Fifty-five years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice set out to create a musical that asked a central, controversial question about the central figure of Christianity: what if Jesus Christ wasn’t the Son of God, and was just a man trying to make a difference? “It’s not really a religious piece,” Rice said in a 2023 interview. “It’s a story.”

Half a century later, Jesus Christ Superstar, the award-winning 1971 musical created by Webber and Rice, has become a global phenomenon, with hundreds of major productions put on around the globe since its Broadway debut. Stars like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, Mel C, John Legend and Sara Bareilles have all starred in the show, with new productions regularly cropping up around the world.

The latest production of the show promises to be one of its buzziest — starting Friday (Aug. 1), Jesus Christ Superstar is set to take over the Hollywood Bowl with a star-studded cast, including Cynthia Erivo in the titular role and Adam Lambert opposite her as the show’s tragic protagonist Judas Iscariot.

Just as it was in 1971, this modern production is still proving to be controversial. After Erivo was cast in the role of Jesus, conservative Christians quickly called the choice “blasphemous” due to the fact that Erivo is Black, queer and a woman. “You can’t please everyone,” Ervio told Billboard about the backlash for her June cover story. “It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth.’”

Below, Lambert talks with Billboard about the rehearsal process for the three shows this weekend, how his starring role in Broadway’s Cabaret helped prepare him for the role of Judas, and why he thinks Erivo’s casting continued the show’s tradition of pushing the proverbial envelope.

You’re performing as Judas just a few months after wrapping your run as the Emcee in Cabaret — how do you feel performing nightly on Broadway helped prepare you for this show?

Returning to the theatre and making my Broadway debut this year was a dream and definitely prepared me for Jesus Christ Superstar at the Bowl. Emcee and Judas have long been two of my absolute dream roles so this year has been full of “pinch-me” career moments.

The company has been rehearsing for the last couple of weeks. Tell us a little bit about what that process was like; what stood out to you about the cast and direction during rehearsals? Were there any particular difficulties when it came to putting this together?

I first heard the original concept album when I was 10 and my Dad would play it on vinyl, so I came in super familiar with the musical and excited to hit the ground running. We only had about nine days of rehearsal, but this cast is truly next level. I’m blown away every day by the talent and professionalism of the cast, and excited for the audiences to hear us sing our faces off.

You’re performing with a truly stellar cast and starring opposite Cynthia Erivo. What has Cynthia been like to work with, and what did you make of the backlash to her casting as a Black, queer Jesus?

Cynthia’s brilliant. Her voice, presence, and simultaneous power and vulnerability absolutely blows my mind and working with her has been a dream. I’m excited by the challenge of presenting the audience with a production led by a female, Black “Jesus” and encourage the audience to expand their minds a bit. Originally utilizing rock and roll, Jesus Christ Superstar is supposed to provoke and challenge, that’s the point. And shouldn’t the teachings of Jesus transcend gender?

Judas gets some of the best songs in the show, “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Superstar” being the most popular among them. Do you have a favorite song that you get to perform in this show? 

I love them both but opening the show with “Heaven on Their Minds” is electric. And even more special as I was asked to record a studio version of it by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which is such an honor.

For practically half of her life, Indy Yelich says she’s played the “supporting act” to her big sister: Ella Yelich-O’Connor, better known as Lorde, whose sudden catapult to global fame with “Royals” turned her entire family’s life upside down in 2013. But the 26-year-old pop singer-songwriter has no qualms about that.

“There’s the main actress,” Yelich tells Billboard, but “the supporting act is still a really big part of the story. All you can really do is be yourself, and deal with the cards you’ve been dealt.”

On Wednesday night (July 30), the Auckland native was fully the leading lady at The Wayland bar in New York City’s East Village, where she played songs from her new EP, Fame Is a Bedroom, for the first time ahead of its release on Friday (Aug. 1). The space was packed with Yelich’s fans and a collage of friends who make up the small community she’s managed to build in the city, more than 8,000 miles away from home. One of them, a SoulCycle instructor, met her after she took his “Lorde vs. ODESZA”-themed class. Many sipped on Yelich’s favorite kale-infused margarita, upon her bubbly insistence that they absolutely had to try it as she got set up.

Yelich has spent the past few years in New York, originally moving to the States at age 18 to pursue acting but later shifting over to music. In 2022, she dropped her debut single, “Threads,” carving out her own sliver of the space her sister had dominated for years, and steadily building up a fan base of her own.

As she’s strengthened her creative voice with subsequent releases, she’s now ready to reckon with the insanity of her life — some of which can be chalked up to being sister with a global pop star, but most of which is due to the inherent chaos of being in one’s mid-20s — on Fame Is a Bedroom, a lucid dream-pop blend of influences both classic (Fleetwood Mac) and modern (Holly Humberstone, Mk.gee).

“A lot of it is saying goodbye to past versions of myself,” she tells Billboard, over the noise of guests chattering, mixed drinks being shaken and a downpour outside, perched on a stool at the end of the bar minutes before her set. “With fame, it’s influenced my desire to be understood. It drove me to want to express my own version of myself in music. I would’t be here without it, but it’s kind of the little devil on my shoulder. It’s something that I’ll never necessarily want for myself, but I love it in a weird way, and I’ve made friends with it.”

At the heart of Fame Is a Bedroom are tender yet messy relationships — and yes, that does include the one she shares with her sister. A devastating split from a much older man — Yelich calls it her “Mr. Big” era — informed the simmering breakup ode “Up in Flames,” which includes a shout-out to The Wayland, previously a favorite date-night spot for her and her ex. She’s had no trouble reclaiming the bar for herself post-breakup, though, because, as she says with a glint in her eye, “It was always mine, baby. I’m an East Village girl, he lived in FiDi. This was mine from the start.”

There’s also “Sail Away,” which she says was inspired by a confusing relationship with a female friend whom she “put on a pedestal,” developing unreciprocated romantic feelings that blurred with the innately “primal” way “women love each other.” But the standout track — also the most healing to write, according to Yelich — is “Idol,” on which she was finally able to articulate all of the emotions she’s accumulated over the complexities of sharing her sibling with the public for so many years.

The lyrics are unflinching: “They don’t understand your love/ Never be bound by blood,” she sings of Lorde’s fans over a bed of synths and electric guitar. “I’m the one that you’re running to.”

“Idol” isn’t intended as a message to the rest of the world, though. “It’s a love song to my sister,” Yelich emphasizes. “It’s saying everything I wanted to say [about her fame] and putting it to bed. It’s really about coming to terms with a private relationship where there’s such trust and love, and also grappling with the emotional tug-of-war of sharing someone that I’m so close to.”

That said, Yelich admits that she was a little nervous to play “Idol” for Lorde (whom she, of course, knows simply as Ella), having some reservations about putting confessions such as “You crush me/ And trust me, I know that you love me” so plainly. Fortunately, both sisters were working on their most recent projects at the same time, and they often listened to each other’s demos as they were still being made. And with Lorde also pulling back the curtain on a tricky family dynamic on her June album Virgin — the fifth track of which finds her confessing her desperation to be mom Sonja’s “Favourite Daughter” of three girls — Yelich felt the runway clear for her to dig deep, too.

“I was really inspired by her honesty,” she says earnestly of her sister. “I was just really proud of [her writing about] the muse that is our mother. I can relate to it so much. There’s a complexity in, you know, the intimacy of sisterhood. I really grew alongside that song.”

Taking that lesson with her, Yelich is continuing to move forward with her heart on her sleeve. “Am I shiny?” she asked at The Wayland with her brow furrowed, powdering her face, divulging that a guy she has a crush on is in the audience, and taking the makeshift stage in the corner of the pub. More shows are in her future — she’ll play Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn in November — but on Wednesday night, she radiated happiness at the small gift of performing at her favorite bar in front of people who love her.

Right before she started singing, the most important of them walked in. Looking low-key in a simple white button-down and ponytail, Lorde quietly camouflaged herself in the rest of the crowd, and as Yelich sings “Idol” straight to her, the cheekbones she and her baby sister share crinkle with unspoken emotion, pride glowing on her face. That night, she was the supporting act, and she didn’t seem to mind at all.

Listen to Fame Is a Bedroom below.

Madonna continues to be in a reflective, dance floor-ready mood. A week after finally dropping the long-rumored Ray of Light remix album Veronica Electronica, the singer was back in the groove on Friday morning (Aug. 1) with a 40th anniversary celebration of her beloved Like a Virgin single “Dress You Up.”

The final single from the diamond-certified 1985 album is bundled in a three-song digital drop featuring a bouncy official remix and a nearly six-minute “12” Formal Mix” that includes an funky, extended bass-slapping, bell-ringing midsection of the song produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, who also plays iconic chicken scratch guitar on the track. The final version is a four-and-a-half minute “Casual Instrumental Mix” that strips away the vocals to focus on the song’s insistent, hypnotic melody.

According to a press release, the three-piece package is dedicated to the memory of Barbie doll designers and Madonna superfans Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi, who both tragically died in a car crash in Italy earlier this week. “We dedicate this release to them. Thank you for dressing up so many of your creations in Madonna iconic looks over the years,” it read.

In addition to combing through the archives, Madonna is reportedly working with Deadpool & Wolverine producer Shawn Levy on a limited Netflix series based on her life and career. While it wasn’t known at press time which part of her nearly five-decade career that project will focus on, The Fantastic Four: First Steps star Julia Garner recently said that she thinks the Madonna biopic she was tapped to star in that got shelved in 2023 is “supposed to still happen.”

Listen to the “Dress You Up” anniversary bundle below.

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

This week, Chappell Roan takes “Subway” uptown, Metro Boomin packs the guest list and Demi Lovato briskly comes back to pop. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Chappell Roan, “The Subway” 

There’s a reason why, more than a year after Chappell Roan performed “The Subway” during a few summer 2024 festival sets, fans were still pining for a studio version, which finally arrives today: the midtempo alt-pop ballad focuses on a dissolved romance with sweeping force, culminating in an extended outro that turns the phrases “She’s got a way” and “She got away” into a wounded belt-along.

Metro Boomin, Metro Boomin Presents: A Futuristic Summa 

While it’s easy to slot Metro Boomin’s A Futuristic Summa mixtape into the tradition of star-studded compilations from well-connected producers, a la Calvin Harris’ Funk Wav Bounces series, the late-00’s tone of this new project is defined by its thrilling splicing of old and new hip-hop generations, with veteran voices like Young Duo and Roscoe Dash joining Metro’s stable of mainstays.

Demi Lovato, “Fast” 

Following a foray into rock music that included reworking her old hits as guitar-heavy headbangers, Demi Lovato makes her pop return with “Fast,” a sweaty, kinetic club track that makes good use of her far-reaching vocals; Lovato has always possessed the talent to morph into a dance floor diva, and “Fast” hints that such a path is right in front of her.

Reneé Rapp, Bite Me 

The title of Reneé Rapp’s sophomore album suggests a newfound aggression, but really, the multi-hyphenate is simply honing her pop persona and rejecting those who want to dismiss it: Bite Me bristles with gleeful pop-rock anger at times, but on songs like “Shy” and “Sometimes,” that extended middle finger is balanced out by breathtaking vulnerability that deepens the project overall.

Mariah The Scientist & Kali Uchis, “Is It a Crime” 

“Is it a crime to fall in love a couple times?” Mariah The Scientist ponders on her new collaboration with Kali Uchis, which quickly follows the viral success of “Burning Blue” with an affecting meditation on modern romance — and utilizes Uchis’ gifts as a co-star, with two artists playing off of each other with deference and soulfulness on “Is It a Crime.”

Hayley Williams, “Glum” 

“Glum” is one part of a much bigger, and more amorphous, statement from Hayley Williams, as the Paramore leader surprised fans this week with 17 new songs (but not an album, exactly); the entire musical drop is worth perusing, but “Glum” is a muted, lightly strummed highlight, with Williams’ voice pitched up in the opening verse before clarifying on the hook.  

$uicideboy$, Thy Kingdom Come 

The underground rise of $uicideboy$ is well-documented, and on Thy Kingdom Come, the duo once again prove why their cultural resonance is less unlikely than you think: their sixth studio album is full of quick-hit observations and bruising rhymes per usual, but with some of the more deeply felt hooks of their career, as their bars wrap smoothly around each melody.

Editor’s Pick: Sofia Kourtesis, Volver 

Peruvian singer-producer Sofia Kourtesis’ 2023 debut Madres stands as one of the most mesmerizing dance albums of the decade, and while new EP Volver does not sprawl out as rapturously, the six-song project (which is dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community) pushes her thumping warmth towards a different set of grooves — most compellingly on “Unidos,” an acid-house riff made with Dan Snaith’s Daphni moniker.

INFAMOUS PR named Maxfield Frieser as CEO, with founder Alastair Duncan making the pivot to a new chairman role. Frieser, who joined in 2015 and most recently served as COO, helped build the PR agency’s festival and artist divisions, working with acts like Rüfüs Du Sol, RZA and Carl Craig, along with labels like Warner Records and Life & Death. His promotion aligns with INFAMOUS’ European expansion, launching a new office in Barcelona that’ll be led by Frieser and new hire Paul Geddis, who arrives from Sónar Festival. Assisting Geddis across the EU will be London-based communications pro Jamie Milton. Serving over 30 festivals and a diverse artist roster, the agency supports global clients like Time Warp, Sónar and Love Family Park. Duncan praised Frieser’s leadership, saying “there is no one I trust more to oversee the next chapter of our growth, and continue the excellence and innovation that INFAMOUS prides itself on.” Founded in 2008, INFAMOUS now has 13 staff across LA, NYC, London and Barcelona.

MNRK Music Group elevated Tina Warwick to senior vp of commerce and sales. In her expanded role, she will lead global strategy across streaming, digital and commercial platforms, reporting to COO Chris Moncada. Warwick will continue overseeing commerce and operations teams, focusing on data-driven strategy, DSP partnerships and international planning for MNRK’s growing roster. With over 20 years of experience, the LA-based Warwick joined MNRK in 2022 as vp of sales after holding senior roles at ADA/Warner Music Group and Sanctuary Records. “Tina’s unique perspective and leadership have been a great asset to MNRK from the very beginning of her tenure,” said Moncada.

The Country Music Association announced a wave of recent promotions and hirings. Emily Evans has been promoted to senior vp of business strategy and operations, taking over direction of the strategic partnerships team. Jenny Methling has been hired as senior director of strategic partnerships and will oversee CMA’ brand partnerships department; Methling previously served as vp of strategic partnerships at Musicians On Call. Devin Ford has been promoted to senior manager of social media. Luke Johnson has been hired as staff accountant, following time with Wilson Bank and Trust. Zarah Goldberg is the new video content creator, having previously held the role of digital marketing coordinator at Fox Nose Records. Finally, Liliana Manyara has been on-boarded as international industry relations coordinator, and previously worked at SESAC as licensing coordinator. –Jessica Nicholson

Major label vets Katie Vinten and Zach Lund partnered with Eclipse Music Group to launch Wild Child Music, a boutique management company. The company’s roster includes Delacey, Hayden Blount, Valley James, Cece Coakley and more. Vinten, formerly svp of A&R at Columbia Records and co-head of A&R at Warner Chappell, has worked with artists like Leon Bridges, Julia Michaels and Kygo. Lund, previously director of A&R at Universal Music Publishing Group, has collab’d with Stephen Sanchez (“Until I Found You”) and Cage the Elephant’s Matt Shultz. Eclipse’s leadership praised Vintner and Lund’s “drive, authenticity and commitment to artistic integrity” as “unmatched.”

Stern Management is making its U.K. debut by bringing on London-based talent manager Andrew Mishko and operations expert Jill Irvine. Mishko, formerly with Bad Habit and PC Music, brings a roster including EKKSTACY, Witch Post and Martha Skye Murphy. Irvine, based in Colorado, has over a decade of experience across management, agency and venue operations. Their hiring follows a wave of major successes for Stern artists, including Djo topping U.S. Alternative Radio and surpassing 2.5 billion streams, and Finn Wolfhard releasing his debut solo LP and completing a sold-out tour. Mishko, with a background in touring and brand partnerships and Irvine, known for elevating Grammy-winning talent, will strengthen Stern’s global presence. 

Veteran publicist Jenny Huynh joined Big Loud Rock as director of media, where she will lead press strategy and execution, reporting to senior leadership. Huynh brings extensive experience from her time at 2b Entertainment and Warner Records, where she led national campaigns for artists like Green Day, Shania Twain, My Chemical Romance and David Guetta. She began her career at Rogers & Cowan PMK and is known for her strong media relationships and creative storytelling. Excited to join Big Loud Rock, Huynh praised the team’s energy and leadership. Label president Joey Moi highlighted her “fresh perspective” and “strong connections” as “key in helping our artists stand out.”

Alan D. Valentine will retire as president and CEO of the Nashville Symphony at the end of the 2025-2026 season, concluding a transformative 28-year tenure. Since 1998, Valentine has led the Symphony through major milestones, including the creation of Schermerhorn Symphony Center, $145 million in fundraising and 14 Grammy wins. Under his leadership, the Nashville Symphony expanded its reach to over 550,000 people annually, launched the acclaimed Accelerando program, and emerged stronger after overcoming major challenges like the 2010 flood. A national search for his successor is underway, with acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin returning as music advisor in September 2025 to ensure artistic continuity during the transition. Valentine called his time at the symphony “the honor of a lifetime.”

NASHVILLE NOTES:  SMACKSongs promoted Sam Sarno to senior creative director of publishing. In this expanded role, she will continue working with the current roster while also focusing on signing and developing new talent. Sarno has played a key role in the success of artists like Lalo Guzman, Josh Dorr, and Johnny Clawson … Triple Tigers’ Akando Music promotion group added two regional directors: East director Christina Kosters and West director Greg Raneiri. Kosters arrives from Capitol Christian Music Group, where she was Southeast director of national promotion, while Raneiri formerly was KSON San Diego assistant PD/music director.

NAMM announced new leadership for its NAMM Young Professionals (YP) and Women of NAMM (WoN) groups. Erin Kessler (Maple Leaf Strings) will serve as NAMM YP president, joined by Scott Rife (Eastman Music Co.) as vice president and Matthew Kennedy (C.F. Martin & Co.) as secretary-treasurer. Leanne Chu (Gator Co.) has been named chair of WoN, with Gayle Eline (Menchey Music Service) as vice chair and Morgane Devos (Shure Inc.) as secretary. These leaders will guide NAMM’s fastest-growing communities, aligning with the organization’s broader mission.

Slacker Media Group appointed Joe Pulito as director of operations, bringing over a decade of experience in live entertainment, talent buying and tour production. Pulito will oversee daily operations and lead the scaling of the Boston-based company’s national event portfolio — including It’s A 2000s Party and Sploinky Rave — while streamlining internal processes and expanding production capabilities. Since its founding, SMG has sold over 250,000 tickets and generated nearly $4 million in revenue, pioneering innovations like real-time hologram visuals in live events through Sploinky Rave.

ICYMI: The Motion Picture Academy elected a president … AWAL promoted three … Warner Records realigned … Spotify’s ad chief dashed … UMG lost a board member … and DCP named its first CCO. Find these stories here.

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