Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ children didn’t get to spend Father’s Day with him, but that didn’t stop many of them from celebrating their dad on the holiday.

In posts on Instagram on Sunday (June 15), all of the disgraced Bad Boy Records founder’s adult biological kids paid tribute to Diddy, who is currently in custody as his sex-trafficking trial unfolds in New York City. Justin Combs, whose mother is Misa Hylton, shared a black-and-white video featuring his father and wrote, “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY POPS THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME LIFE & ALWAYS BEING PRESENT!”

“MY SUPER HERO!” added the 30-year-old. “I’M W YOU 4EVER NO MATTTER WHAT!! MISS YOU & LOVE YOU.”

Christian Combs, whom Diddy shared with late model Kim Porter, posted a throwback photo of himself as a young boy with the hip-hop titan. “Happy Fathers Day Pops!!” the 27-year-old wrote. “I Love you & miss you !!! We waiting for you at [home].”

Diddy’s 18-year-old daughter Chance, whom he welcomed with Sarah Chapman in 2006, shared a photo of herself as a child cuddling up with her dad on a boat. “Missing you today on Fathers Day,” she wrote. “My love for you is beyond! Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you and miss you. I’m forever grateful for all the beautiful moments we shared. I miss you so much and love you and can’t wait to hug you.”

And finally, Diddy’s 18-year-old twin girls with Porter, D’Lila and Jessie, posted a family beach photo to mark the occasion. “Happy Father’s Day to the best dad in the entire world,” they wrote on their joint Instagram account. “We love you so so much words can’t even explain. You have always been there for us whenever we needed you no matter what through thick and thin.”

“We appreciate everything you’ve done for us and we couldn’t ask for a better dad,” added D’Lila and Jessie. “The bond we have is inseparable and unplaceable. We are so blessed to be given a dad as great as you are. We love and miss you so so much.”

This Father’s Day marked Diddy’s first since he was arrested last September on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. He is now about six weeks into his federal trial, which has seen prosecutors question multiple witnesses — including his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura — about his alleged drug-fueled sex parties (aka “freak-offs”), during which he would allegedly force his partners to have sex with male escorts as he masturbated.

Diddy’s legal team has denied all of the accusations. During opening statements in May, his attorney, Teny Geragos, told the jury: “Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case. We take full responsibility that there was domestic violence. Domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”

The music mogul is also sad to adopted child Quincy Taylor Brown — Porter’s son with record producer Al B. Sure! — as well as 2-year-old daughter Love, whom he welcomed in 2022 with Dana Tran.

Ed Sheeran’s next tour isn’t going to include a stop at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an order issued Monday, the high court refused to revive a long-running lawsuit that claimed Sheeran’s 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s famed 1973 jam “Let’s Get It On.”

The star’s legal accuser — a company that owns a partial stake in Gaye’s 1973 song — had asked the justices to hear the case, which was dismissed in November by a lower court that ruled the two tracks share only basic “musical building blocks.”

But the justices denied that request on Monday, allowing that earlier ruling to stand. As is typical, the Supreme Court did not offer any explanation for why it had refused to hear the case. The high court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases it receives.

Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 58 weeks on the chart.

He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye – a case that ended with a high-profile jury verdict clearing Sheeran. He was then hit with a separate case by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different stake in Townsend’s copyrights to the legendary song.

That suit was rejected in November by the federal Second Circuit appeals court, which said the lawsuit was essentially seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”

“The four-chord progression at issue — ubiquitous in pop music — even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” the appeals court wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”

In a petition to the Supreme Court in March, SAS argued that the earlier ruling had unfairly restricted the case to written sheet music rather than Gaye’s iconic recorded version. It claimed that problem would impact “the rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music.”

But in a response filing last month, Sheeran’s lawyers said SAS was using a “false premise” and “baseless assertions” to try to get the justices to revive the case: “The petition should be denied.”

Monday’s denial will finally end SAS’s lawsuit against Sheeran, but the pop star not quite out of the legal woods just yet. Pullman’s company later filed a second, more novel case in which it is seeking to sue Sheeran over the more detailed recorded version of Gaye’s song; that case has been paused for years while the earlier lawsuit plays out.

In a statement to Billboard on Monday, Pullman said that separate case “will now go forward” in federal court: “Defendants fear has always been the sound recording of ‘Let’s Get It On’,” Pullman said. “The US Supreme Court was aware of this and understands that the case will go forward and may very well be back at the US Supreme Court at a later date.”

Attorneys for Sheeran did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday.

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Brian Wilson, who died on Wednesday (June 11) at age 82, by looking at the first of The Beach Boys’ three Hot 100-toppers: the irresistible pop smash “I Get Around.”

The Beach Boys had racked up four consecutive top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (discounting B sides) prior to “I Get Around,” but this ebullient song was their first single to reach No. 1. They recorded it in April 1964, making it the first song they recorded after The Beatles arrived in the U.S. that February.

If The Beach Boys felt threatened by the Fab Four’s explosive arrival, they were not going down without a fight. “I Get Around” is chock-full of hooks – great harmonies, handclaps, twangy guitar work and the inspired “round-round-getaround” hook.

In his liner notes for the 1990 reissue of Little Deuce Coupe and All Summer Long, Beach Boys expert David Leaf said the track represented “a major, revolutionary step in Brian’s use of dynamics.” He added: “From the opening note to the falsetto wail on the fade, this is one of the greatest tracks the Beach Boys ever cut. … Powered by the driving lead guitar break, the explosive harmonies and the handclaps, everything about this track was very spirited.”

The song runs a highly efficient 2:14, making it the second-shortest No. 1 hit of 1964. The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” was a couple of seconds shorter.

With this song, The Beach Boys continued to move away from the surf music fad that they rode in on, with such hits as 1962’s “Surfin” and “Surfin’ Safari” and 1963’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and “Surfer Girl.” Like its immediate predecessors “Be True to Your School” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around” has nothing to do with catching a wave, but instead is more generally capturing teen life in early-’60s California. (And, when you think about it, driving songs played nearly as big a part of the early Beach Boys success as surfing songs, between “I Get Around,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “409” and others.)

Mike Love sang lead vocals on “I Get Around,” with Brian Wilson contributing falsetto lead vocals on the chorus. All five members of the group – also including Al Jardine, Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson – contributed harmony and backing vocals. The fabled Wrecking Crew of top Los Angeles session players, including Hal Blaine and Glen Campbell, played on the track.

The song has a line that seems autobiographical, given the group’s rising level of success over the previous two years: “My buddies and me are gettin’ real well-known.” The song also includes one of the most charming lines ever in a pop song: “None of the guys go steady ’cause it wouldn’t be right/ To leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.”

The group projects a strutting confidence throughout. Biographer Mark Dillon compared the lyrics to “the braggadocio of a modern-day rapper” — fitting that nearly 30 years later, one of the all-time most legendary MCs would recycle the title for his own cockiest hit.

The song entered the Hot 100 at No. 76 for the week ending May 23, 1964. It was the week’s fourth-highest new entry, behind hits by Elvis, Bobby Vinton and Lesley Gore, though it wound up eclipsing all of those. The song reached No. 1 in its seventh week, July 4, displacing Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” which was written by Paul McCartney (though officially credited to Lennon/McCartney.)

McCartney and Wilson, two of the greatest songwriters of all time, spurred each other on to ever-greater heights for many years. The Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” was clearly an homage to The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.”

“I Get Around” topped the Hot 100 for two weeks, before being displaced by The 4 Seasons’ “Rag Doll.” (These groups, representing the pinnacle of West Coast and the East Coast pop, respectively, were among the few American groups from the pre-Beatles era that continued to thrive after the British invasion.) “I Get Around” also put The Beach Boys on the map in the U.K., becoming their first top 10 hit in that country.

The B side of “I Get Around” was the equally great “Don’t Worry Baby,” making this one of the strongest double-sided singles in pop music history. It ranks with Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel”/ “Hound  Dog,” The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”/“Strawberry Fields Forever,” The Beach Boys’ own “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”/“God Only Knows” and a handful of others.

The song was the opening track on (and only single released from) the group’s sixth album, All Summer Long, which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in August 1964. In his liner notes to the 1990 reissue, Leaf noted, “All Summer Long was the last regular studio album The Beach Boys recorded before Brian quit the touring band – the last complete Beach Boys album Brian cut before he suffered a nervous breakdown in late December of 1964.”

Incredibly, “I Get Around” didn’t receive a single Grammy nomination. The Beach Boys’ only songs to receive Grammy nods were “Good Vibrations” and the 1988 Brian-less hit “Kokomo.” The Recording Academy has since sought to make amends, awarding The Beach Boys a lifetime achievement award in 2001 and inducting five of their most classic works (including “I Get Around”) into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Wilson was initially the only songwriter credited on the song. In 1992, Mike Love sued to get a credit on this and many other songs. Love prevailed in December 1994, when he was awarded co-writing credits on 35 songs – as well as $13 million. In his series “The Number Ones,” Stereogum writer Tom Breihan wryly summarized the dispute: “Mike Love later sued Brian for a co-writer credit, and if he really did come up with the round round getaround part, he deserved it.”

While there is no improving on The Beach Boys’ recording of “I Get Around,” several artists have taken a stab at it over the years. Red Hot Chili Peppers performed it at the 2005 MusiCares Person of the Year gala where Brian Wilson was honored. My Morning Jacket performed it on the 2023 special A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys (which CBS re-aired on Sunday night).

Billie Joe Armstrong posted his version of the song on Instagram on Wednesday (June 11), hours after the news of Wilson’s death broke. “Thank you Brian Wilson,” Armstrong wrote. “I recorded a cover of ‘I Get Around’ a few years ago. ..never got to share it. One of my all time favorite songs ever.”

Check back tomorrow and Wednesday for our Forever No. 1 reports on The Beach Boys’ second and third No. 1 hits, “Help Me Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.”

The judge in Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ sex trafficking trial has formally dismissed a juror for giving inconsistent answers about where he lives, rejecting warnings by the rapper’s defense attorneys about a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.”

Prosecutors moved to remove the juror last week, citing a “lack of candor” in his answers before he was picked for the trial. The defense blasted the move, arguing in a court filing over the weekend that he was “one of only two black men on the jury” and that Diddy would be “severely prejudiced” by his removal.

But at the start of Monday’s proceedings Judge Arun Subramanian said it was “inappropriate to consider race” in deciding whether the juror had been truthful in his answers, according to ABC News.

“The record raised serious concerns as to the juror’s candor and whether he shaded answers to get on and stay on the jury,” Subramanian said. “There’s nothing the juror could say at this point to put the genie back in the bottle.”

The judge replaced the juror, a 41-year-old Black man, with a member of the alternate pool, a 57-year-old white man.

Combs is standing trial over accusations that he ran a sprawling criminal operation aimed at facilitating “freak-offs” — elaborate events which he allegedly forced his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and other women to have sex with male escorts while he watched and masturbated.

Prosecutors also say the star and his associates used violence, money and blackmail to keep victims silent and under his control. (Read Billboard‘s full explainer of the case against Diddy here.) Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include on racketeering and sex trafficking; if convicted, he faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

Five weeks into a trial that’s expected to run until early July, prosecutors moved to dismiss Juror No. 6, citing alleged inconsistencies about where he lives. During jury selection, the man said he lives in the Bronx, but he later revealed that he had been living some of the time in New Jersey – a residence that would make him ineligible to sit on the jury.

Diddy’s team, which criticized prosecutors during jury selection for striking several Black candidates, vehemently opposed the removal. In court last week, defense attorney Xavier Donaldson called it a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.” And in a motion filed with the judge on Sunday, Diddy lawyer Alexandra A.E. Shapiro said the government had a “discriminatory motive” and was seizing an opportunity to “strike yet another black male from the jury.”

“The fairness of the trial depends in part on having jurors with backgrounds similar to Mr. Combs share their perspectives on the evidence with other jurors from diverse backgrounds during deliberations,” Shapiro wrote. “Removing this particular juror will deprive Mr. Combs of that important perspective.”

In the filing, Shapiro warned that removing the juror “at this late stage” would warrant a mistrial: “There is no question Mr. Combs would be severely prejudiced if the juror in question were removed,” she wrote. “Their pretextual motion to dismiss [the juror] is just one more attempt to gain an unfair advantage at the expense of Mr. Combs’s right to a fair trial — which is all we ask this Court to preserve.”

At Friday’s proceedings, Judge Subramanian tentatively dismissed the juror, though he vowed to consider the defense’s objections over the weekend. On Monday, he stuck by his earlier decision, including rejecting the complaints about race: “This jury does not raise those concerns.”

After blockbuster testimony last week from an alleged victim known as “Jane,” the Diddy trial will now continue into its sixth week. Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case by the end of the week, allowing Combs’ team to begin presenting their own witnesses. A verdict is expected by July 4^th.

Few artists fib as sweetly as Zach Top. On breakout hit “I Never Lie,” he sings about his life as a model citizen — an unfailingly punctual teetotaler who always gets a full night’s rest and remains impervious to heartbreak. It’s only at the end of the chorus that the illusion is shattered. “I wish I could say I miss you,” Top croons. “But you know I never lie.” The last falsehood is impossible to believe, and the rest of them fall like dominoes. 

“I Never Lie,” which sounds like it could have been released in Nashville in the 1980s — maybe around 1987, when George Strait turned his own series of fibs into the hit single “Ocean Front Property” — cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in September. It has climbed the chart at a stately pace, peaking at No. 24 in May, an impressive accomplishment for Top — and for Leo33, the fledgling independent label who made the singer their first signing in the summer of 2023.   

“We knew that he was an important signing for us for a lot of reasons,” Katie Dean, label head at Leo33, says of Top. “We had a great plan, and Zach is absolutely a once in a lifetime kind of artist. But you can hope and dream — to have the audience react this way has been unbelievable. And to have the success with him that we’ve had has also helped put our stamp on, ‘These are the kinds of artists that we want to sign.’”

Dean spent close to two decades at labels in the Universal Music Group family, specializing in radio promotion, before helping to launch Leo33 in April 2023. Like many veterans of the majors who transition to the independent sector — and some veterans who are still working at the majors — she worries that the artist development process has “fallen to the wayside” as those companies prioritize “picking up what’s popping and running with it.” 

“Majors are sort of designed to do high volume: It’s signing a lot of artists and taking a lot of shots,” Dean says. “I wanted to be in an environment where we could really focus and know everybody who was touching the project at any given time, rather than walking into a boardroom where there’s a bunch of new faces from week to week.”

Dean joined Universal Music Group in 2005, eventually rising to senior vp of promotion at MCA Records Nashville. During that time, she worked with George Strait, Reba McEntire, Taylor Swift, Sam Hunt and Kacey Musgraves, among others. Her resume was part of the reason Top signed with Leo33. “It meant a good bit to me that Katie Dean had worked on a bunch of records that had made me fall in love with country music,” he told Billboard last year. 

She launched Leo33 along wit​​h Rachel Fontenot, former vp of marketing and artist development at UMG Nashville; Daniel Lee, former president of artist development company Altadena; and Natalie Osborne, former Downtown Music Nashville senior creative director. Leo nods to the constellation of the same name; Fontenot said in 2023 that it was meant to signify lion-like traits, namely courage and agility. (She left a few months after the label was born.)

At a time when labels who have not previously shown interest in country music are storming into Nashville, a newcomer needs to be able to offer competitive advances. Leo33 has backing from Firebird and Red Light Ventures, which provide “fantastic resources and additional marketing support,” according to Dean. Firebird, which has invested in labels, management companies and publishers, also serves as Leo33’s distribution partner, as well as “another voice” advocating for the label’s artists at the streaming services.

Dean promises singers plenty of direct attention. “We are all on group texts with each of the artists, so anyone is available at any point,” she says. On top of that, “We don’t have the luxury as a new label to rely on 30 years of catalog. Success is the only option.”

That hunger appealed to Top. He was being pursued by other record companies, but “the fact that [Leo33 executives] are all veterans in this industry and they are trying this new [label], it feels like they are at square one again just as much as I am and have everything to prove,” he said.

Osborne, an A&R executive at Leo33, had gone to Whiskey Jam in Nashville to see another act when she stumbled on a performance by Top, a bluegrass artist turned country singer. She played his music at the Leo33 office the next morning before setting out to find Top’s manager. 

Dean was also “immediately smitten” by what she heard. “He made the kind of music that made me fall in love with this format,” she says. And Leo33 executives believed “there is an audience of people who are craving that kind of music,” precisely because it has been out of favor in the country mainstream. 

Top co-wrote his debut album, Cold Beer & Country Music, with Carson Chamberlain, who had a hand in No. 1 hits for legends like Strait and Alan Jackson. Leo33 picked the uptempo dance number “Sounds Like the Radio” — which references Jackson in its very first couplet — as the lead single. It serves as a manifesto of sorts: “It sounds like the radio/ Back in ’94, ya know.” 

Roughly three months after releasing “Sounds Like the Radio,” when it was hovering just inside the top 40 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, Top put out the rest of his album. “With most major labels, that would not have been the case,” Dean explains. “It would have been, ‘Wait for multiple singles to come out, wait for enough of a consumption threshold to be met.’ But we all felt really strongly internally that if somebody discovered Zach, they would want to discover more than a few songs.”

Their faith was rewarded when listeners started to gravitate to “I Never Lie,” streaming it and using it in TikTok videos. The album’s other high points include “Bad Luck,” which plays like a sequel to “I Never Lie,” where the protagonist finally catches a break; and “Use Me,” a slow-burn ballad about a one-night stand.

The rest of Leo33’s roster includes Jenna Paulette, who lives on a working ranch in Texas and shares Top’s appreciation for fiddle and pedal steel guitars; Jason Scott & the High Heat, whose ramshackle rock sprouts with sweet harmonies; Ashland Craft, who favors a rugged country sound; and a fifth signing that the company hasn’t yet announced.

In addition to reaching the top 25 on the Hot 100, “I Never Lie” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart in May. Top’s catalog has earned 798,000 equivalent album units to date in the U.S., according to Luminate, including 963.9 million on-demand streams. 

Leo33 now has eight full-time employees. In March, Ana Shabeer joined as director, business intelligence; and Joseph Manzo started as a marketing coordinator.

Jason Scott & the High Heat put out American Grin in March, and Ashland Craft just released her debut album on Leo33, Dive Bar Beauty Queen. Top will follow Cold Beer & Country Music with Ain’t In It For My Health on August 29. The lead single, “Good Times & Tan Lines,” was promptly put into rotation by 50 country radio stations, making it the most added track of the week in the format.