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Jeopardy! contestants are expected to know a little bit about everything. They can be a leading authority on the World Series, but that doesn’t do them a bit of good if the categories before them are Shakespeare, U.S. History and 20th Century Women. On Wednesday (Sept. 25), one of the categories was Grammy Winners for […]

K-pop girl group aespa announced additional dates for their 2024-2025 aespa LIVE TOUR – SYNK: PARALLEL LINE outing. After launching in June with a pair of shows in Seoul, South Korea and then hitting Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and Australia in July and August, KARINA, GISELLE, WINTER and NINGNING will make their way to North America, Mexico and Europe in early 2025.
According to a release announcing the shows, with the newly-added stops the year-long tour will included a total of 41 performances across 29 cities.

Tickets for the U.S. and Canadian dates will be available first through a WeVerse presale, followed by a general onsale beginning on Oct. 4 at 3 p.m. local time, with ticket information available here; tickets for the Mexico City show will go on sale to the general public on Oct. 9 at 10 a.m. local time, with information available here.

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The announcement of the additional dates for the group’s world tour in support of their debut studio album, Armageddon – The 1st Album — came a week after aespa teamed up with Grimes for a spacey remix of their hit single “Supernova” on the six-track EP iScreaM Vol. 33 : Supernova / Armageddon Remixes.

The 2025 SYNK : PARALLEL LINE tour dates:Jan. 28 – Seattle, WA @ ShoWare Center  

Jan. 30 – Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena  

Feb. 1 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Kia Forum  

Feb. 4 – Mexico City, MX @ Sports Palace  

Feb. 6 – Orlando, FL @ Kia Center  

Feb. 8 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center  

Feb. 11 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center  

Feb. 13 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena  

Feb. 15 – Chicago, IL @ United Center

March 2 – London, UK @ OVO Arena, Wembley  

March 4 – Paris, FR @ Zenith  

March 6 – Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS Live  

March 9 – Frankfurt, DE @ myticket Jahrhunderthalle  

March 12 – Madrid, ES @ WiZink Center  

Check out the tour poster below.

2024-2025 aespa LIVE TOUR – SYNK PARALLEL LINE –[SEATTLE]📅 2025.01.28 (TUE)[OAKLAND]📅 2025.01.30 (THU)[LOS ANGELES]📅 2025.02.01 (SAT)[MEXICO CITY]📅 2025.02.04 (TUE)[ORLANDO]📅 2025.02.06 (THU)[CHARLOTTE]📅 2025.02.08 (SAT)[NEWARK]📅 2025.02.11… pic.twitter.com/TBKSCPn4v4— aespa (@aespa_official) September 26, 2024

With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. We’ve already named our Honorable Mentions and our No. 25, No. 24, No. 23, No. 22, No. 21, No. 20, No. 19, No. 18, No. 17, No. 16 and No. 15 stars, and now we remember the century in Justin Timberlake — a true triple-threat whose insane winning streak to start this century seemed for a while like it might last indefinitely.

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Justin Timberlake came into the 21st century as pop’s golden child. From his scene-stealing time as the baby bro of *NSYNC at the turn of the century, to his one-two-three punch of a solo start with the hit-making Justified in 2002, gliding into the cutting-edge FutureSex/LoveSounds in 2006, and rounding out a decade-plus of pop supremacy with the glossy two-part 20/20 Experience in 2013, it began to seem like no amount of time off from music (or even a globally televised Super Bowl catastrophe) could kill his vibe. And while that golden touch has lost a bit of its sheen in the past few years – as Timberlake’s commercially dominant streak tapered to an end – his chokehold on pop culture for those 15 years can’t be overstated.

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But Timberlake’s transition from one-fifth of a blockbuster boy band to solo superstardom was never guaranteed. For every Michael Jackson, there are dozens of… well, we won’t name names, but for most boy banders, the group is the beginning and end of their success story. Timberlake was able to be the exception to the pop rule by choosing the exact right time to strike out on his own, and he had the most epic launch pad possible in the turn-of-the-millennium juggernaut that was *NSYNC.

Justin Timberlake

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Before we arrive at the year 2000, let’s quickly rewind to 12-year-old Timberlake landing a spot on Disney Channel’s All-New Mickey Mouse Club in 1993, where he met kindred pop spirit JC Chasez (and Britney Spears too, but we’ll get to her later). That was of course well before both were selected by Lou Pearlman as two of the five members of a new boy band, designed to recapture the late ’80s/early ’90s fan frenzy around New Kids on the Block, and backed by earworm productions from Swedish pop maestros, including the soon-to-be-legendary Max Martin. While *NSYNC made a huge impression with their 1997 self-titled debut album – spinning off four Billboard Hot 100-charting hits – their arrival was preceded by Pearlman’s other group, Backstreet Boys, and it felt a bit like the junior group was playing catch-up to their pop peers.

That perception was obliterated when *NSYNC’s new millennium kicked off with the January 2000 release of their first top five Hot 100 hit “Bye Bye Bye,” leading up to March’s No Strings Attached – which marked not just their biggest album debut yet, but the biggest album debut of all time, selling an unprecedented 2.4 million copies in its first week (setting a record that held for 15 years, until Adele’s 25); topping the Billboard 200 for eight weeks; and producing the group’s lone Hot 100 No. 1 in “It’s Gonna Be Me.”

One giant album led to another, with *NSYNC returning the next year with 2001’s Celebrity, their second Billboard 200 No. 1, which saw Timberlake’s introduction as the group’s true star. While Timberlake and Chasez had shared lead vocals on every song to that point, there was a solo showcase on Celebrity that painted the picture of what was to come: “Gone” found JT – who traded his famous ramen-noodle curls for a bad-boy buzzcut – singing every verse (showing off his vocal range, from a gravelly baritone to a floating falsetto) and starring front and center in the black-and-white music video, backed by his groupmates for lush harmonies on the chorus. Another sign of Timberlake’s future: Celebrity’s breakout hit “Girlfriend,” *NSYNC’s first foray into hip-hop-flavored pop and a Hot 100 top five hit, included a guest verse from Nelly and production by The Neptunes, foreshadowing the core sound JT would pursue on his solo debut.

Justin Timberlake

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And we can’t paint a picture of just how massive a star Timberlake was at this point without talking about the power couple that catapulted his public profile into another stratosphere. Timberlake started dating Spears, his fellow Mickey Mouse Club alum, in 1999, and their combined pop powers launched a thousand teen-magazine covers (and led to an iconically bizarre dual-denim fever dream of a red-carpet appearance at the 2001 American Music Awards).

The beginning of the end for *NSYNC arrived in April 2002, when the Celebrity Tour, the group’s fourth and (so far) final trek, wrapped up and was followed by an indefinite hiatus. Also in the spring of 2002: Timberlake broke up with Spears – meaning his public identity as both a boy bander and Britney’s boyfriend were behind him as he headed into the summer 2002 creation of his debut solo album, Justified. For the 13-track set, he reunited with The Neptunes on seven cuts and connected with hip-hop heavyweight Timbaland for the first time on four songs. Just four months after pressing pause on *NSYNC, JT’s debut solo single, the Neptunes-produced “Like I Love You,” arrived in September 2002, followed by the Nov. 5 release of the full album. 

“Like I Love You” peaked just outside the Hot 100 top 10, and Justified debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 – but the heat around Timberlake’s budding solo stardom had just started boiling. The Timbaland-produced “Cry Me a River” came next, climbing all the way to No. 3 on the Hot 100 by memorably mining the Britney breakup, fueling cheating rumors and deploying a Spears doppelganger in its eyebrow-raising music video. JT scored two more top 40 Hot 100 hits with a final pair of singles from the album: the MJ-indebted “Rock Your Body” (No. 5) and the Pharrell-intro’d “Señorita” (No. 27). Aside from his chart success, Timberlake also managed something on his debut album that *NSYNC never accomplished, picking up his first two career Grammys at the 2004 ceremony: best pop vocal album for Justified and best male pop vocal performance for “Cry Me a River,” from five nominations.

After Justified, Timberlake was hot enough to get the call to appear onstage with headliner Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. What should have been a victory lap for the newly minted solo star turned into a world-famous nightmare when Timberlake accidentally exposed Jackson’s breast in front of 140 million TV viewers (just as he sang the “Rock Your Body” lyric “better have you naked by the end of this song”), later coining the infamous phrase “wardrobe malfunction” in his apology. But while Jackson’s career famously suffered in the aftermath, JT was largely left strikingly unaffected.

After back-to-back releases from *NSYNC followed quickly by his solo debut, fans had to wait a grueling four years for Timberlake’s next album. Led by “SexyBack” — his most experimental single yet, with a harsh but intoxicating electro-funk sound — FutureSex/LoveSounds debuted atop the Billboard 200 in September 2006 and signaled his arrival as a fully formed adult pop star. He leaned into his Timbaland partnership on the project, scoring his first three solo Hot 100 No. 1s with the album’s first three singles: “SexyBack”; the percussive T.I.-featuring ballad “My Love” and the two-part “What Goes Around…Comes Around,” basically a karmic sequel to “Cry Me a River.” He picked up another four Grammys across the ‘07 and ‘08 ceremonies for the project, cementing his spot as both a critical and commercial heavyweight. He also sprinkled his pop magic onto other artists’ singles in his downtime, returning the favor to Timbaland with the Hot 100-topping “Give It to Me” (also alongside Nelly Furtado) and gracing a trio of top five hits in Madonna’s “4 Minutes,” T.I.’s “Dead and Gone” and 50 Cent’s “Ayo Technology.”

By this point, Timberlake had introduced a new layer to his many talents by hosting Saturday Night Live during both of his solo album cycles (he’d eventually join the Five-Timers Club in 2013) and introducing his recurring sketch “The Barry Gibb Talk Show” with Jimmy Fallon during his debut 2003 hosting gig. But the real gift came in December 2006, when Timberlake co-starred in The Lonely Island digital short “D–k in a Box,” which went on to win an Emmy for outstanding original music and lyrics the next year and virtually invented the idea of a viral hit on YouTube, the video-sharing site that had debuted only a year prior.

That SNL success seemed to feed into Timberlake’s next move, as he took a nearly seven-year break from music to pour himself into an acting career, with varying degrees of success (there was Oscar-favorite The Social Network and charming Mila Kunis rom-com Friends With Benefits, but there was also The Love Guru). At this point, it was unclear whether Timberlake would ever return to his recording career, but it was a testament to the level of stardom he’d reached that his fans never stopped anticipating his musical return, no matter how long he stayed on the sidelines.

He eventually found his way back to music, taking on a natty Rat Pack-inspired persona in a tuxedo and slick new hairstyle as he rolled out the smooth Jay-Z-featuring “Suit & Tie” (No. 3 peak on the Hot 100) in January 2013 and the eight-minute ode to wife Jessica Biel “Mirrors” (No. 2) in February ahead of the March release of The 20/20 Experience. The breathless excitement for Timberlake’s crooning comeback was made clear when 20/20 sold 968,000 copies in its first week – the largest solo week ever for JT – and finished as the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 album for 2013. While the project was generally embraced by fans and critics alike, there were a few misgivings this time – including some hand-wringing over the songs’ excessive runtimes – compared to the flawless approval rating of its FutureSex/LoveSounds predecessor. 

Justin Timberlake

Evan Agostini/Getty Images

The long-awaited album wasn’t the only music JT had up his tux sleeve that year: Timberlake surprised fans by announcing an imminent Part 2 coming for The 20/20 Experience – and it arrived just months later, scoring him a pair of Billboard 200 chart-toppers in 2013. The project was preceded by what might be considered Timberlake’s first musical misstep: Lead single “Take Back the Night” shared a name with a sexual-assault awareness group, but its suggestive lyrics instead told the story of a carefree, sexy night. JT apologized (“neither my song nor its lyrics have any association with the organization”) and shed light on the group’s efforts (“something we all should rally around”), but the song never really rose above the controversy, topping out at No. 29 on the Hot 100. There were two success stories from 2 of 2, however: The dreamy ballad “Not a Bad Thing” climbed all the way to the Hot 100’s top 10 eight months after the album’s release, and the twangy “Drink You Away” became JT’s first song to reach Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, following a lauded team-up with Chris Stapleton at the 2015 CMA Awards.

After sticking to his electro-pop sound on top 10 lead single “Filthy,” Timberlake found another country moment on his February 2018 album Man of the Woods when he re-teamed with Stapleton for the strummy standout cut “Say Something” and scored another Hot 100 top 10. Days after the release of his fifth studio album – which debuted atop the Billboard 200, but with a much smaller first week than 20/20 — Timberlake returned to the Super Bowl stage, 14 years after the Janet incident, for a much less incendiary showing and headlining for the first time. 

As JT made a memorable meme out of #SelfieKid in the Minneapolis crowd and paid tribute to hometown hero Prince at Super Bowl LII, some fans questioned why Timberlake was invited back to the Super Bowl when Jackson never was, and the pop star directly addressed that criticism years later in a 2021 Instagram statement. His comments were prompted by the February 2021 release of the documentary Framing Britney Spears, which put his post-breakup behavior in a new light and led to renewed criticism over the double-standard at play following the Super Bowl controversy, and Timberlake’s failure to properly support Jackson over the blowback she’d faced at the time, which he’d since expressed regret over. “I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed,” he wrote in part.

While he had amassed his fair share of detractors by this point, Timberlake had also broken through to a new, much younger generation of fans by combining his Hollywood aspirations with his musical prowess and voicing Branch in the pop-music-obsessed Trolls animated movie series, scoring his fifth Hot 100 No. 1 along the way with the bouncy, Oscar-nominated 2016 soundtrack single “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Timberlake brought things full-circle in 2023 for Trolls Band Together, when he reunited his *NSYNC bandmates in the movie and for their first new song in 21 years, the whistling confection “Better Place.” 

And that wasn’t all he had in store for fans who had been with him from the beginning: For his sixth studio album Everything I Thought It Was (led by top 20 single “Selfish”), the pop quintet got together yet again for “Paradise,” which they live-debuted just before the album’s March 15 release, and which seemed to speak directly to the fans who had been begging the boy band to reunite for decades (sample lyric: “I’ve been waiting forever/ Right here for this moment”). 

Justin Timberlake

Kevin Kane/WireImage

Aside from the *NSYNC reunion, JT’s latest album mostly underwhelmed, debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and failing to produce any lasting hits. That lackluster performance was further compounded when Timberlake’s summer DWI arrest in The Hamptons amid the Forget Tomorrow World Tour became an online punchline, thanks to his police-reported prediction of “This is going to ruin the tour… the world tour.” But it didn’t: In fact, the recently extended trek is on track to land in the top 10 of Billboard’s year-end tours list. And the hunger for a potential *NSYNC reunion tour is still raging as well: “Bye Bye Bye” even recharted on the Hot 100 this year – 24 years after its initial Hot 100 debut – off its use on the Deadpool & Wolverine soundtrack. 

It seems fitting that Timberlake would find himself approaching the quarter-century mark by (however briefly) returning to the turn-of-the-century group responsible for much of what he’s created so far in his career. After all, while he’s surely picked up fans along the way who weren’t around for his *NSYNC heyday – whether they were too old to be invested in a boy band or too young to understand (or not even alive for it, for that matter) – the bond formed from watching someone at age 12 on Disney Channel to following along on their boy-band journey to seeing their ascension to the top of the pop pyramid is impossible to replicate. There’s an unconditional love that comes from those day 1 fans that has unquestionably fueled JT’s nearly three decades in pop, through its highs and lows. In the end, ain’t nobody love him like we love him.

Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back on Tuesday when our No. 13 artist is revealed!

LISA’s latest post on TikTok has some fans saying “please please please” to a possible collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter. In a video posted Wednesday (Sept. 25), the BLACKPINK band member steps up to a microphone and sings the words “so kiss me,” blowing a smooch to the camera. The track that plays Sixpence None the […]

Cardi B has long been a wrestling fan, but has yet to step foot inside the ring. Perhaps that could be changing when WWE’s SummerSlam comes to New Jersey next year, because the WWE has enlisted her to help announce that 2025’s SummerSlam is headed to East Rutherford’s MetLife Stadium for the first-ever two-night event of its kind. The action’s all going down on Aug. 2 and Aug. 3, 2025.

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Cardi stars in the ad alongside WWE superstar Bianca Belair while her spicy Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “Enough” provides the soundtrack.

“Here’s to the Streets.. and to my girl @BiancaBelairWWE !SummerSlam. 2Nights. MetLife Stadium. August 2nd and 3rd,” she wrote to Instagram on Thursday (Sept. 26).

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The clip finds the Bronx native in the glam room giving her friend Bianca Belair a call to break the good news. “I got two words for you: SummerSlam,” she said. “MetLife.” The WWE Women’s Tag-Team Champion responded: “I’m pretty sure that’s one word.”

Cardi continued with her idea of the two-word trend: “Two nights.”

The Bardi Gang began theorizing that the Grammy-winning rapper could be involved in a match and speculated her long-awaited sophomore album would be out by the time SummerSlam rolls around.

“Love this! You gotta DDT someone at SummerSlam,” USA Network chimed in on her post.

A fan even had an idea for her finishing move, writing in the comments, “Cardi’s finisher should be called Ms. DANGEROUS… ns that would eat!”

While she’s never made an appearance during a show, Cardi B has had her name thrown around inside the WWE universe. Back in 2021, WWE Hall of Fame diva Torrie Wilson gave her a shout-out during an episode of RAW. WWE legend Trish Stratus also lent her stamp of approval to Cardi on X. “Cardi knows,” she wrote.

To which an ecstatic Bardi replied: ““OMMMMMMMGGGGGG !!!!! Bitch I’m gagging !!!! I’m so hype !!!”

The momentum didn’t stop there as former WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez professed their hopes of seeing “WAP” collaborators Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion team up in the ring.

“I would love to see Cardi and Meg The Stallion,” the tandem offered in May 2023. “I think Meg would be incredible. They’ve also been so active with us on Twitter and just responded to different things. Those two would be interesting to see in the ring. Us versus Cardi and Meg. Make it happen.”

Watch the SummerSlam announcement clip below.

Amid election season, Bad Bunny is making sure that the more than three million residents living in Puerto Rico know his political stance. 
In a Sept. 24 tweet, the Puerto Rican artist shared a set of photos of billboards across San Juan that read: “To vote for PNP is to vote for corruption,” “Who votes for PNP doesn’t love Puerto Rico” and “Voting for PNP is voting for LUMA.” The latter of the three is a private energy company responsible for power distribution and transmission on the island. 

“Announcements paid by Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio,” he captioned the post. “A Puerto Rican who does love Puerto Rico.”

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Billboard has reached out to Bad Bunny’s rep for comment.

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The billboards are in protest of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive Party), one of the major political parties in Puerto Rico that traces back to 1967 and currently holds both the seat of the governor and of the resident commissioner.

The powerful PSAs also come on the heels of Bad Bunny’s latest song, “Una Velita,” in which he reflects on the devastating aftermath of the Category 5 Hurricane Maria that occurred in 2017.  “There were five thousand that they let die, and we will never forget that,” he chants in the track.

“Obviously the light will go out, God knows if it’ll come back,” he continues over an intense folkloric beat. “The bridge they took so long to build, the growing river will break. A few songs on the phone for when the reception goes out. The sign was sent and they don’t want to see it, it’s up to the Boricua to want to wake up … Remember that we’re all from here, the people will have to save its pueblo.”

Always passionate and vocal about the social issues that affect the Puerto Rican community, in 2022, Benito also released a 23-minute-long documentary for “El Apagón” in which he addresses blackouts and gentrification, among other topics, taking aim at the local government for its inaction. 

For the sixth consecutive month, Zach Bryan has one of the 10 biggest tours in the world. For the second of the last three, he’s at No. 1. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Bryan grossed $93.2 million and sold 467,000 tickets from 13 shows around the U.S., returning to the top of Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart.
When Bryan topped the list in June, Billboard noted that he was only the second country act to rule the tally since it launched in early 2019, following Morgan Wallen. Now, he’s the only artist in his genre to claim multiple months at No. 1. Bad Bunny and Elton John lead overall, each having topped seven monthly charts.

Bryan kicked off The Quittin’ Time Tour in March at a string of North American arenas. By the end of May and into June, he began sprinkling in stadium plays, multiplying his potential nightly audience by three or four and prompting his first monthly win. In August, stadiums made up the majority of his calendar — for 10 of his 13 shows. Those were spread across major markets such as Atlanta, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, leaving only Kansas City and Grand Forks, N.D., in arenas.

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This transition from indoor basketball courts to outdoor football fields joins Bryan with fellow country superstars such as Luke Combs and Wallen as well as the biggest of the big beyond genre, like The Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift.

A double-header at Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field earned the biggest gross of Bryan’s career. The Aug. 6-7 stay earned $20.7 million and sold 103,000 tickets, followed immediately by another six-digit attendance total at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Aug. 10-11 ($17.8 million; 100,000 tickets).

Since beginning in Chicago on March 5, The Quittin’ Time Tour has grossed $318.1 million and sold 1.6 million tickets. Bryan will resume the trek with 18 shows in November and December. Most of his remaining 2024 dates bring him back to arenas, which means he could add another $60 million by year’s end, approaching the $400 million mark.

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Bryan’s summer on top was briefly interrupted by Coldplay’s July victory. This month, Chris Martin & Co. dip to No. 2, with a gross of $86.4 million from 626,000 tickets sold. Though the band misses Bryan’s high mark by about 7%, its attendance total is tops for August.

As has been customary amid the Music of the Spheres World Tour, Coldplay’s August schedule was compact, including three shows in Munich, four in Vienna and two in Dublin. The extended run at Vienna’s Ernst Happen Stadion on Aug. 21-22 and 24-25 is both the highest grossing ($33 million) and bestselling engagement of the month (251,000 tickets).

As Billboard reported, The Music of the Spheres World Tour is already the highest grossing and bestselling rock tour in Boxscore history, with $1.06 billion and 9.6 million tickets sold through Sept. 2. Next on its record-breaking schedule is the 10 million ticket threshold, which will certainly clear during the Australia and New Zealand leg in October and November.

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Metallica follows at No. 3 on August’s Top Tours chart with $74 million and 621,000 tickets. The latter figure barely misses Coldplay’s ticket sales, separated by just 5,000 tickets, or less than 1%. The hard-rock legends sport two appearances in the top 10 of Top Boxscores, at Nos. 8-9 with stints at Foxborough’s Gillette Stadium and Chicago’s Soldier Field, respectively.

At No. 4, P!nk is the lone woman in August’s top 10 at $55.6 million and 329,000 tickets, next followed by Jhene Aiko’s $16.3 million and 150,000 tickets. While gender representation can be marked by the whims of monthly schedules – there were five women on the charts for June and July, and September marks the launches of major treks by Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish – it’s startling to see women make up less than 7% of August’s top-30 pie.

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Interrupting Coldplay’s sweep of Top Boxscores, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival is No. 2. The San Francisco festival grossed $29.5 million and sold 184,000 tickets across its Aug. 9-11 run.

Outside Lands is joined by Montreal’s Osheaga Music & Arts Festival, which rounds out the chart’s top 10 with $14.7 million and 137,000 tickets sold. It’s one of a string of festivals, along with Ilesoniq and Lasso Montreal, that pushed Evenko to No. 5 on the month’s Top Promoters ranking.

On the venue rankings, it’s the fourth consecutive win for Sphere among rooms with a capacity of 15,001 or more (excluding stadiums). Again, Dead & Company ushered the immersive arena to its victory, which closed out its summer-long residency on Aug. 10.

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Whether it’s breakups or spicy wings, SZA isn’t letting anything bug her — for the most part.
On the latest episode of First We Feast’s Hot Ones posted Thursday (Sept. 26), the Grammy winner opened up about her music, career and relationships in between bites of spicy wings, all while wearing alien-like prosthetics and a pair of antennae. “I’m just tired of being not a bug,” she explained of her costume choice.

While talking to host Sean Evans about which songs make her the most emotional to perform, SZA replied, “‘Nobody Gets Me’ because my ex-fiancé hates me so much, and it’s so unfortunate.”

“Every time I sing it, it’s like, ‘Damn, what the f–k?’” she continued, adding that she also gets in her feels while singing Ctrl tracks “Normal Girl,” “20 Something” and “Drew Barrymore,” which she says reminds her of seeing “the boy you like … f–kin’ on some other girl” at a house party.

SZA has been open in the past about how her relationship with her ex has inspired her music, particularly “Nobody Gets Me.” “This particular song in entirety is a story about my ex-fiancé and how we went through all these arguments, and we broke up,” she told Hot 97 in December 2022. “I just felt like I was gonna be doomed to be in hell for the rest of my life because nobody understood me the way he did, and nobody motivated me the way he did.”

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While speaking to Evans, who brought up when SZA told Billboard in 2023 that the success of her hit “Kill Bill” “pissed [her] off” because it was “super easy” to write, the R&B star opened up about how she finds the music industry confusing because of how unpredictable it can be. “I never know what’s happening,” she said on Hot Ones. “I be like, ‘I thought you liked this.’ Then they’re like, ‘No, stupid, we hate this.’”

“It’s abusive, but it’s also very fulfilling and validating,” she added. “The toxic [relationships] are the most fun.”

The interview comes ahead of SZA’s highly anticipated third album Lana, which will follow her critically acclaimed sophomore record SOS. The 2022 LP ruled at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 10 weeks, marking her first album to top the chart.

After sweating through increasingly spicy wings that led her to question Evans’ “sinister and insidious” intentions for the show, the “Snooze” singer gave a candid response when asked at the end of the episode to give fans a life update. “I’m going through a breakup, it’s hot as f–k,” she said.

Watch SZA on Hot Ones above.

Cardi B and Offset‘s relationship issues spilled over publicly onto social media on Wednesday night (Sept. 25).
The Migos rapper set things off during Cardi’s Instagram Live when he accused her of cheating on him while pregnant with their third child. (She gave birth earlier in September.) “U f–ked with a baby inside tell the truth!!” he wrote in a comment on her Live session.

She tweeted, “AND DID !!!!!!,” which left some fans on X wondering if she was confirming her estranged husband’s accusation. (Billboard has reached out to Cardi and Offset’s reps for comment.)

Cardi — who is in Paris for Fashion Week — then carved out some time to blast her estranged husband on Instagram Live. “All weekend you was blowing up my phone, I blocked you … You tryna get me mad, ‘Let me show you the b—-s I’m f–king,’” she said. “I don’t care. … You’re f–king lame.”

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Cardi continued to explode on Offset, from whom she filed for divorce over the summer. “I’m too much woman for you. I’m too much of a boss b—h for you. And I always been too good for you … I don’t make you feel like you’re that n—a in this home,” she said. “I make you look good.”

While she’s thankful for her three kids with Set and credited him as a father, Cardi admitted she regrets her relationship with the Atlanta native. “All three of them — I don’t regret none of them, but I regret you,” she claimed. “I don’t regret my kids. You a good daddy. You aight. I don’t regret none of them. … But f–k you. I regret you. I’m too good for you. I’ve always been too good for you, n—a.”

Offset fired back in the comment section of her live, as captured by DJ Akademiks. “Insecure,” he wrote. Another captured by Akademiks saw the Migos rapper write: “The fact u keep going shows you hurt leave along don’t you got a n—a ain’t we divorced.”

Cardi and Offset married in 2017. She filed for divorce the first time in September 2020, but quickly called it off. The former couple share three kids — Kulture, 6, Wave, 3, and welcomed their third on Sept. 7.

Watch Cardi’s explosive IG Live session below.

Herb Alpert laughs when he says that his sister Mimi — who at 98 is nine years his senior — often asks him, “Why are you doing these concerts? Why are you traveling? Why do you want to do that?” But the 89-year-old trumpet-playing music legend has a ready answer.
“I have to explain to her that it gives me energy to do it,” Alpert — who just released his 50th studio album, appropriately titled 50 — tells Billboard via Zoom. “I’m not on a victory tour here. It’s not about that. It’s that I love doing it. I love to play the horn. I love to play the horn. I love playing with great musicians. I love doing it. I’m a right-brain guy; I play, I’m painting for over 50 years, sculpting for over 40. It just gives me reason to be.”

He’s quick to add however, that “this is landmark year for me. I can’t believe I’ve recorded 50 albums out there. I’ve been married (to singer Lani Hall) 50 years this year. A lot of things have happened in my life that are so startling. I never dreamed of having a career like I’ve had. I’m certainly grateful for it.”

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It’s hard to come up with a superlative that definitively captures Alpert’s career. Born in Los Angeles into a family where everybody played an instrument, Alpert started on trumpet when he was eight, studied at the University of Southern California and played in the Trojan Marching Band and the U.S. 6th Army Band.

He began writing songs during the late ‘50s and putting out records of his own, first billed as Dore (his given name) Alpert, in 1960. Since then, he’s sold more than 74 million records worldwide with his Tijuana Brass band and on his own; placed 39 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (including two No. 1s); won eight Grammy Awards; received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; won a Tony; got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006; and received National Medal of the Arts in 2013.

Alpert was also the “A” in the famed A&M Records label, which he started in 1962 with Jerry Moss. Moss passed away 13 months ago, and another of A&M’s stalwarts, Brazilian keyboardist and Brasil ’66 bandleader Sergio Mendes, died earlier this month — another death that hit close to home for Alpert, who signed the group to A&M and produced its 1966 debut album, which remained on the Billboard 200 for more than two years and was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. It was Mendes who introduced Alpert to Hall, too, when she was part of Brasil ’66.

“He was an extraordinarily gifted musician. We just hit it off,” Alpert says of Mendes, adding that he and Hall spoke with him almost daily during the last year of his life. “He was a real person. He was excited about so many things. He loved great food. He loved great wine. He loved great restaurants. He spoke several languages. He was into life. He was a very unusual guy. He’s missed by everyone who came into contact with him.”

Alpert’s record of having four albums simultaneously in the Billboard top 10 back in 1966, meanwhile, was matched last year by none other than Taylor Swift.

“I sent her a nice little FaceTime, and I was very happy for her,” Alpert says. “I think she’s a really good artist. I don’t actually follow her music. I hear a couple of things, but I like her. She has a lot of integrity. She understands her audience. She’s very sensitive. She’s smart. I don’t think that record is carved in stone; I like to see other artists jump in there, too. I have other records, so it’s alright.”

What’s most impressive and inspiring is that Alpert is still doing it, and also planning for the future. He’s released a dozen albums since 2010 — eight of which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. He approached the 10-track 50 much like he did his other releases.

“I don’t even think about it as being an album,” he explains. “I have a studio at home here, and I just record at my whim, individual songs and melodies that just touch me…. I don’t have a master plan for recording an album. I don’t have a concept. I just take songs that I like, and when I feel it’s worthy of putting out there for other people to listen to, I put out an album. But really I’m just trying to entertain myself more than anything.”

50 features Alpert’s usual mix of original compositions and covers. One of those covers — The Chords’ 1954 hit “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)” — is particularly special for him.

“I was kind of a snob with classical music until I heard ‘Sh-Boom,’” Alpert recalls. “I was in high school, and it was the first time I heard a song like that. There was something about it…. I remember sitting down at a friend’s house who had the radio on, listening to this song, thinking, ‘I like that. I like the feeling of that song.’ I really didn’t understand what the lyric was about ’til much later, but I liked the harmonies and the feeling. That song got me on to pop music and got me thinking about some of the songs that were out there in that period. Then I started listening to jazz and never looked back.”

Alpert maintains that his litmus for music has remained the same throughout the decades. “Melody reigns supreme,” he says. “Any artist who’s had success over the years has to have good taste when it comes to melody. You can have a fabulous lyric and terrible melody and I don’t think that song’s gonna go very far. But you can have a fabulous melody with a pretty good lyric and that’ll go far. And if you have a fabulous lyric with a fabulous melody, i.e. Burt Bacharach and Hal David and all those sophisticated songs they did, it hits. Even with jazz, after expressing a melody all of a sudden they’ll improvise on the chord changes of the particular song and invent a whole new melody. That’s exciting.”

As he reaches this year’s milestones, Alpert is already eyeballing the future. He plans to release a recording of “The Christmas Song” for this holiday season (“It touches me, and I feel like a lot of people might feel the same”) and reports that “I have another Christmas album in my head.” And while he and Hall have concert dates books into mid-December, next February Alpert plans to hit the road with a revived version of the Tijuana Brass, the band he led from the early ‘60s into the mid-70s and released hits such as the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 “The Lonely Bull” and the Billboard 200-topping 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights.

“A lot of people have asked; they want to hear that Tijuana Brass sound again, so I’m gonna do it and I’m excited about it,” he says. “I always like the music. It always gave me a good feeling when I hear it, and I know a lot of people feel the same. It’s gonna be fun for me to revisit that whole sound again and play some of the old standards — ‘The Lonely Bull,’ ‘Spanish Flea,’ ‘This Guy’s In Love With You.’” He also plans to include his 1979 hit “Rise” in the repertoire, one of his two Hot 100 toppers (the other being “This Guy’s In Love With You”).

And beyond all that? “I hope to keep living,” Alpert says with a laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything I’m missing. I play the horn every day. I’d like to be able to play a little better bebop, but that’s an inch at a time. There’s not much, though. It’s been a great life.”