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Louis Tomlinson is paying tribute to his longtime friend and former bandmate, Liam Payne, following the news of his death on Wednesday (Oct. 16).
In a heartbreaking post shared to Instagram on Thursday (Oct. 17), Tomlinson said that he is “devastated” to have “lost a brother,” alongside a photo of the two One Direction members smiling onstage, with Payne’s arm wrapped around Tomlinson’s shoulder.
“Liam was somebody I looked up to everyday, such a positive, funny, and kind soul,” the “Bigger Than Me” singer continued in his post. “I first met Liam when he was 16 and I was 18, I was instantly amazed by his voice but more importantly as time went on I got a chance to see the kind brother I’d longed all my life for.”
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He added that Payne was the “most vital part of One Direction,” due to “his experience from a young age, his perfect pitch, his stage presence, his gift for writing.”
Tomlinson then shared a message directly to Payne, hoping he’s “listening,” writing, “I feel beyond lucky to have had you in my life but I’m really struggling with the idea of saying goodbye. I’m so grateful that we got even closer since the band, speaking on the phone for hours , reminiscing about all the thousands of amazing memories we had together is a luxury I thought I’d have with you for life. I would have loved to share the stage with you again but it wasn’t to be.”
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He continued that he will be looking out for Payne’s seven-year-old son, Bear, adding, “I will be the Uncle he needs in his life and tell him stories of how amazing his dad was.”
“Payno, my boy, one of my best friends, my brother, I love you mate. Sleep well,” his statement concluded. See it here.
Tomlinson’s statement comes in addition to a joint message by the surviving members of One Direction, in which they noted that they are “completely devastated by the news of Liam’s passing.” The group statement continued, “In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say. But for now, we will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly. The memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.”
Payne died around 5:07 p.m. local time after sustaining multiple traumas and hemorrhages from his fall, a recent preliminary autopsy confirmed. Local authorities believe he was not sober at the time and found substances that appeared to be narcotics and alcoholic drinks in his room after they arrived at the scene. In the moments leading up to the star’s death, a hotel manager called 911 to report that a guest was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol” and “destroying [their] entire room”; by the time police got there, Payne had already fallen from the balcony of his room and died due to his injuries.
One Direction has spoken out about the loss of former bandmate Liam Payne, who died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday (Oct. 16).
In a joint statement shared to Instagram one day after the tragedy, surviving members Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson wrote that they are collectively “completely devastated by the news of Liam’s passing.”
“In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say,” their message continues. “But for now, we will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly. The memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.”
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“For now, our thoughts are with his family, his friends, and the fans who loved him alongside us,” the band added. “We will miss him terribly. We love you Liam.”
Payne died around 5:07 p.m. local time after sustaining multiple traumas and hemorrhages from his fall, a recent preliminary autopsy confirmed. Local authorities believe he was not sober at the time and found substances that appeared to be narcotics and alcoholic drinks in his room after they arrived at the scene. In the moments leading up to the star’s death, a hotel manager called 911 to report that a guest was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol” and “destroying [their] entire room”; by the time police got there, Payne had already fallen from the balcony of his room and died due to his injuries.
Payne, Styles, Horan, Malik and Tomlinson first met in 2010 on The X Factor, when judges Simon Cowell and Nicole Scherzinger placed them together in a boy band. One Direction continued on for six years after that, scoring four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and six Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits in addition to embarking on numerous sold-out global tours before disbanding in 2016.
Afterward, all five members pursued solo careers. Relations between them were sometimes tense following their split, but in recent years, the quintet appeared to be supporting one another more than ever. Just two weeks before he died in Argentina, Payne had attended Horan’s concert in the country.
In addition to the band’s statement, Tomlinson also shared his own personal tribute to Payne on Instagram on Thursday. “Liam was in my opinion the most vital part of One Direction,” he wrote, sharing a throwback photo with his late bandmate. “His experience from a young age, his perfect pitch, his stage presence, his gift for writing. The list goes on. Thank you for shaping us Liam.”
Rita Ora‘s latest concert featured an emotional tribute to Liam Payne, who died at age 31 on Wednesday (Oct. 16) after falling from the third floor of his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Taking the stage in Japan within hours of the tragedy, the singer/actress struggled to get through the words of “For You,” her 2018 collaboration with the former One Direction star for the Fifty Shades Freed movie. Looking visibly emotional in videos captured by fans, Ora ended up having the crowd sing the lyrics for her as she walked with her head bowed, at one point turning her back to the audience and looking up at the ceiling.
She then sat down on a riser and attempted to sing the final pre-chorus before cutting out again. “I can’t even sing this right now — can you do it for me?” she said, pointing into the crowd before covering her face with her hands.
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As a black-and-white photo of Ora and Payne in the studio flashed on the screen behind her, the Descendants: The Rise of Red star watched her fans sing the chorus for a minute more before mouthing, “I’m sorry,” and walking off the stage with her arms folded over her chest.
“For You” reached No. 76 on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to appearing on the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack, the collaboration also found homes on Payne’s debut solo album LP 1 and Ora’s Phoenix.
Shortly after news of Payne’s death came to light, Ora wrote on Instagram that “For You” takes on “a whole new meaning for me now.”
“He had the kindest soul, I will never forget,” she added, sharing photos of herself and the “Strip That Down” artist. “I loved working with him so much – he was just such a joy to be around on and off stage. This tragic news breaks my heart.”
Countless other musicians and fans have also shared messages of shock and grief on social media over the past 24 hours, with two of Payne’s other collaborators — Zedd and J Balvin — speaking out as well. The X Factor alum’s former school recently posted a statement remembering his “positive impact” on the community in which he grew up (Wolverhampton, England), while his family told the BBC, “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul. We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”
A recent preliminary autopsy confirmed that Payne died from multiple traumas and hemorrhages obtained from the impact of his fall. Police are still investigating what happened, but initially reported finding substances in the star’s room that appeared to be narcotics and alcohol.
See Ora’s tribute to Payne below.
Taylor Swift tickets are completely sold out at press time. If you go on Ticketmaster, you’ll see the same message for all remaining tour dates: “Sorry, tickets are not currently available online.”
It won’t be easy to come by tickets at a reasonable price, but there are a few options to explore. Here’s how I would look for tickets for Swift’s concerts in Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver.
How to find face value tickets to a “sold-out” concert on Ticketmaster:
Don’t get your hopes too high, but a small number of tickets typically do get released on Ticketmaster last minute, depending on availability. With The Eras Tour being such a hot ticket, quiet drops are often only accessible to those who have Verified Fan status for that city.
The night of Wednesday, Oct. 16, for example, Ticketmaster opened a queue to purchase tickets for the upcoming weekend’s Miami concerts with this message: “A few last-minute ticket releases have been made available to a number of fans who previously registered for and were screened by Verified Fan for this city.”
Why weren’t all tickets able to be purchased by fans at on-sale when they’re so ridiculously in demand? Often some seats are held by the venue, promoter or artist’s team for various business reasons, and if those aren’t put to use they eventually get put on sale for face value on Ticketmaster. For The Eras Tour, based on personal observation and fan reports on social media, it also seems that extra seats that weren’t originally on the floorplan sometimes get added after the crew sets up, if space allows. It’s a shot in the dark, but any unused or just-added seats will go to someone. Swift’s final Eras shows can all be found here on Ticketmaster.
If you’re still in search of tickets a day or two before the concert, you want to set yourself up for the best chance at snagging them in a very limited-release: You know that meme of the Sims mom distracted by the computer while the Sims baby is on fire? Imagine that level of laser focus on the event ticketing page, minus any real-life neglect and imminent danger: “Not now, honey, I’m refreshing Ticketmaster.” (Dark humor, folks!)
Best of luck, sincerely, to those of you trying to get your family of Swifties to a Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto or Vancouver concert.
A girl holds up a sign asking if anyone has a spare ticket as Taylor Swift fans arrive at Wembley Stadium ahead of her performance on Aug. 15, 2024 in London, England.
How to find resale tickets at a price you’re willing, if not thrilled, to pay:
Desperation can sink in if you really want to see Swift with your kids on The Eras Tour and have exhausted all opportunities to find direct tickets from the original point of sale. That’s where the resale market comes in: StubHub is probably the most popular place for that, but there’s also websites like SeatGeek, TickPick and Vivid Seats.
I’ve purchased tickets from StubHub and TickPick in the past and had a fine experience with both. Eras resale tickets are overpriced, most of the time obscenely so, and riddled with fees, but real. In the rare case there’s an authenticity or delivery issue with your purchase (which has never happened here, but the possibility exists), customer service policies say they’ll replace your tickets with “comparable or better tickets” (StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee), or “equal or better quality” (TickPick’s BuyerTrust Guarantee). Check the policies on the website you’re buying from before you go through with an order to make sure you’re comfortable with all outcomes.
How to find the best seats for the best deal through the resale market:
Get familiar with how ticket resale outlets work. Unless you see the obvious Deal of the Eras Tour, don’t buy immediately. Test the website’s different options for sorting available tickets. Memorize the seating chart so you know what sections you want to zone in on. If you’re a family of more than three people, consider splitting up if that helps save a few bucks or gets everyone in better seats — with one parent sitting with one kid, and the other parent sitting with the other kid, or however it works out for the makeup of your family. Keep checking the websites you’d feel comfortable buying from for new ticket listings until the price and seats feel right for your situation.
If you’re not finding exactly what you want and willing to take a risk, you might consider heading in the direction of the venue without tickets just in case a better option pops up. Confirm with the venue if you can park there without a ticket, or park somewhere that’s on the way to the stadium and search. It takes strategic thinking and high hopes. Just remember, if you’re with your kids you’ll want to be at peace with buying from whatever’s left and still spending a good amount of money. For other artists price ranges often lower dramatically across resale platforms as start time nears on the day of the show, but not always. Do not rely on this. Be aware that this has not been the trend with Swift’s Eras Tour tickets.
As disappointing as it is to witness, I’ve spent enough time on real-time ticket-buying research to see incredible seats go unsold on these websites because the total never goes down to a price point anyone’s willing to pay.
Do not buy Eras Tour tickets here, or at least proceed with caution:
Steer clear of buying tickets via an unprotected transaction with strangers via social media. Certainly there are groups made on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit that are meant to feature listings from fans intending to sell tickets they can no longer use directly to other fans, like this account with more than 300,000 followers, but the possibility of being scammed is very real. The people voluntarily running these accounts are connecting Swiftie buyers with sellers and are not responsible for someone scamming you.
If you’re going to gamble anyway, be smart about it. Be aware that tickets sold on Ticketmaster have digital delivery on the Ticketmaster app this tour. A screenshot of the order confirmation is not enough proof that legit tickets will actually show up for the concert — a screenshot can be faked. Use PayPal’s Goods and Services option for any exchange of money, not Apple Pay, Cash App, Venmo or Zelle.
One tip I’ve picked up from research in fan spaces is to ask the seller to get on a video call with you to complete the transaction while they show you the ticket order in their actual Ticketmaster account, at that very moment. Is this whole process a little sketchy? Yep. Is it foolproof? Nope. Could you end up with great seats at a nice price from a kind Swiftie? Of course, but remember, you might never be able to recover the money lost to a con artist.
Liam Payne’s tragic death at the age of 31 on Wednesday (Oct. 16) has provided the pop world a sorrowful opportunity to reflect on his legacy as a member of One Direction and as a solo artist. Payne helped 1D conquer the world as an integral part of the five-piece pop group, then moved on recording on his own with his debut single, “Strip That Down” featuring Quavo, which became a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017.
Less clear, however, is the status of Payne’s unreleased solo material — and whether a follow-up to his debut album, 2019’s LP1, was completed upon his passing.
Following One Direction’s final studio album, 2015’s Made In The A.M., Payne signed a solo deal with Republic Records in 2016, and “Strip That Down” streaked to a No. 10 peak on the Hot 100 upon its May 2017 release. Payne’s debut solo album, LP1, arrived through Republic in December 2019 and featured a wide array of collaborators, including Zedd, J Balvin, A Boogie wit da Hoodie and Rita Ora.
This March, Payne released “Teardrops,” a snappy rhythmic pop track with a booming chorus that allowed the singer to showcase his falsetto. “Teardrops” — which was co-written with Jamie Scott and *NSYNC star JC Chasez — marked Payne’s first single since 2021’s “Sunshine,” which he contributed to the soundtrack for the animated film Ron’s Gone Wrong.
“‘Teardrops’ is about the vulnerability of heartbreak and the challenge of overcoming those moments,” Payne said in a press statement upon the new single’s release. He added that the track was “the start of a new beginning,” with more music planned for 2024.
Prior to the release of “Teardrops,” Payne had spent extended time in the studio with Scott, the British songwriter-producer who had contributed to One Direction smashes like “Story of My Life,” “Night Changes” and “Drag Me Down,” and co-written hits like “Cold Water” by Major Lazer and “This Town” by Payne’s 1D band mate Niall Horan. In a press release, Payne had described working with longtime collaborator Scott on new music as a “year-long process of self-reflection.”
“Teardrops” has earned 3 million official U.S. streams to date, according to Luminate, but did not chart on the Hot 100. Outside of an acoustic version of “Teardrops” released later in March, no other material from Payne had been released in 2024, and an official follow-up to LP1 had yet to be announced.
Reps for Republic Records did not respond to requests for comment about the status of Payne’s unreleased music, although the label did release a statement on Thursday morning (Oct. 17) honoring the singer: “We are deeply saddened and devastated by the tragic passing of Liam Payne, an extraordinary artist whose music touched millions. His legacy will live on through the timeless work he created, and he will forever be remembered as an icon of his generation. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and fans during this difficult time.”
Meanwhile, fans have flooded the comments of Payne’s official YouTube videos with remembrances and appreciations. “Liam Payne, You have put smiles across billions of fans,” reads the highest-rated comment on the clip for the “Teardrops” acoustic version. “I hope you rest in peace.”
Anyone who has been involved, even tangentially, in pop duo Tegan and Sara‘s fanbase over the course of the last two decades can attest to just how tight-knit the Canadian performers are with their followers. Seen as a community of like-minded (and largely queer) individuals keen on making safe, inclusive spaces for one another, the Tegan and Sara fan community is commonly lauded as a good example of what pop fandom can look like.
Seated at a desk in her hotel room, Tegan Quin describes to Billboard a very different feeling she’s developed about her fans. “If we’re being truthful and honest, then I have to say that I’m afraid of our audience,” she offers, grimacing as she says it.
It may sound like an odd statement coming from Tegan — that is, until you’ve watched the new documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (debuting Friday, Oct. 18 on Hulu). Over the course of an hour and a half, Tegan, Sara and documentarian Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs. Spears, Mommy Dead and Dearest) walk audiences through an elaborate scheme that began around 2008, in which an anonymous individual posed as Tegan online and proceeded to exploit, manipulate and harass both the duo and their fans for over a decade.
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Throughout the course of the film, the Quin sisters and Carr detail how Fake Tegan (often referred to in the doc as “Fegan”) hacked the singer’s personal files in 2011, giving them access to everything from unreleased demo recordings to photos of her real passport — much of which they used to convince fans and friends alike that they were the real Tegan. As they try to uncover the culprit, Tegan and Carr simultaneously interview a number of the fans who found themselves on the receiving end of Fegan’s scheme, examining how these scams work, and the emotional toll they take on their victims.
It’s a story that Tegan originally never intended to tell the public — the doc details the band’s efforts to protect themselves and their fans by not giving more voice to the online imposter. But after listening to the hit podcast Sweet Bobby, which details a similar true story of a woman caught in an intricate web of internet deception, she felt the urge to finally speak about her own experience.
“I ended up telling the Fake Tegan story to a friend, and he said, ‘You should write that down,’” Tegan tells Billboard. After writing out everything she could remember from her experience with her catfisher, Tegan approached podcaster and Rolling Stone contributing editor Jenny Eliscu to ask for advice on what to do with it. Eliscu introduced Tegan to Carr, who urged her to tell the story on camera.
“Obviously, I wrote the story, so I was ready to tell the story. Was I ready to hand it off to somebody? Was I ready to have a full film made about this? No,” Tegan says, still squirming in her seat. “I was projecting fear — fear that we’d alienate our audience, fear we would agitate Fake Tegan, fear that people would be like, ‘Who cares?’”
Even before Fake Tegan began terrorizing their community, Sara describes how she and her sister had begun to grow slightly wary about the reality of fame. Where the early days of their career saw the duo regularly interacting with their fans after shows, continued success and more frenzied interactions with fans forced the pair to reconsider their approach.
“It was such a part of indie and punk culture to bro down with the people in the audience, to go sell merch and have a beer with your fans after the show,” Sara says. “To then say at some point that you don’t want to stand outside in the dark with strangers after we’ve played a show and done press all day … those were such small changes we made, but they had such a big cultural punch within our community.”
Enter Fegan; after successfully hacking an iDisk for the pair’s management, the catfish began posing on early message boards and social media sites like Facebook and LiveJournal as Tegan, creating connections, friendships and occasionally even romantic relationships with fans. They would send through unreleased recordings and unposted, personal photos of both Tegan and Sara, using them as supposed proof that they were who they said they were to the fans they were scamming.
In detailing multiple fans’ conversations with Fegan, Fanatical does not aim to criticize or mock people who fell for this scheme — it often does the opposite, taking great lengths to show that, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could be entrapped by a scammer.
Tegan even explains that earlier cuts of the documentary featured an FBI investigator hired by Carr to talk the band and their team through just how complex Fegan’s operation was — and how they created multiple accounts using a variety of different IP addresses to fool everyone. “Witnessing that forensic investigation removed any part of me still thinking, ‘Why would people fall for this?’ This took time and money and sophistication, and yet we so often just go, ‘Well, that person clicked on a link, what an idiot,’” she says. “You can’t watch this film and think that our fans fell for an easy-to-figure-out ruse — Erin was so clear that she wanted people to watch this film and actually feel compassion and empathy for these fans.”
As the documentary goes on, Carr and the Quin sisters begin to examine how fan behavior can turn toxic. The film shows how, as time went on and the band’s fan base grew, online interactions with fans began to grow scarier, where addresses and phone numbers for the band’s family members and significant others would getting posted on message boards, leading to the kind of harassment that’s become all too common for celebrities in the modern day.
“This happens to almost every celebrity [who reaches that level of fame] — actors, politicians, athletes. musicians, you name it,” Sara tells Billboard. “And I think we, as a culture, have to look at the way that we treat people in positions of power and celebrities.”
It’s a refrain with renewed significance in 2024, as artists like Chappell Roan begin to confront the harsh reality of what bad behavior from fans looks like. But Sara points out that this kind of behavior was perpetuated long before Roan asked her fans to leave her alone, and yet we only find ourselves at the beginning of this conversation today.
“What’s the real problem that causes this? Why is it a story right now, and why wasn’t it a story when other people asked to be left alone?” she posits. “This is a product of the culture we’ve created. If we don’t like the behavior — and it seems that most of us don’t like it — then what does that say about the culture we’ve built around art?”
That culture, Tegan notes, was largely built by one specific group of people. “The billionaires that own the record labels and the streamers and the people working for them are guilty,” she says. “They are driving artists to build obsessive, parasocial, frantic fanbases on social media platforms where we basically have to pay to access our mailing lists. So many artists are walking around, millions of dollars in debt so that our fans can listen to music for free on streaming services but spend $5k to go see a show, which only builds even more frantic competitiveness among the fans. Every part of our industry is broken, so I understand why people in the industry say ‘I don’t know how to fix bad fan behavior,’ and then run away.”
In one particularly wrenching scene of the doc, Tegan participates in a tense phone call with a fan (referred to anonymously in the film as “Tara”) who fell victim to Fegan’s scam. In earlier scenes, it’s revealed that this fan also actively fought with and bullied other fans, and even wrote and published a fan-fiction story about Tegan and Sara involving incest.
When Tegan called out this behavior and asked Tara to explain why they would do that, she’s immediately met with a stunning response: “You weren’t affected in that capacity,” Tara said, claiming her actions had no impact on the pop singer’s life. “It barely skimmed the surface.”
As shocking as the scene is, Tegan says that it’s a refrain she heard from multiple victims of Fake Tegan. “[There were] multiple victims who didn’t think that I would care about what was happening to me. That I was rich and famous and didn’t give a s–t,” she explains. “I was like, ‘Oh no! We’re f–ked if we think that just because someone is in a band, they are somehow impervious to judgement and vulnerability and sadness!’”
It’s why, as Sara points out, so many artists feel fear when it comes to their fans. “We seem like we have all the power, and in a lot of cases we do — we have security, and barricades in place [at concerts]. But that security and those barricades are there because we are vulnerable to the mass of people who are coming to see us perform,” she explains. “We don’t say to our audience, ‘Hello, Cleveland! We’re super afraid of all of you, because there are 5,000 of you, and if you decided to, you could overrun Bill, John and Mark here up at the barricade and tear us limb from limb!’ The power structure is weird.”
At the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, both Tegan and Sara say they found themselves surprised when the audience began laughing during a section of the film that showed social media messages from other fandoms threatening to dox their favorite artists’ critics. While Tegan says they likely laughed because “this is the first time in the film that it’s not about us, and they’re trying to get that nervous energy out,” she couldn’t help but feel a little concerned.
“They were also laughing because that’s just what we do now — we laugh at each other. We watch videos of each other failing and doing stupid s–t and saying dumb s–t, and we take glee and pleasure from that,” she says, sighing. “It’s why I hope people just experience some compassion watching this movie.”
Gracie Abrams’ Emily in Paris synch earns the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart, powered by Tunefind (a Songtradr company), for September 2024.
Rankings for the Top TV Songs chart are based on song and show data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of September 2024.
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“Close to You” appears in the fourth-season finale of Emily in Paris, the Lily Collins-starring Netflix series. The full season premiered Sept. 12.
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The song earned 21.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams and sold 3,000 downloads in September, according to Luminate. It peaked at No. 49 on the June 22-dated Billboard Hot 100 and ranks at No. 90 on the most recently published, Oct. 19-dated chart.
Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain,” which appears in the debut season of fellow Netflix series Nobody Wants This, places at No. 2 on Top TV Songs. It racked up 16.4 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.
The track, from her album Anti, is heard in the third episode of the series, which stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The single hit No. 5 on the Hot 100 in 2017.
The song is one of three from Nobody Wants This on the 10-position Top TV Songs chart, joined by Frank Sinatra’s “Theme From New York, New York” (No. 8; 3.4 million streams, 1,000 sold) and HAIM’s “Now I’m In It” (No. 10; 515,000 streams).
Netflix continues its domination of Top TV Songs’ top three with Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” at No. 3 after playing in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The song, a No. 2 Hot 100 hit in 1987, drew 8.1 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.
The classic also reaches Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated Oct. 19 (with older songs eligible to make Billboard’s multimetric song charts if ranking in the top half and with meaningful reasons for their resurgences). It enters at No. 16 and finds its way onto Rock Digital Song Sales at No. 14 and Alternative Streaming Songs at No. 23.
Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain,” also featured in Monsters, likewise hits Top TV Songs, at No. 6 (3.4 million streams, 2,000 sold). Catalog gains for the duo — multiple songs by the pair are featured in Monsters — drives its 4 EP onto the Billboard 200 at No. 197 with 8,000 equivalent album units. It marks Milli Vanilli’s first appearance on the chart in nearly 34 years, since the chart dated Oct. 27, 1990.
See the full Top TV Songs top 10, also featuring music from The Penguin, Tell Me Lies and Agatha All Along, below.
Rank, Song, Artist, Show (Network)1. “Close to You,” Gracie Abrams, Emily in Paris (Netflix)2. “Love on the Brain,” Rihanna, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)3. “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” Crowded House, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)4. “9 to 5,” Dolly Parton, The Penguin (HBO)5. “Ms. Jackson,” OutKast, Tell Me Lies (Hulu)6. “Blame It on the Rain,” Milli Vanilli, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)7. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Agatha All Along (Disney+)8. “Theme From New York, New York,” Frank Sinatra, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)9. “The Promise,” When in Rome, The Penguin (HBO)10. “Now I’m In It,” HAIM, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
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. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here, and now we remember the century in Ariana Grande — whose standard-defying approach to pop music saw her withstand expectations and stigma to become one of the most prolific examples of what pop sovereignty can look like in the streaming era.
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It’s easy to view Ariana Grande’s rise to the highest echelons of pop stardom as a classic, uncomplicated success story within the music business. The child-actor-turned-pop-sensation route is well-trodden, after all, and at first glance, the 31-year-old singer-songwriter appears to be yet another benefactor of that industry pipeline.
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Yet once you dig further into her career, it becomes clear that her success was far from guaranteed. Over the course of the last decade-and-change, Grande created lasting hits amidst a mercurial musical landscape, endured unimaginable hardships and deftly navigated an industry that seemed to grow more volatile by the minute. Her standing today as a veritable icon is less a reflection of the efficacy of established systems that promoted her rise, and more a testament to her enduring, generational talent.
The star’s achievement came in part thanks to her drive for greatness from an early age. Born and raised in Boca Raton, Fla., Grande began her work towards a music career earlier than most — at age eight, she was already publicly performing on cruise ships, sporting events and her own personal YouTube channel, catching the attention of her family, her peers and even icons like Gloria Estefan. By the time she turned 13, the aspiring star had already booked her first professional gig as the bubbly, popular cheerleader Charlotte in the 2008 Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s musical 13.
Ariana Grande
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Her foothold in the entertainment industry firmly established, Grande soon landed her breakthrough role as the loveable ditz Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. With a sing-song voice proclaiming increasingly zany one-liners over the course of the show’s run, the character quickly rose among the ranks of the children’s network’s beloved characters — thanks, especially, to the impressive vocal chops Grande got to occasionally flaunt throughout the three season run. Valentine became so popular among the network’s fans that she earned her own spinoff series with iCarly’s Sam Puckett (Jennette McCurdy) on 2013’s Sam & Cat.
The standout support for her character provided a natural on-ramp to Grande’s own musical aspirations — who better than the perky-best-friend-type to deliver a string of uncomplicated pop songs? For her 2011 debut single “Put Your Hearts Up,” Grande and her team at Republic Records aimed to capitalize on that progression with a bubblegum anthem in the style of the day’s superstars like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. But “Hearts” came and went, missing the Billboard charts and falling to bigger, bolder turbo-pop anthems of the era. Grande herself would later acknowledge that “Hearts Up” made more sense coming from her character than it did from her, making the entire experience feel “inauthentic and fake.”
So when it came time for her to reintroduce herself, Grande stepped away from the saccharine schtick of her Nickelodeon persona and leaned into her love of R&B. 2013’s “The Way,” featuring rising alt-hip-hop star Mac Miller, provided Grande with a streamlined, ebullient palette cleanser, placing the singer’s stratospheric four-octave range front and center. Vague, kid-friendly proclamations about giving a little love to change the world were exchanged for lyrics depicting a more mature, albeit still unspecific, approach to romance. Employing curated ‘90s sounds — including a lift of the central piano riff from Big Pun’s 1998 hit “Still Not a Player” — Grande happily aged herself up, gleefully drawing early comparisons between her airy, whistle-toned voice and The Voice, Mariah Carey. This, she told her eager fans, was the Ariana Grande she wanted to be.
Her audience certainly took that message to heart, earning the star her first of many top 10 debuts on the Hot 100. With “The Way,” Grande was ushered forth as a soon-to-be-star. Her subsequent debut album Yours Truly confirmed that “The Way” was the rule, not the exception — for every track on the record that didn’t quite work (like the doop-wop-meets-EDM strangeness of “Daydreamin’”), there was another that shined (the surefire R&B-pop killer “Piano” still stands out to this day), signaling the singer-songwriter’s vast potential in the pop space. With a No. 1 debut on Billboard 200, Yours Truly heralded the advent of Grande’s oncoming dominance.
Where 2013 saw Ariana arrive, the summer of 2014 saw her quickly start to take over. Her face adorned the covers of Billboard, Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue, wherein she earnestly began to separate herself from her child star roots — never quite falling into the stereotypical “good girl gone bad” persona, but instead offering new context to buffer between the public’s introduction to her through Cat Valentine and the pop star she aimed to be. As her pop persona developed, so did her image; gone were the flame-red locks that defined her Nickelodeon career, replaced now by her natural brunette hair tied up in a stratospheric ponytail.
All the while, her music became utterly inescapable: “Problem,” her funk-fueled dance-pop diatribe featuring rapper-of-the-moment Iggy Azalea, dominated the airwaves in the early summer (bolstered in part by a whisper hook from her then-beau Big Sean); “Break Free,” her Zedd-produced EDM-pop anthem, gained steam shortly thereafter; and “Bang Bang,” her girlboss team-up with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj, exploded into the zeitgeist.
As each of her three singles peaked within the Hot 100’s top three slots at the end of August, Grande became the second woman in the history of the chart (alongside Adele) to maintain three tracks simultaneously in the top 10 as a lead artist. By the time Grande’s powerhouse sophomore LP My Everything arrived — along with its fourth-straight top-10 hit “Love Me Harder” featuring a then-lesser-known alt-R&B act called The Weeknd — the singer had already been ordained as the Next Big Thing in pop music, just one year after her debut album dropped.
With that attention came a predictable wave of controversy. Fans accused Grande of acting like a “diva” to her fans, with some drawing comparisons to her pop idol Mariah Carey. Rumors swirled of a feud with her Sam & Cat co-star Jennette McCurdy. A September 2014 headline in The Washington Post warned that the pop star was “on the brink of a major image problem,” stating that, as undeniable as Grande’s talent was, she was still a “very, very new name” in an industry with “a strange fascination with seeing the ‘fall’ of a newcomer as much as the ‘rise.’”
Ariana Grande
Courtesy Photo
But nothing could have prepared us for one of the most deeply bizarre celebrity scandals of the 2010s — Donutgate. A leaked security video caught Grande licking a donut on display at a bakery in Lake Elsinore, Ca., while proclaiming that she “hates America” and kissing her backup dancer Ricky Alvarez. The public reaction came swiftly, with fans, pundits and industry professionals alike asking, what the hell is a rising star doing tonguing a donut she didn’t buy? A drop from Wikileaks would later reveal that even the Obama White House kept their distance, rejecting a proposal for Ariana to perform. The star made multiple apologies for the incident, assuring the public that her actions were those of a dumb kid, promising that “I’m going to learn from my mistakes.”
Still, it wasn’t until 2016’s flirtatious and sonically fluctuating Dangerous Woman that Grande faced diminishing returns. Its intended lead single “Focus” earned too little attention on the charts, and too much attention as a reskin of 2014’s “Problem,” that the label decided to cut it wholecloth from the album. The set became her first not to clinch the top spot on the Billboard 200, failing to dethrone Drake’s Views for its reign atop the chart. Critics, meanwhile, were divided over the album’s sound. Some praised the singer for taking a bolder, more daring approach to her established pop-n-b aesthetic, singling out the bombastic retro-soul title track “Dangerous Woman” and provocative reggae-pop Nicki Minaj duet “Side to Side.” Others heard the sound of a would-be superstar still struggling to figure out her sound three albums later.
A slight career dip certainly didn’t deter Grande from cementing her position as the pop star of the day. In March 2016, she served double duty as host and musical guest on SNL, poking fun at Donutgate; a few months later, she dazzled audiences with her spot-on impersonations of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears on The Tonight Show; in September, she showcased her blissful romance with now-boyfriend Miller on his “My Favorite Part;” she even closed out the year on NBC’s telecast of Hairspray Live, playing the role of Penny Singleton alongside stage and screen stars like Jennifer Hudson, Harvey Fierstein and Martin Short. As she embarked on her second arena tour in 2017 — which would go on to gross $71 million, according to Billboard Boxscore — Grande appeared to be an unstoppable force.
Tragedy, as it turned out, is an immovable object. On May 22, 2017, minutes after Grande’s live performance concluded at the UK’s Manchester Arena, a terrorist detonated a suicide bomb in the arena’s foyer. 22 people were killed in the attack — twelve of whom were under the age of 16 — marking the deadliest act of terrorism on British soil since the 7/7 bombings of 2005. A public inquiry revealed in 2022 that more than 800 people were injured as a result of the attack. Grande escaped the attack physically unharmed, but emotionally “broken,” as she wrote in a tweet the day following the attack.
In the years to come, Grande would describe her experience with post-traumatic stress disorder following the attack, and the immense anxiety she suffered as a result. “I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well … I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience,” she told British Vogue. “I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
After successfully hosting her One Love Manchester benefit show — featuring artists including Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus to help raise over $13 million for the attack’s victims — Grande finished out the remainder of her postponed tour and retreated from the public eye. Where her Twitter and Instagram accounts were once littered with personal messages recounting her day-to-day experiences with fame, now there was a deafening silence.
Perhaps that’s why so many view “No Tears Left To Cry” as the turning point in Grande’s already impressive career. Over the course of three and a half minutes, the singer reset the narrative, acknowledging the abject horror she and her fans had been through while defiantly promising to move forward with light and optimism. House and disco stylings delivered the burst of joy she so earnestly sought on the track, bringing Grande’s vision for herself and her fans firmly into the forefront of the cultural consciousness. Yet what made “Tears” so remarkable was Ariana’s deft handling of tone: The song never comes across as a purely enthusiastic rallying cry, nor does it fit the mold of mournful reflections on loss — instead, Grande pulled off its own galvanizing message of picking it up and moving on.
Ariana Grande
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Ariana Grande
With the album that followed, 2018’s Sweetener, Grande found something deeper than any of her past works. Albums like My Everything and Dangerous Woman took a kitchen-sink approach to finding what sounds produced hits, with Grande trying on new pop diva personas to best fit each package. Sweetener, by contrast, provided no artifice: It was just Ariana, the confessional, sometimes goofy, always-earnest singer-songwriter embracing the most vulnerable parts of herself. Though the album never quite achieved the level of chart domination exhibited during My Everything’s undeniable 2014 run, it exhibited an evolution, both artistic and personal, that once eluded Grande.
The album’s commercial success was certainly helped by the fact that Ariana had become the hottest topic in the months leading up to and following its release, thanks in no small part to her whirlwind romance with SNL star Pete Davidson. Tabloids, paparazzi, social media and the public at large were obsessed with the odd couple. When they were in public together, photos appeared online in seconds; when Ariana shared a one-minute interlude on Sweetener named after the comedian, articles appeared dissecting its romantic lyrics; and when the pop superstar bragged about her sudden fiancé’s “BDE,” fans turned it into a meme.
But a question arose from Sweetener’s shift — could Ariana Grande, Serious Artist coexist with Ariana Grande, Cultural Phenomenon? Within four months of the album’s release, a resounding answer crash-landed in the form of an out-of-nowhere, cycle-breaking single that smashed through Ariana’s own release pattern and her audience’s presuppositions. “Thank U, Next,” Grande’s cheeky response to the media storm around her breakup with Davidson and the death of her ex-boyfriend and collaborator Mac Miller, deftly toed the line between her blockbuster era and her newfound emotional honesty. Memes, think pieces, reviews and shot-by-shot analyses of its Mean Girls-inspired video poured out in the weeks to come, only further bolstered by the song’s No. 1 debut on the Hot 100 — somehow the first of the pop star’s career.
From that point forward, Grande became the invincible pop juggernaut that had been promised since her debut. The track’s follow-up — the Sound of Music-interpolating hip-hop jam “7 Rings” — immediately earned Grande her second No. 1; the release of her lauded fifth studio album Thank U, Next saw Ariana beat Cardi B’s record for the most simultaneous top 40 hits by a female artist. She even became the first solo artist in the history of the Hot 100 to simultaneously occupy the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 spots, and then the only act in 55 years to do so since The Beatles. Perhaps the most telling records that Grande managed to smash in 2019 came from Spotify: Upon its release, Thank U, Next shattered streaming giant Ed Sheeran’s record for the most weekly streams of any pop album, while within a year, Grande became the most streamed female artist on Spotify, surpassing pop superhero Rihanna.
Ariana Grande
Nicholas Hunt/FilmMagic
Where Adele had revitalized the art of album sales in 2010, Grande became proof of concept at how the streaming era could generate gargantuan pop idols in the modern music business. Curating the social media experience for her army of Arianators over the course of her career paid dividends in Grande’s modern eras, as her loyal fan base rallied to support their fave at all costs, even as they occasionally crossed the line with comments about her image and personal life. She learned from the prolificacy of her hip-hop contemporaries like Drake that more was more when it came to content creation. Putting those two skills together, Grande became the artist to beat in the streaming game.
A global pandemic couldn’t even seem to stop Grande’s cultural takeover. A pair of early-lockdown collaborations — the retro-pop Justin Bieber duet “Stuck With U” and the French house Lady Gaga banger “Rain on Me” — earned Grande another pair of Hot 100-toppers. A year later, her sultry turn on renewed superstar The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” turned the slow-burning hit into an immediate chart-topper, sending the song to No. 1 on the Hot 100 within two weeks of its release. Even when her sixth LP Positions fell short of critics’ newly lofty expectations, she still took both the album and its title track to the summit of the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, respectively.
Today, even if her commercial power has waned from its 2019-2020 zenith, Grande has found a level of consistency amongst her cultural ubiquity. Eternal Sunshine, the singer’s sparkling meta-narrative on the pitfalls of public image, spawned yet another pair of No. 1 hits for the singer-songwriter, as well as earning a debut atop the Billboard 200. And as she gears up for her lifelong dream of playing Glinda in the long-awaited film adaptation of Wicked, it seems that Grande has come full circle, all the way back around to her theater roots.
Trace that ring from start to finish, and you’ll witness something fascinating; a young woman who managed not only to transform her pain into prosperity, but created a mold-breaking model for success. The career framework Grande built has only benefitted recent pop ingénues like Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae, who’ve capitalized on her streaming-focused strategies and sweetly melodic (and slyly winking) pop&B sound to rocket-launch their own music. Ariana Grande consciously changed how pop music is perceived and enjoyed by the masses, in a way a new generation of fans and artists will forever be so f–king grateful for.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back Thursday as we reveal our No. 9 artist!
THE LIST SO FAR:
Honorable Mentions
25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele
Liam Payne‘s preliminary autopsy report has been shared by the prosecutor’s office in Argentina, revealing the 31-year-old singer died from internal and external traumas upon falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires Wednesday (Oct. 16). According to the Spanish-language press release from the country’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office that […]
Mitzi Gaynor, a beloved star of the 1950s whose effervescent personality, radiant personality and triple-threat skills as an actress, singer and dancer earned her a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Ensign Nellie Forbush in the 1958 film adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific had died at 93.
The star’s managers announced her death in an Instagram post, noting that she “passed away peacefully” on Thursday morning (Oct. 17) of natural causes. “For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage,” read the announcement. “She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer.”
Gaynor, born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on Sept. 4, 1931, was best known for her run of starring roles in a series of 1950s movie musicals, including 1954’s There’s No Business Like Show Business, 1956’s Anything Goes and 1957’s Les Girls. Born to a violinist father and dancer mother, Gaynor got an early start on her career when her family moved from Detroit to Los Angeles when she was 11-years-old, leading to her landing a spot as a singer/dancer in the Los Angeles Civil Light Opera two years later.
By 17, she signed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, making her film debut in 1950’s My Blue Heaven, where she starred alongside Betty Grable. By the next year she landed her first starring role in the musical western Golden Girl, where she played a character based on early 20th century actress Lotta Crabtree.
Her first big screen success came in 1952 with the musical Bloodhounds of Broadway — based on a Damon Runyon story — which kicked off nearly a decade of starring roles that showcased her versatility and winning, shining personality, which manifested in film with a mix of innocence and sex appeal. She shared the screen with such established stars of the day as Ethel Merman, Johnnie Ray and Marilyn Monroe and sang songs penned by Irving Berlin in There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor in the 1956 adaptation of Cole Porter’s stage musical Anything Goes. Other highlights included 1957’s The Joker Is Wild, with Frank Sinatra and Charles Vidor, and that year’s Les Girls, which also featured music by Porter and co-starred Gene Kelly.
Her winning streak continued with top billing in the WWII romantic musical South Pacific, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for best motion picture actress – comedy/musical for her exuberant performances of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” and “Some Enchanted Evening.” She appeared in a handful of other movies over the next few years, including 1963’s For Love or Money with Kirk Douglas, Gig Young and Julie Newmar, before pivoting to a successful run as the hots of a series of TV specials.
“I quit films because they quit me,” she told the TV Academy Foundation in a 2012 in explaining why she moved from the big screen to the little one. “Marilyn Monroe was now the new Alice Faye/Betty Grable, she was doing the musicals at Fox. I wasn’t going to do My Fair Lady, and I wasn’t going to [sing] ‘The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Screaming’ — there was nothing for me to do.”
She famously performed between the two sets by the Beatles on a Feb. 16, 1964 episode of the Ed Sullivan Show, singing a 13-minute medley of “Too Darn Hot” along with “The More I See You,” “Birth of the Blues” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The episode from the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach aired a week after Sullivan legendarily introduced the Fab Four to American audiences in one of the most-watched TV moments of all time.
Before he teamed up with Cher, Gaynor was glittery celebrity gown designer Bob Makie’s first A-list client, modeling his one-of-a-kind creations during her stint as a headliner in Las Vegas in the 1960s.
That run paved the way for Gaynor’s first TV special, Mitzi, which aired on NBC in Oct. 1968 and was followed by a second one on the network the next year, as well as half a dozen similar song-and-dance specials on CBS from 1973-1978; her nine specials were nominated for a total of 16 Emmy Awards, though she didn’t take one home until 2008 thanks to her PBS special Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle! The Special Years.
A frequent performer on the Academy Awards broadcasts — wowing the crowd in 1954 with her take on “The Moon Is Blue” and again in 1959 with her signature “There’s No Business Like Show Business” — Gaynor also recorded two albums for Verve Records, 1959’s Mitzi and Mitzi Gaynor Sings the Lyrics of Ira Gerswhin.
“We take great comfort in the fact that her creative legacy will endure through her many magical performances capture on film and video, through her recordings and especially through the love and support audiences around the world have shared so generously with her throughout her life and career,” wrote managers Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda in their tribute.
See the statement announcing Gaynor’s death and some of her career highlights below.