Pop
Page: 8
Tyler Brown spent more than a decade working at Syco Entertainment, which launched the careers of superstar groups like One Direction and Fifth Harmony while the members were still in their teens. The vector for their rapid success was the TV show The X Factor. “We would take kids off the street, put them on TV in front of 15 million people twice a week, and then by the end of that show, they were famous,” says Brown, who recently co-founded the indie label Heatwave Records. “Then you put a record out in a few months, and it goes to No. 1. And that’s all in the space of less than a year.”
More than a decade later, though, teen superstars are vanishingly rare. This is immediately apparent when looking at Billboard‘s annual 21 Under 21 list, which snapshots the next generation of rising artists. 10 years ago, it was stocked full of acts who were already household names: Not only Fifth Harmony, but Five Seconds of Summer, Lorde, Shawn Mendes, and Troye Sivan. In 2021, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish were both on the list.
Trending on Billboard
This year, however, there aren’t any massive pop stars under the age of 21.
“There’s not a centralization of key platforms where people are finding artists,” says Mike Weiss, vp of music and head of A&R at UnitedMasters. “Everything is more niche. To become a superstar, it takes time to build from community to community and expand that base.”
That process typically is “a lot longer now,” Brown says, relative to the peak years of The X Factor. Many of the artists who recently enjoyed major breakthroughs triumphed in their mid-twenties after long grinds. Sabrina Carpenter released five albums before rocketing to fame on her sixth, while Noah Kahan put out two full-lengths and two EPs before releasing the album that propelled him into the mainstream. The career trajectory of country star Jelly Roll makes those ascents seem swift by comparison — he started to pepper the charts with hits only after releasing his eighth album.
“The time horizon of breaking an artist ten years ago used to be 18 to 36 months once they had signed to a major label,” Ben Maddahi, svp of A&R for Columbia Records, told NME in 2023. “Now it’s more like three to five years. It’s not going to happen quickly.”
In previous decades, stars were minted by the TV shows and radio stations that served as the central engine of music discovery. Major labels had the marketing resources and relationships to carpet-bomb these formats, sending listeners scrambling to cough up cash for records or CDs or downloads. At the dawn of the social media age, they started harvesting talent from YouTube (like Justin Bieber and Troye Sivan) and Vine (like Shawn Mendes) and plugging them into the major-label machine that created pop juggernauts.
But today’s fans are spread across an increasingly wide range of streaming services and social media platforms, each with its own priorities and approach to music. Young listeners, who are most likely to mint the next young stars, primarily learn about new songs through Spotify and TikTok, according to a 2024 report from Edison Research. For listeners aged 35 to 54, however, YouTube and radio airplay are far more important. TikTok doesn’t even register as a music discovery avenue for listeners 55 and up, where radio remains dominant.
Edison Research’s report surveyed music lovers on 14 different potential sources of discovery, and they could conceivably have inquired about more — they didn’t ask if anyone still learned about music by reading journalism, for example. In this fractured environment, “there’s no button to push” to blitz everyone simultaneously, says Jonathan Daniel, co-founder of Crush Music, which manages Miley Cyrus and Lorde, among others. “It’s so much less of a monoculture,” Daniel adds, “that it takes longer” to build a star.
At the same time, the rise of short-form video platforms — especially TikTok — has allowed songs to become popular faster than ever. But record companies have repeatedly been forced to reckon with the wide gulf that separates a viral hit from an enduring career. “Before, we were very focused on, ‘How do we make this a global artist that can be all these different things?’” explains Olly Shepard, senior vp of publishing at Artist Partner Group. “Now the song breaks, and then we have to build the artist around that.”
This can be challenging — some teenagers weren’t even contemplating a music career before they went viral and signed a record deal. It’s no surprise, then, that “labels have struggled to create follow-ups for a lot of the young artists” they signed following big TikTok hits, Brown says. “They need to have two, three, four records in a row to become a fully established artist.”
The last five years have shown that, even in a world where singles can become global phenomena nearly overnight, the star-building process remains stubbornly hard to accelerate. Many of the artists who are signed because of their prowess on short-form video platforms are “talented but under-prepared, and once signed, it becomes apparent that most need a couple of years just to get up to speed,” Maddahi said. “If you’re signing a 15-year-old kid off TikTok, they’ve likely never toured before, performed before or even been in a real studio.”
On top of that, some executives argue that the music industry is no longer prioritizing breaking new stars the way it once was — Chappell Roan famously got dropped after her first stint at a major label only to explode four years later. In a landscape full of viral singles and myriad sub-pockets of fandom, many labels are taking the approach of “let’s sign more small things, but in the aggregate they’re equivalent to a star,” says Leon Morabia, a partner at Mark Music & Media Law. “That’s not the same thing as picking someone because they’re so talented or so charismatic.”
Young artists can still carve out a robust career even if they’re only owning their particular niche. “There’s room for artists to have enormous success within their individual lanes — it just isn’t the type of success where casual music fans know who you are,” says Jeff Vaughn, founder and CEO of Signal Records. “That level of exposure and awareness is taking much longer to achieve now.”
A version of this story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
British pop phenomenon Lola Young has dropped “One Thing,” her first slice of new material since the release of her This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway LP in August.
Inspired by classic boom-bap production, lyrically, the track sees Young assert her agency in the bedroom with a new flame. “I wanna show you just what I like/ I wanna kiss you slow/ Wanna f–k you rough/ Wanna eat you up,” she sings.
“One Thing” arrives after a series of social media teaser clips from the 24-year-old, which were filmed in California after her appearance at Coachella in April. Its accompanying music video was directed by Dave Meyers (Little Simz, SZA, Sabrina Carpenter).
Trending on Billboard
“I wanted to make a song and music video that is thought-provoking and highlights sex being both a fun and light thing, not always meaningful, as well as showing how gender roles can be reversed,” said Young in a press release.
Young has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past six months. Her anthemic single “Messy” enjoyed a slow-burn rise to the top of the Official U.K. Singles Chart in January, hitting the summit eight months after it was initially released. It has been streamed more than 600 million times on Spotify to date, with listeners drawn to Young’s frank assessment of her own failings.
By spending four weeks at No. 1, Young became the longest running British female artist to be at the top spot since Adele’s “Easy on Me” in 2021. “Messy” broke a tie with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” (2022) and Kenya Grace’s “Strangers” (2023); both had three-week stints at the top.
Elsewhere, the south Londoner has collaborated with Tyler, the Creator (“Like Him”) and Lil Yachty (“Charlie”), and has recently scooped three Ivor Novello nominations, as well as landing in the best pop act category at the BRIT Awards back in March.
“What I’m realizing about myself as an artist is that I’m not about the glitz and the glam — I don’t scream ‘Hollywood’,” Young told Billboard U.K. of her global success in an interview published last November. “For a long time, I wanted to represent this ideal of Westernized beauty — but then I realized I’m not that. I now choose to give realness and truth. I’ve got a bit of a belly out, I f–king swear a bunch and I have fun. And that’s what people are resonating with.”
Looking ahead, Young is scheduled to perform at festivals across the U.K. and Europe throughout the summer, including Reading & Leeds in August. The following month, she is set to appear at All Things Go in New York City alongside the likes of Doechii and Noah Kahan.
Listen to “One Thing” below:
Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco opened up about why the title of their new album I Said I Love You First felt so right, in a new short film released Thursday (May 15).
“We were just, like, trying to figure out what to even call this thing. It’s such a scary thing, ’cause it’s like, ‘Oh, we worked so long on this! How are we even gonna figure out…’” Blanco recalls before trailing off, with Gomez quick to respond, “But I feel like that became something really easy: I Said I Love You First is just a fact.”
“Technically, you probably would’ve said it first,” she then admits, laughing over her cup of tea before triumphantly adding, “I just beat you to it!”
Trending on Billboard
During the 12-minute film for Vevo Extended Play, the newly engaged couple perform intimate renditions of a number of cuts off I Said I Love You First, including second single “Sunset Blvd,” “How Does It Feel to Be Forgotten” and “Scared of Loving You.”
In between numbers, the lovebirds spill plenty of other tidbits about the songs on their romantic, collaborative project — from “Sunset Blvd” being inspired by the location of their first date (well, “the second half” of it, anyway, according to Blanco) to why “Scared of Loving You” is the “easiest” song for Gomez to perform.
“It’s so easy for us to do a thing together, like a project, because we speak the same language — both in music and, you know, personally,” the producer says of the way their romance translated to musical chemistry in the studio while crafting their joint album. “Whenever either one of us has an idea, we’re always gonna listen to each other, and that, to me, goes both romantically and in our working relationship.”
I Said I Love You First bowed at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 upon its March 25 release. Since then, Gomez and Blanco have already unveiled a deluxe version of the LP titled I Said I Love You First… And You Said It Back, which features additional collaborations with GloRilla, DJ Sliink and Cigarettes After Sex and other bonus tracks.
Watch Gomez and Blanco’s I Said I Love You First short film in full below.
On April 13, the Circle Chart — South Korea’s longest-running music ranking, and its equivalent to the RIAA — unveiled its latest musician milestones. Alongside accomplishments by Blackpink’s Jisoo, NewJeans and BTS, stood PLAVE — a boy band whose members’ real-life identities are hidden behind digital avatars, but whose commercial performance and ambitions rival K-pop’s biggest human acts.
For almost three decades, Korean music companies have attempted to develop cyber singers, with mixed results. But none have broken through like PLAVE, which with its third mini‑album, February’s Caligo Pt. 1, became the first entirely virtual Korean act to surpass 1 million units sold, according to Circle Chart. But much like Gorillaz — the virtual British band created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett — the members of PLAVE are, behind the screens that project their avatars, real artists proving they can have real impact without revealing their faces or personal lives.
PLAVE was conceptualized in the unassuming Seoul office building that houses VLAST, an entertainment company that started as a for-hire computer graphics studio and is now a full-service production house for real-time graphics and virtual intellectual property that also provides label and management services to PLAVE, which is currently its sole musical group. Inside its scrappy yet cutting-edge production facility, and under CEO Lee “William” Sunggoo’s direction, the company imagined a virtual band in the style of manhwa, the Korean comics and webtoons that have become increasingly popular over the past two decades thanks in part to the otherworldly good looks of their characters. After successfully pitching the potential of virtual artists to the singer who would go on to voice PLAVE leader Yejun, VLAST recruited four more artists to round out the quintet as Bamby, Noah, Eunho and Hamin. “Each new member was recommended by someone who recognized their musical ability,” Lee says.
Trending on Billboard
According to VLAST, the men behind PLAVE are all artists who previously pursued K-pop or R&B careers. Their virtual selves — brought to life in meticulous 2D detail through motion-capture rendering — sing, dance and rap like any K-pop stars would. But the real men of PLAVE also write, produce, choreograph and play instruments on tracks, a level of creative involvement usually seen in chart-toppers like BTS and Stray Kids that’s still atypical among idol groups.
Bamby
Billboard Korea + VLAST
Eunho
Billboard Korea + VLAST
At VLAST’s Seoul headquarters, creative teams huddle around screens, monitors and camera rigs, overseeing motion-capture stages and ensuring the PLAVE avatars and the actual musicians in the room with them have every dance move and facial expression synced. Through real-time animation, PLAVE can host frequent livestreams with fans and play concerts and festival appearances — so long as venues have a screen to display them.
The quintet’s real members can even see its fans — known as PLLI — as it performs from inside VLAST HQ and respond directly to them. So far, the group has headlined four concerts with in-person audiences, all in Seoul: First, it sold out two April 2024 shows at the city’s 2,500-seat Olympic Hall, then two dates the following October at the 11,000-capacity Jamsil Indoor Stadium, according to VLAST. In a review of the latter, the Korea JoongAng Daily lauded onscreen feats like watching PLAVE “driving a burning motorcycle to the stage,” but noted that the band’s inability to actually meet its audience “greatly limits the range of performance,” while technical glitches jolted fans from the fantasy.
(“We are always committed to delivering the best possible results,” VLAST says. “Enhancing PLAVE’s concert experience involves upgrading every element that allows the audience to feel fully immersed and connected — including minimizing technical issues.”)
“PLLI are the kinds of fans who truly see the real us,” Bamby tells Billboard in a video interview. At 5 foot 9, he’s PLAVE’s shortest member and sports pink hair and magenta eyes. (Whether these avatars’ attributes are in any way directly inspired by the people voicing them remains a secret.) Because of PLAVE’s virtual nature, Bamby continues, “We rely even more on communication platforms. We’re constantly curious about how they’re doing and how they’re experiencing our content.”
Since its March 2023 debut, PLAVE has earned more than 2.1 billion official on-demand global streams, according to Luminate. Before its latest single, “Dash,” became the first song by a Korean virtual group to reach the Billboard Global 200 in February 2025, PLAVE had entered the Global 200 Excl. U.S. chart with “Pump Up the Volume!” and “Way 4 Luv.”
Hamin
Billboard Korea + VLAST
PLAVE joins a long history of virtual acts from Asia. In the mid-1990s, Japan pioneered virtual idols; the first from South Korea was Adam, a Sims-like cyber singer from information technology company Adamsoft who “debuted” in 1998 and whose first album, Genesis, sold a reported 200,000 copies. Adam led a small boom of cyber stars, but corporations ultimately abandoned them as costs exceeded earnings.
Virtual artists began making a comeback at the start of the 2020s after artificial intelligence and metaverse technology trends helped launch groups like Mave:, an AI-powered female quartet that virtual-artist management house Metaverse Entertainment launched in 2023. Korea’s Kakao Entertainment invested a reported 12 billion won (about $9.7 million at the time) in a partnership with Metaverse. While Mave: is strictly operated through technology, other groups with real humans behind virtual facades like PLAVE now exist, including female sextet Isegye Idol and 11-member girl group Itterniti. But none have broken through with significant sales or awards recognition like PLAVE.
“The initial investment is substantial,” Lee says. “But once that foundation is in place, there are certain advantages. Unlike traditional artists, we don’t have costs for things like hair, makeup or long-distance travel. Instead, our resources are directed toward technology, creative development and content production.”
PLAVE’s rapid ascent has attracted financial investment from HYBE and YG Entertainment, which double as strategic advisers on everything from the members’ vocal health to global rollout strategy. “As a company new to the entertainment industry, we valued getting advice and insights from established industry leaders with extensive experience,” Lee says. With global distribution from YG PLUS, Caligo Pt. 1 included the group’s first all-English track, “Island” (co-written by Adrian McKinnon, whose credits range from Rae Sremmurd to ENHYPEN). On June 16, PLAVE will release its debut Japanese single, “Kakurenbo (Hide and Seek),” following a 2024 agreement with HYBE Japan to support PLAVE’s expansion in the market.
“From an international fan’s point of view, it can sometimes be hard to fully grasp the emotions we want to express due to language barriers,” says PLAVE’s Eunho, who appears as a silver-haired rapper with fangs. “Some feelings just don’t translate perfectly, so we’re really glad we got to release an English track this time. We believe it helped us connect more deeply with our fans in English-speaking countries, and we plan to keep exploring multilingual projects.”
For now, VLAST has no plans for developing further virtual artists, focusing its energies entirely on PLAVE. Its current goals for the group include upgrading the concert experience, launching a dedicated mobile app, pushing to “reach more global fans” — including in Western markets — “and introduce them to what virtual artists can offer,” according to Lee.
“The biggest misconception we faced was that virtual idols like PLAVE were fully operated by AI,” he adds. “Even now, in some overseas markets where people aren’t yet familiar with PLAVE, that remains a common misunderstanding.”
Noah
Billboard Korea + VLAST
Yejun
Billboard Korea + VLAST
The way that blonde, blue-eyed Noah sees it, “one of the coolest parts about PLAVE is that we can do things on stage that other artists can’t — like magical effects or cinematic action scenes. People sometimes say, ‘But aren’t you AI? Doesn’t that make it easier?’ But the truth is, none of it is easy when you actually try it.” (He adds that some members even sustained injuries while rehearsing the “intense” choreography for “Dash,” created by Bamby and Hamin.)
As with so many ascendant pop stars, the real men behind PLAVE have faced their share of privacy invasion. Prying online fans have unearthed clues to the members’ real-life identities; last year, some began stalking them at VLAST and their homes, despite the company’s pleas for fans to respect PLAVE’s privacy and subsequent threat of legal action toward anyone disclosing personal information about the act. When rumors regarding the members’ real identities ran wild across social media and online forums around Caligo Pt. 1’s release, neither the band nor VLAST responded.
The group’s navy-haired, silver-eyed leader, Yejun, promises that in the coming year, “Fans will see us onstage a lot more. Up until now, we’ve had relatively few chances to perform live. In 2025, we want to change that — more concerts and more global tours.” (In early May, PLAVE announced three August dates at Seoul’s KPSO Dome.)
“All five members of PLAVE are passionate about music,” Lee explains. “We believe that high-quality music and performance are what distinguish us from other virtual artists. Creating compelling music is always one of our top priorities.”
“Our chemistry as a group, our direct communication with fans and our distinct musical identity are what have brought us this far,” the black-haired, black-eyed rapper Hamin says. Adds Yejun: “The bond we share as members — the connection, the stories we’ve built and the trust between us — that’s what makes PLAVE special.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Joe Jonas is going back to his acting career with his new, bittersweet music video for his latest single, “Heart By Heart.” Directed by Anthony Mandler and released on Thursday (May 15), the clip opens with the superstar having an awkward-but-friendly run-in with an ex on the streets of New York City. After saying goodbye, […]
For the past decade, Maren Morris has been one of the most recognizable names in country music — with award-winning albums, a really striking voice and presence and some of the best and biggest singles the genre has produced in recent years. And over that time, she’s also made high-profile forays into the top 40 […]
By now you’re certainly seen video of the nightly ritual at Sabrina Carpenter shows on the singer’s Short n’ Sweet tour where she “arrests” someone from the audience. Back in March, during a stop at the O2 Arena in London, she once again looked around for a guest that was “too hot” in order to […]
There were the usual allotment of eye-popping fashion whoas and uh-ohs at this year’s Met Gala. And while fans and the media love to obsess over who wore what and how, sometimes A-listers who didn’t even go get drawn into the conversation. Take, for instance, Billie Eilish. While it certainly seemed like she dove into […]
Celine Dion went back to the start on Tuesday (May 13). The singer sent a surprise video to the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest expressing her gratitude and love for the singers, organizers and viewers during the first semi-final round.
“Dear Eurovision family and contestants. I’d love nothing more than to be with you in Basel right now. Switzerland will forever hold a special place in my heart. It’s a country that believed in me and gave me the chance to be part of something so extraordinary,” Dion, 57, said in the video that was broadcast on a big screen on the main stage on Tuesday night.
“Winning the Eurovision song contest for Switzerland in 1988 was a life-changing moment for me and I’m so thankful for everyone who supported me,” she continued. “Now, 37 years later, it’s so beautiful and emotional to see Switzerland winning and hosting this incredible event once again. To the people of Switzerland, thank you for your love. This night is yours and I hope you feel as proud as I do.”
Trending on Billboard
Before she became a global phenomenon, Dion won the Eurovision Contest representing Switzerland in 1988 with the song “Ne partez pas sans moi.” Dion, who had already released more than half a dozen French-language albums at that point, issued her first English-language LP, Unison, two years later, in 1990.
Her message also included a French-language portion in which she said, “Music unites us, not only this evening, not only at the moment. Wonderful. It is our strength, our support and our support in the moments where we need it. I love you all, Europe and the rest of the world, of course. Kisses, I love you.”
Among the acts who made it through during Tuesday’s cut-down round are Norway’s Kyle Alessandro, Albania’s Shkodra Elektronike, Sweden’s KAJ, Iceland’s VÆB, the Netherlands’ Claude, Poland’s Justyna Steczkowska, San Marino’s Gabry Ponte, Estonia’s Tommy Cash, Portugal’s NAPA and Ukraine’s Ziferblat, with Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia and Slovenia getting eliminated. The next semi-final round will take place on Thursday (May 15) and feature performances from Armenia, Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Serbia, and the United Kingdom, with the top 10 advancing to the Grand Final.
According to CNN, after the Dion message aired a number of singers from last year’s contest performed a cover of the diva’s winning song from 1988.
The video from Dion was her latest appearance in the wake of a long lay-off due to the singer’s battle with the rare neurological disorder Stiff-Person Syndrome, which caused her to call off all live dates and resulted in a retreat from the spotlight for nearly two years as she battled the debilitating effects of the disorder. She made her triumphant return to the spotlight last summer when she performed at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics.
Check out Dion’s message below.
Jin is heading back to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Billboard can exclusively reveal. Just over half a year after he made his solo debut on the late-night show, the BTS singer will make his way back to 30 Rock a week from today — on Wednesday, May 21 — to perform on the […]