Pop
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When One Direction arrived in America in 2011, the five-member British boy band took the pop world by storm. More than a decade later, fans of the wildly popular group were devastated to learn of the death of Liam Payne last week at age 31. The four remaining members of the group — Harry Styles, […]
Girl power has arrived: Kids’ audio player Yoto has added Spice Girls music to its library, in partnership with Universal Music Group.
Spice Girls: Greatest Hits, a collection of 14 songs, is now available for the Yoto Player and Yoto Mini via a music card priced at $12.99. Yoto made the announcement on Tuesday (Oct. 22).
Featured tracks include the Spice Girls’ biggest pop hits, which parents who grew up in the ’90s are sure to remember: “Wannabe,” which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for a total of four weeks in 1997, and “Say You’ll Be There,” which peaked at No. 3 on the chart the same year.
‘Spice Girls: Greatest Hits’ for Yoto
Yoto offers ad-free music, stories and educational activities for children on screen-free audio players. They’re used by inserting a card, like the new Spice Girls: Greatest Hits one, into a slot that’s at the top of the player.
“Adding the greatest hits from the Spice Girls to our music collection is an exciting milestone for Yoto,” says Dom Hodge, Yoto’s head of music and sound, in a statement about the new release. “We’re thrilled to make iconic ’90s hits from one of the most influential music groups of all time accessible to budding music lovers globally. We can’t wait for young listeners to discover the joy and vibrancy that shines through the Spice Girls discography.”
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Sarah Boornman, Universal Music UK’s general manager youth strategies, says, “For so many parents, children themselves in the ’90s, the Spice Girls WERE pop music! We can already feel the anticipation and excitement, as these now adult fans get ready to pass on unmistakable, iconic anthems such as ‘Wannabe’ and ‘Spice Up Your Life’ to the next generation.”
Disney music favorites like original songs from Encanto and Frozen, plus classic song collections from The Beatles and Queen, are among the other featured music cards on Yoto’s website. Some other fun highlights are music themed for upcoming holidays like Halloween (Halloween Howls and Spooky Songs) and sets featuring classic pre-school songs.
There are several card options in classic children’s fiction –picks like Frog and Toad and Winnie-the-Pooh, both great series to read with younger ones, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Matilda, often enjoyed by elementary school-aged kids — for families who’d like to use the player to listen to stories.
Universal Music Group is among a Yoto’s current list of partners that includes PRH, Macmillan, Sony, Disney, Roald Dahl Story Company, Pottermore, HarperCollins, Hachette, Viacom, Bonnier and Scholastic.
The Yoto Player is priced at $99.99, and the 2024 edition of the Yoto Mini is $69.99.
Here’s the track list for Yoto’s Spice Girls: Greatest Hits card:1. “Wannabe”2. “Say You’ll Be There”3. “2 Become 1”4. “Mama”5. “Who Do You Think You Are”6. “Move Over”7. “Spice Up Your Life”8. “Too Much”9. “Stop”10. “Viva Forever”11. “Let Love Lead the Way”12. “Holler”13. “Headlines”14. “Goodbye”
With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here, and now we remember the century in Justin Bieber — who has now been a megastar for half his 30 years, accounting for some of the best and biggest pop music (and one of the most impactful career paths) of the past 15 years in the process.
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Anyone who saw Justin Bieber’s 2007 cover of Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” could tell he was going to be famous.
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The blurry clip of a barely discernible 13-year-old Bieber seems like nothing special at first, just a video his mom Pattie Mallette uploaded to the platform for his extended family to check out. “I know the videos of him are dark but you can hear him and get a sense of his stage presence,” Mallette wrote in the caption of the video, in which the teen is dressed in an unusually formal white button-down shirt, trousers and a tie. His magic quickly became apparent, as soon as Bieber began to belt the R&B track with a shocking sense of vocal ease for someone so young. He confidently makes his way around the stage, making eye contact with different audience members and never once seeming nervous, as if even he knew he was destined to be a superstar.
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Even “superstar” feels like an understatement. With 23 Grammy nominations (and two wins), eight No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, eight Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping songs, 33 Guinness World Records, 26 Billboard Music Awards, four RIAA-certified diamond records and an estimated 150 million records sold over the course of his career, 30-year-old Bieber has been a crucial part of the pop landscape for more than a decade, setting a new standard for pop artists to come by being a trailblazer in using social media to his advantage, without the need for radio or MTV backing to cross over to mainstream success.
However, perhaps none of that would have been possible without a serendipitous discovery from Scooter Braun, the now-titan of the music industry who, at the time, was a marketing executive of So So Def Recordings. After accidentally stumbling upon the “So Sick” clip on YouTube, Bieber’s smooth voice and the “stage presence” his mother pointed out caught his attention. With the blessing of his mother, Bieber was flown down to Atlanta, Georgia – nearly 900 miles away from his hometown of Stratford, Ontario – to record some demos with Braun, who quickly introduced him to now-grown teen-pop royalty Usher. At just 13 years old, Bieber signed with Braun and Usher’s joint venture, Raymond Braun Media Group, and a year later, also signed with Island Records.
The good fortune kept pouring in for Bieber, who made achieving fame seem so easy. His debut single, “One Time,” was released in July 2009 and his first EP, My World, dropped just a few months later in November. “One Time,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Love Me” and “Favorite Girl” from the project entered the top 40 of the Hot 100. My World eventually became certified platinum in the United States.
But what was it about Bieber that made him so immediately popular? Sure, his honeyed vocals and his catchy love songs were enough to get fans to swoon, but there was a significant lack of male pop stars in the music market at the time. Another Justin – Timberlake – was still taking over radio with songs like “What Goes Around… Comes Around” and “Summer Love,” but he was 26 years old at the time, and many of his fans also skewed older. Bieber was the perfect age for young, hormonal teenage fans who soon coined the term “Bieber Fever,” a Beatlemania-type craze over Bieber’s bright smile, charming personality and swooping hairstyle that inspired similar ‘dos for boys across the globe for years to come.
Bieber Fever spread strongly into the start of 2010, when JB dropped the Ludacris-assisted “Baby,” the first single off his debut full-length project, My World 2.0. The track skyrocketed Bieber into a success for a global audience beyond the tweens that loved his 2009 EP, hitting top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album, which was released in March 2010, featured a slew of other longstanding hit singles, including “Somebody to Love,” “U Smile,” “That Should Be Me” and “Eenie Meenie” featuring Sean Kingston. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earned him his first two Grammy nominations, for best new artist and best pop vocal album.
Bieber was now 16 years old, and wasn’t planning on slowing down yet. 2011 was just as busy as his previous two years. His Jon M. Chu-directed concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never hit theaters in February – grossing $30 million on its opening weekend and $99 million total worldwide. The film arrived alongside a remix album, Never Say Never: The Remixes, which featured appearances from fellow stars including Usher, Miley Cyrus and Chris Brown. In his personal life, he also confirmed his relationship with another young star, Wizards of Waverly Place actress and pop singer Selena Gomez, when the couple made their red carpet debut at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party that year. He rounded out 2011 with his holiday album, Under the Mistletoe, which became the first Christmas album by a male artist to top the Billboard 200.
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By the time his third studio album Believe arrived in June 2012, Bieber’s fame reached unprecedented levels of chaos and success. Still a teenager, he couldn’t leave the house without being hounded by paparazzi and fans, and he survived his first public controversy when a pregnant fan claimed Bieber was her baby daddy. While the paternity test came back negative, the experience inspired the Believe track “Maria,” a modern “Billie Jean” denying that he fathered the child.
Clearly, Bieber was growing up, and Believe reflected that. The singer had gone through puberty and his voice was noticeably lower, and the track list strayed away from his past teen-pop sound, as Bieber played with elements of dance, R&B and hip-hop reflect a newer, more mature chapter in his career. Believe debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and featured Hot 100 top 10 hits including “Boyfriend,” “Beauty and a Beat” featuring Nicki Minaj and the Big Sean-assisted “As Long As You Love Me.” With four chart-topping albums under his belt, Bieber’s Believe Tour launched in September 2012, and grossed $212.2 million across 155 shows.
However, by the start of 2013, the negative effects of childhood fame on mental health began to appear. Bieber and Gomez split for the first time in November 2012, and in March 2013, Bieber was getting aggressive with paparazzi in London. He soon began to display increasingly erratic behavior – including wearing a gas mask to dinner, urinating in a nightclub’s cleaning bucket (as well as on a photo of Bill Clinton), spitting on fans, sneaking out of a Brazilian brothel while wearing a sheet, vandalism and, of course, writing that he hoped Anne Frank would have been a “Belieber” in the Anne Frank House guestbook – and Bieber announced in December 2013 via Twitter that he was “officially retiring.” The announcement came just a day after he released his singles collection Journals, which continued to display his artistic maturity by experimenting with downtempo R&B on songs like “All That Matters” and “Confident.” However, the sound was a bit too jarring for his pop-loving fans, and the album flopped commercially compared to his previous works.
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His retirement proved to be equally turbulent. In January 2014, he was arrested in Miami Beach, after getting pulled over in a bright yellow Lamborghini. He was charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving. Bieber later revealed that from the ages of 19 to 21, he was heavily addicted to drugs – including prescription pills, lean, psychedelic mushrooms, MDMA and marijuana, which he used as a coping mechanism for extreme amounts of anxiety and pressure he was understandably feeling at the time.
Things began looking up again for Bieber in 2015, when he found his sense of Purpose with his sixth Billboard 200 leader and his most successful commercial project to date, led by his comeback hit “Where Are Ü Now” with Skrillex and Diplo, an unexpected and successful pivot by the star into the EDM landscape. He followed it up with “What Do You Mean?,” which became his first leader on the Billboard Hot 100, clearly indicating that the music scene was missing Bieber’s presence. The project produced two more No. 1 hits, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself,” which remain inescapable on the radio and streaming playlists to this day. While the Purpose tour kicked off in March 2016 to build on the success of the groundbreaking album, Bieber’s mental health issues persisted. The run was canceled in July 2017 as the singer shifted focus on his well being.
Over the next two years, Bieber lent his vocals to a handful of successful collaborations, including DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One,” BloodPop’s “Friends” and the inescapable hit of 2017, a remix of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” The historic track marked a major step in Latin music breaking into the global mainstream, and spent a whopping 16 weeks atop the Hot 100, then tied for the longest run in the chart’s history. However, at 23 years old and nearly a decade into his career, Bieber seemed to be taking a much-needed break from his recording career. In late 2017, he began opening up about the effects of childhood stardom in interviews and in his music in order to put his past actions into perspective and highlight his immense growth.
By 2018, he rekindled his romance with model Hailey Baldwin, and the two were married in September of that year. A year later, he announced that his fifth studio album, Changes, was on the way, and released a vulnerable, in-depth YouTube Originals docuseries. The 10-part series focused on the ups and downs of Bieber’s life throughout his musical hiatus, including his marriage, sobriety journey, battle against Lyme disease and mental health. In the grand scheme of his career, the docuseries marked a major pivot for good, with Bieber shedding the pop star persona and showing fans the human at the core.
Bieber dropped Changes in 2020, and subsequently gained three Grammy nominations and one win for best country duo/group performance for his Dan + Shay collaboration, “10,000 Hours.” Justice arrived a year later and was nominated for album of the year and best pop vocal album at the 2022 Grammy Awards. The album’s standout hit, “Peaches,” became his first Hot 100 No. 1 of the 2020s and gained four nominations including record of the year and song of the year. Justice also featured the Benny Blanco collaboration, “Lonely,” a devastatingly raw look at how fame sent Bieber into a downward and isolated spiral, capturing his past 15 years in one single. “Everybody saw me sick/ And it felt like no one gave a s—/ They criticized the things I did as an idiot kid,” he sings on the diaristic track.
Now, in 2024, Bieber hasn’t released a new single or album in a few years, but it seems like the 30-year-old star is experiencing a healthy, loving life for the first time, much to fans’ happiness. He’s been married to Baldwin for six years, and the duo welcomed their first child, a son named Jack Blues Bieber, over the summer. With his whole life to that point being spent on overdrive, it’s relieving to see Bieber cruising and enjoying his newest adventure, fatherhood. Hopefully, the ride will inspire yet another chart-topping album – and one more example of his one-of-kind presence, which has persistently shined through the darkness for over 15 years now.
Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back Thursday as we reveal our No. 7 artist!
THE LIST SO FAR:
Honorable Mentions
25. Katy Perry24. Ed Sheeran23. Bad Bunny22. One Direction21. Lil Wayne20. Bruno Mars19. BTS18. The Weeknd17. Shakira16. Jay-Z15. Miley Cyrus14. Justin Timberlake13. Nicki Minaj12. Eminem11. Usher10. Adele9. Ariana Grande
Joey Fatone is heading back to the Broadway stage, this time for the Shakespeare-inspired & Juliet. & Juliet opened at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City in 2022 and features songs by the legendary and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Max Martin. The show reimagines the classic Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet, picturing what life would have […]
As fans get ready to catch Lady Gaga‘s “Disease,” the pop superstar shared a haunting new video trailer for the fast-approaching single Tuesday (Oct. 22). In the clip, Gaga — wearing a short white dress — frantically sprints away as a car drives after her in a suburban neighborhood. The camera is positioned from inside […]
Kylie Minogue has done it all during her gold-dusted 45-year career. But even with two Grammys on the shelf and her mantle as the best-selling female artist ever from her native Australia, Kylie as a few “what-ifs?” in the closet.
She revealed one in a new chat with Audacy Check In, telling host Mike Adam that at one point she almost recorded one of Britney Spears’ most iconic songs. “Yeah, there’s a little song called ‘Toxic’ that was headed my way, and I was like, ‘Toxic? I don’t know if I want a song called Toxic’…,” said Minogue of the dance banger from Spears’ fourth album, 2003’s In the Zone. “As it’s turned out, it was meant to be a Britney Spears song, I can’t imagine it being anything else.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Minogue was asked to name which other vocalists she would tap if asked to put together an all-star “We Are the World”-type song. “It might be a girl group,” she said before rattling off a list that included Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus and Madonna.
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Minogue also talked about pulling the set list together for her upcoming first U.S. tour in more than a dozen years, promising that she’ll hit songs from this month’s Tension II, as well as its 2023 predecessor Tension, 2002’s Disco and 2018’s Golden, and, of course, her 1987 breakthrough smash cover of “Locomotion.”
The 56-year-old singer who has tapped into a musical fountain of youth that has kept her relevant for decades — see her 2023 global dance hit “Padam Padam” — also delved into the changes she’s seen for women in the music industry.
“It’s very encouraging that I’m proof, I’m sat here. Now we bring up the age topic, but I think it’s at least with a positive spin on it,” she said. “It wasn’t that many years ago that I felt I was in quite awkward positions where people would question me to my face in an interview, ‘When are you too old to be a woman in this business?’ Firstly — rude, but secondly — I don’t know. I guess I’ve always had women in the industry that I’ve looked up to, I didn’t really think about their age at the time.”
Minogue recalled “obsessing” over fellow Aussie singer Olivia Newton-John as a grade schooler, as well well as disco diva Donna Summer, before moving on to worshipping Whitney Houston, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper as a teen. “I guess there wasn’t such an age gap between my teenage years and their years,” she said. “But I don’t know what happened where it was suddenly deemed distasteful or, I don’t know. But thankfully, it is becoming, certainly, for the younger generation… they’ve just got new minds and open minds.”
Watch Minogue on the Audacy Check In below.
Chappell Roan has attracted millions of new listeners in the year since she dropped her acclaimed debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, many of whom are eagerly waiting to hear what she makes next — and luckily for them, producer Dan Nigro has an update. In a New York Times profile […]
It’s early in season 26 of The Voice, but Monday night’s (Oct. 21) kick-off of the Battle rounds had the coaches wondering if they’ve already spotted one of this season’s frontrunners. With the blind auditions in the rear view, coaches Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg, Michael Bublé and Reba McEntire counseled their teams on strategy, then had the unenviable task of pitting two of their chosen vocalists against each other.
Stefani picked two promising teens on her team, 15-year-old Buffalo, N.Y. native Sydney Sterlace and 19-year-old Pittsburgh singer Sloane Simon, tasking them with taking on Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather.”
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Sterlace was up first, appearing a bit nervous as she crooned, “I want you to stay/ ‘Til I’m in the grave/ ‘Til I rot away, dead and buried/ ‘Til I’m in the casket you carry.” Simon proved she was equally up to the task, jumping in on the second verse with airy, confident vocals as she stared down her opponent.
The women then sang directly at each other as they dueted on the song’s wistful chorus, “Birds of a feather, we should stick together/ I know I said I’d never think I wasn’t better alone,” changing places and expertly working the stage as they blended their voices and did their best to stand out during the individual bits with impressive runs and soaring ad libs.
Proud coach Stefani leapt to her feet (along with McEntire) as Bublé told the pair that their singing was “really beautiful” and Gwen admitted that she was totally “momming out right now.” Bublé said he could sense a bit of nervousness in Sterlace’s vocals, noting that she was not as settled as her battle mate, “nor should you be. You’re 15. Besides that your voice was great, I loved that you moved towards Sloan,” he said.
Snoop added that he was “thrilled” with the performance, dubbing both singers “true professionals… do not let the age dictate what you could possibly be because we were all young once upon a time.” Snoop dubbed them equally good, suggesting Stefani shold pick the singer she can “grow with,” even as the No Doubt and solo star lamented, “how can a mommy choose between their daughters?”
McEntire also said she was impressed with both, but suggested that her vote would be for Simon, agreeing that Sterlace has some more years to develop her craft. “You’re gonna blossom like the most beautiful rose ever,” she said. “‘Cause you’re a beautiful bud right now.”
Stefani said her heart was in her throat about the tough decision, recalling that she was blown away by Sterlace’s blind audition and wanted to hear more, while also being stunned by Simon’s “sparkly personality,” confidence and tone. It may have helped that Simon was, literally, wearing a silver sparkle dress with matching stacked heels.
In the end, Stefani focused in on Sterlace’s still-germinating stage presence rather than already established vocal talents. “You have come so far since our rehearsals. I’m shocked,” Stefani said, doubling down on McEntire’s rose bud metaphor. “I keep hearing that word ‘bud,’” veteran toker Snoop joked. Stefani said that the reality was that Simon is “a little bit more ready… you have that star-quality personality.”
Faced with a tough choice, Stefani followed the “weird voice” insider her head and chose Sterlace. And even after McEntire praised Simon’s “voice of an angel,” in her pitch to steal, Sloane ended up choosing Bublé — who also called her voice “angelic” — as her new team leader.
New episodes of The Voice air Monday and Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, and then stream on-demand via Peacock the next day.
Watch Sterlace and Simon face off below.
Do you get deja vu? Olivia Rodrigo‘s Guts World Tour concert film is coming soon to Netflix, allowing fans to relive the 21-year-old pop star’s show over and over again — as teased by a new trailer that dropped Tuesday (Oct. 22).
The minute-long video opens with Rodrigo on stage, dressed in a sparkly red leotard. “Here’s the deal,” she yells into the microphone as the crowd cheers. “Right now, I want you to think about something or someone that really pisses you off, and when the lights go down, you’re going to scream as loud as you can and let it all out!”
The teaser then cuts to a backstage shot of the “Vampire” singer with her band and backup dancers, standing in a circle as they hype each other up ahead of a show. “I’m so grateful that I get to be here and do this with you guys,” she tells the crew. “I love you all to death.”
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Rodrigo’s concert film is set to drop on Netflix Oct. 29. As seen in the rest of the trailer, the project will document the star’s first-ever arena tour with shots of her singing, playing guitar and piano, dancing on stage and interacting with fans at her August tour stop at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
“For those of you who didn’t get a chance to rock out in person, now you can have the best seats in the house!” Rodrigo wrote in a statement when the film was first announced early October. “And to the fans who cheered, screamed and danced with me, I am so glad we get to do it all over again!”
The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series alum has been on the road since February in support of her Billboard 200-topping sophomore album, Guts. Just days before her concert film premieres, Rodrigo will wrap the trek with four shows in Sydney Oct. 17-22, after which she won’t take the stage again until 2025 for a limited run of dates in Latin America and two rescheduled shows in Manchester.
“It brings me so much joy to perform in front of my fans,” Rodrigo recently reflected on the experience to Billboard. “We sing, we scream and we dance … Everyone’s energy is really inspiring and makes me want to bring my all every night.”
Watch the trailer for Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour below.
Britney Spears has walked down the aisle three times with partners. But in a video posted on Sunday (Oct. 20), the singer celebrated going it alone the fourth time. In a brief clip that appeared to be a partial repost of a similar one from 2022, Spears wrote, “The day I married myself … Bringing it back because it might seem embarrassing or stupid, but I think it’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done !!!”
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The video cued to Sting’s 1993 solo single “Fields of Gold” features Spears, 42, staring into the camera while wearing a slip-like off-white dress and matching veil with lacy edges. Back in Dec. 2022, Spears — who was then still married to third ex-husband Sam Asghari — wrote, “Yeah … I married myself 👰🏼♀️ !!! I got bored, liked my veil and said IS THIS CRAZY ??? OR IS THERE SOMETHING TO IT 🤔🤔🤔 ??? Psss yes but I’m still married to hubby too 💍💍💍 😂😂😂 !!!” in a nearly identical video accompanied by Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.”
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Spears briefly married childhood friend Jason Alexander in 2004 before tying the knot with dancer Kevin Federline that same year; she and Federline welcomed two sons, Sean Preston, 19 and Jayden James, 18 before breaking up in 2007. In 2022, the singer married actor/personal trainer Asghari, with whom she split two years later.
Though Spears has said will “never return” to the music business, she continues to inspire her fellow artists, including Halsey, who tipped their hat to Brit this week as part of the roll out of the upcoming album The Great Impersonator (Oct. 25).
“It’s Britney, b–ch!!!,” Halsey wrote of the eleventh preview of her fifth studio album, which so far has had them channeling the look and vibes of Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, late Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, Evanescence’s Amy Lee, David Bowie, Cher and other iconic stars. “The first superstar who ever inspired me,” they wrote of Spears, whose work is sampled on their Great Impersonator single “Lucky.” Halsey also copped Spears’ In the Zone look for the acompanying promo pic. “There were infinite Britney looks to choose from, but I had to do this iconic album!,” they added of Spears’ 2003 fourth studio album, which featured the Madonna collab “Me Against the Music,” as well as the Billboard Hot 100 No. 9 hit “Toxic.”