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Jimmy Carter is likely headed for the Grammy history books. The former president’s audiobook Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration, is nominated for best audio book, narration and storytelling recording. If it wins on Feb. 2, Carter, 100, will become the oldest Grammy winner in history. That distinction is currently held by blues pianist Pinetop Perkins, who was 97 in 2011 when he won best traditional blues album for Joined at the Hip.
Perkins is followed by legendary singer Tony Bennett, who was 95 in 2022 when he won best traditional pop vocal album for Love for Sale, his second collab with Lady Gaga; George Burns, who was also 95 when he won in 1991 for spoken word or non-musical recording album for Gracie: A Love Story, a tribute to his late wife and comedy partner Gracie Allen; and Carter, who was a whippersnapper of 94 in 2019 when he won best spoken word album for Faith: A Journey for All.
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If Carter wins, this would be his fourth Grammy, which is more than any other president. He previously won in 2007 for Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis; in 2016 for A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, and in 2019 for Faith – A Journey for All. Two other former U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have each won two Grammys.
Four of this year’s five nominees in the audiobook category are over 75. Funk legend George Clinton, nominated for …And Your Ass Will Follow, is 83; Barbra Streisand, nominated for My Name Is Barbra, is 82; Dolly Parton, nominated for Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, is 78. The relative youngster in the nominations is Guy Oldfield, who produced All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words. He’s 55. (The two living former Beatles — Paul McCartney, 82, and Ringo Starr, 84 — are not nominees.)
Carter has had the longest life of any U.S. president. That title was formerly held by George H.W. Bush, who was 94 when he died in 2018. Carter has also had the longest post-presidential retirement of any U.S. president (nearly 44 years). That distinction was formerly held by Herbert Hoover, whose retirement lasted more than 31 years. Both Carter and Hoover were one-term presidents, who were unseated by Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt, respectively. Their long retirements provided some consolation for their landslide losses.
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars have a lot to smile about following the unveiling of the 2025 Grammy nominations Friday (Nov. 8), which saw the duo earn two major nods for their chart-topping collaboration “Die With a Smile.”
And on Sunday (Nov. 10), both pop stars reacted to the news with a passionate thank-you note to fans who supported the track. “I’m so grateful for these 2 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS! 😭” Gaga wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of herself and Mars enjoying glasses of champagne.
“Because of our amazing fans we are so blessed to be nominated for Song of the Year and Best Pop Duo recording for Die With A Smile!!” the Joker: Folie à Deux actress continued. “@recordingacademy We love y’all! 😭Monsters and Hooligans did that! 🥂”
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In the comments, Mars added, “(Monsters 🤝 Hooligans) Thank you! We love you!”
Nominations for next year’s Grammy awards arrived about three months ahead of the Feb. 2 ceremony. Gaga and the Silk Sonic star share the song of the year category with Shaboozey, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé, while 2025’s best pop duo/group performance is split among “Die With a Smile” and “Us” by Gracie Abrams and Swift, “Levii’s Jeans” by Bey and Post Malone, “Guess” by Charli XCX and Eilish, and “The Boy Is Mine” by Ariana Grande, Brandy and Monica.
Gaga and Mars spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Die With a Smile” this year. Complete with a retro Nashville-themed music video, the track served as a standalone collaboration ahead of Gaga’s Joker 2 companion album, Harlequin, and upcoming seventh studio album. It also preceded Mars’ “APT.” duet with ROSÉ of BLACKPINK, which recently debuted atop the Global 200.
“This was a pure, organic thing that both these artists who respect each other so much wanted to do together,” songwriter Andrew Watt, who worked on “Die With a Smile” with the two superstars, told Billboard earlier this year. “This was about the love of making great music.”
Olivia Rodrigo is joining the already star-studded line-up for the BST Hyde Park series next summer. American Express presents BST Hyde Park announced on Monday (Nov. 11) that the “Bad Idea Right?” singer will headline the Great Oak Stage on June 27 with support from The Last Dinner Party and Girl in Red, with additional […]
Argentine trap star Duki, widely recognized as a major pioneer of Argentina’s global urban music movement, is adding a 10-city U.S. leg to his global Ameri World Tour.
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The tour kicks off March with previously announced stops in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy, with more locations to be revealed soon.
Duki’s U.S. leg, produced by Live Nation, kicks off April 26 at SOMA in San Diego, Calif., and will stop in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, among other cities, before wrapping up at San Juan’s Coca Cola Music Hall in Puerto Rico May 18. Tickets will be available for presale Nov. 12 and for general sale Nov. 13 on Live Nation’s website.
This is Duki’s first major foray in the U.S., following huge touring success in other markets.
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Last December, Duki became the first urban artist ever to sell out Argentina’s biggest stadium — the fabled River Stadium in Buenos Aires — not once, but twice, selling 140,000 tickets across both nights. Earlier this year, he became the first urban artist to ever play and sell out Spain’s Bernabéu stadium in Madrid.
The Ameri World Tour follows the release of Ameri, the album, on indie Dale Play Records. The set garnered 13.5 million streams on its first day of release and premiered as a pre-listening event in front of over 15,000 people at the Movistar Arena in Argentina.
Here are all of Duki’s Ameri World Tour U.S. dates:
April 26 – San Diego – SOMA
April 27 – Los Angeles – Hollywood Palladium
April 30 – Philadelphia – Theatre of the Living Arts
May 1 – Boston – Citizens House of Blues
May 3 – New York – Theatre at Madison Square Garden
May 6 – Charlotte, N.C. – The Fillmore Charlotte
May 8 – Silver Spring, Md. – The Fillmore Silver Spring
May 10 – Chiago – Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
May 14 – Atlanta – Tabernacle
May 17 – Miamia – Kaseya Center
May 18 – San Juan, Puerto Rico – Coca Cola Music Hall
Ever since Ralph Peer held his famous recording sessions in Bristol, Tennessee in the late 1920s with such acts as Ernest Stoneman, Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, country music has uniquely told the story of American life.
Those early country stars and other artists recorded songs that reflected the down-home appeal of rural living, a nostalgia for what seemed to be a simpler past, a lure of a good old-fashioned murder ballad or a longing for an absent love.
The pioneers and trailblazers who brought these songs to the masses through the Grand Ole Opry weekly radio show (which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year) or by traveling the nation’s highways and byways helped establish country music, perhaps more than any other genre, as a storytelling medium.
Billboard looks at the those early, mid-century and 21st-century contemporary country artists who have delivered, and in some cases written, the songs that have made us cry in a tear in our beer –and who have widened the scope of what it means to be a country artist, without every sacrificing the genre’s heart.
In determining these rankings, members of the Billboard editorial staff selected their top artists from a list of nearly 200 names spanning the past century. Certain parameters were set, including focusing primarily on mainstream country artists, instead of embracing adjacent genres like Americana or bluegrass (therefore, no Jason Isbell or Sturgill Simpson).
While commercial success was a factor, artistry, longevity and enduring influence counted just as much. Because it’s too early to gauge the long-term impact of many of the newer acts yet, the list leans largely on artists whose place in country music history is already secure. But everyone on the list has in their own way moved the genre forward.
Lists such as these are always lightning rods for debate — and while our No. 1 choice, which will be revealed Nov. 19, feels pretty unassailable, there are certainly others in the Top 10 who many will feel deserved the top spot. In fact, we had a healthy staff debate over who it would be. That just goes to show the depth and richness of the talent in country music. The list will unfold over the next two weeks in five parts, starting with Nos. 100-76.
100. Brothers Osborne
Image Credit: John Shearer/2021 CMT Awards/Getty Images
For anyone who grew up in a Spanish-speaking country or a Spanish-speaking home, telenovelas were not only part of the soundtrack of their lives, but of their very upbringing. Because watching telenovelas is not a lonely pursuit; it’s a shared experience with parents, siblings, friends, nannies, college roommates and grandparents.
Indeed, the origins of telenovelas date back to the factories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with some historians specifically referencing tobacco factories in Cuba, where a “reader” would read stories to distract those who rolled the tobacco. From there, they evolved into the famous radio novelas, where daily chapters were narrated. These, in turn, became telenovelas, which are often equated with soap operas, but they’re more like cousins. Telenovelas air daily, both in daytime and nighttime slots, and their running time is far shorter than that a soap opera, usually between three to six months.
Produced throughout Latin America, but especially in Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela (previously), Colombia, and Brazil, the DNA of the telenovela is melodrama — love, betrayal, revenge, passion — all taken to the extreme. And of course, there’s the music: Each telenovela comes with its main theme, the song that announces the program’s beginning or its farewell, the siren that calls us to watch. It’s impossible to think of a telenovela without thinking of the song that identifies it, and for many artists, getting a song into a telenovela was a crucial marketing component to land a hit.
At Billboard, we set out to make a list of the 100 songs that made the most emblematic telenovelas memorable in our collective memories. Compiling the list was a titanic task, as there are literally thousands of telenovelas that have been successful on the continent, with ratings varying from country to country. We gathered all the editors and contributors of Billboard Latin and Billboard Español — 11 journalists in total, born and raised in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the United States, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic — and asked each one to select their favorite theme songs.
Although telenovelas date back to the 1950s, our list starts in the 1970s. We focused on “traditional” telenovelas, those that are broadcast daily during the day or night. We did not include biographical telenovelas based on the lives of specific people, or weekly series. We zeroed in on productions from Latin American countries and the United States, but did not include Brazilian telenovelas, given the language difference, or those produced in Spain. But we did include “narconovelas,” those dealing with cartel themes, as they are a specific subgenre of the daily telenovela.
Although we consider the 100 songs on this list to be the pinnacle of the genre, we have ranked them in order of importance, considering their impact, history, performer, and their influence on the history of music and the telenovela. For the next five weeks, every Monday we will publish a list of 20 telenovela theme songs, starting with Number 100, until we reach No. 1 in December.
This week’s list counts down to No. 61. Enjoy!
100. Alfredo Gutiérrez, “La Mala Hierba” / Telenovela: La Mala Hierba (1982)
The Latin Recording Academy revealed the final batch of performers for the 25th Annual Latin Grammy Awards on Monday morning (Nov. 11), Billboard Español can exclusively announce. The concluding acts set to perform on Thursday (Nov. 14), include a stellar lineup of salsa icons and budding acts, including Christian Alicea, Grupo Niche, Luis Figueroa, Oscar […]
One of the suspects in the investigation into the death of Liam Payne broke his silence over the weekend in an interview with an Argentinian media outlet. Three people were detained last week in connection with Payne’s death on Oct. 16 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the One Direction singer and solo star died after falling from a third-floor balcony of a hotel.
Speaking to journalist Guillermo Panizza for Telefe Noticias, 24-year-old waiter Braian Nahuel Paiz admitted to partying with Payne, but denied supplying the 31-year-old singer drugs; to date, Argentinian authorities have not revealed the names of any of the suspects that have been detained and Billboard has not been able to independently confirm that Paiz was one of them.
Paiz said he met Payne twice before the singer’s death, but insisted, “I never supplied Liam with drugs. Liam’s first contact with me was at my place of work.” He said they swapped info and then got back together later that night, with the report including pictures of the two men together. “We got together there and he showed me some of the music he was going to bring out. I’ve heard people saying he was taking drugs, but the truth is that when he got to the restaurant where I was working he was already under the effects of drugs and he didn’t actually eat anything.” Paiz said the two men communicated via Payne’s secret Instagram account.
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When the two men got together a second time at Payne’s hotel on Oct. 13, Paiz — who reportedly has lost his job in the wake of the investigation — claimed that he spent the night partying at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, alleging that the singer was doing cocaine while Paiz smoked pot. “We took drugs together, but I never took drugs to him or accepted any money,” said Paiz, who added that his home has been searched in the probe, but that he has not yet been questioned by investigators.
Paiz also said he doesn’t know who the other two unnamed suspects are and that he does not know what happened to Payne after he left the hotel room. Click here to watch the interview in Spanish.
Last week, officials in Buenos Aires released Payne’s body to his family for repatriation to the U.K. and a press release from the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s office No. 14 revealed the final results of toxicology tests on the singer. According to a translated copy of the report, in the 72 hours before Payne died after falling from a three-story hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he had “alcohol, cocaine and prescription antidepressants” in his system.
The results of the autopsy concluded that Payne’s death was caused by “‘multiple trauma’ and ‘internal and external hemorrhage,’ the result of the fall the musician suffered from the balcony of the third-floor room of the hotel in the Palermo neighborhood where he was staying.”
Additional reports concluded that the injures Payne sustained were caused by a fall at the hotel from a height and that “self-harm of any kind and/or physical intervention by third parties were ruled out.” Authorities also reported that Payne did not adopt a “reflex posture” to protect himself from the fall, which led to the conclusion that he “may have fallen in a state of semi- or total unconsciousness.”
The three people detained so far were charged with abandonment leading to death and the supply and facilitation of narcotics.
It has been a long time since Oasis performed live. But despite a 16-year lay-off, singer Liam Gallagher can confidently predict that when he and brother/guitarist Noel Gallagher reunite on stage next year for their first tour since 2008, not only will there be no cobwebs, but he double-dares any young band out there to […]
Music giant Quincy Jones was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Los Angeles, a week after his death at age 91. A larger, more public memorial is also being planned. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The family of the 28-time Grammy-winning producer, arranger and […]