs there [in the Philippines], it’s a very passionate, romantic culture and when we’ve been there we also noticed everyone can sing, really well! Like even the valet at the hotel!” Timmons says.
Listen to some of the new mixes and a preview of “Stranger Things (Have Happened) ” below.
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Maroon 5 and LISA aim for the charts, Ed Sheehan stumbles through memories and Don Toliver and Doja Cat are ready to race. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Maroon 5 & LISA, “Priceless”
From Christina Aguilera to Cardi B, Maroon 5 have teamed up with A-list solo stars on singles that have reached the top of the Hot 100 over the years; they’ll attempt to do the same with “Priceless,” a lightly funky, easy-listening pop track featuring LISA, hot on the heels of her debut album and Coachella performances, balancing out Adam Levine’s romantic crooning with airy sing-rapping.
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Ed Sheeran, “Old Phone”
After kicking off his new era with the global anthem “Azizam,” Ed Sheeran returns to the wistful, emotionally piercing pop-rock of previous eras with “Old Phone,” on which the singer-songwriter keeps strumming as he stumbles upon a long-dormant phone and gets flooded with the photos, texts and memories stored inside, searching for resolution within the discovery.
Don Toliver feat. Doja Cat, “Lose My Mind”
The upcoming Brad Pitt-starring racing drama F1 will boast one of the most high-profile soundtracks of 2025, and the compilation rollout gets kicked off with “Lose My Mind,” a shimmering, synth-drenched club track (courtesy of producer Ryan Tedder) that showcases Don Toliver’s silky melodic streak and Doja Cat’s chest-thumping rhyming, a few years after the latter scored a top 10 hit with her Elvis theme “Vegas.”
Bailey Zimmerman feat. Luke Combs, “Backup Plan”
“Getting back up — that’s the only backup plan you need,” Bailey Zimmerman declares on “Backup Plan,” the empowering new single that seems tailor-made for end-of-workout playlists to give you that extra bit of motivation. After Zimmerman teamed up with BigXThaPlug on the top 10 hit “All the Way,” Luke Combs serves as his co-pilot here, with the fellow country star’s rumbling voice turning into the perfect foil.
Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco, I Said I Love You First… And You Said It Back
In addition to a few stray tracks and remixes, the real appeal of I Said I Love You First… And You Said It Back, the deluxe edition of Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco’s collaborative full-length from March, is “Talk,” a cheeky new single that reanimates Cake’s beloved 1998 single “Never There” for a new generation of pop fans, complete with halting lyric delivery and slinky alt-rock arrangement.
Quavo feat. Takeoff, “Dope Boy Phone”
The tirelessly prolific recording run of Migos in the 2010s and early 2020s has resulted a slew of unreleased material seeing the light of day following the tragic passing of Takeoff in 2022, and “Dope Boy Phone,” Quavo’s new single featuring a posthumous appearance by his nephew and group mate, sounds as fresh as any of the rap group’s earth-rattling hits, including those on the pair’s underrated joint project Only Built for Infinity Links.
Fuerza Regida, 111XPANTIA
A press release for Fuerza Regida’s 111XPANTIA describes the new project as “pure Fuerza from start to finish”: with 12 songs and zero features, the album does indeed offer an unadulterated version of the Mexican music superstars’ aesthetic, full of carefully constructed arrangements and harmonies that encourage the listener to join in after a few listens.
Editor’s Pick: Key Glock, Glockaveli
Key Glock’s excellent new album may include an update of Three 6 Mafia’s “Stay Fly” on the single “Blue Devil,” but the rapper was already carrying on the tradition of Memphis hip-hop long before Glockaveli: through his recent mixtapes and particularly his critical work with Young Dolph, Key Glock has demonstrated an unflappable delivery and ear for effective production, and his new album feels like the mainstream arrival for an artist who’s already been putting in the work.
“Back in the day,” Chubby Checker tells Billboard from his home in New Jersey, “I said, ‘I don’t want to be in the Rock Hall when I’m dead. I want to smell my flowers when I’m here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little late in the game, I would admit, but I’m still alive to see Chubby Checker in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
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Eligible since the first Rock Hall class in 1986, the 83-year-old responsible for “The Twist” and other dance sensations will finally arrive in the shrine during the Nov. 8 induction ceremony in Los Angeles — on his first nomination, no less. That’s come as a surprise, even shock, to many fans since the news broke about Checker’s induction, but the South Carolina native (born Ernest Evans) says it’s not something he’s been fretting about over the years.
“It’s another milestone — and the beat goes on,” he notes.
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Nevertheless, Checker famously protested outside of the Rock Hall museum in Cleveland back in 2002, but he clarifies that it wasn’t simply about his exclusion from the ranks. “I wanted people to know that Chubby’s music was not being played, that’s all it was,” he explains. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The best thing for any artist is to get his music played, and my music wasn’t getting played and I was a little upset about it. You can walk into the supermarket and hear (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…but not ‘The Twist,’ and you look around the supermarket and every company’s got some kind of twist product, you know? I did it very nicely. I didn’t try to cause any problems. I never protested anything in my life except that.”
Checker will, of course, enter the Rock Hall with ample credentials as a groundbreaker and architect. Inspired to pursue music after seeing country great Ernest Tubb perform at a South Carolina fair when he was four years old, Checker and his family moved to South Philadelphia and he began singing doo-wop as a youth. Nicknamed Chubby by a boss at the produce market where he worked, he auditioned as a teen for American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose wife Barbara added Checker as a surname as a salute to Fats Domino.
Checker imitated Domino, Elvis Presley and other poplar singers at the time for a 1959 single called “The Class,” after which Clark suggested he take on “The Twist,” which was written by Hank Ballard — based on dances he saw teenagers doing in Tampa, Fla. It was only a modest success for him and his band, the Midnighters. Adding dance moves to his performance, Checker took the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during September 1960 and then for a second time in January 1962 — the only single to do that until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” decades down the road.
“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have on the dance floor — and is still giving us that,” says Checker, who despite his Philadelphia roots was a supporter of the Rock Hall being built in Cleveland, in deference to pioneering radio DJ Alan Freed. “Before (‘The Twist’), Elvis and Little Richard and Bill Haley and Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, they were doing the swing to their songs. Then Chubby Checker comes along and…the whole world changed.” Checker followed “The Twist” with other dance songs, including “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Again” and a resurrection of the late ‘40s dance “The Hucklebuck.”
“Chubby Checker never left the dance floor,” he says. “I used to call myself the wheel that rock rolls on, because anyone after Chubby Checker who had a song that you could dance to, they were in my world, that I brought to the dance floor. Dancing to the beat is what we brought, and it’s still there — no matter what it is. It’s called the boogie, and the boogie is still going on. Someone once said, ‘Chubby, you want to do a disco song?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”
In all, Checker has had 32 songs (and seven top 10 hits) on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2008 Billboard honored “The Twist” as No. 1 on the Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs list, which it held until the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” took the honor in 2021. Nevertheless, Checker notes, “it will always be the No. 1 song. There will be a number two No. 1 song, a number three No. 1 song, but (‘The Twist’) was the first and will always be the first.”
“The Twist” has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. The Rock Hall honored “The Twist” in 2018 by inducting the single as part of a new initiative — a practice that has not been repeated since.
Checker has no intention of recording anything new — “How am I gonna invent the wheel twice?” he asks — but still performs regularly. And that continuing demand, he says, has mitigated any disappointment he may have felt while waiting for his Rock Hall induction.
“Listen, I’m a blessed human being,” Checker says. “In spite of everything, my dreams come true every day. Every time I go on stage my dream comes true, my dream is renewed — that’s what keeps me going. I’m a blessed man in this world.”
