Pop
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Christina Aguilera is ready for spooky season. The “Genie in a Bottle” singer took to Instagram on Tuesday (Oct. 22) to share a series of sultry pics of her Halloween get-up, eschewing a traditional costume and corpse makeup in favor of a curve-hugging orange and black cut-out dress that left little to the imagination. “My […]
Artists see a lot of strange and beautiful things from the stage, and sometimes they just have to call them out and call in the proper authorities. Case in point: during Sabrina Carpenter‘s Short n’ Sweet tour stop at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Tuesday night (Oct. 22), the “Please Please Please” singer was so […]
Billie Eilish is recovering after hitting her leg hard and not quite soft. The multi-Grammy winner took to her Instagram Stories to show off a nasty leg bruise she retained after tripping and falling on steps as she left the stage during her show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Friday (Oct. 18). On […]
Taylor Swift is feeling grateful after the return of her Eras Tour, which picked right back up over the weekend after a two-month break with three shows in Miami.
And following the conclusion of her stay at Hard Rock Stadium, the pop star took to Instagram on Tuesday (Oct. 22) to say thank you to her fans. “The Eras Tour is BACK and the 3 Miami crowds we just got to play for were on a new level,” Swift wrote, sharing a slew of photos from the performances. “With only 5 cities left to play before it’s over, I knew I was going to be savoring every moment up on that stage but the bewildering passion of those crowds really blew my mind.”
“It rained (a lot) the 1st and 3rd nights, and so that kicked up the cinematic drama,” the 14-time Grammy winner continued. “I had really missed this on our break. The mass quantities of joyful people genuinely living in the moment and seeming truly carefree for 3.5 hours.”
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The trio of Eras Tour shows in the Sunshine State was indeed memorable, with rainstorms bookending the dates and Florence Welch — “my mystifyingly talented friend,” as Swift described her — aptly joining the “Anti-Hero” artist on stage each night to sing their The Tortured Poets Department collaboration “Florida!!!” Swift also debuted a new Reputation jumpsuit and several new dresses during the shows, about which she wrote on Instagram, “I got some new outfits, and it’s always nice when the crowd notices that 😁 You guys are just the best.”
“Thank you to everyone who came and everyone who followed along online,” she concluded her post. “4 more cities left and the next one up is: New Orleans!”
As Swift pointed out, the Eras Tour has just a few more stops — NOLA, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver — before it ends in December. The trek first kicked off nearly two years ago in March 2023 and has seen the musician travel through North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia, joined by openers Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams, Paramore, Sabrina Carpenter and more.
The entire trek has also seen millions of fans from all over the world come out in droves to get in on the friendship bracelet trading and three-hour-plus scream-singalongs, something Swift highlighted during her first show in Miami. Calling the audience one of the “wildest, most passionate, craziest, most loving crowds in the world,” Swift gushed, “The volume at which you are singing every single one of these songs is astonishing.”
Ashton Irwin is remembering his times with Liam Payne following the 31-year-old singer’s shocking death last week.
On Tuesday (Oct. 22) — six days after Payne suffered a fatal fall in Buenos Aires, Argentina — the 5 Seconds of Summer drummer opened up about the “sunken heart feeling” of losing his friend in a string of tweets. “Been thinking on my times with Liam and how kind he was to me, [whether] backstage, passing by at an airport, he always made the time,” Irwin wrote.
“I feel super confused by his passing and I’m finding it so hard to sum up the way it feels, such a massive loss for many,” the 30-year-old musician continued. “my thoughts are with his family, partner, and the other 1D guys, and all of you. I feel at times I had a front row seat back in the day to watching Liam light up lives with his performances with the band. Gone to soon. This is just horrible.”
Payne died Oct. 16 after falling from the third-story balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A recent preliminary autopsy report showed that he appeared to be alone at the time and suffered multiple traumas and hemorrhages upon impact. A follow-up toxicology test confirmed that the “Strip That Down” singer was under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he died, including a recreational drug called “pink cocaine” that mixes substances such as ketamine, MDMA, methamphetamine, cocaine, opioids and more.
Irwin and his 5SOS bandmates — Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford and Calum Hood — opened for One Direction in 2014 on the Where We Are Tour. “We need to respect that we’re here to warm up the crowd for the headliner, which has sold out the stadium,” the drummer reflected on the experience in an interview with Billboard that year. “We do punk jumps and all that. We just don’t ever say ‘f—‘ onstage.”
Countless other musicians and Payne’s loved ones have also spoken out about the X Factor alum’s death over the past few days, including all four surviving members of 1D: Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. In addition to making their own individual statements, the foursome posted a joint message reading, “We will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly. The memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.”
See Irwin’s tweets below.
Been thinking on my times with Liam and how kind he was to me, wether backstage, passing by at an airport, he always made the time, I feel super confused by his passing and I’m finding it so hard to sum up the way it feels, such a massive loss for many.— Ashton Irwin (@Ashton5SOS) October 22, 2024
such a sunken heart feeling, my thoughts are with his family, partner, and the other 1D guys, and all of you. I feel at times I had a front row seat back in the day to watching Liam light up lives with his performances with the band. Gone to soon. This is just horrible— Ashton Irwin (@Ashton5SOS) October 22, 2024
I’ve been afraid to share my feelings publicly cause it terrifies me, but all I’m trying to say is at the end of the day, I am really really thankful for those early days touring with him and seeing the world the way we did was a dream come true— Ashton Irwin (@Ashton5SOS) October 22, 2024
When One Direction arrived in America in 2011, the five-member British boy band took the pop world by storm. More than a decade later, fans of the wildly popular group were devastated to learn of the death of Liam Payne last week at age 31. The four remaining members of the group — Harry Styles, […]
Girl power has arrived: Kids’ audio player Yoto has added Spice Girls music to its library, in partnership with Universal Music Group.
Spice Girls: Greatest Hits, a collection of 14 songs, is now available for the Yoto Player and Yoto Mini via a music card priced at $12.99. Yoto made the announcement on Tuesday (Oct. 22).
Featured tracks include the Spice Girls’ biggest pop hits, which parents who grew up in the ’90s are sure to remember: “Wannabe,” which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for a total of four weeks in 1997, and “Say You’ll Be There,” which peaked at No. 3 on the chart the same year.
‘Spice Girls: Greatest Hits’ for Yoto
Yoto offers ad-free music, stories and educational activities for children on screen-free audio players. They’re used by inserting a card, like the new Spice Girls: Greatest Hits one, into a slot that’s at the top of the player.
“Adding the greatest hits from the Spice Girls to our music collection is an exciting milestone for Yoto,” says Dom Hodge, Yoto’s head of music and sound, in a statement about the new release. “We’re thrilled to make iconic ’90s hits from one of the most influential music groups of all time accessible to budding music lovers globally. We can’t wait for young listeners to discover the joy and vibrancy that shines through the Spice Girls discography.”
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Sarah Boornman, Universal Music UK’s general manager youth strategies, says, “For so many parents, children themselves in the ’90s, the Spice Girls WERE pop music! We can already feel the anticipation and excitement, as these now adult fans get ready to pass on unmistakable, iconic anthems such as ‘Wannabe’ and ‘Spice Up Your Life’ to the next generation.”
Disney music favorites like original songs from Encanto and Frozen, plus classic song collections from The Beatles and Queen, are among the other featured music cards on Yoto’s website. Some other fun highlights are music themed for upcoming holidays like Halloween (Halloween Howls and Spooky Songs) and sets featuring classic pre-school songs.
There are several card options in classic children’s fiction –picks like Frog and Toad and Winnie-the-Pooh, both great series to read with younger ones, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Matilda, often enjoyed by elementary school-aged kids — for families who’d like to use the player to listen to stories.
Universal Music Group is among a Yoto’s current list of partners that includes PRH, Macmillan, Sony, Disney, Roald Dahl Story Company, Pottermore, HarperCollins, Hachette, Viacom, Bonnier and Scholastic.
The Yoto Player is priced at $99.99, and the 2024 edition of the Yoto Mini is $69.99.
Here’s the track list for Yoto’s Spice Girls: Greatest Hits card:1. “Wannabe”2. “Say You’ll Be There”3. “2 Become 1”4. “Mama”5. “Who Do You Think You Are”6. “Move Over”7. “Spice Up Your Life”8. “Too Much”9. “Stop”10. “Viva Forever”11. “Let Love Lead the Way”12. “Holler”13. “Headlines”14. “Goodbye”
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. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here, and now we remember the century in Justin Bieber — who has now been a megastar for half his 30 years, accounting for some of the best and biggest pop music (and one of the most impactful career paths) of the past 15 years in the process.
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Anyone who saw Justin Bieber’s 2007 cover of Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” could tell he was going to be famous.
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The blurry clip of a barely discernible 13-year-old Bieber seems like nothing special at first, just a video his mom Pattie Mallette uploaded to the platform for his extended family to check out. “I know the videos of him are dark but you can hear him and get a sense of his stage presence,” Mallette wrote in the caption of the video, in which the teen is dressed in an unusually formal white button-down shirt, trousers and a tie. His magic quickly became apparent, as soon as Bieber began to belt the R&B track with a shocking sense of vocal ease for someone so young. He confidently makes his way around the stage, making eye contact with different audience members and never once seeming nervous, as if even he knew he was destined to be a superstar.
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Even “superstar” feels like an understatement. With 23 Grammy nominations (and two wins), eight No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, eight Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping songs, 33 Guinness World Records, 26 Billboard Music Awards, four RIAA-certified diamond records and an estimated 150 million records sold over the course of his career, 30-year-old Bieber has been a crucial part of the pop landscape for more than a decade, setting a new standard for pop artists to come by being a trailblazer in using social media to his advantage, without the need for radio or MTV backing to cross over to mainstream success.
However, perhaps none of that would have been possible without a serendipitous discovery from Scooter Braun, the now-titan of the music industry who, at the time, was a marketing executive of So So Def Recordings. After accidentally stumbling upon the “So Sick” clip on YouTube, Bieber’s smooth voice and the “stage presence” his mother pointed out caught his attention. With the blessing of his mother, Bieber was flown down to Atlanta, Georgia – nearly 900 miles away from his hometown of Stratford, Ontario – to record some demos with Braun, who quickly introduced him to now-grown teen-pop royalty Usher. At just 13 years old, Bieber signed with Braun and Usher’s joint venture, Raymond Braun Media Group, and a year later, also signed with Island Records.
The good fortune kept pouring in for Bieber, who made achieving fame seem so easy. His debut single, “One Time,” was released in July 2009 and his first EP, My World, dropped just a few months later in November. “One Time,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Love Me” and “Favorite Girl” from the project entered the top 40 of the Hot 100. My World eventually became certified platinum in the United States.
But what was it about Bieber that made him so immediately popular? Sure, his honeyed vocals and his catchy love songs were enough to get fans to swoon, but there was a significant lack of male pop stars in the music market at the time. Another Justin – Timberlake – was still taking over radio with songs like “What Goes Around… Comes Around” and “Summer Love,” but he was 26 years old at the time, and many of his fans also skewed older. Bieber was the perfect age for young, hormonal teenage fans who soon coined the term “Bieber Fever,” a Beatlemania-type craze over Bieber’s bright smile, charming personality and swooping hairstyle that inspired similar ‘dos for boys across the globe for years to come.
Bieber Fever spread strongly into the start of 2010, when JB dropped the Ludacris-assisted “Baby,” the first single off his debut full-length project, My World 2.0. The track skyrocketed Bieber into a success for a global audience beyond the tweens that loved his 2009 EP, hitting top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album, which was released in March 2010, featured a slew of other longstanding hit singles, including “Somebody to Love,” “U Smile,” “That Should Be Me” and “Eenie Meenie” featuring Sean Kingston. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earned him his first two Grammy nominations, for best new artist and best pop vocal album.
Bieber was now 16 years old, and wasn’t planning on slowing down yet. 2011 was just as busy as his previous two years. His Jon M. Chu-directed concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never hit theaters in February – grossing $30 million on its opening weekend and $99 million total worldwide. The film arrived alongside a remix album, Never Say Never: The Remixes, which featured appearances from fellow stars including Usher, Miley Cyrus and Chris Brown. In his personal life, he also confirmed his relationship with another young star, Wizards of Waverly Place actress and pop singer Selena Gomez, when the couple made their red carpet debut at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party that year. He rounded out 2011 with his holiday album, Under the Mistletoe, which became the first Christmas album by a male artist to top the Billboard 200.
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By the time his third studio album Believe arrived in June 2012, Bieber’s fame reached unprecedented levels of chaos and success. Still a teenager, he couldn’t leave the house without being hounded by paparazzi and fans, and he survived his first public controversy when a pregnant fan claimed Bieber was her baby daddy. While the paternity test came back negative, the experience inspired the Believe track “Maria,” a modern “Billie Jean” denying that he fathered the child.
Clearly, Bieber was growing up, and Believe reflected that. The singer had gone through puberty and his voice was noticeably lower, and the track list strayed away from his past teen-pop sound, as Bieber played with elements of dance, R&B and hip-hop reflect a newer, more mature chapter in his career. Believe debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and featured Hot 100 top 10 hits including “Boyfriend,” “Beauty and a Beat” featuring Nicki Minaj and the Big Sean-assisted “As Long As You Love Me.” With four chart-topping albums under his belt, Bieber’s Believe Tour launched in September 2012, and grossed $212.2 million across 155 shows.
However, by the start of 2013, the negative effects of childhood fame on mental health began to appear. Bieber and Gomez split for the first time in November 2012, and in March 2013, Bieber was getting aggressive with paparazzi in London. He soon began to display increasingly erratic behavior – including wearing a gas mask to dinner, urinating in a nightclub’s cleaning bucket (as well as on a photo of Bill Clinton), spitting on fans, sneaking out of a Brazilian brothel while wearing a sheet, vandalism and, of course, writing that he hoped Anne Frank would have been a “Belieber” in the Anne Frank House guestbook – and Bieber announced in December 2013 via Twitter that he was “officially retiring.” The announcement came just a day after he released his singles collection Journals, which continued to display his artistic maturity by experimenting with downtempo R&B on songs like “All That Matters” and “Confident.” However, the sound was a bit too jarring for his pop-loving fans, and the album flopped commercially compared to his previous works.
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His retirement proved to be equally turbulent. In January 2014, he was arrested in Miami Beach, after getting pulled over in a bright yellow Lamborghini. He was charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving. Bieber later revealed that from the ages of 19 to 21, he was heavily addicted to drugs – including prescription pills, lean, psychedelic mushrooms, MDMA and marijuana, which he used as a coping mechanism for extreme amounts of anxiety and pressure he was understandably feeling at the time.
Things began looking up again for Bieber in 2015, when he found his sense of Purpose with his sixth Billboard 200 leader and his most successful commercial project to date, led by his comeback hit “Where Are Ü Now” with Skrillex and Diplo, an unexpected and successful pivot by the star into the EDM landscape. He followed it up with “What Do You Mean?,” which became his first leader on the Billboard Hot 100, clearly indicating that the music scene was missing Bieber’s presence. The project produced two more No. 1 hits, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself,” which remain inescapable on the radio and streaming playlists to this day. While the Purpose tour kicked off in March 2016 to build on the success of the groundbreaking album, Bieber’s mental health issues persisted. The run was canceled in July 2017 as the singer shifted focus on his well being.
Over the next two years, Bieber lent his vocals to a handful of successful collaborations, including DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One,” BloodPop’s “Friends” and the inescapable hit of 2017, a remix of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” The historic track marked a major step in Latin music breaking into the global mainstream, and spent a whopping 16 weeks atop the Hot 100, then tied for the longest run in the chart’s history. However, at 23 years old and nearly a decade into his career, Bieber seemed to be taking a much-needed break from his recording career. In late 2017, he began opening up about the effects of childhood stardom in interviews and in his music in order to put his past actions into perspective and highlight his immense growth.
By 2018, he rekindled his romance with model Hailey Baldwin, and the two were married in September of that year. A year later, he announced that his fifth studio album, Changes, was on the way, and released a vulnerable, in-depth YouTube Originals docuseries. The 10-part series focused on the ups and downs of Bieber’s life throughout his musical hiatus, including his marriage, sobriety journey, battle against Lyme disease and mental health. In the grand scheme of his career, the docuseries marked a major pivot for good, with Bieber shedding the pop star persona and showing fans the human at the core.
Bieber dropped Changes in 2020, and subsequently gained three Grammy nominations and one win for best country duo/group performance for his Dan + Shay collaboration, “10,000 Hours.” Justice arrived a year later and was nominated for album of the year and best pop vocal album at the 2022 Grammy Awards. The album’s standout hit, “Peaches,” became his first Hot 100 No. 1 of the 2020s and gained four nominations including record of the year and song of the year. Justice also featured the Benny Blanco collaboration, “Lonely,” a devastatingly raw look at how fame sent Bieber into a downward and isolated spiral, capturing his past 15 years in one single. “Everybody saw me sick/ And it felt like no one gave a s—/ They criticized the things I did as an idiot kid,” he sings on the diaristic track.
Now, in 2024, Bieber hasn’t released a new single or album in a few years, but it seems like the 30-year-old star is experiencing a healthy, loving life for the first time, much to fans’ happiness. He’s been married to Baldwin for six years, and the duo welcomed their first child, a son named Jack Blues Bieber, over the summer. With his whole life to that point being spent on overdrive, it’s relieving to see Bieber cruising and enjoying his newest adventure, fatherhood. Hopefully, the ride will inspire yet another chart-topping album – and one more example of his one-of-kind presence, which has persistently shined through the darkness for over 15 years now.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back Thursday as we reveal our No. 7 artist!
THE LIST SO FAR:
Honorable Mentions
25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele9. Ariana Grande
Joey Fatone is heading back to the Broadway stage, this time for the Shakespeare-inspired & Juliet. & Juliet opened at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City in 2022 and features songs by the legendary and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Max Martin. The show reimagines the classic Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet, picturing what life would have […]
As fans get ready to catch Lady Gaga‘s “Disease,” the pop superstar shared a haunting new video trailer for the fast-approaching single Tuesday (Oct. 22). In the clip, Gaga — wearing a short white dress — frantically sprints away as a car drives after her in a suburban neighborhood. The camera is positioned from inside […]