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Sabrina Carpenter has secured her spot as the U.K.’s Christmas No. 1 Album for 2024. Her sixth album, Short n’ Sweet, first hit the summit of the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart in August, and this is the 25-year-old’s second non-consecutive week at No. 1 on the charts this year. Over the course of the year, […]
In this episode Billboard Unfiltered, Billboard staffers Trevor Anderson, Kyle Denis, Damien Scott and Carl Lamarre rank the best rap and R&B albums of 2024, go through the biggest scandals of the year, share their predictions for 2025 and more!
Damien Scott:You’re out here talking, you know, making the 2024 song about dating and getting into arguments and s–t.
Kyle Denis:In 2024 specifically.
Damien Scott:This is all Kat Williams’ fault.
Trevor Anderson:That’s really where it started.
Carl Lamarre:In case y’all missed last week’s episode, there were talks about y’all potentially being gone because Amber and Regina killed it.
Trevor Anderson:Oh, was that the conversations in the back?
Carl Lamarre:Yeah, but the OG squad is here!
Trevor Anderson:I see those conversations got squashed quickly.
Carl Lamarre:We got Charles and Kenny back, you know what I’m saying?
Damien Scott:We’re what’s best for the show.
Trevor Anderson:Shout-out to Kenny, man.
Carl Lamarre:No, I was happy to have the gang back especially for this last episode of 2024. We unveiled two fire lists this week, which include the Best Rap Albums of 2024 and the Best R&B Albums of 2024, so what we’ll do, I’m going to give a quick breakdown of the top 10. The full list is on billboard.com, so here’s the top 10.
For the Best Rap Album of 2024: No. 10 Freddie Gibbs’ You Only Die 1nce; nine: Future, Mixtape Pluto; eight: Latto, Sugar Honey Iced Tea; seven: Megan Thee Stallion, Megan: Act I and Megan: Act II; six: Schoolboy Q, Blue Lips; five: GloRilla, Glorious; four: Tyler, the Creator, Chromakopia; three: Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal; three: Future and Metro, We Don’t Trust You …
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It’s official: Wham!’s “Last Christmas” is the U.K.’s Christmas No. 1 for 2024.
It makes for the second consecutive year that the pop duo – made up of Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Michael – have achieved the feat. The song, first released in 1984 and written by Michael, was beaten to the Christmas No. 1 spot at the time of release by Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and eventually took the coveted slot 39 years later in 2023.
Speaking on the achievement to the Official Charts Company, Ridgeley said, “37 years to get to No. 1, 39 years to Christmas No. 1, and then like London buses, they all come along at once! I’m especially pleased for George — he would have been utterly delighted his fabulous Christmas composition has become such a classic, almost as much a part of Christmas as mince pies, turkey and pigs in blankets.”
The achievement places Wham! in a rare group of artists to have had multiple Christmas No. 1s on the Official Singles Chart. With its second title, the duo joins Queen (2), Spice Girls (3), The Beatles (4) and the current record-holders, LadBaby (5). The latter, the moniker for YouTube influencer Mark Hoyle, holds the record for number of Christmas chart-toppers with five different songs hitting No. 1 between 2018 and 2022.
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“Last Christmas” is also experiencing success on the Billboard Hot 100, currently placing at No. 3, a new peak for the single. Speaking to Billboard‘s Pop Shop podcast, Ridgeley reflected on how the success both in the U.K. and abroad felt.
“Well, extremely satisfying. You know, Yog [Michael’s nickname], we placed a great deal of importance on being a success in the States. It was, for any artist, of that era … you were nowhere unless you were a big deal in the States. You could be a big noise in the U.K., but the States was the golden prize, really. We were fortunate enough … and one or two of our contemporaries, we had great success in the States.”
Elsewhere, Wham! faced stiff competition over the course of the week. Gracie Abrams finished at No. 2 with her single “That’s So True,” which has enjoyed a five weeks at the top spot already in 2024, while Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” finished at No. 3. Carey’s 1994 song took the honor of Christmas No. 1 back in 2020, more than 26 years after its original release.
Tom Grennan, meanwhile, put up a strong battle to finish at No. 4 with “It Can’t Be Christmas,” his exclusive for Amazon Music U.K., which is also his highest charting solo song on the Official Singles Chart.
See the full Official Singles Chart here.
A familiar group of faces tops Billboard’s monthly touring report for November: For the third time in 2024, and fifth overall, Coldplay is No. 1 on Top Tours. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the British quartet grossed $71.1 million and sold 609,000 tickets over nine shows in November.
Claiming its fifth monthly victory dating back to the chart’s launch in February 2019, Coldplay sits only behind Bad Bunny and Elton John, who have seven titles apiece. Beyoncé and Trans-Siberian Orchestra have each ruled four times, with the latter currently in the middle of its annual holiday tour.
Coldplay’s November run swept through Oceania, with two shows in Melbourne, Australia; four in Sydney; and three in Auckland, New Zealand. The four dates at Sydney’s Accor Stadium grossed a mammoth $37.4 million, earning the No. 1 position on Top Boxscores. The Auckland run ($19.3 million) follows at No. 2. The Melbourne shows grossed $14.4 million on Nov. 1-2, but were a continuation of a four-night engagement that began in late October. Had all those shows fallen in November, the band’s $28.8 million gross would have given Coldplay a clean sweep of the top three.
The most recent leg of the Music of the Spheres World Tour is, of course, the continuation of a three-year trans-continental trek. Dating back to its March 2022 kickoff in San Jose, Costa Rica, it has earned more than $1.1 billion and sold 10.3 million tickets. That’s a bigger attendance figure for any tour in music history.
It’s been a hard-earned all-time record, with Coldplay meeting demand across the world. The tour has featured sold-out stadium shows in five continents, with 48 more shows scheduled for 2025 in Asia, Europe and North America. Watch the video below to see the band’s road to 10 million tickets, one international city at a time.
Of the tour’s three-year totals, $400.9 million and 3 million tickets came from the 2024 tracking period (Oct. 1, 2023-Sept. 30, 2024), nabbing Coldplay the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s year-end Top Tours and Top Ticket Sales charts. It’s the second consecutive year for Chris Martin & Co. atop the latter list.
Pearl Jam follows at No. 2 on Top Tours, with $41.8 million and 314,000 tickets sold in November. Also in Australia and New Zealand, the band’s run featured two dates each in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney, plus one in Carrara (suburb of Gold Coast).
Coldplay and Pearl Jam each played a pair of shows at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, combining for more than $30 million and the runner-up slot on Top Stadiums, only behind Sydney’s Accor Stadium. Altogether, the two bands helped fuel four spots for Oceania on the Stadiums ranking.
Three former Top Tours champions round out the top five, with Zach Bryan, P!nk and Paul McCartney at Nos. 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Bryan and P!nk both landed in the top five of the year-end Top Tours and Top Ticket Sales rankings, with their recent November totals already positioning them well for 2025’s charts.
While Oceania proved dominant as a continent, Mexico City is the most prevalent city on November’s charts, with three of the top 10 spots on Top Boxscores. Two festivals – Corona Capital and Coca Cola Flow Fest – are at Nos. 5 and 9, while McCartney is sandwiched at No. 7 with two shows at Estadio GNP Seguros. All three engagements delivered eight-figure grosses.
Las Vegas is not far behind, with three in the top 15. Billy Joel and Sting earned $11.4 million from one show at Allegiant Stadium, earning the No. 8 spot. More, two weekends of Sphere shows from the Eagles brought in a combined $18.5 million, split at Nos. 11 and 13.
Sure to crest with the December report, November set the stage for the holiday season. Trans-Siberian Orchestra is No. 10 on Top Tours, while Mariah Carey is No. 17 with the first shows of her fall tour. Further, New York’s Radio City Music Hall towers over the Top Venues (5,001-10K capacity) listing with $33.7 million — more than seven times the gross of No. 2 — with the onset of its annual Christmas spectacular.
Sabrina Carpenter, fresh off the North American leg of her first-ever arena tour, is now accustomed to playing 20,000-seat concert halls. But at NPR’s offices in Washington, D.C., the short and sweet pop star finally found a venue that’s just her size. On a Monday in early December, Billboard was on hand to watch Carpenter […]
The Viña del Mar International Song Festival announced on Friday (Dec. 20) that Incubus and The Cult are the final two acts to complete its lineup for 2025. Both rock bands will make their first appearance at the Chilean festival on Feb. 27.
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“Viña’s Festival should always have a lineup in which everyone feels represented,” said the Mayor of Viña del Mar, Macarena Ripamonti, in a press release. “By confirming these important rock bands, we are catching up with various generations who grew up with this style of music, a longing they constantly expressed to me.”
Formed in 1991 in Calabasas, Calif., Incubus is an alternative rock and nu metal band that also combines elements of heavy metal, hip-hop, funk and grunge. It is known for hits such as “Stellar,” “Adolescents” and “Drive,” the latter of which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. On the Billboard 200, the band has placed 11 albums, seven of them in the top 10 and one, Light Grenades, at No. 1. Comprised of Brandon Boyd (vocals), Mike Einziger (guitar, piano, backing vocals), José Pasillas (drums), Chris Kilmore (keyboards) and Nicole Row (bass), the band has sold more than 23 million records worldwide and has received dozens of multi-Platinum and Platinum certifications.
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Meanwhile, English band The Cult emerged in 1983 and since then, has positioned itself as a major exponent of gothic post-punk with singles such as”She Sells Sanctuary,” “Love Removal Machine,” “Spiritwalker” and “Rain,” among others. The band’s 11th album, Under the Midnight Sun, was released in 2022, marking its return after several years away from the recording studios.
In its 64th annual edition, the festival will take place from Sunday, Feb. 23, to Friday, Feb. 28, at the Quinta Vergara in the coastal city of Viña del Mar, Chile.
Incubus and The Cult join a lineup of musical stars performing at the world’s largest Latin festival, headlined by Marc Anthony, Myriam Hernández, Morat, Carlos Vives, Duki, Bacilos, Ha*Ash, Sebastián Yatra, Carín León, Eladio Carrión and Kidd Voodoo
Produced for the first time by Megamedia and Bizarro Live Entertainment, the Viña del Mar Festival will be broadcast on Mega and Mega Go. It will also be available on the Disney+ platform throughout Latin America, and globally on the Billboard website with specials and exclusive content.
Eager fans of The Weeknd have something to look forward to, with Lionsgate officially setting a release date for his upcoming film Hurry Up Tomorrow.
Directed by Trey Edward Shults (Waves, It Comes At Night), Hurry Up Tomorrow will mark The Weeknd’s (aka Abel Tesfaye) feature-starring debut, and serves as something of an extension of his forthcoming album of the same name. While the record is slated for release on Jan. 24, the film has now been given a release date of May 16.
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“Abel is a visionary whose art cannot be confined by any single medium,” said Adam Fogelson, chair of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, in a statement upon the company’s acquisition of worldwide distribution rights. “With Hurry Up Tomorrow, in partnership with Trey, his musical universe expands onto the big screen with a psychological thriller that will usher in a new cinematic experience for fans. We are thrilled to be bringing it to audiences worldwide.”
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The Hurry Up Tomorrow film is both inspired by and features new music from The Weeknd, who scored the film with frequent collaborator Daniel Lopatin (also known as Oneohtrix Point Never). The film also serves as the conclusion of his artistic trilogy that began with 2020’s After Hours and continued with 2022’s Dawn FM.
Alongside Tesfaye’s starring role, Hurry Up Tomorrow features Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan in supporting roles, with production handled by Tesfaye’s own film and television production company Manic Phase and producing partner Reza Fahim, along with the late Kevin Turen and Harrison Kreiss.
Ortega, Shults, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, Ryan Kroft, The Weeknd’s manager Wassim “Sal” Slaiby and Harrison Huffman are all listed as executive producers on the film. Chayse Irvin serves as director of photography, Elliott Hostetter is the production designer, and Erin Benach and Hannah Jacobs are the costume designers.
In May 2023, Tesfaye spoke to W Magazine to claim that his next studio album would be the final record released under The Weeknd moniker. “It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn,” he said at the time.
“The album I’m working on now is probably my last hurrah as The Weeknd,” he added. “This is something that I have to do. As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say.”
Rihanna has a new snack she’ll be making for her kids — assuming she doesn’t take all of it for herself.
In a fun new video posted to the superstar’s Instagram Thursday (Dec. 19), Ri and a friend try out an unorthodox pairing: chicken nuggets and caviar. “Oh my god, I don’t like how much I like this,” the Fenty mogul says after smearing the spread on a nugget and taking a bite.
“Am I about to steal my kids nuggets?” she continued while going in for seconds and thirds. “I hate when I like my kids’ food, because I be stealing that s–t. I’m actually really nervous what my near future looks like.”
“In the spirit of Christmas, this one is for all the ‘snoccer moms,’” Ri captioned the clip.
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Assuming she actually shares with her kiddos, the caviar nuggets will go to 2-year-old RZA and 1-year-old Riot Rose, whom Rihanna shares with A$AP Rocky. In an October interview with Access Hollywood, the “Love on the Brain” singer opened up about being a mom to two boys, gushing, “It’s fun, I literally, I enjoy it so much.”
“I am just looking at them and living through them, and I’m amazed by every new discovery of theirs, even their boundaries,” she added at the time. “They’re teaching me how to be their mom as much as I’m teaching them how to be in this world and guide them as best as I can.”
Ri’s new “snoccer mom” snack tutorial comes shortly after she enjoyed a mom’s night out at Mariah Carey’s final 2024 holiday concert Dec. 17 at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. While there, the “All I Want for Christmas Is You” vocalist stepped down into the audience to greet her famous friend, who asked Carey to autograph her chest in a hilarious moment captured on video.
“Mariah Carey is signing my t-t y’all,” Ri hilariously said into Carey’s microphone at the time. “This s–t is f–king epic! … Look at that s–t, y’all!”
12/20/2024
As the old saying goes, “it’s not where you start. It’s where you finish.”
12/20/2024
Ben Stiller would drive all night for SZA. In fact, in the new visual for the singer’s track “Drive,” which dropped on Friday morning (Dec. 20), the Nutcrackers star looks entranced as he lip-synchs along to the song while barreling down a dark road in his SUV.
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In the Bradley J. Calder-directed clip, Stiller enthusiastically sings the moody ballad’s lyrics about hitting the road to clear your head while trying to not get too in your head about everything that’s going on. “I been up ’til up midnight, drivin’ to nowhere/ Bumpin’ a slow song, can’t get my head clear/ I been up ’til sunrise, headed to nowhere/ Hopin’ that someone’s missin’ me somewhere,” SZA sings over gently plucked acoustic guitar.
After worrying that she’s balled so hard she’s hit her peak, SZA brags about all the exes who still want to hit her up and how she has no time to waste on haters. And while he’s hitting those lines, Stiller closes his eyes and begins to drift to sleep before waking up with a renewed energy that inspires him to lean out of the window and rip doughnuts in the middle of the street. Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the midnight ghost ride is similar to a lip-synching cameo Stiller had in Jack Johnson’s “Taylor” video in 2003 — only this time around, the actor’s hands are wrapped around a steering wheel instead of a guitar.
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Things then get super weird as Stiller drives off and SZA pops up in the woods dressed as a sexy alien insect as the second half of the song turns into a slow-grind R&B jam and the singer crawls her way across the marsh. The costume is similar to one in the teased artwork for SZA’s long-awaited deluxe edition of her blockbuster SOS album, Lana, which is due out on Friday, as well as her Hot Ones look from September.
SZA first revealed the Lana title during a show in New York in September 2023, during which she told the audience that the deluxe version of SOS would be like “a whole ‘nother album … It’s seven to 10 songs, and it’ll be out this fall.” Then in a November British Vogue interview, she described Lana and the SOS deluxe as two entirely different albums.
But then earlier this month, SZA confirmed that Lana is the title of the SOS deluxe album, and teased the tracklist. SOS debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums charts following its 2022 release, shattering the record for the biggest streaming week for an R&B album by a woman at the time with 404.6 million official on-demand streams for the album’s songs, according to Luminate.
SZA will embark on the Grand National stadium tour with Kendrick Lamar beginning in April.
Watch the “Drive” video above.