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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 and No. 19 stars, and now we remember the century in The Weeknd — who emerged in the shadows as an early-’10s mixtape sensation, before making a more successful pivot to pop stardom than anyone could have guessed.
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About a dozen years ago, nobody would’ve believed the hedonistic, alt-R&B, then-cult figure known as The Weeknd would become one of the 21st century’s most decorated and durable pop artists, dominating both the Billboard charts the and world’s biggest stadiums. Global superstardom might not have seemed immediately on the horizon upon his 2011 mixtape arrival, but his ability to carve his own path in R&B before successfully switching lanes to pop has made his journey one of the most fascinating ones to follow this century.
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Born Abel Tesfaye to Ethiopian immigrant parents in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, The Weeknd dropped out of high school at 17 with his best friend and now creative director La Mar Taylor and moved out of his family’s home one weekend (wink wink). Homelessness, substance abuse and run-ins with the law forced him to get his act together, so he translated the ill-advised lifestyle of his youth to his music.
In 2010, The Weeknd anonymously uploaded three moody, atmospheric R&B tracks – “What You Need,” “Loft Music” and “The Morning” – onto his YouTube. Fellow Torontonian (and then rap’s brightest budding star) Drake noticed the songs and featured them on his OVO Blog – a key co-sign that projected The Weeknd’s name (and still not his face) in the media before he dropped his debut mixtape House of Balloons for free on his website in March 2011. The songs stretched for five, six, even seven minutes, with The Weeknd’s wailing falsetto and supple tenor from the Michael Jackson vocal academy reliving his pill-popping and bed-hopping escapades and other foggy morning-after memories, through the perspective of someone who’s perpetually attempting to replace his pain with pleasure in a numbing rinse-and-repeat cycle.
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Meanwhile, his sampling of indie and post-punk rock bands like Siouxsie & the Banshees, Cocteau Twins and Beach House, along with other hip-hop and electronic influences, forever shifted the R&B landscape — and helped usher the genre’s alternative shift, alongside other enigmatic artists like Frank Ocean. And when it was finally time to reveal himself at his now-iconic debut concert at Toronto’s 600-capacity Mod Club in July 2011, it was the must-see show of the city: The promotional flyer indicated there was “no guestlist,” but that didn’t stop major U.S. label executives from catching last-minute flights up north to see what the hell The Weeknd was even about and if he lived up to the internet hype. (A former MuchMusic employee tells me she remembers one even offering her $1300 CAD for her ticket that she bought for $20.)
Later that same year, he released two more mixtapes –Thursday and Echoes of Silence – that invited us to venture deeper into The Weeknd’s world of debauchery and self-destruction. With his cult-classic trilogy, The Weeknd firmly established himself as lord of the R&B underworld. In the four-month period between the latter two tapes, he was also all over Drake’s emo magnum opus Take Care, co-writing five songs and being featured on the chant-along banger “Crew Love.” The kinship between the two Canadian phenoms generated a lot of speculation that Drake would sign The Weeknd to OVO, but he continued carving out his own lane, and founded his XO label (fans have debated on Reddit threads whether it stands for “hugs and kisses” or “ecstasy and oxycontin”), signing to Republic Records the following year. Given The Weeknd’s “I thank God that I never signed my life away” line from Future and Metro Boomin’s “All to Myself” during 2024’s Great Rap Beef™, it’s safe to say he believes he made the right decision there.
The Weeknd
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
The Weeknd
Chelsea Lauren/WireImage
Tesfaye had steadily built up momentum for his major label debut studio album Kiss Land in 2013, but takeoff there was a bit turbulent. It sounded like he had exhausted his nihilistic, narcotic-fueled aesthetic – and having already consumed what felt like three albums in under one calendar year, we were kind of exhausted, too. Maybe why Kiss Land fell a bit flat was because the air of mystery behind The Weeknd was also fading, especially with his face and Jean-Michel Basquiat-esque dreads front and center on the album cover. Even though Kiss Land entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2, it wasn’t the optimal introduction for an artist who had been cranked out of the internet hype machine – and it received mixed reviews, while failing to produce a hit single.
But the false start didn’t stop Tesfaye from building a bigger breakout moment. Ariana Grande, the Nickelodeon-bred pop princess who signed to Republic the year before The Weeknd, recruited him for her My Everything single “Love Me Harder.” The lip-biting ruminations about rough sex gave Grande more edge, while the song’s throbbing synthwave-R&B production – courtesy of 21st century-defining producer Max Martin (who would go on to play a crucial role in Tesfaye’s career) – softened The Weeknd’s. It’s the first song to affirm his mainstream ambitions, as Tesfaye earned his first Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit. Grande would go on to become one of his most reliable hit collaborators a decade later, hopping on the remixes of “Save Your Tears” from his 2020 album After Hours, which they performed together at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards, and “Die For You” – which experienced a TikTok resurgence six-plus years after it first appeared on his Starboy album – both of whichwould then shoot to No. 1.
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Four months after “Love Me Harder,” Tesfaye was tapped to record “Earned It” from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack. The most sexually explicit R&B singer of the time making a song for the year’s most pornographic film? It felt so wrong, but oooh was it so right. The orchestral pop ballad introduced The Weeknd’s slow-burning seductive vocals to a much wider audience. “Earned It” became The Weeknd’s first solo Hot 100 top 10 hit (No. 3), won a Grammy Award for best R&B performance and scored an Oscar nomination for best original song.
The Weeknd’s mid-2010s pop pivot was well underway, but now he wanted to prove he could pull it off without the assist of an A-list artist or buzzy movie franchise with “Can’t Feel My Face.” The certified smash earned him more MJ comparisons than when Tesfaye put his skeletal cover of “Dirty Diana” on Echoes of Silence, especially his screeching ad-libs that felt plucked straight from Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and his slick footwork and signature spin in the music video. With his dependable hitmaking team from “Love Me Harder” – Max Martin, Savan Kotecha, Ali Payami and Peter Svensson – Tesfaye had successfully broken though pop’s ceiling after initially cracking it with “Love Me Harder” and “Earned It.” “Face” eventually became The Weeknd’s first solo Hot 100 chart-topper, and a runaway radio smash that had us just as hooked as Tesfaye was on blow (or so he semi-subtly sang). It also earned a favorite song of the year nomination at the 2016 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, which he hilariously referenced in the Starboy cut “Reminder”: “I just won a new award for a kids show/ Talkin’ ‘bout a face numbin’ off a bag of blow.” The Weeknd’s lyrical knack for disguising his NSFW fixations in PG-rated, radio-friendly hooks would give him a clever edge.
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Surprisingly, follow-up “The Hills” would be even bigger. Horrifying shrieks, sparse trap beats and Tesfaye’s hoarse verses about life in the fast lane felt like a return to form to his mixtapes’ murkier R&B – with its outro sung in his native Amharic, the primary language of Ethiopia, to further ground himself in his roots – and without compromising “the real me,” it became the fundamental crossover smash of his career. The Weeknd replaced himself at No. 1 on the Hot 100, with “The Hills” dethroning “Can’t Feel My Face” after its three-week run and remaining on top for six weeks.
His chart reign gave him the confidence to make his mainstream bid with Beauty Behind the Madness. The album, which completed his transition from reputable R&B singer-songwriter to perennial pop star, was marked by even more irresistible MJ-inspired bangers (“In The Night”) and lovelorn, instrumental-driven ballads (“Angel” and “Shameless”). On the Ye-produced, soul-sampling “Tell Your Friends,” The Weeknd sums up just exactly who he is: “I’m that n—a with the hair/ Singin’ ‘bout popping’ pills, f—kin’ b—-es, livin’ life so trill.” Beauty became The Weeknd’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and planted him firmly in the spotlight he had shied away from just a few short years ago.
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And as he started sounding more like a pop star, he also started looking like one, too, with a headline-making haircut. He kills his former self and smashes his accolades to the beat of the title track’s snare in the music video for his third Hot 100 No. 1 “Starboy,” featuring Daft Punk. Starboy became his second Billboard 200-topping album and earned him his second best urban contemporary album Grammy win, proving that lightning can strike twice.
His high-profile relationships with model Bella Hadid and fellow singer Selena Gomez inspired his 2018 EP My Dear Melancholy,. Revealing he volunteered to donate his kidney to Gomez (who got a transplant in 2017 amid her battle with lupus) on the desolate opener “Call Out My Name” set the tone for the heart-wrenching six-song set, which represented a sobering sonic departure from the resplendent pop of Beauty Behind the Madness and Starboy. But the vulnerability – which was on full display at his first Coachella headlining gig the following month – recaptured the dark magic of his early mixtapes. And it was a winning formula: My Dear Melancholy, earned Tesfaye his third consecutive Billboard 200 No. 1.
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The album rollout for 2020’s After Hours era unfolded like a masterclass in world-building, with The Weeknd playing a red suit jacket-, black leather glove-, black sunglasses-wearing character, his face further concealed by bloodied facial bandages, that would bring mischief and mayhem to music videos and late-night TV and award show performances. We would first meet him in the visual for “Heartless,” a hedonistic trap-tinged R&B record where The Weeknd boasts in the first line, “Never need a b—h, I’m what a b—h need” and licks a psychedelic-laced frog.
The song became The Weeknd’s fourth No. 1, but it would be the LP’s second single that would alter pop music history. As Billboard’s top Hot 100 song of all time, “Blinding Lights” is an adrenaline-pumping, synth-pop juggernaut that beamed brighter than the marquee lights of its Las Vegas Strip backdrop and entered the cultural zeitgeist. Only The Weeknd could turn a song about drunk driving to a hookup (that premiered in a Mercedes Benz commercial, no less) into the longest-running Radio Songs No. 1 (26 weeks) and the most-streamed song on Spotify while also soundtracking over a million TikTok dance videos featuring frontline healthcare workers and quarantined families alike.
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With its parent album After Hours, he nailed one of pop music’s tenets – making personal themes universal – and with the pandemic, The Weeknd’s motifs of loneliness and escapism felt even more relatable. That’s why After Hours and Dua Lipa’s ‘70s disco-inspired album Future Nostalgia came at the right time, because they cranked up the BPMs of top 40 and helped usher in pop’s retro dance-driven renaissance (years before Beyoncé’s Renaissance) during one of the world’s darkest years in recent history.
After Hours debuted atop the Billboard 200, but when it and “Blinding Lights” shockingly received zero nominations at the 2021 Grammys, critics and his peers like Drake and Kid Cudi sneered at the snub. “The Grammys remain corrupt,” The Weeknd retaliated on X (formerly known as Twitter), adding in a statement to The New York Times that he “will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys.” (He still took home a statue in 2022 for his feature on Ye’s “Hurricane” with Lil Baby.) While The Weeknd was missing from Music’s Biggest Night, he was front and center on the world’s biggest stage a month earlier: the Super Bowl LV Halftime Show. And the penultimate performance of his House of Balloons title track, backed by a marching army of bandaged lookalikes, that eventually revved up to the exhilarating speed of “Blinding Lights,” made for a true career-spanning victory lap moment.
The Weeknd
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The Weeknd
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for TW
As he continued riding the highs of his blockbuster After Hours era, fans wondered where The Weeknd could possibly go next. On his highly anticipated follow-up, Dawn FM, he showed us exactly where he was taking us: With the help of Jim Carrey, who was posing as purgatory’s radio DJ, we were headed toward the light at the end of the tunnel. The Weeknd soundtracked the ominous journey by zeroing in on After Hours’ synth-pop infatuation to create levity on tracks like the spellbinding dancefloor number “Take My Breath,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Hot 100, and “Sacrifice,” where Tesfaye gets as close as he ever has to sounding like the King of Pop. But unlike its blockbuster predecessor, Dawn FM failed to produce a surefire hit. Dawn FM entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2, a slight misstep for someone who’s notched four consecutive No. 1 albums, but an inconsequential one for someone who had already been crowned pop royalty.
The Weeknd didn’t put out any new solo studio releases in 2023, but his status as a no-doubt superstar allowed him to rest on his laurels and enjoy the fruits of his labor. With the Grande-assisted “Die for You” going No. 1, The Weeknd joined Michael Jackson as the only male soloists with multiple leaders on the chart from three different albums. Not bad for a guy who’s spent his entire career emulating the King of Pop. Guinness World Records also named him the world’s most popular artist after he became the first artist to reach 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify. He was Spotify’s most streamed monthly artist for over a year, until Billie Eilish recently took the title – and his premature supportive response suggested a heavyweight like him wasn’t threatened by someone else holding the championship belt. The Weeknd also headlined Coachella again alongside Swedish House Mafia, entering an elite group of acts who’ve headlined the festival twice (and being the first non-alternative/rock act to do so). His set served as a warm-up for his After Hours Til Dawn Tour, with its first leg and second leg earning spots on 2022 and 2023’s top 10 grossing tours list.
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And for a split second, his stadium stint doubled as the set for his HBO series The Idol, which follows troubled pop star Jocelyn (played by Lily-Rose Depp) who develops a complicated relationship with Tesfaye’s character Tedros, a sleazy nightclub owner/cult leader who yearns to pilot her career comeback. Despite critics and viewers largely rebuking the controversial series, which received a 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes and was swiftly canceled after five episodes, The Idol managed to win an Emmy this year and win back some credibility with its soundtrack. The Weeknd formed an unusual, yet effective alliance with the Queen of Pop Madonna and the King Vamp Playboi Carti on the platinum-certified “Popular” that harkened back to the slinky 2000s pop&B that The Neptunes dominated, and entered into a musical threesome with BLACKPINK’s Jennie and Depp on the erotic, down-tempo “One of the Girls,” which reached No. 10 on the Billboard Global 200.
Earlier this September, he announced the third and final installment of his After Hours/Dawn FM trilogy, Hurry Up Tomorrow, a bittersweet way of sunsetting this chapter of his career: He told W Magazine last year that this album “is probably my last hurrah as The Weeknd.” Its lead single, “Dancing in the Flames,” is out Friday (Sept. 13), and the shimmering snippet suggests he’s delivering yet another slice of retro-pop brilliance. But even when The Weeknd as we’ve come and known to love him ceases to exist, his transition from subterranean R&B auteur to ubiquitous genre-bending superstar – and the countless alt-R&B neophytes and would-be eletro-pop stars he’s fathered in the years between – he will forever go down as one of the most remarkable artists, with one of the most remarkable career arcs, in modern pop music history.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back on Tuesday when our No. 17 artist is revealed!
In decades past, the BBC Proms were considered an austere, sometimes stuffy showcase of classical music at London’s Royal Albert Hall. But in recent years, pop and rock acts have risen to the challenge to be a part of the programming, with Sam Smith taking on a performance backed by the BBC Orchestra earlier this summer.
Last night (Sep 11), Florence + The Machine played their 2009 debut Lungs in full for their first – and only – live performance in 2024, backed by conductor Jules Buckley and his orchestra. The Proms were first held in 1895, and have been organised by the BBC since 1927. The events take place over an 8-week stretch in the summer each year.
The show – dubbed “Symphony of Lungs” – saw many classic tracks be performed live for the first time in decades. “Bird Song” had not been played by the band for 15 years, while fan favorites “Drumming Song” and “My Boy Builds Coffins” were brought back into the setlist after lengthy absence.
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Speaking to the crowd, Florence Welch said that the album captured her “messy and chaotic” teenage years and spoke of the challenge revisiting the songs. “I really had a time re-learning these songs ‘cause these [vocal] ranges are crazy,” she said from the stage. “Because you’re young and you’re drunk and you only think you’ll ever sing them one time.”
Watch footage from the show below.
The event was one of the season’s most in-demand events with tickets selling out instantly upon announcement earlier this year. A limited batch of tickets released on the day of the event, with prices as low as £8 ($10), saw a queue form online that reached over 20,000 hopeful attendees.
Lead singer Florence Welch and the band worked extensively with conductor Jules Buckley to adapt the songs for his orchestra. Speaking to Vogue, the singer said it was an offer she couldn’t refuse. “When [the invitation] came in, they were like, ‘We know you’re off, but would you…?’ and I was like, ‘Yes!’”
Fan favorites including “Dog Days Are Over”, “Kiss With A Fist” and “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” were all performed, fusing elements of the string section and her own band expertly. Lungs was a instant-hit upon release, landing at No.1 on the U.K. Albums Chart and No.14 on the Billboard 200.
Florence + The Machine released their most recent album Dance Fever in 2022, which was another chart topper in the U.K. and reached No.14 on the Billboard 200. Earlier this year, Welch collaborated with Taylor Swift on The Tortured Poets Department cut “Florida!!!”, which peaked at No.8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
See the show’s full setlist below.
“Drumming Song”“My Boy Builds Coffins”“You Got the Love” (Candi Staton cover)“Bird Song Intro”“Bird Song”“Swimming”“I’m Not Calling You a Liar”“Kiss With a Fist”“Howl”“Girl With One Eye”“Hardest of Hearts”“Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”“Blinding”“Hurricane Drunk”“Cosmic Love”“Between Two Lungs”“Dog Days Are Over”“Falling”
It would be an understatement to say that 2024 has been the year of Sabrina Carpenter. The former Disney Channel (Girl Meets World) child star’s sixth studio album, Short N’ Sweet, just gave the singer her first-ever Billboard 200 No. 1 album when it debuted at the top of the tally on the chart dated Sept. 17.
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That lofty peak came after pre-release singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” hit, respectively, No. 3 and No. 1 on the the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, with the latter representing Carpenter’s first chart-topping single. How did the 25-year-old born in Quakerton, PA go from posting videos of herself singing songs by Adele and Christina Aguilera as a homeschooled fifth grader to dominating the charts?
The story begins 13 years ago when Carpenter landed the first in a series of small TV roles that eventually landed her a gig in the Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World playing Maya Hart, a role she reprised in the spin-off Boy Meets World. During her run on Girl, Carpenter scored her Billboard chart debut in 2014 on the Kids Digital Song Sales chart with the show’s theme song, “Take On the World,” which she sang alongside co-star Rowan Blanchard.
After signing with Disney’s Hollywood Records, Carpenter released her debut EP, Can’t Blame a Girl For Trying, which spawned the single of the same name, co-written by Meghan Trainor. The singer then made her Billboard 200 chart debut in April 2015 with her first full-length album, Eyes Wide Open, which peaked at No. 43.
Her second album, Evolution, followed in October 2016, peaking at No. 28 on the 200 album chart and spawning her first radio hit, “Thumbs,” which topped out at No. 28 on the Pop Airplay chart. Her third album, November 2018’s Singular: Act I, featured the singles “Almost Love” and “Sue Me,” and was followed by its second part, Singular: Act II, in July 2019.
After leaving Hollywood Records for Island Records in 2021, Carpenter released her first single for her new label home, “Skin,” which landed the star’s first Hot 100 charting song when it debuted at No. 48. Her 2022 follow-up LP, Emails I Can’t Send, became her highest-charting album to date, peaking at No. 23 on the 200 tally and scoring her first No. 1 on the Pop Airplay chart with a song she co-wrote, “Feather,” which also peaked at No. 21 on the Hot 100.
All of that was plenty to brag about, but 2024 is the year that Carpenter blew up in a major way. She kicked things off by booking two major gigs: first, opening for Taylor Swift on some South American dates of the pop superstar’s Eras Tour in 2023 and again in early 2024 in Australia and Singapore and then performing a memorable set at the Coachella Festival in April of this year.
But when she unleashed the bubbly “Espresso” on fans in April, the tune she co-wrote blew up and instantly became her signature hit and an inescapable meme on its way to the No. 3 slot on the Hot 100. The song catapulted the singer to a new career peak, which was quickly supplanted by her first Hot 100 No. 1, “Please Please Please,” whose accompanying steamy video co-starred real-life boyfriend actor Barry Keoghan (Saltburn). With the release of her No. 1 Short N’ Sweet album, Carpenter has cemented her spot as a fixture on the Billboard charts.
Watch Billboard Explains: Sabrina Carpenter’s Sweet Success on the charts in the video above.
After the video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about Peso Pluma and the Mexican music boom, the role record labels play, origins of hip-hop, how Beyoncé arrived at Renaissance, the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and more.
Maroon 5 and Cardi B‘s cameo-stuffed 2018 video for “Girls Like You (Volume 2)” has reached the billion views mark on YouTube. The female empowerment anthem and fifth single from the band’s fifth album, 2017’s Red Pill Blues, got a bonus-edition visual in May 2018 with Cardi slotted-in midway through for a verse about her her come up from stripper to world-beating rap superstar.
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The ascension to the billie club for the Vol. 2 version of the tune marks the fifth time both M5 and Cardi have landed billion view music videos on YouTube.
The original video for Billboard Music Award-winning song — which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and 33 weeks in the top 10 — has racked up more than 3.6 billion views to date. That David Dobkin-directed clip found the camera swinging in a circle around M5 singer Adam Levine as a series of famous female singers, comedians, athletes, activists, politicians, actresses and models materialized behind the vocalist and danced along to the bouncy pop tune.
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Among the stars popping in were: Camilla Cabello, Phoebe Robinson, Aly Raisman, SarahSilverman, Gal Gadot, Lilly Singh, Amani al-Khatahtbeh, Trace Lysette, Tiffany Haddish, Angy Rivera, Franchesca Ramsey, Millie Bobby Brown, Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lopez, Chloe Kim, Alex Morgan, Mary J. Blige, Beanie Feldstein, Jackie Fielder, Danica Patrick, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Banks, Ashley Graham and Rita Ora, as well as Levine’s wife, model Behati Prinsloo and their daughter, Dusty Rose.
In addition to dancing and lip synching along to the tune, a number of the women in the clip rock message T-shirts with pointed social messages, including immigration activist Rivera’s “Undocumented Unafraid Unapologetic” one, as well as U.S. gymnast Raisman’s “Always Speak You Truth” shirt and activist Fielder’s “Divest, Water Is Life” top.
Watch the “Girls Like You (Volume 2)” video below.
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The Toronto Film Festival premiere of Pharrell Williams‘ LEGO-fied animated biopic Piece By Piece on Tuesday night (Sept. 10) was interrupted by an animal rights protester who stormed the stage during a Q&A session after the screening of the film.
The unnamed woman ran on stage at the Princess of Wales Theatre waving a sign that read: “Pharrell stop supporting killing animals for fashion” and decrying the singer’s use of wild animal skins and furs in his role as creative director of the Louis Vuitton men’s collection; Williams was named as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director in Feb. 2023. Shouting “Pharrell stop torturing animals!,” the activist scurried away from security guards chasing her and hopped onto the floor in front of the stage as Williams addressed her directly.
“You know what? You’re right,” he said in video of the moment as she continued her protest, repeatedly telling her “you’re right… God bless you” as the crowd erupted into applause. “It’s okay. Everybody give her a round of applause please,” Williams added as he encouraged the audience to repeat “God bless you” while security escorted the woman out of the auditorium.
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Once she was removed, Williams took a moment to address her protest, saying, “You know, Rome wasn’t made in a day and sometimes when you have plans to change things and situations you have to get in a position of power and influence where you can change people’s minds and help progression.”
He then seemed to offer that the protest was not the best way to affect change in the fashion industry, while suggesting that he’s already trying to turn the tide behind the scenes. “That’s not necessarily the way to do it and sitting in my position, when I have conversations on behalf of organizations like that, unbeknownst to them, they come out here and do themselves a disservice,” he said. “That’s okay, when that change comes everybody in this room will remember that I told you we’re actually working on that. And if she would have just asked me, I would have told her. But instead she wanted to repeat herself.”
In an Instagram post about the interruption, PETA wrote, “We CRASHED @pharrell’s @piecebypiecefilm premiere at @tiff_net to remind the @louisvuitton men’s creative director that animals suffer for fur & wildlife skins. Do the right thing and switch to faux & vegan alternatives NOW!”
Back in June 2023, PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman issued a statement responding to Williams’ use of fur in his then-new collection for the fashion house. “Instead of being the creative innovator Louis Vuitton desperately needs to stay relevant, Pharrell Williams debuted a collection that belongs in a history museum. Tormenting and killing animals to wear bits of their body parts alienates today’s socially conscious consumers, who are driving the demand for luxurious vegan materials that leave animals in peace. If mutilating animals makes Williams happy, PETA hopes his stint at Louis Vuitton will be as short-lived as the animals who suffer for his awful fashion sense.”
The animal rights organization said at the time that it had sent a letter to Williams urging him to ban fur and reptile skins in his role at LV, sharing links to an investigation by PETA Asia that claimed “rampant animal abuse at facilities that supply Louis Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH,” including a graphic description of the way the company’s workers treat crocodiles.
In a statement after the TIFF interruption, Reiman said that the organization would like to stop disrupting Williams’ appearances, “but despite a lot of lip service, he’s yet to ditch fur and exotic skins. Pharrell can decide in a heartbeat, today, to use his power for good and stop being complicit in cruelty — it’s quite easy to be kind.”
The Hollywood Reporter reported that PETA activists also protested a press and industry screening for the Morgan Neville-directed film that also features the voices of many of the 13-time Grammy winner’s past collaborators, including Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes and Jay-Z.
The movie, which features two new songs by Pharrell, will hit theaters on Oct. 11.
Check out PETA’s footage of the incident below.
A year after Joe Jonas filed for divorce from former Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner, a Florida judge declared the former couple divorced and single. According to a copy of the agreement obtained by Billboard, on Friday a Miami-Dade County judge approved a confidential, moderated agreement between the two that splits their assets and details spousal support and custody of the pair’s two daughters, four-year-old Willa and two-year-old Delphine.
The sign-off came a year after the 35-year-old Jonas Brothers singer filed for divorce from Turner, 28, ending their five-year marriage. Judge Gina Beovides declared the marriage “irretrievably broken” and said the couple entered into a voluntary, confidential parenting plan and separation agreement that was in the best interest of the family. “Specifically as relates to the parties’ Parenting Plan, [Jonas] previously voluntarily dismissed all relief and claims sought in relation to said Parenting Plan,” read Judge Beovides’ final judgement paperwork, dated Sept. 6.
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Before their split became acrimonious over a disagreement over custody of their children, the couple issued a joint statement last September in which they said they were parting on friendly terms. “After four wonderful years of marriage we have mutually decided to amicably end our marriage,” their announcement began. “There are many speculative narratives as to why but, truly this is a united decision and we sincerely hope that everyone can respect our wishes for privacy for us and our children.”
At the time Jonas filed for divorce he deemed the marriage “irretrievably broken” and filed paperwork seeking joint custody of the children. The former couple first met in 2016 before tying the knot in two ceremonies in 2019, a surprise Las Vegas wedding in May of that year, followed by a lavish wedding at the next month in the South of France.
Weeks after Jonas’ divorce filing, English actress Turner sued her ex for custody of their daughters, alleging that the singer had engaged in “wrongful retention of of two children… from their habitual residence of England,” in a bid to force Jonas to hand over the girls’ passports so they could join her in her native country.
At the time, the girls — who were born in the U.S. but have dual citizenship — were with Jonas in New York while he was on tour with the Jonas Brothers; Turner claimed that the couple had agreed to raise their children in England before the marriage fractured. She also claimed that she learned about the divorce filing through media reports, though he said they had discussed it several times.
In January, Turner dropped her “wrongful retention” suit when the pair reached a co-parenting agreement.
Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be feeling confident after Tuesday night’s (Sept. 10) first, and possibly only, debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump. In video from the Democratic presidential candidate’s watch party, Harris was seen addressing the crowd following what many pundits called was her commanding performance in the often tense 90-minute showdown with the twice-impeached former President, telling them, “Hard work is good work and we will win, we will win!”
But more pointedly, Harris then walked off the stage to a very apropos Taylor Swift song, shortly after the pop superstar gave her enthusiastic endorsement to the Democratic ticket of Harris and her VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. As the audience cheered, Harris exited the party with Swift’s 2019 female empowerment anthem “The Man” blasting through the speakers.
In the same way that Swift is fond of conjuring diamond-precise mic drop moments that speak for themselves, Harris’ choice of the Lover track said it all without her having to say anything else. “I’d be a fearless leader/ I’d be an alpha type/ When everyone believes ya/ What’s that like?” Swift sings on the tune about society’s chauvinistic double standards.
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“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man/ And I’m so sick of them coming at me again/ ‘Cause if I was a man/ Then I’d be the man,” goes the chorus to the song blasted out of the speakers at the party celebrating Harris, who is vying to become the nation’s first female President.
The Swift nod came after the singer threw her hat in the ring to endorse the Swift/Walz ticket. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Swift wrote on Tuesday night just minutes after the end of the debate that marked the first-ever meeting between convicted felon Trump and former prosecutor Harris. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
Swift’s endorsement also got the thumbs-up from Walz. “I am incredibly grateful to Taylor Swift and I say that as a fellow cat owner,” Walz told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow after she read him Swift’s lengthy, heartfelt Instagram statement that was signed “childless cat lady” in the feline-loving singer’s not-so-subtle dig at Trump VP pick JD Vance’s belittling description of what he described as the Democratic party’s voting base in a 2021 interview.
“That was eloquent and that was clear and that’s the type of courage we need in America to stand up,” Walz continued. “We’ve seen it out of those Republicans who were at the DNC. We’ve seen it out of women who would like to have their personal lives kept personal but are forced to go out there because they nearly died because they can’t get abortion services in a pregnancy. And now you have somebody like Taylor Swift coming out making that very clear. This would be the opportunity, Swifties: KamalaHarris.com, get on over there, get things going.”
Shortly after the Swift endorsement, Harris’ official X account reposted the singer’s statement, writing, “Ready for it,” along with a heart hands emoji.
Donald Trump called into Fox & Friends before 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning (Sept. 11) to talk about Tuesday night’s (Sept. 10) debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, and while the hosts listened as he gave his spin on how he did in what may be the only time he faces off against his Democratic opponent, the most burning question was obvious.
What did Trump think of Taylor Swift‘s enthusiastic endorsement of Harris in the moments after the debate ended?
“Well, I actually like, uh… Mrs., uh [laughs] I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better if you want to know the truth. She’s a big trump fan,” Trump said, in seeming reference to Brittany Mahomes, wife of Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Current co-owner and former soccer player who was swept into Swift’s orbit last year when the singer began dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
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“I was not a Taylor swift fan, it was just a question of time. She couldn’t, uh, you couldn’t possibly endorse Biden. You look at Biden you couldn’t possibly endorse him,” Trump continued during the interview in which he described Brittany as “the wife of the great quarterback.”
“But she’s [Swift] a very liberal person, she seems to always endorse a democrat and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” Trump continued of the star who is about to wrap up her sold-out Eras Tour, which is on track to be one of the highest-grossing tours in music history. “But no, I like Brittany, I think Brittany’s great. Brittany got a lot of news last week she’s a big MAGA fan, that’s the one I like much better than Taylor Swift.”
Up until last week, the women were frequently seen passionately cheering on their significant others from luxury boxes across the country on game day. However, it appeared they were at a distance from each other during last Thursday’s Chiefs season kick-off, a week after Brittany Mahomes drew criticism for appearing to like a Trump Instagram post outlining his party’s 2024 platform.
Convicted felon Trump quickly thanked Mahomes for her apparent support, writing on his Truth Social platform, “I want to thank beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me, and the fact that MAGA is the greatest and most powerful Political Movement in the History of our now Failing Country.”
Mahomes later responded to criticism of her like by saying in an Instagram Story, writing, “I mean honestly, To be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood. There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.”
Despite what appeared to be a chill in the friendship, just days later, the two women were spotted hugging it out at the U.S. Open on Sunday, seemingly dousing rumors of a rift.
Trump, who insisted to the Fox & Friends crew that he decisively won the debate, calling it “my best debate, actually,” was widely criticized by media pundits for his often rambling, vague answers during the tense, 90-minute showdown in which he frequently talked over the moderators. While Harris repeatedly pushed back on what she described as Trump’s “same old tired playbook” of lies and obfuscations, many pundits zeroed in on the twice-impeached former President’s false claim that Haitian immigrants are “eating dogs.. eating the cats,” an internet rumor that that debate co-moderator David Muir swiftly fact-checked in real time.
The bizarre, debunked rumor had been amplified a day earlier by Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who feline fan Swift took a playful swipe at in her Harris endorsement by signing off as a “childless cat lady.” The latter was a reference to one of Vance’s controversial 2021 claims that Democrats were promoting an “antifamily” agenda led by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Before Tuesday night, Swift had not endorsed a candidate yet in the 2024 presidential election, despite backing the 2020 ticket of President Joe Biden and Harris after a career in which she largely avoided weighing in on politics until Trump entered the White House in 2016. In her statement, the singer said her endorsement was driven, in part, by a false AI-generated image purporting to show her endorsing Trump that the former one-term president shared on his social feeds last month.
“It really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
Gov. Tim Walz has responded to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as she runs for the office of President of the United States – and as a “fellow cat owner,” he’s happy. Walz, the Minnesota governor who is Harris’ VP pick on the Democratic ticket for the President of the United States, […]
When Kendrick Lamar was revealed as the headliner for the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show over the weekend, the announcement spurred some burning questions. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking through those questions. What will he perform? Should his booking be seen as an “anti-Drake” move after their heated […]