Pop
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Liam Payne’s tragic death at the age of 31 on Wednesday (Oct. 16) has provided the pop world a sorrowful opportunity to reflect on his legacy as a member of One Direction and as a solo artist. Payne helped 1D conquer the world as an integral part of the five-piece pop group, then moved on recording on his own with his debut single, “Strip That Down” featuring Quavo, which became a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017.
Less clear, however, is the status of Payne’s unreleased solo material — and whether a follow-up to his debut album, 2019’s LP1, was completed upon his passing.
Following One Direction’s final studio album, 2015’s Made In The A.M., Payne signed a solo deal with Republic Records in 2016, and “Strip That Down” streaked to a No. 10 peak on the Hot 100 upon its May 2017 release. Payne’s debut solo album, LP1, arrived through Republic in December 2019 and featured a wide array of collaborators, including Zedd, J Balvin, A Boogie wit da Hoodie and Rita Ora.
This March, Payne released “Teardrops,” a snappy rhythmic pop track with a booming chorus that allowed the singer to showcase his falsetto. “Teardrops” — which was co-written with Jamie Scott and *NSYNC star JC Chasez — marked Payne’s first single since 2021’s “Sunshine,” which he contributed to the soundtrack for the animated film Ron’s Gone Wrong.
“‘Teardrops’ is about the vulnerability of heartbreak and the challenge of overcoming those moments,” Payne said in a press statement upon the new single’s release. He added that the track was “the start of a new beginning,” with more music planned for 2024.
Prior to the release of “Teardrops,” Payne had spent extended time in the studio with Scott, the British songwriter-producer who had contributed to One Direction smashes like “Story of My Life,” “Night Changes” and “Drag Me Down,” and co-written hits like “Cold Water” by Major Lazer and “This Town” by Payne’s 1D band mate Niall Horan. In a press release, Payne had described working with longtime collaborator Scott on new music as a “year-long process of self-reflection.”
“Teardrops” has earned 3 million official U.S. streams to date, according to Luminate, but did not chart on the Hot 100. Outside of an acoustic version of “Teardrops” released later in March, no other material from Payne had been released in 2024, and an official follow-up to LP1 had yet to be announced.
Reps for Republic Records did not respond to requests for comment about the status of Payne’s unreleased music, although the label did release a statement on Thursday morning (Oct. 17) honoring the singer: “We are deeply saddened and devastated by the tragic passing of Liam Payne, an extraordinary artist whose music touched millions. His legacy will live on through the timeless work he created, and he will forever be remembered as an icon of his generation. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and fans during this difficult time.”
Meanwhile, fans have flooded the comments of Payne’s official YouTube videos with remembrances and appreciations. “Liam Payne, You have put smiles across billions of fans,” reads the highest-rated comment on the clip for the “Teardrops” acoustic version. “I hope you rest in peace.”
Anyone who has been involved, even tangentially, in pop duo Tegan and Sara‘s fanbase over the course of the last two decades can attest to just how tight-knit the Canadian performers are with their followers. Seen as a community of like-minded (and largely queer) individuals keen on making safe, inclusive spaces for one another, the Tegan and Sara fan community is commonly lauded as a good example of what pop fandom can look like.
Seated at a desk in her hotel room, Tegan Quin describes to Billboard a very different feeling she’s developed about her fans. “If we’re being truthful and honest, then I have to say that I’m afraid of our audience,” she offers, grimacing as she says it.
It may sound like an odd statement coming from Tegan — that is, until you’ve watched the new documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (debuting Friday, Oct. 18 on Hulu). Over the course of an hour and a half, Tegan, Sara and documentarian Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs. Spears, Mommy Dead and Dearest) walk audiences through an elaborate scheme that began around 2008, in which an anonymous individual posed as Tegan online and proceeded to exploit, manipulate and harass both the duo and their fans for over a decade.
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Throughout the course of the film, the Quin sisters and Carr detail how Fake Tegan (often referred to in the doc as “Fegan”) hacked the singer’s personal files in 2011, giving them access to everything from unreleased demo recordings to photos of her real passport — much of which they used to convince fans and friends alike that they were the real Tegan. As they try to uncover the culprit, Tegan and Carr simultaneously interview a number of the fans who found themselves on the receiving end of Fegan’s scheme, examining how these scams work, and the emotional toll they take on their victims.
It’s a story that Tegan originally never intended to tell the public — the doc details the band’s efforts to protect themselves and their fans by not giving more voice to the online imposter. But after listening to the hit podcast Sweet Bobby, which details a similar true story of a woman caught in an intricate web of internet deception, she felt the urge to finally speak about her own experience.
“I ended up telling the Fake Tegan story to a friend, and he said, ‘You should write that down,’” Tegan tells Billboard. After writing out everything she could remember from her experience with her catfisher, Tegan approached podcaster and Rolling Stone contributing editor Jenny Eliscu to ask for advice on what to do with it. Eliscu introduced Tegan to Carr, who urged her to tell the story on camera.
“Obviously, I wrote the story, so I was ready to tell the story. Was I ready to hand it off to somebody? Was I ready to have a full film made about this? No,” Tegan says, still squirming in her seat. “I was projecting fear — fear that we’d alienate our audience, fear we would agitate Fake Tegan, fear that people would be like, ‘Who cares?’”
Even before Fake Tegan began terrorizing their community, Sara describes how she and her sister had begun to grow slightly wary about the reality of fame. Where the early days of their career saw the duo regularly interacting with their fans after shows, continued success and more frenzied interactions with fans forced the pair to reconsider their approach.
“It was such a part of indie and punk culture to bro down with the people in the audience, to go sell merch and have a beer with your fans after the show,” Sara says. “To then say at some point that you don’t want to stand outside in the dark with strangers after we’ve played a show and done press all day … those were such small changes we made, but they had such a big cultural punch within our community.”
Enter Fegan; after successfully hacking an iDisk for the pair’s management, the catfish began posing on early message boards and social media sites like Facebook and LiveJournal as Tegan, creating connections, friendships and occasionally even romantic relationships with fans. They would send through unreleased recordings and unposted, personal photos of both Tegan and Sara, using them as supposed proof that they were who they said they were to the fans they were scamming.
In detailing multiple fans’ conversations with Fegan, Fanatical does not aim to criticize or mock people who fell for this scheme — it often does the opposite, taking great lengths to show that, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could be entrapped by a scammer.
Tegan even explains that earlier cuts of the documentary featured an FBI investigator hired by Carr to talk the band and their team through just how complex Fegan’s operation was — and how they created multiple accounts using a variety of different IP addresses to fool everyone. “Witnessing that forensic investigation removed any part of me still thinking, ‘Why would people fall for this?’ This took time and money and sophistication, and yet we so often just go, ‘Well, that person clicked on a link, what an idiot,’” she says. “You can’t watch this film and think that our fans fell for an easy-to-figure-out ruse — Erin was so clear that she wanted people to watch this film and actually feel compassion and empathy for these fans.”
As the documentary goes on, Carr and the Quin sisters begin to examine how fan behavior can turn toxic. The film shows how, as time went on and the band’s fan base grew, online interactions with fans began to grow scarier, where addresses and phone numbers for the band’s family members and significant others would getting posted on message boards, leading to the kind of harassment that’s become all too common for celebrities in the modern day.
“This happens to almost every celebrity [who reaches that level of fame] — actors, politicians, athletes. musicians, you name it,” Sara tells Billboard. “And I think we, as a culture, have to look at the way that we treat people in positions of power and celebrities.”
It’s a refrain with renewed significance in 2024, as artists like Chappell Roan begin to confront the harsh reality of what bad behavior from fans looks like. But Sara points out that this kind of behavior was perpetuated long before Roan asked her fans to leave her alone, and yet we only find ourselves at the beginning of this conversation today.
“What’s the real problem that causes this? Why is it a story right now, and why wasn’t it a story when other people asked to be left alone?” she posits. “This is a product of the culture we’ve created. If we don’t like the behavior — and it seems that most of us don’t like it — then what does that say about the culture we’ve built around art?”
That culture, Tegan notes, was largely built by one specific group of people. “The billionaires that own the record labels and the streamers and the people working for them are guilty,” she says. “They are driving artists to build obsessive, parasocial, frantic fanbases on social media platforms where we basically have to pay to access our mailing lists. So many artists are walking around, millions of dollars in debt so that our fans can listen to music for free on streaming services but spend $5k to go see a show, which only builds even more frantic competitiveness among the fans. Every part of our industry is broken, so I understand why people in the industry say ‘I don’t know how to fix bad fan behavior,’ and then run away.”
In one particularly wrenching scene of the doc, Tegan participates in a tense phone call with a fan (referred to anonymously in the film as “Tara”) who fell victim to Fegan’s scam. In earlier scenes, it’s revealed that this fan also actively fought with and bullied other fans, and even wrote and published a fan-fiction story about Tegan and Sara involving incest.
When Tegan called out this behavior and asked Tara to explain why they would do that, she’s immediately met with a stunning response: “You weren’t affected in that capacity,” Tara said, claiming her actions had no impact on the pop singer’s life. “It barely skimmed the surface.”
As shocking as the scene is, Tegan says that it’s a refrain she heard from multiple victims of Fake Tegan. “[There were] multiple victims who didn’t think that I would care about what was happening to me. That I was rich and famous and didn’t give a s–t,” she explains. “I was like, ‘Oh no! We’re f–ked if we think that just because someone is in a band, they are somehow impervious to judgement and vulnerability and sadness!’”
It’s why, as Sara points out, so many artists feel fear when it comes to their fans. “We seem like we have all the power, and in a lot of cases we do — we have security, and barricades in place [at concerts]. But that security and those barricades are there because we are vulnerable to the mass of people who are coming to see us perform,” she explains. “We don’t say to our audience, ‘Hello, Cleveland! We’re super afraid of all of you, because there are 5,000 of you, and if you decided to, you could overrun Bill, John and Mark here up at the barricade and tear us limb from limb!’ The power structure is weird.”
At the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, both Tegan and Sara say they found themselves surprised when the audience began laughing during a section of the film that showed social media messages from other fandoms threatening to dox their favorite artists’ critics. While Tegan says they likely laughed because “this is the first time in the film that it’s not about us, and they’re trying to get that nervous energy out,” she couldn’t help but feel a little concerned.
“They were also laughing because that’s just what we do now — we laugh at each other. We watch videos of each other failing and doing stupid s–t and saying dumb s–t, and we take glee and pleasure from that,” she says, sighing. “It’s why I hope people just experience some compassion watching this movie.”
Gracie Abrams’ Emily in Paris synch earns the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart, powered by Tunefind (a Songtradr company), for September 2024.
Rankings for the Top TV Songs chart are based on song and show data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of September 2024.
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“Close to You” appears in the fourth-season finale of Emily in Paris, the Lily Collins-starring Netflix series. The full season premiered Sept. 12.
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The song earned 21.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams and sold 3,000 downloads in September, according to Luminate. It peaked at No. 49 on the June 22-dated Billboard Hot 100 and ranks at No. 90 on the most recently published, Oct. 19-dated chart.
Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain,” which appears in the debut season of fellow Netflix series Nobody Wants This, places at No. 2 on Top TV Songs. It racked up 16.4 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.
The track, from her album Anti, is heard in the third episode of the series, which stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The single hit No. 5 on the Hot 100 in 2017.
The song is one of three from Nobody Wants This on the 10-position Top TV Songs chart, joined by Frank Sinatra’s “Theme From New York, New York” (No. 8; 3.4 million streams, 1,000 sold) and HAIM’s “Now I’m In It” (No. 10; 515,000 streams).
Netflix continues its domination of Top TV Songs’ top three with Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” at No. 3 after playing in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The song, a No. 2 Hot 100 hit in 1987, drew 8.1 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.
The classic also reaches Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated Oct. 19 (with older songs eligible to make Billboard’s multimetric song charts if ranking in the top half and with meaningful reasons for their resurgences). It enters at No. 16 and finds its way onto Rock Digital Song Sales at No. 14 and Alternative Streaming Songs at No. 23.
Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain,” also featured in Monsters, likewise hits Top TV Songs, at No. 6 (3.4 million streams, 2,000 sold). Catalog gains for the duo — multiple songs by the pair are featured in Monsters — drives its 4 EP onto the Billboard 200 at No. 197 with 8,000 equivalent album units. It marks Milli Vanilli’s first appearance on the chart in nearly 34 years, since the chart dated Oct. 27, 1990.
See the full Top TV Songs top 10, also featuring music from The Penguin, Tell Me Lies and Agatha All Along, below.
Rank, Song, Artist, Show (Network)1. “Close to You,” Gracie Abrams, Emily in Paris (Netflix)2. “Love on the Brain,” Rihanna, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)3. “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” Crowded House, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)4. “9 to 5,” Dolly Parton, The Penguin (HBO)5. “Ms. Jackson,” OutKast, Tell Me Lies (Hulu)6. “Blame It on the Rain,” Milli Vanilli, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)7. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Agatha All Along (Disney+)8. “Theme From New York, New York,” Frank Sinatra, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)9. “The Promise,” When in Rome, The Penguin (HBO)10. “Now I’m In It,” HAIM, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
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 Ariana Grande — whose standard-defying approach to pop music saw her withstand expectations and stigma to become one of the most prolific examples of what pop sovereignty can look like in the streaming era.
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It’s easy to view Ariana Grande’s rise to the highest echelons of pop stardom as a classic, uncomplicated success story within the music business. The child-actor-turned-pop-sensation route is well-trodden, after all, and at first glance, the 31-year-old singer-songwriter appears to be yet another benefactor of that industry pipeline.
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Yet once you dig further into her career, it becomes clear that her success was far from guaranteed. Over the course of the last decade-and-change, Grande created lasting hits amidst a mercurial musical landscape, endured unimaginable hardships and deftly navigated an industry that seemed to grow more volatile by the minute. Her standing today as a veritable icon is less a reflection of the efficacy of established systems that promoted her rise, and more a testament to her enduring, generational talent.
The star’s achievement came in part thanks to her drive for greatness from an early age. Born and raised in Boca Raton, Fla., Grande began her work towards a music career earlier than most — at age eight, she was already publicly performing on cruise ships, sporting events and her own personal YouTube channel, catching the attention of her family, her peers and even icons like Gloria Estefan. By the time she turned 13, the aspiring star had already booked her first professional gig as the bubbly, popular cheerleader Charlotte in the 2008 Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s musical 13.
Ariana Grande
Getty Images/Dave Hogan for One Love Manchester
Her foothold in the entertainment industry firmly established, Grande soon landed her breakthrough role as the loveable ditz Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. With a sing-song voice proclaiming increasingly zany one-liners over the course of the show’s run, the character quickly rose among the ranks of the children’s network’s beloved characters — thanks, especially, to the impressive vocal chops Grande got to occasionally flaunt throughout the three season run. Valentine became so popular among the network’s fans that she earned her own spinoff series with iCarly’s Sam Puckett (Jennette McCurdy) on 2013’s Sam & Cat.
The standout support for her character provided a natural on-ramp to Grande’s own musical aspirations — who better than the perky-best-friend-type to deliver a string of uncomplicated pop songs? For her 2011 debut single “Put Your Hearts Up,” Grande and her team at Republic Records aimed to capitalize on that progression with a bubblegum anthem in the style of the day’s superstars like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. But “Hearts” came and went, missing the Billboard charts and falling to bigger, bolder turbo-pop anthems of the era. Grande herself would later acknowledge that “Hearts Up” made more sense coming from her character than it did from her, making the entire experience feel “inauthentic and fake.”
So when it came time for her to reintroduce herself, Grande stepped away from the saccharine schtick of her Nickelodeon persona and leaned into her love of R&B. 2013’s “The Way,” featuring rising alt-hip-hop star Mac Miller, provided Grande with a streamlined, ebullient palette cleanser, placing the singer’s stratospheric four-octave range front and center. Vague, kid-friendly proclamations about giving a little love to change the world were exchanged for lyrics depicting a more mature, albeit still unspecific, approach to romance. Employing curated ‘90s sounds — including a lift of the central piano riff from Big Pun’s 1998 hit “Still Not a Player” — Grande happily aged herself up, gleefully drawing early comparisons between her airy, whistle-toned voice and The Voice, Mariah Carey. This, she told her eager fans, was the Ariana Grande she wanted to be.
Her audience certainly took that message to heart, earning the star her first of many top 10 debuts on the Hot 100. With “The Way,” Grande was ushered forth as a soon-to-be-star. Her subsequent debut album Yours Truly confirmed that “The Way” was the rule, not the exception — for every track on the record that didn’t quite work (like the doop-wop-meets-EDM strangeness of “Daydreamin’”), there was another that shined (the surefire R&B-pop killer “Piano” still stands out to this day), signaling the singer-songwriter’s vast potential in the pop space. With a No. 1 debut on Billboard 200, Yours Truly heralded the advent of Grande’s oncoming dominance.
Where 2013 saw Ariana arrive, the summer of 2014 saw her quickly start to take over. Her face adorned the covers of Billboard, Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue, wherein she earnestly began to separate herself from her child star roots — never quite falling into the stereotypical “good girl gone bad” persona, but instead offering new context to buffer between the public’s introduction to her through Cat Valentine and the pop star she aimed to be. As her pop persona developed, so did her image; gone were the flame-red locks that defined her Nickelodeon career, replaced now by her natural brunette hair tied up in a stratospheric ponytail.
All the while, her music became utterly inescapable: “Problem,” her funk-fueled dance-pop diatribe featuring rapper-of-the-moment Iggy Azalea, dominated the airwaves in the early summer (bolstered in part by a whisper hook from her then-beau Big Sean); “Break Free,” her Zedd-produced EDM-pop anthem, gained steam shortly thereafter; and “Bang Bang,” her girlboss team-up with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj, exploded into the zeitgeist.
As each of her three singles peaked within the Hot 100’s top three slots at the end of August, Grande became the second woman in the history of the chart (alongside Adele) to maintain three tracks simultaneously in the top 10 as a lead artist. By the time Grande’s powerhouse sophomore LP My Everything arrived — along with its fourth-straight top-10 hit “Love Me Harder” featuring a then-lesser-known alt-R&B act called The Weeknd — the singer had already been ordained as the Next Big Thing in pop music, just one year after her debut album dropped.
With that attention came a predictable wave of controversy. Fans accused Grande of acting like a “diva” to her fans, with some drawing comparisons to her pop idol Mariah Carey. Rumors swirled of a feud with her Sam & Cat co-star Jennette McCurdy. A September 2014 headline in The Washington Post warned that the pop star was “on the brink of a major image problem,” stating that, as undeniable as Grande’s talent was, she was still a “very, very new name” in an industry with “a strange fascination with seeing the ‘fall’ of a newcomer as much as the ‘rise.’”
Ariana Grande
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But nothing could have prepared us for one of the most deeply bizarre celebrity scandals of the 2010s — Donutgate. A leaked security video caught Grande licking a donut on display at a bakery in Lake Elsinore, Ca., while proclaiming that she “hates America” and kissing her backup dancer Ricky Alvarez. The public reaction came swiftly, with fans, pundits and industry professionals alike asking, what the hell is a rising star doing tonguing a donut she didn’t buy? A drop from Wikileaks would later reveal that even the Obama White House kept their distance, rejecting a proposal for Ariana to perform. The star made multiple apologies for the incident, assuring the public that her actions were those of a dumb kid, promising that “I’m going to learn from my mistakes.”
Still, it wasn’t until 2016’s flirtatious and sonically fluctuating Dangerous Woman that Grande faced diminishing returns. Its intended lead single “Focus” earned too little attention on the charts, and too much attention as a reskin of 2014’s “Problem,” that the label decided to cut it wholecloth from the album. The set became her first not to clinch the top spot on the Billboard 200, failing to dethrone Drake’s Views for its reign atop the chart. Critics, meanwhile, were divided over the album’s sound. Some praised the singer for taking a bolder, more daring approach to her established pop-n-b aesthetic, singling out the bombastic retro-soul title track “Dangerous Woman” and provocative reggae-pop Nicki Minaj duet “Side to Side.” Others heard the sound of a would-be superstar still struggling to figure out her sound three albums later.
A slight career dip certainly didn’t deter Grande from cementing her position as the pop star of the day. In March 2016, she served double duty as host and musical guest on SNL, poking fun at Donutgate; a few months later, she dazzled audiences with her spot-on impersonations of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears on The Tonight Show; in September, she showcased her blissful romance with now-boyfriend Miller on his “My Favorite Part;” she even closed out the year on NBC’s telecast of Hairspray Live, playing the role of Penny Singleton alongside stage and screen stars like Jennifer Hudson, Harvey Fierstein and Martin Short. As she embarked on her second arena tour in 2017 — which would go on to gross $71 million, according to Billboard Boxscore — Grande appeared to be an unstoppable force.
Tragedy, as it turned out, is an immovable object. On May 22, 2017, minutes after Grande’s live performance concluded at the UK’s Manchester Arena, a terrorist detonated a suicide bomb in the arena’s foyer. 22 people were killed in the attack — twelve of whom were under the age of 16 — marking the deadliest act of terrorism on British soil since the 7/7 bombings of 2005. A public inquiry revealed in 2022 that more than 800 people were injured as a result of the attack. Grande escaped the attack physically unharmed, but emotionally “broken,” as she wrote in a tweet the day following the attack.
In the years to come, Grande would describe her experience with post-traumatic stress disorder following the attack, and the immense anxiety she suffered as a result. “I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well … I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience,” she told British Vogue. “I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
After successfully hosting her One Love Manchester benefit show — featuring artists including Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus to help raise over $13 million for the attack’s victims — Grande finished out the remainder of her postponed tour and retreated from the public eye. Where her Twitter and Instagram accounts were once littered with personal messages recounting her day-to-day experiences with fame, now there was a deafening silence.
Perhaps that’s why so many view “No Tears Left To Cry” as the turning point in Grande’s already impressive career. Over the course of three and a half minutes, the singer reset the narrative, acknowledging the abject horror she and her fans had been through while defiantly promising to move forward with light and optimism. House and disco stylings delivered the burst of joy she so earnestly sought on the track, bringing Grande’s vision for herself and her fans firmly into the forefront of the cultural consciousness. Yet what made “Tears” so remarkable was Ariana’s deft handling of tone: The song never comes across as a purely enthusiastic rallying cry, nor does it fit the mold of mournful reflections on loss — instead, Grande pulled off its own galvanizing message of picking it up and moving on.
Ariana Grande
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Ariana Grande
With the album that followed, 2018’s Sweetener, Grande found something deeper than any of her past works. Albums like My Everything and Dangerous Woman took a kitchen-sink approach to finding what sounds produced hits, with Grande trying on new pop diva personas to best fit each package. Sweetener, by contrast, provided no artifice: It was just Ariana, the confessional, sometimes goofy, always-earnest singer-songwriter embracing the most vulnerable parts of herself. Though the album never quite achieved the level of chart domination exhibited during My Everything’s undeniable 2014 run, it exhibited an evolution, both artistic and personal, that once eluded Grande.
The album’s commercial success was certainly helped by the fact that Ariana had become the hottest topic in the months leading up to and following its release, thanks in no small part to her whirlwind romance with SNL star Pete Davidson. Tabloids, paparazzi, social media and the public at large were obsessed with the odd couple. When they were in public together, photos appeared online in seconds; when Ariana shared a one-minute interlude on Sweetener named after the comedian, articles appeared dissecting its romantic lyrics; and when the pop superstar bragged about her sudden fiancé’s “BDE,” fans turned it into a meme.
But a question arose from Sweetener’s shift — could Ariana Grande, Serious Artist coexist with Ariana Grande, Cultural Phenomenon? Within four months of the album’s release, a resounding answer crash-landed in the form of an out-of-nowhere, cycle-breaking single that smashed through Ariana’s own release pattern and her audience’s presuppositions. “Thank U, Next,” Grande’s cheeky response to the media storm around her breakup with Davidson and the death of her ex-boyfriend and collaborator Mac Miller, deftly toed the line between her blockbuster era and her newfound emotional honesty. Memes, think pieces, reviews and shot-by-shot analyses of its Mean Girls-inspired video poured out in the weeks to come, only further bolstered by the song’s No. 1 debut on the Hot 100 — somehow the first of the pop star’s career.
From that point forward, Grande became the invincible pop juggernaut that had been promised since her debut. The track’s follow-up — the Sound of Music-interpolating hip-hop jam “7 Rings” — immediately earned Grande her second No. 1; the release of her lauded fifth studio album Thank U, Next saw Ariana beat Cardi B’s record for the most simultaneous top 40 hits by a female artist. She even became the first solo artist in the history of the Hot 100 to simultaneously occupy the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 spots, and then the only act in 55 years to do so since The Beatles. Perhaps the most telling records that Grande managed to smash in 2019 came from Spotify: Upon its release, Thank U, Next shattered streaming giant Ed Sheeran’s record for the most weekly streams of any pop album, while within a year, Grande became the most streamed female artist on Spotify, surpassing pop superhero Rihanna.
Ariana Grande
Nicholas Hunt/FilmMagic
Where Adele had revitalized the art of album sales in 2010, Grande became proof of concept at how the streaming era could generate gargantuan pop idols in the modern music business. Curating the social media experience for her army of Arianators over the course of her career paid dividends in Grande’s modern eras, as her loyal fan base rallied to support their fave at all costs, even as they occasionally crossed the line with comments about her image and personal life. She learned from the prolificacy of her hip-hop contemporaries like Drake that more was more when it came to content creation. Putting those two skills together, Grande became the artist to beat in the streaming game.
A global pandemic couldn’t even seem to stop Grande’s cultural takeover. A pair of early-lockdown collaborations — the retro-pop Justin Bieber duet “Stuck With U” and the French house Lady Gaga banger “Rain on Me” — earned Grande another pair of Hot 100-toppers. A year later, her sultry turn on renewed superstar The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” turned the slow-burning hit into an immediate chart-topper, sending the song to No. 1 on the Hot 100 within two weeks of its release. Even when her sixth LP Positions fell short of critics’ newly lofty expectations, she still took both the album and its title track to the summit of the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, respectively.
Today, even if her commercial power has waned from its 2019-2020 zenith, Grande has found a level of consistency amongst her cultural ubiquity. Eternal Sunshine, the singer’s sparkling meta-narrative on the pitfalls of public image, spawned yet another pair of No. 1 hits for the singer-songwriter, as well as earning a debut atop the Billboard 200. And as she gears up for her lifelong dream of playing Glinda in the long-awaited film adaptation of Wicked, it seems that Grande has come full circle, all the way back around to her theater roots.
Trace that ring from start to finish, and you’ll witness something fascinating; a young woman who managed not only to transform her pain into prosperity, but created a mold-breaking model for success. The career framework Grande built has only benefitted recent pop ingénues like Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae, who’ve capitalized on her streaming-focused strategies and sweetly melodic (and slyly winking) pop&B sound to rocket-launch their own music. Ariana Grande consciously changed how pop music is perceived and enjoyed by the masses, in a way a new generation of fans and artists will forever be so f–king grateful for.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back Thursday as we reveal our No. 9 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. Adele
Liam Payne‘s preliminary autopsy report has been shared by the prosecutor’s office in Argentina, revealing the 31-year-old singer died from internal and external traumas upon falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires Wednesday (Oct. 16). According to the Spanish-language press release from the country’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office that […]
Mitzi Gaynor, a beloved star of the 1950s whose effervescent personality, radiant personality and triple-threat skills as an actress, singer and dancer earned her a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Ensign Nellie Forbush in the 1958 film adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific had died at 93.
The star’s managers announced her death in an Instagram post, noting that she “passed away peacefully” on Thursday morning (Oct. 17) of natural causes. “For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage,” read the announcement. “She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer.”
Gaynor, born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on Sept. 4, 1931, was best known for her run of starring roles in a series of 1950s movie musicals, including 1954’s There’s No Business Like Show Business, 1956’s Anything Goes and 1957’s Les Girls. Born to a violinist father and dancer mother, Gaynor got an early start on her career when her family moved from Detroit to Los Angeles when she was 11-years-old, leading to her landing a spot as a singer/dancer in the Los Angeles Civil Light Opera two years later.
By 17, she signed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, making her film debut in 1950’s My Blue Heaven, where she starred alongside Betty Grable. By the next year she landed her first starring role in the musical western Golden Girl, where she played a character based on early 20th century actress Lotta Crabtree.
Her first big screen success came in 1952 with the musical Bloodhounds of Broadway — based on a Damon Runyon story — which kicked off nearly a decade of starring roles that showcased her versatility and winning, shining personality, which manifested in film with a mix of innocence and sex appeal. She shared the screen with such established stars of the day as Ethel Merman, Johnnie Ray and Marilyn Monroe and sang songs penned by Irving Berlin in There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor in the 1956 adaptation of Cole Porter’s stage musical Anything Goes. Other highlights included 1957’s The Joker Is Wild, with Frank Sinatra and Charles Vidor, and that year’s Les Girls, which also featured music by Porter and co-starred Gene Kelly.
Her winning streak continued with top billing in the WWII romantic musical South Pacific, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for best motion picture actress – comedy/musical for her exuberant performances of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” and “Some Enchanted Evening.” She appeared in a handful of other movies over the next few years, including 1963’s For Love or Money with Kirk Douglas, Gig Young and Julie Newmar, before pivoting to a successful run as the hots of a series of TV specials.
“I quit films because they quit me,” she told the TV Academy Foundation in a 2012 in explaining why she moved from the big screen to the little one. “Marilyn Monroe was now the new Alice Faye/Betty Grable, she was doing the musicals at Fox. I wasn’t going to do My Fair Lady, and I wasn’t going to [sing] ‘The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Screaming’ — there was nothing for me to do.”
She famously performed between the two sets by the Beatles on a Feb. 16, 1964 episode of the Ed Sullivan Show, singing a 13-minute medley of “Too Darn Hot” along with “The More I See You,” “Birth of the Blues” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The episode from the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach aired a week after Sullivan legendarily introduced the Fab Four to American audiences in one of the most-watched TV moments of all time.
Before he teamed up with Cher, Gaynor was glittery celebrity gown designer Bob Makie’s first A-list client, modeling his one-of-a-kind creations during her stint as a headliner in Las Vegas in the 1960s.
That run paved the way for Gaynor’s first TV special, Mitzi, which aired on NBC in Oct. 1968 and was followed by a second one on the network the next year, as well as half a dozen similar song-and-dance specials on CBS from 1973-1978; her nine specials were nominated for a total of 16 Emmy Awards, though she didn’t take one home until 2008 thanks to her PBS special Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle! The Special Years.
A frequent performer on the Academy Awards broadcasts — wowing the crowd in 1954 with her take on “The Moon Is Blue” and again in 1959 with her signature “There’s No Business Like Show Business” — Gaynor also recorded two albums for Verve Records, 1959’s Mitzi and Mitzi Gaynor Sings the Lyrics of Ira Gerswhin.
“We take great comfort in the fact that her creative legacy will endure through her many magical performances capture on film and video, through her recordings and especially through the love and support audiences around the world have shared so generously with her throughout her life and career,” wrote managers Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda in their tribute.
See the statement announcing Gaynor’s death and some of her career highlights below.
On Wednesday night (Oct. 16), Billie Eilish beamed with pride as tens of thousands of birds of a feather stuck together and relished in the cinematic world of her Hit Me Hard and Soft LP. The nine-time Grammy winner played her first of three sold-out shows at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, the most times she’s ever graced the iconic venue on a headlining tour.
Anchored by the still-permeating tracks of Hard and Soft, Eilish’s latest trek displays her remarkable growth as a musician, vocalist, and performer, as well as her almost singular ability to cultivate intimacy in spaces that are diametrically opposed to that feeling. Dressed in her now-trademark ensemble of an oversized t-shirt, baggy shorts, sneakers, and a Yankees snapback, Eilish sprinted around the stage, spent some time with fans on the floor, and treated The Garden two hours to some of the best and most adventurous pop music of the last half-decade.
The morning of the show, Eilish launched a SoHo pop-up in collaboration with American Express featuring exclusive merchandise and interactive stations inspired by the world of Hard and Soft. Before she took the stage, pop-rock sibling duo Nat & Alex Wolff — who some fans fondly remember as The Naked Brothers Band from Nickelodeon — warmed up the arena, delivering spirited renditions of tracks like 2020’s “Glue” and “Soft Kissing Hour,” an unreleased Eilish-produced cut. At one point, Alex Wolff ran an entire lap on the floor around the stage before kicking off the final song in the duo’s set — a particularly impressive feat considering what a busy weekend the multihyphenate has ahead of him. The Line, his new film in which he stars alongside Halle Bailey, Denise Richards and the late Angus Cloud, opens on Friday (Oct. 18).
Wolff’s affinity for a quick lap was just a teaser for Eilish, who frequently sprinted around the stage during her livelier songs. With the stage in the center of the arena and a setup that prioritized her band and incredibly intricate lighting design over backup dancers and elaborate set pieces, Eilish offered up a show that played on the minimalist bent of her music. The sparseness of the stage created scenes that were as enthralling and they were harrowing, particularly during ballads like “When the Party’s Over,” “Lovely” and “What Was I Made For?” Of course, eye-popping pyro and dizzying lasers played up the spunky, electronic undertones of hits like “Bad Guy,” “Therefore I Am” and “Guess.”
Ultimately a gorgeous presentation of her latest Billboard chart-topping album, Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour was also a commendable victory lap for a pop star who only seems to know how to level up. Here were the eight best moments from Wednesday night’s show.
Billie Builds “When the Party’s Over” From Scratch
Prior to Liam Payne‘s death on Wednesday (Oct. 16), a hotel manager in Buenos Aires, Argentina called 911 to report a guest who was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol,” adding, “he’s destroying the entire room and, well, we need you to send someone, please.”
According to the Associated Press, the caller’s voice grew more anxious as the call continued, with the hotel manager noting that the room had a balcony. Former One Direction and solo star Payne, 31, was found dead on Wednesday after officials said he sustained “extremely serious injuries” in a fall from the third-floor balcony of his room — approximately 42-45 feet from the ground — at the Casa Sur Hotel in the Palermo neighborhood of the nation’s capital city.
While the initial reports stated that Payne fell, the AP reported that Buenos Aires Security Ministry spokesperson Pablo Policicchio told the news service in a statement that Payne “had jumped from the balcony of his room.”
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Police were dispatched the to scene following the emergency call around 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday according to Policicchio, after being told by hotel staff that there was an “aggressive man who could be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.” Officials are reportedly still investigating the circumstances of Payne’s death, with an autopsy under way.
In the days since, fans have gathered in a vigil outside the hotel for the beloved boy band star, lighting candles and singing 1D’s “Night Changes” and “Story of My Life,” while his music industry peers and family have shared their grief over the shocking loss.
Payne’s rise to stardom began in 2010 at age 17 when he was paired with the other members of what would become One Direction by Simon Cowell after the quintet’s singers all auditioned for the British X-Factor as solo acts. Along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik, Payne was thrust into instant global adoration in 2012 after the late 2011 release of the band’s debut single, “What Makes You Beautiful,” which went to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in the UK.
The song memorably opens with one of Payne’s most beloved, iconic vocals, in which he sings, “You’re insecure, don’t know what for/ You’re turning heads when you walk through the door/ Don’t need makeup to cover up/ Bein’ the way that you are is enough.” During the band’s subsequent six-year run they scored four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and six top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits.
After the group hit pause, Payne — who never headlined his own tour — released his lone solo album, 2019’s LP1, as well a string of singles, including the 2017 Billboard Hot 100 No. 10 Hit “Strip That Down” (featuring Quavo), “Get Low” (feat. Zedd, No. 23, 2017), “Bedroom Floor” (No. 35, 2017), “For You (Fifty Shades Freed)” (feat. Rita Ora, No. 37, 2018) and “Familiar” (feat. J Balvin, No. 25, 2018). He also released the 2018 EP First Time, as well as singles with Jonas Blue and Lennon Stella (“Polaroid,” 2018), A Boogie Wit da Hoodie (“Stack It Up,” 2019), Cheat Codes (“Live Forever,” 2019) and Dixie D’Amelio (“Naughty List,” 2020).
His final single, “Teardrops,” co-written by former *NSYNC member JC Chasez, was released in March.
After the group went on indefinite hiatus in 2016, the singer was open about how the dizzying rush of fame overwhelmed him, leading to a yearslong substance use struggle. In July 2023, he posted an eight-minute video in which he revealed that he was almost six months sober following a 100-day stay in a Louisiana rehab facility.
“I just kind of feel like I’ve got more of a grip on life and everything that was getting away from me, I just feel like I’ve got more of a handle on it,” Payne said at the time. “I just needed to take a little bit of time out for myself actually because I kind of became somebody who I didn’t really recognize anymore. And I’m sure you guys didn’t either. I was in bad shape up until that point and I was really happy to kind of put a stopper to life and work.”
In a 2019 interview, Payne admitted that he had trouble adjusting to 1D’s Beatles-like level of fan adoration at the height of the group’s success, frequently leaning on alcohol to cope with the stress. “It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on,” he said. “I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”
Then, in a Diary of a CEO podcast appearance in 2021, Payne talked about struggling with depression and substance use disorder during the chaotic 1D years. “I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where’s rock bottom for me?” the singer told host Stephen Bartlett. “And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No one would ever have seen it.”
He described how the pressure and intense fan attention during the height of the group’s fame transformed him into an “angry person” who turned to prescription pills and alcohol to numb his anxiety and fear. When host Bartlett asked if that period included “suicidal ideation,” Payne said it did, explaining, “There is some stuff that I have definitely never, never spoken about. It was really, really, really severe. It was a problem. And it was only until I saw myself after that I was like, ‘Right, I need to fix myself.’”
Payne said the substance use continued for “many years” and then returned during England’s COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when he took a break from recording solo songs for a few months due to exhaustion, only to find himself drinking more and more, and earlier and earlier in the day. “What I’ve found more than anything with the alcohol is boundaries. If you’re on Zoom you can probably get away with being a bit tipsy, when you’re not supposed to be,” he said at the time.
After catching a glimpse of one of his performances on TV looking bloated and unwell, he said he began working out, attending meetings and going to therapy.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with mental health or substance abuse disorders, reach out to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration‘s national helpline 24/7 at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for confidential treatment referrals and information. For those who are experiencing suicidal thoughts and/or distress, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 by texting 988.
ROSÉ is launching her solo era, and she’s bringing one of pop music’s biggest names along for the ride. On Thursday (Oct. 17), the BLACKPINK star and Bruno Mars announced that they’re teaming up on a new single titled “Apt.” — and it’s coming even sooner than you think. Breaking the news to fans via […]
Liam Payne‘s family has spoken out after the former One Direction member’s death on Wednesday (Oct. 16. “We are heartbroken. Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul,” the statement shared with the BBC on Thursday (Oct. 17) said. “We are supporting each other the […]