Pop

Justin Timberlake’s Lawyer Speaks Out Following Singer’s DWI Arrest

Justin Timberlake‘s lawyer has shared a statement following the pop star’s arrest for driving while intoxicated.

On Wednesday (June 19), the office of attorney Edward Burke Jr. spoke out about the incident, saying that he will “vigorously” defend the 43-year-old singer and actor.

“[We] look forward to vigorously defending Mr. Timberlake against these allegations. He will have a lot to say at the appropriate time. He is currently awaiting full discovery from the DA’s office,” Burke said in the statement, shared with TMZ.

Timberlake was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in Sag Harbor, N.Y. on Monday night (June 17). He was arraigned on one count of “driving while intoxicated” the following day.

According to a statement released by the Sag Harbor Police Department, a traffic stop was initiated after the SexyBack” singer “was observed operating a 2025 BMW southbound on Madison Street, failing to stop at a duly posted stop sign and failing to maintain his lane of travel.”

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“It was ascertained that the defendant was operating said vehicle in an intoxicated condition in that his eyes were bloodshot and glassy, a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath, he was unable to divide attention, he had slowed speech, he was unsteady afoot, and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests,” according to the police report filed by officer Michael Arkinson.

“I had one martini and I followed my friends home,” Arkinson also quoted the 10-time Grammy winner as saying in his report.

Timberlake’s next court hearing is scheduled for July 26, the same day he is scheduled to perform at Tauron Arena Krakow in Poland. He is currently on his Forget Tomorrow world tour.

Katy Perry’s Pop Return Is Upon Us: What Do Music Fans Want From Her in 2024?

Katy Perry is returning to music, and she’s ready to prove that it’s a “Woman’s World.”

On Monday, Perry announced that the first single from her sixth studio album will arrive on July 11. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking what music fans will want from Perry in 2024 — just over 10 years removed from her last Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit, “Dark Horse,” which topped the chart in February 2014.

Listen to our full conversation below:

Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Charli XCX scores her highest-charting album ever on the Billboard 200, how Bon Jovi becomes only the fifth group with newly charting top 10s on the Billboard 200 in each of the past five decades, how Sabrina Carpenter has two songs in the top three of the Billboard Hot 100, and how Chappell Roan rises to the top 10 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time with her buzzy album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

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The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)

How Taylor Swift Has Stayed Atop the Charts With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

In early June, when Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was enjoying its seventh week atop the Billboard 200, her friend and collaborator Lana Del Rey offered a simple explanation of Swift’s stardom to BBC News. “She’s told me so many times that she wants it more than anyone,” Del Rey said. “And how amazing — she’s getting exactly what she wants.” 

This week, Swift secured her eighth consecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, tying Folklore and coming behind only 1989 and Fearless (11 weeks each) for the most weeks at No. 1 of any of her 14 career chart-toppers. TTPD is also the first album in a year, since Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At a Time, to have spent at least two months atop the list and is the first album by a woman to spend its first eight weeks at No. 1 since Whitney Houston‘s Whitney spent its first 11 weeks at the top in 1987. It also extends Swift’s record of weeks spent at the apex of the Billboard 200 to 77 — 10 weeks more than the artist with the second-most, Elvis Presley (67).

While Swift is adept at rolling out record-breaking albums, what’s different this time is not how she has done it but for how long — and when. While she — and most artists across genres — often boosts first-week sales with multiple vinyl variants, signed CD copies and deluxe digital exclusives, Swift has expanded on that rollout plan well beyond the initial release of The Tortured Poets Department.

It’s a strategy that’s relatively novel. Then again, rarely does an artist have such a massive and faithful fan base ready and willing to activate as needed. And while Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour and initial deluxe release, The Anthology — which arrived mere hours after the 16-track original, and which has continued to stream well — have surely helped sustain TTPD, the strategic drops of bonus versions available for a limited time, from acoustic renditions to first-draft phone memos, have kept her physical and digital sales high.

In its first tracking week, TTPD raked in 1.914 million total album sales in the United States (physical configurations and digital downloads), according to Luminate. That figure alone translates to an estimated $38.3 million — without taking into account the 891.37 million on-demand official streams, which accounted for an additional 683,000 streaming equivalent album units. The album continued to stream well for its next three weeks, even as sales naturally died down — until its fifth week, when Swift supercharged the album by releasing six digital album bonuses and one new CD variant on her webstore, including first draft phone memo versions, “Live From Paris” recordings and an acoustic version of “But Daddy I Love Him,” all available for a limited time in the United States. Plus, a variety of five CD offerings — either signed or a deluxe version — had shipped after being replenished. Fans were quick to snatch the new versions up, generating an estimated $2.4 million in sales revenue — a huge bump from the prior week’s total of nearly $801,000, and helping keep the album at No. 1.

That same week, Billie Eilish released her third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. It arrived with a handful of physical offerings including nine vinyl variants and four CD editions, plus three deluxe digital editions: a standard digital album with 10 bonus isolated vocal tracks of the album’s 10 songs, a version with 10 bonus sped-up versions and a version with 10 bonus “slowed and reverb” versions. Hit Me ultimately debuted at No. 2 but scored Eilish the best first-week number of her career with 339,000 units.

The competition resulted in a major coup for both artists: For the first time in eight years, two albums had earned over 300,000 equivalent album units in a single week in the United States, according to Luminate. (Drake’s Views and Beyoncé’s Lemonade both cleared 300,000 units in one week on the chart dated May 21, 2016).

Swift continued her extended rollout strategy this past week as her Eras Tour hit the United Kingdom. In TTPD’s eighth week of availability, she made her “Live From Paris” bonus tracks and first draft phone memos available once more for a limited time, gated to the U.K. market, which once again led to a weekly sales spike — and helped keep TTPD atop the charts in that country.

Swift’s dominance has certainly been felt by her peers, who themselves released deluxe editions and additional versions of their albums in their respective first weeks of availability, hoping to boost their own first-week numbers. Fans of those artists felt it, too; Billie Eilish fans, for example, noted that Swift’s fifth week — when she released the first batch of additional versions — coincided with the release of Eilish’s Hit Me Hard And Soft. And Charli XCX fans, hoping to see the pop star get her first U.K. No. 1 album with Brat this past week, expressed frustration that Swift happened to release the second wave of additional releases the week Charli’s album hit the market. (In the United States, Brat debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 3, earning Charli the highest debut of her career.) As one user wrote on X: “I didn’t wanna believe it but… Taylor could actually be chart obsessed…”.

Some industry sources across sectors of the business feel similarly, lamenting to Billboard that Swift’s flood of releases is not just feeding superfans, but boxing others out of the spotlight — and the type of acclaim and prestige that a No. 1 album can provide. Charli hinted at the online chatter when she said to a sold-out crowd at Los Angeles venue The Shrine on May 15: “I just feel like artistry shines through, you know what I’m saying? I’m really appreciative of the people who have been there from the jump and understood my vision… What’s the next song? Oh, it’s ‘Sympathy Is a Knife.’ Interesting.”

After the fact, fans pointed to the themes of Brat — particularly a song like “Rewind,” on which Charli questions her relationship to fame and her own artistry, even calling out the Billboard charts by name. One fan wrote on X: “There is of course an irony that an album full of meditations on the push-pull relationship of the artist and their art to success was beaten to the #1 spot by an artist peddling the 304th edition of their album for another week atop the charts…”. Yet, as Clint Robinson, on-air talent for Audacy Orlando, said in a TikTok clip, “The problem is, Taylor Swift has amassed a literal army of fans that buy her variations, that want to stream her albums, that want to see her be No. 1. They care about that because she does too. And you want to know why? Because she is an incredible businesswoman.”

Given its success, Swift’s extended-rollout strategy could become a blueprint for others to follow to maintain momentum on the charts. Meanwhile, some industry insiders are wondering when it will end, with one industry source comparing the ongoing TTPD releases to fast fashion.

Ahead, fans are eyeing Sabrina Carpenter’s current chart reign as she occupies the Nos. 2 and 3 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” respectively. Carpenter — a close friend of Swift’s who opened for the star on a handful of Eras Tour dates — will release her new album, Short n’ Sweet, on August 23. Though the pair are openly supportive of one another, and despite Carpenter’s album being nearly two months away, her fans aren’t resting easy just yet. As one posted on X: “Taylor Swift got a mega deluxe acoustic version ready for her ass.”

Sabrina Carpenter Strips Down Chappell Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ for BBC Performance

In between sips of that me espresso, pop star Sabrina Carpenter is wishing all of her exes the best with a cover of fellow singer Chappell Roan‘s latest single.

Taking the stage at BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge on Tuesday (June 18), Carpenter performed her own take on Roan’s breakout hit “Good Luck, Babe!” Swapping out the song’s chunky ’80s synths for a piano and acoustic guitar combo, Carpenter started off slow, taking Roan’s octave-jumping chorus down for a more somber take on the track.

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But by the time she reached the song’s second chorus, the “Please Please Please” singer ratcheted things up a notch, bringing in a twangy guitar and showing off her impressive falsetto on the song’s final chorus. Watch the full performance above.

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In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter spoke about her friendship with Island Records labelmate Roan, saying that she had her songs on a “loopty loop” and that the two had formed an off-stage friendship. “I’ve been just as obsessed with her as everyone has,” she said. “It’s so weird when you’re hanging out as two young women as opposed to thinking about when she goes onstage and is that person and when I go on stage.”

Both pop singers have had a fruitful few months. Carpenter earned a pair of chart-toppers on the Billboard Global 200 this week, as “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” hit Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. Meanwhile, on the Billboard Hot 100, the two tracks occupy Nos. 2 and 3, with Roan’s “Good Luck Babe” rising to No. 21, followed by “Red Wine Supernova” and “Hot to Go!” at Nos. 67 & 68, respectively. Roan’s debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess also earned its highest-charting week on the Billboard 200, climbing into the chart’s top 10 nine months after its original release.

Paul McCartney Celebrates His 82nd Birthday: ‘Looking Forward to Being Spoilt Rotten’

Paul McCartney is another year older and wiser, with the musical legend celebrating his 82nd birthday Tuesday (June 18).

To commemorate the occasion, the Beatles star shared a photo of himself onstage via Instagram. “They say it is my birthday,” he captioned the snap. “I’m looking forward to being spoilt rotten by my loved ones! – Paul”

The night prior to McCartney’s big day, Austin Butler revealed that he’d recently attended a party — which may have been the former’s birthday bash — at the Wings frontman’s house. The gathering was also attended by Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep and Taylor Swift, who at one point DJ’d the festivities, according to the Elvis star.

“That was insane,” Butler told Jimmy Kimmel, who also attended the celebration, on the comedian’s late-night show Monday (June 17).

Kimmel agreed that it was “the craziest party I’ve ever been to in my whole life.”

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Four days before his birthday, McCartney and Wings released their new live album, One Hand Clapping. The star also recently unveiled his Eyes of the Storm photo exhibit at The Brooklyn Museum in New York City, featuring a sprawling collection of his own behind-the-scenes snaps from the early days of Beatlemania with Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon.

In November, McCartney unveiled “Now and Then,” a previously unreleased Beatles track recovered from a low-quality tape. The “Silly Love Songs” singer worked with audio specialists to lift Lennon’s vocals from the recording using AI, a process he called “magical” at the time.

“When we were in the studio, we had John’s voice in our ears,” he added in an interview with BBC Radio 1 last year. “So you could imagine he was just in the next room in a vocal booth or something and we were just working with him again … It’s very special for me to be singing with John again.”

Tinashe Reacts to ‘Nasty’ Reaching No. 69 on the Hot 100: ‘Billboard Matched My Freak Wow’

Tinashe’s viral sensation “Nasty” has hit a new peak on the Billboard Hot 100, and she’s pretty excited about it.

Originally debuting at No. 90, “Nasty” jumped up 21 spots to No. 69 (nice) this week.

In response to a tweet from Chart Data, the singer quote tweeted, “Billboard matched my freak wow.”

So far, the song has spawned to very popular memes.

One being this edit of two people dancing to the song:

Which is based on this video:

The video and the dance have become a meme as well, and Tinashe felt the need to get in on the action herself:

Then there was this tweet by user @hugetulip asking the age-old question, “Who are 2 people that actually did match each others freak?” (The quotes and replies are hilarious.)

The song’s virality has helped make “Nasty” the singer’s highest charting single as a lead artist since 2014’s “2 On” when she was signed to RCA.

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Since departing the label, Tinashe has released three albums on her own and plans on dropping a sequel to BB/Ang3l entitled BB/Ang3l Pt. 2 — Quantum Baby sometime this year, posting a trailer along with a pre-save link back in April.

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In 2021, she spoke with Billboard about going independent, and she’s very much content with that decision. “It has been extremely rewarding, especially spiritually and emotionally in terms of how I view myself as a creative,” she said at the time. Adding, “I feel a lot more empowered now and more confident in my decisions. Following those instincts is really valuable to me.”

Ariana Grande Addresses Criticism About Her Speaking Voice Changing: ‘I’ve Always Done This’

Ariana Grande is putting criticism about her speaking voice to rest. After a clip from her recent interview on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast started circulating online — thanks to fans pointing out how drastically she changes her pitch and cadence at one point — the pop star explained Tuesday (June 18) why the shift in her tone is perfectly natural.

In one TikTok post featuring the interview clip, Grande starts off speaking about recording new music in a lower tone before suddenly shifting to a higher register. “The Voice Change??” the uploader captioned the video.

In the replies, however, the “Thank U, Next” singer herself jumped in to put an end to other commenters accusing her of faking her manner of speech, noting that her higher tone comes through out of “habit” and “speaking like this for two years” while playing Glinda on the set of Wicked.

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“and also vocal health,” she continued. “i intentionally change my vocal placement (high / low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing.”

The musician also pointed out, “i’ve always done this BYE.”

The interview clip isn’t the first time fans have noticed a change in Grande’s speaking voice, though it might be the last now that she’s provided clarification. In March, similar critiques emerged about her higher-pitched tone when she presented at the 2024 Oscars alongside her Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo, even though the two-time Grammy winner has been open about transforming herself in preparation for the role of Glinda.

“Prepping for the auditions was like six months — voice lessons every day, acting lessons every day,” she said on The Zach Sang Show in February. “I trained every day … to transform my voice, even — like, my singing voice — everything about me, I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person.”

But while some people were focused on her speaking patterns, many fans were more excited about Grande revealing on Podcrushed that she has more new music on the way — possibly in the form of a deluxe edition of her Billboard 200-topping album Eternal Sunshine. “I’ve been living in the studio,” she said on the show. “I went to the studio the day after the Met [Gala] and stayed there for 10 days. I’ve been writing a lot, and maybe there’s more. I want to do a deluxe at some point.”

Watch the interview below.



Adele Had the Cutest Moment With Her Mini-Me Fan During Vegas Residency Show: ‘I Love Your Dress’

Adele had made a habit of strolling out amongst her fans and saying hello during her Weekends With Adele residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. But over the weekend it wasn’t her OB-GYN in the crowd who caught her eye, or a couple looking for help with a gender reveal or a tribute to late Friends star Matthew Perry that made headlines, but instead a little girl who came dressed in her best Adele.

A mom named Alexandra posted an adorable video on her Instagram on Sunday in which she chronicled the once-in-a-lifetime moment when the singer took a pause during “When We Were Young” to give a little girl named Valentina some special attention. As it turns out, Valentina was wearing a dress that looked a lot like a classic Adele ensemble and it did not go unnoticed.

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“Adele stopped to meet ‘mini Adele,’” Arguello wrote. “Needless to say Valentina and I had our dream come true! Unforgettable night with my little love.” In the heart meltingly cute video accompanying the post, Adele makes her way through the crowd in the venue while singing “When We Were Young” as Valentina — wearing a black dress with a giant white bow across the shoulders — waits patiently for the singer to make her way to her row.

When Adele spots her tiny double she makes a super surprised face and gives Valentina a special smile as she bends down to sing, “You look like a movie/ You sound like a song,” breaking character for a few moments to have a chat. “Hi… I love your dress,” Adele says as she continues singing in between the small talk. She then does the ultimate fan service by asking Valentina to spin around so someone can snap a proper selfie of them.

In another video, Arguello thanked her grandmother for sewing a shrunk-down version of the custom black-and-white Schiaparelli gown that Adele wore to Lakers star Anthony Davis wedding in 2021 in less than 48 hours before the Vegas show.

Saturday night’s show was the last one on Adele’s Vegas calendar for a while. The singer is not slated to return to the Colosseum stage until October 25. In between, she is booked to play a string of shows in Munich, Germany in a specially built 80,000-capacity venue on August 2, 3, 9, 10, 14, 16, 23, 24, 30 and 31.

Check out the adorable video and the get-ready clips below.

The 50 Best Songs of 2024 (So Far): Staff List

Our picks of the best songs from the most packed first half of a year in recent memory.

Wow there are a lot of songs already this year, huh? A facile observation, of course — there are literally millions of new songs uploaded to streaming every year, if not every month — but this year, well, it just feels like there are more. Certainly on the Billboard charts, and certainly compared to other recent years, when it often seemed like we barely got any new songs at all the first few months, and mostly had to make do with leftovers from the year(s) prior. This year, it’s been one full meal after another of oven-fresh, piping-hot new jams — ones actually from 2024 — to make it very likely the most memorable first half of the year for new music so far this decade.

All the big albums from reliable A-listers that we’ve gotten have helped a great deal there, of course. But beyond those, we’ve also gotten breakout hits from brand new pop superstars, burgeoning radio fixtures and streaming success stories in the making. We’ve gotten comebacks from old favorites, who have re-crashed the charts seemingly through the collective force of will of them and their rabid fanbases. And of course, we’ve gotten some of the fieriest, most vicious (and most playlist-sticking) diss tracks of our lifetimes, which have been raising the temperature in hip-hop and pop since the coldest months of winter.

It all adds up to a first six months of songs that have left us more fed than we can remember being at this point in the year in a long time. Here’s our favorite 50 so far — songs that either were released or peaked on the Billboard charts in 2024 — and we can’t wait to see what’s still left on the menu from here.

Stephen Sanchez Talks ‘Until I Found You’ Success, Deluxe Album & More

Stephen Sanchez is fresh off the release of the deluxe version of his debut album, Angel Face, and the 21-year-old star sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to discuss his growing career.

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“These songs existed in the creation of the record, but they weren’t raising their hands just yet. I think, when the story was complete […] we were able to add songs that didn’t make the record the first time around,” he shared of adding five more songs on the Club Deluxe edition of his project.

The OG version of the album features viral love song, “Until I Found You,” which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. “I think more than anything, the lyricism and the orchestral production of the songs makes you feel nostalgic,” he shared. “Now, even more so, there’s this feeling of nostalgia.”

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He continued, “It’s definitely an out of body experience hearing your song everywhere. It’s just a sign of the times, you open your phone and you’re connected to the world immediately. It can be a good and a bad things, for sure, but I think it’s good when it comes to songs like that, which feel universal and there’s a connectivity across just everybody — just everybody’s individual lives and stories and they can come to agreement on one thing. I feel like, the way the world is right now, things are just divided and fall apart, so I feel like people are looking for a hero in a lot of ways, whether that be through music, lyricism and how they connect people to each other or just art in itself.”

Sanchez added that “Until I Found You” is a “really special” song for him, “because it kind of came at a really perfect and interesting time because music just isn’t like that anymore. Lyrics just aren’t like that anymore. It feels like a good hand raise of that time that the music like that is still cool.”

Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Stephen Sanchez above.