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Ryan Reynolds knows when not to rock the boat. The IF co-star and Wrexham A.F.C. co-owner popped into The Today Show on Monday morning (May 13) to talk about his role in actor/director John Krasinski’s new animated movie about imaginary friends, as well as to spill some details on one of the most-burning questions in Hollywood: what did he and wife Blake Lively name their fourth child?
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The couple have made a habit of keeping their kids’ faces (and names) out of the public eye, but speaking to Today co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, Reynolds joked that the only person who might know the baby’s name is the world’s biggest pop star. Guthrie practically begged Reynolds to cough up the name, asking him, “Taylor Swift keeps dropping it into lyrics… is the fourth child’s name, the baby’s name, anywhere on the record?”
That record, of course, is Swift’s mega-selling The Tortured Poets Department, and Reynolds — legendary for his desert-dry wit and dead-pan jokes — quickly responded, “We always wait for Taylor to tell us what the child’s name will be. And we’ll say this: we’re still waiting.”
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Teasing that Swift is clearly a prolific writer, Reynolds channeled mock panic as he said, “what are we doing here?”
Jokes aside, Reynolds has good reason to await Swift’s blessing, as the singer previously unveiled her A-list pals’ other three children’s names in the song “Betty” from 2020’s Grammy-winning Folklore album. That song name-checks the couple’s third child in the title, daughter Betty, four-and-a-half, in addition to older sisters Inez, seven-and-a-half and James, nine.
Last year, at a May stop on her Eras Tour in Philadelphia, Swift shouted out the couple’s first-born trio while performing “All Too Well” at Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field. Lively and Reynolds welcomed their fourth in Feb. 2023, but have not discussed the baby’s name to date.
Check out the Today show clip below.
Ryan Reynolds jokes on TODAY about the name of his and Blake Lively’s fourth child: “We always wait for Taylor (Swift) to tell us what the child’s name will be. And, we’ll say this: we’re still waiting.” pic.twitter.com/CimgAjffOM— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 13, 2024
Good Neighbours’ “Home” has been one of the biggest viral success stories of 2024 so far. Here’s how the duo made it happen.
Foundation
Before they were Good Neighbours, Scott Verrill and Oli Fox were literal neighbors in an East London studio space last year, intrigued by each other’s solo work bleeding through the metal windows. “We could constantly hear what each of us was playing,” Fox recalls, “and on a spare morning, we did a bit of free writing together.”
Those sessions hinged on shared influences — Verrill and Fox both draw from late-2000s indie–pop mainstays like MGMT and Passion Pit — and “Keep It Up,” one of the first songs the duo wrote together with its booming drums and yelped vocal hooks, formed a mission statement of sorts while the pair worked through demos in late 2023.
Discovery
In January, Good Neighbours recorded the oversize chorus of “Home,” a bleeding-heart, whistle-packed anthem, and decided to float the refrain on TikTok without finishing the rest of the song. “It started out pretty quickly — a few thousand plays — and we got excited and said, ‘If it hits 25,000, we’ll get a pint!’ ” Fox says.
Within a few hours, the “Home” clip had crossed the 1 million mark, and major labels were reaching out to the duo’s manager, Joe Etchells of Various Artists, who signed the act in September 2023. “Home” was quickly fleshed out to a full song, debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in February and has earned 77 million streams through April 25, according to Luminate. Instead of grabbing that celebratory drink, Verrill and Fox got their worlds upended: “We’re constantly looking at each other and going, ‘This is insane,’ ” Fox says.
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Future
Last week, Good Neighbours announced a global joint venture with Capitol Records and Polydor Records. And after lining up headlining shows in the United Kingdom and Europe for the spring and festival gigs for the summer, Good Neighbours released “Keep It Up” in April as their second single and are finishing more material to be released later this year.
“We wrote a bunch of new demos in January, and we’ve got like 10 from last year — some of which are probably better than ‘Home,’ which is really nice,” Fox says. Still, after recording separately for years before joining forces, Verrill and Fox understand how rare a breakthrough like “Home” can be in the modern music industry. “The whole thing has been such a happy accident,” Verrill says. “We’re still trying to process it.”
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Madonna is sharing a reminder that Mother’s Day can be hard for some people. While honoring her late mom and namesake on Sunday (May 12), the pop star opened up in an emotional Instagram post about how she wasn’t aware of the extent of her mom’s fatal illness as a child.
“I stood on stage for 81 shows staring up at the beautiful face of my mother and wondering what she must’ve been thinking as she waved goodbye to me from her hospital window,” she wrote, sharing photos of her mother’s image on stage at one of her recent Celebration Tour shows.
“I stepped into the station wagon and shut the door not knowing it was the last time I’d see her,” she continued in her post. “Nobody told me my mother was dying – I just watched her disintegrate mysteriously and then she disappeared and there was no explanation except that she had gone to sleep which explains My Tumultuous relationship with sleep.”
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The “Material Girl” singer’s mother, Madonna Louise Ciccone, died at age 30 after a battle with breast cancer in 1963. The future superstar was just five years old when it happened.
“When I stepped out on the stage and looked up at my mothers face every night,” added the seven-time Grammy winner, “I said hello I said goodbye. I said Thank you. I hope you’re proud of me. I said Please protect me and keep me sane.”
Now 65, Madonna is a mother to six kids, including Lourdes Leon, whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Carlos Leon, and son Rocco Ritchie, whom she welcomed with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. She and the director went on to adopt David shortly after the musician founded her charity organization Raising Malawi in 2006. Later, she adopted Mercy, then Stella and Estere — all three of whom are also from Malawi — as a single mother.
“Tonight all of my children sleep Under one roof which is Rare and comforting,” Madonna noted in her post, which also featured photos of all of her kids. “They grow up too fast and spin out in different directions And yes I have a hard time letting go … I became very close to my children on this tour. We clung to each other. In the long hours we worked and struggled. They helped me manifest my dreams.”
The post comes about a week after the Queen of Pop wrapped the Celebration Tour with a record-breaking show at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach Saturday (May 4), an event that saw more than 1.6 million fans show up for the free performance. The concert put a bow on several months of performances following the tour’s kickoff in London in October.
All four of Madge’s youngest kids joined her as fellow performers on the trek, for which she had Mercy accompany her on piano during “Bad Girl,” duetted with David on “Mother and Father” and danced with twins Stella and Estere to “Don’t Tell Me.”
“They never stopped practicing… they never stopped cheering me on and supporting me,” the star gushed about her children in a recent post. “They were also going to school and rehearsing every night. !! . am so very proud of all of them.”
Taylor Swift had the perfect outfit for her final Eras Tour show in Paris, considering who was in the audience. The pop star appeared in Kansas City Chiefs colors for the 1989 set of her performance Sunday (May 12), and tight end Travis Kelce adorably jammed out to his superstar girlfriend’s show from the crowd at La Defense Arena.
The tribute to Chiefs Kingdom came midway through the Eras setlist, with Swift taking the stage in a sparkly gold crop top and red skirt to sing “Style,” “Blank Space” and more hits from her fifth studio album. On her left foot, she wore a yellow bootie, and on the right, an orange bootie.
It’s not the first time the “Anti-Hero” singer has sported the team’s official colors, with Swift wearing a number of red and gold outfits to games at Arrowhead Stadium throughout the 2023-24 season, all the way up to the Super Bowl in February, which saw Kelce and the Chiefs take home their second Lombardi Trophy in a row. This time, it was the New Heights podcaster’s turn to support Swift from the stands at La Defense, where he enjoyed the show alongside Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper and Lenny Kravitz.
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Following the 1989 set, Swift performed a series of songs from The Tortured Poets Department for just the fourth time so far. Fan videos captured Kelce smiling and dancing along to “So High School,” which many think the singer wrote about the athlete. During the number, she and her dancers swag surf as part of the choreography, a sweet tribute to Chiefs Kingdom.
Later, Swift sang another Tortured Poets track believed to be about Kelce as a surprise song — “The Alchemy” — which she mashed up with Red‘s “Treacherous.” While she strummed on the guitar, the Ohio native swayed and held up a cute hand heart at the 14-time Grammy winner.
Swift will next perform in Stockholm for three nights at Friends Arena starting May 17, after which she’ll spend the summer traveling through Spain, Scotland, Ireland and more cities in Europe before returning to the U.S. in October. In an Instagram post Sunday (May 12), the musician confirmed that she’ll be including the Tortured Poets set in the show throughout the rest of the Eras trek, writing, “I’m SO fired up to play this for every crowd on the tour.”
See a photo of Swift’s Chiefs-themed outfit, plus videos of Kelce enjoying the show, below.
Taylor Swift performs onstage during night four of “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at La Defense on May 12, 2024 in Paris, France.
Kevin Mazur/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
K-pop girl group aespa prove they are stronger — and fiercer — than the rest in the stunning visual for their “Supernova” single. The first track from the four-woman act’s upcoming debut full-length studio album, Armageddon (due out May 27) is a high-energy bop on which members KARINA, WINTER, GISELLE and NINGNING sing about being […]
Any fans not in Paris for Taylor Swift‘s four Eras Tour shows at La Defense Arena are probably feeling a little down bad after missing the pop star’s first-ever performances of several The Tortured Poets Department songs. But luckily, she’s just as excited to bring the updated show to all of the remaining cities on […]
Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department spends a third straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated May 18), marking her first title to spend its first three weeks atop the chart since 2020’s Folklore spent its first six weeks at No. 1. (Between Folklore and the new album, Swift earned six No. 1 albums.) The Tortured Poets Department is the first album to spend its first three weeks in the pole position since Travis Scott’s Utopia led in its first four weeks last summer (Aug. 12-Sept. 2, 2023).
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The Tortured Poets Department earned 282,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending May 9 (down 36%), according to Luminate. That marks the largest third-week for any album since Swift’s own Midnights clocked 299,000 units in its third frame (Nov. 19, 2022-dated chart).
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Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Dua Lipa achieves her highest-charting album yet, as Radical Optimism debuts at No 2. Plus, SEVENTEEN logs its fifth top 10-charting effort with the No. 5 arrival of SEVENTEEN Best Album ’17 Is Right Here.’
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new May 18, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on May 14. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Of The Tortured Poets Department’s third-week unit sum of 282,000, SEA units comprise 229,500 (down 30%, equaling 298.33 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs), traditional album sales comprise 51,000 (down 53%) and TEA units comprise 1,500 (down 43%).
Swift adds her 72nd career week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, extending her record among soloists (Elvis Presley has the second-most among soloists, with 67). The total encompasses her 14 leaders. (She’s tied with Jay-Z for the most No. 1s among soloists.)
Dua Lipa scores her highest-charting album yet on the Billboard 200 as her third studio effort, Radical Optimism, bows at No. 2. It enters with 83,000 equivalent album units earned — a personal best for the singer-songwriter. Of its starting sum, album sales comprise 51,500 (it’s the top-selling album of the week, and it’s Lipa’s best sales week ever), SEA units comprise 30,500 (equaling 39.7 million on-demand official streams of the album’s songs) and TEA units comprise 1,000.
The album’s sales were bolstered by its availability across 20 physical variants, all with the same 11 songs. There were 11 vinyl editions in assorted colors (one of which was signed, and most variants were exclusive to specific retailers) and two cassette tapes. In terms of CDs, there was a widely available standard CD with a lenticular cover, and then multiple CD iterations sold exclusively in Lipa’s webstore (a signed standard CD, a zine CD package, and four deluxe CD boxed sets — each containing a branded T-shirt and a CD, and two of the boxes also included a signed art card).
In addition, the album was issued as a widely available standard 11-song digital download and a deluxe digital album with two live bonus tracks sold exclusively in Lipa’s webstore.
Radical Optimism is Lipa’s second top 10-charting effort, following her sophomore set, 2020’s Future Nostalgia, which peaked at No. 3.
The new 11-song album was announced on March 13 following two previously-released singles “Houdini” and “Training Season.” The former dropped last November and peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 that month, while the latter topped out at No. 27 in March. A third single, “Illusion,” bowed at No. 43 on the chart dated April 27.
On the promotional front, Lipa opened both the Brit Awards (March 2) and the Grammy Awards (Feb. 4). On the former, she performed “Training Season,” while on the latter she presented a medley of “Training Season,” the Grammy-nominated Barbie soundtrack hit “Dance the Night” and “Houdini.” On May 4, a day after the album’s release, Lipa hosted and performed on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, performing “Illusion” and the album’s “Happy for You.” Further, the entertainer was named to Time 100 list of the most influential people of 2024 (and appeared on the magazine’s April 29 cover), graced the covers of both Rolling Stone (for its February issue) and Elle (May issue), sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an hour-long interview (May 1) and even went day drinking with Seth Meyers (Dec. 11, 2023).
Two former No. 1s are up next on the Billboard 200, as Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time is pushed down 2-3 despite a 3% gain (to 71,000 equivalent album units) and Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You falls 3-4 (down 1% to 61,000 units).
SEVENTEEN collects its fifth top 10 on the Billboard 200, all consecutive, as SEVENTEEN Best Album ‘17 Is Right Here’ debuts at No. 5. The retrospective compilation earned 53,000 equivalent album units in its first week. Of that sum, album sales comprise 49,000, SEA units comprise 4,000 (equaling 5.5 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs) and TEA units comprise a negligible sum. The set’s sales were supported by its availability across a dozen CD variants, all containing branded paper merchandise like posters and photocards (some randomized). Exclusive iterations were sold by Barnes & Noble and Target, while signed editions were also available.
Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign’s chart-topping Vultures 1 flies back into the top 10, as it wings 52-6 following the set’s arrival on vinyl. The effort earned 45,000 equivalent album units in the tracking week (up 173%), while album sales comprising 31,000 of that sum (up 37,841%). Essentially all of its sales were from vinyl — nearly 31,000, which marks the biggest sales week on vinyl for both Ye and Ty Dolla $ign. The vinyl edition of the album was exclusively sold via Ye’s official webstore, and was initially sold as a pre-order when the album was first released on Feb. 10 (as a paid download and via streaming services). At that time, when customers pre-ordered the vinyl, the webstore stated the vinyl would ship in “2024.”
Wallen’s former No. 1 Dangerous: The Double Album is squeezed 6-7 on the new Billboard 200, though with a 4% gain (to 42,000 equivalent album units). Beyoncé’s chart-topping Cowboy Carter falls 4-8 with 41,000 units (down 21%), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season slips 5-9 with 40,000 units (down 2%) and SZA’s former leader SOS falls 9-10 with 39,000 (down 1%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Zayn Malik is opening up about his regrets while being a member of One Direction.
During an interview on the Zach Sang Show, the 31-year-old “Pillowtalk” singer said he wishes he would’ve taken more time to appreciate his time with the British boy band.
“The main thing that I always feel bad about when I look back over my life is not enjoying the band enough,” explained Malik, whose new album, Room Under the Stairs, dropped on Friday (May 10).
“I feel like I just took things too seriously. I’m grateful that I’m able to be happier now. I can actually enjoy things and own my own perspective a bit. Like, glass half full versus it being half empty. That’s my choice.”
Malik shocked fans by announcing his departure from One Direction in March 2015. Later that year, the remaining four-piece — Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson — went on an indefinite hiatus. The group was formed in 2010 by Simon Cowell on the U.K.’s X-Factor when the musicians were teenagers.
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During the interview, Malik added that his younger self “didn’t understand the importance of just trying to be happy. I had this, like, teen angst thing going on — chip on my shoulder. I’m like, ‘It’s really cool to be moody as f— all the time.’ It’s not. You’re just a loser. Let’s be honest, you know what I mean?”
Since then, Malik has learned that “you should be a nice person. You should be somebody that people want to be around and enjoy being in your presence, and you should bring light to peoples’ day instead of being this f—ing negative cloud of energy.”
When the topic turned to romance, Malik admitted that he doesn’t think he’s ever been in love. The pop star previously dated supermodel Gigi Hadid for more than five years. The pair share 3-year-old daughter, Khai.
“I don’t know how you know what love is. That’s a really deep question. It’s hard, you know? I think love comes in many different forms. In love with somebody is a whole different, kind of complicated, you know? There’s so many different variables that go into it,” Malik said.
He added, “When you ask me, ‘What is love?’ I think the reason that’s hard for me to answer that question is I don’t know if I’ve ever actually truly been in love.”
Watch Malik’s Zach Sang Show interview below.
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By his own admission, rapper/songwriter/producer Mike Posner had a “midlife crisis at 22.” He had signed a major label deal and experienced his first big brush with success with his 2010 top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Cooler Than Me.” A few years later, by the time an EDM remix of his stripped-down “I Took a Pill […]
She’s got the eye of the tiger, and that’s why Katy Perry‘s “Roar” music video has skyrocketed to 4 billion YouTube views, marking the most of any female artist on the platform. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the 2013 clip, Perry embarks on an animal-filled frolic […]