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Jordan Firstman did not set out to turn videos of him reading inherently ridiculous sentences into a running, viral piece of internet lore — it just turns out he’s exactly the right person to spin twisted confessions into comedy gold.
“I think I just have the kind of personality where nothing really shocks me,” he tells Billboard over Zoom, before quietly chuckling to himself. “I think I have something wrong in my brain where I cannot understand that people would be shocked over something.”
Firstman has been posting his Instagram series Secrets — in which his followers submit anonymous sentences disclosing some of their wildest personal tidbits — since the pandemic. Taking simple messages ranging from the mundane (“I voted third party”) to the truly absurd (“I k-holed in a guys bathroom on the 1st date n robbed him”), the comedian started to slowly transform some of his favorite secrets into short songs. Next month, the singer will bring his long-running gag to a brand new format with his debut album.
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Secrets, due out Friday, April 4th via Capitol Records, takes those same direct messages from fans and transforms them into brand new songs — the first of which (“I Wanna See My Friends’ D–ks”) fans will get to hear on Thursday (March 14). Spanning genres and subject matters, the album plays back to front as a raunchy, raucous ride through Firstman’s unique comedy lens. Plus, he adds: “The songs sound f–king amazing.”
Below, Firstman chats with Billboard about the origins of his Instagram series, how he scored a major label record deal and why modern pop stardom requires singers to have comedy chops.
Take me back to how the Secrets Instagram series started: what made you want to take your followers’ deepest, dumbest secrets and turn them into content?
It was a very pandemic thing; I had the idea to use the questions box to ask [for secrets]. I actually was kind of making songs out of them pretty immediately, just by myself with no beats or anything. I think the character limit means you cannot get into full stories, so they just felt like these little soundbites that were great to make fun of. To this day, who knows what’s real and what’s not, but I try to just use the ones that feel real.
I know you’ve referred to this as your “indie” series behind something like your very successful Impressions series — at what point did you realize that Secrets was really hitting a nerve with your audience?
It’s such a social media answer, but this was a way to just have this immediate connection with your following. I’m far from the first person to do this — there was stuff like PostSecret back in the day. Kind of like comedy, you cannot own the style, but you can own how you do it. So, I think what’s made it stick with my followers is just, I guess, my own sensibility and my own take on things.
At what point did the idea occur to you that those songs you were making could become an album?
I guess about a year or two ago, I had just been compiling these free MIDI files of different genres, and I would just play them in my apartment when I was bored. I have this friend, Brad Oberhofer, who is a brilliant musician, and I asked him if he would want to do one live with me, and that was the beginning of the new era of Secrets. We just kind of became a great team, and the songs were really fun. It wasn’t until this summer that I was like, “Ok, so we should start recording a couple of these and see what we get.” It became clear within a week or two that there was something there. I asked a couple other friends to start helping out, and within that first month, I think I had 10 or 12 songs recorded, I had a record deal, and it all happened really fast.
How do you go about selecting which submissions make for the best songs, versus which ones are just good for normal Secrets submissions?
When I’m doing them with Brad, I probably get anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 secrets every time I do it. And so there is this kind of pressure every time we do it, so I do get drunk. [Laughs.] It’s kind of the only way I can move that fast, because we usually do these in about an hour, and we’ll do anywhere from 10 to 20 mini songs. The more we’ve done, the more we’ve wanted more production in there, so it’s not just us and a guitar, it’s us having this very fast live setup. We just scroll really fast, and whatever pops up, we just do it. It’s become a very instinctual thing. Like, yeah, “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill” is obviously a country song. Obviously! But we’re working so fast that we don’t have time to think about it.
But then on the album, luckily, all of the secrets are logged [on Instagram]. So I’ve gone through my archive and I found so many good ones. I’d say a little less than half of the album are secrets that I haven’t made songs out of yet, but that I was like, “Oh, this is a perfect premise for a song.”
In working with Brad, as you’ve been putting these together, have you started to kind of find the sound that you’re most comfortable with? Or is the eclectic genre approach very much the point?
There is a major level up that happened on the album. It’s truly every genre — there’s an amazing jazz song, there’s a Nirvana-style song, there’s a funk song, there’s a post-punk song, there’s a Central Cee-type song where I rap. We’re probably missing, like, classical? But on the deluxe, I do want to have an insane song title, and then just have it be classical music with no lyrics.
Was there any part of this process that proved to be a challenge for you?
The songs are kind of gendered, and the titles immediately tell me if it’s a boy or a girl singing it, and so there are some songs that are absolutely girl songs. I do, however, have a male voice, so it became a question of, “How do I sing this song from a woman’s POV?” On at least one of the songs, we do pitch me up a little bit, but it’s still my cadence. There’s one almost-Lilith Fair-style ’90s lesbian song that was really challenging to find the right vocal tone for.
Let’s talk a little about the record deal — how did that process start, and why did you go with Capitol?
So basically, I have four main producers now — Brad, Blake Slatkin, Zach Dawes and Sega Bodega. I have really good people, so now the songs sound f–king amazing. But Blake and I had a session, and within an hour, we had the single, done and ready to go. We knew it was a f–king smash. After that, we sent the record over to Capitol. I went in literally the next day to play them a couple of songs, and then they were just like, “Yeah, we would like to do this with you.” I didn’t even really meet with other people, because it was like, “They get this, and they’re going to do it in the right way.” They understood it so well immediately, so we just went for it.
I remember the next week, I went into a big boardroom with the chairman of Capitol and president and the vice president, and I played them “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill.” And they got it! It was very aligned, the whole experience just felt right. I don’t know, sometimes there’s this rhetoric [from artists] of “F–k the labels,” and I’m sitting here like “I don’t know, they’ve been great!” [Laughs].
Comedy music has been picking up some steam over the last couple years, with people like Bo Burnham and Tom Cardy earning big viral songs in the genre. Why do you think this genre is having that moment right now?
I think music is now bigger than it’s ever been, and then comedy is so inherent to music right now. Like, you can’t really be a musician right now if you don’t have a sense of humor. Look at Sabrina Carpenter — in a way, she is making comedy songs! And Lil Nas X! With social media, everyone has almost had to turn into a comedian to thrive.
It’s interesting — this is definitely a comedy album, for sure, but it’s almost some songs more than others [are comedy songs]. When I think about what I’m doing, to me, it’s not in line with most of the comedy albums that have been out lately. I would actually compare it more to something like Bloodhound Gang — they’re real songs that are also funny. The joke isn’t the main part of the song, but they are still funny.
This is a huge time for you with this album, the success of English Teacher, your upcoming role in Rachel Sennott’s comedy series — what are some things that you’re still hoping to accomplish in the months and years to come?
It’s a big year of firsts for me, and I kind of just have to do the work. I’m excited to see what sticks. You can’t be attached to any real outcome, but I don’t know. Everyone who hears this music just really likes it, and so I have a good feeling about this. It’s been a slow and steady build, and it’s starting to feel like the projects this year are the things that I’ve been really prepared for. So, I’m just excited to see the response.
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Dolly Parton leads this week’s crop of new music, with her tender tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean, after his passing at the age of 82 on March 3. Kelsea Ballerini continues unpacking emotions the deluxe version of her album Patterns, while Brad Paisley teams with Dawes for a new track that takes a unflinching look at mental health.
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Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of the top new country, bluegrass and Americana songs of the week below.
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Dolly Parton, “If You Hadn’t Been There”
Country Music Hall of Famer Dolly Parton pays elegant homage to her late husband Carl Dean on this tender song. With a classic country feel, underpinned by piano and fiddle, finds Parton chronicling the ways he served as her constant source of support. “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been there/ Pushing me on when I was scared,” she sings, and her expressive soprano builds from whisper-soft, sounding slightly ragged around the edges with grief, to ringing powerfully with love.
Kelsea Ballerini, “Hindsight Is Happiness”
Last year, Ballerini issued her biggest-selling album to date with Patterns, and returns with five new songs on the deluxe version of the project. One of the standouts in this new handful of tracks is “Hindsight is Happiness,” a peaceful ballad looking back on the wreckage of a decimated relationship and realizing both parties have matured and moved on. “I never should’ve tethered in my 20s, my bad,” the now-31-year-old Ballerini sings, before wishing happiness and love for her ex-flame on the road ahead.
Brad Paisley and Dawes, “Raining Inside”
Brad Paisley and Dawes recently performed together at the Grammys earlier this year. Now, the two pair their boundary-less creative freedom and turn it toward providing a mirror to modern-day afflictions, on this brooding look at mental health and depression. “No one’s sick and no one died, no one’s left and no one’s leaving/ But it’s raining inside,” they sing, highlighting the prevalence mental health struggles regardless of the presence or absence of situational hardships. The song’s pop-rock oriented stylings, highlighted by grizzled guitar work, elevates the song’s poignant message.
Tim McGraw feat. Parker McCollum, “Paper Umbrellas”
McGraw refreshes a fan favorite from his 2023 project Standing Room Only by welcoming McCollum. Together, they blend neo-traditional country sounds with a slight islands vibe to create a song that feels tailor-made to become a summer anthem. The intergenerational pairing of 57-year-old country standard-bearer McGraw with surging 32-year-old McCollum also evinces the enduring power of a song that melds a timeless, relatable story arc of post-breakup solace with breezy instrumentation and a melody that highlights the warm, laid-back charisma these two vocalists share.
Caroline Owens, “You’ve Still Got It”
Caroline Owens, a three-time IBMA Awards nominee who has performed with bluegrass luminaries including Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs and Rhonda Vincent, offers up softly beguiling vocals on her debut single for Billy Blue Records. Her soft-focus voice floats over trilling mandolin picking and reserved fiddle. Written by Jerry Salley and John Pennell, “You’ve Still Got It” centers on a sturdy love. Her full album, with production from Salley and Darin Aldridge, is set for later this year.
Rob Williford, “Johnny”
“How far can a man bend before he breaks?” It’s a haunting question at the center of the latest song from Williford, known for his work as a songwriter crafting hits for Luke Combs (“Beautiful Crazy” and “Forever After All” and Tim McGraw (“Fool Me Again”) and as a longtime bandmember for Combs. Williford previously released the solo project Wildcard in 2023, but fully steps into his own on his latest song. “Johnny” is a tale of addiction to moonshine and pills that leads to betrayal and murder, depicting how addiction and a string of poor choices can decimate a family generation after generation. His growling vocal lays out this destructive storyline over driving, rustic acoustics, evoking a unfiltered, country-rock vibe.
With RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing back their Rate-a-Queen system for season 17, Billboard decided to rate each of the new queens every week based on their performance. Below, we take a look at the roast challenge to see which queens delivered the best jabs. Spoilers ahead for episode 10.
Even seasoned comedians will tell you that the format of a roast is inherently hard. But RuPaul’s Drag Race has never shied away from giving their queens a tough challenge. So, in the infamous words of Farrah Moan: “Let’s get this roast a-cookin’!”
On last week’s episode (aired Friday, March 7), RuPaul invited the eight remaining queens of the season to perform in the show’s inaugural Villains Roast. Bringing back recent alums Kandy Muse, Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Plane Jane as the guests of dishonor on the show’s format, Ru tasked the queens with writing up their rudest (and funniest) material to lampoon the villains of seasons past.
You would expect comedy killers like Onya Nurve and Suzie Toot to be the shining stars of this episode, but Lana Ja’Rae and Lydia Butthole Kollins proved that, even at this late stage of the competition, big swings can pay off. Both queens skewered the villains dais with ease, surprising both the judges and the audience at home with their quick-witted jokes on the main stage, where Lydia ultimately took home the win.
Yet even in an episode where two previously faltering queens proved themselves, all eyes were fixed on the drama of the week between Jewels Sparkles, Arrietty and Lexi Love. After Jewels gave both of the queens starting positions in the performance lineup that they didn’t appreciate, both Lexi and Arrietty took two different approaches to their performances. Lexi, ever the victim of her inner saboteur, spent the entirety of this episode wrapped up in her head, failing to deliver on her jokes on the main stage.
Arrietty, meanwhile, leaned hard into her derailment by stealing Jewels’ jokes, effectively dragging her former friend down with her into the bottom two. In a fiery Lip Sync For Your Life to “YA YA” off Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Jewels stormed the stage, channeling all her fury into her stellar performance and leaving Arrietty as the latest queen to get the chop.
Below, Billboard takes a look back at episode 10 and ranks where our remaining contestants lie based on this episode and the season as a whole:
ELIMINATED: Arrietty
Image Credit: Courtesy of MTV

The upcoming season of You can’t come soon enough for Cardi B, who was almost speechless after seeing the trailer for the Netflix show’s fifth and final chapter arriving this spring.
On Sunday (March 9), the rapper helped announce that the first full-length preview of the April-slated season would be dropping the next day in a video posted to You‘s official Instagram. “Girl, I am shook — I just saw it,” she says in the clip, which came one day before the trailer dropped.
After giving fans the smallest taste of what to expect — “Joe got some money! He got a girl with money, chile,” she revealed — Cardi gave her ecstatic review. “I cannot wait for you guys to see the trailer,” she cheered, clapping her hands. “Y’all gonna gag! Got me gagging. Gagging!”
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The two-and-a-half-minute trailer, which has since dropped on Netflix’s YouTube, opens with Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg back in the same place he started five seasons ago: New York City. This time, though, the fictional stalker-murderer is a famous, wealthy socialite thanks to his relationship with Charlotte Ritchie’s Kate. However, the horrors of his dark past continue to threaten to come to light and disrupt his new lifestyle, especially as he falls in love yet again with a new woman played by Madeline Brewer.
The preview reaches a tipping point when Joe declares, “There isn’t a line I wouldn’t cross to protect this family,” at which point Kate stops him in his tracks. “You want us to kill everyone who is suspicious of us for the rest of our lives?” she asks incredulously, to which he sinisterly replies, “Is that so wrong? If it’s for the right reasons?”
The trailer then devolves into a montage of Badgley’s character committing a number of violent atrocities, from choking one person to bashing someone else with a concrete brick. “The killer finale you never saw coming,” onscreen text teases viewers.
The fifth and final season of You is set to premiere April 24 on Netflix. It will arrive seven years after the show first debuted on the streaming service.
And if you’re wondering why the “WAP” rapper was the one to announce the new trailer’s arrival, Cardi is a longtime fan of the show. In 2021, she fangirled over its leading man on X — which was then still known as Twitter — before both the musician and Gossip Girl alum hilariously changed both of their profile pictures to photos of each other.
Later, Cardi’s Billboard Hot 100-topper “I Like It” was featured in the first episode of You‘s fourth season, which dropped in 2023. That year, Badgley told Rolling Stone that he would absolutely want the hip-hop star to make a cameo in the show, but only if the role was right.
“Would I want her to be in You? Yeah, if it worked,” he told the publication. “I wanted her to be in season four. But it has to work. You know? How could she be anybody but Cardi B?”
See Cardi’s video and watch the trailer for You Season 5 below.
The top nine tracks on the Hot 100 remain in place from a week earlier. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” ranks at No. 2, following five nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 beginning in January. It notches a fifth week atop Radio Songs (64.7 million, up 2%).
Below “Luther,” Lamar logs two other songs in the Hot 100’s top five: “Not Like Us,” at No. 3, and “TV Off,” featuring Lefty Gunplay, at No. 4, after reaching No. 2.
Notably, Lamar lands his fifth week with at least three songs in the Hot 100’s top five simultaneously, after he first scored such a triple in December. He ties for the third-most such frames – here’s a recap of all acts who have achieved the feat for at least one week.
Most Weeks With 3 or More Songs in Hot 100’s Top 5:
8 weeks, The Beatles, in 1964
6, Drake, 2018-23
5, Justin Bieber, 2015-16
5, Kendrick Lamar, 2024-25
3, Taylor Swift, 2022-24
2, 50 Cent, 2005
2, Sabrina Carpenter, 2024
1, 21 Savage, 2022
1, Ariana Grande, 2019
(Swift – twice – Lamar, Drake and The Beatles are the only acts ever to monopolize the entire top five on the Hot 100 in a single week. Swift scored the most songs from No. 1 on down – 14 – on the May 4, 2024, chart, thanks to the arrival of her album The Tortured Poets Department.)
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” ranks at No. 5 on the Hot 100, following its record-tying 19 weeks at No. 1 beginning last July. It commands the multimetric Hot Country Songs chart for a 37th week.
ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” places at No. 6 on the Hot 100, after hitting No. 3.
Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” is No. 7 on the Hot 100, after reaching No. 2. It tops the multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Alternative Songs charts for a 31st week each. On the latter, it extends the longest reign for a song by a woman; on the former, it solely claims the mark, one-upping Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything,” featuring Kacey Musgraves, which led for 30 weeks in 2023-24.
Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” which led the Hot 100 for a week in March 2024 – and became the year’s top song – ranks at No. 9. It notches an 81st week on the survey overall, the fourth-longest stay in the chart’s history, below only Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” (91 weeks, in 2021-22); The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” (90 weeks, 2019-22); and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” (87 weeks, 2012-14).
Rounding out the Hot 100’s top 10, Drake’s “Nokia” returns to the region, rising a spot to No. 10, where it debuted two weeks earlier.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Travis Scott, The Rock and John Cena are WWE‘s new big three who fans didn’t know we needed. After a viral […]
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We’re only two months into Donald Trump’s second presidency and already it seems like the honeymoon phase for MAGA voters is coming to a painful end, as many of Cheeto Jesus’ cult followers are beginning to regret letting their personal prejudices and grievances influence their choice at the ballot box.
According to Raw Story, many Trump supporters have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to express their regret over their vote for Donald Trump, as the leopard has begun to eat their faces. But Hispanic Trump supporters, in particular, are learning that his deportation policies also extend to them, as they too are now in the crosshairs of ICE.
Last Wednesday (March 5), Jensy Machado found out the hard way that the color of his skin was reason enough for ICE agents to harass him at gunpoint as they assumed that he was an illegal immigrant. Though the man is actually neutralized and living in the United States legally, ICE agents didn’t give him the opportunity to prove that his status in America was kosher before putting him into handcuffs.
Per Raw Story:
“They just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, ‘Turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window,’ you know,” Machado said. “Everything was really fast.”
Machado, who showed WRC reporters documentation showing his legal status, said the agents were seeking a man for a deportation order who had given his home address, and Machado said he didn’t know anyone by that man’s name and offered to show his REAL ID-compliant Virginia driver’s license.
“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me, and then he went to me and [asked] how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case, and I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”
Luckily for Machado, he was let go after agents finally looked at his drivers license, but the incident left him pondering whether he made the right choice in voting for someone who’s main policies are aimed at making life harder for Brown and Black people living in America.
“I voted for Trump last election but, because I thought it was going to be the things, you know, like … just go against criminals, not every Hispanic-looking, like – that they will assume that we are all illegals,” Machado said, according to Raw Story. “That’s what they’re doing now, they’re just following Hispanic people.”
Many Trump voters are in the “find out” stage after they done “f*cked around,” and they’re not liking it one bit. We on the other hand are low-key enjoying the rude awakening they’re experiencing. Just sayin’.
What do y’all think about this situation? Let us know in the comments section below.
BLACKPINK‘s JENNIE snares Dua Lipa in her glittery web in the trippy video for the K-pop superstar’s solo track “Handlebars.” The dreamy visual for the mid-tempo tune directed by BRTHR (Charli XCX, the Weeknd) dropped on Monday morning (March 10) and it opens with JENNIE using a two-wheeled metaphor to lament her proclivity for falling […]