Joshua Bassett Announces New Single ‘Feel Something’

A new song from Joshua Bassett will be arriving soon.

“SURPRISE ! NEW SINGLE ‘FEEL SOMETHING’ MAY 7TH !” the musician and actor revealed on Instagram Friday night (April 16).

“Feel Something,” which follows Bassett’s self-titled debut EP that was released in March, will drop just a week ahead of the May 14 season two premiere of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, the Disney+ show on which Bassett is a series regular. Bassett stars as Ricky opposite Olivia Rodrigo’s Nini.

“It’s the most proud I’ve ever been of a body of work,” he said of his EP to Billboard in February. “I showed myself that I can really do more than what I thought. It’s got me all over it — people will be able to feel that when they listen to it.”

On Friday, he premiered a special one-off virtual concert, performing the songs from that EP and more.

See Bassett’s “Feel Something” announcement on Instagram.

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Britney Spears Assures Fans She’s ‘Extremely Happy’ and ‘Totally Fine’

Britney Spears is letting fans know that she’s doing okay amid her conservatorship battle and the #FreeBritney movement.

The 39-year-old pop superstar took to Instagram on Friday (April 16) to answer several commonly asked questions by fans, including inquiries about her mental health.

“The next question is, am I okay?” Spears says in the video. “Yes, I’m totally fine. I’m extremely happy. I have a beautiful home, beautiful children. I’m taking a break right now because I’m enjoying myself.”

In recent months, fans grew concerned about the singer’s life following the release of the New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, which chronicles her turbulent rise to fame and long-running conservatorship.

Spears has been in a conservatorship overseen predominantly by her dad since 2008. Many supporters of the #FreeBritney movement have come forward questioning whether a conservatorship over her personal and financial life still needs to be in place.

The pop star’s IG video addressed whether she gets dizzy from doing twirls in the many home-recorded dance clips she posts on social media.

“Yes, I get extremely dizzy,” Spears says. “But I’m a dancer, so as long as I have a focus for my head as I turn, as long as I keep finding that spot, usually in the end it’s not as bad.”

The singer also touched on a random picture she shared in late March of her vintage red refrigerator. “What does the red refrigerator mean on my Instagram? Honestly, I just thought it was cool,” she says. “I thought it was vintage, it was red. And it’s just really cool.”

In the caption, Spears explained that the video was recorded a day before she made a public appearance in Malibu, Calif., to do some shopping.

“This was me yesterday before I went to Malibu randomly in my boyfriend’s brown blazer to stay in disguise … but s— … the paps still found me!!!!” she wrote, adding that she discovered a “cool new” clothing store in the area. “I’m so excited for summer … what have you guys been up to ???”

See Spears’ Q&A post on Instagram here.

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H.E.R., Leslie Odom Jr. & More to Perform Oscar-Nominated Songs on Pre-Show, Not the Main Telecast

The producers of the 93rd annual Academy Awards had good news and bad news for the singers who are performing this year’s Oscar nominees for best original song. The good news: All five nominees will be performed in their entirety. The bad news: They’ll be featured on a 90-minute pre-show, Oscars: Into the Spotlight, which is billed as “the lead-in” to the Oscars.

Hosted by actors Ariana DeBose (Hamilton) and Lil Rel Howery (Bad Trip), the pre-show will air Sunday, April 25, at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT. The main Oscar telecast will begin at 8 p.m.. ET/5 p.m. PT.

The Oscars have struggled with how to include the five nominated songs without having a four-hour show. In a few years, none of the nominated songs were performed on the show. In others, some were, some weren’t. Or some songs were truncated. All of these approaches made music fans unhappy. This year’s approach, in which song nominees are relegated to a pre-show, will likely also make music fans unhappy.

In two cases, both co-writers of a nominated song will perform, rather than just the artist who performed it on the film soundtrack. Laura Pausini and Diane Warren will perform “Io Sì (Seen)” from The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se). Celeste and Daniel Pemberton will perform “Hear My Voice: from The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Individual artists will perform the other three nominees. H.E.R. will sing “Fight for You” from Judas and the Black Messiah. Leslie Odom Jr. will perform “Speak Now” from One Night in Miami… Molly Sandén will perform “ Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. (Actress Rachel McAdams lip-syncs the song in the film.)

“Husavik” will be recorded in Húsavík, Iceland. The other four performances will be recorded at the Dolby Family Terrace of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

According to an Academy statement, the 90-minute pre-show “will highlight the nominees’ journey to Hollywood’s biggest night [and] give fans around the world the ultimate insiders’ sneak peek into the party.” The show will feature an appearance by DJ Tara.

At the conclusion of the 93rd Oscars, there will be a third Oscar-branded show, Oscars: After Dark, hosted by actors Colman Domingo (Zola) and Andrew Rannells (The Prom) and featuring interviews by film critic Elvis Mitchell. The special will recap the evening’s must-see moments and showcase Oscar winners as they have their statuettes personalized.

“We’ve come up with some serious pre-game and post-game action to enhance our main event,” said Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh, who are producing this year’s main Oscar telecast. “Our suggestion is just tune in for the whole shebang, otherwise you’ll miss something really unexpected and fun.”

Both the pre-show and the wrap-up special are executive-produced by Michael Antinoro and David Chamberlin, alongside Collins, Sher and Soderbergh. Collins has worked on the Grammys production team for 17 years. This year, he was co-executive producer for the first time.

The 93rd Oscars will be held on Sunday, April 25, at Union Station Los Angeles and the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and international locations via satellite.

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Taylor Swift Reveals the ‘Fearless’ Vault Song That Pointed to Her Pop Future

When Taylor Swift released her fifth album, 1989, in 2014, she made a point to announce that it was her first all-pop project. But the writing was on the wall for her genre transition long before then.

In a new interview about her re-recorded 2008 project Fearless (Taylor’s Version) with Audacy (formerly Radio.com), Swift says the newly released “From the Vault” song “Mr. Perfectly Fine” made it crystal-clear that she had more than country music on her mind.

“‘Mr. Perfectly Fine’ is a song that I wrote alone,” she says of the track, which she recently co-produced with Jack Antonoff — a now-frequent collaborator whom she first worked with on 1989 — but was written back in her Fearless days. “It was definitely an early indicator of me creeping toward a pop sensibility. I’ve always listened to every type of music, and even though Fearless is a country album, there were always these pop melodies creeping in.”

Of course, Swift’s crossover to the mainstream really kicked into gear with the original 2008 release of Fearless, which spawned two of her biggest Pop Airplay hits to date — chart-topper “Love Story” and No. 2 hit “You Belong With Me” — and garnered her first album of the year win at the Grammys.

In addition to the pop vibes of “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” the song is also a pretty good indicator of Swift’s teen sensibility at the time she wrote it. “I think the lyrics are just wonderfully scathing and full of the teen angst that you would hope to hear on an album that I wrote when I was 17 or 18 or on that cusp,” she says.

“Mr. Perfectly Fine” was one of the most-talked-about previously unreleased Fearless songs thanks to fan theories that it’s aimed at Swift’s ex Joe Jonas.

Listen to the full Audacy interview, in which Swift breaks down more songs on Fearless (Taylor’s Version), below.

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DMX Memorial Service Set for Brooklyn’s Barclays Center

A memorial service for late rapper DMX will be held April 24 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Billboard can confirm.

Though Barclays Center is big enough to accommodate 19,000 fans for concerts, it’s unclear how many people will be allowed inside the New York arena with current COVID-19 restrictions. According to a source close to the situation, Barclays is maxed at 10% capacity currently and the service will not be open to the public.

Further details for the service, first reported by TMZ, are still being ironed out, DMX’s former manager Steve Rifkind told the site. According to their report, the public service on that Saturday would be followed by a more intimate church service for just X’s family and inner-circle the next day, Sunday, April 25.

DMX died a week ago, on April 9, after suffering a heart attack triggered by a drug overdose. He was 50 years old.

Barclays Center opened its doors less than a decade ago, in September 2012, which was years after DMX’s late ’90s/early 2000s heyday, but the rapper hit the arena’s stage twice: once in 2017 as part of a Ruff Ryders reunion show and in 2019 at the Masters of Ceremony concert.

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