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Trending on Billboard Just about three years after releasing her “Bikini Bottom” single, Ice Spice is set to make her voice-acting debut in The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants when the sequel hits theaters via Paramount Pictures on Dec. 19. Billboard obtained an exclusive first look at Ice Spice’s animated character in Bikini Bottom on […]
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If you watched Jimmy Kimmel’s moving, 22-minute tribute to his longtime bandleader and lifelong best friend, saxophonist Cleto Escobedo III last week following the musician’s death at age 59, you know how crushing the loss was for the late night host.
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Now, following his tearful tribute to Escobedo, Kimmel is looking to raise funds for two organizations in his friend’s honor. In an Instagram post over the weekend, Kimmel shared a picture of Escobedo smiling with his wife, two children and their dog and another of the two pals laughing as they cradle their instruments in a parking lot.
“Cleto was always kind and eager to help others. As we mourn his loss, we have started two fundraisers to celebrate his life and give back,” wrote Kimmel. “The first is for UCLA Medical Center where he received such incredible care. Together we can help vulnerable patients and families in need of financial assistance during hard times. @UCLAHealth.
“In memory of our friend Cleto, we’d like to thank all the hardworking specialists, doctors, and nurses at UCLA. They worked tirelessly and generously to give him the best care,” reads a note on the fundraising page. “Cleto was always kind and eager to help others. To honor his generous spirit, we’d like to help vulnerable patients and families in need of financial assistance during hard times. Let’s help others in Cleto’s name.”
The second, he said was an effort to “honor his love of animals,” via fundraising links to @TheAnimalFoundation in the men’s former hometown of Las Vegas. “Cleto was a beloved friend, father, and animal lover whose heart was always open to pets in need,” reads a message on the organization’s home page, alongside a note from Escobedo’s family.
“Cleto was a compassionate animal lover. He loved each of his rescue dogs like they were family,” it read. “Please consider making a donation to The Animal Foundation in his hometown of Las Vegas. Cleto would have loved his friends and family helping to provide safety, healing and homes for pets in need.”
Kimmel announced Escobedo’s death last Tuesday, writing, “we lost a great friend, father, son, musician and man, my longtime bandleader Cleto Escobedo III. To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement. Cleto and I have been inseparable since I was nine years old. The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true. Cherish your friends and please keep Cleto’s wife, children and parents in your prayer.”
Escobedo led Kimmel’s late night house band, Cleto and the Cletones — which also included his sax-playing dad — since the show’s debut in 2003. On last Tuesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host fought through tears to pay tribute to the man he called his best friend since the day they first met in 1977.
“We loved all the same things. Baseball, fishing, boxing, [Muhammad] Ali, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen, Michael McDonald, Huey Lewis, Stevie Wonder, and most of all, we loved David Letterman,” Kimmel said. “Cherish your friends, we’re not here forever.”
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SNL has a country hit in the making with “I Miss My Ex’s Dad,” a musical parody starring new cast members Ben Marshall and Tommy Brennan as a convincing country duo. The pair reminisce about relationships lost in a pre-taped sketch that aired Saturday night (Nov. 15) on the late-night comedy show’s latest episode, hosted by actor Glen Powell.
“You ever miss someone much you lose sight of yourself?” Brennan asks at the bar.
“You think about them all the time and you wonder if life will ever seem normal again,” adds Marshall, sitting on the hood of a pickup truck.
“Haven’t felt the same since you’ve been gone/ Everyone else just feels so wrong/ By now I thought I’d be over you/ At the bottom of this bottle, I’ll know what to do/ I don’t know what else to say/ I just wanna hear about your day/ I can’t stop thinking ‘bout what we had,” they sing, and then comes the kicker comes in: “Oh man, I miss my ex’s dad.”
Glen Powell and Kenan Thompson play the beloved dads who’ve inspired the country duet.
“Your socks, your Crocs/ You’re the ideal male with your ponytail,” vocalists Marshall and Brennan lament on the chorus, which has the guys admitting, “I don’t miss his daughter at all, which I know is bad/ I just miss my ex’s dad.”
“Your grill, your Buick/ You’re the ideal man with your cardigans,” they sing later on. “Don’t remember his daughter’s name, which I know is bad/ I just miss my ex’s dad.”
As it turns out, the feeling is mutual. “I wish her new boyfriend was dead,” the dads (Powell and Thompson) sing.
Watch SNL‘s “I Miss My Ex’s Dad” music sketch below. Making her Saturday Night Live debut, Olivia Dean appeared as the actual musical guest on this weekend’s episode, performing “Man I Need” and “Let Alone the One You Love.”
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Olivia Dean made her Saturday Night Live debut on Nov. 15, performing two songs from her latest album, The Art of Loving.
The 26-year-old U.K. singer-songwriter and BRIT School alum appeared alongside host Glen Powell, delivering an ebullient rendition of “Man I Need” and a mesmeric performance of “Let Alone the One You Love.”
Both tracks appear on Dean’s sophomore album, The Art of Loving, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 following its September release.
Recently nominated for best new artist at the 2026 Grammy Awards, the soul-pop artist opened her set with “Man I Need,” wearing a sparkly gold dress and backed by a full band. She followed with “Let Alone the One You Love,” performing in a flowing pink gown against a matching backdrop.
Dean has built significant crossover momentum in the U.S. in recent months, currently holding four entries on the Billboard Hot 100, including the top 5 hit “Man I Need.”
“I’ve never been somebody who has followed trends or made music because of what else was popular at the time,” Dean told Billboard. “I like old music, I like soul music, I like Motown. That’s what I wanted to make, and in my mind, I’m in my own lane in that way.”
She also recently announced The Art of Loving Tour, slated for next summer. The North American run kicks off in San Francisco on July 10 and includes stops in Los Angeles, New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Atlanta, Toronto, Las Vegas, Boston, and Houston before wrapping in Austin on Aug. 28.
SNL returns on Dec. 6 with actress-comedian Melissa McCarthy as host and musical guest Dijon.
Watch Dean’s SNL performances below, and find all the ways to stream the full episode here.
Trending on Billboard Eric Church is giving fans a preview into the cinematic concert extravaganza that his fans will see in February, when Eric Church: Evangeline Vs. The Machine Comes Alive hits IMAX theaters in the United States and Canada for two nights only, on Feb. 11 and Feb. 14, 2026. Explore See latest videos, […]
Trending on Billboard Saturday Night Live is breaking in a pair of first-timers this weekend, with musical guest Olivia Dean and host Glen Powell both making their debuts. And cast members Bowen Yang and Marcello Hernandez aren’t making things easy for them. “Well, well, well,” Yang says, glaring. “If it isn’t a couple of first-timers,” […]
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Charli xcx is back with another taste of her album of music written for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the full trailer for which arrived Thursday (Nov. 13) featuring a new song from the pop star titled “Chains of Love.”
The preview opens with Emily Brontë’s famous fictional lovebirds, Heathcliff and Catherine — played by Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, respectively — sitting together in the moors as the former imagines what he would do if he were rich. The latter is startled when he indicates he’d “take a wife,” setting off a montage of the couple’s tragic gothic love story.
“Why did you leave me?” Robbie says at one point as Elordi chases after her in a downpour, asking her in response, “Why did you betray your own heart?”
All the while, Charli’s anthemic, synth-powered track plays. “I know the chains of love won’t break,” she repeats in a soaring soprano melody.
The full song is now available for streaming, dropping on the same day as the trailer. It follows on the heels of “House,” which the British singer-songwriter worked on with John Cale of the Velvet Underground for her Wuthering Heights concept album. The new LP is set to drop on Feb. 13 — one day before the film premieres in theaters.
In her first-ever post on Substack, Charli recently shared how the upcoming concept LP came to be. “I called Emerald and asked her what she was hoping for from my read of the script,” she wrote in a post on Nov. 12. “She coyly suggested ‘A song?’ and I suggested ‘An album?’ because why not? I wanted to dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar. Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living.”
“This collection of songs is an album, and sure, my name’s on the credits, but is it a Charli xcx album?” she added in the post. “I don’t even know. Nor do I really care to find out.”
Watch the new trailer for Wuthering Heights featuring “Chains of Love” above, and listen to the full song below.
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With a week left until Wicked: For Good hits theaters, Cynthia Erivo is setting the record straight on why some think her performances are political statements.
Appearing on the cover of GQ‘s Men of the Year issue, Erivo said that her performances in Wicked, The Color Purple and every other project she works on are inherently political simply because she is a Black, queer woman, not necessarily because she chooses political roles.
“I think inevitably, because I’m in this body with this skin, in this time, everything I do will be political,” she says. “I’ve been told so many times that I pick controversial roles, and I’m like, ‘Why? Why are the roles I pick controversial?’ I just pick a thing that I feel like I want. If I was a different person, in a different body, in a different skin, it wouldn’t be controversial.”
The near-EGOT did point out, however, that she is interested in “f–king with the narrative” of audience expectations, especially when it comes to her sexuality and gender. “I’m fascinated with the interplay between masculinity and femininity, and where we place it and how we use it,” she said. “Because I truly believe we all have both in us — and I think it’s so sexy when we can access both.”
Erivo received a wave of backlash earlier this year when she was cast as Jesus Christ in a Hollywood Bowl production of Jesus Christ Superstar, with some on the religious right calling her casting “blasphemy.” In an interview with Billboard in June, Erivo laughed off the criticism, saying, “you can’t please everyone.”
Elsewhere in her new interview, Erivo got real when speaking about the anti-LGBTQ+ political environment of 2025, saying that “who I love and who you love” have “nothing to do with each other,” and she doesn’t understand why people feel a need to “be involved in people’s business.”
“It is about love. If people really, actually allow themselves to love, actually love, this wouldn’t be happening,” she explained. “We would want everyone to have it, wherever they could get it. Because you’d actually know what it feels like. And so when you know what it feels like, you’d want it for anyone else. Get it however you can get it, please.”
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Grab Pandy’s hand and hold on tight, because it’s almost time to jump into a new season of Gabby’s Dollhouse.
For season 12, hitting Netflix on Monday, Gabby’s stuffy BFF Pandy Paws (Logan Bailey) is singing a new song that reminds us why “It’s Good to Be a Gabby Cat,” and Billboard Family is exclusively premiering the tune and video below.
It’s the latest track from series composer and songwriter P.T. Walkley, the man behind the DreamWorks Animation show’s “Hey Gabby” theme song and countless other musical contributions (“Between all the songs and ditties, there must be at least 200 or more,” Walkley tells Billboard Family). So where did “It’s Good to Be a Gabby Cat” — which hits streaming on Friday — come from?
“The assignment on this Gabby tune was to look back through all their magical moments together that make it so ‘good, good, good’ to be a Gabby Cat,” Walkley tells Billboard. “The chorus hook came to me first, then the question was, ‘Well what makes it so good-good-good?’ So I thought back to moments of cruising through the ocean, riding horses through the old west, blasting through outer space, island hopping, playing games together, cooking together, and got as many of those memories as I could into a catchy little tune.”
Watch and listen below:
Pandy’s new song is featured in “Good to be a Gabby Cat Game Show!,” episode 5 of the five-episode new season. What makes this episode special is that the animated Gabby Cats join real-life Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) in her bedroom instead of the Dollhouse for a Hollywood Squares-style game show.
It’s been a busy year for Gabby’s Dollhouse, with the six-episode season 11 premiering on Netflix back in February, followed by the Gabby’s Dollhouse Live! U.S. tour and Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie both arriving in September, as well as an immersive Gabby’s Dollhouse x CAMP experience that took fans inside the Dollhouse at CAMP stores in Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.
All five episodes of season 12 arrive Monday on Netflix.
Trending on Billboard At an otherwise joyful celebration of Wicked in Singapore for the second film’s Asian premiere on Thursday (Nov. 13), a scary moment took place when someone in the crowd charged at Ariana Grande and forced Cynthia Erivo to step in as her costar’s bodyguard. In videos of the incident captured at the […]
