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, Alex Warren is far from “Ordinary,” Jessie Murph delivers on her promise and BTS bring us back to live. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Alex Warren, You’ll Be Alright, Kid
With the success of “Ordinary” eclipsing even the wildest expectations, Alex Warren now has the opportunity to establish an enduring foothold in popular music — and You’ll Be Alright, Kid, a new album that features his No. 1 smash as well as previously released collaborations with Jelly Roll and ROSÉ, fleshes out the boom and gravel of his voice, with opener “Eternity” in particular operating in the same emotional songwriter register as his breakthrough hit.
Jessie Murph, Sex Hysteria
“Blue Strips” may have been the viral smash-turned-top 20 hit that finally delivered Jessie Murph to the mainstream, but the singer-songwriter has spent years honing her pop persona and hopscotching across genres with ease; Sex Hysteria contains plenty of the earworm hooks that made Murph’s voice ubiquitous over the past few months, but more importantly, the new album places her fierce spirit front and center, and gives her the widescreen platform that she deserves.
BTS, Permission To Dance On Stage – Live
Although the long-awaited, full-throttle return of BTS is expected for 2026, Permission To Dance On Stage – Live — the group’s first live album, which is taken from various performances during their 2021 tour — serves as a timely reminder of their global appeal, from their Hot 100 chart-toppers to their fan-favorite album tracks that still resonate a decade after their release.
Zach Bryan feat. Gabriella Rose, “Madeline”
Two weeks after releasing a three-pack of songs, Zach Bryan has quickly returned with “Madeline,” a heartfelt collaboration with Gabriella Rose that also precedes a newly announced album, With Heaven On Top; Bryan remains as prolific as ever, but none of the recent material feels rushed or tossed-off, and Rose’s gentle twang nicely plays off his own delivery here.
Alex G, Headlights
Alex G signing to RCA Records was both a big deal and a natural next step for the indie stalwart: as the singer-songwriter’s commercial prospects have steadily grown, new album Headlights contains the potential of a true crossover for his deeply felt, idiosyncratic tone, especially if songs like “Oranges” and “Afterlife” find the right rock-leaning audience.
Myke Towers, Island Boyz
A press release for Myke Towers’ Island Boyz describes the project as “an album that doesn’t aim to fit into any mold, but rather to create its own language” — and across its 75-minute run time, Towers centers not just his Puerto Rican roots but the entirety of Caribbean music, reaching a new level as a mainstream artist through synthesis and experimentation.
Cam, All Things Light
As a fresh generation of country artists has stepped into the spotlight, Cam has remained among the most consistent in her class, with new album All Things Light reflecting on personal struggles and offering hope to those in desperate need of it; it’s a different shade for the singer-songwriter, but the newfound urgency powers this collection.
Editor’s Pick: Nine Inch Nails, “As Alive As You Need Be to Me”
Nine Inch Nails’ studio output has slowed down over the past decade as Trent Reznor has focused on scoring film projects (and become a fixture at the Academy Awards as a result) — and while “As Alive As You Need Be to Me” is attached to a movie, as the first taste of the upcoming Tron: Ares soundtrack, the single gloriously flexes the band’s industrial-dance muscle that recalls the highs of With Teeth, and Reznor spends the track sounding commanding, re-energized back in front of the microphone.
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:40:562025-07-18 16:40:56Friday Music Guide: New Music From Alex Warren, Jessie Murph, BTS and More
In her latest post dissing the R&B singer-songwriter, the Queen of Rap claimed Thursday (July 17) that Drizzy initially wanted her, not SZA, to be featured on his hit “Rich Baby Daddy,” before alleging that Bey was reluctant to sing the “Kill Bill” artist’s “s–t lyrics” on 2015’s “Feeling Myself.” “I wonder if she know I turned down being on the ‘shake dat a– for drake’ song,” Minaj began, referencing Drake’s 2023 collaboration with SZA and Sexyy Red.
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“He wanted me & [Sexyy] on it,” she continued. “I said I want to wait for [Pink Friday 2] for me & him to do a dricki song so it felt more special. And now that silly goose still out here shaking dat a– for drake every day.”
Minaj went on to claim that SZA “has been trying to tell the world she wrote for Beyonce every other other business day,” referring to the R&B hitmaker’s co-writing credit on the New York native and Bey’s decade-old joint effort. Earlier in their back-and-forth, SZA had claimed that Minaj previously asked to collaborate with her “twice to no response” before teasing, “In addition to rapping my lyrics on feeling myself ‘Cooking up the bass looking like a kilo’?”
“I remember me & Beyonce was going back & forth on the phone about that part of the song,” Minaj wrote Thursday. “Bey was like you sing it, I was like NOOOOO you sing it, she was like noooooo you sing it, I was like PLEASE!!!!! I can’t sing! … none of us wanted to sing those s–t lyrics.”
Billboard has reached out to reps for SZA, Drake and Beyoncé for comment.
The rapper’s latest post comes a couple of days after she first started lobbing insults at SZA on Tuesday (July 15). It all started with Minaj posting about her issues with the One of Them Days actress’ former manager, Terrence “Punch” Howard, after which SZA posted on X, “Mercury retrograde .. don’t take the bait lol silly goose” — which Minaj took to be a subtweet aimed at her.
Minaj has since fired off a number of posts dissing SZA, calling her opponent “ugly” and a “liar,” repeatedly making fun of her for wearing “fake freckles” and writing, “B—h looking & sounding like she got stung by a f–king bee.”
SZA, on the other hand, has not directly responded to Minaj more than a couple of times. When the latter first started posting messages about her, the former wrote, “I don’t give a f–k bout none of that weird s–t you popping.”
Later, SZA responded to Minaj calling her a “s–t girl’s girl” with a screenshot of the rapper allegedly asking to collaborate with the singer, writing, “Nicki … You absolutely know my music and what I contribute cause you’ve asked for features twice to no response.”
Of SZA’s reply, Minaj added in her post about Drake and Beyoncé, “Took the Btch 2 days to be coached on what to say & do next. These btchs have no identity, can’t thing off the top of their heads if you paid them to.”
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:33:062025-07-18 16:33:06Nicki Minaj Brings Drake & Beyoncé Into Her Spat With SZA: ‘None of Us Wanted to Sing Those S–t Lyrics’
In the sunlit boardroom of a sleekly understated West Hollywood hotel, the gentlemen of Above & Beyond sign hundreds of posters of themselves. The trio — Paavo Siljamäki, Tony McGuinness and Jono Grant — form an assembly line as they put their respective names (first, only) onto each image from the three inch stack, their silver Sharpies dulling from use.
Based in London (Grant and McGuinness) and Finland (Siljamäki) the guys are jet-lagged but a bit giddy from an interview they did earlier today with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, an occasion they flew to Los Angeles for, and for which McGuinness says they were “incredibly nervous.” They’re one of the most beloved groups in dance music, yet they seem gobsmacked by the mainstream recognition.
That interview, and this one, are puzzle pieces of an album campaign that launched in March with the announcement of Bigger Than All of Us, the trio’s fifth studio LP in a catalog going back to 2006. The campaign hit overdrive three months ago with a primetime performance at Coachella’s Outdoor Stage, a promo cycle that compounds upon itself here on the glass conference table as they sign posters bearing an image of that show.
In it, the trio appear in miniature at the center of a giant circular stage rig, a huge digital full moon rising on the LED wall behind them and a sprawling audience ahead. What’s cut out from the image is the additional 40,000 people who were in the crowd that night.
“We went to the stage the night before at the same time and there were about 10,000 people seeing the band there,” says McGuinness. He thought A&B would pull a similarly sized crowd. He was wrong. They walked onstage and “I Iooked out and it was just one of those moments where you go ‘Wow,’” he says. “I think it was one of the most extraordinary gigs we’ve done, seeing the people going on forever.”
Above & Beyond at Coachella 2025
Brandon Densley
Given that A&B has been commanding giant crowds for upwards of 25 years, since coalescing in the U.K. in the Y2K era, that’s saying something. At Coachella, the trio debuted a handful of never-before-heard album tracks, ramping up to a place of anthemic ecstasy over the hour. Watching via livestream from his living room in Los Angeles, the album’s A&R Dave Dresden was observing closely.
“I could feel the tension in them when they started,” he says. “They started with a song nobody had ever heard before, and it wasn’t really crafted for the dance floor, but they won that crowd over in a way that I wasn’t even expecting.” By the end of the set, Dresden was crying. Given the heart-on-sleeve vibe that’s long been A&B’s signature, he likely wasn’t the only one.
Out today (July 18) Bigger Than All of Us is the group’s first entirely electronic album since 2018’s Common Ground. (2019’s Flow State is a continuous mix of ambient music made for yoga and meditation.) The plan wasn’t necessarily to wait seven years between albums, but when the pandemic hit, the guys were in different locations and each just went about making a solo project.
When the trio started touring together again post-pandemic “it quickly became evident that we needed new music, because we were playing mostly old stuff,” says McGuinness. “It was like there needed to be a new Above & Beyond album, or there would be no more Above & Beyond.”
“If you don’t keep going, you sort of become a legacy act,” says Grant. “It was like, ‘If we don’t do a new album, what are we going to do? What’s the point?’”
“We could probably always play the major festivals,” Siljamäki continues, “but that’s not really as exciting as it is to go out there and play new material.”
So at a 2023 lunch with their manager James Grant, (who’s also Jono’s brother), they decided that It Was Time. Luckily, they had a lot of pre-existing ideas to pull from. Unfortunately they weren’t convinced any of them were very good.
This is where Dresden entered the picture. Half of longstanding dance duo Gabriel & Dresden, he’d long known James Grant and the crew at Anjuna, the family of labels (Anjunbeats, Anjunadeep and Anjunachill) that’s home to a sprawling ecosystem of artists and events, with A&B at the center. (James Grant is also the head of Anjunadeep.) Dresden says he’d previously “planted the seed” with James Grant that he’d be an astute A&R for the label, but he didn’t expect to work with its star act.
“I think they’d been working on the album for a year and weren’t feeling like they’d gotten anywhere,” says Dresden. “They needed outside perspective.”
He was offered the A&R role, but didn’t immediately say yes. Instead, he downloaded the audio book of Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being, digested its messages about how to get the best from an artist, then spent a day listening to the complete Above & Beyond discography. “I really felt like I understood what they achieve in their records,” he says, “and I felt like I could do it.” He accepted the job.
The trio sent Dresden approximately 40 unfinished songs, and he sorted them into five categories ranging from “‘Sun & Moon’ Level,” (a reference one of their biggest hits) to “I don’t really understand this.” His benchmark for quality was specific: “The framework, he says, “Was that the songs need to be so good that people will be willing to tattoo the lyrics on their bodies.”
Siljamäki, McGuinness and Grant gave Dresden a few weeks to digest the music, then they had their first meeting. “They’d sold me on this idea they were lost,” says Dresden. “In that meeting I said to them, ‘I know you’re not going to believe me, but you already have an album.’”
“That completely changed the vibe,” says Siljamäki. “We had him saying ‘This track you did five years ago, this is really good, did you realize?’ He really helped bring us together.”
“What was great is that there were bits in there that we maybe believed in individually, but maybe the group didn’t believe it,” says Jono Grant. “Having Dave go, ‘This is a great song’ … Whoever didn’t make the track would listen up and go ‘Okay!’ He broke through the egos and the bulls–t and just got down to what’s really good here.”
Through this process, the guys saw that they had roughly two thirds of the album already done. From there, they scheduled weekly virtual meetings where they’d play through the progress of each song and everyone would provide feedback. “It felt a little bit corporate at times, but it was good to have some accountability,” says Jono Grant. “They sort of squeezed an album out of us.”
“We typically resist meetings,” says McGuinness. “We work together sometimes, but it’s very rare for all three of us to be in the room at the same time. That’s never been the way that we work. I work with Jono. Jono works with Paavo, then with me. There are different iterations.”
Amid process, they brought in their longtime collaborators Zoë Johnston, whose ethereal voice is arguably one of the calling cards of the A&B sound, as well as Richard Bedford and Justice Suissa. It’s essentially a given that these guests will be on any new A&B album. “We’re not reinventing the wheel every time we do a record,” says McGuinness. “Having those recognizable voices helps us with radio and helps us to signal that we’re back.”
Eventually, they had 16 tracks, and Bigger Than All of Us was officially completed in May.
The project, James Grant says, “is pretty much the most exciting thing that can happen on Anjunabeats,” with the label putting a third of its global team on the album campaign, from streaming to events to management to merch. In terms of success, he says there’s “no single factor that just changes the game and the campaign. It’s more a cumulative effect of doing lots of things well.”
A huge piece of the puzzle is the upcoming tour, for which A&B will take the same giant stage rig from Coachella to 13 North American amphitheaters from August to October, being one of only a handful of electronic acts able to play this level of venue. (Other acts at this level might include Odesza.) A&B fans are famously dedicated, and among the more welcoming crowds in electronic music, no doubt a trickle-down effect of the group and its focus on wellness, inclusivity and therapeutic crying on the dancefloor.
“I really feel like we have a voice that we need to use in the electronic world,” says Siljamäki, who’s been open about the period of severe burnout and depression he experienced during the pandemic, and how clubbing helped him come back from it. “What we created is so awesome that even if it’s hard, it’s worth going through the hard stuff.”
“The backbone has to be the love of music to keep me engaged,” says Grant, “But the responsibility drags me through the bits when I’m tired on tour and can’t get out of bed in a hotel room.”
This sense of responsibility extends to the core operation itself. “I feel that responsibility every time I go in the office and see how many people we’ve got working there,” says McGuinness. “Without Above & Beyond, Anjunabeats is a very different size company from the one that that we’ve got with us.”
But the size in question here isn’t just the number of Anjuna staff or the number of streams the album will amass or the number of posters sitting here on the table. Above & Beyond’s music is big and anthemic, but it’s also subtle and often understated — opening track “Stepping In” spends its first minute weaving together sounds of wind, bird calls and children playing before really lifting off. “Blood From a Stone,” like so much of the album, is as celestial and contemplative as it is thumping. When Above & Beyond talk about proportions, its never been just about numbers, but the weight of impact their music has on the individual and the global collective that’s its brought together. Ultimately, that’s the size that most matters.
Says McGuinness: “It’s not called Bigger Than All Of Us for no reason.”
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:33:052025-07-18 16:33:05‘There Needed to Be a New Above & Beyond Album, Or There Would Be No More Above & Beyond’: The Beloved Trio Are Back
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Beyoncé is in the middle of her Cowboy Carter Tour, but she took some time out of her schedule earlier this year to record a portion of Matriarch: A Memoir, the new audiobook written by her mother Tina Knowles. Now, you can listen to Beyoncé’s narration of Matriarch for just $0.99 with a rare deal on Audible.
For a limited time, you can get yourself an Audible Premium Plus membership through Amazon for $0.99 a month for the first 3 months, allowing you access to a wide range of audiobooks, including Knowles’ memoir. With this deal, you’ll receive one credit a month so you can pick from Audible’s entire premium selection to keep forever. Why not use one of your credits on the memoir? With this deal, you’ll also get unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals and podcasts. After the first three months, your subscription will return to $14.95/month.
Beyoncé’s smooth melodic voice adds a rather personal touch to her mother’s book. The singer provides a voice-over introduction for the memoir, expressing gratitude for her mother’s honesty, bravery and compassion. The singer touches on Tina’s motherhood and her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis, a revelation that was further discussed in the book. The resulting narration is a deeply touching retelling of her mother’s story in crisp, clear detail. Solange, Kelly Rowland and Angie Beyincé, Beyonce and Solange’s cousin, also help narrate Tina’s story, as does Tina herself. The Matriarch book tour began on April 30, right on the heels of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour.
An Audible audio book narrated by Beyonce and Solange
Following its release, Matriarch earned a coveted spot on The New York Times‘ bestseller list. Beyoncé took to Instagram to celebrate her mother’s accomplishment. “Matriarch is officially a No. 1 New York Times bestseller,” the singer wrote, “The Mama T was that good?? Ha. You deserve it, I’m so proud!”
The book, of course, aims at shedding light on Tina and her famous family, debunking a few misconceptions along the way. “Now is the time,” Tina told the Los Angeles Times in an interview from April, “because people have so many misconceptions about my family and I wanted to tell the story myself and not have anyone else tell it.”
A particularly poignant moment in the book focuses on rumors that Bey was faking her pregnancy with Blue Ivy, a pregnancy that was famously announced at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. “This child was prayed for and prayed over — a wanted, cherished, real baby, and people were making a living off saying she was a lie,” Tina wrote, noting how the “Deja Vu” singer had suffered multiple miscarriages before Blue came along. “I wanted to curse some people out and scream at these losers to set the record straight. They had no idea what she and Jay and our whole family had been through.”
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:27:402025-07-18 16:27:40Listen to Beyoncé Narrate Mom Tina Knowles’ Memoir ‘Matriarch’ for Just $0.99 With Audible
Books are perfect for reading or displaying on your coffee table, but on the days you’re commuting or traveling to new destinations, finding space to pack a thick book isn’t always easy. To help you update your summer reading list with audiobooks, Amazon is giving eligible Prime members a chance to get up to three months of Audible Premium Plus for free.
However, if you’re not an eligible Prime member, you can still get three months of the audiobook service for just $0.99 per month — that’s less than $1 per month to access thousands of audiobooks.
Not a member? Sign up for a 30-day free trial to take advantage of all that Amazon Prime has to offer, including access to Prime Video, Prime Gaming and Amazon Photos; fast free shipping in less than two days with Prime Delivery; in-store discounts at Whole Foods Market; access to exclusive shopping events — such as Prime Day and Black Friday — and much more. Learn more about Amazon Prime and its benefits here.
The Audible summer promotion is on now and runs through July 31. Sign up for the Audible deal and you’ll receive unlimited access to Amazon’s library of Audible Originals, audiobooks, podcasts, sleep tracks and meditation programs. That also includes thousands of popular titles across genres, such as Amazon bestsellers.
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There are two plans to choose from: Audible Plus and Audible Plus Premium. Audible Plus is the entry-level plan that’s regularly $7.95 per month and gives you instant access to Audible Originals, audiobooks and exclusive podcast series. Audible Plus Premium gets you one free title from Audible’s library a month to keep in addition to everything included in the Audible Plus plan.
Once the three months are over, you’ll be charged the normal subscription price of starting at $7.95 per month. In the meantime, you’ll either get three months for free, or three months of access for only $0.99 per month.
This Audible summer promotion is a limited-time offer, so we recommend acting fast to score this new Audible deal. It expires at the end of the day on Thursday, July 31. See full details of the Audible promotion here.
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Why Europe’s Pioneering AI Legislation Has the Music Business Worried: ‘Make or Break Moment…
In March 2024, the European Parliament passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, the first serious law that would regulate AI. Procedurally, this represented an enormous accomplishment — it’s not easy to pass legislation at the speed of innovation. Practically, like most legislation, the act represented a compromise, applying different levels of regulatory scrutiny to applications with different levels of risk. Broadly, it fell far short of perfect, but it was much better than the proposed 10-year moratorium on enforcing state laws affecting AI in the American “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (The act passed. This provision was eliminated. I am still unable to say the name of this law without giggling.)
Now all creators and rightsholders have to do is lobby the EU to enforce it — to “Stay True to the [AI] Act,” to quote the campaign that the recording business trade association IFPI and other rightsholder groups unveiled on July 15, complete with the inevitable but slightly ungainly #StayTrueToTheAct hashtag. At a time when technology companies already seem more powerful than governments, this is not a good sign.
The asks involved are simple and familiar: Transparency, consent and remuneration. The second two are at the heart of copyright — creators and rightsholders want to negotiate (consent) so they can get paid fairly (remuneration). But both of those could be difficult, if not impossible, without transparency. And now we get to the heart of the matter.
In Brussels, it sometimes seems like the U.S. technology business is the Wild West and the European Union is trying to bring a modicum of order to a lawless frontier. There’s more than a little truth to this. “Regulators, mount up!” to quote the sample of dialog from the 1988 Western Young Guns in the Warren G song — the startups are out of control again. Indeed, U.S. technology companies like to “move fast and break things” — to beg forgiveness rather than ask for permission. In the case of AI, it is assumed that technology companies have already ingested massive amounts of work in order to make their algorithms function. In some cases, this is pretty obvious, although it has never been confirmed.
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Before the AI Act passed, European copyright law in some cases allowed for data-mining — ingesting copyrighted works for very limited purposes, unless rightsholders opted out. It’s not entirely clear which AI uses this covers, though, and most professional creators have a label, publisher or collecting society opt-out on their behalf. Based on what we know about generative AI music products, though, it appears that at least some technology companies ingested works controlled by rightsholders that had opted out. (It is unclear when and where the relevant copying was done.) In other words, technology companies have just gone ahead and done what they wanted, nevermind the law — business as usual in the U.S. but far less common in Europe. The guiding assumption is that this will eventually be solved by litigation or private deals that will make generative AI music a legitimate business.
Maybe.
Because using a lawsuit or legal settlement to legitimize the generative AI music business requires compensating rightsholders whose work was copied to train algorithms — which in turn requires knowing what was copied and how it was used. Once the generative AI business grows, hopefully, technology companies will be able to determine which works were used the most to create a certain output and credit and compensate creators accordingly. That’s why the AI Act required technology companies to track this — with provisions for transparency. Whatever future one imagines for AI, from making new #sleepwave music to going full fascist, it has to involve enough transparency to know which humans to credit — and, in some cases, blame.
The trouble is that the transparency requirements in the AI Act aren’t very specific. The idea was that companies would follow the spirit of the law, as well as its letter. There are fears this isn’t happening, though, partly because the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, favors a more lax approach to AI. Perhaps, like other governments, it has concerns about “falling behind” in a technological field that presents serious national security issues. Perhaps there is U.S. pressure to lay off Silicon Valley. Perhaps both.
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This isn’t the way to move forward, though. AI technology has the potential to change all sorts of industries, but ingesting albums by Dr. John and Dr. Dre isn’t going to improve medical technology. (And please don’t let medical AI listen to anything by Dr. Octagon!) The EU shouldn’t let the U.S. push it around, especially at a time when technology companies have so much influence in Washington, D.C. More important, the promise of AI is that we can build a digital media business that’s more fair to creators by crediting and compensating them — and loosening the record-keeping requirements would make this much harder.
Yes, the idea of lobbying the European Union to enforce its own law is a bit odd. But it’s also alarming. Although it’s hard to know how many people understand much about the AI Act, it was passed democratically by democratically elected lawmakers. We shouldn’t let it be undermined by technology companies — at least until AI takes over everything, anyway.
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:24:322025-07-18 16:24:32The European Union Passed Its Artificial Intelligence Bill. Will It Enforce It?
Russell Dickerson banks his sixth top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart as “Happen to Me” jumps four spots to No. 9 on the list dated July 26. It advanced by 8% to 18.2 million audience impressions July 11-17, according to Luminate.
The song was co-written by Jessie Jo Dillon, Chris LaCorte and Chase McGill. Dickerson co-produced it with Josh Kerr and LaCorte. It’s from Dickerson’s LP Famous Back Home (he’s from Union City, Tenn.), due Aug. 22.
Dickerson earns his first Country Airplay top 10 since “God Gave Me a Girl,” which rose to No. 2 in November 2023. Dickerson started with a splash, linking four straight career-starting No. 1s in 2018-20: “Yours,” “Blue Tacoma,” “Every Little Thing” and “Love You Like I Used To.”
The collaboration marks Zimmerman’s sixth straight career-opening top 10 and Combs’ 23rd hit to reach the tier. It was co-authored by Tucker Beathard, Jimi Bell and Jon Sherwood and produced by Austin Shawn. The song previews Zimmerman’s album Different Night Same Rodeo, due Aug. 8.
Zimmerman, 25, from Louisville, Ill., last hit the Country Airplay top 10 with “Holy Smokes” (No. 10 peak in April). Like Dickerson, he rattled off four straight No. 1s out of the gate, in 2022-24: “Fall in Love,” “Rock and a Hard Place,” “Religiously” and “Where It Ends.”
Combs last reached the chart’s top 10 in March as featured on Post Malone’s “Guy for That,” which hit No. 5. It followed “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma,” which became his 18th leader, reigning for two weeks last fall.
‘Case’ Is Not Closed
Morgan Wallen’s “Just in Case” controls Country Airplay for a third total and consecutive frame (32.9 million, up less than 1%). Of his 18 No. 1s, it’s his 10th to lead for three weeks or longer.
All charts dated July 26 will update Tuesday, July 22, on Billboard.com.
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:16:312025-07-18 16:16:31Russell Dickerson’s ‘Happen to Me,’ Bailey Zimmerman & Luke Combs’ ‘Backup Plan’ Hit Country Airplay Top 10
Massive Attack announced the formation of an alliance for musicians they say are facing “intimidations” within the music industry for their support of Palestine and the people of Gaza in the midst of the ongoing Israeli war against militant group Hamas.
In a statement posted on Thursday (July 17), the British trip hop group wrote, “The scenes in Gaza have moved beyond description. We write as artists who’ve chose to use our public platforms to speak out agains the genocide occurring there & the role of the UK Government in facilitating it. Because of our expressions of conscience, we’ve been subject to various intimidations from within our industry (live & recorded) & legally via organized bodies such as UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI); whose range of activities has now finally been exposed in a new documentary film projected last night by the Led By Donkeys collective.”
The group added that they were aware of what they described as the “aggressive, vexatious campaigns” by UKLFI, as well as “multiple individual incidences of intimidation within the music industry itself; designed solely to censor & silence artists from speaking their hearts and minds,” adding, “having withstood these campaigns of attempted censorship, we won’t standby & allow other artists — particularly those at earlier stages of their careers or in other positions of professional vulnerability — to be threatened into silence or career cancellation.”
While the statement did not name any specific bands, it got re-shared by two acts that have come under fire recently for their pro-Palestinian comments, Northern Irish rap group Kneecap and Irish rock band Fontaines D.C., as well as Brian Eno and Garbage.
British punk duo Bob Vylan recently courted controversy by shouting “Free Palestine” and “Death to the IDF” during their Glastonbury Festival set — the latter in reference to the Israel Defense Forces — an action that led to their being dropped by their booking agent, as well as a police investigation into the incident and the cancellation of festival appearances and European tour dates with Gogol Bordello.
Those actions followed a campaign calling for Kneecap’s set at the fest to be cancelled over a terror offense charged to MC Mo Chara (born Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh) by the London police in May for allegedly showing support for the militant organizations Hamas and Hezbollah — both of which are defined as terror groups by U.K. law — by displaying a Hezbollah flag onstage during a show in London last year.
In an accompanying statement, Kneecap wrote, “END threats and censorship against artists who speak out against the genocide in Palestine. Speak out. Stand up. We are the majority.” As a result of their advocacy, Kneecap were removed from the Scottish TRNSMT festival over safety concerns and their Glastonbury set was not aired as part of the BBC’s life broadcast of the show.
Fontaines D.C. posted the phrases “Free Palestine” and “Israel is committing genocide” on screens during a pair of recent sold-out London gigs and then invited a member of a pro-Palestinian group on stage at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark in June, where he led the crowd in chants of “Free Palestine.”
Massive Attack have long supported Palestinian causes, boycotting performances in Israel since 1999 and issuing a statement in April supporting Kneecap that read, “Kneecap are not the story. Gaza is the story. Genocide is the story.”
Israel’s nearly two-year war against Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the militant group on the Jewish state in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage has led to the deaths of nearly 59,000 Palestinians in the conflict so far, according to Palestinian authorities. Over the course of the military assault, Israeli forces have serially displaced the citizens of Gaza and destroyed much of the area’s infrastructure as the administration of Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to eradicate Hamas from the territory.
The massive devastation has also led to severe food shortages and claims that Israel is conducting a genocidal operation in Gaza, charges that Netanyahu has repeatedly denied. On July 3, Amnesty International issued a statement claiming that evidence the group gathered in the month since Israel introduced a controversial “militarized aid distribution system,” points to the Netanyahu administration’s continued use of “starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and to deliberately impose conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide.”
Massive Attack’s statement ended with a call to artists who feel they’ve been censored for their views about Palestine to contact them, in addition to a list of demands including an end of UK arms sales to Israel, an immediate cease fire and “immediate, unfettered access to Gaza for recognized international aid agencies without military threat.”
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:13:372025-07-18 16:13:37Massive Attack Form Alliance For Musicians Facing ‘Intimidation’ In Music Industry Over Palestinian Support
Billy Joel introduced himself to the Billboard Hot 100 with the eventual classic, and one of his signature songs, “Piano Man,” which hit No. 25 in April 1974. He landed his first No. 1 in July 1980 with the celebratory “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.” His other two chart-toppers, among 13 top 10s and 33 top 40 hits: the ‘60s ode “Tell Her About It,” in 1983, and the rapid-fire history lesson “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” in 1989.
Joel has also earned four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, with his longest-leading, 1978’s 52nd Street, reigning for eight weeks. On the Adult Contemporary chart, he has earned eight No. 1s, with “The River of Dreams” ruling for a personal-best 12 weeks in 1993. He most recently made the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary with his comeback hit “Turn the Lights Back On,” which reached No. 7 on the latter list in March 2024, becoming his 24th top 10.
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The native New Yorker has won five Grammy Awards, including album of the year for 52nd Street in 1979 and both record and song of the year for “Just the Way You Are” in 1978. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, became a Kennedy Center honoree in 2013 and was awarded the sixth-ever Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress in 2014.
In honor of the icon — and upon the July 18 premiere of the two-part HBO/HBO Max documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes (named after his intimate piano ballad that rose to No. 37 on the Hot 100 in 1990) — Billboard looks at his biggest Hot 100 hits.
Notably, Joel solo-wrote each of the 25 songs below.
“I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was about 20,” Joel told Billboard in 2014. “I said, ‘OK, you ain’t gonna be a rock star, you don’t look like a rock star, it probably ain’t gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs.’ I just felt like I had something to write, and the advice I got from the music business people that I knew was, ‘OK, now you should probably make an album of your songs.’ Get a record deal, make an album. This just happened to coincide with the era of the singer-songwriter.
“So, I got a record deal,” Joel continued, “made a record and then the advice I got was, ‘Now you should go out on the road and perform and support the album.’ So, I went out on tours, didn’t get paid nothin’, but played, and it kinda turned into this ‘Billy Joel pop star/rock star guy,’ which to this day is still kinda funny to me, because that’s not at all what I set out to do. I’m not gonna disown it — it’s the best job I ever had — but it ended up happening kind of randomly.”
Billy Joel’s Biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits chart is based on actual performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100, through the July 19, 2025, ranking. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at No. 100 earning the least. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted to account for different chart turnover rates over various periods.
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:04:452025-07-18 16:04:45Billy Joel’s Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits
More than 700 artists representing over 1,700 releases were submitted for best new artist consideration at the Latin Grammys this year, according to its officials, making it tough even for chart-topping names to make the final cut.
That’s because the Latin Academy’s rules for the category are very different from those of the Recording Academy for the Grammys. Earlier this year, the Grammys’ competition for best new artist read like a who’s who of chart-toppers, with winner Chappell Roan competing against Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims and more. The nominees reflect the definition of the category itself, which “recognizes an artist whose eligibility-period release achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and notably impacted the musical landscape.”
In contrast, according to the Latin Academy’s rules, a best new artist is “any performing artist or group who has not yet achieved a prominent level of regional recognition within the Latin market.” According to the organization’s chief awards, membership and preservation officer, Luis Dousdebes, “The Latin Recording Academy views the [category] as a platform to spotlight 10 emerging artists from the Ibero-American region on a global stage.”
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While both academies share the minimum number of releases an artist must have to qualify (five singles/tracks or one album), there is no maximum number of releases for the Grammys. Yet at the Latin Grammys, as of 2021, there is a release limit of three albums or 15 singles, or any equivalent combination, though the Academy errs on the side of inclusion.
In an era where emerging artists deliver singles at a quick clip in hopes of gaining traction on social media and scoring a record deal, this ruling shrinks the pool of talent. But it also forces artists and their teams to put a premium on artistry over volume. Witness Joaquina and Ela Taubert, winners in 2023 and 2024, respectively, both of whom graduated from Julio Reyes Copello’s Arthouse program in Miami and are signed to Universal, which laid out a strategy of patience for their respective roads to a nomination.
“While the Latin Academy acknowledges the evolving industry trend of frequent single releases as part of modern music marketing strategies,” Dousdebes says, “it believes that placing a limit on the number of prior releases helps preserve the integrity and original intent of the category to recognize truly new and developing artists.”
This story appears in the July 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
https://i0.wp.com/neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/station.nez_png.png?fit=943%2C511&ssl=1511943Yvetohttps://neztelinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nez_png.pngYveto2025-07-18 16:04:442025-07-18 16:04:44This One Rule Helps the Latin Grammys Focus on ‘Truly New’ Best New Artist Nominees
