Pop

13 Jun 2025

Justin Bieber’s Touring Group, We The Band, Release Debut Single, ‘One & Only’

While Justin Bieber stays busy recording the long-awaited follow-up to his 2021 Justice album, his backing gorup, We the Band, dropped their debut single on Friday morning (June 13). The Earth, Wind & Fire-esque slow-burn R&B jam “One & Only” showcases the group’s smooth, soulful vocals and retro ’70s funk style. The slick accompanying performance video was directed by Zev York in collaboration with Nick DeMoura, who was the choreographer and creative director for JB’s 2023 Believe world tour.

The group consisting of bassist/vocalist Harv, DJ Tay James, guitarist/vocalist Julian Michael, drummer Devin “Stixx” Taylor and keyboardist Dr. O backed up Bieber on his 2015 Purpose world tour as well as his 2022 Justice world tour, which prematurely ended in Sept. 2022 after the singer revealed that he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome and suffering from partial facial paralysis.

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According to a release announcing the song, Tay James met Bieber in 2009 after graduating from college, snagging a gig as the singer’s official DJ, followed by bassist Harv taking on the role of music director in Bieber’s live band, which he filled out with Taylor and Michael. In 2021, Harv co-wrote and co-produced Bieber’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Peaches.”

We The Band recently signed with the Avex Music Group and the group is working to finish their as-yet-untitled debut album, which, according to a release announcing the signing will include unnamed “special guest appearances.”

“This has been a dream of ours for many years now,” the group said in a statement. “To create our own music that represents who we are as musicians with the support of a global powerhouse like Avex is incredibly exciting for all of us. We can’t wait for our fans to hear what we’ve been working on.”

At press time no additional information was available on Bieber’s next studio album, which the singer has been teasing for much of the past year via videos and pictures from the recording studio.

Check out the “One & Only” video below.

13 Jun 2025

Jonas Brothers Drop ‘Live From the O2 London’ Album Featuring Unreleased Song ‘When You Know’

While Jonas Brothers fans await the release of the sibling band’s Greetings From Your Hometown studio album on Aug. 8, they can keep their summer cool with a live LP that dropped on Friday (June 13). Live From the O2 London is a 24-track collection recorded at the iconic London venue last year, featuring such beloved hits as “Sucker,” “Only Human,” “Waffle House,” “What a Man Gotta Do,” “Year 3000” and “Burning Up.”

Along with those bangers, the album ends with a cover of the Cranberries’ 1993 hit “Dreams,” and also features the unreleased ballad “When You Know” from their upcoming LP. In addition, the career-spanning live album opens with the 2023 song “Wings,” and makes pit stops at “Summer Baby,” “Vacation Eyes,” “Play My Music,” “Fly With Me,” “Paranoid,” “Walls” and “Only Human,” as well as including “Cake By the Ocean” from Joe Jonas’ side band, DNCE.

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In an Instagram post earlier this week, the trio promised that the live album’s tracklist features songs from “the early days, unreleased music from our upcoming studio album, and a ton of favorites in between.” They added, “Getting to capture the energy from these shows on Nick’s birthday in London last year was something special and we can’t wait to share it with you all.”

This year has been all about celebrating the trio’s 20th anniversary as a band, which, so far, has included the release of the singles “Slow Motion” and “Love Me To Heaven,” as well as the massive JONASCON gathering at New Jersey’s American Dream. The band will hit the road for their North American Jonas20: Living the Dream stadium tour slated to kick off on Aug. 10 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Listen to Jonas Brothers Live From the O2 London LP below.

13 Jun 2025

Toby Gad Shares Inspiring Music Video for Donna Summer Collab ‘Run (Piano Diaries)’

Toby Gad unveiled the music video for “Run (Piano Diaries),” his previously unreleased collaboration with the late Donna Summer, exclusively to Billboard on Friday (June 13).

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The Queen of Disco’s voice shines as she delivers the ballad’s powerful message, singing, “You can sit it out, wait until you see your chance/ Try your luck, you can dare to dance/ Dream away your life and never live your dream/ Or breathe every breath you get and run with it.”

Meanwhile, the music video features Gad accompanying Summer’s vocals on the piano as 13-year-old dancer London! performs an emotional lyrical routine over a montage of archival footage of the late “MacArthur Park” dance floor diva, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 63.

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Gad and Summer originally worked on the song for the disco legend’s final studio album, 2008’s Crayons, which also earned the pair a No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart with fourth single “Fame (The Game).”

Though “Run” ultimately didn’t make the cut for Crayons‘ final tracklist, Gad is now releasing the ballad as special part of his ongoing Piano Diaries project, reimagining some of the greatest hits in his catalog with new artists.

“Donna was funny, such a warm spirit — we instantly connected,” Gad tells Billboard. “I was a little nervous at first working with such an icon, but unlike Madonna, who enjoyed testing my character for several days before letting me into her world, Donna opened up to me immediately as I showed her my first ideas. She loved to crack jokes and had such an immediate sense of humor. She enjoyed big hugs and on the first day it felt like she had already decided that I was part of her family.”

The songwriter behind hits like John Legend’s “All of Me” and Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” went on to recall, “Donna was not only an amazing singer who was totally in charge of her voice, much like Beyoncé when I worked with her, [she] was also a great songwriter, intuitively finding words that are honest, authentic and have emotion.”

Watch Gad’s emotional music video for “Run (Piano Diaries)” below.

13 Jun 2025

Haim Announce Full Tracklist For ‘I Quit’ Album

Haim finally released the full tracklist for their upcoming album I Quit on Thursday night (June 12), slowly revealing the 15 song titles in videos on their Instagram stories become compiling the whole thing in a single post (see below).

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While we already knew the follow-up to 2020’s Women In Music Pt. III will contain the previously released singles “Relationships,” “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out,” “Down to Be Wrong” and “Take Me Back,” we now know the collection co-produced by singer/guitarist Danielle Haim and Rostam Batmanglij will also feature the songs “All Over Me,” “Love You Right,” “The Farm” and “Blood on the Street,” among others.

The group previously teased that the opening track, “Gone,” will feature a sample of George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90,” which Danielle said in an interview with i.D. magazine was inspired by listening another pop star’s bespoke sampling. “I was listening to the Beyoncé album, and I was really inspired by all the different samples,” she said. “It doesn’t feel ‘F–k you’ to me—it feels like… ‘I’m gonna do my thing.’”

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Among the other songs on the album are: “Lucky Stars,” “Million Years,” “Try to Feel My Pain,” “Spinning,” “Cry” and “Now It’s Time.”

Alana, Danielle and Este Haim will hit the road in support of their fourth studio album on Sept. 4 with a show at TD Pavilion at the Mann in Philadelphia for a tour that will keep them across North America through an Oct. 11 show in Santa Barbara before hopping over to the U.K. for a run of late October shows that are currently slated to wrap on Oct. 31 at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow.

Check out the full track list for I Quit below.

12 Jun 2025

Sabrina Carpenter’s Controversial ‘Man’s Best Friend’ Album Cover Divides the Ladies of ‘The View’

The controversial cover of Sabrina Carpenter‘s new album Man’s Best Friend has gotten people talking, including the women on The View.

On Thursday (June 12), the ladies shared their takes on whether the artwork — which features the pop star down on all fours, pawing at a man who holds a fistful of her hair — is subversively feminist or just plain sexist. For Alyssa Farah Griffin, it’s the former.

“Oh, boo-hoo,” she began of the criticism surrounding Carpenter’s visual. “If you listen to her music, she’s a feminist. It’s all about women’s empowerment. Her newest single, ‘Manchild,’ is literally just about men who are useless who refuse to grow up.

“It reminds me of Britney Spears in the ’90s … are we still doing that?” Griffin added.

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Sunny Hostin, on the other hand, isn’t convinced. “I’ll admit, I don’t know who she is,” she said of Carpenter. “I had never heard of her music. I don’t know anything about her, but I don’t know. I think imagery is important, and even if her lyrics are strong and she’s a feminist, I think about young girls seeing that who may not understand.”

The women’s conversation echoes a much broader discussion happening online about the Man’s Best Friend cover, which Carpenter unveiled Wednesday while announcing that the new LP would drop Aug. 29. The two-time Grammy winner has long had a reputation for being cheeky and a little risqué in her lyrics and performances, from her NSFW “Nonsense” outros to the striking of various sex positions while performing the explicit track “Juno” on her Short n’ Sweet Tour.

But while the Internet is torn over whether Carpenter’s submissive position on the Man’s Best Friend cover is funny or degrading, Whoopi Goldberg was more concerned with something else. “I would’ve bit him,” the actress said of the singer’s pose on The View. “If you’re down there, you bite.”

As for the Girl Meets World alum, Carpenter has her own thoughts on leaning into her sexuality through her pop persona. “It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” she told Rolling Stone in a recent cover story. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.”

Watch the women of The View debate Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend cover below.

12 Jun 2025

LE SSERAFIM Announce Dates For 2025 North American Fall Tour

K-pop quintet LE SSERAFIM announced the dates for their first-ever North American tour on Thursday (June 12). The eight-date outing by KIM CHAEWON, SAKURA, HUH YUNJIN, KAZUHA, and HONG EUNCHAE as part of their Easy Crazy Hot world tour is slated to kick off on Sept. 3 with a show at Newark, N.J.’s Prudential Center and feature stops in Chicago, Grand Prairie, TX, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Las Vegas before winding down with a Sept. 23 show at Arena CDMX in Mexico City.

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Tickets for the North American shows will go on sale starting with the FEARNOT membership pre-sale, which kicks off on June 24 at 4 p.m. KST, followed by a general on-sale on June 25 at 4 p.m. KST; click here for full pre-sale information.

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The North American swing will be the capper to the group’s world tour in support of their 2024 EP trilogy, Easy, Crazy and Hot, all three of which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 album chart. According to a release, the run of shows that kicked off in March in South Korea, “weaves together the unique concepts and narratives from each album into one spectacular experience.”

During a string of shows in Japan, the group shared a loving message with their FEARNOT fan group, saying, “Let’s make this moment we share hot, fun, and unforgettable!” Before arriving in North America, LE SSERAFIM will wrap up shows in Japan before moving on to Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.

Along with the new tour dates, the group is gearing up to release an English-language version of their first original Japanese single, “DIFFERENT” (English Ver.) on Friday (June 13). Check out a teaser of the song here.

Check out the dates for the 2025 LE SSERAFIM Easy Crazy Hot North American tour below.

  • Sept. 3: Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
  • Sept. 5: Chicago, IL @ Wintrust Arena
  • Sept. 8: Grand Prairie, TX @ Texas Trust CU Center
  • Sept. 12: Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
  • Sept. 14: San Francisco, CA @ The Theater at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
  • Sept. 17: Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
  • Sept. 20: Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob ULTRA Arena
  • Sept. 23: Mexico City, MX @ Arena CDMX

12 Jun 2025

Was ‘Eat It’ ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s Greatest Pop Star Moment?

It’s been a week of “Weird Al” on Billboard.com. Our recent cover star and indie spirit award recipient comes to us at a fascinating place in his career, where despite having recorded only sporadically over the past decade, he’s in many ways at a career peak — culturally ubiquitous, about to embark upon the biggest tour of his career and still very much unchallenged in his lane as the world’s No. 1 song parodist. It’s a four-decade-plus-long reign, which was cemented in 1984 with his true breakout hit: “Eat It,” his parody of both Michael Jackson’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Beat It” and its equally popular music video.

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On this week’s Great Moments in Pop Star History episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard executive editor Rebecca Milzoff — writer of our cover story — to talk about the song and video that brought “Weird Al” Yankovic to a level stardom and omnipresence nearly comparable with the artists he parodied. We dive into the context that allowed “Weird Al” to crash the charts and MTV over 40 years ago and has allowed him to remain pretty much consistently popular for every decade since.

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Along the way, we of course ask all the most important questions about “Eat It”: Why was food such an inextricable part of the “Weird Al” experience — and does it feel different now that we know him to be a vegan in real life? Were there really a particularly large number of kids starving in Japan in 1984? Will Weird Al ever come back to performing the song after removing it from his live setlist post-Leaving Neverland? And what the hell actually started the long-running feud between “Weird Al” producer Rick Derringer and “Beat It” soloist Eddie Van Halen?

Check out our discussion above, as well as Rebecca’s video interview with Al, and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!

And if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:

Transgender Law Center

Trans Lifeline

Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe

Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.

12 Jun 2025

Dua Lipa Reveals She’s Engaged to Callum Turner: ‘It’s Very Exciting’

Love is in the air, and wedding bells are in the future. Dua Lipa has revealed that she’s engaged to Callum Turner.

Engagement rumors began to heat up around Christmas time last year when the British pop star was seen sporting a dazzling rock around her finger, but Dua Lipa confirmed that the Fantastic Beasts actor put a ring on it in an interview with British Vogue published on Thursday (June 12).

“Yeah, we’re engaged. It’s very exciting,” Dua said. “This decision to grow old together, to see a life and just, I don’t know, be best friends forever – it’s a really special feeling.”

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Turner got some help from the singer’s closest friends, as well as Dua’s sister, Rina, with designing the custom ring. “I’m obsessed with it,” Dua gushed about the diamond. “It’s so me. It’s nice to know the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with knows you very well.”

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For now, there’s no rush for wedding plans with the Grammy-winning star currently on a world tour and Turner shooting for a movie.

“I want to finish my tour, Callum’s shooting, so we’re just enjoying this period,” she explained. “I’ve never been someone who’s really thought about a wedding, or dreamt about what kind of bride I would be. All of a sudden, I’m like: ‘Oh, what would I wear?’”

Dua and Turner were first publicly linked in January 2024 when the couple was spotted together at an afterparty for the Masters of the Air premiere. The singer says they actually first met at The River Cafe in London after being introduced by the restaurant’s co-founder. Lipa explained that they had so many friends in common, and about a year later, they ran into one another at another restaurant, this time in Los Angeles.

By chance, they both had been reading the same book, Trust by Hernan Diaz, which made Dua feel they were “1,000 percent” destined to eventually be together.

Dua Lipa continues her Radical Optimism Tour with shows in Belgium before returning to London next week, when she’ll take over Wembley Stadium.

12 Jun 2025

Woman Arrested for Attempted Break-In at BTS Jung Kook’s Residence on the Day of His Military Discharge

Just hours after BTS’ Jung Kook was officially discharged from his mandatory military service, a Chinese woman was taken into custody for allegedly attempting to break into the singer’s residence in Seoul.

According to authorities at the Yongsan Police Station, the suspect — a Chinese national in her 30s — went to Jung Kook’s home in the Yongsan District around 11:20 p.m. KST on Wednesday night (June 11). The woman allegedly attempted to gain entry by repeatedly entering codes into the front door’s keypad.

Police were dispatched to the scene following a report from a nearby resident and arrested the woman on-site for suspected unlawful entry. During questioning, she reportedly told investigators that she had traveled to South Korea specifically to see Jung Kook following his discharge.

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Jung Kook, who enlisted as an active-duty soldier on December 12, 2023, had completed his 18-month military service with the Army’s 5th Infantry Division Artillery Brigade earlier that same day. Authorities have stated that the investigation remains ongoing as they work to determine the full circumstances and motive behind the incident.

The attempted break-in came after both Jung Kook and BTS bandmate Jimin were officially discharged from their mandatory South Korean military service this week, which marked a big step toward the K-pop group’s long-awaited reunion. At press time, six of the seven group members have now completed their service obligations, with Suga currently wrapping up his alternative service as a social worker; he is expected to be discharged later this month.

“Thank you to the fans and reporters who came to see us,” Jimin said upon discharge, where he and Jung Kook were greeted by fans and media who’d begun gathering a day earlier near Yeoncheon Public Stadium in Gyeonggi Province. “It’s been a long time, from the pandemic to military service. Now that we’re back, we’ll work hard to show you what we’ve prepared.”

12 Jun 2025

Mariah Carey’s Debut Album: Every Track Ranked (Staff Picks)

The vocalist dropped her first-ever LP in 1990 and immediately became a chart-topping sensation.

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey

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“We don’t look at her as a dance-pop artist,” Columbia Records president Don Ienner noted to Rolling Stone about his latest signing Mariah Carey in 1990. “We look at her as a franchise.” It’s fair to say that some pretty lofty expectations were placed on the diva ahead of her first studio album’s release. Luckily, Mariah Carey achieved them and then some.

Indeed, the record spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200, helped Carey pick up the Grammy for Best New Artist, and racked up sales of more than 15 million to become the biggest pop debut of the era. And although hitmakers Rhett Larence, Narada Michael Walden, and Walter Afanasieff were brought in to help hone its sound, each and every one of its 11 tracks was co-penned by Carey, very much proving that her songwriting talents were as forceful as her mesmeric vocal range.

In fact, alongside earliest creative partner Ben Margulies, Carey had also produced the demos which first caught the attention of Sony’s head honcho and her future husband Tommy Mottola. (“When I heard and saw Mariah, there was absolutely no doubt that she was in every way destined for super-stardom,” the latter once remarked in another example of the music industry’s high hopes).

Of course, Carey would go on to surpass her early achievements with blockbuster records such as Music Box, Daydream, and 2005 comeback The Emancipation of Mimi. But her eponymous LP still stands up as an impressive springboard. Ahead of its 35th anniversary on June 12, we’ve ranked its octave-spanning offerings from worst to best.