Sammy Hagar likely won’t be listing Alex Van Halen’s new memoir Brothers atop his favorite books of 2024.

Hagar, who fronted Van Halen from 1985 to 1996, and again from 2003 to 2005, took to social media to share his thoughts on the recent book from his former bandmate, labelling the omission of his time within the band as “blasphemy”.

Published in October, Brothers largely focuses on the veteran California outfit’s first 12 years, effectively stopping the Van Halen story after the departure of vocalist David Lee Roth, and overlooking not only Hagar’s time as vocalist, but the temporary lineup featuring Gary Cherone, and their ultimate reunion with Roth.

“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Alex Van Halen told Billboard in October. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything.”

Sharing a photo of himself and guitarist Eddie Van Halen from 1991 on Instagram earlier this week, Hagar began responding to comments on the post, including one who opined that “most purists believe VH ended with DLR”.

“It could have [ended], my friend, but instead we went on to sell over 50 million records for [a] No. 1 album [then] sold out every building and stadium in the world for a whole decade,” Hagar responded. “That never happened again.”

IVan Halen experienced some of their biggest successes with their album 1984, which featured the Hot 100-topping single “Jump”, would peak at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and become their highest charting release of the Roth era. Their next album, 1986’s 5150, was their first released with Hagar on vocals, and was the first of four consecutive No. 1 albums released with Hagar at the helm.

Continuing his response, Hagar contended that Alex Van Halen was doing both the band and his late brother a disservice by leaving the era out of the memoir.

“Alex is not doing his brother’s musical legacy justice by not acknowledging all the No. 1 albums and some great music Eddie and I wrote together — not Alex — but Eddie and I wrote together,” Hagar continued. “To not acknowledge [those] 10 years of music is blasphemy to his brother’s musicianship, songwriting and legacy.”

Despite his harsh words regarding Alex Van Halen’s book, Hagar recently told Rolling Stone it’s “on [his] bucket list” that he and his former bandmate are able to make peace at some point.

“I understand he probably couldn’t have done the whole era in one book. It would’ve been the Bible, the dictionary, so maybe he’s got plans for a Volume 2. Who knows?” said Hagar.

“I want to be friends, though. I don’t want to play in a band with Al. I’m not asking for that. I can see that he’s not capable of doing that. If he was, I’d be happy to play with him, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I just want to friends again.”

Jingle Punks and Audio Up Media founder Jared Gutstadt has been accused of sexual assault in a new lawsuit filed by singer-songwriter and actor Mary Koons (known professionally as Scarlett Burke), who alleges that the influential executive “trapped” her “in a cycle of manipulation, abuse and exploitation” for years.

Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday (Dec. 31), the complaint alleges that Gutstadt “manipulated” Koons “into a sexual relationship under the guise of advancing her career”; repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted her; “isolated” her from professional opportunities “unless she complied with his sexual and logistical demands”; and “engaged in stalking, harassment, intimidation and retaliation” when she tried to escape his control — in the process “causing her significant and irreparable financial and professional harm.”

Audio Up and Anthem Entertainment — the former parent company of creative music agency Jingle Punks, which Gutstadt founded in 2008 — are also named as defendants in the lawsuit for allegedly facilitating Guststadt’s grip over Koons “by exerting substantial financial control and decision-making power over [her] professional opportunities and working conditions, particularly through her employment and contractual relationships with Jingle Punks.”

The allegations were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Gutstadt is best known for founding Jingle Punks and Audio Up, a podcast network he launched in 2020. Anthem (then known as ole Music Publishing) acquired Jingle Punks in 2015, ultimately leading to Gutstadt’s exit four years later. In July, Anthem and Gutstadt struck a joint venture enabling Audio Up to develop scripted podcasts from some of the publishing and intellectual property assets he created at Jingle Punks. In October, Jingle Punks was acquired by music licensing company Slipstream along with Anthem’s other production music businesses. (Slipstream is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.)

According to the complaint — filed by L.A.-based attorney Samuel Brown at Hennig Kramer along with Parisis Filippatos, Tanvir Rahman and Gabrielle Rosen Harvey at New York firm Filippatos — Koons met Gutstadt in 2017, when she was 27 and he was 39. Over the next several years, she alleges she endured “psychological manipulation, physical violence and sexual abuse, leading to severe emotional and psychological trauma,” according to the complaint. “The relentless pattern of abuse culminated in an environment where Ms. Koons felt she had no choice but to comply with Mr. Gutstadt’s sexual demands, to avoid the horrifying consequences of refusing him.”

In the lawsuit, Koons claims she met Gutstadt in May 2017 at the Peppermint Club in West Hollywood, where Gustadt’s band, The Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra, had a residency. That night, she says, Gutstadt “fixated” on her immediately and later had his assistant contact Koons’ then-manager to arrange a meeting. Over the next several weeks, Koons claims Gutstadt “launched a calculated campaign to groom” her, “bombarding her with messages about prestigious career opportunities designed to captivate and overwhelm her,” inviting her to dinners with high-profile music and TV executives, and bringing her along on trips to Nashville and Lake Tahoe “under the guise of collaborating on music projects” for Jingle Punks’ then-parent company ole Music (later Anthem).

Koons says that within a week of meeting Gutstadt, he requested that she record “Let the Dice Roll,” a song he was planning to pitch as the theme for the Netflix series Girls Incarcerated. “This marked the start of her employment with Jingle Punks and her entrapment in his manipulative control,” according to the suit. After Netflix acquired the song, Koons claims Gutstadt paid her only $500 (“a glaring underpayment that disregarded the value of her work and contribution”) and kept the rights to the song for himself.

According to the lawsuit, the first flash of Koons’ alleged abuse occurred “in or around” June 2017 after Gutstadt invited Koons to a dinner that had “several prominent music executives” in attendance. After driving her back to her Studio City apartment, Koons says Gustadt “began incessantly pressuring” her to kiss him, and, when she obliged by agreeing to kiss him on the cheek, he “turned his head at the last moment, tricking her into kissing him on the lips.”

The following month, Koons said that Gutstadt invited her to join him in Nashville for a week of writing sessions with him and his team, during which she says she was put up in a seedy “motel along the interstate,” half an hour’s drive from the Thompson Hotel where Gutstadt was staying. Claiming she felt unsafe, she says she asked Gutstadt to move her to a different hotel and that, instead of providing her with her own room, he manipulated her into staying in his. Koons claims the first sexual assault happened that night, when she alleges Gutstadt “forcibly grabbed her hand and put it on his penis” and “ignored her pleas for him to stop.”

Over the next several months, Koons says Gustadt “overwhelmed” her with “lavish gifts and gestures,” including freelance work opportunities, and “deliberately isolated” her from supportive people in her life, including her manager, “who, like many others, recognized that something was wrong and tried to separate” her from Gutstadt.

In a pattern of alleged abusive behavior that Koons says occurred over the next seven and a half years, she says Gutstadt’s “manipulative tactics paved the way for his coercive sexual relationship” with her. “In or around” August 2017, she says Koons invited her to a Jingle Punks company retreat in Lake Tahoe, only to again deceive her into sharing a hotel room with him and failing to include her in any of the “team building activities.” It was around this time that Koons says she became aware of a “misogynistic” culture at Jingle Punks and Anthem, including an alleged incident at the Tahoe retreat in which a male Jingle Punks music supervisor attempted to assault a female Jingle Punks composer in her hotel room. Koons claims that despite the company being aware of the alleged incident, “no action was taken” to address it.

Koons says she was subsequently “lured into an intermittent extramarital affair” with Gutstadt, who she says “would also constantly resort to coercion and manipulation to convince Ms. Koons she had to stay with him in order to advance her career” — all while being denied the opportunity to “reap the benefits of her work” as a songwriter for the company and being cut off from outside work opportunities. In one account, she says that when the Deutsch advertising agency reached out to her with an offer of work, Gutstadt “became enraged” and verbally abused her before compelling her to tell the Deutsch executive that any future offers needed to be run through Gutstadt and Jingle Punks.

According to the lawsuit, Koons says that Gutstadt, in a bid at “entrenching his dominance over her,” eventually left her completely financially dependent on him, after which she says “the abuse escalated significantly.” Each time she says she tried to release his grip on her, he would allegedly lure her back with lucrative work opportunities on high-profile projects, including paid writing sessions for the movie Trolls and an opportunity to write for country star Chris Stapleton.

In the fall of 2018, Koons says that after taking her to an Emmy Awards party, Gutstadt effectively forced her to have sex with him at his office after making her “feel indebted to him” for the invite. “This was not consensual sex,” the lawsuit reads. That same October, she says Gutstadt manipulated her into signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) “not tied to any specific project” with Gutstadt or his company. After signing it, she says Gustadt “warned her that if she ever spoke out, no one would believe her, and that breaching the NDA would not only destroy her career but allow him to ruin her entirely.” She claims that as a party to the NDA, ole Music (now Anthem) “exerted additional control over Ms. Koons by restricting her ability to speak out” about Gutstadt’s alleged abuse.

Koons claims the abuse further escalated after she signed the NDA and that she was forced to take jobs with Gustadt, Jingle Punks, ole Music and Audio Up, including through signing multiple agreements with the companies that served “to strip her of her creative ownership” and deny her adequate financial compensation. According to the lawsuit, one of these alleged agreements — a development deal with Jingle Punks and ole Music for Make It Up As We Go, a podcast series based around Koons’ original music — saw Koons effectively “signing away her creative rights” to the project and being paid just $10,000, described as “a paltry and insulting amount that grossly undervalued her contributions and highlighted the agreement’s exploitative nature.”

The lawsuit includes multiple allegations of physical abuse. In one April 2019 incident described in the complaint, Koons claims that after allegedly protesting when Gutstadt “took most of the money” she earned from participating in a two-day Deutsch songwriting session, he “became violent” and began hitting both her and her dog. In another alleged incident in October 2019, Koons claims that Gustadt “violently tackled her to the ground” after she attempted to read text messages between him and his wife.

In another account of alleged abuse, Koons claims that while recording two songs with him and another songwriter at Audio Up’s Audio Chateau in L.A. in January 2022, she awoke in the middle of the night to find Gutstadt “raping her in her sleep.” She claims Gutstadt raped her again in September 2023 — while they were staying at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Calif., during an Audio Up writing retreat — after Gutstadt became enraged when Koons “refused his sexual advances.”

Throughout Koons’ alleged relationship with Gutstadt, she says Anthem/ole Music “enabled” a culture of “harassment and coercion,” thereby “solidifying its complicity in the ongoing mistreatment” of Koons as well as multiple other female employees by Jingle Punks staffers.

“Mr. Gutstadt’s deliberate and vindictive behavior has marginalized Ms. Koons, stunting her professional growth and obstructing her visibility within the industry,” the complaint reads, adding that she “has suffered and continues to suffer from profound emotional distress,” including post-traumatic stress disorder.

Koons is seeking compensatory damages, lost wages and earnings, a money judgment for “mental pain and anguish and severe emotional distress,” and punitive and exemplary damages, among other relief.

Representatives for Gutstadt, Anthem and Audio Up had not responded to Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.

Marcelo Figoli is no stranger to big numbers. As the founder and owner of Fenix Entertainment — the Argentina-based conglomerate that encompasses live shows, amusement parks, soccer teams and media — Figoli has offices in eight countries, produces more than 100 live events per year and has successfully promoted tours by the likes of Ricardo Arjona, Ricky Martin, Romeo Santos and Shakira.

But Figoli capped 2024 with his biggest tour ever: namely, the Luis Miguel 2023-24 Tour — co-promoted alongside Henry Cardenas’ CMN — which became not only the highest-grossing Latin tour of the year but also the highest-grossing Latin tour of all time, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.

In December, when Billboard published its top tours of the year recap, the Miguel tour had reported more than 2 million tickets sold over 128 shows, generating a gross income of $290.4 million in 2024 alone. That number doesn’t include the 2023 figures or Miguel’s final Mexico City shows.

“I was very emotional [when I heard the news],” Figoli tells Billboard of his record. “I felt immense happiness, for the artist and for the work we did.”

Below, Billboard speaks with Figoli about the stunning success of the Miguel tour and how it broke all records.

Despite its size, Fenix ​​is ​​an independent company. How do you distinguish yourself from other promoters worldwide?

We offer something different. We do more artisanal work, if you will, and put more thought into each of the artists and the products. I throw myself into it. I’m passionate, I go crazy, I review sales numbers every day, I’m a workaholic. I’m very calm when it comes to handling the stress generated by these massive events that I organize, but I’m very nervous in the day-to-day work leading up to achieving success.

We can provide a plus in markets like Latin America and in some cases — as with Luis Miguel and Arjona— in the entire world. Also, Fenix ​​has partnered with CMN in recent years, and that consolidation continues to open a space for us.

Had you worked with Luis Miguel before?

We did countless concerts with Luis Miguel, but we had worked in the South American markets. Never a global tour like this one. But we’d worked very well because we have great respect and great admiration for his career. For us, he is one of the greatest artists in the world in any language, and we firmly believe in his career and that is why we bet on his tour. I thought the tour was going to be big, solid, strong. It may have exceeded my expectations, but I did know that this tour was going to do what it did. Initially, we were going to partner with CMN only in the United States and we ended up partnering for everything.

There’s a big leap from a “solid” and “strong” tour to the most successful in history. What do you attribute it to?

For me, the key to success was, first, how high we aimed. And second, how we planned the tour launch at the same time at a global scale, rather than market to market. We launched the global tour on the same day. The same day we put all the cities up for sale, and on the same day, with the same launch, we created a global explosion. We were able to get hundreds of thousands of fans around the world talking about it at the same time. We had billboards up in every city that went on sale, and we had digital and radio campaigns in each of those cities from day one. It’s the kind of launch that I have only seen for mass-consumer products. It was important to show that confidence and aggressiveness in the tour, and positioning it as a global tour, not a local tour. The way we framed it made it go viral.

How was working with CMN?

A lot of coming together, a lot of pre-production before launch. We work very well with the CMN team and the artist’s team. Plus, Henry is a legendary promoter.

It strikes me that Luis Miguel didn’t even have a new album or single…

But he was having a good personal and artistic moment, and that had an influence. Also, the launch strategy around the tour. In addition, we did a great job with our marketing teams, influencers, etc. But the basis is in the greatness of the artist. I’ve worked with so many artists, and I can’t think of many who could pull off a tour [of this magnitude and stamina]. He has demonstrated extraordinary professionalism and courtesy.

How do you see next year for Latin tours?

Excellent. We’re trying to convince Ricardo Montaner to do a farewell tour. Obviously we are negotiating for Ricardo Arona’s global tour. And with artists in development, we’ve had extraordinary success with Emilia Mernes and her 10 Arenas Movistar in Buenos Aires, where she played to over 290,000 people. I think Emilia is going to be a big deal in 2025.

Rapper and songwriter BigXthaPlug previously appeared on “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” hitmaker Shaboozey‘s song “Drink Don’t Need No Mix” (from Shaboozey’s album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going)–but he says he has plenty more country collaborations ahead.

In an interview with Complex, BigXthaPlug noted that he has an upcoming country music EP in the works and it’s packed with country music luminaries.

“I got a country EP loaded up, you got Shaboozey, you got Morgan Wallen, you got Post Malone, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll…” BigXthaPlug said. The rapper also noted he has a second project in the works, though he hasn’t decided which to release first.

“I also got another project I’m putting together, kind of like a ‘South Mix’ of me, Megan Thee Stallion, GloRilla, NLE Choppa…” he said.

Of course, prior to Jelly Roll’s transition into country music, he spent years releasing rap projects, and still incorporates a medley of rap classics into his headlining shows, alongside his hits such as “Son of a Sinner” and “Halfway to Hell.” Meanwhile, Wallen previously teamed with Moneybagg Yo for the song “Whiskey Whiskey,” and with Lil Durk for the songs “Broadway Girls” (which topped Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart in 2022) and “Stand By Me.”

Texas native BigXthaPlug previously hinted about his Wallen and Post Malone collaborations in January during an interview for Los Angeles radio station Real 92.3, when he recalled that Wallen came to one of his shows in Arkansas and they hung out. At one point during the interview, BigXthaPlug called Wallen “the Drake of country,” and teased the collaboration, saying, “We actually cooking something up…I got something coming with Morgan Wallen. I got something coming with Post Malone.”

In 2022, BigXthaPlug released the song “Texas,” which cracked the top 40 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. And last year, he mentioned the possibility of a country collaboration, telling Complex, “I also really want to do an actual country version because a lot of country playlists and whatnot have been reaching out to me because of the song. I figured, “Why not do a song with a popping country artist and just expand it on some Lil Nas X-type deal?’”

2024 has been a big year for genre-traversing artists with collaborative projects, including Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter project and Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion, both of which topped the all-genre Billboard 200. Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter featured collaborations with artists including Shaboozey, Linda Martell, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, while Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion featured collabs with artists including Wallen, Tim McGraw, Lainey Wilson, Parton, Luke Combs and Sierra Ferrell. Meanwhile, Kane Brown’s collaboration with Marshmello has spent 33 weeks entrenched atop the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart.

Depending on when BigXthaPlug releases the EP he’s teasing, it seems those cross-collaborative country hits could keeping coming in 2025.