BLACKPINK‘s latest album, Born Pink, has topped this week’s new music poll.

Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (Sept. 16) on Billboard, choosing the K-pop girl group’s second full-length project as their favorite new music release of the past week.

Born Pink beat out new music by Charlie Puth (“I Don’t Think That I Like Her”), Marcus Mumford (self-titled), Rina Sawayama (Hold the Girl), Fletcher (Girl of My Dreams), Maggie Lindemann (Suckerpunch), and others.

In addition to its popular lead single “Pink Venom,” BLACKPINK’s follow-up to 2020’s The Album boasts second track “Shut Down” (with its Easter egg-filled music video), surprise Rosé solo cut “Hard to Love,” stunning ballad “The Happiest Girl,” and previously unreleased fan-favorite track “Ready to Love.”

“Pink Venom” netted the foursome its second-highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 after debuting at No. 22 on the Sept. 3-dated chart. (“Ice Cream” with Selena Gomez, which appeared on BLACKPINK’s The Album, peaked at No. 13 on the Hot 100 in 2020.)

Up next for the K-pop stars is the Born Pink World Tour, which launches in October, with stops in South Korea, North America, Europe and Australia.

Trailing behind Born Pink on the fan-voted poll was Puth’s latest song “I Don’t Think That I Like Her,” with 3% of the vote. Placing third was Mumford’s emotionally raw debut solo project, (self-titled), with 2% of the vote.

See the final results of this week’s new music release poll below.

In a matter of weeks, familial country music trio Chapel Hart have gone from earning the group Golden Buzzer from the judges of America’s Got Talent and making it all the way to the show’s finale, to making a triumphant, tear-filled Grand Ole Opry debut performance on Saturday evening (Sept. 17).

The Mississippi-born trio — sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and their cousin Trea Swindle — previously released the albums Out The Mud (2019) and The Girls Are Back in Town (2021). Their three-song Opry debut earned the trio three standing ovations and fervent cheers from the Opry crowd.

On Tuesday evening (Sept. 13), the three-piece performed the patriotic number “American Pride” during the AGT finale, but were overcome by emotion during the show and battled vocal issues throughout the performance.

“We didn’t make it halfway through the song. The first notes started and we started boo-hooing on America’s Got Talent before the song even started, so tonight we want to dedicate this to the men and women who lay it all on the line day in and day out,” Danica Hart told the Opry crowd, before the group offered a heartfelt thanks to any and all military members in the Opry House audience, and gave the song another go on the Opry stage, drawing immense applause, a standing ovation, and one of the most inspiring moments of the evening.

They concluded with “You Can Have Him Jolene,” their AGT audition song that earned the trio the group Golden Buzzer win, along with praise from artists including Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Darius Rucker.

During the AGT finale, Chapel Hart performed “Something to Talk About” with Rucker, who had previously revealed Chapel Hart will be featured on his upcoming album. Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Chapel Hart told Billboard how the Rucker collaboration for his album came about.

“First of all, you get a message from Darius Rucker on social media and you think, ‘These darn spam folks,’ but then you see there’s a blue checkmark!” Swindle said. “He said, ‘I have this song and I think I hear you guys doing the harmonies. Y’all just take it and do Chapel Hart. I’d love to work with you.’ So we took it and Chapel Harted it right up, put down the vocals and sent it to the producer. We were waiting for the response and the producer just goes, ‘Got it, thanks.’

“We were like, ‘Oh, maybe he didn’t like it as much as we thought,’ but then two weeks later, we get a message from Darius and he’s like, ‘OMG, what in the world?! I just heard this.’ He didn’t change a thing and said, ‘I want this to be a feature, a collaboration.’ Just to see him be so excited about that, when for so long we’ve just wanted to show people who we are — he definitely gave us an opportunity and championed us as artists.”

The trio has a strong bucket list of artists they would still love to collaborate with, including Little Big Town, the Chicks, Zac Brown Band and Pistol Annies.

“And we would love to do something with Dolly [Parton], even if we just stand and cry in the background,” Danica Hart says.

“We’ll be the background criers,” Swindle said, adding, “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but I’m going to convince Gretchen Wilson to come back and start doing some more stuff.”

Saturday evening may have marked Chapel Hart’s first Opry performance, but certainly not their last — near the closing of their set, they surprised the Opry audience with the news that will return for their next Opry performance on Oct. 8.

As Chapel Hart made their very first Grand Ole Opry performance, they were introduced by “Miss Country Soul” Jeannie Seely, who that same evening celebrated 55 years as member of the vaunted Grand Ole Opry establishment.

“How special it is tonight for a 55-year member to welcome a group on their debut, which just proves our Grand Ole Opry tradition — the circle will not be broken,” Seely told the audience. Prior to her introduction, Seely noted that she welcomed the trio with a bottle of champagne and handwritten notes congratulating them on their Opry debut.

Seely, known for Billboard hits including “Wish I Didn’t Have to Miss You” (with Jack Greene) and “Can I Sleep in Your Arms,” was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on Sept. 16, 1967. On Saturday night, she was honored not only for her 55-year commitment to the Opry, but also for having the distinction of having appeared on the Opry stage more than any other artist in Opry history, having stepped onto the Opry stage over 5,000 times in her career.

Dan Rogers, Grand Ole Opry’s vp/executive producer, and Gina Keltner, director of Opry talent scheduling and logistics, offered Seely a plaque to commemorate both milestones.

“How blessed I am,” Seely said. Earlier in the evening, she told the audience, “I’m just enjoying every second of it and never take it for granted.” Noting that Roy Acuff once told her, “Sing the one that brought you to the Opry,” Seely offered a rendition of her No. 2 Billboard country hit from 1966, “Don’t Touch Me,” which earned her a Grammy win for best country & western vocal performance-female.

Of course, Pennsylvania native Seely was never content to be only a performer on the Opry — she fought for progress within the organization, becoming the first woman to regularly host segments of the weekly Grand Ole Opry shows, and is credited with being the first to wear a miniskirt on the Opry stage.

“It wasn’t just pushing for women’s rights, although that was part of it,” Seely told reporters backstage of her push for allowing women to host Opry segments. “My view was for the overall show, and the talent that gets heard and what the people want to hear.”

Currently, Seely says she is focused on three things: the Opry, her role as host of a weekly Sunday show on SiriusXM’s Willie’s Roadhouse channel, and getting back to songwriting. Last year, Rhonda Vincent released the bluegrass hit “Like I Could,” which Seely wrote with Erin Enderlin and Bobby Tomberlin. In 2020, Seely also released the album An American Classic, a mix of new songs and re-recordings of timeless tunes.

Seely noted that she went into the studio nearly three weeks ago to record more songs she had written.

“I talked to Bill Anderson one day about an idea I had and he said, ‘I really like this.’ We’ve been friends for 60 years and we tell each other about our songs,” she told reporters backstage. “[Seely said] ‘Are we ever going to write a song?’ So he and I and Bobby Tomberlin got together and wrote one. I served them lunch and when I was walking them to the door, I remembered another idea I wrote on my phone in Target one day. I told them the idea, and Bill said, ‘Jeannie, that’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard in a while,’ so we set another [writing] appointment for the next day.”

She’s also been writing with Buddy Cannon, Victoria Shaw and Gary Burr. Seely said that even after over five decades as an Opry member and country music mainstay, the creative possibilities of songwriting still excite her. “These people call me to write with them, and I’m blown away, absolutely,” she noted.

Lea Michele is passing her time in quarantine on TikTok after testing positive for COVID-19 last week. She launched her own TikTok account on Saturday (Sept. 17), poking fun at a dramatic recreation of her performance on Broadway’s Funny Girl with one of her own.

The original TikTok video, created by Javi Rodriguez, featured an impersonation of “Lea Michele on opening night of Funny Girl” that others commented was pretty accurate: “As someone who just saw the show tonight, I can say with 100% certainty that this is what happened,” one person had written.

Michele, who’s currently on a 10-day break from her role as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival show just after her run in the show began, did her own take of the “Don’t Rain on My Parade” entrance on TikTok.

“duet with @javirod305 #funnygirl Clearly I can’t wait to get back to @funnygrlbwy next week,” she captioned the clip on Saturday.

Michele had just taken over the starring role on Sept. 6, after standby Julie Benko filled in following Beanie Feldstein’s exit from the production in July. Michele is due to return to the stage on Sept. 20.

Watch her first post on TikTok here and embedded in the tweet below.

Life Is Beautiful, Las Vegas’ block-party festival, returned to the streets downtown for its ninth edition on Friday (Sept. 16). The three-day cacophony of music, art, comedy and food set amid the lights of 18 electric blocks always delivers a number of surprises for both attendees and performers. 2022 was no exception. With stand-out sets from Charli XCX, Alison Wonderland and Blu DeTiger, this one belonged to the women who dominated Friday’s lineup.

Blu DeTiger

Rising star Blu DeTiger performed not once, but three times on Friday: first her own set on the Huntridge stage, then at the Toyota Music Den and later at the official Life Is Beautiful after party at the Sand Dollar Lounge inside the Plaza Hotel, where she DJed and riffed on her bass. During her festival turn, the bass prodigy was dreamy, funky, poppy heaven on her own tasty songs such as “Cotton Candy Lemonade,” “Toast with Butter” and “Crash Course” — and then with covers of Gorillaz, OutKast and M.I.A. Closing out the 40-minute set with Vintage, and ripping on the bass, DeTiger left us wanting more and assured she would deliver.

Billboard talked after the set with DeTiger, who shared that while she embraces her following on TikTok, where she rose to fame, nothing beats the live crowd. “I released most of my music during the pandemic. I got a lot of my fanbase during the pandemic, and I started playing shows at a certain level because that’s how the trajectory was going. I suddenly had all these people that knew the words,” she says. “I’d rather the real human performance over performing to a phone.”

Alison Wonderland

Australian DJ and producer Alex Sholler, also known as Alison Wonderland, is the current reigning queen of EDM — and she straightened that crown closing out day one with a booming set that showcased her range of talents. Playing until 1 a.m. in the Fremont tent, she provided a divergent sound to the other headliner of the night, indie rockers Arctic Monkeys on the Downtown Stage. The Church of Wonderland was the theme of the set with stunning lasers and projections as she played her remix of Dua Lipa’s “New Rules,” “U Don’t Know” and numerous tracks from her new album Loner, like “Something Real.” Singing, DJing and cello playing, she offers something fans just can’t get from other EDM artists. Seeing her live is like taking a trip through her soul — raw, visceral, churning and burning, yet delicate and intricate. Sholler told Billboard that playing Life Is Beautiful in 2018 stills stands out in her mind.

“It was the energy. It’s always the energy that makes me remember a show. I remember it just being such a rush. And I was having a really good moment in life at that time, too,” she says.

Charli XCX

Playing the intimate Huntridge stage, Charli XCX easily could’ve occupied space on the main stage. It’s through her festival sets that you really get the scope of her body of work and its hits. From “Lightning” to “I Love It,” the Greek goddess-themed staging created a stunning visual presence while the sing-along quality of her catalog was pure auditory pleasure. Her energy carried over to the crowd, which bounced back to the stage and her dancers. The biggest treat of the night was “Hot in It,” a Tiësto collab — playing it in the town the DJ unquestionably dominates. 

Shaggy, Cage the Elephant and More Highlights

Other top acts included Shaggy on the BACARDÍ stage, Cage the Elephant and Coin on the Downtown stage, Wet Leg on the Huntridge stage and Sonny Fodera on the Fremont stage.

Shaggy brought the party with all fun tracks that everyone sings along to, including “Angel,” “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me.” He shouted out his collaboration with Sting on the Frank Sinatra-homage album Com Fly Wid Mi, performing “That’s Life.”

Playing off the fun house vibes of the night at the BACARDÍ stage, Oliver Tree was a delicious festival snack, riding on stage in a scooter, making reference to the heat by describing himself as a pork chop and playing an extra huge guitar. Appropriately, his album Ugly Is Beautiful was prominently featured. 

T-Pain, who dropped in when Migos dropped out, was the perfect day one closer on the BACARDÍ stage. His collaborative hits “Black and Yellow” with Wiz Khalifa and “Good Life” with Kanye West are festival bangers that never grow stale.

Before closer Arctic Monkeys, Cage the Elephant could have easily been the headliner of the night. The band, fronted by Matt Shultz, moved up the lineup quite a bit from their turn in 2017, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the theatrics. Shultz has the persona of Iggy Pop crossed with Mick Jagger, and he banged out the hits, wore at least three extravagant hats and stage dived into the crowd while wrapping himself in his fishnet tights. At one point, he even stopped and started a song over as a drone show appeared in the night’s sky for the website Factz.com. Unrelated to the festival, the colorful flying devices paraded into a letter “Z” pierced by an arrow. 

Day two will feature Lorde, Gorillaz, Bob Moses, Hope Tala, Kygo and many more.