State Champ Radio Pop
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Ariana Grande is one of pop’s biggest trend-setters, in music and beyond. From her sky-high ponytail — which has been dyed a rainbow of different hues over the years — to her long sweatshirt sleeves and thigh-scraping boots, the singer has carved out a style that’s just as singular as her R&B-infused pop anthems or […]
NewJeans brought the fun to Billboard’s Women in Music event on Wednesday night (March 6), where they took the stage to perform a high-energy mash-up of “OMG” and their viral hit, “Super Shy,” before accepting the Group of the Year award. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news […]
Selena Gomez can turn her love on, but trust that she can also turn it right off.
In a funny video shared to TikTok on Thursday (March 7), the 31-year-old singer/actress passed along some advice on how to get over a crush, featuring some moral support from her Only Murders in the Building co-star Steve Martin.
In the clip, Gomez mouths along to a hilarious audio on set while adjusting her hair in the view finder, while the Pink Panther actor watches her curiously from his seat in the background. “If you have a crush on a guy, don’t worry,” the Rare Beauty founder lip-syncs as Martin smiles behind her. “Just get to know him and it’ll go away.”
Gomez then turns around and walks out of the room while the 78-year-old grins at the camera.
“Feat. Steve Martin lol,” she wrote in her caption.
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The fourth season of Only Murders — starring Gomez and Martin, along with Martin Short — is currently in production, with Hulu recently announcing that Kumail Nanjiani is joining the cast. The Wizards of Waverly Place alum’s new TikTok appears to have been filmed while the main trio was shooting season 3, based on the fact that the gold dress she wears in the clip was featured in the 10th episode of the show’s latest installment.
Gomez and Martin previously hung out together in January at the 2024 Emmys, where Only Murders was nominated for best comedy series (the award ended up going to FX’s The Bear). The “Single Soon” singer brought her boyfriend, producer Benny Blanco, as her date to the ceremony, marking one of the couple’s first major public outings.
On the music side of things, the multi-hyphenate is fresh off the release of her new single “Love On,” which debuted at No. 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart dated March 9.
“I try not to read too much into things, but I think the whole idea was to make a song that felt good,” she recently told Billboard of the track. “I feel like I’m in such a light and happy place, and that’s reflected in the song.”
See Gomez’s TikTok with Martin below.
Alex Rodriguez was in total dad mode at Olivia Rodrigo’s concert Wednesday night (March 6). After working all day, the 48-year-old sports broadcaster rallied his energy to make one of his teenage daughter’s dreams come true by taking her to the Guts World Tour stop in Miami, which he documented in a relatable Instagram video.
“All right I’ve been filming all day, I’ve never been more tired,” he says in the clip as he and 15-year-old Ella, whom Rodriguez shares with Cynthia Scurtis, walk to their seats in Kaseya Center. “Now I’m at a Rodrigo …”
After Ella reminds him of the “Drivers License” singer’s first name, the former Yankees star continues, “… [an] Olivia Rodrigo concert surrounded by 22,000 teenage girls, and all I wanna do is go to sleep.”
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“Oh man, here we go, here goes nothing,” he adds. “Wish me luck — Rodrigo here we go!”
The video then cuts to Rodriguez and his daughter enjoying the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series alum’s performance of her Guts lead single “Vampire,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks last summer. “POV: Life as a Teenager’s Dad,” the retired athlete wrote in text over the clip. “Rodrigo is pretty good TBH.”
On Instagram, Rodriguez – who also shares 19-year-old daughter Natasha with Scurtis — added in his caption, “Props @oliviarodrigo… I won’t mess up your name next time 😂.”
Rodrigo’s first-ever arena tour kicked off Feb. 23, and has so far seen the Grammy winner play shows in Phoenix, three cities in Texas, New Orleans and Orlando in addition to Miami. Next, she’ll take the trek to Spectrum Center in Charlotte Friday (March 8) before setting up shop at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville the day after.
Rodriguez’s clip was posted the same day Rodrigo poked fun at a viral TikTok in which the creator mistakenly called her by the former shortstop’s last name. “Olivia Rodriguez, the li’l Mexican girl that be crying,” the apparently confused user said in their video, which the singer, who is of Filippino descent, then recreated while biting into a Guts-themed Crumbl cookie.
Watch Rodriguez take his daughter to the Guts World Tour below.
Former Fifth Harmony members Dinah Jane and Ally Brooke were on the carpet and ready to talk at Wednesday night’s (March 6) Billboard Women in Music 2024 event, with both women offering a tantalizing tease about a potential return by the “Worth It” group. Asked if the X Factor-created quintet — which also featured Lauren […]
Bolstered by acts like Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan and Luke Combs, country music in 2023 experienced its biggest growth spurt in more than 30 years — way back when Garth Brooks soared to superstardom. Already, this year seems on track to continue that explosion, as country stars and pop icons alike are capitalizing on the genre’s recent boom.
In February, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with her galloping hit, “Texas Hold ’Em,” from her upcoming Act II, expected to be a full-on country album, out March 29. Post Malone has teased a duet with Combs on social media and written with other genre stars including Wallen and HARDY for his upcoming country album. And Lana Del Rey — who declared that her fall album, Lasso, will be a country set — recently posted a snippet of a song that she worked on with noted Nashville songwriter-producer Luke Laird.
CMT senior vp of music strategy and talent Leslie Fram views the influx as a sign of “overwhelming respect for the storytelling and the songwriting in Nashville,” but predicts that noncountry artists taking up slots at terrestrial country radio “is going to be a major topic of conversation … If [a core country artist] has spent 30 to 50 weeks trying to climb up a chart and, all of a sudden, they’re replaced by someone who is not in the genre, I do believe there will be concerns.”
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However, Simon Tikhman, co-founder of The Core Entertainment, which manages Nickelback and country upstarts Bailey Zimmerman and Nate Smith, sees the possible radio displacement as a good sign overall. “We were on a call with Nate’s Sony team talking about adds at radio, and No. 1 was Beyoncé and No. 2 was Nate,” he says, adding that The Core Entertainment co-founder Kevin “Chief” Zaruk “and I were like, ‘This is amazing that she sees what’s going on over here.’ She’s as brilliant as a performer gets, and she wants to be part of this. It just goes to show how powerful the genre is right now.”
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As Alan Jackson famously sang in his 1994 hit, “Gone Country,” for decades, any artist who released such music but who hadn’t moved to Nashville or put in the time building a country audience and courting country radio was considered a carpetbagger. But now, many insiders see it as a sign that borders between genres have fallen and that country’s recent surge in popularity has made it extremely appealing to artists who have fallen in love with the music, too.
And unlike in the past, when artists might explore country only as their pop career dwindled, today’s infiltration and interest are coming from names at the peak of their pop prowess. “It isn’t like the heritage artists before that wanted to do a country record. These are artists at the top of their game,” Fram says. Olivia Rodrigo attended Megan Moroney’s Los Angeles show last year and posted photos backstage together. And in November, Post Malone made his debut performance at the Country Music Association Awards.
Plus, fandom aside, it’s smart business. “The pop labels are seeing the success of a Morgan Wallen,” Sony Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman says of the country superstar, whose smash “Last Night” and album One Thing at a Time logged the most weeks of any song or album on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 last year, respectively. He adds: “The biggest female artist in the world is Taylor [Swift], who started in country. I don’t think that’s lost on any of the labels.”
Range Media Partners co-founder Matt Graham, whose company manages Jack Harlow, Midland and Saweetie, believes the pop transplants could help expand country’s global audience. “It’s good for making the genre international,” he says, noting that acts like Wallen and Combs have already helped country grow worldwide. “This has the potential to blow that wide open.” He predicts streaming numbers for country artists, which were already up nearly 24% year over year in 2023 domestically, according to Luminate, will “drastically” increase this year and beyond.
And the genre-flipping isn’t just flowing one way: Country artists are finding success in other formats, too. Combs had a massive crossover hit with his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” and Wallen topped Billboard’s year-end Streaming Songs Artists chart, the first time a country act had achieved the feat. Meanwhile, Jelly Roll and HARDY — both of whom are considered primarily country artists — reached No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock and Hard Rock charts, respectively.
Like 21-year-old Rodrigo, younger music listeners don’t “put music in a box,” Zaruk says, noting Zimmerman’s November duet with the Jonas Brothers. “For years, country fans didn’t really listen to hip-hop and rap and rap fans were not listening to country,” he continues. “We’re genreless now.”
This story will appear in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The late Jimmy Buffett deeply loved New Orleans. After graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi, he moved to the Crescent City for a year and his time there informed the rest of his musical life.
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He played New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival at least a dozen times, adored New Orleans legendary composer/artist Allen Toussaint (who wrote a song called “I’m Gonna Hang with Jimmy Buffett”), recorded and toured with local icons The Neville Brothers, and when asked by a journalist if he thought “there would be a Jimmy Buffett if there wasn’t a New Orleans,” Buffett replied, “I don’t think there ever would have been.”
On his final album, Equal Strain on All Parts, which was released Nov. 3 via Mailboat/Sun, two months after his Sept. 1 death, Buffett again professed his love for New Orleans and what the city meant to him on the rollicking “The College of Bourbon Street.”
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In the video for the autobiographical anthem, which premieres above, Buffett, with a little help from the renowned Preservation Jazz Hall Band, chronicles his history with the city. Anchored by footage of a grinning Buffett recording the song in the studio last year, the video also includes decades of photographs and clips of Buffett performing in New Orleans and just enjoying the multitudes of delights the city has to offer.
He’s shown leading a second line, busking in the French Quarter with a sign in his guitar case that reads “will play for gumbo,” hanging out with fans at Margaritaville, playing at Jazz Fest and excitedly getting ready to sample some gumbo. The video does everything to reinforce the notion that Buffett lived and loved every moment to the fullest in his 76 years on earth.
Buffett wrote the song with Will Kimbrough, who told Buffettnews.com that he “started writing ‘The University of Bourbon Street’ on my couch Dec 19, 2022, after Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers sent me one of his ‘are you ready for some homework? messages.” He then joined Buffett in the studio last January to record the song. “One of the most profound experiences of this time period was rewriting the lyrics from beginning to end right there in the studio with Jimmy” he told the website. “No pressure! But we did it. Despite his illness, he was 100% on and energetics, lighting up the room with that smile. Making everyone feel comfortable and laugh.”
Kesha is ready to begin again. The singer who was locked in a battle with former producer/label boss Dr. Luke for nearly a decade over her claims that he raped and emotionally abused her posted a snippet of new music and hinted an her new era in a post on Wednesday (March 6); Luke (born […]
True: Olivia Rodrigo has a Guts-themed cookie available on certain Crumbl shelves. False: She’s a Mexican artist whose last name is Rodriguez. Need some context? A TikTok user named Dre recently went viral for his video review of the 21-year-old pop star’s custom pastry, during which he called her “Olivia Rodriguez” and asked his followers: […]
Jack Antonoff is the producer behind some of the biggest pop records of the past decade, two of which — Taylor Swift‘s Midnights and Lana Del Rey‘s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd — earned album of the year nods at this year’s Grammys. (Midnights ended up taking home the prize.)
And in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1 released Wednesday (March 6), the musical mastermind opened up about some of his most magical moments working with the “Anti-Hero” singer and “Summertime Sadness” musician. “Every time we do something new, I joke, ‘I guess we still got it,’ because there’s no reason for it to keep coming the way it does,” he told Lowe.
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“There’s a lot of magic there,” Antonoff continued. “I feel that way with Taylor, I feel that way with Lana … It’s almost like, the more we do, the less I expect it. Because I often think to myself, well, how much longer could we really keep having this spark? And I’m just grateful that it’s there, and I don’t know where it comes from or where it goes, but the one thing that I’ve noticed is that anyone who claims to know where it comes from and where it goes burns out pretty quick.”
Reflecting on making “Mariners Apartment Complex” for Del Rey’s acclaimed album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Antonoff described the surreal experience of watching the singer writing the chorus in real time. “She just got behind the mic, she just sang that part,” he recalled. “She heard it, I heard it. And if anyone didn’t hear how brilliant it was, they’re a moron.”
He also touched on the whirlwind moment he and Swift wrote the bridge to the pop star’s Reputation track “Getaway Car,” which the pair captured on video. Fans loved the clip so much, Antonoff re-created it with Swift onstage during a surprise guest appearance at the Eras Tour last year.
“I remember the moment that Taylor was sitting in my apartment and we were doing ‘Getaway Car,’ and it’s like, these things, they tell you what they are, and they’re pretty unimpeachable,” he told Lowe. “So I guess that’s what I look for, or that’s why I know I could do something with someone, is if that’s all we’re looking for, is this feeling.”
Antonoff’s new album Bleachers arrives March 8.
