State Champ Radio Music
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Country music stardom wasn’t in Megan Moroney’s plans. Though she wrote her first song at age 19, Moroney studied marketing and accounting at the University of Georgia. But in the end, that turned out to be just the preparation she needed for a career in Nashville.
“I guess because I grew up thinking I was going to be an accountant, I didn’t know much about the industry and what rules I should even be following,” Moroney, 27, says today. “There is definitely a bit of, ‘I’m going to do whatever I want to do.’ ”
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So just two months after the Georgia native released her debut EP, Pistol Made of Roses, independently in July 2022, she chose to put out another song not on the EP: “Tennessee Orange,” a ballad of a star-crossed romance between fans of two rival SEC football teams.
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At first, Moroney doubted her decision. “You spent every dollar that you have making this EP. Why would you release another song that’s going to take away from these songs?” she recalls thinking. But when Spotify offered to add a new song by Moroney to its Fresh Finds playlist — provided that she gave them one — the timing seemed perfect. “They are a huge platform, and that’s free marketing. Football season’s coming and I’ve got this football song. It made sense.”
That “football song” soared into the top 20 of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and on the strength of that success, Sony Music Nashville/Columbia Records signed Moroney in November 2022. With the labels’ help working it to country radio, “Tennessee Orange” reached the top five of the Country Airplay chart and has now been certified triple-platinum by the RIAA.
Selkie top, Nadri jewelry.
Tracy Allison
For the relatable songs on her debut album, 2023’s Lucky, and its follow-up, 2024’s Am I Okay? (which debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200), the self-described “emo cowgirl” drew on influences like John Prine and Emmylou Harris — but filtered them through the lens of a 20-something navigating life and love, such as on the mean-girl takedown “I’m Not Pretty” and the introspective “No Caller ID.” And Moroney’s marketing background keeps coming in handy: She’s connected with a wide audience thanks in large part to her innate branding acumen — using different colors to signify each new album era, for instance — and off-the-cuff use of social media.
“I like to create worlds around albums,” Moroney says. “I feel like my fans would be very upset if I didn’t continue that. I’ve been writing a lot, and I have a couple of colors in mind [for upcoming music].”
Last year, Moroney toured with Kenny Chesney and won two coveted industry honors: the Country MusicAssociation’s new artist of the year and the Academy of Country Music’s new female artist of the year trophies. And as she continues to amass commercial wins (her catalog has registered 2.1 billion official on-demand streams in the United States through Feb. 20, according to Luminate) and begins work on her next album, Billboard’s 2025 Women in Music Rulebreaker is still fearlessly following her creative impulses.
“I’m sure the next album will have a few emo cowgirl songs, but overall, I’ve been shocked at myself,” she says. “I’m still in the creative process, but it’s been happier than I thought.”
Dolce & Gabbana dress, Camila Cabello necklace, Nadri earrings and rings.
Tracy Allison
You have built a relationship with your fans through social media from the get-go. Why was that so important to you?
I think social media and the direct me-to-fan interactions is how it’s all blown up so quickly. I recently teased a song I had literally just written while I was in the islands. I was like, “I’m in the middle of the ocean and this song is such a vibe. I’m just going to post it.” Because I can share so much of my life and share songs quickly and react to what they like, I know what they like, so then I can put it out. And sometimes my life is just straight up boring, and I’m like, “Sorry, guys!”
How else have you broken rules in your career?
I’m definitely not putting myself in any kind of box. I love country music, and all the instrumentation [on my songs] is country, but I’m not just thinking about being in a field with trucks. With branding “Tennessee Orange,” I made the cover [art] on my phone. I have control of my social media. There is no “You should do this or you should wear this.”
Who, to you, has been a rule-breaker?
Artists that are true to themselves. Dolly [Parton] did her own thing. Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves — especially when Kacey was coming up, her songwriting opened the door for conversational, universal lyrics in country music. For me, that was the first artist where I’m like, “Can you say that in a country song? OK, cool. If she can say it, I can probably say it.”
Megan Moroney photographed on February 25, 2024 at The Paper House in Nashville. Selkie top and bloomer, Malie shoes and Nadri jewelry.
Tracy Allison
Last year, you performed with Tate McRae in Nashville. Do you feel a kinship with women pop artists?
The pop girls, I love their music. Tate and Olivia [Rodrigo] are amazing. I was so surprised, honestly, when I sang with Tate how much crossover our fans [have]. I was a little nervous to go out in front of Tate’s crowd. Even though it’s Nashville, I was like, “These people are going to be like, ‘Who is this girl?’ ” But fortunately, everyone freaked out, and so that made me happy.
For other artists who want to break rules, what advice do you have?
Trust your gut and make decisions based off you and your career alone. Don’t bring another artist’s success into how you think you should operate. It’s OK to take risks, too.
This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Celine Dion has not yet fully re-emerged from her three-year battle with debilitating Stiff-Person Syndrome. The rare neurological disorder that caused the singer painful, uncontrolled muscle spasms that made it hard to move and were so intense that they sometimes broke ribs has kept Dion mostly off-the-radar since she announced her diagnosis in 2022.
But after a few recent high-profile gigs in which she dipped her toe back into performance, Dion looked fit and feisty this week in a video with her three sons, René-Charles, 24, and twins Nelson and Eddy, 14, from the golf course. In the clip, Dion rips what sounds like a killer tee shot as one of her boys yells “YES ma!” from off camera.
“You like that one?” Dion says enthusiastically, flipping up her driver to play some air guitar in celebration, shaking her hips and goofing off while displaying her nimble moves as the voice off camera assures her, “that one was so good!”
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“I had a beautiful day with my boys out on the course,” Dion wrote in the caption. “Getting back into the swing of things!! [heart emoji],” she added, along with the playful shout-out for feedback: “PS: @pgatour, how’s my swing?”
Dion’s battle with Stiff-Person Syndrome not only impacted her body, but also caused spasms in her vocal cords that she has said made if feel like “somebody is strangling you,” leading the singer to postpone all of her 2023 and 2024 tour dates. She began her slow re-emergence into the spotlight at last year’s opening ceremony for the Paris Summer Olympics, where she wowed crowds, followed by a surprise set at the City of Hope’s 2024 Sprit of Life Gala in October and a November appearance at the “1001 Seasons of ELIE SAAB” event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Last Saturday, she also marked International Stiff-Person Syndrome Awareness Day, sharing a clip in which she talked about the rare disorder. “I want to remind you: no matter what challenges or conditions you face, you are not alone. Please hold onto hope, because it will guide you through the hardest times,” Dion wrote alongside a clip of her discussing her Celine Dion Foundation’s $2 million gift last year to establish the Endowed Chair in Autoimmune Neurology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Check out Dion’s swing below.
The Guns N’ Roses drum seat didn’t stay empty for long. Just a day after announcing the departure of their longest-tenured stickman, Frank Ferrer, after 19 years, the hard rock stalwarts revealed who will take over on Thursday (March 20).
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And while he’s not (yet) a household name, Isaac Carpenter has the perfect CV to back up the core trio of singer Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan on their upcoming Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour, which kicks off in South Korea on May 1.
The 45-year-old Washington state native performed in a GNR cover band in high school called .22s and Tulips, before that act transformed into the group Loudermilk, which got signed to Rick Rubin’s American label while the guys were still teens. Following the band’s dissolution, Carpenter played drums in AWOLNATION for a decade, and also spent time playing with McKagan’s side project, Loaded, as well performing and recording with Adam Lambert, Barbarians of California, A Perfect Circle, The Exies, Ours and Black Lab, among others.
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Carpenter will kick off his GNR era with the band for their 2025 tour, which will hit stadiums and festivals in Europe, Asia and the Middle East this summer.
Guns announced the “amicable exit” of Ferrer on Wednesday (March 19), thanking their longest-running drummer for “his friendship, creativity and sturdy presence over the past 19 years, and they wish him success in the next chapter of his musical journey.” Ferrer joined Guns N’ Roses in 2006, taking over from Bryan “Brain” Mantia, who had joined in 2000. Ferrer’s last appearance with the band was at Mexico’s Hell & Heaven Metal Fest in November 2023, which is also the most recent live performance from the GNR.
Check out the band’s first official photo of Carpenter below.
What better way to celebrate the release of your love-drenched debut album as a couple than go on The Tonight Show to prove how good you are at lying to each other? Well, that’s exactly what Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco did on Thursday night (March 20) when they fêted their collab LP I Said I Love You First by playing a round of “True Confessions” with host Jimmy Fallon.
Spoiler alert: they are adorably bad at lying to one another.
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The couple had other business to discuss on the show, of course, including a re-telling of the tale of Blanco’s elaborate engagement plot, which Selena said she almost ruined because she was exhausted after a long day of work. Gomez, who wore a flattering, off-the-shoulder black velvet dress and heels, and Blanco, dressed in a bedazzled, ripped jeans and an equally sparkly pale purple short-sleeved shirt and black cowboy boots, said she had no idea that Blanco was going to propose back in December because the day it happened she was wiped from work.
“We had to do a lot of promo for the album, so I woke up and I was very confused on what was happening, where we were going, because it seemed kind of far,” Gomez said. “I’m kind of a little grumpy. I really am tired. This is too far. So then I tell him, ‘after this shoot I’m going to go hang out with my friends.’”
Blanco said that sent him into panic mode because getting engaged is the “craziest thing” in the world. “It’s like, right before you’re gonna tell someone you’re gonna be married to them forever, they’re like, ‘show me how good you can lie to me!’” Blanco joked. “It’s the hardest thing in the world!” Blanco said the cloak-and-dagger arrangement made for the “scariest week of my life.”
When Fallon predicted the music at the wedding would be “amazing,” Gomez said they are “definitely not planning exactly at this moment,” but that she will for sure leave the music portion of the big night to Grammy-nominated producer/songwriter Blanco.
The pair, of course, also talked about the album, which Gomez described as “an exploration of each other’s present, past and future. The music was very fun, but cathartic, because we got to know each other on a deeper level.”
Earlier in the episode during the lying game, Selena tried to convince Blanco and Fallon that one time her dog ran away on set and Paul Rudd found it. Blanco was immediately skeptical about the tale, asking what year it was, to which Gomez snapped, “what are you, Judge Judy?” Showing off his deep knowledge of Sel’s dog history, Blanco expertly poked holes in her story, leading the singer to complain, “He knows it’s a lie. I told you backstage I’m going to be terrible at this!”
Nobody fell for Fallon’s dumb claim that he almost ruined Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown’s last year by showing up uninvited, especially Blanco who asked, “Who is Millie Bobby Brown?” After proving his expert sleuthing skills, it was Blanco’s turn to lie, pretending he starred in a Burger King commercial as a kid. He put on a good face, but Gomez immediately wondered, “I dunno… why wouldn’t you have told me that?”
Watch Gomez and Blanco on The Tonight Show below.
When Jennie posted the long-awaited trailer announcing her debut solo album, Ruby, she was on a plane heading to London. “It’s hard for me to stay longer than a week in one city,” she confesses — while in the car en route to yet another flight (this time from Los Angeles back home to Seoul).
Jennie chose the commanding “Zen” to soundtrack the album’s January trailer, particularly highlighting the lyric “In the dark I grew,” a sentiment that echoes throughout Ruby. “To me, that song is the core of this album,” she says. “So it only felt right to begin this journey with it.”
The album, which is entirely in English and arrived March 7, was preceded by singles “Mantra”; “Love Hangover,” with Dominic Fike; and “ExtraL,” with Doechii; and its other features — including genre-spanning artists such as Dua Lipa, Childish Gambino and Kali Uchis — further illustrate Jennie’s wide-ranging taste and global appeal. As a jet-setting artist with a devoted worldwide fan base firmly in place thanks to her role in history-making K-pop act Blackpink, Jennie is determined to build upon that on her own. (She released Ruby on her independent label, OddAtelier, in partnership with Columbia.) “It feels like my power as a superhero,” Billboard‘s 2025 Women in Music Global Force says. “It drives me to put more great things out there and work hard.”
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You already have a global fan base thanks to Blackpink. How did that benefit you on your solo journey?
If anything, I’m reintroducing myself to the world with this album. I’m throwing myself out there as if this was the very first time — that’s the commitment that I told myself. So I don’t think it changes so much for me.
You’ve adopted the middle name of Ruby Jane. How did that inspire the album title?
I was contemplating until the very end. I didn’t name [the album] Ruby because it’s a part of my name. To me, Ruby speaks to me as the curtain call of a play, where I’m opening this new chapter of… I don’t want to say new life; life is life, but a different stage in my life and I’m welcoming everyone in. I don’t necessarily see Jennie, Ruby, Jane as three different alter egos of mine. That’s just who I am, all in one.
Annakiki dress.
Songyi Yoon
You released a lyric breakdown of “Love Hangover” in Korean. Why was that important for you to do?
I love the fact that I’m Korean, so I’m just showing my appreciation and giving back the love that [my Korean fans] give me, and I wanted them to understand my music and myself better since this is an all-English album. And I know that they want to be more interactive with me in both languages.
What lyrics on Ruby best sum up how this journey has felt for you?
There’s a song that speaks to me in that sense called “Starlight,” and I think it’s a beautifully written song about how I felt for all this time. It’s a personal song.
Dua Lipa is featured on “Handlebars.” Tell me about that friendship.
I’ve known Dua for a very long time now. I went to her first show in Korea. We’re already good friends, [but] it was our first time doing a song together. That itself was a new experience for us to see each other in a different way, and we just had a great time.
Jacquemus top, David Koma pants, AREA hat.
Songyi Yoon
Between you two, who do you think travels more?
Honestly, we both work hard.
Behind the scenes, you have a strong team of women helping run your label. Why was that important to you?
I consider it to be important to work with people that you share good energy with, and I naturally started to gravitate toward empowering women. I’m still working hard to become one of those women that I look up to myself.
This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard.
03/21/2025
What was new compared to last year’s run of Dead Forever shows?
03/21/2025
Playboi Carti has landed his first-ever No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart with Music, the rapper’s third studio album and most ambitious release to date.
The 30-track project not only marks his first chart-topper in Australia, but also his first entry into the ARIA top 10, following previous peaks at No. 49 with Die Lit (2018) and No. 15 with Whole Lotta Red (2020).
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Music features an all-star lineup of guest collaborators, including Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Future, Young Thug, and Jhené Aiko, adding to the hype that’s surrounded the long-anticipated release.
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Over on the Singles Chart, Doechii rises to No. 1 with “Anxiety,” marking her first-ever chart-topper in Australia. The viral hit samples Gotye and Kimbra’s 2011 smash “Somebody That I Used To Know,” which itself spent eight weeks at No. 1. Doechii also places at No. 23 with “Denial Is A River,” and is featured on Sleepy Hallow’s version of “A N X I E T Y,” currently at No. 41.
Australian singer-songwriter Mia Wray makes an impressive debut, landing at No. 26 on the albums chart with her first full-length release Hi, It’s Nice To Meet Me.
The Melbourne-based artist, who won the People’s Choice Award in the 2012 Telstra Road To Discovery program, has previously toured with acts like Vance Joy, The Rubens, The Teskey Brothers, and Maisie Peters.
Elsewhere on the Singles Chart, Alex Warren jumps into the top 5 for the first time as “Ordinary” rockets up the chart. Chappell Roan also continues her breakout run with “The Giver,” debuting strong, while her earlier single “Pink Pony Club” hits a new peak this week.
The Jonas Brothers have officially kicked off their 2025 with the release of their brand-new single, “Love Me To Heaven.”
The track arrived at midnight on Friday (March 21), serving as the trio’s first new release of the year, following previous collaborations with Marshmello and Rascal Flatts.
Released just ahead of their inaugural fan convention, JONASCON, taking place at New Jersey’s American Dream on Sunday (March 23), the song arrives as part of the band’s 20th anniversary celebrations. The upbeat pop tune, first performed during their anniversary show in Toronto last month, sees Nick, Joe, and Kevin lean into romantic euphoria.
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“Could give me everything, but it ain’t enough / You can’t put a price on the human touch / I could be down, but you love me to heaven / Turns out the Northern Lights don’t impress me much / Guess I’m just a fool for the human touch / I could be down, but you love me to Heaven,” they sing in the track’s soaring chorus.
The Jonas Brothers previously hinted that 2025 would bring a full slate of releases, including a live album, a holiday soundtrack, solo music, and a new Disney+ holiday movie titled Jonas Brothers Christmas Music.
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“Love Me To Heaven” marks the next step in what’s shaping up to be a major year for the band. With JONASCON promising live performances, Q&As, immersive fan experiences, karaoke, merch exclusives, and even a Camp Rock bar, the Jonas Brothers are going all-in to celebrate two decades of music and fandom.
Stream “Love Me To Heaven” now on all major platforms.
Jack Harlow has called on Doja Cat for his newest collaboration, the flirty “Just Us,” which arrived on Friday (March 21). I wish it was just us in this b—h/ But they can’t trust us in this b—h,” Harlow raps on the track. “Because I’m tryna bust nuts in this, huh/ Let’s keep it on the hush-hush in […]
J-Hope has delivered his latest piece of art. The BTS superstar unveiled his newest single, “Mona Lisa,” on Friday (March 21). In a statement, the singer’s label, BIG HIT, described the new song as exuding his “smooth, laid-back charm… expand[ing] his musical spectrum, solidifying his status as one of the most dynamic and sought-after global […]
