Pop
Page: 150
Over the course of the last week, one drag queen’s performance of Chappell Roan‘s “Red Wine Supernova” has ignited the Internet in a debate about misogyny and drag culture. Now, the artist behind the clip is speaking up.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
On Thursday (Sept. 19), Drag Race Philippines star Brigiding took to social media to speak up about her controversial performance to Roan’s song. “My recent performance of ‘Red Wine Supernova’ has stirred up a lot of differing opinions,” she wrote on X. “Some have accused me of being misogynistic and disrespectful, while others saw it as campy and true to the essence of drag.”
The clip in question saw Brigiding standing on a table during a drag brunch lip-syncing to the track off The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. As she reaches the song’s chorus, Brigiding lifts up her skirt and opens a spout attached to her undergarments, letting a stream of red wine flow out into a wine glass being held by a fan.
Trending on Billboard
The performance quickly went viral as fans and critics alike began debating whether the performance was appropriate. Some commenters claimed the performance was openly mocking the concept of menstruation, while others quickly came to Brigiding’s defense, saying the performance was not mocking women or periods, but was simply a fun drag performance of a hit pop song.
In her statement, Brigiding did not apologize for her performance, instead opting to celebrate the artist who made it possible in the first place. “As a drag artist, I look up to artists who fearlessly create spaces for us, the queer community, and right now, @chappellroan is one amazing champion,” she wrote. “[Chappell’s] music speaks to the freedom and creativity that I try my best to bring into my performances as an artist. I intended to celebrate her influence and impact, not to offend anyone, especially women.”
She added in the closing line of her post that the point of drag is “breaking gender stereotypes” and giving people a place to celebrate “freedom to artistic self expression.” Nodding to the “Pink Pony Club” singer’s own lyrics, she captioned her post with a wink: “I’m gonna keep on dancing.”
Read Brigiding’s full statement below:
https://twitter.com/brigiding/status/1836644429836489087
The White House race between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris continues to be incredibly tight. With less than two months to go before Americans cast their votes, both candidates are doing everything they can to lock in their core constituents, amidst a desperate scramble to rope in crucial undecided and uninspired voters who could tip the scales in their favor.
And while the GOP has long hewed to the old saw that celebrity endorsements don’t move the needle on election day, this year has already shown how the right A-list seal of approval could be one of the decisive factors in the battle between twice-impeached convicted felon Trump and 11th-hour Democratic candidate VP Harris.
The proof is in the immediate impact felt by Taylor Swift throwing her hat into the ring two weeks ago with a strongly worded endorsement of Harris and VP pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. After Swift encouraged young voters to register at Vote.gov following the Democratic National Convention, more than 405,000 people clicked through in strong example of Swift’s potential impact on the outcome in November, easily besting the site’s early September daily tally of 30,000 visitors.
Trending on Billboard
A week later, Trump lashed out at the megastar, who has been selling out stadiums around the world for the past year on her culture-dominating Eras Tour, while also getting weekly high-profile, multi-demo screen time during NFL season thanks to her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” the candidate raged on his Truth Social platform over the weekend.
According to a YouGov poll conducted last week, more than 53% of Americans — including 31% of Republicans — think Swift’s endorsement will help Harris; 4% thought it might hurt Harris. That poll came on the heels of a February survey by Change Research that found that 65% of Democrats had a favorable view of Swift, while 29% of independents and just 17% of Republicans felt the same. For now, though, it’s still unclear if Swift’s endorsement will actually help Harris — based on a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, in which 81% of voters surveyed said Swift’s support for the VP will not influence how they vote. Only six percent said they are more likely to vote for Harris since Swift’s post, with 13 percent saying it makes them less likely to do so.
With the Nov. 5 election just 47 days away, Billboard spoke to a group of academics, political consultants, pollsters and music managers to see if they think Swift’s endorsement — and Trump’s lashing out — could help push Harris/Walz over the top, or turn the tide in Trump’s favor.
“People Will at Least Listen to Her”
“This election will be decided by a few thousand votes in three or four key states, so everything matters,” says veteran pollster and communications analyst Frank Luntz. “Will this be the deciding factor? Probably not. But will it have an impact? Most definitely.”
Luntz, who has done a series of stories asking the same group of young, undecided voters about the election for the New York Times since August, says before President Biden dropped out to make way for Harris, he polled voters about who would have the most influence on their vote. In first place was Trump at 38%, with Biden at 34% and Swift not far behind at 25%.
“I was really shocked by that,” he says. “At the time, Biden was so weak among younger women, and they are among the Democrats’ most reliable voting group — and [Swift] matters significantly, because she’s not seen as a politician and she’s not seen as a partisan. So people will at least listen to her.”
In addition, Luntz says, he thinks Swift handled the wording of her endorsement “quite well,” with language that explained “with some sophistication” why she did what she did. Among the reasons Swift cited for speaking out was her fear and anger over an incident last month in which Trump platformed fake AI-generated images of the singer falsely claiming she was supporting him.
Brilliant Corners Artist Managment (Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service, Best Coast) co-founder Jordan Kurland knows a bit about speaking out during crucial elections, thanks to his time serving on the Entertainment Advisory Committee for both former two-term Democratic President Barack Obama and the unsuccessful 2016 Clinton presidential campaign against Trump. He also was impressed with the way Swift made it more about voting than herself.
“I appreciate that she talks about doing her research and encouraging people to not just vote for the candidate because your favorite pop star said so, but to really get to know the issues,” says Kurland.
“The icy peak of dumbf–k mountain”
While an older generation of artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand, have been reliable democratic party boosters and endorsers in the past, Luntz and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson (author of Everything Trump Touches Dies) say that Swift is a new kind of political force — with a massive, multi-media reach that could rope in sometimes unreliable, unmotivated young voters.
“Taylor Swift represents a different category of celebrity than almost anyone under the sun,” says the former Republican and political strategist Wilson, who co-founded the Lincoln Project Super PAC in 2019 in an effort to prevent Trump from being re-elected. “She’s sui generis in terms of the reach she has and her impact on young women, not to mention their fathers and mothers.”
Swift not only rules the Billboard charts on an almost constant basis, as well as having a culture-dominating Eras Tour and accompanying movie, but also makes headlines every weekend from the sky box as she cheers on Kelce. NFL games averaged 17.9 million viewers each in 2023, a year when 45 NFL games were among the 100 most-watched prime-time telecasts, with the league hogging 14 of the top 15 slots.
Add in 4.35 million tickets sold for her 60 Eras Tour U.S. shows in 2023, and Wilson says you have an artist whose reach — and influence — is virtually unmatched in modern pop history.
“Some of those girls who first loved her are now young women whose mothers took them to see Swift 10-15 years ago,” says Wilson. “And she has a relationship to those women and girls that Republicans are trying to make fun of — [they say] ‘her music is about bad choices, that’s why this is a bad choice’ — but her candor about her life, and the way it plays through her art, makes her relatable and engages people and makes them feel connected to her beyond her music and entertainment.”
In addition to being major pop culture moments and serious financial boosters for every city Swift visits, Wilson wryly notes that “nobody leaves a Taylor Swift show early or cranky, which is exactly the opposite of a Trump rally. They stay until the last minute and come away feeling happy and empowered.” (Wilson says he joked on MSNBC last week that he’d devised a new spin on the traditional warning about the historically biggest mistakes a politician can make: invading Moscow in the winter, launching a land war in Asia… and screwing with Swifties.)
As for Trump’s “HATE” tweet, Wilson came up with a new description of what he said was an unfathomably stupid self-own targeting a potentially crucial group of voters. “It wasn’t just a stupid idea,” he says. “If there was an Olympian level of stupidity, a mountain in the far distance of stupid ideas, it’s the very pinnacle, the icy peak of dumbf–k mountain.”
“They got Kid Rock and you have Taylor Swift”
Renowned political consultant and pundit James Carville, the lead strategist for Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign, maintains that the evidence that celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on voting behavior is “pretty thin.” But, he adds, at the very least Swift’s endorsement will “drive [Trump] crazy” — as evidenced by the billionaire real estate mogul’s all-caps tweet and running mate JD Vance’s (somewhat) tempered double-down on Fox News last week. “We admire Taylor Swift’s music — but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans,” opined the former venture capitalist, multi-millionaire Ohio senator.
In addition to her endorsement potentially distracting Trump, and his hate in response turning off many 18-34 young female voters who could be crucial to a win in November, Carville says Swift’s urge to register to vote could definitely make a difference. “It’s impressive that people did an affirmative act [in registering to vote], and he knows that,” says Carville. “They got Kid Rock and you have Taylor Swift. How is that gonna work out?”
Despite political veteran Carville’s on-the-fence status about celebrity endorsements, Penn State University associate professor of political communications and gender Dr. E. Michele Ramsey says that there is “all kinds of research” showing that the “perceived authenticity” of a celebrity’s thumbs-up does move the needle for “either a product or a candidate.”
Ramsey, who teaches the “Taylor Swift, Gender and Communication” course, says Swift’s action could make a difference among low-information voters, a crucial demo this year. She says we’re a moment now where women’s stories are loudly taking center stage on playlists, in the movies and on social media thanks to massive exposure for projects from not only Swift, but also such pop culture juggernauts as Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, and even last year’s billion-dollar Barbie movie. And while Swifties are generally more likely to vote for Democrats according to a recent YouGov poll, she is so hugely popular that it’s likely she has fans across a broad political, and geographic spectrum.
“We’re in a unique moment in history where women’s stories are at the top of the food chain, where all these performers are speaking in a very vulnerable situation and expressing feelings that I think many women [and others] can relate to,” Ramsey says about an era when a woman’s right to choose has taken center stage. That state-by-state battle of course follows the overturning of Roe V. Wade two years ago, thanks to Trump’s elevation of three new conservative Supreme Court justices ,who helped overturn a woman’s federally protected right to abortion.
So far, in addition to Swift, a raft of other musicians and stars who appeal to the young female demo have endorsed Harris, including Beyoncé, Eilish, Roan, Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Charli XCX, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Kesha, Megan Thee Stallion and P!nk. Trump has gotten endorsements from a less pop-culture-relevant group: one that includes Kid Rock, Billly Ray Cyrus, Kanye West, Lil Pump, Jason Aldean, Kodak Black and Azealia Banks.
“I’ve never seen a political party that just wants to poke the bear as much as they can,” Ramsey adds about the GOP’s decades-long drive to make abortion illegal, as well as attempts to limit the availability of IVF treatments and contraception, and Vance’s now-infamous put-down of Harris (and other Democrats) as “childless cat ladies.” (Swift sharply signed her endorsement as a member of the latter group, while posting a picture of her holding one of her cats.)
Ramsey notes that while young voters don’t tend to trust dusty institutions or traditional politicians, they do put faith in idols they want to emulate — as evidenced by the quickly formed Swifties for Kamala group that pulled together the day Biden dropped out. “If I was a campaign consultant to Republicans, I would tell them to stop saying anything about Taylor Swift,” he counsels.
At the end of the day, Luntz thinks “everything” makes a difference when you’re talking about an election measured in inches, not miles. He points out the Harris campaign’s potential to lean into Swift’s pop culture pull, as they already have with Taylor-themed campaign friendship bracelets and political ads. “You’re seeking any kind of momentum, any kind of edge,” he explains.
In Luntz’s mind, if the singer doubled-down against Trump’s childish “if you don’t like me, I don’t like you more” “HATE” post and turned his ire against him, it could be a key brick in Harris’ firewall: “She [Swift] could easily turn that into, ‘you don’t like me, WE don’t like you and we’re gonna have the last laugh!’”
At press time spokespeople for the Trump and Harris campaign had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. We’ve already named our Honorable Mentions and our No. 25, No. 24, No. 23, No. 22, No. 21, No. 20, No. 19, No. 18 and No. 17 stars, and now we remember the century in Jay-Z — who redesigned crossover hip-hop stardom in his image and became one of the biggest pop culture icons of the entire century.
The best is not always the best-selling. Take the Porsche 911: Considered by many experts and fans alike to be pound-for-pound the best sports car money can buy, the rear-engined coupe sells only a fraction of what America’s number one pony car, the Ford Mustang, sells. Despite its motor being in the wrong place, the 911 is thought to be the platonic ideal of a sports car. It can do it all: deliver a transcendent driving experience, win prestigious motor races, do the weekly chore run, ferry a (small) family around, and look cool when parked on the block. Instead of introducing radical new ideas every model year, Porsche has worked to intensely refine and perfect the 911 over the course of its 75-year run.
Trending on Billboard
The closest thing Hip-Hop has to the Porsche 911 is Brooklyn’s own Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. Throughout his storied three-decade career, Jay-Z never reached the commercial heights of some of his contemporaries but, much like the 911, he represented the platonic ideal of what a rapper should and could be – including as a crossover star, who was able to have major hits and top 40-level success without ever really changing who he was or sounding like he was actively chasing any of it.
Jay-Z
Evan Agostini/Getty Images
Hitting the scene in earnest in 1996 with his debut album Reasonable Doubt, Jay shared underworld tales and street knowledge in a cool unaffected manner that made it seem as if he was letting you in on a secret. With Death Row and Bad Boy dominating the charts in the mid-’90s, Jay worked to carve out a lane for himself as the guy who had one foot on the block and one foot in the boardroom. After not finding high-level commercial success with his debut, Jay recruited the team behind his friend The Notorious B.I.G.’s classic albums to create In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. Debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Vol. 1. boasted minor hits in “The City Is Mine” and “(Always Be My) Sunshine” but proved that Jay had the propensity to make music that appealed to both radio program directors and true hip-hop heads.
But the real breakthrough came with 1998’s Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life. This time around there was no big-name executive producer, just Jay-Z and his Roc-A-Fella partners Dame Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke. The star of the show was the 45 King-produced, Annie-sampling “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” that peaked at No. 15 on the Hot 100, becoming Jay-Z’s biggest hit up until that point and pushing Vol 2. to be Jay’s first No. 1 debut on the Hot 200. Suddenly the hustler from Marcy Projects was no longer toiling away in the shadow of NYC’s towering MCs — he was now one of its brightest stars. Over the next four years Jay-Z proved success does indeed beget success. He launched the careers of a few successful rap stars under his Roc-A-Fella imprint and stretched his earning potential with new clothing and liquor endeavors. But despite all that — as well as a bevy of rap hits and back-to-back Billboard 200 No. 1 albums — Jay’s best days were still far ahead of him.
The new millennium got off to a crazy start for Jay, as he connected with the Neptunes for the first time for the lead single of what was supposed to be a label compilation album. The fun and uproarious “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” became Jay’s first single to top the Hip-Hop/R&B chart and peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100. The song was so big it reportedly inspired Britney Spears to tap the Virginia Beach-based production duo to work on her Britney album. The Dynasty: Roc-La-Familia also served a greater purpose still for the young rap mogul: It set the groundwork for what would become the best album of his career. Featured on Dynasty were three then-unknown producers – Ye (then Kanye West), Bink! and Just Blaze — who gave Jay a bunch of sample-based beats that were shimmering, soulful and gritty all at once. That sound would go on to anchor Jay’s sixth album, The Blueprint.
In 2001, Jay was fighting battles on multiple fronts. He was taking verbal fire from NYC artists — Nas, Prodigy, and Jadakiss — who were none too happy with Jay’s claim to be the King of New York. And he was fighting two criminal cases: one for illegal gun possession and one for assault. During all that, Jay absconded to Miami to record what would become his magnum opus. Legend goes that Jay heard the beats and was so inspired he recorded the album in less than a week. The result would be a project that completely reordered the pantheon of rap greats: Sure, Reasonable Doubt is considered a classic, but the wider world didn’t take notice of it until years later. With The Blueprint, everyone knew immediately that Jay-Z had made the best rap album anyone had heard in years. From the scathing diss track “Takeover” to the tender “Song Cry” — and a pair of irresistible ‘00s pop-rap staples in the triumphant “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and the hilariously rude “Girls, Girls, Girls” — The Blueprint, as Noah Callahan-Bever wrote, became just that: “Everything a great rap album should be, and, perhaps as importantly, nothing that it should not be.”
Throughout his career, Jay always looked at himself as more than a rapper. Yes, he also claimed to be a hustler, but he more so saw himself as an enterprise. The famous bar wouldn’t come until 2005 when he hopped on a remix to Ye’s “Diamonds” record—in Jay’s eyes he’s not simply a businessman, he’s a business, man. And that sentiment really began to show in the early 2000s: So much so he felt he’d outgrown his role as a rapper to the point that he decided to retire, dropping a farewell project in The Black Album. And why not? By then he felt he had it all: He had five consecutive No. 1 albums, Roc-A-Fella was chugging along just nicely — and, in his immortal words, he had “the hottest chick in the game” wearing his chain in Beyoncé. He’d just scored two of his biggest pop hits to date alongside the then-burgeoning pop/R&B diva: His No. 3-peaking “Bonnie & Clyde ‘03” from the overstuffed sequel album Blueprint 2: The Gift and Curse, and her “Crazy in Love,” the Hot 100-topping breakout hit from Bey’s Dangerously in Love that set her on the path to all-time solo greatness. Things couldn’t be going better.
But what other rapper could have made the entire world care about their retirement? He made culture stop. Fans actually mourned his career! We’d never seen someone go out on top; on their own terms. Especially after making what appeared to be all the right moves. It was no wonder the documentary he made about the making of his “last” album – 2004’s Fade to Black, which also captured his “retirement party” concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, bringing hip-hop to the World’s Most Famous Arena at a time when it rarely got to command such stages — was itself a hit.
Jay-Z
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Of course, he couldn’t leave the game alone, and wound up returning three years and a Def Jam Presidential stint later with the forgettable Kingdom Come. Tapping his usual list of producers to craft his comeback special, Jay suffered his first great misstep: He underestimated just how much the rap game had moved on in the time he was away. The South, and Atlanta in particular, was now the dominant force in rap– a reality helped bring forth by signing Young Jeezy to Def Jam. And with younger guys like T.I. able to seamlessly flow between grimy street records and wide aperture radio hits, Jay’s attempt felt, well, old. It didn’t help that he himself was struggling with how to be a rapper touching 40 years old.
But Jay-Z’s true gift remained his ability to make people believe Jay-Z is the coolest person in the world. His ability to sell that idea has helped him sell everything else. When, on Blueprint 3, he declared Auto-Tune dead at the late height of its use within hip-hop in 2009, most people said “hm,” but went with it. (He had less success with getting people to stop wearing Timbs, but you can’t win ‘em all.) Nonetheless, his coolness is what made his BP3 collaboration with Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind” — a song that could have fallen flat and tumbled into cringe in the hands of a lesser artist — his first song to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100, and an enduring Big Apple anthem that even folks who couldn’t name a second Jay-Z song still know most of the words to.
Another gift has been his ability to align himself with the right people at the right time. When he retired from rap and released The Black Album, Jay released a cappella versions of the album and let DJs and producers make new mash-up versions of the album. Danger Mouse’s career was birthed on the back of that release when he mixed it with beats sampling the Beatles’ White Album to create The Grey Album. That album also inspired Linkin Park and Jay to combine some of their songs together to create a six-song EP called Collision Course that wound up selling 368,000 copies first week and winning a Grammy for “Numb/Encore.”
But Jay’s greatest collaborations would come years later. In 2011, he and his mentee Ye traversed the globe to record what would become Watch the Throne. A fully immersive experience, WTT spawned a roving art exhibit, a listening at NYC’s Hayden Planetarium, and a global tour that had them performing their smash hit “N—as In Paris” multiple times at every stop and 11 times in Paris. Lush, lavish, and luxurious, Watch the Throne had was the cultural high point of the past 24 years for both Jay-Z and Ye, positioning them both as not just rap stars but pop culture titans.
Jay-Z
Jason Merritt/Getty Images
A few years later, in 2014, Jay’s legend (and pop star bonafides) only grew greater when he and his now-wife Beyoncé decided to team up for what would become one of the best tours of the past 25 years, with the On the Run Tour. Boasting 21 shows across three countries, the all-stadium tour became one of the most successful in history, with $109 MM in ticket sales, according to Billboard Boxscore. It was so successful, the duo re-upped and did it again four years later. Could Jay have headlined a solo stadium tour 18 years into his career? Maybe, maybe not. But the important thing to remember is that he did embark on global stadium tours at a time in his career when most rappers from his generation wouldn’t be able book midsize venues in their home cities.
Just like the venerable 911, Jay’s game was constant improvement. He didn’t sell like 50 Cent or Nelly or Eminem at their respective peaks. The only time he was able to sell a million in a week – sort of — was when he made a deal with Samsung to pre-load his Magna Carter…Holy Grail album on their phones, giving him a platinum plaque before it even hit stores. But his stranglehold on pop culture and his influence on cultural trends was unmatched (remember when he told everyone not to drive a BMW X5 and everyone, even people who couldn’t afford one in the first place, listened?). No one, besides Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Ye back when his name was still Kanye, has been able to affect the commercial decisions of young music fans as much as Jay had.
Jay-Z
Jon Super/Redferns
Don’t take our word for it, though. Listen to Jay at the end of “What More Can I Say”:
The soul of a hustler, I really ran the streets/A CEO’s mind, that marketing plan was me/ And no I ain’t get shot up a whole bunch of times/ Or make up s—t in a whole bunch of lines / And I ain’t animated, like say, a Busta Rhymes/ But the real s—t you get when you bust down my lines/ Add that to the fact I went plat’ a bunch of times/ Times that by my influence on pop culture/ I supposed to be number one on everybody’s list.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back on Tuesdsay when our No. 15 artist is revealed!
Zach Bryan knows all too well he made a mistake, and he’s acknowledging it. The country star shared a lengthy explanation and apology on Thursday (Sept. 19) after tweeting two days earlier “eagles > chiefs / Kanye > Taylor,” then asking followers, “who’s with me.”
“for the record guys I wasn’t coming for Taylor the other night,” he wrote in an Instagram Story he paired with the pop superstar’s Post Malone Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 collab “Fortnight.” “I was drunkenly comparing two records and it came out wrong. I know there’s a lot of stuff that clouds around Ye and I was speaking purely musically. I love Taylor’s music and pray you guys know I’m human and tweet stupid things often. Hope one day I can explain this to her.”
The country singer — has since deactivated his X account — went on to explain that he gets in trouble on the social media platform too much, and will be staying off of it. “I’m sorry to any Taylor fans I pissed off or let down.” he added.
Trending on Billboard
In a second Story featuring “The Albatross,” the “I Remember Everything” singer explained that he’s been going through a tough time, and shared his appreciation for the 14-time Grammy winner. “To be completely honest, it just came off as rude and desensitized to Taylor. I respect her so much as a musician that the last thing I want is people thinking I don’t appreciate and love what she has done for musician,” he wrote, before offering a public service announcement. “Love you guys and hope you guys understand. Don’t drink and tweet. Don’t drink and tweet!”
But he wasn’t done there. The country star continued to express his love for Swift in a third Story. “Taylor has been a force of nature for as long as we’ve all been growing up and I admire that,” Bryan wrote in part. “I never want people to think I have a hint of malice or meanness towards anyone, ever, that’s why I’m saying all this.”
Bryan, who won the Grammy for best country/duo performance for his No. 1 Hot 100 hit “I Remember Everything,” went on to elaborate on the tough time he’s had in a fourth Story. “This year has been an awful lot on me in personal ways that no one knows and I’ve been trying to cope and balance too many things at once,” he explained. “So I’m going to take a breather from tweeting stupid stuff, finish my tour, and ground myself somehow in the midst of all this. I feel very, very blessed each day.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.
The pop superstar and Ye have a long had bad blood, dating back to the 2009 VMAs, when the rapper grabbed the mic from Swift as she was accepting the award for best female video, and made his infamous “Imma let you finish” speech. Then there was the “Famous” lyric by the controversial rapper — who in recent years has faced mounting criticism for his hate speech — calling the “Anti-Hero” singer a “b—h” that included what Swift in 2023 called the “frame job” phone call of her allegedly approving the lyric, and more.
Bryan is set to perform at the Bourbon & Beyond music festival in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday (Sept. 21). His Quittin Time tour then resumes Nov. 17 in Canada, before swinging back into the U.S. for a series of shows beginning Nov. 22 in Tacoma, Wash.
The Eagles paid loving tribute to their late friend and collaborator J.D. Souther on Wednesday (Sept. 18) in a heartfelt message posted just a day after the singer/songwriter/actor died at 78. “We have lost a brother, a friend and a brilliant collaborator, and the world has lost a great songwriter, a pioneer of the Southern California sound that emerged in the 1970s,” the veteran easy rocking band wrote. “J.D. Souther was smart, talented, well-read, and in possession of a wicked sense of humor. He loved a good meal, a good movie, and a good Martini … and he loved dogs, adopting many, over the course of his lifetime.”
The band — whose current lineup includes founding singer/drummer Don Henley, as well as guitarist Joe Walsh, bassist Timothy B. Schmit and guitarist/vocalists Deacon Frey and Vince Gill — continued with an homage to the versatile Souther’s many loves and contributions to their legendary songbook.
Trending on Billboard
“Born in Detroit and raised in the Texas Panhandle, he was a student of the deep roots of the best American music – from country, to jazz, to classical, as well as ‘Standards’ from the Great American Songbook – and that knowledge and appreciation informed his work,” they wrote. “He was a crucial co-writer on many of our most popular songs, including, ‘The Best of My Love,’ ‘New Kid in Town,’ and ‘Heartache Tonight.’ J.D. also collaborated on many of Don Henley’s solo works, including ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ ‘Little Tin God,’ ‘If Dirt Were Dollars’ and ‘Talking to the Moon.’”
According to a statement on his official website, John David “JD” Souther — also known for his collaborations with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Orbison and for his acting roles in My Girl 2 and Postcards From the Edge — died peacefully at his home in New Mexico on Tuesday. Souther’s longtime friendship with Frey resulted in his collaborations on many Eagles songs, including “James Dean” and “Doolin-Dalton,” helping to make Souther — whose voice bore an eerily similar tone to Frey’s — a staple of the 1970s California country-rock scene.
“We mourn his loss and we send our condolences to his family, his friends, and his many fans around the world,” the Eagles added. “He was an extraordinary man and will be greatly missed by many. Adios, old friend. Travel well.”
Former Eagles guitarist/vocalist Don Felder also posted a tribute, writing, “It is with heavy heart to start the day with the news of JD’s passing. The invisible Eagle has left the nest. His writing contribution and vocal contributions to the music industry has been a blessing to the whole world. He will be missed but his songs will live on forever.”
Souther was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013, but never reached the pinnacle of success with his solo work as the Eagles’ lofty heights, landing his biggest chart success with his 1979 No. 7 Billboard Hot 100 single “You’re Only Lonely.”
Donations in Souther’s honor can be made to the Best Friends Animal Society.
LISA is heading to the runway. The BLACKPINK superstar is set to take the stage and perform at the highly anticipated return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. The announcement comes amid an exciting year for LISA, as the K-pop icon stepped into a new phase of her solo career outside of BLACKPINK with “Rockstar,” which […]
The Lincoln Project has spent the better part of five years warning Americans about what they see as the danger of second Donald Trump administration. The political action committee made up of moderate conservatives and former GOP members — including George Conway, ex-husband of Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway — will release its latest broadside against twice-impeached, convicted felon Trump on Thursday morning (Sept. 18).
And in keeping with the raft of headlines over the past few weeks, it involves Taylor Swift. Specifically, the minute-long “Bad Blood” spot — which Billboard is exclusively previewing today — paints Trump’s recent rant against the pop star as being in line with what the group says is Trump’s long-running contempt for successful women.
The ad — whose landing page features the all caps subtitle: “THE MISOGYNISTIC PRESIDENTS’ DEPARTMENT” in a nod to the title of Swift’s most recent studio album — is titled “Bad Blood,” a reference to Swift’s 1989 single of the same. It opens with a shot of Swift accepting an award at last week’s 2024 MTV VMAs as a voiceover notes, “Taylor Swift isn’t the first successful woman Donald Trump has attacked… she’s just the most recent.” The screen then fills with a shot of a post from Trump’s Truth Social account from Sunday in which he said in all caps: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Trending on Billboard
The rest of the spot is a super-cut of Trump’s most well-known put-downs of famous and prominent women over the years, including his reference to what he called comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s “fat, ugly face. The narrator continues, “Trump has a problem with women… disrespectful…insulting…even violence,” over images of Trump during his contentious 2016 presidential debate with former Senator and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, in which he referred to her as “the devil.” It also includes the time the reality TV host insulted Celebrity Apprentice contestant Brande Roderick with the crude oral sex reference, “must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”
“It’s ugly,” the female narrator says over footage of a smiling Trump telling ABC reporter Cecilia Vega, “I know you’re not thinking, you never do.”
“It’s cruel,” the narrator adds as the subject turns to a 2016 MSNBC interview in which then-candidate Trump said “there has to be some form of punishment [for women],” for having an abortion; the Supreme Court reversed the half-century-long constitutional right to abortion two years ago after Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices, a ruling he called “the biggest win for life in a generation.”
“One thing he’s proven is that he’ll never change,” the narrator says over footage of Trump signing a document on the back of a bent-over woman as well as putting his signature on the upper half of a female supporter’s dress. It also includes the infamous leaked Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged that when you’re a celebrity women allow you to “grab ’em by the p–sy,” which surfaced before election day in 2016.
“Is this how you would want a man to treat your daughter?” the narrator asks over Trump’s crude description of former Fox News anchor and 2016 debate moderator Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her whatever” after she pressed him on his past history of referring to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
“You know the answer, you know the truth,” the ad concludes as Swift fills the screen again, along with audio from a recent Fox News segment in which Trump said he was never a fan of the billionaire pop star and predicted that her endorsement of rival Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will find her “pay[ing] a price for it” in the marketplace.
“He says he hates Taylor… but the truth is he hates all of us.”
Watch the Lincoln Project’s “Bad Blood” ad below.
British singer Yola has signed with S-Curve Records and returns with her first new music in three years today (Sept. 19) with “Future Enemies.”
The song, the live video of which premieres below, is a spiky tale, delivered in Yola’s inimitably rich vocals, about a relationship that she pre-emptively calls quits on before it can turn sour. Expanding beyond her rootsy, groove-laden past songs like “I Don’t Wanna Lie,” “Diamond Studded Shoes” and “Faraway Look,” “Future Enemies” combines synth-driven electronica with R&B and dance vibes and signals a new musical direction for the six-time Grammy nominee. Yola wrote and produced the song with Sean Douglas and Zach Skelton.
“There is a moment when you realize you’re not going to get on with someone. They haven’t noticed yet, so you have a unique opportunity to disappear from their lives before they ever realize you were destined to be enemies. It’s a luxury to not have an endless supply of negative memories about someone ‘cause you never made them,” Yola says in a statement about the song. “I choose to save my time for situations, spaces and people that have no ticking timer of inevitable doom because they don’t see me or center a reality that does not serve me or my wellbeing. Of course, when you’re a woman, culturally black (as well as physically black), dark skinned (and feminine in energy), plus size (and willfully main character in energy), from a whole different continent and living in the West, let’s say you’re going to have to be both vigilant and choosy in life, in love [and] in work.”
Trending on Billboard
Yola’s new direction draws from her past as part of London’s Broken Beats scene that extended from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s and of which she was a part as a member of electronic collective Bugz in the Attic. It’s reflected in “Future Enemies” and her new EP, My Way, out Nov. 15. The EP also draws on her love of various R&B eras, including ‘70s soulful pop and ‘90s neo soul, while thematically exploring creative autonomy and even historic movements, including the Windrush Generation of immigrants who came from Caribbean countries to the U.K. after WWII through 1973.
“I’ve been purposefully hinting about this direction for years. From covering Soul II Soul for Apple Music to my covers on tour and reworkings of my songs, the broad church of soul music through the ages has always been the narrative,” she says. “I’ve covered Yarborough and Peoples’ ‘Don’t Stop the Music’ as a throwback nod to my time with Bugz In The Attic (we used to cover that song).
“This time I’m exploring my love of soul music through influences like Chaka Kahn, Janet Jackson, Sade, Prince, Minnie Riperton and various luminaries of rare groove and progressive RnB,” She continues. “Layering programming and synths with organic instrumentation is at the core of the sonic landscape, and as usual I have metabolized these elements into a concoction very much of my own.”
“For the past few years, Yola has been one of my favorite contemporary artists,” said Steve Greenberg, founder/CEO of S-Curve Records, in a statement. “So, when I learned she’d fulfilled her previous recording commitments [with Easy Eye Records], we jumped at the opportunity to sign her to S-Curve. The music she’s been recording for this new project is classic Yola, yet she expands her musical palette by incorporating funk and late 80’s R&B influences in a very natural way. It’s an exciting evolution and I think her new music will delight Yola’s long-time fans, while simultaneously bringing lots of new listeners into the fold. We’re ready to do everything we can to help Yola build this next phase of her career.”
Yola, who is currently starring in Hadestown on Broadway as Persephone through mid-October, is managed by Range Media Partners and booked by Wasserman.
For years in her 20s, Lady Gaga says she was constantly asked if she was a man. A strange question, to be sure, but one the singer, 38, says she faced with certainty and a sense of humor. In the second episode of the new Netflix series What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, the singer explained to the billionaire Microsoft co-founder that she never bothered to refute the rumors.
“When I was in my early 20s there was a rumor that I was a man,” Gaga told Gates. “I went all over the world. I traveled for tours and for promoting my records and almost every interview I sat in — there was this imagery on the internet that had been doctored — they were like, ‘There’s rumors that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?’”
The explanation tells you everything you need to know about Gaga and why she’s been such an ally to the LGBTQ+ community for her entire career, as well as a beacon for Little Monsters who don’t fit into society’s preconceived notions. “The reason why I didn’t answer the question is because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie and I thought: What about a kid who is being accused of that who would think that a public figure like me would feel shame?,” Gaga said.
Trending on Billboard
“I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumor was not in the best interest of the well being of other people. In that case, I tried to be thought provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point,” she explained.
The singer who stars as Harley Quinn in the upcoming Joker sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (Oct. 4) brushed off a question about the rumor in an 2011 interview with Anderson Cooper in 2011, telling the anchor, “Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”
To be fair, Gaga said she got used to “lies being printed about me since I was 20-years-old. I’m a performer. I think it’s kind of funny.” This, you might recall, is the chin-up style of the same artist who recently responded to an old Facebook group titled “Stafani Germanotta, you will never be famous,” created by some ex-classmates from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts who mocked her dreams of stardom a few years ago.
The 13-time Grammy winner and Oscar winner got the last laugh, of course, commenting on the hate she endured early in her career: “Some people I went to college [with] made this way back when. This is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down — gotta keep going.”
Moving right along, after the upcoming release of the anticipated second turn by Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, Gaga will be gearing up to release the first single from her untitled seventh album. She recently revealed that the album is due out in February, with the untitled first listen due out in October.
In the meantime, Gaga recently scored a third week at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Charts with her Bruno Mars collab “Die With a Smile.”
Watch Gaga on What’s Next here.
Gwen Stefani is ready to bloom! The superstar revealed on Wednesday (Sept. 18) that her fifth studio album, Bouquet, will be arriving on November 15. She also unveiled the album’s cover art and track list. The photo features Stefani in a cowboy hat and a brown plaid suit, laying across a bed while holding a […]