Pop
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Rihanna recently said that she wants to collaborate with Billie Eilish — and according to the 22-year-old pop star, she’s waiting by the phone for the Fenty mogul’s call.
In a new cover story interview with Complex published Thursday (Dec. 5), Eilish gushed about the moment RiRi shouted her out in October — “If I could only do a song with Billie Eilish, she’s so good,” the superstar said at the time — which the two-time Oscar winner said she “literally thought … was AI.”
“I’ve never met Rihanna,” Eilish continued to the publication. “She’s literally my idol. She’s the greatest of all time. She’s my complete dream collab.”
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“I don’t even answer that question when people are like, ‘Who would you like to collab with?’” she added. “But I always think Rihanna. I’m not going to say that, though! Why would I say that?! It’s not real. I would think, like, ‘She probably doesn’t even like me.’ I’ve never heard from her, and I’ve never had any interaction with her, so why would I have ever even thought about it?”
When the “Umbrella” singer first sang Eilish’s praises, the latter simply wrote in disbelief on Instagram Stories, “what in the absolute f–k.”
A few weeks later, the “Birds of a Feather” artist says she finds the whole thing funny. “I was like, ‘Well, b—h, I’ve been sitting here this whole time!’” Eilish told Complex, laughing. “What the f–k is she even talking about? Like, as if I’ve been saying, ‘No.’ Rihanna! Riri!? I’ll literally do anything you want. That’s insane.”
The interview comes about six months after Eilish released her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The star — who is currently on tour in support of the LP — also recently sat down with CBS News Sunday Morning and spoke about how she came into her own as a songwriter while working on the project with her older brother and producer, Finneas.
“My passion has never been songwriting,” she said in a video snippet from the interview airing Dec. 8. “My passion is music, and performing, and singing. And songwriting is something that I do so that I can then sing it and perform it … I did way more writing on this album than anything ever.”
Watch the clip from the upcoming episode of CBS Sunday Morning below.
Superstar singer-songwriter and two-time Oscar winner Billie Eilish opens up about her evolving view of songwriting. While her brother Finneas has always had a deep passion for it, Ellish saw songwriting as a means to perform and express herself. pic.twitter.com/CsnVg1NtAa— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) December 5, 2024
Charli XCX gives her all on stage, but it comes with a cost.
In a new video interview with Variety posted Wednesday (Dec. 4), the 32-year-old pop star opened up about suffering nerve damage from how intensely she performs, noting, “I find touring really hard emotionally.”
“I find the stage — especially these days — to be a very angry place for me,” she continued. “I’ve done a lot of physical damage to my body from performing, and I’m often in a lot of pain when I perform. Physically, I have nerve damage in my neck from things I’ve done on the stage.”
Charli is currently gearing up for a run of 2025 dates in support of her critically acclaimed album Brat. This year, she hit the road with Troye Sivan for their joint Sweat trek, an arrangement the “Von Dutch” artist called “a lot easier and less of an emotional battle for me.”
“For me to give a performance I feel is good enough, I have to really physically throw myself around and that makes me very upset when I do it,” she added. “It’s kind of this hellhole, but being with Troye softens that a lot.”
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The video comes alongside a feature interview with Variety, in which the musician opened up about the surprising success of Brat, her insecurities and more. At one point, she shared that her “Sympathy Is a Knife” remix collaborator Ariana Grande gave her advice on multiple fronts, including kick-starting her acting career and hosting SNL. (The “Yes, And?” singer helmed the show in September, followed by Charli in November.)
Charli also recalled bonding with the Wicked star over the “Sympathy Is a Knife” lyrics. “She had a lot to say,” the “365” artist said of Grande, who “gravitated” toward the track, according to Charli. “We went back and forth on the lyrics, talking about all the knives that we both felt in this industry.”
Watch Charli open up about her nerve damage above.
Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour Book is following in the footsteps of her record-smashing global tour of the same name. According to the Associated Press, Circana BookScan reported that the $39.99 Target exclusive book chronicling the career-spanning outing moved an eye-popping 814,000 copies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. That made it the biggest publishing launch […]
The holiday season hasn’t truly begun until the iconic Rockefeller Center tree has been lit, and NBC’s annual Christmas in Rockefeller Center telecast on Wednesday night (Dec. 4) brought together a list of all-star performers to celebrate. The Backstreet Boys took the stage to perform a heartwarming rendition of Nat King Cole’s holiday classic “The Christmas Song […]
BTS’ latest accomplishment is smooth like butter! The group notched their seventh entry into YouTube‘s Billion Views club with their 2021 music video for “Butter.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Their previous videos to hit one billion views on the platform include “Dynamite,” “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey and “DNA,” among […]
Chappell Roan was on countless people’s 2024 Spotify Wrapped roundups, but who was on hers?
On Wednesday (Dec. 4), the 26-year-old pop star revealed which artists were in her top five at the close of the year, sharing an old photo of herself posing next to a car decked out in camo-print decals on Instagram and writing, “this pic kind of insane.”
“Ps,” she added. “My Spotify wrapped most listened to artists were 1. Ariana [Grande] 2. Charli [XCX] 3. Heart 4. Justice 5. Kacey Musgraves.”
“Top song was barracuda ofc,” Roan added, referencing her third-most-streamed artist’s 1977 hit.
The Missouri native’s post comes on the same day Spotify unveiled its annual Wrapped feature, allowing users to see which artists and songs they streamed the most over the course of 2024 through specially curated playlists and shareable data cards. The platform also revealed its most-streamed artists overall — Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish, in that order — as well as its most popular songs of the year.
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Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” garnered the most listens globally on Spotify this year, followed by Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.” In the U.S., however, Roan scored the sixth-most streamed song with breakthrough single “Good Luck, Babe!” — which surpassed one billion streams just a few days prior to Wrapped arriving — bested only by “Espresso,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” and Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” nationally.
The “Hot to Go” singer’s debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was also the fifth-most streamed album in the U.S. Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology was No. 1 at home, followed by Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet and Noah Kahan’s Stick Season.
Roan has previously expressed her fandom of Grande, calling herself an “Arianator” in an August livestream and adding that she was “so excited” to see Wicked. She also gave Charli a shout-out in her September Rolling Stone cover story, naming the “Von Dutch” artist as one of several female stars who had reached out to her with support during the emotional low-points of her rise to fame, along with Katy Perry, Lorde, Muna, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and more.
On today’s (Dec. 4) episode of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century podcast, we finally get to No. 1 on our list with the period’s true standard-setter, a pop star who set the bar 25 years ago and has only continued to raise it in the years since. (Read our No. 1 Greatest […]
Kesha is reborn, and she’s celebrating her new musical chapter with a goddess-inspired Playboy photoshoot. In the photoset for Playboy’s Spotlight of the Month, directed by Brooke James, depicts Kesha as an angel as well as Venus — the Roman goddess of love and beauty — emerging from from a shell, just like in the […]
If you like it, then you should’ve put a ring on it — but a billion views isn’t a bad compromise. Fresh off of being named Billboard‘s No. 1 greatest pop star of the 21st century, Beyoncé‘s iconic music video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” has surpassed one billion views on YouTube […]
When you’ve been on the kind of career rip that Beyoncé‘s had for the past two decades, you get used to winning. That was the message from the singer’s mother, Tina Knowles, when TMZ caught up with her on Tuesday (Dec. 3), just hours after Billboard revealed that Bey was named the No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century.
Asked to respond to the honor, Knowles said, “that’s nice… very nice.” As for the follow-up question about whether the family ever gets used to the accolades heaped on their their daughter, Knowles offered up a succinct, “yeah.”
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The expectation of excellence was mirrored by Bey’s father Matthew Knowles as well, who boasted about the singer’s accomplishments in a loving post on X on Tuesday. “Beyoncé was shy growing up. But, as soon as she started singing, it was like a different person emerged and we knew from a very young age that she was destined to pursue her passion in music,” he wrote. “She turned everyone around her into a believer with her determination, work ethic, stage presence and talent.”
He also addressed his daughter directly, saying, “Beyoncé, I am so proud of you. This is another one of your many major distinctions, yet I sit here not surprised because I knew you were meant for greatness from the moment I held you in my arms for the first time!”
“While Taylor Swift is the century’s biggest pop star by the numbers — from album sales to streams to touring dominance — our editorial staff chose Beyoncé as our Greatest Pop Star of the Century, based on her full 25 years of influence, evolution and impact,” reads the intro to the essay about the Beyoncé.
The No. 1 slot placed Queen Bey over Swift (No. 2), as well as the rest of the top 10, which included Rihanna, Adele, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Drake.