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For the past few months, The Weeknd has been teasing that his sixth album and upcoming movie of the same name, Hurry Up Tomorrow, could mark the end of the unpredictable stage character that has taken over singer Abel Tesfaye’s life for more than 15 years. After suggesting to The New York Times recently that the film à clef he wrote, stars in and produced — which eerily matches some of his own career high, and low, points — likely marks his last release as The Weeknd, he told EW that the door is still cracked.
Speaking to the magazine at the recent CinemaCon festival alongside director Trey Edward Shults and co-star Jenna Ortega, Tesfaye said the movie (which opens on Friday) feels like the final nail in the coffin of the complex Weeknd character.
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Or, perhaps, it could be the kick-off to a second life?
While he has been adamant that he plans to keep making music, Tesfaye told EW, “It feels like it [the end of the Weeknd]. I mean, I’ve kind of toyed with the idea in the past with albums,” he added, noting that this isn’t he first time he’s considered doing away with his sometimes swaggering, sometimes beat-to-a-pulp alter ego. “But it could also just be a rebirth. Who knows?” he said.
In January, Tesfaye, 35, said that he planned to retire his alter ego following the conclusion of the album trilogy that began with 2020’s After Hours and includes 2022’s Dawn FM and wrapped up with January’s Hurry Up Tomorrow. “It’s a headspace I’ve gotta get into that I just don’t have any more desire for,” he said of his stage name at the time. “You have a persona, but then you have the competition of it all. It becomes this rat race: more accolades, more success, more shows, more albums, more awards and more No. 1s. It never ends until you end it.”
The Weeknd entered the public consciousness in 2011 when he put out the House of Balloons mixtape and worked to keep his face and identity secret at first, finally revealing himself to the wider world at Coachella in 2012. Flash forward billions of streams and four Grammys later and he’s one of the biggest acts on the planet.
The movie was inspired by what should have been a triumphant moment that went sideways. Tesfaye has described becoming undone when he suddenly lost his voice completely during a stadium show in L.A. in 2022. In the film, he plays a fictionalized, insomnia-wrecked version of himself, also named Abel, who is taken on a wild ride by alluring stranger Anima (Ortega).
“I tried to make the movie in a way where, for his fans and people who want to approach it at that level, I hope it’s very satisfying and you get a good meal out of it,” Shults, who co-wrote the psychological thriller’s screenplay with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim told EW in February. The director said that it was an “absolute possibility” that the project would be the Weeknd’s final chapter, adding “And for people that aren’t his fans and don’t know anything about him or even care about the final capping of the Weeknd, I think you still have a great movie to go through.”
Philadelphia’s Making Time festival has announced the lineup for its 2025 event.
The three-day show will feature performances from legends including Four Tet and Moodymann, electronic pioneer Suzanne Ciana, Japanese phenom Yousuke Yukimatsu, modern mainstays Boy Harsher, Avalon Emerson, Haii, Sherelle, Jubilee and Ben UFO, rising Brooklyn duo Fcukers, Glasgow veterans Optimo (Espacio) and many more.
Additionally, the lineup includes Interplanetary Criminal, Gerd Janson, Chaos in the CBD, Panda Bear, John Talabot, VTSS, Donato Dozzy and others.
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Making Time 2025 will once again happen at Fort Mifflin, an eighteenth century landmark located on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The site will feature five stages, across which the event will feature indie and experimental electronic music, along with post-punk, shoegaze, ambient and more. Along with music, the lineup includes meditation sessions, sound baths and other activities designed to foster transcendence.
The event happens Sept. 19-21, with tickets on sale now. Tickets are $235 plus taxes and fees, and tickets with no fees attached are available at The Lot Radio in Brooklyn and Middle Child & Middle Child Clubhouse in Philadelphia.
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2025 will mark the fifth edition of the independently produced festival. Making Time was created by Philadelphia-based producer Dave Pianka, whose artist name is Dave P., and is an extension of his Making Time radio show and the Making Time parties he’s been throwing for 25 years.
A press release for the festival notes that “The motto for [Making Time 2025] is ‘choose transcendence.’ For over 25 years, Making Time has been about partying your a– off and transcending the mundanity of the everyday, the average, the mediocre.”
See the full lineup below:
Making Time 2024
Courtesy of Making Time
Ineffable Live has signed an exclusive talent buying agreement with Majestic Ventura Theater, previously managed and booked by Live Nation since 2019. Ineffable Live is the concert promoter and talent buying division of Ineffable Music Group, the Oakland-based record label, management company and concert promoter. Ineffable’s stable of California venues include the Uptown Theatre in […]
Taylor Swift has met the newest member of the Kelce family, according to Jason Kelce.
In a red-carpet interview with Entertainment Tonight at Amazon Upfront Monday (May 12), the retired Philadelphia Eagles center revealed that despite her busy schedule, the pop star recently carved out time to meet boyfriend Travis Kelce’s new niece, Finnley. Jason — who is the Kansas City Chiefs tight end’s older brother — welcomed the baby girl with podcaster Kylie Kelce in early April.
“She has, yep. She’s met her,” Jason told the outlet. “We were fortunate to have them all in. It doesn’t happen often — everyone’s busy — but it was really special.”
“Thankfully we have a really tight-knit family that makes time for each other,” the Monday Night Football host added. “It’s been awesome.”
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With the addition of Finnley, Jason and Kylie are now parents of four daughters. They also share 5-year-old Wyatt Elizabeth, 4-year-old Elliotte Ray and 2-year-old Bennett Llewellyn.
The Kelce family expansion comes a few months after the conclusion of Swift’s global Eras Tour in December. Since then, the 14-time Grammy winner has mostly been lying low, but she and Travis were recently spotted out and about at a restaurant in Philadelphia for a Mother’s Day meal.
But while she seems to have been taking some time off in recent months, Swift has a lot of her fans convinced that that’s all about to change. Thanks to a few potential Easter eggs hidden on her website and Taylor Nation X account, many Swifties think the “Fortnight” singer is gearing up to announce something at the 2025 American Music Awards on May 26.
One thing fans have been hoping to see Swift do is appear on the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast. A few times in the nearly two years since the musician and Travis first started dating in summer 2023, listeners have thought that she might be a special guest on various episodes — but so far, it hasn’t happened.
When the ET reporter expressed that she hoped to see Swift on New Heights in the future, Jason was coy. He said with a laugh, “You and a lot of other people, for sure.”
While rumors about the upcoming Oasis reunion tour continue to swirl, one of the band’s co-managers has put one to bed: There will be no new music from the Gallagher brothers.
Speaking to Music Week, Alec McKinlay, who heads the band’s Ignition Management and Big Brother Recordings, Oasis’ U.K. label, revealed that there were no plans for Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher to get back in the studio together for a new record. The band released their most recent album, Dig Out Your Soul, in 2008.
“This is very much the last time around, as Noel’s made clear in the press,” McKinlay said in the interview published Tuesday (May 13). “It’s a chance for fans who haven’t seen the band to see them, or at least for some of them to. But no, there’s no plan for any new music.”
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The confirmation arrives after months of rumors, including some teasing by frontman Liam on his social platforms. In September, Liam responded to a fan to say that a new record was “already finished,” and in November he said he was “blown away” by the songs Noel had allegedly written for a new album.
The band’s reunion tour kicks off in the U.K. at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, on July 4. The run of dates will continue through Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin before hitting North America, Latin America, Asia and Australia across the 41 planned shows.
Elsewhere in the interview, McKinsley discussed the response to the shows globally. “We’d obviously been planning it for a while and the moment when it went live was a little bit of a step into the unknown in terms of how big the reaction would be,” McKinlay said. “When it all hit home, it was just phenomenal. The reaction was very much one of, ‘Finally, some good news after all the nonsense that’s been going on in the world.’
“Probably the biggest and most pleasing surprise of the reunion announcement is how huge it was internationally,” he added. “Honestly, we knew it would be big here, and that doesn’t take much intuition. But looking outside the U.K., we knew they had a strong fanbase, we did all the stats. We were quite cautious about what that would mean when it came to people actually buying tickets, but we were just bowled over by how huge it was.
“We could have sold out half-a-dozen Rose Bowls in Pasadena and probably eight MetLife Stadiums in New York in a day,” McKinsley shared. “We saw the ticket stats, we were watching what was happening and the demand was way beyond our expectations.”
The clamor for Oasis tickets in the U.K. sparked a debate about on-sale practices. In March, the Competition and Markets Authority said that Ticketmaster may have “misled” fans about ticket prices for the events.
The band has yet to officially confirm who will be performing in the live group alongside Noel and Liam, but the latter has denied reports that “Hello” will be dropped from the setlist due to its connection to convicted pedophile Gary Glitter.
Red Bull Spiral, the innovative Hip-Hop series from Red Bull 1520, is back for a third season and is kicking things off with three lyrical heavyweights. Big Sean, Joey BadA$$, and Ab-Soul all hopped into the Red Bull Spiral cypher with their unique, face-melting bars.
Opening up the Red Bull Spiral is Big Sean, with the Detroit wordsmith sounding comfortable over the head-nodding production behind him with some assistance from Joey BadA$$ and Ab-Soul. After Sean Don playfully says that Ab-Soul’s lady told him that he was going to “wash” him in the cypher, the Black Lip Pastor returns the jab but delivers another one of his amazing displays of lyricism as only the Martin Luther King of Carson can. In his verse, Soul-O also shouts out BadA$$’s Pro Era set but still flies the TDE flag high.
On the anchor, the Brooklyn Bad Mon Joey BadA$$ ripped a hole in the multiverse with his bars and backed up all the tough talk he delivered over his blistering “The Ruler’s Back” track, expertly saluting Ab-Soul’s hometown and shouting out Sean. The synergy between the trio makes it appear as if they were an actual group, but this is the first time the three stars have appeared on a track of this sort. And if there was any doubt about Joey’s love for the West Coast, it was squashed amicably at the end of his set.
Check out Big Sean, Ab-Soul, and Joey BadA$$ in the Red Bull Spiral cypher below. Peep the lyrics here.
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Photo: Koury Angelo / Red Bull Content Pool
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Jeremy Sirota will leave Merlin at the end of the year, the licensing organization announced on Tuesday (May 13).
Sirota has served as CEO since 2020, guiding Merlin as it steers digital music licensing for independent labels and distributors. During Sirota’s tenure, Merlin reached new deals with Apple, Audiomack, Canva, Peloton, Snap, Twitch and more.
In a statement, Darius Van Arman, who is both chairperson of Merlin and co-founder/co-owner of Secretly Group, called Sirota “an extraordinary CEO” who brought “great focus, tremendous energy and brilliant thinking to one of the most important and challenging roles within the independent community.”
“His work and leadership has Merlin more prepared than ever to manage an increasingly complex music licensing landscape and to achieve our mission of enabling greater independence for all Merlin members,” Van Arman continued.
In his own statement, Sirota called helming Merlin “the privilege of a lifetime.” He added that the organization continues “to be the most important organization representing independents” and that it “has a bright future.”
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Sirota previously worked as a tech lawyer before spending nine years at Warner Music Group and then jumping to Facebook Music.
That experience “gave me the ability to relate to people at different levels in the business, whether it’s a product manager at a digital platform, or an engineer who’s now a founder of a startup, or it’s a member who runs a metal label,” he told Billboard last year. “I’ve always been on the service side, and that’s always been the through line.”
During Sirota’s time as CEO, Merlin added over 100 members. In addition, the organization launched Merlin Engage, a program to mentor the next generation of women executives, and Merlin Insights, to help members analyze the deluge of data that’s available in world of streaming.
“We now have a data operations team to make sure that all trends data is being delivered in the right format,” Sirota explained in 2024. “Our market share on some of these platforms is significant — more than just the 15% we talk about. So we have this incredible wealth of data. We have the ability to pull out interesting stories that help our members — things they don’t know because they’re not on the ground.”
On Tuesday (May 13), Billboard and Sensical, Cricket Media’s streaming service, announced a first-of-its-kind, music-focused partnership for kids and families. This dynamic offering is designed to provide a safe and engaging space for both young listeners and their families to listen, watch and learn together while enjoying top hits and the most exciting artists of today.
This collaboration will include the launch of free ad-supported streaming channels dedicated to nonstop family-friendly music programming. Offering a blend of curated playlists and artist-driven content, this partnership will provide a trusted space where the youngest fans can connect with the biggest pop stars in age-appropriate environments.
“At Billboard, we believe in the universal power of music to inspire, connect, and shape generations. Partnering with Sensical on a music streaming destination for kids allows us to extend this vision by creating a safe, dynamic space for families to explore music together,” said Mike Van, CEO of Billboard. “This initiative highlights our commitment to innovation and inclusivity, ensuring young listeners have access to content that sparks their creativity while encouraging meaningful shared experiences.”
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Building on the success of the Billboard Family editorial platform, the initiative provides a dedicated space for families seeking the best in music and entertainment. The hub serves as a go-to resource for parents and kids, featuring content designed to engage and entertain the whole family. Sensical will now help power Billboard Family with custom lists and expert guides on Billboard’s platforms to help kids create and experience music in a safe way. In addition, an always-on music hub on Sensical streaming apps will offer themed playlists, exclusive Billboard Family content, and integration into a scrolling vertical video feature on the Sensical mobile app. Sensical will use its proprietary content evaluation standard, incubated within Common Sense Networks, to curate the music initiative as it has been similarly utilized to evaluate content on YouTube and TikTok KidsMode.
“This partnership is a game-changer for kids and families who love music. By combining Billboard’s legendary music authority with Sensical’s gold standard expertise in safe, high-quality content, we’re building an entirely new ecosystem for music discovery,” said Thomas Middelhoff, Cricket Board Member and former CEO Bertelsmann, AG. “Collaboration between Billboard and Sensical will deliver a new generation of kids with a fun, safe, and brand-friendly way to engage with music,” said Eric Berger, CEO of Cricket Media. “It meets families where they are today while sparking a lifelong relationship with young fans who will drive the entertainment economy of tomorrow.”
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Cardi B and Stefon Diggs sparked major buzz Monday night as they shared an affectionate moment courtside at Madison Square Garden.
Attending Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals between the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics, the rapper and NFL wide receiver appeared inseparable, adding more fuel to the ongoing rumors surrounding their relationship.
The two were seen laughing together, holding hands, and exchanging playful glances throughout the game. Their body language suggested a strong connection, making it hard for fans and cameras to look away. Though neither Cardi nor Diggs has addressed the dating speculation publicly, their warm and intimate courtside behavior gave the crowd plenty to talk about.
While their chemistry caught everyone’s attention, the game itself delivered high-stakes excitement. The Knicks secured a key victory over the Celtics, pushing the series to a 3-1 lead. However, the celebration was dimmed by a serious injury to Boston’s Jayson Tatum, who reportedly suffered an Achilles injury that could sideline him for the remainder of the playoffs.
Despite the on-court drama, Cardi B and Diggs remained the center of attention, their closeness suggesting more than just a casual friendship. Their appearance at such a high-profile event only intensified speculation, with many now believing the duo is ready to go public. As the Knicks edge closer to a spot in the Conference Finals, fans are just as eager to see how this rumored romance develops.
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Tory Lanez is recovering after being stabbed 14 times in prison on Monday morning (May 12), according to the statement shared on his Instagram. The positive update confirmed the singer, born Daystar Peterson, was “in good spirits” following the attack. “Tory was stabbed 14 times, including seven wounds to his back, four to his torso, […]
