Powerhouse acts, both in front of and behind the scenes, showed up to Billboard Women in Music 2026 for a night of celebration. 
 
On Wednesday, April 29, women from all sectors of the industry took to the red carpet at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles for a night to remember, hosted by the infectious Keke Palmer. To mark the occasion and in honor of its long history of supporting musical artistry, Hennessy set up shop on the red carpet and inside the venue with dedicated bars, offering attendees a selection of two craft cocktails to rejoice: Hennessy Espresso Martinis and Henny-Ritas™. As guests made their way through, they paused to grab a drink and became part of something bigger: a celebration of music, culture, and community. 
 
Similar to Hennessy’s longstanding connection to music and artists, Billboard’s tribute to women across the industry resonated throughout the evening. Honorees included Tate McRae (Hitmaker Award), Teyana Taylor (Visionary Award), Ella Langley (Powerhouse Award), Kehlani (Impact Award), Laufey (Innovator Award), Zara Larsson (Breakthrough Award), and Thalia (Icon Award), The Beaches (Global Force Award presented by FACTOR), Zara Larsson (Breakthrough Award), Thalia (Icon Award) and more. 
 
If you missed the red-carpet action, we’ve got you covered with standout shots from the night. Click here for more on the 2026 Billboard Women in Music, including show highlights, exclusive interviews, and more! 

The pop (and country!) girls are out in full force for this New Music Friday (May 1).

Kacey Musgraves leads the way with her new Middle of Nowhere album, which features her latest Billboard Hot 100 song “Dry Spell” (No. 55), as well as stellar collaborations with Miranda Lambert, Willie Nelson, Billy Strings and more. Zara Larsson also shared her Midnight Sun: Girls Trip remix album, recruiting some of the buzziest names across dance, pop and R&B, including Shakira, Kehlani, Robyn and PinkPantheress.

The Lady Gaga-led Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack also arrived, as did a deluxe version of Halsey’s acclaimed 2024 The Great Impersonator LP. North West, daughter of Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Kim Kardashian, also shared her debut project, N0rth4evr.

Not to be outdone, several standout male artists across hip-hop, Afrobeats, reggae and R&B also shared new projects, including Durnad Benrarr (BERNARR.), Isaiah Rashad (It’s Been Awful), Asake (M$NEY) and Ziggy Marley (Brightside).

Over on the singles side, Madonna released the duet she and Sabrina Carpenter debuted at the “Espresso” singer’s Coachella Weekend Two headlining set. Reminiscent of the house flourishes that color “Vogue,” “Bring Your Love” is another promising taste from Madge’s forthcoming Confessions II. In addition to Gaga’s three new songs, the Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack also boasts a new track from Sienna Spiro titled “Material Lover.” “Build a B—h” singer Bella Poarch also shared her new “Ribcage” single.

This New Music Friday also includes new songs from Labrinth (“Prostitute”), Lizzo (“Bitch”), Bella Kay (“Promise?”), Vince Staples (“Blackberry Marmalade”), Bryson Tiller (“It’s OK”), Maroon 5 (“Heroine”), Jessie Reyez and Muni Long (“Ain’t You Tired?”), Bleachers (“I’m Not Joking”) and DaBaby, Yung Miami, YKNIECE and GloRilal (“Pop Dat Thang” remix).

Which new release this week is your favorite? Vote — or share your own pick — in Billboard‘s New Music Friday poll below:

The last time Durand Bernarr spoke with Billboard, just days after he took home his first career Grammy for 2025’s Bloom (best progressive R&B album), he wasn’t planning a new studio album — just a deluxe edition of his recent award-winner.

“We thought that we were only doing seven additional songs — two remixes, five new records — to make it 20 altogether,” he explains. “During the recording process, there were just so many ideas coming out. And I already wanted to do something for the “heated fellowship” side of things, because being spicy wasn’t the topic of Bloom. We were planning a deluxe, Blooming, and another EP for the end of the year, but eventually decided, ‘Why don’t we just do another project?’”

And just like that: the Cleveland-bred, powerhouse vocalist entered his BERNARR album. Corralling an all-star team of A-list R&B producers and songwriters, including Raphael Saadiq, Bryan-Michael Cox, Johntá Austin, Troy Taylor, James Fauntleroy and Sevyn Streer, BERNARR expands the Grammy winner’s soulful, gospel-informed soundscape with splashy flourishes of yacht rock, P-Funk, house and Miami bass. After prioritizing platonic relationships on Bloom and holding space for emotional connections beyond lust, Bernarr turns up the heat across the set’s 17 new tracks, including lead single “Wild Ride” and “Bloom.” (“Yes, I have a title track for the previous album on this new one,” he quips. “I finally was getting spicy a little bit!”)

Born Bernarr Durand Ferebee, Jr., the powerhouse vocalist has delivered a true time capsule of the different musical eras that raised him. Make no mistake: he’s a true Junior.

“I was going to title my rock album BERNARR,” he reveals. “But when I saw the album cover, I heard so many of my aunts and homegirls in my head saying, ‘You looking just like your father!’ This look and sound really do encapsulate Bernarr. And with the heavy hitters [involved], I had to do the lean. When our ancestors did that lean, they meant business!”

He’s talking about his pose on the album cover, which is reminiscent of the one on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Luther Vandross’ Give Me the Reason and Teddy Pendergrass’ It’s Time for Love, or just any classic ‘80s R&B record. And Bernarr isn’t merely gesturing at R&B greatness by tapping into that iconography — he fully achieves it across the full spectrum of rhythm and blues. Whether he’s linking up with Big Sean for the bass-rattling “Waiting” or delivering a potentially definitive R&B power ballad for the current era with “My Life,” Bernarr hits every note with impassioned precision. There’s no coasting or phoning it in for him post-Grammy win. If anything, that gilded gramophone was simply the key to unlock his next gear.

Below, Durand Bernarr goes deep about the making of BERNARR, being embraced by and working alongside his R&B heroes and how he turned Altoids nutritional facts into his dad’s favorite song from the new record.

What was your first post-Grammys studio session like?

I hopped in [the studio] two days after, so there really wasn’t any time to truly process. This go-around, we definitely had more writers and producers in the space. I cut two songs with Big Sean, and he’s been really supportive and excited about working together. We actually met when I did background for him when he did Jimmy Kimmel in 2024. But, generally, these sessions didn’t feel different. I got my heater, blanket, incense, weed and wonton soup, and we’re ready to create!

“Am I Okay?!” is such an arresting second single. How did that one come together?

I was on the phone with Branford Jones of They Have the Range, and he had Donnie Scantz on the line, who told me he had a song for me that was originally a Miguel record. Miguel wrote and recorded the first verse and hook, but he hadn’t touched it since 2020. I cut it not too long after that call, and it was one of the first songs I did when things started morphing into a different project. It’s a genuine check-in with yourself.

You highlight two era-defining songwriters, James Fauntleroy and Sevyn Streeter, as featured vocalists. How did their dual talents impact the way those records came together?

I’ve been wanting to work with James [Fauntleroy] for the longest, and “Wild Ride” was the first beat he played out of the pack. That composition allows me to land in certain places and really live there by design; it scratches this itch in my brain that feels really good. Fauntleroy wrote to the arrangements that I came up with over my first few passes, which I thought was really dope.

Sevyn wrote the top of the second verse of “Am I Okay?!” with my homegirl, Kolesta “Choklate” Moore, another writer on Bernarr. She also did “10,000 Lifetimes” with me, which is my take on how ‘90s R&B singers would close their albums with a gospel song. Except this one is about my parents. I remember telling some of the writers, “Bugs Bunny is my spirit animal, but I don’t want to be him on every song.”  As singers, we’ve been arranging like rappers in terms of cadence, but I don’t want the notes to be a distraction. I want you to be able to focus on the note and let me live on those notes. And I wanted to make it a duet; it’s definitely giving Disney/Pixar.

I feel like “AYO” is a message a lot of people need to hear and internalize.

Bad days happen; it’s not going to be sunshine and roses all the time. That doesn’t mean life is out to get you, or that someone is conspiring against you. There doesn’t have to be some big prophetic theory; sometimes life just happens — and the devil didn’t do it either.

I want to remind people that it’s okay for things not to go the way we wanted to. And it’s okay to have accountability because sometimes we want to blame something else for something happening. But no one’s to blame; it’s just life.

What song demanded the most from you?

The Bryan Michael-Cox record, “My Life.” I’ve never recorded a song that I didn’t have any intention of singing live. I’m always considering where to place breaths and whatnot. Troy [Taylor] was very particular about the inflections he wanted, so I was pleased to be able to deliver. I’ve never punched an entire record so that we can get everything right all the way through. I was literally out of breath before I got to the chorus, and I was getting frustrated. They had to remind me like, “Durand, you’re not going to be singing this song; the audience is going to take it away from you.”

What were some of the most interesting things you learned from your collaborators?

It makes me feel very necessary and anchored where I’m supposed to be. I have made enough noise being myself that I have garnered the attention and respect of OGs and legends who have been in my playlists. Raphael made “Sugar Family” just for me the night before we got in the studio. I’ve made this joke on social media, but times are so hard, like — daddy cannot do it by himself! We need a sugar family! I also cut some stuff on a song for one of his projects. His excitement made me even more excited.

What was the last song you added to the track list?

“Sleep.” [Laughs.] My team was trying to change my mind because they wasn’t feeling it! I feel like I’ve been doing a solid job giving the people what we need to in order to really take us to the next level. But this record is for me; it expresses how I’m feeling, how I’ve been feeling, and how I know I’m going to feel. When I hear it, I envision myself on the open road, half my body hanging out the window. It’s the shortest song on the album, which was intentional because I also don’t get that much sleep!

What was it like playing this for your dad for the first time? What songs did he gravitate toward?

“I Found Myself” was the one for him. He loves the whole album, but there were a couple that made him come to me personally, like, “This is amazing.”

When I’m trying to come up with melodies, I’ll take something like a tin of Altoids and read the nutritional facts off of it. Troy was like, “In the 30 years I’ve been doing music, I’ve never seen anyone read lyrics off Altoids to create a melody.” We eventually replaced those nutritional facts with the words we wanted to tell the story with, but that’s been my thing to get the creative juices flowing. I started doing it during these sessions, but I’ve been doing it outside the studio forever because it’s really just me stimming.

Melissa Etheridge had long had a very strong relationship with the LGBTQ community and planned to announce to the world that she is a lesbian after the release of her 1992 breakthrough album, Never Enough. For years, she’d had what she felt was an “unspoken” bond with her most loyal fans, even though she was not publicly out at the time.

“When my first album came out it was that unspoken thing,” Etheridge, 64, told Joel Madden on his Artist Friendly podcast on Wednesday (April 29) about the wink-wink understanding in the late 1980s. “I would go do a show and my first two rows would be women losing their minds, right? And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. You know. What’s this?’”

Then, when she dropped Never Enough around the time grunge was starting to take over mainstream rock in the early ’90s, the singer figured, “‘hey, I can wear flannel, I’ve been wearing flannel for a long time,’” thinking that it was her time to reveal her true self to the wider world. Then, she was the subject of a cover story for England’s legendary New Musical Express magazine and was shocked at the final product.

“I was on the cover and he [the writer] changed every pronoun that I used,” she recalled. “He changed it to my ‘boyfriend’ and I was like … and it horrified me. Because there was an underground … the gay community was really strong, but it was underground, right? And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna think that I did this!’”

Worried that she would offend or turn off her core audience, Etheridge said she planned to right the wrong done to her by going on the then red-hot Arsenio Hall Show to officially come out. Before that could happen, though, she worked on the Bill Clinton/Al Gore presidential campaign in 1992, where she was surrounded by a lot of “really important, strong, powerful gay leaders.” She said she saw them putting “everything on the line” to speak out about the AIDS crisis and gay rights and when they started to invite her to events and include her in their work she realized she had to speak her truth.

“I finally came out at the inauguration,” she said of her public announcement at the Jan. 20, 1993, Triangle Ball, the first-ever gay/lesbian presidential inaugural ball. “I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be truthful to myself and then speak about it,” she said.

Etheridge released her seventeenth studio album, Rise, in March. She will play a show at the Factory in St. Louis on Friday (May 1) as part of her tour in support of the LP.

Watch Etheridge on Artist Friendly below.

Carlos Vives has unleashed his new studio album, El Último Disco, Vol. 1, a 10-track set that includes collaborations with Juan Luis Guerra, Nina Pastori, Sergio George and Josemi Carmona. 

Though its title is open to many interpretations, it actually represents a return to roots and basics. 

“This is not a farewell; it is a return to what truly matters: love, the land and our identity,” the Colombian singer-songwriter tells Billboard. “This album was crafted in that spirit — like those debut records by unforgettable bands. It was recorded live in the studio, alongside musicians of exceptional caliber who are unafraid to sing of beautiful love and of their people.” 

Crafted with the traditional rock-infused cumbia and vallenato sounds that made Vives a global powerhouse, El Último Disco is also charged with romantic lyrics about wooing someone like in the old days as heard in opening track “Te Dedico.” 

In the Juan Luis-assisted “Buscando el Mar,” the two Grammy-winning acts are inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude for a metaphorical journey filled with nostalgia, hope and connection. The song also marks the final recording by Vives’ longtime and late accordionist Egidio Cuadrado, who passed away in 2024.

But contrary to the album’s title, which translates to “the last album,” Vives is not going anywhere.

“I have no plans to retire; on the contrary, I want to continue singing about beautiful love and for my people,” he assures. “In a world of change, this album is a celebration of true music — of the essence that unites us. I want every song to be a personal message, a light that illuminates the heart of anyone who listens.”

Stream El Último Disco, Vol. 1 below: