Each summer, a small army of volunteers, residents and music professionals welcomes dozens of world-class artists to Quebec City, Canada, for Festival d’été de Quebec (a.k.a. FEQ), one of the largest and most diverse music festivals in North America. While residents of Quebec’s French-speaking capital city are known for their congenial hospitality and embrace of the dozens of acts that will perform on Plaines de Abraham, residents will admit, when asked by outsiders, that there is one act playing this year’s festival that they appreciate more than all the others.

And that act is the California thrash metal band Slayer.

“Yeah, Quebec is a big heavy metal town,” says Samantha McKinley, communications director for the long-running 11-night music festival. While the annual event has remained relatively unknown in live music circles for years, its impressive attendance figures and love for heavy metal acts like Slayer and Metallica are starting to be noticed by top-tier acts, booking agents and an increasing number of orbiter festivals that book their events based on Festival d’été’s headliners. (“Festival d’été” is French for “Summer Festival.”)

The festival’s strength comes from its ability to regularly draw audiences of 90,000 or more per night for artists like Rod Stewart, Avril Lavigne and Benson Boone, a figure that puts it in the top echelon of North American festivals. Coachella maxes out at about 125,000 people per day and runs for six days total (over two three-day weekends), equaling about 750,000 fans total. Realistically, however, 750,000 individual people don’t descend on Indio, Calif.; rather, the same 125,000 fans attend the festival over three days, each weekend, putting the number closer to 250,000.

But unlike Coachella, where the same fans attend each day of the festival, Quebec’s FEQ has a culture of wristband sharing, explains executive director Nick Racine, who also serves as CEO and president for festival organizer BLEUFEU. He estimates that all 140,000 tickets for the festival are bought in a single day, with some blocks of tickets selling out in seconds.

The vast majority of those tickets — about 125,000 — are sold as GA tickets that retail for $165 CAD ($121 USD), while the rest are more expensive VIP tickets bundled with food & beverage. GA tickets include access to 11 nights of music, including the festival’s main stage featuring Shania Twain, Slayer, Hozier, Kygo, Def Leppard, Boone, Stewart, Lavigne and more. The main stage, called the Bell Stage, sits on a portion of the Plains of Abraham, a historic area within Battlefields Park where British forces defeated the French in 1759. The Bell Stage is just one of multiple stages scattered throughout the city for FEQ; the Quebec Lottery and SiriusXM Canada host the festival’s other two paid stages, accessible only to ticketholders, while a few free stages dot the perimeter of Quebec’s historic district.

Fans are encouraged to share wristbands with friends and loan them out to family members in order to keep the Bell Stage full each night and create huge audiences and memorable moments for the artists that play. The goal is to keep the wristbands in the community and off secondary market sites like StubHub, where speculators often drive up the price of tickets and frustrate fans. In recent years, festival organizers have begun monitoring secondary market sites and even canceling orders if they suspect ticket scalping. Wristband sharing is a kind of compromise that keeps the tickets in the community and pushes the number of people who attend the festival to somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 individual people each year.

That large of an audience, coupled with the tens of millions of dollars the festival makes from ticket sales and the revenue it generates from sponsorships and government grants, makes FEQ a music industry powerhouse, explains Louis Bellavance, programming director for the festival since 2011. Bellavance tells Billboard that a number of major East Coast and Canadian festivals — from Milwaukee Summerfest to Ottawa Bluesfest — look to book acts that play Quebec, hoping to pick up dates for artists coming and going from the festival. Sometimes the festival will submit joint bids with other major events to book acts  — FEQ’s radius clause only covers the province of Quebec — while other times it will make exclusive bids for artists on its own to create scarcity for the big headliners it brings to Quebec City.

That includes The Rolling Stones in 2015 — a booking that led to a $2 million loss for the year for FEQ, but helped solidify its dominant place in the festival space. When it comes to audience size, ticket sales and economic power, FEQ easily lands within the top 10 when it comes to the largest and most financially successful festivals in North America.

But organizers say its strength goes beyond economics and comes from what fans say is FEQ’s long-term unofficial headliner: Quebec City itself. With its cobblestone streets and picturesque boulevards, architectural beauty, expansive public park system and bustling culinary scene, the city is a popular destination in its own right.

“Where else can you watch Rod Stewart play on a classic battlefield or see a new band perform just meters away from the steps of Parliament?” says Racine. “We’re an urban festival, and the restaurants and the hotels here do a large part of their annual business during the festival. It works because fans love coming to Quebec, they love our presentation and they love the artists we bring each year.”  

Zack Borer and Chayim Newman, who’d been in the music business for years before forming Amber Health, a company of therapists and clinicians, came up with a simple idea: to provide mental health support for struggling crew members on stadium and arena tours — with the headliners paying for it out of their own budgets.

But in 2021, when the pair landed a Zoom meeting with Marty Hom, Olivia Rodrigo’s tour director, Hom shot them down.

“This is never going to work,” Hom told them. “I’m not going to hire you, and nobody else is going to hire you. What you’re going to charge is too expensive.”

Borer and Newman were undeterred. During the pandemic, the two had conducted a survey of 1,100 touring pros and found that 34% suffered from depression, 70% had trouble sleeping, 45% regularly consumed alcohol and 26% reported “serious suicidal ideation.” The result was clear: crews needed therapy on the road. So the clinicians reworked their finances and asked for five minutes with Hom, in person, months later at the headquarters of live event production company Rock Lititz in Pennsylvania. 

After re-pitching Hom, the 40-year industry vet — who has worked with Beyoncé, The Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand — finally came around. “All right,” he responded. “Now I get it.”

This summer, Rodrigo is one of 16 major artists — including Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Green Day — who’ve paid Amber Health to supply free mental health benefits to all of their crews. (The company worked on four tours in 2024.)

“I never had anything like that,” Daisy Spencer, a guitarist on Rodrigo’s Guts tour in 2024 and 2025, told Billboard. “I had this free resource of incredible therapists, and I utilized the crap out of that.” 

Borer had decided to become a therapist after years of trying to make it as a New York artist and songwriter, bartending all night while struggling with anxiety and depression. After making the pivot, he hooked up with a colleague, concert producer-turned-clinical psychologist Newman, to form Amber Health in 2020.

At first, Amber Health held traditional sessions with individual clients, focusing on artists and the music industry. Through that, they learned that artists and crew miss their families and friends and are disconnected from their support systems while on the road for months; contend with complicated group dynamics, working at impersonal venues and living on cramped tour buses with not-always-like-minded co-workers; and deal with injuries amid difficult physical work. 

“We started to think about the scale, and how we could make a systemic impact, and help thousands and thousands of people,” Newman says.

In 2021, a forklift crashed into a Green Day photographer at the Philadelphia Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, breaking his pelvis, femur and back and lacerating an artery, nearly killing him. He recovered, then sued Live Nation, the Phillies and others, settling last year for $18 million. Last August, Green Day returned to the stadium for the first time since the accident, which was “something all of us were dreading,” according to Zito, Green Day’s longtime production manager. Luckily, Amber Health was on hand to provide on-site sessions. “It was really good to know they were there,” Zito adds.

Amber Health received a similar call during Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour in 2023, after a cameraperson fell off a nine-foot-tall scaffolding and suffered an injury so severe that it traumatized fellow crew members. “How soon can you be out here?” Hom, the tour’s director, asked Newman and Borer. Within a day, the pair met the tour in Chicago and counseled some of its 500 employees. “It was a very high-pressure, high-stress tour,” Hom says. “People talk about being under-appreciated and not being taken care of on tour. This was a way we could take care of people.”

On a typical tour, Borer, Newman and other Amber Health therapists are on hand at various dates, scheduling private, confidential hour-long sessions throughout non-travel days. For the Rodrigo tour, which travels with 120 crew members, Amber Health provides a clinical team of four to six people, “taking into account age, demographics, race — culturally appropriate, so everybody on the tour will feel like there’s somebody on our clinical team they can go to,” according to Borer. The company also provides a crisis helpline and virtual sessions, and often meets with crew during pre-tour rehearsals. “We’ll sit down with the tour and map their whole routing,” Newman says. “We’ve got people traveling in and out. Then it’s like, ‘OK, cool, see you soon, book something virtually if you need to next week — otherwise, we’ll see you somewhere in Minneapolis.”

Neither Amber Health nor tour contacts would give details about costs, but Hom says the finances boil down to tours paying for individual therapy sessions, which are comparable to traditional office visits. Tours also cover travel and lodging for the clinicians. 

“It’s a decimal point in a big tour’s budget, and one that shows a lot of value to the team,” Zito adds. “When you’re looking at budgets that are $20-$30-$50 million, and you’re talking $100,000 for something like this, is it worth it? Should it bring value for the team? I think it does.”

The multibillion-dollar touring industry — last year, according to Billboard Boxscore, the top 100 tours earned $15.7 billion — has until recently mostly ignored mental health services. But since the pandemic, in addition to Amber Health, the Recording Academy’s health-focused charity MusiCares and companies such as Denver-based nonprofit Backline Care and Athens, Ga.-based Nuci’s Space have provided similar services.

“There was a lot of stigma around mental welfare before. I don’t know if it’s because it was a male-dominated environment, or it’s just, ‘The show must go on,’” says Helen Himmons, production manager for Sheeran, whose 150-person team started working with Amber Health in early 2023. “COVID definitely broke down some of those barriers. Now, there’s an awareness that if you want the show to go on, you’ve got to support the people who are integral to making that happen. If you don’t look after people, you’re going to end up paying for it, one way or another.” 

Adds Shaun Clair, executive vp of business development for Clair Global, which provides staff for concert tours and employs Amber Health for a range of tours: “We know at any moment if we’re in crisis, we have access to world-class services that allow us to address that crisis quickly and correctly.”

Pivotal to the success of Amber Health, which supported 4,000 concert workers in 2024 and recently partnered with the Country Music Awards, is Borer and Newman’s understanding that they must work within the concert business system. 

“We don’t walk into a tour and say, ‘We have to change this,’” Borer says. “We understand the industry runs at this clip, at this level, that creates magical moments and experiences. What we do is try to support people when things get hard.”

Marvin Winans, of the legendary Winans family, launches at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart (dated July 26) with “Forgiveness.” The song is the last track on Justin Bieber’s new LP, SWAG, which opens at No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart, as well as Top R&B Albums, and No. 2 on the Billboard 200. (Of the set’s 21 cuts, the other 20 are by Bieber, eight with co-billed guests.)

SWAG starts with 163,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States July 11-17, according to Luminate. “Forgiveness” (at a tidy 1:30 in run time) drew 3.8 million official U.S. streams in that span and concurrently tops Gospel Streaming Songs.

“Forgiveness” was written as a worship song by Rick Founds. It was initially titled “Let My People Go” and is from the Winans’ LP by that name, which led Top Gospel Albums for a week in 1986. They’ve since added three more leaders on the chart, through 1999.

“Forgiveness” becomes Winans’ second No. 1 on Hot Gospel Songs (which began in 2005), and his first as a lead act. He topped the list the first time as featured on Andrae Crouch’s “Amen,” for four frames starting in April 2012.

As “Forgiveness” enters Hot Christian Songs at No. 3, it becomes the Detroit native’s first top 10, in his initial appearance on the chart.

Winans is one of the founding members of the Winans, along with his brothers Carvin, Michael and Ronald. The group released its first album, Introducing the Winans, in 1981. The siblings are among 10 born to Delores and David, also known as “Mom” and “Pop” Winans.

Just hours after it was announced that metal legend Ozzy Osbourne had died at age 76 on Tuesday (July 22) a number of artists took to the stage for their own shows, where they paid tribute to the beloved hard rock hell raiser.

At her Mayhem Ball show at the Chase Center in San Francisco, Lady Gaga ripped open her black leather jacket to reveal a black Ozzy t-shirt, then blasted the iconic Ozzy 1980 debut solo hit “Crazy Train” as she and her band danced down the catwalk to the main stage. Once there, they all lined up and jumped in place, banging their heads to the song’s signature opening riff before taking a company bow.

During their show at Nissan Stadium in Nashville on Tuesday, Coldplay dedicated a cover of Sabbath’s 1972 metal ballad “Changes” to Ozzy. “We’d like to dedicate this whole show to the incredible genius, talent, and characterful gift to the world who was Ozzy Osbourne. We send our love to his family,” singer Chris Martin said in a fan video of the moment.

Sitting alone at the electric piano, Martin crooned, “I feel unhappy/ I feel so sad/ I lost the best friend I ever had,” giving the song a poppy, quintessentially Coldplay vibe.

In another unexpected tribute, Dave Matthews — who once hilariously played a befuddled Ozzy on Saturday Night Live — performed a solo version of “Changes” during the DMB’s gig in Gilford, N.H., turning the song into a mournful acoustic reverie.

In more expected news, theatrical Swedish metal band Ghost dedicated their sold-out Madison Square Garden show in New York on Tuesday to Ozzy, with singer Tobias Forge (aka Papa Perpetua) taking a moment mid-set to honor Osbourne’s impact on music. “Good evening, New York City! How are you? It’s one of those days now. We’re going to dedicate tonight’s show to the memory of the life and laughter of Ozzy Osbourne,” Forge said as the crowd broke into a spontaneous “Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy!” chant.

Forge continued, “For being the Prince of Darkness, he sure gave us a lot of light. So we’re going to tap into that and carry it forward, through a time of darkness.”

Ghost appeared at Osbourne’s final Back to the Beginning show on July 5, performing “Bark at the Moon” with a supergroup including Travis Barker on drums and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt on guitar.

Jeremy Zucker is heading back Down Under. The multi-platinum singer, songwriter, and producer has announced his 2025 Welcome to the Garden State Australian tour, set to kick off this November.

The “all the kids are depressed” singer will begin the run at Melbourne’s Forum on Nov. 14, before playing Brisbane’s Tivoli on Nov. 16 and Sydney’s Roundhouse on Nov. 18. The tour will wrap up at Metropolis Fremantle in Perth on Nov. 21.

Frontier Touring will launch a members pre-sale at 9 a.m. local time on Friday, July 25. Tickets will go on sale to the general public at 9 a.m. local time on Monday, July 28. More ticketing information can be found on the Frontier Touring website.

“I’m so excited to bring the Welcome to the Garden State tour to Australia later this year,” Zucker said in a statement. “It feels amazing to be coming back to one of my favorite places to play live, and it will never get old having people connect with my music all the way around the world.”

The singer is touring in support of his upcoming album Garden State, due Aug. 22 via Republic Records. The 14-track project includes the recent single “hometown” and finds Zucker reflecting on his journey from New Jersey to global stardom, revisiting childhood memories and processing life’s ups and downs. It’s been described as his most vulnerable and introspective record yet.

Zucker’s connection with Australian audiences has been strong since his breakout, with ARIA certifications for “comethru” (2x Platinum), “you were good to me” (2x Platinum), “all the kids are depressed” (Platinum), and Gold-certified singles including “this is how you fall in love,” “better off,” and “talk is overrated.”

You can pre-order/pre-save the album here.

Jeremy Zucker Welcome to the Garden State Tour Australia
Presented by Frontier Touring

Nov. 14 – The Forum, Melbourne, VIC (18+)

Nov. 16 – The Tivoli, Brisbane, QLD (18+)

Nov. 18 – Roundhouse, Sydney, NSW (Lic. All Ages)

Nov. 21 – Metropolis Fremantle, Perth, WA (18+)