State Champ Radio Music
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Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were passed over for an Oscar nomination for their acclaimed score for Challengers, but Reznor’s fellow members of the ASCAP composer and songwriter community voted that score the year’s best — and on Wednesday (April 30), Reznor was honored with the ASCAP Composers’ Choice Award for film score of the year at the 2025 ASCAP Screen Music Awards, held at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
Elsewhere, Jeff Toyne won two ASCAP Composers Choice Awards — television score of the year and television theme of the year, both for his work on work on Apple TV+’s Palm Royale. Toyne earlier won a Primetime Emmy in September for outstanding original main title theme music for his work on the show. He was also nominated for a second Primetime Emmy for outstanding music composition for a series (original dramatic score).
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Chosen by the ASCAP composer and songwriter community, ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards are presented in five categories. Here’s a complete list of this year’s winners:
● Film Score of the Year: Challengers – Trent Reznor
● Television Score of the Year: Palm Royale – Jeff Toyne
● Television Theme of the Year: Palm Royale – Jeff Toyne
● Documentary Score of the Year: Jim Henson: Idea Man – David Fleming
● Video Game Score of the Year: Tales of Kenzera: Zau – Nainita Desai
In other categories, Andrea Datzman was honored with top box office film of the year for the animated family film Inside Out 2. Composer Jeff Cardoni earned top network television series for the sitcom Young Sheldon, while John Sereda received top cable television series for the historical drama When Calls the Heart. David Vanacore was the top winner in the most performed themes & underscore category.
In addition, ASCAP recognized some of the top composers of the past year’s hit streaming series and films. The top streaming series winners include Bear McCreary for the epic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Michael Abels for his tone-setting score in the sci-fi mystery-thriller The Acolyte, Jamie Jackson and WAZ for the comedy crime drama Bad Monkey, and Rupert Gregson-Williams for his score and Josh Kear & Meghan Trainor for their theme to the whodunit crime drama The Perfect Couple.
Among the top streaming films winners, Hans Zimmer was honored for his score to the historical World War II drama Blitz, Lorne Balfe received recognition for the action thriller Carry-On, Amelia Warner was recognized for the biographical sports film Young Woman and the Sea, and Siddhartha Khosla was celebrated for the romantic book-to-film adaptation of The Idea of You.
The complete list of winners is available on the ASCAP website: www.ascap.com/screenawards25.
So far, the NHL‘s Los Angeles Kings have played three home games in their first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs matchup against the Edmonton Oilers. For all three of those games, the Koreatown Senior and Community Center harmonica class was also in Crypto.com Arena. The L.A. hockey team invited the amateur harmonica troupe to play the national […]
If the party was over and our time on Earth was through… could you say you’ve watched Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ “Die With a Smile” video? Since its release more than eight months ago, the music video has officially racked up 1 billion views on YouTube — so yes, a few people can say […]
Following before-and-after photos of Olly Murs‘ fitness journey going viral this week, the British pop star is reacting to what he calls “very disappointing” coverage of his body transformation.
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It seemingly started when a poll on X (formerly Twitter) asked users if they preferred the “before” or “after” version of Murs’ body, and whether they were male or female. The results showed that the majority of women voters thought the “before” looked better, while men voters chose the “after.”
After days of social-media debate (which seemed to dismiss the fact that only Murs needs to be happy with his own physique), the singer/songwriter and TV host weighed in on the chatter, sharing a photo on Instagram of a Daily Mail headline that read: “Bad luck, Olly! Women prefer your ‘huggable dad bod’ to the muscles you got in the gym.”
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“I wouldn’t normally comment on stuff like this but from what I’ve seen I just want to say that this journey at the start of the year was for many personal reasons and not one of them was to spark a debate and divide opinions,” Murs wrote in the caption. “So it’s very disappointing to see this kind of reporting!”
He ended with a message to his supporters and anyone else on their own fitness journey: “Big Love to everyone who’s been kind and to anyone out there improving themselves and making adjustments to their wellbeing. Love to you all, keep it up! ignore the noise!”
One of Murs’ fans decided to flip the narrative by providing her own “before & after” moment on X. “Thought I’d do my own Olly Murs comparison post since that’s all that’s on my feed right now… 15 years in the game..5 albums out of 7 went to number 1 and STILL selling out arenas ! you deserve every single bit of success @ollymurs.”
The “before” moment she shared was Murs’ audition on season 6 of the U.K.’s X Factor in 2009 — where the then-25-year-old declared his dream of becoming a “pop star” and finished as the runner-up — and the “after” is his Official Charts Company stats, which include five U.K. No. 1 albums and four U.K. No. 1 singles. In the U.S., Murs has scored two Billboard Hot 100 hits, including the top 40 hit “Troublemaker,” featuring Flo Rida, which peaked at No. 25 in 2013 and hit the Pop Airplay top 10.
In addition to his music career, Murs has found success as a TV personality, appearing as a coach on The Voice UK from 2018 to 2023.
Find Murs’ response to the online debate below.
thought I’d do my own Olly Murs comparison post since that’s all that’s on my feed right now…15 years in the game..5 albums out of 7 went to number 1 and STILL selling out arenas ! you deserve every single bit of success @ollymurs 👏❤️ pic.twitter.com/ALaAgpoAj6— antonia✨ (@antonia_704) April 29, 2025
Ye’s Donda 2 streaming debut could be short-lived. Mere hours after the lost 2022 project hit streamers on Tuesday night, Ye (formerly Kanye West)revealed that he received threats of legal action from managers of producers who contributed to the album over financial compensation. “Free Maiden tried to charge me 3 million dollars for these beats […]
DDG has an offer for popular streamer IShowSpeed. While on Twitch promoting his upcoming album Blame the Chat, the rapper and streamer asked Speed how much it would cost for him to make a cameo in a music video for a song of the same name featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Rich the Kid. “Speed, […]
Calvin Harris and Vick Hope are finding love in new places this year, with the couple currently expecting their first baby together. As revealed in photos posted on Instagram on Tuesday, the British TV and radio personality is visibly pregnant. In one snap of Hope hosting the 2025 Roundhouse Poetry Slam, she shows off her […]
Victoria Monét checked a mommy-daughter moment off her parenting bucket list this week when she brought her baby girl, Hazel Monét, to her first concert as Beyoncé kicked off her Cowboy Carter Tour on Monday night. The “On My Mama” singer posted a carousel of clips and photos from the heartwarming evening with friends and […]
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated May 10, we look at the chances of Ghost’s Skeletá to top the chart – or whether a late-registering rap superstar may sneak in ahead of them.
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Ghost, Skeletá (Loma Vista): The masked-and-costumed Swedish hard rock outfit Ghost has steadily grown their profile stateside over the past decade and a half – even scoring a surprise Billboard Hot 100 hit in 2022 with the TikTok-favored “Mary on a Cross.” Each of their five studio albums has performed better than its predecessor on the Billboard 200, leading up to 2022’s No. 2-peaking Impera – which means there’s only one spot left for sixth album Skeletá, released last Friday (Apr. 25), to reach if the band wants to continue the trend.
Skeletá does not yet have a “Mary”-sized breakout hit, and its streaming presence will likely be relatively modest. But Ghost has long sold well, and the band’s latest is available for purchase in over a dozen vinyl variants — with different-colored and/or different-pictured records — as well as four cassette color variants, and as a digital download. For most of the week, it looked like that would be enough for Skeletá to likely stand virtually unopposed as the week’s top debut. However…
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Donda/Ye, Donda 2 (YZY) …a major new variable has emerged in the form of divisive rapper Ye‘s new re-release. While constantly under a cloud of controversy due to his recent drift towards hate speech, Ye (formerly Kanye West) has also remained a consistent commercial performer, with six-digit first-week unit bows for both of his Vultures 1 & 2 sets. Now, he doesn’t have a new set to a threaten the charts with, but he does have a reissue of an older album that has never been widely available before.
Upon its early 2022 release, Ye’s Donda 2 – sequel to his chart-topping, Grammy-nominated 2021 set – was only released via the Stem Player, and was not even considered eligible for the Billboard charts. Today (Apr. 30), the rapper has released the 18-track LP to DSPs like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal, and has also made the set available for purchase on iTunes – allowing fans who didn’t make the investment in the album and/or the Stem Player the first time around to essentially get to experience it like a new release. (The album is technically credited to the artist “Donda” on these services.)
Of course, with the album’s Wednesday release, it will only have two days of tracking counting towards its performance on the upcoming Billboard 200, and Donda 2 was not particularly well-received by either the fans or the critics who did hear the album back in 2022. But even at yet another PR low point, Ye cannot ever be counted out on the Billboard 200 – he has 11 No. 1s on the chart, including both Donda and Vultures 1 this decade.
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d4vd, Withered (Darkroom/Interscope): One of the more consistently buzzy performers in the alt-rock space this decade, the prodigious d4vd finally released his debut album Withered last Friday. The now-20-year-old’s LP includes the Hot 100 hit “Feel It” — originally released on the soundtrack to the Amazon Prime series Invincible – and is available in six different vinyl variants (as a 12-track set), on CD (14 tracks), on streaming (15 tracks), with each of those versions also available for digital download, and as an extended digital download (17 tracks). He’ll also profit from signed iterations of the vinyls and CD.
Tucker Wetmore, What Not To (Back Blocks/UMG Nashville): After scoring a pair of viral hits in “Wine Into Whiskey” and “Wind Up Missing You,” Tucker Wetmore quickly became one of the hottest names in country. Now he’s trying to capitalize on that early success with his debut album What Not To – which includes both those hits, as well as current country radio single “3,2,1,” among its 19 tracks. The album is available in multiple CD and vinyl variants (including four signed CDs), as well as 20- and 21-track extended d2c digital downloads.
Grateful Dead, Dave’s Picks Volume 54 (Rhino): The Dead’s Dave’s Picks series, always available in a limited-edition run of 25,000 total copies. remains a regular presence in the Billboard 200’s top 40, though it hasn’t gotten to the top 20 since Volume 45 back in January 2023. Regardless, the three-disc Volume 54 is out now, and features the band performing at the Baltimore Civic Center back in March 1973 – with some four-disc copies also including songs from the Dead’s show at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium earlier that month.
“I’m a little nervous,” Sandra Bernhard told the audience on the first night of her debut residency at Manhattan’s Café Carlyle on Tuesday (April 29) evening. Noting that the chic space insists its performers (whether they’re a singer, actor, comedian, or in her case, all three) bring new material to the 90-capacity room, she wondered aloud whether that meant the venue had someone “watching, monitoring” to ensure everything was fresh.
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For a performer who started out in the ‘70s and has been singing, acting and cracking wise since (Bernhard is legendary for her brash, uncompromising style and dry wit, perhaps best showcased in her classic 1990 film Without You I’m Nothing), that’s no small task. But if the venue was concerned about new material, they got that and much more when Bernhard revealed she had recently underwent open heart surgery.
“It was a planned surgery, it wasn’t that dramatic,” Bernhard clarified, pointing out that other patients she came in contact with at the hospital were suffering through much harder health scares. (Her reaction to all that? “This sh-t’s crazy, I’m gonna pull through and get the f–k out of here,” she deadpanned).
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Bernhard shared she had some last-minute concerns about potential scarring right before her surgery. “I know we’re just minutes away from being wheeled into the operating room, but I’m an actress, I’m a performer,” she recalled telling the doctor. “Do I need to bring in a plastic surgeon? They said, ‘We’ll make it work, we’ll make it beautiful.’ … And here I am.”
After some cheers and applause from the crowd, she gave her fans the side-eye. “I thought I’d get a standing ovation, but okay.”
The opening night crowd included her partner of 25 years, Sara Switzer, as well as friends and longtime fans (her rescue pup, George, was waiting for her in one of the upscale hotel’s rooms in “a smoking jacket”), giving the evening a casual, conversational feel. At one point, she engaged in an extended conversation with one lucky woman sitting toward the front. Similarly, during an anecdote about her gynecologist, she turned to a table of presumably gay men (they were, after all, at a Sandra Bernhard show) and assured them, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna force anything on you.”
Backed by her Sandyland Squad Band (including her pianist of 40-some years, Mitch Kaplan), Bernhard sang an eclectic mix of decades-spanning songs over the course of the evening. Per the Carlyle’s new-material mandate, she trotted out fresh covers in her repertoire, tackling everything from McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” to Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” to Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze.” While the lyrics for the lattermost gave her a spot of trouble (“Isn’t this the soundcheck?” she quipped), she quickly fell into a groove with her band; while Bernhard isn’t known for vocal dynamics, she brings a captivating, effortless verve to the mic that eludes many technically proficient singers.
There was real pathos and pain in her voice when she sang Marianne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By.” The recently deceased singer-songwriter was a longtime friend of hers, and Bernhard told a few stories about her time with the chain-smoking chanteuse. “We’ll never see the likes of her again,” she concluded of the late icon.
Many years from now (we hope) when Bernhard herself shuffles off this mortal coil, the same will certainly ring true for her. From Flint, Mich., to stages around the world, Bernhard is a true American original, possessing the kind of wit and presence that can’t be learned or manufactured. Seeing her in an intimate venue like Café Carlyle during this residency, which runs through May 3, is an undeniable treat.
Before the night was over, she did a callback of sorts to her big reveal: grasping her chest, she slumped over, briefly faking a heart attack. “That’s a new party trick,” she shared.
