Daddy Yankee, or DY as of recently, is splashing into summer with the joyous, soon-to-be anthem “Sonríele,” which he released on Thursday (July 10).

Marking his first release under HYBE Latin America, a division of HYBE — the company behind BTS, KATSEYE, SEVENTEEN and ENHYPEN — the merengue track is both infectious and uplifting, with DY offering a message of resilience. “Give me a smile,” he sings over a hip-swiveling beat. “Smile at life that joy cures the soul/ Give thanks to the one above for waking up another day and the bad things leave.”

With that a spiritual and hopeful outlook, DY continues his commitment to dedicate his life to Christianity after announcing his retirement from reggaeton in 2022. “This isn’t about a comeback. It’s about connection,” the Puerto Rican hitmaker said about “Sonríele” in a statement. “Life’s not perfect, but we have to smile through it. This song was born from what we live every day — it’s my way of telling people not to give up, to appreciate the little things and never let anyone take their joy away.”

“Sonríele” was preceded by a teaser featuring actor Anthony Ramos, who asks Daddy Yankee if he’s ready, to which he replies, “I’m back.” After spearheading the reggaetón movement with his 2004 breakthrough hit “Gasolina,” DY announced he was “retiring” in 2022, although since he’s released a handful of singles, including “Loveo” and most recently, “En El Desierto.”

The song’s music video was recorded across three locations, including including New York City’s Bushwick neighborhood, where DY once lived and allowed him to “reconnect with the streets that shaped him and the memories of his humble beginnings,” according to a press release.

Watch the “Sonríele” music video below:

Taeil — a K-pop star who found fame as part of SM Entertainment boy band NCT — will spend three and a half years behind bars after pleading guilty to a rape charge.

According to The New York Times, the 31-year-old performer born Moon Tae-il received the ruling in Seoul Central District Court on Thursday (July 10). He reportedly looked “downcast” in the courtroom as Judge Lee Hyun-kyung read out his sentence, calling his crime “severe” and noting that his victim “likely suffered great mental pain” from his actions.

Taeil pleaded guilty in June of raping a Chinese tourist alongside two other men, who also received the same sentence. The crime took place last year, with the musician and his cohorts sexually assaulting a heavily intoxicated woman they’d met at a bar in Seoul earlier that night after taking her to one of the defendants’ homes via taxi. 

The offense — which South Korean law deems “special quasi-rape,” a term reserved for specific cases such as when two or more perpetrators are involved in assaulting an unconscious victim, per the NYT — has a maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors had tried for a seven-year sentence, arguing that the three men had deliberately moved their victim to another location so that she would later struggle to remember details of what happened, but the defendants were ultimately given half that amount.  

Taeil and the two other men were reportedly taken into custody immediately after the sentencing. In addition to jail time, they will have to complete a 40-hour sexual violence program.

Billboard has reached out to SM Entertainment for comment. 

The development comes almost a year after SM announced that Taeil had been removed from both NCT and sub-unit NCT 127. At the time, the company shared only that the decision had been made due to the performer being accused of a then-unspecified sex crime. 

“We have recently learned that TAEIL has been accused of a criminal case related to a sexual offense,” read a statement from SM shared with Billboard in August 2024. “While assessing the facts related to this matter, we recognized the severity of the issue and determined that he can no longer continue team activities.”  

“After discussing with TAEIL, it’s been decided that he will withdraw from the team,” continued the statement, which also noted that the star had been fully cooperating with police investigations. “We deeply apologize for the controversy caused by our artist.”

Even before his departure, Taeil’s activities with NCT had been limited for quite some time. In August 2023, he suffered a severe motorcycle accident that necessitated surgery to treat his wounds, leaving him unable to participate in performances and band appearances while he recovered.

NCT 127 hasn’t released music since before Taeil left. The band’s last album, July 2024’s Walk, reached No. 117 on the Billboard 200.

If you or anyone you know is in need of support for victims of sexual violence, reach out to RAINN for free, confidential support via its website or by calling 1-800-656-4673. 

Challenge a good ol’ boy on a tractor to diagram a sentence and the reaction would likely amount to a short grunt.

But play that same guy the new Dylan Marlowe single, “Picture Perfect,” and he’d probably smile over the obscure John Deere reference and appreciate the twist of a common adjective into a verb, even if he couldn’t explain how or why that twist worked. It’s also a sure bet that he’d relate to the song’s topic: the desire to find peace of mind on a piece of land. It’s a slice out of Marlowe’s own story.

“There was a plot of land, it was 80 acres,” he recalls. “We literally were like, ‘This is what we’re wanting to buy. It’s a good deal.’ We literally had driven to the land, looked at the land we were dreaming about, where the house was going to go, where the fence was going to go, where a gate was going to go. Like, we were dreaming these things in a moment.”

Oddly enough, Marlowe was fenced out from the initial writing session when that property emerged as a song idea. Marlowe’s then-current single, the Dylan Scott collaboration “Boys Back Home,” was at No. 12 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, and when Nate Smith came up sick, Marlowe was a last–minute fill-in for Audacy’s Stars and Strings acoustic concert in Hollywood, Fla., last November.

Marlowe’s “Boys Back Home” co-writers, Seth Ennis and Joe Fox, encouraged him to take the gig and promote the single, as did Play It Again Music founder Dallas Davidson, Marlowe’s manager and publisher. Those three kept the writing appointment they’d set for that day, and in Marlowe’s absence, they decided to tailor something for him. Ennis had a title, “Picture Perfect,” that would typically work as a two-word adjective, as in “picture-perfect wedding.” But Marlowe had told Fox in a phone call the previous night about driving with his wife, Natalie, to view the 80-acre plot. Fox thought they could employ “picture” as a verb, something like, “When you picture us, picture perfect.”

“Joe made it a little more interesting,” Davidson says. “I’m like, ‘I’m in, let’s write this thing.’ ”

They started from the top, verbally re-creating Marlowe’s experience with the property, describing the land and the way a house might fit with the tree line. It led directly to a chorus that opened with that verb — “Baby, close your eyes and picture perfect” — before drawing on homey images: handprints in the concrete, pencil marks on the door frame. And Davidson placed a 4020 in the barn, referencing a John Deere model that he’d inserted into a previous Luke Bryan track, only to have Bryan remove it.

“That’s an iconic tractor,” Davidson recalls. “You had a no-cab 4020 — I drove one when I was 15 years old, working pecans. A guy named Junior taught me how to drive a 4020, and I’m glad that made it in there.”

“If people question it,” Marlowe adds, “that might give them something to go look up. It might make them pay attention.”

After the 4020 line, Ennis extended the “picture” verb to the next level: “Baby, picture baby pictures in the hallway.”

“I didn’t know if it was a thing at first,” Ennis says. “I was like, ‘Hey, would it be dumb if we said, “Baby, picture baby pictures”? Is that lame to say the same thing twice?’ And then Dallas, who’s this multi-hit songwriter, looks at me and he’s like, ‘What are you talking about, dude? That’s awesome.’ ”

As they finished the first verse and chorus, they began hearing the melody as something better suited for Bryan, so they reworked it.

“Seth kind of spit out a new chorus melody,” Fox recalls. “It was a completely different vibe, like different chords, different melody. But we had the lyrics, so we kind of went and just revised it to be a little more Dylan.”

Davidson suggested they halt there so Marlowe could work on the next verse and make it even “more Dylan.” They emailed a guitar/vocal version to Marlowe, who -listened to it repeatedly on the flight back to Nashville the next day. Once he was home, he wrote a second verse and a bridge on the porch, outlining how the amount of road work he was taking on was to provide financial roots for the couple’s dream.

“I was working my butt off, playing shows, trying to save so much money, and also just confirming [the motivation],” Marlowe says. “Women like to be reaffirmed that you’re doing that kind of thing.”
Marlowe’s co-writers gave the new sections a thumbs-up, and Ennis cut a new guitar/vocal version that pulled the whole thing together.

Fox produced the master at Sound Stage, intent on finding a middle ground: enough bite to elevate its sound beyond ballad territory but slow enough to convey its seriousness and sincerity.

“The tempo of this song was a pain in the butt to figure out,” Marlowe says.

Ilya Toshinskiy laid down an oscillating, two-note acoustic guitar figure as a foundation, and the rest of the arrangement adhered to that part, particularly a simple six-note up-and-back riff that blended a Fox vocal pass with Scotty Sanders’ steel guitar and Dobro.

“Joe did the perfect amount of having it rocking, but it also serves what the song is talking about,” Ennis says. “You don’t necessarily want rock’n’roll, in-your-face screaming guitars when you’re talking about what this song is talking about. I think that he nailed the vibe.”

They scrapped the bridge so they could get back to the chorus sooner, and Fox weaved in a notably spare guitar section.

“I’m not a fan of shredding guitar solos,” Fox says. “In the ’80s hair metal days, which I like, they always found a way to make the guitar solo a part of the song so you could sing the solo back.”

Sony Music Nashville’s Columbia imprint released “Picture Perfect” to country radio through PlayMPE on May 12 as the follow-up to “Boys Back Home,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Country Airplay chart dated Jan. 18.

“Ken [Robold] and Taylor [Lindsey] are new at Sony as the heads, and they are firm believers in songs, which I appreciate,” Marlowe says. “They just said, ‘Hey, this is a good song. It may not have the same numbers as “Boys Back Home” off the bat, but we believe in this song, and we believe you when you sing it.’ It was very mutual.”

Kylie Kelce and Ed Sheeran chatted about a mutual friend on the latest episode of the former’s Not Gonna Lie podcast, with the pair agreeing that Taylor Swift is the “cheat code” for getting crowds to be as loud as possible.

The topic of the pop superstar first came up as the British musician was talking about the highest decibel level he’s ever had an audience reach. “We brought on Eminem, and that was the loudest I’ve ever heard a crowd — like, anywhere in the world,” Sheeran told Kelce of a 2023 performance in the rapper’s home city of Detroit.

“There’s never been a louder crowd than that,” he continued. “But I will say it’s because I brought Eminem on stage in Detroit. That’s the cheat code.”

When Sheeran asked Kelce which artist would be the “cheat code” for Philadelphia crowds, the former field hockey player said that it would have to be her brother-in-law’s ultra famous girlfriend. “I mean, I think Taylor, just because it’s home,” Kelce told the four-time Grammy winner, referring to the fact that Swift was born and raised in West Reading, Penn., before moving to Nashville as a teenager.

Sheeran replied, “I kind of think Taylor anywhere, though.”

Both Kelce and Sheeran have first-hand experience with the high-volume crowds Swift draws. The former — who is married to retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce — has known the “Fortnight” singer since 2023, when Swift first started dating Jason’s younger brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Sheeran, meanwhile, has performed on stage with Swift a number of times, including countless nights more than a decade ago on her Red Tour, for which he served as an opening act.

Speaking of the Red trek, Sheeran revealed to Kylie how traveling with Swift turned him into an NFL fan. “I moved to Nashville for Taylor’s Red Tour in 2013, and I got a place there,” he said. “I went to Walmart to buy bits to move in, and I just bought some pajamas. And then when I got home, I was wearing the pajamas, and when someone was around, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re a Titans fan.’ I was like, ‘Guess I am.’”  

The interview comes as Sheeran is gearing up to release his new album, Play, in September. So far, he’s shared three tracks from the LP — “Azizam,” “Old Phone” and “Sapphire.”

His chat with Kylie isn’t the first time he’s spoken about Swift in the lead-up to Play. While guesting on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast in April, he opened up about his friendship with his former tourmate, telling listeners, “I see her when I see her … Like, instead of catching up the whole time, we have a proper sit-down, six-hour catchups, and I think that’s like a really nice way to do it.”

Listen to Sheeran’s full conversation with Kylie below.