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Jason and Travis Kelce returned to their old college stomping grounds on Thursday (April 11) when the NFL legend brothers packed the University of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena for a taping of their “New Heights” podcast in front of a rabid audience of college kids and football fans. And while they had some A-list guests […]

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

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This week, Dua Lipa sees through your deception, Sabrina Carpenter keeps you up all night, and of course, Future and Metro Boomin remain doubtful about your reliability. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Future & Metro Boomin, We Still Don’t Trust You

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If you thought Future & Metro might be mostly phoning in their sequel effort to their chart-topping We Don’t Trust You from three weeks ago, that 25-song tracklist — 18 for the proper album and a seven-track extra disc — should make it pretty clear that this isn’t just spare bonus material. Besides, the leadoff title cut finds rapper and producer right away in new pulsing dancefloor territory, led by an uncredited appearance by The Weeknd, which sets the tone for the strobelit sonics for much of the project. But of course, folks will mostly be talking about the appearances on this set from J. Cole (“Red Leather”), who does not really seem to be addressing any of the recent “Big 3” feuding, and A$AP Rocky (“Show of Hands”), who appears to be taking shots — possibly at Drake? — via his current romantic partner: “N—as swear they bitch the baddest, I just bagged the worst one
 I smash before you birthed son, Flacko hit it first son.”

Dua Lipa, “Illusion”

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Following the top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hits “Houdini” and “Training Season,” pop superstar Dua Lipa is back with the third taste of her upcoming Radical Optimism set, “Illusion.” Co-written with regular collaborator Caroline Ailin, singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., PC Music soundsmith Danny L Harle and psych-pop fixture Kevin Parker — the latter two of whom also co-produced — Lipa sings of learning to “take my rose-colored glasses of” when dealing with a potential new love with no shortage of red flags. The track finds her back in her disco-pop sweet spot, and with its repeated “dance all night” refrain should find its way to plenty of radio and club airplay in no time.

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Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”

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Speaking of disco-pop, if you prefer your dancefloor jams a little on the laid-back side — more “Levitating” than “Physical,” perhaps — Sabrina Carpenter has you covered with her new piping hot “Espresso.” The alluring new single, co-written with Grammy nominee Amy Allen and Carpenter’s “Nonsense” collaborators Steph Jones and writer/producer Julian Bunetta, features Carpenter positing herself as the caffeinated beverage keeping boys’ thoughts’ racing and sleepless: “That’s that me espresso.” Who’s to say what coffee puns she’ll end up ad libbing in the outro to this one during future live performances?

Lil Nas X, “Right There”

“Been hoarding music for years smh i hate my relationship with fear of my songs not doing well and perception,” Lil Nas X wrote on Instagram in March. “i wish i could just release music and not give af.” The rapper seems to be walking the walk now by dropping his new “Right There” on SoundCloud earlier this week, thought to be a track from his upcoming Nasarati 2 mixtape. With a bombastic beat built around an angelic backing vocal loop, the song sounds absolutely enormous as LNX mixes themes of sex, drugs and religion in his verses: “Montero just popped that Perc/ This feel like God in church/ This scripture a Bible verse/ Buss it open and make it twerk.”

Maggie Rogers, Don’t Forget Me

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Acclaimed singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers might not be likely to end up with the most buzzed-about release of the week since Future & Metro entered the picture, but Don’t Forget Me should nonetheless delight fans of her sparkling, impassioned folky alt-pop. Highlights of the songs not already released from her 10-track third official LP include the Pat Benatar-worthy ’80s pop-rock blast “Drunk” and the gently-but-firmly shuffling acoustic kiss-off “On & On & On.”

PartyNextDoor, “Lose My Mind”

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PartyNextDoor fans who want to hear the late-night singer-songwriter at his most carnal and unfiltered were no doubt encouraged by the recently released cover image for his upcoming PartyNextDoor 4 album — a naked model, shot from behind — and will probably only be further intrigued by “Lose My Mind” his hedonistic latest release from the project. “F–kin’ two b—hes at the same time/ Couldn’t make me choose if it depended on my life” he sings in the first verse, and it only gets more libidinous from there — culminating in a sample from DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here),” which recontextualizes that song’s classic raging hook as a statement of unbridled lust and sexual abandon.

While listening to her latest LP, Don’t Forget Me, Maggie Rogers wants you to slide on in, roll down the windows, feel the breeze on your face.
“I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers says of Don’t Forget Me, which arrived, fully-formed at midnight. Clean face (with a touch of lipstick), good vibes, a bottle of your favorite.

“I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.”

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Don’t Forget Me dropped at midnight via Capitol Records, and is the followup to 2022’s Surrender, her second major label effort, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200; and 2019’s Heard It in a Past Life, an LP that peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned the singer, songwriter and producer a Grammy nomination for best new artist.

Rogers co-produced Don’t Forget Me with Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris) at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, and wrote eight of its 10 songs with him (the other two she penned alone). Shawn Everett (Brittany Howard, The War on Drugs) mixed the set, with Emily Lazar (Beck, Coldplay) returning to master the longplay.

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The Maryland native will be taking a long drive around the country with trusted friends for her first-ever arena tour, entitled the Don’t Forget Me Tour Part II.

The Live Nation-produced outing will kick off on Oct. 9 at Moody Center in Austin, TX, includes stops at New York City’s Madison Square Garden (Oct. 19); and visits to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and other cities; and wraps up on Nov. 2 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA. Ryan Beatty will join Rogers as the opening act on her fall tour dates.

In addition to the arena tour, Rogers also announced Box Office Week, which will include pop-up events and special shows taking place over the course of the week at intimate venues in four U.S. cities.

Stream Don’t Forget Me below.

Perrie Edwards is making sure no one forgets her.
The former Little Mix star (who now goes by the name Perrie) takes a stride forward as a solo recording artist with “Forget About Us,” the first single lifted from her debut album.

While the British pop artist has kept schtum on information about the LP, Official Charts last month reported that she recently hosted a series of private listening parties for fans and industry pros in London where the singer previewed six new songs while telling the stories behind each.

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“What I wanted to make sure of was that every song [from] a different genre had a sister or sibling on the album, so it’s not completely mismatched,” she tells the NME of her forthcoming album. “It makes sense when you listen to it as a body of work.” Expect it to include “Motowny” moments, “guitar-led ballads” and tracks with “Mariah Carey vibes”. 

The album also features Little Mix collaborator Jin Jin, and RAYE, who took home the album of the year award at the March 2nd BRIT Awards for her debut album, My 21st Century Blues.

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And, as previously reported, Ed Sheeran co-wrote “Forget About Us,” a polished pop ballad with country sensibilities. A spokesperson for her label confirmed the details of the report from the listening event, though no release date has been announced for the album yet.

Perrie burst onto the music scene in 2011 when she, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Jesy Nelson were assembled on the British X Factor. The group released six albums before Nelson left the group in 2020 after the release of their final album, Confetti.

Little Mix made history at the 2021 Brit Awards when they became the first girl group in its four-decade-plus history to collect the best British group honor. Later that year, in December 2021, the remaining members went on hiatus; their final show, an April 2022 gig at the O2 Arena in London, was livestreamed.

Leigh-Anne has already made the solo leap, with 2023 debut single “Don’t Say Love” and followup “My Love,” a collaboration with Ayra Starr.

Stream Perrie’s “Forget About Us” below.

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Park Boram, a breakout TV singing competition star who parlayed her powerful vocals into a decade in the K-pop industry, died Tuesday (April 11), according to a confirmation from her record label in Korea. Police are currently investigating the cause of death. She was 30. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, […]

Before she heads to the desert to perform at Coachella, Sabrina Carpenter unveiled a fun new single for her fans titled “Espresso.” “Weirdly enough, ended up writing this song in France, and I think that that probably had a little bit of inspiration to how the song ended up feeling,” the pop star told Apple […]

Madonna’s children are just as creatively talented as she is. The Queen of Pop took to Instagram on Thursday (April 11) to share a series of snaps at her son Rocco’s art show in Miami, in which she’s seen posing alongside her children in front of Rocco’s paintings, dressed in a sleek green pantsuit and […]

We’re less than a month away from the release of Dua Lipa’s upcoming album, Radical Optimism, and the star dropped her summery new single “Illusion” on Thursday (April 11).

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The Tanu Muino-directed music video accompanying the track features Lipa alongside dancers, high divers, and synchronized swimmers at the Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc in Barcelona, Spain, which was also the location for Kylie Minogue’s iconic “Slow” video.

“‘Illusion’ was the first song Caroline [Ailin], Danny [Harle], Tobias [Jesso Jr.], Kevin [Parker] and I worked on together, and it really broke the ice for the record,” the 28-year-old singer shared in a press statement. “It’s about knowing what you’re getting yourself into, but staying for the hell of it. The joke’s on them, it’s the fun of playing someone at their own game because ultimately you won’t fall for an illusion.”

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“Illusion” is the third single the British artist has dropped ahead of her upcoming third studio album Radical Optimism, following “Houdini” and “Training Season.” The former debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the latter entered the chart at No. 27.

“[Releasing the album] feels good. It feels for lack of a better word — radically optimistic,” Lipa previously told Billboard of her upcoming project, before explaining the idea behind the album cover, which features the singer floating in a wide open ocean facing a shark fin. “Throughout the whole record, there’s this idea of chaos happening around and me trying to push through it in a way that feels authentic and honest to me.”

As to how she got the name of the album, Lipa attributed the phrase to a friend “A couple years ago, a friend introduced me to the term ‘radical optimism,’” she said in a statement announcing Radical Optimism back in March. “It’s a concept that resonated with me, and I became more curious as I started to play with it and weave it into my life.”

The 11-track Radical Optimism — Lipa’s first proper LP since 2020’s Future Nostalgia — arrives May 3.

Watch the “Illusion” music video below.

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Ariana Grande is dancing through life as she begins the promotional cycle for Wicked.
Two months after the project’s first trailer premiered during the 2024 Super Bowl in February, the pop star and her castmates debuted an exclusive first look at the live-action duology at this year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Wednesday — after which she shared a handful of sweet photos with Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh and more on Instagram.

Kicking off her post with a pair of glamour shots, Grande elegantly models her Glinda-esque Oscar De La Renta dress — layered with pieces of pink fabric made to look like flower petals — in two photos from the event. The following snaps find the “Yes, And?” singer making kissy faces with Erivo, Bailey and Yeoh, as well as boyfriend Ethan Slater (who also co-stars in Wicked) and Jeff Goldblum. In one group shot, the whole Ozian gang poses for a mirror selfie at a makeup station backstage.

Grande also shared a video of her and Erivo introducing footage from Wicked onstage at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace during Universal Pictures’ Focus Features Presentation, speaking in front of a large crowd of fans armed with light-up wands. “When I was 10 years old, I saw Wicked on Broadway for the first time,” she says in the clip, earning laughs after following up with a joke: “It was only five years ago.”

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She and Erivo then joined hands and walked offstage, a photo of which the R.E.M. Beauty founder included in her post. “i am so incredibly giddy and lucky to be your sister,” Grande wrote of Erivo, also sharing the picture on her Story. “i cannot wait for every step of the way with you.”

Resharing another picture of her and Erivo with Bailey, Grande wrote, “my loves.”

The Grammy winner’s post follows a similar one from Goldblum, who posted a different angle of the group’s makeup mirror selfie and wrote, “Over the rainbow to be reunited with this magical family!”

Grande commented, “my heart !!!!!!!!!”

A separate fan video from the convention showed the singer and Slater holding hands as they walked through the venue, the SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical actor matching Grande in a pink shirt. The pair started dating while shooting Wicked in the U.K. last year, with Slater playing Boq, a munchkin boy who, ironically, has a crush on Grande’s Glinda.

The first of Jon M. Chu’s two-part film adaptations of the famed Stephen Schwartz musical — which itself was based on Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel Wicked — arrives this Thanksgiving, with the second installment set to arrive a year later. In the meantime, Grande has been promoting her latest album Eternal Sunshine, which dropped March 8 and spent an immediate two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

And while Grande has seemingly shifted gears back to Wicked, the vocalist recently assured fans that the Eternal Sunshine era is far from over. “i cannot wait for everything that has yet to come within this eternal sunshine cycle (that has only just begun & may it never end),” she captioned a TikTok video of her recording vocals in the studio earlier this week. “thank you for your love.”

Watch Grande and Erivo introduce the Wicked first look at CinemaCon below.

ReneĂ© Rapp knows her best qualities, and she made sure they were advertised on an eye-catching billboard on the way to Coachella, where the 24-year-old singer will be taking the stage this weekend. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Good tits, big heart,” the billboard displays in […]