A good coaching partnership is built on a strong friendship — just ask Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden and Adam Levine.

The Maroon 5 singer tapped Madden to serve as an advisor for his team during The Voice season 29 battle rounds, marking the Good Charlotte rocker’s first appearance on the flagship U.S. version of the hit reality competition show. He previously appeared as co-coach alongside his twin brother Joel Madden on The Voice Australia (2015-16), as well as the sole season of The Voice Kids Australia (2014).

On the March 16 episode of The Voice, Madden advised three thrilling Team Adam battles that highlighted this season’s impressive level of competition. Bay Simpson took down Hunter Jordan — who previously earned a 3-Chair-Turn — with a winning rendition of Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” Jaali Boyd knocked out Bijou Belle with an ace version of The Weeknd’s “Die For You” and Alexia Jayy edged out Moses G. with a swoon-worthy take on The Commodores’ “Nightshift.” Notably, fellow coach John Legend couldn’t resist the caliber of Team Adam’s talent, so he stole Moses G., keeping him in the competition.

Though the battles were intense, all three showdowns were a testament to the strength of the dynamic Levine and Madden have cultivated as coach and advisor. Blending their joint pop-rock sensibilities, Levine focused on the technical aspects of vocal performance, while Maddem emphasized the importance of connecting emotionally with both the song and the audience. With a coach-advisor partnership that naturally blossomed out of a 20-year friendship, Madden has certainly helped Team Adam remain the frontrunners of season 29.

“We carpooled together, we’re old friends! We’ve known each other for probably 21-22 years. Adam’s the greatest, especially if you get to know him personally,” Madden gushes to Billboard. “I wish this was a [full] stint. I would do that any day of the week. It’s the easiest gig in the world to hang with Adam and talk music, so this was a very easy yes for me. I was really appreciative of Adam bringing me on the show and getting to spend the day hanging. That’s my boy.”

Last summer, Good Charlotte dropped its eighth studio album, Motel Du Cap, which marked the band’s first LP without drummer Dean Butterworth following his departure in early 2025. The 13-song set, which boasts collaborations with Wiz Khalifa, Petti Hendrix, Luke Borchelt and Zeph, reached No. 43 on Top Album Sales. This summer, the Maryland-bred band will embark on a 16-city joint tour with Grammy-nominated heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold. The trek will kick off July 25 in Ridgedale, Mo., and visit major cities like Chicago, New York and Dallas before wrapping with a BMO Stadium show in Los Angeles on Aug. 30.

Below, Benji Madden speaks with Billboard about 20 years of friendship with Adam Levine, advising on season 29 of The Voice and what fans can expect from Good Charlotte’s upcoming tour with Avenged Sevenfold.

Do you remember the very first time you met Adam?

I can’t remember if we were in L.A., but we were both 21 and at a show. We watched each other play — it might have been a festival — and literally have been friends since that day. It was like the new kids meeting at school. We were always really supportive of one another. You don’t have too many people that you can say you’ve been friends with for decades, so it’s really nice, especially when they stay consistent. And Adam’s never changed. Anybody who knows him knows he’s the same dude from day one.

How does your friendship with Adam inform your coach-advisor dynamic for the contestants?

We’re always giving each other advice. When we met, we were both still on tour in vans and trailers. When you grow up through the years and stay friends with someone through the different phases of life, like being married and having families, you need that fellowship. The music industry can be a cold place, but there’s also a beautiful side. I think that those friendships are the most amazing side of it. We talk about everything, from our careers to being dads, so I think that makes it easier for us to advise artists who will listen.

When people receive you, you can be more genuine and tell them what you know. When Adam’s coaching on The Voice, those artists are there to get everything they can get out of that experience and being with him. They’re totally excited and open, and it’s a really fun environment. Sometimes you go into these scenarios and it’s not as comfortable, because you’re getting to know all the different people. So, when you roll in there with your old friend — somebody that you see every day in real life — it’s awesome. I had a blast! And it’s fun listening to people who can really sing; the show definitely keeps a high tier of ability and talent.

This season is being dubbed the “Battle of Champions.” Do you feel like the stakes are higher this time around?

Definitely. This is a big platform to be on. A lot of these people have been working and have gone through the wringer in different talent pools and searches. When you get an opportunity like this platform, you elevate when you get around other great talent. That’s the beauty of getting to hang out with guys like Adam. He’s got a classic voice for our time, it will be remembered. When you go to a [Maroon 5] show, there’s hit after hit after hit, and it’s tied together by Adam’s voice. It’s woven into the fabric of modern music.

We’re on season 29 now, so obviously, they’re trying to find new ways to up the ante and make it stand out. It doesn’t lead to something for everybody, but it’s your opportunity to take and make with it what you will. The stakes are high for these folks, and Adam being back is pretty cool, too.

What advice do you think vocalists need to hear the most these days?

My advice is going to be different than a vocalist vocalist because I’m more of a singer-songwriter. My advice is always going to be: tap into your feelings regardless of the mechanics and technical execution. There’s a balance. Do the work and practice, but when you’re performing, try to tap into your soul and the soul of the song. Connect it to you and your story — that’s what people really feel. You gotta marry that with ability, practice and skill.

And that’s something that Adam does. He’s a technically great singer, but he’s also telling stories and he’s a songwriter. If anyone has a takeaway from Team Adam, it’s to be a storyteller.

You and your brother served as co-coaches for The Voice Australia and The Voice Kids Australia. How did those experiences prepare you for advising this season?

It was great! Having shot those seasons, we know the environment. They’re shooting this entire competition from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed — there is a flow to it. That allowed me to slide right into the flow of the show and have fun with it because I missed doing The Voice, getting to work with all these unknowns, and all this talent. And we learned a lot doing so.

What have been your favorite fan responses to Motel Du Cap?

You never know what to expect, and I don’t think we really had any expectations. We genuinely got to make a record just for the fun of it, and that’s a blessing to be in that place in our career. But the response has been incredible, man. We just did our biggest tour ever in Australia, and we’re doing some of the biggest shows of our career with three or four new songs in the set — and they’re going off. That’s also kind of a rarity. “Bodies,” “Stepper” and “Mean” all get really strong responses. Now the momentum is pulling us into a few more shows than we thought.

We just announced a U.S. summer tour that we’re co-headlining with Avenged Sevenfold. God bless those guys. We’ve been friends for 25 years, and we’ve always wanted to tour together. We don’t take it for granted. Obviously, we can’t do it exactly the way we used to now that we have families and businesses, but we’re really enjoying it when we can.

What can fans expect from this tour?

We’re gonna bring something special. Obviously, we have songs and features together, so I’m talking to Matt Shadows [Avenged Sevenfold lead vocalist] about all that. There will be a lot of production, I’ll tell you that. A lot of thought is going into the creative.

You guys also have a BMO Stadium show on this trek. What excites you most about a venue of that size?

L.A. is a special market for us and Avenged, so we wanted to do something different, which is why we announced it last. We thought this would be a really cool venue to put on a big, old rock show. We’ve got some special guests and lots of cool stuff for that show. It’s sort of like a homecoming show.

Lizzo‘s unreleased track “Don’t Make Me Love U” is finally on its way, which the star announced Wednesday (March 18) on social media with a video that’ll have you seeing double.

In the clip, a camera circles Lizzo as she throws it back on her doppelgänger, who stares ahead blankly in beige spandex and stilettos. The upcoming track plays in the background while a man offscreen shouts encouragements at the star, who twerks to lyrics such as “Don’t make me love you if you’re just gonna change your mind.”

“THE NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM ‘DON’T MAKE ME LOVE U,’” Lizzo captioned the clip. “THIS FRIDAY. GET READYYYYY.”

The Grammy winner previously previewed “Don’t Make Me Love U” while guesting on Late Night With Seth Meyers in February, singing a few bars a cappella. She last dropped music in October, unleashing “Freak Show” that month. Before that, she released June mixtape My Face Hurts From Smiling, which featured collaborations with SZA and Doja Cat.

Lizzo had originally planned on releasing an album titled Love in Real Life, but pivoted away from the project after singles “Still Bad” and “Love in Real Life” didn’t make a splash on the Billboard Hot 100 — a chart she’s previously topped with smashes “Truth Hurts” and “About Damn Time.”

“By 2025, I’ve changed, the world has changed so much, and so much has happened,” she explained in a September interview with Vulture, noting that she wrote most of the shelved album in 2022. “It just wasn’t what I was feeling right now. I was like, ‘I need to do s–t differently, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to just start following my instincts.’”

The hitmaker is also fresh off mini residencies at the Blue Note jazz clubs in Los Angeles and New York City, as well as the announcement of upcoming children’s book Lil Lizzo Meets Sasha B. Flootin’.

Billboard’s Dance Moves roundup highlights the biggest movers and shakers across Billboard’s many dance charts, including new No. 1s, notable debuts, chart milestones, first-timers and rising tracks and artists.

This week, on charts dated March 21, ANOTR, Bebe Rexha, Harry Styles, Jennifer Lopez and David Guetta achieve new feats. Check out the key movers below.

ANOTR

The Dutch duo scores its third Billboard chart hit, and biggest yet, thanks to “Talk to You,” featuring 54 Ultra. Released March 6 via the pair’s own NO ART imprint, it debuts at No. 5 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs with 1.5 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate. The disco-house track built on momentum on social media ahead of its release and has soundtracked over 17,000 videos on TikTok.

ANOTR is an Amsterdam-based electronic tandem comprised of Jesse van der Heijden and Oguzhan Guney. The act first charted in April 2023 when “Relax My Eyes,” with Abel Balder, debuted on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs (No. 29 peak). It followed with “How You Feel,” with Erik Bandt and featuring Leven Kali, in 2024 (No. 32). The duo has released three LPs: EXPO Series 001, The Reset (both in 2022) and On a Trip (2025).

Bebe Rexha & Faithless

Rexha returns to Billboard’s dance charts with her dance-pop track “New Religion.” Released March 6 on EMPIRE, it debuts at No. 11 on Hot Dance/Pop Songs with 2.1 million U.S. streams. It also starts at No. 39 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay.

While the single earns Rexha her first entry on Hot Dance/Pop Songs (launched in January 2025), she has a deeper history on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, which has since become a DJ-centered chart. She has sent 18 songs onto the ranking, including six top 10s and two No. 1s: the 11-week leader “Hey Mama” (David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj, Rexha and Afrojack) and the 55-week smash “I’m Good (Blue),” with Guetta and J Balvin. “I’m Good” is the third-longest-leading hit in the chart’s history, trailing only Marshmello and Bastille’s “Happier” (69 weeks) and Marshmello and Kane Brown’s “Miles on It” (62).

“New Religion” samples and interpolates Faithless’ “Insomnia,” which reached No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997 and spent two weeks at No. 1 on the now-inactive Dance Club Songs chart. A sequel, “Insomnia 2.0,” topped Dance Club Songs for a week in 2015 and reached No. 23 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.

Rexha’s new hit is the lead single from her fourth album, Dirty Blonde, due June 12.

Harry Styles

The singer-songwriter has a massive week across Billboard’s charts thanks to his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. Two tracks from the set appear on the latest Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart: former four-week leader “Aperture” holds at No. 2, while “Are You Listening Yet?” debuts at No. 3.

All 12 songs from Styles’ album chart on the Hot 100, while the LP opens in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 430,000 equivalent album units — the biggest week for an album this year.

Jennifer Lopez & David Guetta

Lopez and Guetta debut on Billboard’s charts with their first collaboration, “Save Me Tonight.” Released March 6 on What a DJ/Warner Records, it arrives at No. 18 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs (881,000 streams) and No. 38 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay.

Lopez released the song the same day she returned to her Las Vegas residency, Jennifer Lopez: Up All Night Live in Las Vegas, at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace. She kicked it off with four shows Dec. 31-Jan. 3 and returned March 6 for eight additional performances. She performed “Save Me Tonight” during many of her live shows in 2025.

The track marks her first release since the Kiss of the Spider Woman soundtrack (which included 11 of her songs) dropped last year, following 2024’s This Is Me…Now. The latter debuted at No. 38 on the Billboard 200.

Lopez lands her fourth entry on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and ninth on Dance/Mix Show Airplay. Guetta extends his records to 97 appearances on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and 72 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay.

“Travis! How’s it going? Just heard you and Taylor were listening to my tracks. Great to hear,” Chris Lake wrote to Travis Kelce in a mid-January Instagram DM. “I’m going to take a crack at remixing this track for her. No idea how I’ll get on, but I’ll do my best!”

The NFL superstar and famous fiancé responded a few hours later: “Chris! You’re a legend, bro love everything you’ve come out with, and Chemistry is one of my favorite albums I listen to right now,” Kelce wrote, referring to Lake’s 2025 debut LP. “Can’t wait to see how you put it together man.” A true fan, Kelce added that he’d loved Lake and Fisher’s set at Coachella 2023.

Lake replied that he was “On it” then two days later sent an update: “F–k I’ve got something really cool with this. I’ll send soon.”

“Dawg I’m f–king pumped!!!! LFG!!!! Can’t wait to hear what you cooked up,” Kelce replied.

This conversation revolved around Taylor Swift‘s “Opalite,” the ebullient second single from her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl. Released on January 12, “Opalite” is currently in its 23rd week on the Hot 100, where it spent a week in the top spot. Lake’s mission was to reimagine it for his natural habitat, the dancefloor.

Working from a London studio for two days in January, Lake reworked the bright pop confection into the club-ready version released on Feb. 19. This remix came out as part of a drop that also included “Opalite” edits by Skream, Bunt. and Ely Oaks. Lake’s remix now has 3.4 million global on demand streams, according to Luminate.

“I do think that sometimes the downside of remixing some of the most popular artists is that there’s a belief you’re doing things for money,” says Lake. “I can’t press enough that I couldn’t give a f–k about that. If I hadn’t made something that I felt worked well, I wouldn’t have done it.”

To make something he, and then subsequently the world, would love, Lake first had to figure out how to pair, he says, the “vibe and the sentiment of the song with the beats from my world, and make [the remix] make sense as something that would fit amongst other songs from my world without it standing out like a sore thumb.” To do so, he started with a bouncy, thumping beat, over which he laid the vocals, then creating a feel of anticipatory joy with Swift’s pre-chorus and loads of building percussion, before the drop breaks the song open into a slick amalgamation of guitar, chimes and vocal samples all played at a galloping pace.

A major element of this process was making “Opalite”s major chords work with the minor chords that characterize Lake’s oeuvre. “Pretty much 99.9% of all the music I’ve ever played or made in my life is with minor chords,” he says.

To meld these styles, Lake first found a chord progression that could play for the duration of the song that melded with the vocals. “To work with a vocal that wasn’t written to be used that way was really challenging,” Lake says. “That’s the bit I’m actually the most happy with… If you listen to the original and to the feel of how her chorus comes in, it’s very happy and uplifting, whereas in the remix, I don’t know what emotion you’d call it, but maybe it’s sort of hauntingly emotive. It makes you feel a completely different way. Then the way it launches into the drop, I haven’t done that on a remix before. I’m really proud of it.”

This final result was a product of fine tuning. After two days in the studio, Lake FaceTimed a friend to get his take on it. “He was like, ‘It’s overcomplicated. You kind of overcooked this,’” recalls Lake. “I was like, ‘S–t. This is really inconvenient, but he’s absolutely right.”

As such, he spent another hour remixing his own remix, at which point he had the finished product. Passing it over to Kelce’s side, Lake was soon informed that they were “over the moon” about what he’d made. So too have been the fans who’ve heard Lake play it in recent sets, with the producer sharing that the edit has been sounding “really great and really warm” in his live shows.

Lake is of course a longtime star of the dance world who’s still riding the wave of his celebrated Chemistry release and who has major headlining and festival shows booked through this fall. But in remixing “Opalite,” he now knows the kind of attention that comes with a Swift-level collaboration.

“It’s quite mind blowing, to be honest,” he says. “The thing that’s been really funny are some of the messages I’ve gotten from people who I haven’t spoken to for a very long time who thought this was genuinely the coolest thing on the planet. There are daughters of people who’ve worked for my father who found out I’d done it and just thought it was the craziest thing. Like, they knew someone that was kind of doing something close to Taylor Swift. Her gravity is powerful.”

The project has also opened up a conversation between Lake and Kelce: “I have only spoken to him on Instagram and text, but that guy’s energy is infectious,” says Lake. “Speaking to him has been really uplifting and energizing, so shout out to him for helping make it all happen.”

In a turn of events as sweet as “Opalite” itself, making the remix has also helped people in Lake’s life who are less familiar with the dance scene better understand his world and his work.

“It’s given me the ability to have a conversation with people that very often don’t understand what I do or the world I live in,” he says. “It’s something where I’m able to say, ‘I’ve done this’ and it’s understandable, because everyone knows about Taylor Swift. My 90-year old grandfather knows who she is.”

Charlie Puth was recently back in a place he briefly called home last fall, the Blue Note Jazz Club Los Angeles, where he sat down with Billboard to talk about the residency run he did there in October — following a similar run at the New York Blue Note — as well as his upcoming fourth studio album, Whatever’s Clever (March 27).

And while the series typically involves a meal, given Puth’s legendary music nerd-dom, the singer instead took to the piano at the club and showed interviewer Tomás Mier how the songs came together and what his intentions were on the most personal collection he’s released to date.

Puth reminisced about jamming on a Boyz II Men classic with Babyface during the New York run, as well as with album guest vocalist Coco Jones (“Sideways”) in Los Angeles and special guest Jeff Goldblum, who pulled a fast one on the singer when he called an audible. “He gets on stage and he looks at the crowd and says, ‘Is anyone in here young enough to remember ‘All This Love’ by El DeBarge? And he was like, ‘You know how to play it, right Charlie?’”

The show ended up being two hours long because Puth and Goldblum ended up doing 30 minutes of covers based on the actor’s suggestions, which included a crowd sing-along to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Goldblum, as it turns out, is on track 11 of the album, “Until It Happens To You,” which includes the Wicked star sharing some sage advice.

Puth said the BloodPop-produced LP is “inherently jazzy” and breaks with what he said is a typical criticism of his music, that people know his music before they know him. BloodPop felt that way as well, and he said he wanted to be part of helping Puth fix that perception. “Slightly rearranging the perspective, put life first and let the music follow,” Puth said. (Watch the full interview above.)

So that’s what Puth did, starting with the prompt to write a song about his dad, a personal place he’d never gone before that BloodPop said the singer’s dad might need some day. The song is called “Cry” and, naturally, it made Puth’s dad cry, so challenge accepted and completed. That went well enough that Puth also wrote a song for his brother, called, you guessed it, “Hey Brother.”

“What’s funny is I don’t consider any of these 12 songs to be clever, I consider them to be real,” said Puth about the “incredibly honest” tracks he thinks will give his fans more insight into who he is as a person than anything he’s released to date as he played his way through the tracks and gave rundowns of what inspired them on the Blue Note’s grand piano.

And, because the album ends with the mea culpa “I Used to Be Cringe,” Puth happily went through his various cringe eras, from his fake lip ring to writing a funny song called “Marvin Gaye” and his, in retrospect, mega-cringe high school-era CharliesVlogs days, where he posted his earliest original tunes (check out “I Don’t Wanna Hurt You Baby”) and did prank calls using Auto-Tune.

Though the album is full of intimate, jazzy tunes that are perfect for a club like the Blue Note, Puth promised that his team is putting together a killer stage set-up that will make the songs come to life on his Whatever’s Clever arena tour, which kicks off on April 22 at Viejas Arena in San Diego.