Photos
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Another year in the books, and Billboard is looking back on some of its best photos throughout 2022.
Some of today’s biggest stars have posed for cover stories, magazine features, and Billboard events throughout the year, including Women in Music and Latin Music Week. We’ve seen jaw-dropping photos from musicians like Doja Cat, Sam Smith, Maluma, Bad Bunny, Machine Gun Kelly, Post Malone, Christina Aguilera, SZA, Shawn Mendes, Camilo, Young Thug and many more. From creative visions to powerful stances, each photo captures the artists as their most authentic self.
See below for our gallery of Billboard‘s best photos from 2022, featuring superstar artists, breathtaking locations and so much more.
Penske Media Corporation’s new music, art and food festival LA3C took over Los Angeles State Historic Park over the weekend, bringing together some of today’s most exciting music stars to celebrate the rich culture and diverse communities in the City of Angels.
Maluma and Lil Baby headlined the two-day event, which also featured some incredible performances from SEVENTEEN, Snoop Dogg, Free Nationals, Gerardo Ortiz, Fonseca, Marc Segui, Shawn Wasabi, Monogem, Shea Diamond, Chicocurlyhead and more.
The celebration extended beyond music as well, and featured a series of activities at the festival, including a range of multicultural food, bold art on display, a marketplace and interactive experiences.
Legendary anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall was also at the event, as she was honored with one of the inaugural LA3C Awards, which was given to people and organizations that celebrate the culture, creativity and global diversity found in Los Angeles.
Check out some of the portraits that were taken at LA3C below.
Westeros isn’t so different from the world of pop. The top slot on the Billboard charts is just as sought-after as the Iron Throne — though artists use their music as weapons instead of, well, actual weapons.
Back in 2016, ahead of the season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO, we decided to see if we could draw a direct line between the citizens of the Seven Kingdoms and our very own pop royalty. These people are playing very different games, but often using similar strategies. We published animated illustrations reimagining six of the biggest musicians in the world as six of the biggest characters on the wildly popular show, which came to an end in 2019 after eight seasons.
This week (Dec. 7), our gallery of GIFs became relevant once again, when Taylor Swift told The Hollywood Reporter for their Women in Entertainment Power 100 issue which Thrones character she most identifies with: Arya Stark. “I realize I don’t know how to use a sword and I’ve never had to rise up from near death to go on an epic revenge mission,” the pop star quipped. “But I have been in the music industry for over 15 years, so …”
When we published the original gallery, we had Swift pegged as the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen — of course, that was before (spoiler alert) Dany burned it all down in the final season. Also since the gallery was posted, Swift has spoken of her kinship with the Stark daughters (Sansa too) and how they partially inspired her 2017 album reputation. “So much of my imagination was spent on Game of Thrones,” Swift told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “At the time, I was making reputation and I didn’t talk about it in interviews, so I didn’t reveal that a lot of the songs were influenced by the show.”
But Swift isn’t our only pop star featured in the gallery. Below, find animated illustrations of pop stars as their kindred Game of Thrones characters. (And maybe for our next round, we’ll include musicians as House of the Dragon standouts.)
This gallery was originally published in 2016.
As November melted into December, musicians and other celebrities flocked to the warm weather of Miami for Art Basel 2022. Over the course of a week, the annual art festival became a hotspot filled with exhibits, A-list performances, parties and more.
One of the most popular locales to spot a famous face during Miami Art Week was Meta House, where everyone from Doja Cat and GloRilla to TOKiMONSTA and Elena Rose hit the stage for thrilling performances, while Becky G, SAINt JHN and more could be found checking out the space’s combination of virtual art galleries, interactive murals, a VR sculpting workshop and other “mixed reality” experiences.
Other high-profile soirees included Wayne and Cynthia Bioch’s Art Basel Party, where 50 Cent served as the evening’s entertainment, MAXIM‘s party at Hyde Beach to celebrate their December 2022 issue with a performance by Trippie Redd and nft now’s The Gateway closing block party, which was DJ’d by Anderson .Paak.
Art Basel was also the site of many a launch and collaboration over the week, whether art lovers could spot John Mayer at the event for Audemars Piguet Starwheel on Nov. 30 or Justine Skye and A$AP Ferg rubbing elbows at the EDITION Hotel in Miami Beach for the launch for D’USSE XO x Dr Woo Glass Set. Mark Ronson also stopped by the exclusive Tequila Don Julio 1942 x OJAS Speaker collab launch, while Diplo hit the celebration thrown by Burberry and W Magazine.
Click through Billboard‘s gallery for all the action from Art Basel 2022.
Fleetwood Mac‘s Christine McVie died on Wednesday (Nov. 30) at age 79 following a “short illness,” per a statement released by her family.
“She was in the company of her family,” the statement read. “We kindly ask that you respect the family’s privacy at this extremely painful time, and we would like everyone to keep Christine in their hearts and remember the life of an incredible human being, and revered musician who was loved universally.”
McVie was a powerful vocalist, instrumentalist and lyricist had an illustrious, decades-long career as a member of Fleetwood Mac, which she joined in 1970, and later as a solo act. During her time in Fleetwood, the band had 29 albums on the Billboard 200 and 25 Hot 100 hits, including nine top 10s and one No. 1 smash: “Dreams” in 1977.
As a solo artist, McVie released several albums including Christine Perfect and most recently Lindsay Buckingham Christine McVie in 2017 alongside her former bandmate.
To honor the late Christine McVie, we’ve compiled a series of photos to celebrate her vibrant life and accomplishments. See them below.
Longtime friends became a high-profile romantic partnership (and one of the most famous couples of all time) when Kanye West and Kim Kardashian became romantically involved in the spring of 2012. As the two were – and still are – some of the biggest superstars on the planet, their union was a cosmic collision for the ages, burning big and bright before ending in a fiery, supernova explosion.
In the eight years between their joyous wedding in 2014 and devastating divorce, finalized in 2022, the world watched with eager eyes as Kimye experienced the joys of marriage and parenthood. Fans everywhere saw Kanye join the rest of Hollywood’s biggest “K” names when he became a full-fledged member of the Kardashian family, celebrated alongside the couple as they welcomed four kids together – North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm – and shared in their devastation when Kim filed for divorce in February 2020.
But while Kim and Kanye’s marriage ended, their relationship – turbulent as it may be – definitely did not. The two will always be linked both in private — as they work to co-parent — as well as in public, as they duke things out on social media. In the years following the breakup, Ye repeatedly bashed his ex-wife for her parenting choices and subsequent romances in Instagram posts and in interviews.
For better or worse, though, Kimye will forever be a staple of 2010s pop culture and a textbook example of what it means to be a certified celebrity couple. Relive all the high and low points of Kanye and Kim’s time together with the relationship timeline below:
The Pitch Perfect spin-off series Bumper in Berlin is just days away from its Peacock premiere on Wednesday (Nov. 23), and to celebrate, the cast of the comedy musical show joined Billboard for an exclusive photo shoot.
Adam Devine (Bumper himself) along with co-stars Sarah Hyland, Jameela Jamil and Lera Abova and executive producer Elizabeth Banks all posed for sleek individual photos and sweet group snaps.
In the upcoming series, which will be unveiled on NBC’s streaming service just in time to binge-watch on Thanksgiving, Devine reprises his role as Bumper Allen, the former leader of the Treblemakers. He gets a call from Pieter from Pitch Perfect 2‘s Das Sound Machine (played again by Flula Borg) inviting him to come to Germany to launch his music career after a video of his went viral on the Internet. Devine then reunites with his Modern Family co-star Hyland, who plays his assistant. Abova plays Pieter’s sister, a DJ named Lina, while Jamil is the extravagant German pop star Giselle.
“We wanted to honor The Barden Bellas and the Pitch Perfect world, while expanding into a fresh and brilliantly weird character journey,” Banks previously shared of the series in a press statement. “This story is about second chances, friendship, and the idea that your dreams can come true in unexpected ways – anywhere in the world, at any point in your life.”
Check out our full gallery of Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin exclusive cast photos below, and stay tuned for our full Billboard News interview with the group going live on Billboard.com and Billboard‘s YouTube channel soon.
Adele made her triumphant debut in Las Vegas over the weekend, performing the first two shows of her Weekends With Adele residency at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace on Friday and Saturday nights. Billboard was inside for night 1 on Friday (read our full review here), so we thought it was only fair to bring you inside too with photos from the concert.
In the pictures below, Adele stuns in her weekend 1 look: a black-velvet off-the-shoulder gown with a drop-waist sash designed by Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli Haute Couture. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the superstar’s stylist, Jamie Mizrahi, revealed that she’ll wear a different black gown every weekend of the residency, which goes through March. “We’re open to embellishment and accents of color, but everything will be a black gown to the floor — except special shows, like New Year’s Eve,” Mizrahi told WSJ. (Adele just added a pair of New Year’s Eve weekend shows to her lineup on Sunday.)
The photos capture a few of the biggest moments from the concert, including the jaw-dropping production for “Set Fire to the Rain,” which features rain pouring down across the stage as a white grand piano becomes engulfed in flames. You can also see some of the emotional show’s comic relief, like when Adele fires autographed T-shirts into the crowd — complete with a handwritten note and a $50 bill — from her stadium-worthy T-shirt gun. And you can also see Adele sauntering through the crowd, as she asks fans for their favorite moments from their childhood and then performs her nostalgic 25 single “When We Were Young.”
Check out all the photos below, and for more from Weekends With Adele, find her best one-liners and banter from night 1 here.
Bad Bunny leads the 2022 American Music Awards list of nominees with eight nods, but the Latin star was far from the only leader at the 2022 AMAs when it came to fashion. Everyone from TXT to Dove Cameron to P!nk brought eye-grabbing threads to the red carpet at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
With pop star and Dance Moms alum kenzie interviewing fellow artists and celebrities for Billboard News, there was a lot going on before the show even got started. Check out kenzie’s AMAs red carpet coverage on Billboard.com, as well as Billboard‘s Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube pages.
As for the show itself, Wayne Brady is hosting the ABC broadcast on Sunday (Nov. 20), which starts at 8 p.m. ET. Taylor Swift, Drake and Beyonce follow Bunny with six nominations for AMAs. P!nk is slated to perform a special tribute to the late Olivia Newton-John during the show.
A living legend – Lionel Richie – will be honored with the icon award at the 2022 AMAs. Richie was recently inducted into the class of 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “Do you know how wonderful it is to walk into a room and people start smiling?” Richie told Billboard backstage at the Rock Hall induction ceremony. “I’m not playing. I’m walking into a dinner, I’m walking into a restaurant, I’m walking my kids to school. What I’m saying is I don’t know how you get this blessed, but it’s a moment in time when you realize the songs have translated over into this thing called love.”
The biggest and brightest stars and executives in the R&B and hip-hop world showed out at Billboard Live: R&B/Hip-Hop on Thursday night (Nov. 17) at Academy LA.
Billboard‘s deputy director, R&B/hip-hop Carl Lamarre and executive director, R&B/hip-hop Gail Mitchell started the evening’s festivities by thanking the R&B and hip-hop team, including reporters Neena Rouhani and Heran Mamo, and devoting a moment of silence to Takeoff, PnB Rock, Young Dolph, Pop Smoke, Nipsey Hussle and more rappers who have died in recent years.
Future, who currently stars on Billboard‘s cover, presented the Rookie of the Year award to Blxst, who recently came off a sold-out world tour and earned two 2023 Grammy nominations for album of the year with Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers and best melodic rap performance with “Die Hard” by Lamar featuring himself and Amanda Reifer.
Fellow cover star SZA presented the Executive of the Year award to Tim Hinshaw, head of hip-hop & R&B at Amazon Music, who delivered a heartfelt speech that made sure there wasn’t a dry eye left in the room. And Vibe editor-in-chief Datwon Thomas presented the Rémy Martin x Vibe Impact and Excellence Award to SAINt JHN, which honors a musician who has made tremendous efforts in their community, as well as paving the way for the next generation of artists.
Opener Flo Milli performed songs from her 2020 debut mixtape Ho, Why Is You Here? and her 2022 album You Still Here, Ho? before City Girls took the stage and performed their hits such as “Jobs” and “P–sy Talk.”