In April, Hongjoong returned to Coachella with nothing to do.

Two years earlier, he had been on the Indio Valley stage when ATEEZ became the first K-pop boy band to perform at the festival. This time he was a guest, watching other people work. “That day I got so many inspirations,” he says of a trip where he linked up with Teddy Swims, PinkPantheress, Central Cee, Swae Lee and Daesung of BIGBANG. “I really love to experience everywhere.” He came back to Los Angeles, booked a session and crafted an atmospheric pop song that he specifies is “not just chill” but about a feeling he had been chasing his whole life.

That song arrives Friday (Sept. 18) as “ENOuGH,” a collaboration with Bazzi, that is unhurried, openly emotional and, perhaps most notably, sounds nothing like the group he leads in the midst of their biggest season yet.

On June 26, ATEEZ unleashed GOLDEN HOUR : Part.5 and made a headlining debut at London’s BST Hyde Park in the U.K. just two days later. The EP gave the group its third No. 1 on the Billboard 200, opening with a career-high 228,000 equivalent album units. At home in Korea, Part.5‘s lead single “BAD” climbed the local charts thanks in part to a viral dance, helping ATEEZ secure their first entry on the Billboard Global 200. Next month, a full day dedicated to ATEEZ and their fans at the inaugural 82WORLD: LA festival is already sold out.

But none of that superstardom is visible when Hongjoong joins an afternoon video call in August from a sun-filled Los Angeles hotel room. He’s dressed down in a plain white V-neck T-shirt with the collar cut off, a few silver rings stacked on different fingers, and a single fingernail painted black — a signature he rarely goes without to raise awareness for the Polished Man campaign, which aims to end violence against children. He looks less like the leader of one of K-pop’s hardest-working groups than someone enjoying a rare stretch of good weather with nowhere urgent to be. “We are so busy these days,” he says, “but finally I get to chill a little here.”

So, when the trending group of the moment’s leader turns up with a subtle song of his own, it’s important to note that it’s not a full-fledged solo departure. “If I give you a new solo debut, maybe I (will have) prepared more than one year,” he says. “But for this one, I made this song in April in L.A.” A proper solo debut would require far more than the few months it took to deliver “ENOuGH” — a song made on a break, at a moment when, for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t sure what he was making.

“I just tried to make some chill song and also not just chill,” he says of those April studio days. “Before starting the music in L.A. in the session, before this song [became] ‘ENOuGH,’ I just focused on making good sounds because I think I need that in here. But for this song, I had a very specific message I wanted to write, and we talked about that before starting the session…I always walked with ATEEZ, and I’m really happy with that. At the same time, I’m 27 now, and I did eight years with ATEEZ. I made so many songs for ATEEZ and myself too, and now I think I have to get more experience because doing that will reflect to ATEEZ again and myself. So, that’s why I started this project and that’s why I think this song is very much ‘enough’ to start a collaboration project.”

Kim Hongjoong has spent almost a decade as ATEEZ’s leader, as well as a consistent songwriter and in-house producer for the act with nearly 200 songs officially registered under his name. In May, he made his debut as music director on the indie film Hallucination, which screened at the Jeonju International Film Festival; weeks later, he appeared on the K-POPS! soundtrack for a track alongside Anderson .Paak and Jay Park; and next month, he’ll make his solo festival debut via his first-ever live DJ set under the moniker NO1 at EDC Korea.

Still, by Hongjoong’s account, the year started confusingly.

“Last year, I really thought I knew myself very well because I know what I can do and where my good points and bad points are,” he shares. “But at the start of this year, I felt I was still learning about myself because if I make songs, sometimes I use high notes and sometimes I use low notes, but I thought that my high note is good because my vocal tone is very high and I think I’ll just use that when I make songs. But at the start of this year, when I listened to the songs that I made, I thought everything was not good. And also it makes me not ‘enough’ because — and I don’t know why — artists always change their flavor and music types.”

That reckoning and realization sent him looking for the gap between what he’s become good at as a musician and what made him want to be one in the first place.

“I thought I have to learn myself more with ATEEZ and also without ATEEZ too because I want to know about me, what I really like, and what I really don’t like,” he continues. “That’s why this music style is quite different than what I made before and ATEEZ’s style. I really love ATEEZ’s style, and I know I’m really good at doing a charismatic rap, but at the same time, the songs that I listened to when I was young were almost all emotional songs. So, that’s why I started this song with the kind of emotional chords, but also the very unique and comfortable sound.”

He’s not wrong about the charisma (listen to him declare himself the captain on “Say My Name,” the fire he spits on “This World” or last year’s solo cut “NO1”), but he’s also careful not to plant his personal flag in any one genre.

“In the near future, [my style] can change, so I want to try to collab with more artists,” he says. “Or if I release more songs, I think many things within a year will really change because I’m still learning myself. If I get my own style or learn my own style, I think there will be someday I can talk to you to say, ‘This is my style.’ I’m not sure this is my real style, but these days, at least in April, I felt this is one of my styles.”

Hongjoong’s opportunity to go find out came from something he hadn’t experienced in years: time off.

Late last year, he and his ATEEZ members sat down with management company, KQ Entertainment, and discussed setting two vacation periods in 2026. “We didn’t have any vacation before this year,” he shares. “When we confirmed to go on vacation, I immediately thought about how I could use that vacation for me and how I could use the vacation for loving myself and expressing myself at the same time.”

All eight ATEEZ members re-signed with KQ for another seven years in July 2025, with the second chapter leaving more space for individuality: Mingi released a six-track solo EP in May, Yunho has moved more into acting and others are taking on their own individual work, which Hongjoong frames as crucial maintenance for the group. “We put ATEEZ first,” he says. “But at the same time, everyone wants to plan their own things too. I think that’s very important to make ATEEZ last longer because everyone needs to express themselves and that makes synergy.”

In rediscovering his sparks, he first found a word with the song’s title coming before the track did.

“To be honest — well, everything is honest because I don’t wanna lie to you — but when I started to write this song, I wanted to sing about [a topic] I’ve never sung about before,” Hongjoong explains. “In my head, sometimes I felt not enough. But also, I think for my whole life I’ve been trying to find something that makes me enough, makes me feel enough. These days, after Coachella and after I got a little vacation, I thought about how something beside me, something nearby, already makes me enough. I didn’t think that was enough, but I realized it was actually a very easy task, to make me enough and I didn’t know before — and that’s why I wrote these lyrics.

“After I wrote the whole lyrics, I felt that many people will feel the same. These days, I think many people find that something can be lacking…” — here he pops out of English for one of the few times in the conversation, landing with his translator’s help on the word “deficiency” — “yeah, a deficiency within their lives, something lacking. And I always focused on that too before. But these days, I think and want to say to many audiences that we don’t have to fear the lacking or deficiency. If we focus on something that we already have, it makes me feel enough to me and can make you feel like you’re enough too.”

Despite its deeper meaning, the easy-listening vibe of “ENOuGH” sounds like a love song at first and Hongjoong doesn’t mind that. “That’s the whole message of this song, but at the same time, it looks very much like a love song too,” he says of a serenade that doubles as a note to oneself. “And that’s very right: I love my job and I love our fans. Also, I can love some girls too; I can love another person or people. I don’t wanna expose a very specific person or specific thing, but that’s why I started this song, and that’s the whole message of this song.”

Meanwhile, Bazzi was part of the song well before he was officially on the record: the Billboard Hot 100 hit “Mine” from 2017 and 2018’s “Beautiful” were fixtures for Hongjoong before he ever entered the industry. But a shared festival experience did the rest.

“We had good timing,” HJ recalls of ATEEZ playing BST Hyde Park Festival the same day Bazzi was on the lineup. “We met and we talked a little bit about our lives. When I was training, his songs were very big inspirations to me, so I talked about that too because ‘Mine’ and ‘Beautiful’ were songs I covered and I listened to a lot. So I talked with him a lot, we exchanged numbers, and after we went back home, I felt like this song was a very good fit for him. And I really love his COSMIC album and this song gave me that same energy. So, that’s why I asked him, ‘How about this song? We could make some kind of magic together.’ And he told me he 100% wanted to be in this song. So it happened very naturally and very fast. He recorded his part to me; we had some ping-pong about ad-libs and some chorus parts and very naturally made this song.”

Hongjoong’s quick, relentless work ethic means there’s more where that came from. “After I made this song, I actually have two, three more songs that I made,” he shares, “So, if I have a chance, I want to release these songs with the right timing.”

The day after chatting with Billboard, Hongjoong shot the “ENOuGH” music video in Los Angeles with a concept in his head long before he finished the song. “When I start music and film something, I have my whole vision,” he says. “Without a visual, I really can’t do anything, because my job is showing something to people.”

The concept has Hongjoong leaving Earth in a spaceship and traveling to a collaborator’s planets, with the first stop being Bazzi’s planet. “This whole story started from me,” he says. “Eight years with ATEEZ for me is a huge thing. I said I want more experiences, so for me, a huge experience is going to space. My huge role model is David Bowie. I love his music, but after my love of his music, space is one of my dream places. I’m scared that I can’t really go there in my reality, but I think I can make that visual in my music video. So, I want to travel space, but it’s just ‘my’ space, in my head. I don’t know when more collabs will come to me, but this is the start of the whole travel when I visit the Bazzi planet. Every planet will have a theme and Bazzi’s planet is time. Because in my fast life, I always felt that lack or deficiency, but after his planet, all of my emotions and thoughts are all ‘enough’ to me.”

For all the talk of learning to find contentment, Hongjoong has kept his and his band’s larger picture in mind instead of tracking day-to-day success.

“K-artists, and artists in general, always have ups and downs,” he shares. “I’m really happy with every achievement we’ve had, but I’m still preparing for the next step…we can go down someday, but I don’t want to make that huge gap to ATEEZ.” He also doesn’t want a year like 2026 or any of his future endeavors as an artist or group member to become what he calls “forgettable.”

That next step is written into the end of the “ENOuGH” video. After Hongjoong sings with Bazzi on the new planet, the lights on his spaceship start flashing, calling him back, and the viewer sees Hongjoong take one last look at the planet before he’s aboard again, journeying to whatever experience and lesson the next planet has for him.

Asked what Planet Hongjoong looks like, he doesn’t need to invent one — he’s already found his home complete with seven other inhabitants.

“My planet is Earth, actually,” he says with a big smile. “My planet is ATEEZ, from now and forever, so my home is ATEEZ, so I can’t move to another planet. I just go there and then I come back.”

KISS co-founder Gene Simmons will receive the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s lifetime achievement award during the IEBA 2026 Honors & Awards ceremony on Tuesday, Oct. 6 at The Pinnacle Nashville. The ceremony will serve as the culmination of IEBA’s 56th annual conference, taking place Oct. 4-6, with daytime programming at Grand Hyatt Nashville and nighttime events at The Pinnacle.

As co-founder, bassist and vocalist of KISS, Simmons helped transform the band into a global phenomenon. KISS was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2025.

“Gene Simmons embodies the kind of lasting impact the IEBA Lifetime Achievement Award was created to recognize,” Brian Wagner, executive director of IEBA, said in a statement. “KISS didn’t simply build a catalog of iconic music; they changed the scale and possibilities of the live concert experience. Gene’s vision for connecting music, performance, spectacle and brand has influenced generations of artists and live entertainment professionals, and we are incredibly proud to celebrate that legacy at IEBA 2026.”

The ceremony will also celebrate the 2026 IEBA Hall of Fame class, with inductions honoring legendary entertainer Chubby Checker and veteran talent buyer Gil Cunningham. Established in 2010, the IEBA Hall of Fame recognizes those whose lasting contributions have helped shape the live entertainment industry.

Checker had two No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, “The Twist” and “Pony Time.” “The Twist” was the first single to hit No. 1 in two separate chart runs, in 1960 and 1962. It was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000 and the National Recording Registry in 2012. Checker was voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025.

“Chubby Checker represents something that every talent buyer understands, the extraordinary value of an artist who can connect with an audience generation after generation,” said Wagner. “His influence extends far beyond an iconic song or dance. He helped change the way audiences participate in live music, and more than six decades later, that connection remains at the heart of what makes live entertainment so powerful.”

Over more than 37 years in live entertainment, Cunningham has earned recognition from both IEBA and the Academy of Country Music. His honors include IEBA talent buyer, event producer, festival buyer and entertainment buyer of the year, the IEBA president’s award and multiple ACM Don Romeo talent buyer of the year honors, including his fifth ACM buyer of the year recognition in 2025.

Cunningham has served as both president and vp of the IEBA, while also serving the broader industry through leadership roles and committee work with organizations including the Country Music Association and the T.J. Martell Foundation.

“Gil Cunningham represents the very best of the talent-buying profession and of IEBA,” said Barry Jeffrey, IEBA chairman emeritus and WME partner. “Great buyers combine knowledge and instinct with relationships, trust and a willingness to take a chance on an artist before everyone else sees what they see. Gil has done that throughout his career, while giving back to this organization and mentoring the people coming behind him. His impact can be seen in the artists he has championed, the events he has helped build and the professionals whose careers he has influenced.”

The IEBA Honors & Awards ceremony recognizes outstanding achievement across the live entertainment business, with IEBA members selecting winners in categories including club, casino, theater, arena, amphitheater, fair/expo and festival of the year, as well as awards recognizing leading talent buyers, agents, promoters, venue executives, young professionals and music and entertainment industry educators.

The Honors & Awards cap three days of programming, bringing together the professionals who drive the live entertainment business. IEBA 2026 will feature keynote conversations, educational sessions, industry roundtables, networking, agency parties, live performances and the association’s signature Agents Alley, where buyers connect directly with hundreds of agents representing touring talent.

For more information about IEBA and the 56th annual conference, visit the IEBA website.

Dave Stewart has made a great many albums during the past 47 years — on his own, with his bands such as the Tourists, Eurythmics and SuperHeavy, or as a producer for the likes of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Tom Petty, Ringo Starr and many more.

But the new The Way It Was Back Then, which comes out Sept. 18, is unlike any he’s made before.

“I didn’t know I was making an album,” the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee tells Billboard via Zoom from the offices of Rare, an artist’s rights company he co-founded in London. And as such he wound up creating the 10 tracks “back to front” at his island studio on Harbour Islands in the Bahamas, rather than in a conventional recording manner.

Inspired by last year’s ad hoc Dave Does Dylan solo acoustic covers set, The Way It Was Back Then developed out of a somewhat similar process. “I just sang the songs with the acoustic guitar, straight into (the recording), just like the Dylan songs,” he recalls. “I didn’t have any of the words written down or in my mind; I just sang them stream of conscious, into the mic. What I got was the spontaneous, one-take vocal and guitar, or with a funny little keyboard called an Orchid. I just thought, ‘Right, I’ll fix some of this later,’ but the more I listened the more I didn’t want to change anything.

“Usually you play everything and make a track and then the singer sings on top of it. This was the exact opposite. It was very homemade.”

Stewart and engineer Jesse Samler subsequently overdubbed all the instruments onto Stewart’s vocal and guitar tracks, adding only “a couple of local ladies who don’t really sing — one of them sings a bit in church — to sing these high backing vocals” on some of the songs. But the result is anything but raw; “Your Wishes,” the album’s second track, features lush orchestrations, while the title track, “He House Where I Was Born,” “Oh Jesse,” the Bowie-esque “Thin Ice” and “All Done” are high-octane, full-band constructions. The more restrained “Black Cat” — which Stewart says is “one of my favorite songs” on the album — builds into a brief guitar solo that he says was actually about 15 minutes long during the recording, and “Makes Me Happy (And Sad)’s” intimate ambience feels like a Pink Floyd demo.

“Jesse plays the drums really good, and we both play the bass and keyboards and guitar, or whatever the songs needed,” Stewart says. “It was funny; I have these concerts in my home town, Sunderland (England) where I’m playing the whole album and not anything else, and I said to Jesse, ‘Hey, I better learn these songs,’ ’cause the only time I ever sang them was when we were recording them.”

Lyrically, Stewart found himself digging deep, waxing nostalgic in the title track and “The House Where I Was Born” — which came from observations he made while once staying in the house across the street from his childhood home and visiting his old school and other parts of the neighborhood. “Cry If You Want” was inspired by one of his daughters’ severe health issues, he says, while “Black Cat” is an expression of defiant resilience.

“I count my blessings and find myself lucky,” Stewart notes, “but it doesn’t stop me from having really deep emotional struggles and feelings in my own world.” In that way the album, especially with its off-the-cuff approach, became a kind of musical therapy for Stewart.

“When you’re younger you’re very busy and you’re doing this and that, you don’t have the same introspective or reflective way of looking at things as you do when you get older,” he explains. “I’m 74 now. I find that as you get older it’s more about the feeling you have of this particular period or that particular time, the feeling you had when that particular moment happened. So the songs tended to be more about that… even though they’re descriptive in certain ways in use places and people or whatever. But I was emoting the feeling of that time and place more than the details, I think.”

In another unconventional move, The Way It Was Back Then is being released in limited physical editions on vinyl and CD via Bay Street Records, as well as via Stewart’s Art of Chaos app, which features a variety of other exclusive content. “After it’s been out for a while, I might allow it on other (platforms) that might become available,” says Stewart, who’s planning some “pop-up concerts for the U.K.” after the Sunderland shows. “At first I want it to be something people make an effort to get for themselves. I actually love it now that I’m hearing it after the fact. My first thought back when we started was, ‘Oh, is this an album?’ Now hearing it,  I’m going, ‘Yeah, it is.’ It’s not just me and Jesse; it sounds like a record, which makes me happy.”

The tracklist for The Way It Was Back Then includes…

“The Way It Was Back Then”

“Your Wishes”

“Cry If You Want To”

“The House Where I Was Born”

“Black Cat”

“Makes Me Happy (And Sad)”

“Oh Jesse”

“All Done”

“Thin Ice”

“What’s A Man Supposed To Do”

After a 20-date run, Mary J. Blige is concluding her Las Vegas residency reign. Mary J. Blige: My Life, My Story at Dolby Live at Park MGM still has 10 remaining dates between October 2026 and February 2027 when the residency will end. Those dates include Halloween, Valentine’s Day weekend and President’s Day weekend.

In announcing the conclusion of her Park MGM shows, Blige stated, “This residency felt like divine timing. I’ve seen so many of you in Vegas and we still have 10 dates left. I feel even more grateful and deeply inspired after every show. Grab your girlfriends, your boots, and I’ll see you in Vegas in October and February.”

The remaining October dates are: Oct. 23-24, Oct. 28 and Oct. 30-31. The five dates in February 2027 are: Feb. 12-13, Feb. 17 and Feb. 19-20. All shows begin at 8 p.m. local time. For additional ticket information, visit here.

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Blige launched My Life, My Story — her first-ever Vegas residency — on May 1. This followed the success of Blige’s For My Fans Tour in 2025. That tour included an April 10 stop in New York City, where the nine-time Grammy winner attained another career milestone: performing her first sold-out headlining show at Madison Square Garden. Livestreamed globally, that achievement was later spotlighted in the theatrical concert film Mary J. Blige: For My Fans, Live From Madison Square Garden, released globally in November 2025.

The “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” released her latest album, Gratitude, in November 2024. Blige recently extended her long association with Lifetime, the cable and satellite television network. The latest project under that partnership is the film Mary J. Blige’s Be Happy, which aired in February.

The nearly 100-year-old Loew’s Jersey Theatre is set for a grand re-opening on Nov. 13 with a performance from the Trey Anastasio Band, the venue has announced.

Located in the heart of Jersey City, N.J.’s Journal Square, the theater will re-open as a fully restored, state-of-the-art live performance venue this fall after a massive redevelopment project between the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA), the State of New Jersey/ New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), the latter of which also operates Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. and White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.

After more than 40 years of limited use, the theatre — one of five “Loew’s Wonder Theatres,” which were built as movie houses in and around New York City in the 1920s — has undergone a restoration to preserve its original character while transforming it into a versatile 21st-century venue.

“There was a big effort within the city to keep the building from the wrecking ball,” Loew’s Jersey Theatre GM Bruce Wheeler tells Billboard. “The city was very interested in having the Loew’s Jersey Theatre be the anchor for them bringing the Journal Square area back to full force.”

In its heyday, the Jersey Theatre, which was at the center of the bustling neighborhood also know as Publishers Row where many newspaper businesses were located, hosted greats like Duke Ellington and New Jersey’s own Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Originally built by renowned theater architects Rapp and Rapp as a 3,021-seat movie house, the private/public partnership behind the reopening spent $130 million renovating the venue. It now features flexible seating configurations ranging from approximately 2,600 to 4,000 guests in order to host concerts, live performances, sporting events, film presentations and more.

The city, which bought the theater from private owners in 1993, had been threatened with demolition, but local preservationists kept the fight alive, and HBSE, who came on board the renovation project in 2021, saw a need for a midsize theater in Jersey City. In addition, the location — easily accessible to the tri-state area via car, PATH train and New Jersey Transit — made it an ideal candidate.

“Quite frankly, artists would prefer to play in something that has some character to it. That you’re looking out and you’re seeing beautiful architecture, and then also the fans want to be in an experience like that,” Sean Saadeh, HBSE chief programming officer and head of entertainment, tells Billboard. “So, why tear down something so beautiful that was so thought out 100 years ago?”

The restoration included bringing the building up to code with its electric and plumbing systems, as well as adding brand new heating and air conditioning units and sound system. The lighting system was also modernized — though artists can also bring their own set up — while the orchestra seating is fully mobile, allowing for standing room only shows.

But with the theater being added to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1985, the restoration had to respect the building’s design. For example, the fully seated balcony seating was restored with new chairs and fabric, but contractors had to restore the aisle end caps.

“It’s a marriage of the restoration piece and bringing the building itself up to a modern-day standard,” says Wheeler. “So, when people walk in, they’ll feel like they walked into the building back almost 100 years ago. But as far as the experience of seeing a concert or an event there, it’s going to be as modern-day as it possibly can be.”

The venue’s original pipe organ was also restored and maintained and will continue to be serviced and tuned regularly. Saadeh adds that other key components and equipment from the theater will be sprinkled throughout the venue to pay homage to its character. The new LED marquee was designed to look like the original, but the modern screens will allow more information to be displayed.

While the Loew’s Jersey Theatre was a movie house, attendees would often be treated with special performances by stars like Bing Crosby and Judy Garland following screenings. For this reason, Wheeler explains that the original architects were very cognizant of sightlines for both film and stage performances.

“When you’re an artist looking out to the crowd, we all know how important that is for their experience, and what Loew’s brings to the table is a sea of people versus balcony,” says Saadeh, adding that all upper seating — lodge, mezzanine and balcony — is on a single outcropping. “You’re not looking at balcony after balcony stacked on top of each other. You’re seeing a sea of fans, and that really is an important experience for an artist because it feels like you’re really in the middle of it all.”

The grand reopening weekend will kick off on Nov. 13 with Trey Anastasio Band, followed by The War On Drugs on Saturday, Nov. 14. Scheduled shows also include Jodeci on Nov. 18; Derek Hough’s Dance For The Holidays on Dec. 8; Unwrapped: An Acoustic Holiday on Dec. 9; Christmas with Chris Tomlin on Dec. 10; Jeff Dunham on Jan. 9; and World of Warcraft: 20 Years of Music on May 8.