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Jin‘s highly anticipated solo single “The Astronaut” has finally landed.
The BTS superstar revealed the stunning, nearly five-minute rock-pop track on Friday (Oct. 28), worldwide alongside its heartwarming music video.
While BTS had previously revealed that “The Astronaut” was co-written by Jin and Coldplay, the entire song reveals the stadium-sized rock sound that the British band is known for as a perfect bed for Jin’s steady, soothing vocals.
While Jin’s past solo songs like “Awake” and “Epiphany” have proven he can bring raw emotions to his ballads, “The Astronaut” is able to capture that same sentimental approach to a more upbeat, dynamic pop-rock song. If you listen closely, one can even hear Chris Martin seemingly harmonizing with Jin on a few notes.
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“The Astronaut” music video lets Jin embrace his actor side and tell a heartwarming story of an alien navigating Planet Earth, finding moments of wonder and joy throughout the journey, and ultimately deciding to call this planet his home. Jin looks cool and calm throughout the visual, which includes special cameos of his Coldplay collaborators and loving shoutouts to ARMY if one looks closely.
October is a major month for Jin’s music. Three of the star’s solo tracks hit worldwide streaming services for the first time on Oct. 21, and following the release of “The Astronaut” on Oct. 28, he’ll give the debut performance of the track alongside Coldplay less than 24 hours later at the band’s concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Fans can watch the concert at River Plate stadium in a movie experience with more than 3,500 theaters in more than 70 countries “cinecasting” the show.
Previous to this single, all seven members of BTS teamed up with Coldplay on the single “My Universe” for the latter’s Music of the Spheres album. The track debuted atop the Hot 100, becoming the first Hot 100 No. 1 by two groups each sporting lead billing on a song.
It’s been nearly a week since Taylor Swift dropped her 10th studio album Midnights, but she’s hardly done rolling out treats for fans.
The star unveiled two instrumental tracks on Thursday (Oct. 27) for “Question…?” and “Bejeweled,” which are both available to order as digital singles on Swift’s website.
The instrumentals come on the heels of Swift’s freshly released music video for “Bejeweled,” which features cameos from Haim, Laura Dern and Jack Antonoff as the star-studded crew puts their own twist on Cinderella.
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“Midnight, what a storied and fabled hour… On this sparkling evening I’ll be releasing my twist on a fairytale we all know. The one about the girl and her step sisters and the clock striking 12…” Swift captioned her announcement of the clip, alongside a photo of herself as Cinderella, sitting in a dark room wearing a worn down dress while sewing a glittery, midnight blue gown. “This video is wild, whimsical and created SPECIFICALLY for you, my beloved fans who have paved this shimmering path.”
Since releasing Midnights, Swift also dropped a 3am Edition of the album featuring seven additional tracks, as well as the music video for “Anti-Hero.” According to initial reports to Luminate, the album has earned more than 1.4 million equivalent album units in the U.S. through its first five days of release (through Oct. 25).
Midnights has the largest week for any album since Adele’s 25 debuted with 3.482 million in its first week (chart dated Dec. 12, 2015). And Midnights‘ traditional album sales total of 1.05 million continues to be the biggest sales week for a set since Swift’s own reputation album debuted with 1.216 million copies sold (chart dated Dec. 2, 2017).
Harry Styles transforms into a tentacled, bearded sea creature in a fishy new music video for his latest single “Music for a Sushi Restaurant.”
The Harry’s House visual just might be the heartthrob’s most high-concept narrative yet, as he saves himself from the sushi chef’s knives by showing off his enviable pipes and becoming an amphibious lounge singer before, well, you just have to watch how the story ends.
While you’re contemplating making sushi out of Styles, we’ve been taking a stroll down the memory lane of his videography and want to know: Which of the singer’s solo videos do you love the absolute most?
Styles released only two music videos from his self-titled debut solo album back in 2017: the high-flying “Sign of the Times” and the elementary school food fight of “Kiwi” filled with kids, cupcakes and an adorable pack of puppies.
When it came time to introduce his sophomore album Fine Line, he opted for something more sensual in the touchy-feely nighttime party that played out in the “Lights Up” video. From there, he fell into hilarious, The Shape of Water-style love with a goldfish in “Adore You” and played a flooding piano in “Falling.”
The beachy “Watermelon Sugar” provided the perfect memories of summer for Harries around the world, and he later enlisted Phoebe Waller-Bridge to dance with him through the old-fashioned treatment for “Treat People With Kindness.”
So far, Styles’ most recent album has featured three music videos — that is, if you don’t count the one he made for just $300 on The Late Late Show With James Corden for album cut “Daylight.” Do you prefer the giant turntable of No. 1 hit “As It Was” or the magical pillow fort of “Late Night Talking”? Or perhaps you’re a fan of Harry as a sea monster with a golden voice.
Vote for your favorite Harry Styles music video in Billboard‘s poll below!
Finneas took to Instagram on Thursday (Oct. 27) to share the details of a scary accident last week that led to a serious injury and surgery.
“Last Friday, I had the pleasure of crashing my electric bike, flying over the handlebars and absolutely demolishing my collarbone as well as sustaining a radial head fracture to my right elbow,” he wrote alongside a photo of his X-ray, in which you can see clear breaks in his bones. “The severity of the displacement of my collarbone meant I required surgery which I am now on the other side of and I’m feeling great!”
The Grammy winning artist went on to thank the doctors and professionals at the hospital who helped him, as well as his family and longtime girlfriend Claudia Sulewski for their care and support.
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Finneas added that “with hard work,” he will recover enough to be able to take the stage with his sister Billie Eilish for her upcoming “Hometown Encore” shows in Los Angeles on December 13, 15 and 16. The concerts at the Kia Forum will serve as a celebration of Eilish’s successful global tour in support of her Billboard 200 chart-topping album, Happier Than Ever.
“As foolish as I felt after the fall, my prevailing emotion is gratitude. You see, I was not wearing a helmet,” the 25-year-old star concluded his message. “Lesson forever learned. I feel so lucky to still be here. Take care of yourselves, thank your bodies for all that they do for you.”
Read his post in full below.
Kelly Clarkson, she’s like most of us. Well, in that she can’t get enough of Jimmy Eat World‘s signature 2001 hit “The Middle.” Which is why it made sense that the daytime talk show host and pop idol took a power pop swing at the oft-covered song on Thursday’s Kelly Clarkson Show during her “Kellyoke” segment.
Clarkson and her house band nailed the song’s chugging urgency, with the singer yelping the “everything will be alright” refrain before a brief, fleet-fingered guitar solo in an arrangement that layered in some tasty Hammond organ and punchy drums.
The beloved song from the Mesa, Arizona emo pop band’s Bleed American album was originally released in Oct. 2001 and hit its chart peak a few months later when it climbed to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Not for nothing, but when Clarkson released her 2015 single, “Heartbeat Song” critics couldn’t help point out that eerie similarity between the two song’s verses and choruses, so Kelly covering the track for “Kellyoke” makes good sense.
“The Middle” has long been a favorite go-to cover, including in an apocryphal story about Prince covering it at the 2009 Oscar after-party, footage of which resurfaced this summer to the band’s utter delight. It also got covered by Taylor Swift in a 2016 Apple ad. “Hearing that Prince had covered it at whatever Grammy afterparty he did or Taylor Swift hand-picking it to use for an Apple commercial? It’s like what?! What is that? I don’t know. I still freak out anytime I hear ‘The Middle’ or anything we’ve done, like, on the radio,” singer Jim Adkins told AZ Central earlier this year.
Check out Clarkson’s cover below.
Sweet creature? More like sea creature. Harry Styles just dropped the music video for “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” the third single off his third studio album, Harry’s House — released in May — and let’s just say things get a little fishy.
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In the Aube Perrie-directed video, the 28-year-old pop star portrays a majestic, bearded sea creature reeled in by a group of fishermen and prepped for cooking by sushi chefs at a restaurant aptly called Gill’s. But when the staff realize that the merman is actually a gifted singer, they save him from the boiling pot and transform their eatery into a live music lounge, starring Sea Creature Harry — who turns into a total scuba diva in the process.
But when his voice suddenly dries up mid show? It’s back to the cutting board for him — literally.
The project was first teased the same day of its Oct. 27 release just after midnight ET, when Styles’ official “Headquarters” Twitter account posted a still image from the video. Some were quick to notice that the Harry in the photo — pictured with long, scruffy facial hair — reminded them a lot of the Harry in Olivia Wilde’s August Don’t Worry Darling film. No spoilers, but the name of Styles’ character, Jack Chambers, began trending on Twitter after fans compared the teaser photo to certain scenes from Darling in which the Grammy winner’s hair and face appear similarly unkempt.
Styles’ brand new video follows visuals made for his Harry’s House Hot 100-topping lead single, “As It Was,” as well as “Late Night Talking,” uploaded to YouTube in July. The former video featured the “Watermelon Sugar” singer strutting atop a rotating platform in a sparkly red jumpsuit, while the latter saw him traveling through different dreamscape scenarios, sitting on a mobile bed as it races through the streets of London.
Watch Harry Styles’ new music video for “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” below:
Kenzie Ziegler is fresh off the release of her new single “100 Degrees” about a steamy summer romance gone cold in the winter, and the 18-year-old star sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to discuss the track and finding her sound.
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“I actually wrote this song about one of my friend’s breakups, not my personal one,” Kenzie explained of the song. “She got broken up with on Christmas Eve, and it’s just a terrible, terrible story. I just wanted to shed light on how something can ruin everything for you during breakups. It can ruin seasons, it can ruin restaurants you went to. … I wanted to talk about that.
“It’s been really fun stepping out of my comfort zone,” she added of playing around with her look, testing out new hair colors and clothing. “I feel like this is an all-around new era for me. I’ve been so happy, I’m comfortable with my music and I’m trying new things. It’s fun playing dress up all the time.”
Kenzie also shouted out her older sister and fellow Dance Moms alum Maddie Ziegler. “My sister is my strongest, biggest supporter on this. She always tells me how proud she is of me,” she shared, before reacting on-camera to a video of herself and her sister when they visited Billboard‘s offices as kids.
“I was such a sassy little kid. I was so sassy and dramatic and always thought I was right,” she said with a laugh, before adding, “That is so funny. Maddie looks so young and it’s so weird to see her so young.”
Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Kenzie above.
On Tuesday night, Charlie Puth was just grateful to be with an audience instead of his phone screen.
“It was good to be in front of TikTok for two years, but there’s nothing like doing this in front of real, live people,” he told the rapt and energetic audience at New York City’s Beacon Theatre. The pop star and, yes, bona fide TikTok sensation, was in the City That Never Sleeps for the second show of his just-launched One Night Only tour supporting his new album Charlie.
Earlier this month, Puth teased how the tour of more intimate venues came together as a sort of post-pandemic testing of the waters in an interview with Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast. “I’ll say what no artist will ever say: I did not know where I stood as a touring artist,” he explained. “We got through a worldwide pandemic — I thought, at one point, my career as a touring artist was over. I had no idea…It has been, like, a couple of years since I had something on Billboard. Like, where did I stand as a touring artist?”
With a set re-creating the singer’s kooky, musically ingenious interior world depicted on the cover of Charlie, no opening act, and a sold-out crowd of superfans going haywire for every song in his repertoire, Puth proved once and for all that he can stand alone, having come into his own as a confident, goofy and pitch-perfect pop star of his own making.
Below, Billboard rounds up the best moments from Charlie’s One Night Only show in New York City.
Charlie (Don’t) Be Quiet!
There was perhaps no more exhilarating way for Puth to kick off his show than with “Charlie Be Quiet!,” the raucous, shout-it-out anthem that gave the New Jersey native the chance to rock the mic as he playfully wailed, “Charlie, be quiet, don’t make a sound/ You got to lower the noise a little bit now/ If she knows you’re in love, she’s gonna run, run away-ay-ay-ay.”
Tears on Charlie’s Piano
Though he’d opened the tour two nights before with a hometown show at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey, Puth chose New York City as the place to live-debut Charlie deep cut “Tears on My Piano.”
Seated behind his trusty upright piano and bathed in red light, the singer looked like he was having the time of his life belting out the melodic, lovelorn anthem. And even though he’d never performed the track onstage before, the electrified crowd made it immediately clear they had put in their time listening to the studio version by singing along to every single word.
Charlie’s “Extraordinary” Advice
After revealing how the sound of a creaky door hinge led to the creation of Charlie album closer “No More Drama” and running through hit single “Left and Right” (sans BTS’ Jung Kook), “Loser” (“a bit of a self-deprecating anthem, which I think we all need sometimes”) and The Hills-inspired highlight “Smells Like Me,” Puth took a moment to offer his fans a piece of heartfelt encouragement.
“I want all of you — if you take anything out of this night tonight — rather than just watching me perform these songs, which you totally, of course, can do, I know all of you in here are capable of doing something extraordinary in the arts field,” he told his screaming fan base. “What you think is mundane and what you experience every day of your life is extraordinary. You should paint a picture about it, you should write a song about it. That’s how I literally wrote this whole album.”
Charlie Needs You to “Stay”
One fun fact some casual fans may not know is that Puth penned Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 2021 collaboration “Stay,” which has remained on the chart for a stunning 63 weeks and counting. After showing off some impressively candid piano chops and spilling some tea about how Peter Cetera’s music and other “’80s power bops” sparked the song’s hook, the songwriter made the No. 1 hit his own by transforming it into a pulsing, midtempo piano ballad.
Charlie Takes It to Church
While Puth closed the show with an encore of 2015’s “See You Again” and played all the old favorites like “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” “Attention,” “BOY” and “Done for Me,” the most powerful moment of the evening came when he dusted off his 2015 sophomore single “One Call Away.”
“No matter where you go, know you’re not alone/ I’m only one call away/ I’ll be there to save the day/ Superman got nothing on me/ I’m only one call away,” he crooned at the piano, taking the Beacon Theatre to church in a massive, chill-inducing sing-along.
You may know Phoebe Bridgers for tracks like “Kyoto,” “Moon Song” and “Motion Sickness” or her best new artist Grammy nomination, but the 28-year-old indie-pop darling is much more than a musician. Bridgers has been using her platform to speak out against injustices, and she’s staying vocal as Teen Vogue‘s October cover star.
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Bridgers chatted with Teen Vogue news & politics editor Lexi Mcmenamin on a variety of topics, including abortion rights and LGBTQ+ visibility in rock and pop.
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and with the rise of female and genderqueer artists in rock such as Mitski and Pom Pom Squad, Bridgers said it’s sad that the community has been forced to identify with white boys for decades.
“I think it shows you how desperate we’ve all been for any f—ing representation,” Bridgers told Teen Vogue. “I also think at the heart of it, it’s just wanting to be understood.”
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
As far as who has access to abortion, Bridgers believes white middle-class and upper-class people are always going to have access to reproductive-health resources, whether it’s flying to another state or family assistance.
“It’s just so much harder for the people that it was already hard for, so I like the organizations that are making life easier for those people,” she said.
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
In her interview with Teen Vogue, Bridgers notes that women shouldn’t let anyone freak them out about abortion “because unless you’re doing it in an unsafe way, there are resources for you if you’re trying to get one — and you should f—ing have one for whatever reason,” she continued. “It’s super safe. Shout-out to Planned Parenthood. I was very held during it.”
Bridgers, who has been open about her own abortion story, also discussed the experience with The Guardian ahead of her appearance at Glastonbury in June. The artist said she didn’t give much thought before posting on social media about her experience at Planned Parenthood, adding that her decision to have an abortion was not an emotional one. “I wasn’t f—ing emotional at all,” she told The Guardian. “Hormonally crazy! But I don’t think you should assign ‘it tore me up’ to me. No! I don’t think about it as a baby, of course not.”
Bridgers was inspired to first share her story via social media after Politico leaked the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade. “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour,” Bridgers tweeted. “I went to Planned Parenthood, where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access.”
Read the full story on Teen Vogue.
Following the release of Taylor Swift‘s highly personal “Anti-Hero” music video on Friday (Oct. 21), the star received some backlash, with critics accusing the pop star of being “fatphobic” due to a scene in which Swift steps on a scale that reads “fat.”
On Wednesday (Oct. 26), the scene was removed from the music video on Apple Music, as spotted by some eagle-eyed Swifties on Twitter. However, at the time of publication, the scene still remains on the YouTube version of the video.
Swift has yet to publicly comment on the change. Billboard has reached out to Apple Music, Swift’s rep and YouTube for comment.
Swift has previously spoken about her struggles with body image, including in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana. She has also opened up about personal nature of “Anti-Hero,” calling it “one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written,” as she’s never “delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before.”
“This song really is a real guided tour through all the things I tend to hate about myself; we all hate things about ourselves,” she explained in a video released ahead of Midnights‘ arrival.
Following the backlash, the hosts of The View came to Swift’s defense on Tuesday’s (Oct. 25) episode. Sunny Hostin noted of the critics, “They missed the point. For someone who’s an artist, she gets to have agency over her artistry. She was describing a personal experience, and quite frankly, it’s a personal experience a lot of women experience. I’ve experienced it, and men.”
Whoopi Goldberg added, “Why are you wasting your time on this? You all want to say something about Taylor Swift, leave her a– alone!”
Watch the YouTube version of “Anti-Hero” below:
