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Usher is set to deliver the keynote address at Emory University’s 180th commencement this spring when the R&B legend takes the podium at the graduation on May 12. During the ceremony, Usher will also receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Emory University. “I have spent my life following my spark — my […]
As might be expected from a project titled Nothing with a two-part “Hell Suite,” the third album from revered psych-dance outfit Darkside deals with some heavy themes. But, as guitarist Dave Harrington explains, “you can at once have the feeling of ‘we’re living in hell’ – and the funky catharsis of music.”
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Such is the dichotomy that drives Darkside’s first album in four years, a record that mirrors the uneasy state of the world today, while responding to it with some of the most vibrant material of the group’s decade-plus career.
Four years ago, Darkside returned with Spiral, its second album, and first since its seminal 2013 debut, Psychic. Now, propelled by the expansion from duo to trio with the addition of drummer Tlacael Esparza, the group is back again, in just half the time – and will embark on its first North American tour in a decade this March.
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Harrington and Jaar formed Darkside in the early ’10s, and have known Esparza for about that long: For years, Esparza played around Brooklyn in various bands led by Harrington, and in 2014, he toured Mexico with Jaar. But it was a series of gigs in Amsterdam, years later in October 2019, that catalyzed Darkside’s eventual growth into a trio. Harrington, Jaar, Esparza and the saxophonist Will Epstein had convened in the Netherlands for an all-improv residency as Bladerunner and, Esparza says, “every night, we would talk about shapes and sounds and colors and ideas, and then we’d go and play something.”
While Spiral wouldn’t be released until summer 2021, it was already mostly completed by those Dutch shows – but when Harrington and Jaar began contemplating what came after for Darkside, in the studio or on the road, it was natural to give Esparza a call. In September 2022, almost exactly eight years since Darkside had played a gig, it returned to the stage, now with Esparza in tow, with two L.A. shows — which it followed with a 2023 European tour. To introduce its new lineup to fans who hadn’t caught those concerts, Darkside released Live in Spiral House, a collection culled from summer 2022 rehearsal sessions, in 2023.
“Tlacael joining Darkside changed the band’s DNA completely,” Jaar tells Billboard by email. “Playing with him was incredibly inspiring and exciting, and we almost immediately got the idea to make the next record by applying what we learned at Spiral House in L.A. and during the first tour we did as a trio in Europe in 2023.”
With “Tlacael in the mix, we just hit a stride,” Harrington says. “We just started working on [Nothing] because we were on tour and we had some days off, and rather than sit around or go to the museum or something, we set up camp in a recording studio. We love making music together, and when we had the opportunity for the three of us to be in the same place at the same time, we jumped at the opportunity to keep making music.”
But with its members spread across the globe – Harrington in L.A., Esparza in New York, and Jaar overseas in London – those fortuitous alignments of time and place weren’t particularly common. Nothing‘s sessions totaled about three weeks, but took place over about a year, in Paris and Los Angeles. But it’s the band’s “unconventional ways,” Harrington says, that drive it creatively.
While other groups might hole up at a studio for weeks or months at a time when making an album, Darkside’s process is “one of always having this time to go back to our own musical worlds, develop things, get curious about new things and then show up again as a band,” says Harrington, calling that “certainly the story of this record, and maybe the story of all three records.”
With Nothing, Jaar and Harrington both applied the extra-Darkside projects they pursued after Spiral. In 2023, Jaar released Intiha, an abstract collaboration with the composer Ali Sethi, and last year, the Chilean-American producer released Piedras 1 & 2, two ambitious LPs tackling Chilean history and Palestinian erasure. Meanwhile, in 2021, Harrington – who begins our Zoom call noodling on a trumpet in his studio, before revealing his “SCARLET > FIRE” sweatshirt, a reference to a famed Grateful Dead song pairing – formed the mildly meta jam band Taper’s Choice with bassist Alex Bleeker (Real Estate), drummer Chris Tomson (Vampire Weekend) and keyboardist Zach Tenorio (Arc Iris). Taper’s Choice has toured regularly since, and jam luminaries like Phish’s Mike Gordon and ’60s Dead member Tom Constanten have sat in with them.
It follows, then, that on Nothing, Darkside has increased both its lyrical depth and jam quotient. At one point in our conversation, Esparza praises a particularly sunny moment in album standout “Are You Tired? (Keep On Singing)” as “the most Jerry [Garcia] part of the record,” and when previewing Darkside’s upcoming shows, Harrington says its 2013 track “Freak, Go Home” has become “almost our ‘Dark Star,’” referencing the song the Grateful Dead would often expand well over the half-hour mark. “Sometimes, when we’re really on one, it’ll turn into a 30- or 40-minute excursion,” he says with excitement. “When we play it live, it barely sounds like the riff – I mean, just barely.”
The deep history between Darkside’s three members, not to mention some of their musical inspirations – Harrington cites his and Esparza’s shared affinity for the jazz drummer Brian Blade and legendary kraut-rockers Can – made its turn toward jamming more or less inevitable. Knowing each other for so long, “you’re used to talking, you’re used to hanging out, you know what they like to eat – and then you go to play music and that’s all kind of in there,” Harrington says. (The philosophy extends to Darkside’s lighting director, who Esparza says “is an improviser as well” and responds to the band in real-time.)
But despite Darkside’s increasingly improvisational bent, Nothing is also another step forward for Jaar’s singing and lyricism – although, he notes, “I’m not a singer. Nor a lyricist, strictly speaking. I’m first and foremost a music producer.” In Darkside sessions, “The vocal elements arrive as drum parts or guitar riffs do and they are often collaged and worked on like we work on percussion. That being said, sometimes, rarely, an inspiration comes and I’ll play the part of singer, but it always involves a lot of acting, it’s a character.”
On Nothing, where Jaar ends and this character begins is ambiguous – but the album’s bold declarations, from “I did it for the time of my life and the thrill! I did it for the money! I did it for the rush!” (“SNC”) to “Look at the window, it’s hell out there” (“Hell Suite (Part II)”) are more categorical.
“We live in hell,” Esparza says as he surveys the album’s themes, “but we can experience the joy and serenity and happiness of being with our loved ones and living life. I think that that’s felt throughout the record.”
“The U.S.A. is the single most dangerous country in the history of this planet, and it’s currently led by the head honcho of a global white supremacist terror ring,” Jaar warns. But, he adds, “this hellish landscape has been made by human hands, and so it can be unmade by human hands too. If I have optimism, it’s in that.”
JENNIE knows fans can hardly wait one more week for her debut solo album, Ruby, so she’s tiding them over with a sampler video posted Thursday (Feb. 27) on her socials. Featuring the BLACKPINK band member starring in multiple different visual concepts ranging from rosy-soft floral to powerful queenlike edginess, the trailer gives brief, out-of-order […]
Kip Moore is gearing up for a year filled with new beginnings, including the launch of two tours, a fresh label home at Virgin Music Group, and the release of his sixth studio album, Solitary Tracks, out Friday (Feb. 28).
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In preparation, Moore has taken his annual trip to rejuvenate in Maui, a place he’s found respite since 2014. “I’ll come out here to surf for a month or so and relax,” Moore tells Billboard via phone.
Just over a decade ago, Moore broke through with his debut hit, “Something ‘Bout a Truck,” which spent two weeks atop Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. He would earn four more Country Airplay top 5 hits, including “More Girls Like You” and “Last Shot.” Since then, Moore has veered increasingly creative with his sound and projects, refining the grizzled, heartland rock sound that has become part of his signature creative palette.
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After Moore parted ways with UMG imprint MCA Nashville in 2024, he says he recorded the first nine songs on the album independently. Solitary Tracks was intended to encompass just 13 songs, but given the lack of time constraints, he kept creating and recording — resulting in a 23-song span, split over four parts, encompassing rock (“Live Here to Work,” “Love and War”), pared-back singer-songwriter tracks (“Forever is a Lie”), muscular folk-rock (“Learning as I Go”) and old-school country (“Alley Cat”). Throughout, he touches on themes of introspection, maturity, romance, isolation, cherishing freedom and embracing life shifts.
Moore co-produced the album with The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, with additional production by Oscar Charles and Jay Joyce. Moore has been insistent on letting the music itself signal when to embark on an album cycle.
“I wrote ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Livin’ Side’ back-to-back. I write every morning, but I don’t know I’m in an album cycle until something clicks. When I wrote those two songs within 24 hours of each other, I knew I had something to say. I compiled these songs and I had four months left to turn it in,” he says. “They were like, ‘You don’t have to turn an album in until October,’ so I kept writing. So, with sides C and D, all the extra songs just became this eclectic mix. It’s kind of all over the place, and that’s what I like about it.”“Live Here to Work” — with its opening anthem of a lyric, “F–k that, I don’t live here to work” –feels like a modern version of the 1977 Johnny Paycheck hit “Take This Job and Shove It.”
“It’s a lot of fun to play at shows, I can tell you that much. I always feel a little bad if I see a couple of young kids in the crowd, but I just step on the gas anyway,” Moore says, noting that the song was inspired by overhearing the grumblings of some construction workers near his home. “One of them said, ‘The hell with that. I don’t live here to work,’ and I thought, ‘Well, f–k, we’ll be a little more emphatic. I ended up writing around that. I’d done those kinds of constructions jobs before.”
Moore co-wrote nearly every song on the album, with the exception of the moody, swaggering “Bad Spot,” a solo write from Casey Beathard, who also contributed to seven other songs on Solitary Tracks.
“It felt like everything I wanted to say at that particular time in my life, and it felt so cohesive, and I loved the hook,” Moore says. “We wrote a lot [of songs] at my house on the East Coast, and he’s never the type of guy who’s going to try to push his own music on you — but I asked if he had written anything he would want me to hear, and he suggested ‘Bad Spot.’ It was automatic for me. It was too good of a song not to record.”
Back in mid-2017, for his third album Slowheart, Moore pledged to help songwriters, many of whom have been severely hurt by the switch from an album to a singles and streaming economy, by paying an annual bonus to writers who contributed songs to his albums that weren’t selected as radio singles. He is considering doing that again with this project.
“I’ve been thinking about going back to it on this record,” Moore says. “When I did that the first time around, my hope was that it would create a little trickle effect with other artists, but that’s not what happened. My whole hope was if we were all kind of tipping out these songwriters, that if someone has a cut with me and a cut with a Keith Urban or another artist, there’s three artists all tipping him $5,000—well, $15,000 ends up being a big difference in yearly income.”
He adds, “I realized [that] because the streaming pay is so f–ked, what it’s done is it’s made writers not just focus on writing the best song that day; it’s made writers only thing about a single for radio, and that’s detrimental to the writing process. If they’re doing the right thing and paying these songwriters the right way, the songs will only get better. But I don’t see that happening without it just becoming a law in Congress driving that force. I can’t see anybody letting go of their lion’s share.”
Compounding the problem is hit songs sounding homogenous, as many new artists chase a sound similar to massive hitmakers such as Zach Bryan’s roots-rock sound, or Morgan Wallen’s brand of pop-country.
“That’s just a phenomenon on its own, and I also knew it would create 10,000 Zach Bryan wannabes,” Moore says. “With anything that pops, you get too many artists [following] that don’t know who they are to begin with. I mean, right now, you’ve got four Morgan Wallens on the radio,” he says. “It waters down the format. Nobody’s going to do it better than Morgan Wallen, so it’s all going to be 2.0, but the crazy thing is they get rewarded and get tons of airplay. Back in the ‘80s, I can’t imagine there being someone that sounded just like Tom Petty [on the radio] at the height of Tom Petty, or someone sounding like Bruce Springsteen or Prince at the height of their careers. Variety has always been key. I love that Zach Top has popped, but I don’t want to hear 10 other clones trying to sound like Zach Top.”
The Georgia native has been particularly successful in perhaps an even more challenging endeavor: building up an international fanbase. That focus on international markets sparked when he saw how audiences reacted to his Up All Night album when he played the UK country music festival C2C in 2015.
“I was the opening act and we saw in two markets where we had the highest merch and CD sales,” he recalls. “You have to keep engaging it. Last year, we did two shows in Germany. This year, we’re doing three. We’re doing two new markets. And it’s tough because it costs so much to go over there, but it’s worth it in the long run.”
Moore has toured New Zealand and the Netherlands, while Wimpie van der Sandt, CEO of Bok Radio, helped bring Moore’s music to South Africa, producing the inaugural Cape Town Country Music Festival, held in October, which Moore co-headlined with Zac Brown Band. Moore’s dedication to international touring earned him the Country Music Association’s 2024 international artist achievement award. Moore still has his sights set on performing in markets including Brazil, Mexico and Spain.
Moore says that focus on delivering internationally was a key reason he chose to align with Virgin Music Group, rather than sign with another Nashville-based label. Though labels came calling immediately after he left MCA Nashville, he spent five months making his decision.
“The whole time I wanted to at least get a distributor, because I don’t want to fool with that—that’s a headache, and even almost every independent artist has a label doing distribution,” he says. “So I knew I wanted to team up with a label, but I needed the right thing.
“[I needed] someone who understood the international capacity, and that is where Virgin came in,” he continues. “They had foot soldiers all over the place, so they wanted to pour gas on the international thing — which, the Nashville labels are not as focused on that.”
This spring, Moore will launch the Solitary Tracks World Tour, which will visit Sweden, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the U.K. In June, he’ll return stateside to team with longtime friend, surfing buddy and fellow musician Billy Currington for a run of U.S. shows in states including Florida, California, Virginia and Texas.
“He comes to Maui around the same time I do, and we’ve surfed together for several years,” Moore says. “Billy and I are both very solitary walkers through this life, and I think we share a bit of a kindred spirit. Billy was one of the first people to take me on tour when the Up All Night record came out and I did a tour with him in 2012 or so. I still to this day say he has one of the purest country voices in the world. When he’s doing pure country music, there ain’t a whole lot of people that do it better than him.”
Back in 2011 Katy Perry mused about finding a “futuristic lover” with “different DNA” on the song “E.T.” The pop star might finally get her chance to have an intergalactic encounter when she suits up with an all-female crew for the next civilian space flight on Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket.
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The company announced on Thursday (Feb. 27) that its 11th human space flight, NS-31, will blast off into the cosmos this spring with a six-person team that will also feature CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, as well as Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez.
According to a release, Sanchez, an author, licensed helicopter pilot and Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, will lead the team of explorers “on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come.”
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Perry is gearing up for her global Lifetimes tour, which is slated to kick off on April 23 in Mexico City. At press time it was unknown if the Blue Origin flight will take place before that extensive outing hits the road, keeping the pop star on stages in Mexico, North America, Australia and Europe through a Nov. 11 gig in Madrid. It was also unknown at press time how much prep the civilian astronauts will have to go through to prepare for the flight.
Blue Origin said that the NS-31 crew will also host former NASA rocket scientist, global STEM advocate and Bahamian-American aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, as well as bioastronautics research scientist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen — the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman astronaut — and Kerianne Flynn, entrepreneur and producer of the films This Changes Everything and 2024’s LILLY, which told the story of fair-pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter.
Though at press time Perry did not appear to have commented on her impending trip to space on her socials, King, 70, announced her blast off on CBS Mornings, telling viewers, “I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time. It’s like how I felt about to deliver a baby… I thought I wanted to open myself up to new adventures and step out of my comfort zone.” The TV presenter who has long joked about her fascination with space flight, also noted that she’d consulted with her two adult children and lifelong bestie and business partner Oprah Winfrey before signing up for the flight.
“Once Kirby and Will and Oprah was fine with it, I was fine,” King said. “I thought Oprah would say no, no. She said, ‘I think if you don’t do it, when they all come back and you had the opportunity to do it, you will be kicking yourself.’ She’s right.”
To date, Blue Origin’s human flight program has sent 52 people above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles above Earth on its phallus-shaped rockets, with crews that have included Star Trek star William Shatner, as well as company founder Bezos and his brother, Mark Bezos.
The spring flight will be host the first all-female crew since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963.
See the CBS announcement below.
The 37th annual Premio Lo Nuestro ceremony, which aired Feb. 20, logged a record 543 million engagements across television, social, digital and ViX, according to TelevisaUnivision. The three-hour show (from 8-11 p.m. ET) reached 4.2 million total viewers across Univision, UniMás, and Galavisión, and delivered year-over-year audience growth among total viewers (+3% to 2.1 million).
Furthermore, this year’s Premio Lo Nuestro — hosted by Thalia, Laura Pausini and Alejandra Espinoza — was the No. 1 program on broadcast television in primetime with more adult (ages 18-34) viewers than the primetime line-ups on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The CW. It also finished as the highest-rated program on all of television during the entire day with U.S. Hispanics across all key demographics, according to the Nielsen ratings report.
On social media, Premio Lo Nuestro logged 4.8 million total interactions across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube combined, making it the No. 1 most social program of the entire day, regardless of language, for the 9th straight year.
With performances by Thalia, Natti Natasha, Xavi, Will Smith, Marc Anthony, among many others, the night also included a special tribute to the late Paquita la del Barrio, who died days before the awards show. La India, Alejandro Fernández and Manuel Alejandro all received special honors throughout the night.
Shakira was the top winner taking home six trophies, including album of the year for Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran and pop female artist of the year. The Colombian star was closely followed by Carín León, who took home five awards, and Karol G and Camilo, each with four. See the complete list of winners here.
In 2025, artists from the indie and pop worlds collaborate and co-mingle regularly enough that it’s almost hard to remember a time when it was ever really that novel. But earlier this century, indie and pop were still isolated enough that in 2009, when Solange took her sister Beyoncé and Bey’s husband Jay-Z to a […]
Sabrina Carpenter‘s tour just got less short and a lot sweeter. On Thursday (Feb. 27), the pop star announced that she’s circling back to North America for a slew of extra dates on her ongoing Short n’ Sweet trek, kicking off this fall. In an Instagram post sharing the new shows, Carpenter wrote, “you asked […]
Little Simz has kicked off her 2025 with the release of a mighty new single, “Flood,” and announced her upcoming sixth album, Lotus.
The new album will be released on May 9 via AWAL, and will be her first studio LP since 2022’s No Thank You.
Featuring vocals from both Obongjayar and Moonchild Sanelly, the lead track marks the first slice of new material from Simz this year. It arrives accompanied by a striking video, which was directed by Salomon Ligthelm.
In February 2024, Simz put out her Drop 7 EP, which was followed by surprise single “Hello, Hi” in December. Throughout the year, she also made a slew of guest appearances on other artists’ tracks: Coldplay’s “We Pray,” Sampha’s “Satellite Business 2.0” and Wretch 32’s “Black and British.” In June, she appeared on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, marking her biggest show to date.
More recently, Simz was nominated in the hip-hop/rap/grime category at The BRITs 2025, which will take place at London’s O2 Arena Saturday (March 1). She has previously triumphed at the awards ceremony, scooping the best new artist gong in 2022.
In January, it was announced that the 31-year-old will curate this year’s Meltdown Festival at the capital’s Southbank Centre. Taking place between June 12-22, the event will see Simz craft a wide-ranging bill of music, art and workshops across 11 nights, with the full lineup expected to arrive soon.
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Across the course of an illustrious career, Simz has released five studio albums, among a wealth of mixtapes and extended projects. In 2022, she won the Mercury Prize for her fourth LP Sometimes I Might Be Introvert – her highest charting record in the U.K. to date, landing at No. 4 upon release.
When the Oscars announced that this year’s nominees for best original song would not be performed on the telecast, but that there would instead be a single spot focused on the songwriters of those songs, some feared that music would get short shrift on the annual awards show, which airs Sunday, March 2, from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. Subsequent announcements have proved that this is not the case.
Six powerhouse women – Doja Cat, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, LISA of BLACKPINK, Queen Latifah and RAYE – will perform on the telecast. The show also will feature a special appearance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Erivo and Grande, who are both nominated for their roles in Wicked, are expected to open the telecast with one or more songs from that blockbuster musical. Queen Latifah is set to take part in a tribute to Quincy Jones, who died in November at age 91. Latifah, a longtime friend of the music and film titan, performed on two tracks on his 1995 album Q’s Jook Joint.
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The other women are expected to participate in “performances celebrating the filmmaking community and some of its legends.”
“There are special moments that are planned and it’s about music, it’s about celebration, it’s about celebrating some really amazing pieces of film and even a Governor’s Award with Quincy Jones,” the show’s executive producer and showrunner Raj Kapoor said in a Zoom press conference with the creative team on Wednesday (Feb. 26). “The music performances are just really special and curated this year. And I think they speak to this year in film, and they also speak to icons and legends.”
But Kapoor didn’t want to divulge too much about the show. “I mean we absolutely love the element of surprise. What I can say is [that even with] every presenter and every performer that’s already been announced, there’s still more to come. There are people that are not going to be announced,” he teased. “You will have to keep a sharp eye out for a few different cameos that happen throughout the evening.”
Kapoor said the show will have a couple of themes. “One is that we are honoring the city of Los Angeles. … We really wanted to create some really beautiful moments on stage that celebrate this amazing city that we live in, all the amazing films that have been filmed here, and just have a really uplifting and beautiful message that we hope really touches everybody who watches the show.
Supervising choreographer Mandy Moore said they will aim to recapture some of the excitement of last year’s show-stopping Ryan Gosling performance of “I’m Just Ken.” “I can definitely say if you liked Kenergy, you’re going to love everything we’re doing this year because it’s in the same vein of joy and celebration.”
RAYE performed her song “Oscar Winning Tears,” from her album My 21st Century Blues, on the Grammy telecast on Feb. 2, where she was a best new artist nominee. Kapoor was an executive producer of that show as well.
Last year’s Oscar winners in the four acting categories – Cillian Murphy, Emma Stone, Robert Downey Jr. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph – were the first presenters announced for this year’s show.
Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña, two of the stars of Emilia Pérez; Ben Stiller; and Joe Alwyn, one of the stars of The Brutalist (though probably still best known as Taylor Swift’s ex) have since been added to the list of presenters. This will be Gomez’s first appearance on the Oscars stage. Other presenters range from 25-year-old starlet Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis) to 95-year old character actress June Squibb.
Conan O’Brien will host the telecast for the first time. Nick Offerman will serve as announcer.
The 2025 Oscars will air live on ABC and stream live on Hulu on Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, with the official live red carpet show airing at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT.
Here are the performers and presenters for the 2025 Oscars.
Performers
Doja Cat
Cynthia Erivo
Ariana Grande
LISA of Blackpink
Queen Latifah (Quincy Jones tribute)
RAYE
Presenters
Joe Alwyn
Dave Bautista
Halle Berry
Sterling K. Brown
Penélope Cruz
Willem Dafoe
Ana de Armas
Lily-Rose Depp
Robert Downey Jr.
Elle Fanning
Harrison Ford
Gal Gadot
Andrew Garfield
Whoopi Goldberg
Selena Gomez
Goldie Hawn
Samuel L. Jackson
Scarlett Johansson
John Lithgow
Cillian Murphy
Connie Nielsen
Amy Poehler
Margaret Qualley
Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Alba Rohrwacher
Zoe Saldaña
June Squibb
Ben Stiller
Emma Stone
Oprah Winfrey
Bowen Yang
Rachel Zegler
