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Bunnie XO is opening up about the lesser known emotions of IVF. In a new episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast, the star got vulnerable about her emotions as she goes through the process of trying to conceive a child with her husband, Jelly Roll. She compared the process to “slot machine in Vegas” due […]
Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco — her fiancé who happens to be one of the top pop producers of today — are making the rounds with their joint album I Said I Love You First.
Best representing the creative collaboration between two halves of a shared heart, the set is home to 15 tracks, including “Call Me When You Break Up,” featuring Gracie Abrams, and “I Can’t Get Enough,” the pair’s 2019 team-up with J Balvin and Tainy.
“It just felt like it was a little taste of what we are and how we made this together, and how much we loved it and how much we love each other,” Gomez recently said about working with her romantic partner in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And it just felt like it was meant to be.”
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One of the set’s standout track is “Ojos Tristes,” a bilingual glam-pop track that features vocals from the Marías leader María Zardoya, who is also credited as a songwriter and producer. The song — whose lyric video has nearly 2 million views and is in the top 10 on YouTube’s Trending chart for music at the time of publishing — samples Jeanette’s 1981 classic “El Muchacho de los Ojos Tristes.”
Below, Billboard compares the 2025 version with the original by the English-born Spanish singer.
Title: “El Muchacho de los Ojos Tristes”
Artist: Jeanette
Year: 1981
Song: A song about a young man with sad eyes became one of the most emblematic songs of Jeanette’s career. Lyrically, she sings about coming across a lonely man who has sad eyes and needs love, and her desire to see him again and make him feel better. Musically, it’s a soft, glam-pop ballad that transmits melancholy backed by Jeanette’s dreamy and dulcet vocals. “El Muchacho de los Ojos Tristes” was written and produced by Manuel Alejandro and marked the third single from Jeanette’s Corazón de Poeta album released in 1981.
Video: A video published on Jeanette’s official YouTube channel shows the then-30-year-old singer performing the song in a live television setting. Completely alone onstage, the artist interprets the song’s lyrics with grace, passion and her own sad, brown eyes glistening. She’s wearing a sequined purple dress with cowboy boots as she sways side to side.
Title: “Ojos Tristes”
Artist: Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco
Year: 2025
Song: While the ’80s song is about the desire of knowing more about that mysterious man with the sad eyes, Gomez’s “Ojos Tristes” is about an unwanted breakup. “It’s not your fault I have to leave/ Please don’t you look that way, baby […] Those sad eyes, sad eyes/ You know I don’t wanna say goodbye,” she sings at the beginning of the track. Produced by Blanco, Josh Conway and Maria Zardoya of The Marías, the song conserves its hazy-disco aura, but with more percussion and instrumentation. The Marías also sings Jeanette’s timeless chorus in Spanish and adds another verse about never forgetting her ex despite the years.
Video: An official music video has yet to be released, but a lyric video featuring Gomez hugging Blanco in bed on a loop captures the nostalgic sentiment of the song.
One is a Broadway veteran; the other a debutante. Natalie Venetia Belcon and Isa Antonetti are the stars playing legendary singer Omara Portuondo at different stages of her life in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, the new Broadway musical about the Cuban artists who brought the acclaimed Grammy-winning album of 1997 to the world.
With Broadway credits including Matilda (Mrs. Phelps) and Rent (Joanne), Belcon is a Trinitarian-American actress and singer best known for originating the role of former child television star Gary Coleman in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q. She had already played the Cuban icon knows as “La Novia del Filin” (“The Bride of Feeling”) during the BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB off-Broadway run, receiving the 2024 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical and a nomination for a Drama Desk Award for the role.
Meanwhile, Antonetti is a “Latinx, indigenous, mixed race LGBTQIA+ actress and singer from the Greater Rochester, New York area,” as stated in the show’s playbill, and is currently completing her BFA in Musical Theatre at Carnegie Mellon University. With credits including Evita (NYCC), Macbeth (CMU), and A Chorus Line (OFC Creations), she recently made her film debut in Gift of Fear, and is excited to make her Broadway debut in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB — “as it reflects her own experiences growing up performing with her father’s Latin band, Orquesta Antonetti.”
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Buena Vista Social Club was formed in Cuba in 1996, as a project organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González, who named the group after a popular music venue in Havana in the 1940s. To showcase popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero, and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for years.
The group’s eponymous debut album was released in September 1997 and quickly became an international sensation. On the Billboard charts, it reached No. 1 on Tropical Albums, where it stayed at the top for 24 weeks and spent a total of 266 weeks on the chart. It also reached No. 1 on Top Latin Albums and World Albums, and spent 19 weeks on the Billboard 200. In 1998, it won the Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Album, and the Billboard Latin Music Award for Tropical/Salsa Album of the Year by a Group. The Buena Vista Social Club album was also voted into the National Recording Registry in 2022 and the Grammy Hall of Fame last year.
With a book by Marco Ramirez, the Saheem Ali-directed Broadway show is inspired by true events, and features a band of international musicians to narrate the legendary story of the artists who brought the original album to life, going back and forth between the mid-90s and the 1950s. The company also features Julio Monge as Compay Segundo, Mel Semé as Ibrahim Ferrer and Jainardo Batista Sterling as Rubén González — with Da’von Moody, Wesley Wray and Leonardo Reyna as their younger versions, respectively. Renesito Avich plays Eliades Ochoa, and Ashley De La Rosa a young Haydee. Also performing are Angélica Beliard, Carlos Falú, Hector Juan Maisonet, Ilda Mason, Marielys Molina, and Sophia Ramos, among others.
Last Tuesday afternoon (March 19), dressed to the nines for the musical’s official Broadway premiere, Belcon and Antonetti sat with Billboard Español to share their experience giving life to one of the most beloved singers of Cuba. (Hours later, Omara Portuondo herself, now 94, would pay the cast a visit at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater in New York City ahead of opening night. She was not available for press).
What did you know about Buena Vista Social Club before joining this musical?
Natalie Venetia Belcon: I have musicians for parents, and they introduced me to Buena Vista Social Club, the album. I was 26, 27, something like that.
Isa Antonetti: I also have musicians for parents, and they would play the music [with their band] or the music would play it in the background and I would never know what I was listening to, until my dad told me: “You should do some more research on this on this Cuban band that we love to play sometimes.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I heard [the song] “Chan Chan” and I heard a couple of their songs and I was just humming them all over the place. And then they kind of just stayed in my Spotify and I would listen to them once in a while.
In the musical, you speak in English but sing in perfect Spanish. Are you fluent? How did you achieve the accent?
Antonetti: I’m not fluent, but I do speak.
Belcon: My father’s side of the family is Spanish, [but] I don’t speak Spanish. When we moved up to this country, we moved to the South Bronx, which is, you know… [heavily Puerto Rican]. So I am used to hearing it. I just never had to speak it. But I treat languages like I would music — I go off of the sounds and the dialect coach, so I’m good like that, just repeating and recording and putting my earphones in and you know, listening to it all the time is how I learned, anyway.
Antonetti: I always think musicians have the ear. You could give me some sheet music and I could make my way around it, but I learned best by our dialect coach, you know, speaking it and sending us voice memos, making sure I’m pronouncing it the way that is authentic to this show.
Beyond the Spanish, how did you both prepare to play Omara at these two stages in her life?
Belcon: I’m lucky in the sense that the stuff that you see of her is of her older. And so I watched “Adiós” quite a few times and listened to the stuff a lot. I mean, I can’t even help it now, it’s just kind of, you know, on repeat, basically.
How about you, Isa? There’s not so much of Omara from that era.
Antonetti: It’s so funny because I was thinking about it and I remember in the rehearsal room when they had the pictures up, it’s just like one picture of Omara when she was younger. I would do some research, I would look to see if there’s some videos of her when she was younger with like her sister and with her quad. And so I would use that, and I would also talk to [Associate Music Director] David Oquendo and ask what is the essence of someone who’s 19 in Cuba? You know, and I would try and bring that to her as well.
What was the biggest challenge of portraying a vocalist known as “La Novia del Filin” [The Bride of Feeling]?
Belcon: Well, today, it’s going to be [hard] to not pass out when I meet her. I hope my understudy is ready, ’cause I might be in the ER with IV (Laughs). The challenge is, even though this is a fable, to make sure that we are still being respectful and not making up somebody entirely. And to have a semblance of who she is, to have it resemble her as much as possible.
Antonetti: Absolutely. I could just quote what she said. All of it!
But this is your Broadway debut so, for you, what was the biggest challenge?
Antonetti: Besides the genuine general things about Broadway being exhausting through the rehearsals and the previews — you know, that it’s challenging in its own way. I think for the show specifically, it’s keeping making sure the time period stays in your body when you step on stage. I’m playing someone in the 1950s, so that’s different than how I would play someone else. I think the challenging part is remembering when you step on stage that you are a different person and you’re being respectful and you’re bringing life to something. It’s challenging and rewarding and all of the above.
At some points during the musical, your characters meet, creating really emotional moments. Any favorites for you?
Belcon: I think it might be [Ibrahim Ferrer and Portuondo’s duet] “Silencio,” when the younger two are up top on the malecón (pier) and Ibrahim comes in and then I’m having all the memories of things. That and, not necessarily my favorite but I think in my head the most important, which is how it all starts when she — again, it’s a “Do I go left or right?” It’s a crossroads: “Do I make the album or not?” Then she chooses and it’s a butterfly effect; it kind of affects everything and everybody else.
Antonetti: I would say “Chan Chan” — it’s had different iterations since we started rehearsal and I’m so grateful that I get to be a part of that number even longer because it’s so emotionally devastating, but I love the moment and I only get to see it from behind the stage of the malecón. I get to see Natalie come in and Angélica [Beliard] do this beautiful dance move where she transfers the trauma into Natalie. Just remembering it, that moment, I’m telling you, I need like three hours to recoup.
Belcon: I need three drinks! (Laughs)
What did you both learn from Omara Portuondo in this process, as a person and as an artist?
Belcon: I mean, to say that she’s strong is an understatement. There needs to be a better word — maybe it needs to be “I am Omara,” right? You know, she’s been through a lot, just a lot, and came through it all and succeeded. More than succeeded. Just the time period, what was happening [in Cuba], and she not only survived that, she thrived regardless.
Antonetti: As a person, as an artist… She is more than just those words. Whenever I think of her, it’s like what you said, strong is an understatement. She is just this powerful being that can take my breath away.
After months of rehearsals, how does it feel to see the whole show finally come together on Broadway?
Belcon: I had a little bit of a heads-up cause I’ve done it once before [off-Broadway.] I think it is different in the bigger space, definitely, but that’s always a fantastic payoff moment. All the hard work and the not sleeping and all the rest of it, when you see everything fall into place, you know, those moments when you see the younger and the older [characters together], it’s always the payoff. They’re emotional moments. They are.
Antonetti: There are moments where I just have to hold myself back because I am an emotional person. And I was like, “This is a dream and it’s coming true and I have to be grounded in that or I’ll freak out.” It’s like what I told someone else outside: It has been exhausting, but it is worth every inch and ounce of that exhaustion. Absolutely.
Actors Natalie Venetia Belcon and Isa Antonetti on the red carpet as they arrive to the Buena Vista Social Club musical opening night on Broadway on March 19, 2025, in New York City.
Andy Henderson
One year after the release of Beyoncé’s Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter, “Texas Hold ‘Em” banjo player Rhiannon Giddens is opening up about feeling conflicted over her contributions to the culture-shifting project.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published Sunday ahead of the release of her own album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, Giddens shared that she has struggled with the pros and cons of appearing on such a high-profile album. On the one hand, plucking strings on the LP’s No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit single “Texas Hold ‘Em” allowed her to feel embraced by the mainstream Black community for the first time, she says — but on the other, it also made her feel like her contributions were simply part of a “transaction.”
“There are so many of us struggling to maintain our humanity in this industry,” Giddens told the publication. “My biggest talent is collaboration. I’m really into sharing and being one of many, and I feel like that’s important, but you can’t be a superstar and do that. You just can’t!”
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“There are two examples I could pull out, in my entire 20-year career, where I feel like I had to make a compromise in order for a greater good,” she continued. “This was one of those times … And there were definitely benefits: I’ve heard from people saying more people are taking banjo classes and dancing to it because of [‘Texas Hold ‘Em’]. It also gave me an entrée into the Black community that I’ve never had, to be honest. Because of all the things I’ve been fighting for my whole life, it’s been difficult to be seen as a Black musician, especially since I’m mixed, all this sh–. But for the first time, I felt acceptance from the mainstream Black community, which made me weep.”
That said, Giddens said it was “really hard” to feel as though her talents were “treated as any other transaction in the music industry.” “Because I certainly didn’t do it for the money, I can tell you that,” she elaborated. “I did it for the mission. So, my idea of what the mission is and somebody else’s idea of what the mission is are not going to be the same thing. There’s a reason why I’m not a multi-millionaire. If you are a multi-millionaire, there are reasons why. No shade, whatever. It means you do things in a certain way.”
The folk musician went on to give an example of a mainstream artist whose mission she does resonate with: Kendrick Lamar, whom Giddens says uses his platform “in an intensely activist way.” “I don’t know how he does it, but he did it,” she said. “He’s unique. Most people aren’t like him. So I can’t expect everybody to be like him, and that’s fine.”
Released in March 2024, Cowboy Carter was one of the year’s most talked-about albums. Featuring collaborations with Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus and Post Malone, the project sparked much discourse about the bounds of genre and whether Bey was “country enough” to make the pivot. The album was notably shut out by the Country Music Awards, receiving no nominations despite its success on the country charts (including the superstar becoming the first Black woman to ever top the Hot Country Songs chart). Cowboy Carter did, however, receive both best country album and album of the year at the 2025 Grammys.
At one point, Giddens herself even responded to the backlash Cowboy Carter faced from country music purists — whose dismissal of the album she said was “just racism” in an IMPACT x Nightline interview. “Nobody’s asking Lana Del Rey, ‘What right do you have to make a country record?’” Giddens said in March last year. “People don’t wanna say it’s because she’s Black. You know? But they use these … these coded terms, you know? And that’s problematic.”
Singer-songwriter Chappell Roan splashes into the country genre as “The Giver” bounds in at No. 1 on Billboard’s streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Country Songs chart dated March 29.
Released March 13, the single totaled 22.3 million official U.S. streams, 2.2 million all-genre audience impressions and 6,000 sold March 14-20, according to Luminate.
The song by the Willard, Mo., native also opens atop Country Streaming Songs and Country Digital Song Sales, likewise in her first visit to each chart.
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Concurrently, “The Giver” roars onto the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 at No. 5. It’s Chappell Roan’s third top 10, following “Good Luck, Babe!,” which hit No. 4 last September, and “Pink Pony Club,” which reached No. 7 a week ago; it ranks at No. 9 on the latest list. “The Giver” marks her first top 10 (or even top 40) debut on the Hot 100.
“The Giver” was shipped to country radio by Universal Group Nashville’s MCA Records. Of the song’s airplay in the tracking week, 20% was from reporters to Billboard’s Country Airplay chart; it debuts at No. 33 on the Adult Pop Airplay tally and is bubbling under Pop Airplay and Country Airplay.
The Country Airplay panelists that played “The Giver” the most during the tracking week: KFDI Wichita, Kan. (45 times); KTTS Springfield, Mo. (44); WZZK Birmingham, Ala. (39); KBAY San Francisco (12); and KYGO Denver (11).
Meanwhile, Chappell Roan is just the third woman to debut a first Hot Country Songs entry at No. 1, after two that also initially established themselves with pop hits: Beyoncé, with “Texas Hold ‘Em” (2024), and Bebe Rexha, with “Meant To Be,” with Florida Georgia Line (2017). (The latter song went on to reign for a record 50 weeks.)
“I have such a special place in my heart for country music,” the Missouri native shared on Instagram March 4. “I grew up listening to it every morning and afternoon on my school bus and had it swirling around me at bonfires, grocery stores and karaoke bars … I am just here to twirl and do a little gay yodel for yall.”
Nick Cannon is famous for numerous music, acting, comedy and hosting projects, but in recent years, he may have become best-known for being a dad — to not one, not two, but 12 kids and counting. The Masked Singer ringleader first became a parent during his former marriage to Mariah Carey, with whom he welcomed […]
While much of the 30-plus track setlist of Tyler, The Creator‘s Chromakopia: The World Tour centers around the rapper’s 2024 album, one fan made it clear that they want to hear at least one song from a different Tyler album, both online and in-person. After Tyler made a stop at Orlando’s Kia Center on Saturday […]
At SXSW 2025, Billboard took over Moody Amphitheater from March 13 to 15 for The Stage, a three-night concert series spanning multiple genres. The final night, however, stood out as Billboard teamed up with Carnival Cruise Line to bring the vibrant world of Celebration Key — the brand’s exclusive Grand Bahama destination launching in 2025 — to life.
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Carnival during the Billboard THE STAGE at SXSW held at Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 13, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
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Carnival transformed the venue into a tropical paradise, featuring bold, beach-themed installations and interactive experiences. Guests arrived at the Stage in Carnival branded pedicabs before being greeted by The Paradise Zone upon entry. The Paradise Zone invited guests to lounge on beach chairs, stretch out on colorful blankets, and enjoy moments like the custom Carnival Celebration Key cornhole game. A beach-inspired wooden sign guided attendees through each interactive station, amplifying the celebration vibe.
A Celebration Key-branded bar served up custom drinks, and attendees could snag exclusive giveaways like bucket hats or glow sticks by sharing their personal definition of paradise. For many, the highlight of the evening was the surprise upgrade from General Admission to The Paradise PIT—Carnival’s VIP section—granting lucky fans a front-row concert experience.
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To add another sweet touch, the Carnival Cotton Candy Station, inspired by Carnival’s Cherry On Top candy store, offered free cotton candy to all in attendance.
The night kicked off with DJ Jordan Miller spinning tropical beats from the Celebration Key DJ booth, followed by rising producer Nala, who kept the energy alive with her remixes.
As 9:30 pm approached, fans flooded the Paradise PIT, waving Carnival-branded light sticks in anticipation of the headliner. John Summit delivered an unforgettable set, packed with chart-topping hits like “Where You Are” and “Shiver.”
For those who couldn’t make it to Austin, stay tuned to Billboard for more recaps from The Stage at SXSW, presented by Carnival.
Kesha is kicking off 2025 with a bang. The superstar’s first release of the year arrives in the form of a major collaboration with T-Pain. The “TiK ToK” singer took to Instagram on Monday (March 24) to announce that the track, “Yippee-Ki-Yay,” will be released on Thursday (March 27). The corresponding cover art features Kesha […]
It’s fair to say the three members of Imagine Dragons are over the moon about their new concert film Imagine Dragons: Live From the Hollywood Bowl (with the LA Film Orchestra), showing in theaters March 26 and 29. The fact that it comes in the wake of the band’s music actually being on the moon makes it even better.
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On March 5, Imagine Dragon’s “Children of the Sky” — which the Las Vegas-formed group co-wrote with Inon Zur and others in 2023 for the video game Starfield — was embedded in Athena, a ship the space startup Lonestar Data Holdings sent to Earth’s moon. And while music had previously arrived there on other voyages, it marked the first time a song was transmitted back to Earth — albeit a day later because the Athena craft landed on its side, and short of its target, so some adjustments had to be made.
Imagine Dragons’ guitarist Wayne Sermon is still stoked that “Children of the Sky” skied its way back to its home planet. “I was here, and I was following the mission live on YouTube,” Sermon tells Billboard via Zoom from Los Angeles, where he now resides. “I’m very much into space exploration, I’m into anything NASA’s doing. I’m very fascinated with that kind of stuff…It was one of the easiest yeses we had. Things looked a little dicey there for a minute…but (Athena) was able to still do a couple of things and one of them happened to be beaming our song.
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“We were happy just to be part of it. It’s a crazy thing. Put it up on the list of things that are just surreal, having your music beamed from the moon. It’s like alright, sure, that sounds reasonable, OK.”
Sermon says he hasn’t had a chance to flex any bragging rights over the achievement, however. “I haven’t used it once, man. Unbelievable,” he says. “It hasn’t come up in conversation, casually. Once it does I have an ace in the hole at a dinner party — ‘So, how about the moon…?’”
Sermon says the filmed Hollywood Bowl experience was also otherworldly. Filmed Oct. 27, 2024, at the last of four shows Imagine Dragons performed at the venue (and the final date of the North American leg of its Loom World Tour), the concert found the band — also including frontman Dan Reynolds and bassist Ben McKee — playing with a full orchestra conducted by Zur, whose video game scoring work the group has long admired.
“We saw these Hollywood Bowl shows coming down the pipeline while we were on tour,” Sermon recalls. “We just felt like something needed to happen there. We’d sold out four shows, which was kind of crazy to us, and it seemed to be special, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we do something with an orchestra, a one-night-only thing.’” The group recruited Zur to create orchestrations and then watched it grow from a handful of numbers to the entire 22-song concert.
“We’d keep getting emails from (Zur), ‘OK, send me another one,’ and the next day we’d have an arrangement and ‘Send me another one,’” Sermon says. “This kept happening until he’d arranged every single moment of the show. From start to finish it was a complete collaboration, which I think is pretty rare in a show like that.”
Among the concert moments that most stand out is “Radioactive,” for which Zur created a duel between violin and cello players in the orchestra. “Children of the Sky” was another highlight, according to Sermon. “That was a song conceived in the studio, and we weren’t present for when (Zur) came up with the orchestration for it,” Sermon says. “We wrote our part, he wrote his part and we got ’em together remotely. We never actually played that song together in the same room with an orchestra before. So for that song to come to life at (the Hollywood Bowl) felt like a full-circle moment. (Zur) wrote a really incredible intro to it where he could stretch out and show some of his chops. It was great to do that song and have it represented and documented forever.”
The film, however, was not part of the initial discussion and only decided upon “probably a couple of weeks before the show,” according to Sermon. “It was just going to be this thing that happened, that you just had to be there for. In this day and age, where everything is documented and overshared, it was maybe something that just lived for a night and was gone, and maybe there’s something beautiful about that. But the more we thought about it, so many people who would like to see it couldn’t. With Inon being involved and hearing his arrangements…we felt it would be a real shame for people not to hear it. Luckily our management scrambled to find some extra cameras and we threw it together and willed it into existence so people could see it.”
Live From the Hollywood Bowl was directed by Vincent Adam Paul and will be screened in CJ 4DPLEX, ScreenX, 4DX and Ultra 4DX as well as standard formats. Theater and ticket information is available via ImagineDragonsMovie.com.
Sermon plans on catching one of the big-screen showings himself but anticipates the film will eventually go to streaming as well. “The whole point of filming it was so people can see it,” he says. “Seeing it in theaters, especially in 4DX formats, is gonna be mind-blowing for people, but eventually it will be streamed.”
Imagine Dragons will resume the Loom World Tour on April 4 in China and then begin a European run on May 27 in Italy. The trek is set to wrap up July 25-26 in London, while he, Reynolds and McKee are “just starting to write our new album now. We are exploring a lot of different options, including parting things back a lot — just trying new things and seeing what sticks. We don’t really know what we’re doing for next things until we just do it.”
