Pop
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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 and No. 17 stars, and now we remember the century in Jay-Z — who redesigned crossover hip-hop stardom in his image and became one of the biggest pop culture icons of the entire century.
The best is not always the best-selling. Take the Porsche 911: Considered by many experts and fans alike to be pound-for-pound the best sports car money can buy, the rear-engined coupe sells only a fraction of what America’s number one pony car, the Ford Mustang, sells. Despite its motor being in the wrong place, the 911 is thought to be the platonic ideal of a sports car. It can do it all: deliver a transcendent driving experience, win prestigious motor races, do the weekly chore run, ferry a (small) family around, and look cool when parked on the block. Instead of introducing radical new ideas every model year, Porsche has worked to intensely refine and perfect the 911 over the course of its 75-year run.
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The closest thing Hip-Hop has to the Porsche 911 is Brooklyn’s own Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. Throughout his storied three-decade career, Jay-Z never reached the commercial heights of some of his contemporaries but, much like the 911, he represented the platonic ideal of what a rapper should and could be – including as a crossover star, who was able to have major hits and top 40-level success without ever really changing who he was or sounding like he was actively chasing any of it.
Jay-Z
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Hitting the scene in earnest in 1996 with his debut album Reasonable Doubt, Jay shared underworld tales and street knowledge in a cool unaffected manner that made it seem as if he was letting you in on a secret. With Death Row and Bad Boy dominating the charts in the mid-’90s, Jay worked to carve out a lane for himself as the guy who had one foot on the block and one foot in the boardroom. After not finding high-level commercial success with his debut, Jay recruited the team behind his friend The Notorious B.I.G.’s classic albums to create In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. Debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Vol. 1. boasted minor hits in “The City Is Mine” and “(Always Be My) Sunshine” but proved that Jay had the propensity to make music that appealed to both radio program directors and true hip-hop heads.
But the real breakthrough came with 1998’s Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life. This time around there was no big-name executive producer, just Jay-Z and his Roc-A-Fella partners Dame Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke. The star of the show was the 45 King-produced, Annie-sampling “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” that peaked at No. 15 on the Hot 100, becoming Jay-Z’s biggest hit up until that point and pushing Vol 2. to be Jay’s first No. 1 debut on the Hot 200. Suddenly the hustler from Marcy Projects was no longer toiling away in the shadow of NYC’s towering MCs — he was now one of its brightest stars. Over the next four years Jay-Z proved success does indeed beget success. He launched the careers of a few successful rap stars under his Roc-A-Fella imprint and stretched his earning potential with new clothing and liquor endeavors. But despite all that — as well as a bevy of rap hits and back-to-back Billboard 200 No. 1 albums — Jay’s best days were still far ahead of him.
The new millennium got off to a crazy start for Jay, as he connected with the Neptunes for the first time for the lead single of what was supposed to be a label compilation album. The fun and uproarious “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” became Jay’s first single to top the Hip-Hop/R&B chart and peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100. The song was so big it reportedly inspired Britney Spears to tap the Virginia Beach-based production duo to work on her Britney album. The Dynasty: Roc-La-Familia also served a greater purpose still for the young rap mogul: It set the groundwork for what would become the best album of his career. Featured on Dynasty were three then-unknown producers – Ye (then Kanye West), Bink! and Just Blaze — who gave Jay a bunch of sample-based beats that were shimmering, soulful and gritty all at once. That sound would go on to anchor Jay’s sixth album, The Blueprint.
In 2001, Jay was fighting battles on multiple fronts. He was taking verbal fire from NYC artists — Nas, Prodigy, and Jadakiss — who were none too happy with Jay’s claim to be the King of New York. And he was fighting two criminal cases: one for illegal gun possession and one for assault. During all that, Jay absconded to Miami to record what would become his magnum opus. Legend goes that Jay heard the beats and was so inspired he recorded the album in less than a week. The result would be a project that completely reordered the pantheon of rap greats: Sure, Reasonable Doubt is considered a classic, but the wider world didn’t take notice of it until years later. With The Blueprint, everyone knew immediately that Jay-Z had made the best rap album anyone had heard in years. From the scathing diss track “Takeover” to the tender “Song Cry” — and a pair of irresistible ‘00s pop-rap staples in the triumphant “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and the hilariously rude “Girls, Girls, Girls” — The Blueprint, as Noah Callahan-Bever wrote, became just that: “Everything a great rap album should be, and, perhaps as importantly, nothing that it should not be.”
Throughout his career, Jay always looked at himself as more than a rapper. Yes, he also claimed to be a hustler, but he more so saw himself as an enterprise. The famous bar wouldn’t come until 2005 when he hopped on a remix to Ye’s “Diamonds” record—in Jay’s eyes he’s not simply a businessman, he’s a business, man. And that sentiment really began to show in the early 2000s: So much so he felt he’d outgrown his role as a rapper to the point that he decided to retire, dropping a farewell project in The Black Album. And why not? By then he felt he had it all: He had five consecutive No. 1 albums, Roc-A-Fella was chugging along just nicely — and, in his immortal words, he had “the hottest chick in the game” wearing his chain in Beyoncé. He’d just scored two of his biggest pop hits to date alongside the then-burgeoning pop/R&B diva: His No. 3-peaking “Bonnie & Clyde ‘03” from the overstuffed sequel album Blueprint 2: The Gift and Curse, and her “Crazy in Love,” the Hot 100-topping breakout hit from Bey’s Dangerously in Love that set her on the path to all-time solo greatness. Things couldn’t be going better.
But what other rapper could have made the entire world care about their retirement? He made culture stop. Fans actually mourned his career! We’d never seen someone go out on top; on their own terms. Especially after making what appeared to be all the right moves. It was no wonder the documentary he made about the making of his “last” album – 2004’s Fade to Black, which also captured his “retirement party” concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, bringing hip-hop to the World’s Most Famous Arena at a time when it rarely got to command such stages — was itself a hit.
Jay-Z
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Of course, he couldn’t leave the game alone, and wound up returning three years and a Def Jam Presidential stint later with the forgettable Kingdom Come. Tapping his usual list of producers to craft his comeback special, Jay suffered his first great misstep: He underestimated just how much the rap game had moved on in the time he was away. The South, and Atlanta in particular, was now the dominant force in rap– a reality helped bring forth by signing Young Jeezy to Def Jam. And with younger guys like T.I. able to seamlessly flow between grimy street records and wide aperture radio hits, Jay’s attempt felt, well, old. It didn’t help that he himself was struggling with how to be a rapper touching 40 years old.
But Jay-Z’s true gift remained his ability to make people believe Jay-Z is the coolest person in the world. His ability to sell that idea has helped him sell everything else. When, on Blueprint 3, he declared Auto-Tune dead at the late height of its use within hip-hop in 2009, most people said “hm,” but went with it. (He had less success with getting people to stop wearing Timbs, but you can’t win ‘em all.) Nonetheless, his coolness is what made his BP3 collaboration with Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind” — a song that could have fallen flat and tumbled into cringe in the hands of a lesser artist — his first song to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100, and an enduring Big Apple anthem that even folks who couldn’t name a second Jay-Z song still know most of the words to.
Another gift has been his ability to align himself with the right people at the right time. When he retired from rap and released The Black Album, Jay released a cappella versions of the album and let DJs and producers make new mash-up versions of the album. Danger Mouse’s career was birthed on the back of that release when he mixed it with beats sampling the Beatles’ White Album to create The Grey Album. That album also inspired Linkin Park and Jay to combine some of their songs together to create a six-song EP called Collision Course that wound up selling 368,000 copies first week and winning a Grammy for “Numb/Encore.”
But Jay’s greatest collaborations would come years later. In 2011, he and his mentee Ye traversed the globe to record what would become Watch the Throne. A fully immersive experience, WTT spawned a roving art exhibit, a listening at NYC’s Hayden Planetarium, and a global tour that had them performing their smash hit “N—as In Paris” multiple times at every stop and 11 times in Paris. Lush, lavish, and luxurious, Watch the Throne had was the cultural high point of the past 24 years for both Jay-Z and Ye, positioning them both as not just rap stars but pop culture titans.
Jay-Z
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A few years later, in 2014, Jay’s legend (and pop star bonafides) only grew greater when he and his now-wife Beyoncé decided to team up for what would become one of the best tours of the past 25 years, with the On the Run Tour. Boasting 21 shows across three countries, the all-stadium tour became one of the most successful in history, with $109 MM in ticket sales, according to Billboard Boxscore. It was so successful, the duo re-upped and did it again four years later. Could Jay have headlined a solo stadium tour 18 years into his career? Maybe, maybe not. But the important thing to remember is that he did embark on global stadium tours at a time in his career when most rappers from his generation wouldn’t be able book midsize venues in their home cities.
Just like the venerable 911, Jay’s game was constant improvement. He didn’t sell like 50 Cent or Nelly or Eminem at their respective peaks. The only time he was able to sell a million in a week – sort of — was when he made a deal with Samsung to pre-load his Magna Carter…Holy Grail album on their phones, giving him a platinum plaque before it even hit stores. But his stranglehold on pop culture and his influence on cultural trends was unmatched (remember when he told everyone not to drive a BMW X5 and everyone, even people who couldn’t afford one in the first place, listened?). No one, besides Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Ye back when his name was still Kanye, has been able to affect the commercial decisions of young music fans as much as Jay had.
Jay-Z
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Don’t take our word for it, though. Listen to Jay at the end of “What More Can I Say”:
The soul of a hustler, I really ran the streets/A CEO’s mind, that marketing plan was me/ And no I ain’t get shot up a whole bunch of times/ Or make up s—t in a whole bunch of lines / And I ain’t animated, like say, a Busta Rhymes/ But the real s—t you get when you bust down my lines/ Add that to the fact I went plat’ a bunch of times/ Times that by my influence on pop culture/ I supposed to be number one on everybody’s list.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back on Tuesdsay when our No. 15 artist is revealed!
Zach Bryan knows all too well he made a mistake, and he’s acknowledging it. The country star shared a lengthy explanation and apology on Thursday (Sept. 19) after tweeting two days earlier “eagles > chiefs / Kanye > Taylor,” then asking followers, “who’s with me.”
“for the record guys I wasn’t coming for Taylor the other night,” he wrote in an Instagram Story he paired with the pop superstar’s Post Malone Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 collab “Fortnight.” “I was drunkenly comparing two records and it came out wrong. I know there’s a lot of stuff that clouds around Ye and I was speaking purely musically. I love Taylor’s music and pray you guys know I’m human and tweet stupid things often. Hope one day I can explain this to her.”
The country singer — has since deactivated his X account — went on to explain that he gets in trouble on the social media platform too much, and will be staying off of it. “I’m sorry to any Taylor fans I pissed off or let down.” he added.
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In a second Story featuring “The Albatross,” the “I Remember Everything” singer explained that he’s been going through a tough time, and shared his appreciation for the 14-time Grammy winner. “To be completely honest, it just came off as rude and desensitized to Taylor. I respect her so much as a musician that the last thing I want is people thinking I don’t appreciate and love what she has done for musician,” he wrote, before offering a public service announcement. “Love you guys and hope you guys understand. Don’t drink and tweet. Don’t drink and tweet!”
But he wasn’t done there. The country star continued to express his love for Swift in a third Story. “Taylor has been a force of nature for as long as we’ve all been growing up and I admire that,” Bryan wrote in part. “I never want people to think I have a hint of malice or meanness towards anyone, ever, that’s why I’m saying all this.”
Bryan, who won the Grammy for best country/duo performance for his No. 1 Hot 100 hit “I Remember Everything,” went on to elaborate on the tough time he’s had in a fourth Story. “This year has been an awful lot on me in personal ways that no one knows and I’ve been trying to cope and balance too many things at once,” he explained. “So I’m going to take a breather from tweeting stupid stuff, finish my tour, and ground myself somehow in the midst of all this. I feel very, very blessed each day.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.
The pop superstar and Ye have a long had bad blood, dating back to the 2009 VMAs, when the rapper grabbed the mic from Swift as she was accepting the award for best female video, and made his infamous “Imma let you finish” speech. Then there was the “Famous” lyric by the controversial rapper — who in recent years has faced mounting criticism for his hate speech — calling the “Anti-Hero” singer a “b—h” that included what Swift in 2023 called the “frame job” phone call of her allegedly approving the lyric, and more.
Bryan is set to perform at the Bourbon & Beyond music festival in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday (Sept. 21). His Quittin Time tour then resumes Nov. 17 in Canada, before swinging back into the U.S. for a series of shows beginning Nov. 22 in Tacoma, Wash.
The Eagles paid loving tribute to their late friend and collaborator J.D. Souther on Wednesday (Sept. 18) in a heartfelt message posted just a day after the singer/songwriter/actor died at 78. “We have lost a brother, a friend and a brilliant collaborator, and the world has lost a great songwriter, a pioneer of the Southern California sound that emerged in the 1970s,” the veteran easy rocking band wrote. “J.D. Souther was smart, talented, well-read, and in possession of a wicked sense of humor. He loved a good meal, a good movie, and a good Martini … and he loved dogs, adopting many, over the course of his lifetime.”
The band — whose current lineup includes founding singer/drummer Don Henley, as well as guitarist Joe Walsh, bassist Timothy B. Schmit and guitarist/vocalists Deacon Frey and Vince Gill — continued with an homage to the versatile Souther’s many loves and contributions to their legendary songbook.
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“Born in Detroit and raised in the Texas Panhandle, he was a student of the deep roots of the best American music – from country, to jazz, to classical, as well as ‘Standards’ from the Great American Songbook – and that knowledge and appreciation informed his work,” they wrote. “He was a crucial co-writer on many of our most popular songs, including, ‘The Best of My Love,’ ‘New Kid in Town,’ and ‘Heartache Tonight.’ J.D. also collaborated on many of Don Henley’s solo works, including ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ ‘Little Tin God,’ ‘If Dirt Were Dollars’ and ‘Talking to the Moon.’”
According to a statement on his official website, John David “JD” Souther — also known for his collaborations with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Orbison and for his acting roles in My Girl 2 and Postcards From the Edge — died peacefully at his home in New Mexico on Tuesday. Souther’s longtime friendship with Frey resulted in his collaborations on many Eagles songs, including “James Dean” and “Doolin-Dalton,” helping to make Souther — whose voice bore an eerily similar tone to Frey’s — a staple of the 1970s California country-rock scene.
“We mourn his loss and we send our condolences to his family, his friends, and his many fans around the world,” the Eagles added. “He was an extraordinary man and will be greatly missed by many. Adios, old friend. Travel well.”
Former Eagles guitarist/vocalist Don Felder also posted a tribute, writing, “It is with heavy heart to start the day with the news of JD’s passing. The invisible Eagle has left the nest. His writing contribution and vocal contributions to the music industry has been a blessing to the whole world. He will be missed but his songs will live on forever.”
Souther was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013, but never reached the pinnacle of success with his solo work as the Eagles’ lofty heights, landing his biggest chart success with his 1979 No. 7 Billboard Hot 100 single “You’re Only Lonely.”
Donations in Souther’s honor can be made to the Best Friends Animal Society.
LISA is heading to the runway. The BLACKPINK superstar is set to take the stage and perform at the highly anticipated return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. The announcement comes amid an exciting year for LISA, as the K-pop icon stepped into a new phase of her solo career outside of BLACKPINK with “Rockstar,” which […]
The Lincoln Project has spent the better part of five years warning Americans about what they see as the danger of second Donald Trump administration. The political action committee made up of moderate conservatives and former GOP members — including George Conway, ex-husband of Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway — will release its latest broadside against twice-impeached, convicted felon Trump on Thursday morning (Sept. 18).
And in keeping with the raft of headlines over the past few weeks, it involves Taylor Swift. Specifically, the minute-long “Bad Blood” spot — which Billboard is exclusively previewing today — paints Trump’s recent rant against the pop star as being in line with what the group says is Trump’s long-running contempt for successful women.
The ad — whose landing page features the all caps subtitle: “THE MISOGYNISTIC PRESIDENTS’ DEPARTMENT” in a nod to the title of Swift’s most recent studio album — is titled “Bad Blood,” a reference to Swift’s 1989 single of the same. It opens with a shot of Swift accepting an award at last week’s 2024 MTV VMAs as a voiceover notes, “Taylor Swift isn’t the first successful woman Donald Trump has attacked… she’s just the most recent.” The screen then fills with a shot of a post from Trump’s Truth Social account from Sunday in which he said in all caps: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
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The rest of the spot is a super-cut of Trump’s most well-known put-downs of famous and prominent women over the years, including his reference to what he called comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s “fat, ugly face. The narrator continues, “Trump has a problem with women… disrespectful…insulting…even violence,” over images of Trump during his contentious 2016 presidential debate with former Senator and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, in which he referred to her as “the devil.” It also includes the time the reality TV host insulted Celebrity Apprentice contestant Brande Roderick with the crude oral sex reference, “must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”
“It’s ugly,” the female narrator says over footage of a smiling Trump telling ABC reporter Cecilia Vega, “I know you’re not thinking, you never do.”
“It’s cruel,” the narrator adds as the subject turns to a 2016 MSNBC interview in which then-candidate Trump said “there has to be some form of punishment [for women],” for having an abortion; the Supreme Court reversed the half-century-long constitutional right to abortion two years ago after Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices, a ruling he called “the biggest win for life in a generation.”
“One thing he’s proven is that he’ll never change,” the narrator says over footage of Trump signing a document on the back of a bent-over woman as well as putting his signature on the upper half of a female supporter’s dress. It also includes the infamous leaked Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged that when you’re a celebrity women allow you to “grab ’em by the p–sy,” which surfaced before election day in 2016.
“Is this how you would want a man to treat your daughter?” the narrator asks over Trump’s crude description of former Fox News anchor and 2016 debate moderator Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her whatever” after she pressed him on his past history of referring to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
“You know the answer, you know the truth,” the ad concludes as Swift fills the screen again, along with audio from a recent Fox News segment in which Trump said he was never a fan of the billionaire pop star and predicted that her endorsement of rival Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will find her “pay[ing] a price for it” in the marketplace.
“He says he hates Taylor… but the truth is he hates all of us.”
Watch the Lincoln Project’s “Bad Blood” ad below.
British singer Yola has signed with S-Curve Records and returns with her first new music in three years today (Sept. 19) with “Future Enemies.”
The song, the live video of which premieres below, is a spiky tale, delivered in Yola’s inimitably rich vocals, about a relationship that she pre-emptively calls quits on before it can turn sour. Expanding beyond her rootsy, groove-laden past songs like “I Don’t Wanna Lie,” “Diamond Studded Shoes” and “Faraway Look,” “Future Enemies” combines synth-driven electronica with R&B and dance vibes and signals a new musical direction for the six-time Grammy nominee. Yola wrote and produced the song with Sean Douglas and Zach Skelton.
“There is a moment when you realize you’re not going to get on with someone. They haven’t noticed yet, so you have a unique opportunity to disappear from their lives before they ever realize you were destined to be enemies. It’s a luxury to not have an endless supply of negative memories about someone ‘cause you never made them,” Yola says in a statement about the song. “I choose to save my time for situations, spaces and people that have no ticking timer of inevitable doom because they don’t see me or center a reality that does not serve me or my wellbeing. Of course, when you’re a woman, culturally black (as well as physically black), dark skinned (and feminine in energy), plus size (and willfully main character in energy), from a whole different continent and living in the West, let’s say you’re going to have to be both vigilant and choosy in life, in love [and] in work.”
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Yola’s new direction draws from her past as part of London’s Broken Beats scene that extended from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s and of which she was a part as a member of electronic collective Bugz in the Attic. It’s reflected in “Future Enemies” and her new EP, My Way, out Nov. 15. The EP also draws on her love of various R&B eras, including ‘70s soulful pop and ‘90s neo soul, while thematically exploring creative autonomy and even historic movements, including the Windrush Generation of immigrants who came from Caribbean countries to the U.K. after WWII through 1973.
“I’ve been purposefully hinting about this direction for years. From covering Soul II Soul for Apple Music to my covers on tour and reworkings of my songs, the broad church of soul music through the ages has always been the narrative,” she says. “I’ve covered Yarborough and Peoples’ ‘Don’t Stop the Music’ as a throwback nod to my time with Bugz In The Attic (we used to cover that song).
“This time I’m exploring my love of soul music through influences like Chaka Kahn, Janet Jackson, Sade, Prince, Minnie Riperton and various luminaries of rare groove and progressive RnB,” She continues. “Layering programming and synths with organic instrumentation is at the core of the sonic landscape, and as usual I have metabolized these elements into a concoction very much of my own.”
“For the past few years, Yola has been one of my favorite contemporary artists,” said Steve Greenberg, founder/CEO of S-Curve Records, in a statement. “So, when I learned she’d fulfilled her previous recording commitments [with Easy Eye Records], we jumped at the opportunity to sign her to S-Curve. The music she’s been recording for this new project is classic Yola, yet she expands her musical palette by incorporating funk and late 80’s R&B influences in a very natural way. It’s an exciting evolution and I think her new music will delight Yola’s long-time fans, while simultaneously bringing lots of new listeners into the fold. We’re ready to do everything we can to help Yola build this next phase of her career.”
Yola, who is currently starring in Hadestown on Broadway as Persephone through mid-October, is managed by Range Media Partners and booked by Wasserman.
For years in her 20s, Lady Gaga says she was constantly asked if she was a man. A strange question, to be sure, but one the singer, 38, says she faced with certainty and a sense of humor. In the second episode of the new Netflix series What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, the singer explained to the billionaire Microsoft co-founder that she never bothered to refute the rumors.
“When I was in my early 20s there was a rumor that I was a man,” Gaga told Gates. “I went all over the world. I traveled for tours and for promoting my records and almost every interview I sat in — there was this imagery on the internet that had been doctored — they were like, ‘There’s rumors that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?’”
The explanation tells you everything you need to know about Gaga and why she’s been such an ally to the LGBTQ+ community for her entire career, as well as a beacon for Little Monsters who don’t fit into society’s preconceived notions. “The reason why I didn’t answer the question is because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie and I thought: What about a kid who is being accused of that who would think that a public figure like me would feel shame?,” Gaga said.
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“I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumor was not in the best interest of the well being of other people. In that case, I tried to be thought provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point,” she explained.
The singer who stars as Harley Quinn in the upcoming Joker sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (Oct. 4) brushed off a question about the rumor in an 2011 interview with Anderson Cooper in 2011, telling the anchor, “Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”
To be fair, Gaga said she got used to “lies being printed about me since I was 20-years-old. I’m a performer. I think it’s kind of funny.” This, you might recall, is the chin-up style of the same artist who recently responded to an old Facebook group titled “Stafani Germanotta, you will never be famous,” created by some ex-classmates from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts who mocked her dreams of stardom a few years ago.
The 13-time Grammy winner and Oscar winner got the last laugh, of course, commenting on the hate she endured early in her career: “Some people I went to college [with] made this way back when. This is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down — gotta keep going.”
Moving right along, after the upcoming release of the anticipated second turn by Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, Gaga will be gearing up to release the first single from her untitled seventh album. She recently revealed that the album is due out in February, with the untitled first listen due out in October.
In the meantime, Gaga recently scored a third week at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Charts with her Bruno Mars collab “Die With a Smile.”
Watch Gaga on What’s Next here.
Gwen Stefani is ready to bloom! The superstar revealed on Wednesday (Sept. 18) that her fifth studio album, Bouquet, will be arriving on November 15. She also unveiled the album’s cover art and track list. The photo features Stefani in a cowboy hat and a brown plaid suit, laying across a bed while holding a […]
The pumpkins and skeletons are just starting to fill the aisles, but Jennifer Hudson is fully in Christmas mode thanks to two big announcements on Wednesday (Sept. 18). The singer and daytime talk show host is teaming up with Hallmark to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their annual “Countdown to Christmas” roll-out of holiday movies and content and the 2024 “Joy To Your World” holiday campaign by teasing the new song “Let There Be Joy.”
In a preview shared with Billboard of the raucous, gospel-tinged holiday anthem, the EGOT performer joyfully wails, “Let there be joy to your world/ Every boy and girl/ Peace on Earth, good will to men/ And may we wall shine our light, make the season bright/ Share a little love again.”
In addition, Hallmark announced that songs from Hudson’s upcoming debut holiday album, The Gift of Love (Oct. 18), will appear across upcoming Hallmark holiday programming. “No one does the holidays quite like my friends at Hallmark, so I couldn’t be more thrilled to celebrate the season together with my new song ‘Let There Be Joy,’ as we Countdown to Christmas,” Hudson said in a statement. “Music and movies have always been a favorite holiday tradition for me and my family, so I hope this song can become the same tradition for everyone on Santa’s list this year!”
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Hallmark chief brand officer Darren Abbott added, “As we mark 15 incredible years of Countdown to Christmas, we continue to focus on our mission of bringing joy and happiness to the world during the holidays. Partnering with Jennifer Hudson couldn’t be a more perfect fit. The original song ‘Let There Be Joy’ captures the heart and soul of what we aim to share each holiday season — pure, genuine joy. We’re excited to share this magical experience and continue our tradition of making the holidays brighter and more joyful than ever.”
In addition, Hudson announced a limited-engagement holiday tour, The Gift of Love: An Intimate Live Experience, which will launch on Nov. 24 in Brooklyn, followed by shows in her native Chicago (Dec. 13), Los Angeles (Dec. 18) and Las Vegas (Dec. 21-22); tickets for the gigs will go on sale on Friday (Sept. 20) at 10 a.m. local time here.
Hudson’s first holiday album will feature covers of such standards as “Jingle Bells,” “O Holy Night,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Little Drummer Boy” and “Auld Lang Syne,” along with a number of originals.
Check out Hudson’s tour announcement below.
Christina Aguilera has two kids of her own, but she’s claiming Sabrina Carpenter as her third. In a new TikTok shared by the “Genie in a Bottle” singer, the two pop stars are hanging out — or perhaps on a “mom-daughter” date. In the clip, the “Espresso” musician lip-synchs to an audio snippet seemingly from […]