It’s not spooky season until Megan Thee Stallion says it is. With the calendar turning to October, Megan continued her tradition of taking a pumpkin head photo shoot on Instagram Tuesday night (Oct. 1).

As the countdown to Halloween begins, the Houston Hottie is one step ahead of everyone as she threw on her pumpkin head carved with hearts for eyes. The series of pictures finds Meg posted up on her couch, casually rocking the pumpkin with a massive bowl of popcorn at her disposal.

Fans were impatiently awaiting the Halloween-themed photos to arrive, and they were loving Megan Thee Pumpkin slideshow once she posted them. Even Paris Hilton gave her “sliving” co-sign.

“You carried on with the tradition!!! I love these so much,” one fan wrote.

Another added, “LMFAOOOOO I really knew you would come thru with the Hottieween tradition.”

She previously celebrated Hottieween with her pumpkin head photos in 2022 and 2023. One peek back at last year’s edition finds plenty of fans recently checking in on the status of the ’24 version in her comment section.

“Not everyone coming back for the 2k24 pumpkin pics,” a fan chimed in.

Before the fourth quarter of the year even kicked off, it’s already been another massive year for Megan Thee Stallion. She earned her first solo Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper with the scathing “Hiss” and followed up to release her Megan album in June, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

The 29-year-old also took home Artist of the Year honors at the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players event in September. But she doesn’t appear to be done, either, as she teased an unreleased song over the weekend while flexing her new icy grill courtesy of famed jeweler Johnny Dang & Co.

Check out Megan Thee Stallion’s latest pumpkin head photo shoots below.

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Alicia Arauzo and Luis Fernández have been appointed co-managing directors of Universal Music Spain, the label announced on Tuesday (Oct. 1).

According to a press release, Arauzo and Fernández will “work closely” in shaping and implementing the company’s business strategy and creative direction, “focusing on the nurturing of the division’s solid artist roster,” as well as the development of new talent. Both executives will be based in Madrid, reporting directly to Jesús López, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Latin America & Iberian Peninsula.

“It is an honor for me to take on this new role, alongside such a great team of professionals,” Arauzo said in a statement. “Luis and I have many challenges ahead of us and I am sure that as a team we will work tirelessly to achieve new milestones for Universal Music Spain, especially in ​​artistic development, which is the DNA of UMG globally. I would like to thank Jesús López for his trust, leadership, and constant encouragement to pursue new goals.”

Arauzo began her career in 1982 working at Spanish record label Hispavox and joined Universal Music Spain in 1996, where she started as manager of international marketing. Her most recent role was general manager. Meanwhile, Fernández joined Universal Music Spain in 2023 as head of A&R. Prior to joining UMG, he was CEO & founder of Sonido Muchacho, the independent record and music publishing company he launched in 2014.

“It is a great opportunity to assume this new position at UMS, where I have grown professionally, and where I have felt so supported since my arrival,” added Fernández. “It is a wonderful challenge to take on this responsibility alongside people I have known since I started in the industry, as we all grow towards a promising future. I would like to thank Jesús, Narcís, and, above all, Alicia, for the trust they have placed in me, as well as the entire A&R team, with whom I have shared the last year of learning and professional growth.”

About the new appointments, López expressed: “Alicia possesses extensive experience, knowledge, immense work capacity and an unquestionable love for Universal Music, among many other qualities, while Luis brings innovation, entrepreneurship, and a deep artistic knowledge. Together, they are the perfect team to lead the continued development of our artists and take Universal Music Spain to the next level of success, that the music market demands of us. I wish them both huge success in this new stage of their careers, and I am certain that the entire team will join me in these wishes.”

In recent weeks, Sugarland‘s Kristian Bush went on a nostalgia trip, attending concerts that featured U2, The Dead, The English Beat and Adam Ant.

But that run of shows was more than just a personal stroll down memory lane. Bush engaged in some professional research, too, anticipating Sugarland’s 18-date concert run on Little Big Town‘sTake Me Home Tour, beginning Oct. 24 in Greenville, S.C.

“I’m trying to educate myself in nostalgia and what it makes me feel like as a fan,” Bush says. “I’m starting to get my feet in the actual mud and dirt of what it’s like as the artist.”

Transitioning from hit-maker to nostalgia act is likely the hardest segue most artists make during their careers. It’s a difficult rite of passage akin to losing a parent — few want to experience it, but almost every performer does. 

Complicating the process, the beginning of that change in career path isn’t clear at the outset. Terri Clark remembers a five-year period when she struggled to understand what was happening, unintentionally quoting from her own “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”

“There’s a lot of ‘woe is me,’ I think, for a while,” she says. “You feel like you’re getting forgotten, like what you did didn’t matter.” 

Of course, it did matter. But once the transition to legacy act starts, the way in which it matters shifts. Instead of having current songs played in hot rotations, the artist’s new material sags in consumption while the old music remains as gold material or in nostalgic playlists. Fans still come to the concerts, but they’re there primarily to hear what Garth Brooks calls “the old stuff.” The new stuff tends to generate the weakest response.

“People want old clothes from a new shop,” Bush suggests metaphorically. “They don’t want new music from their old band, but they want a new show from them.”

Navigating that shift challenges an artist’s self-confidence and sense of purpose. The longer they were on top and the more successful they were during that window, the harder it’s likely to be for them to make the transition. Some eventually learn to appreciate the time they spent in the top 10 as an uncommon privilege and see their past hits as an asset they can use going forward. Others never fully accept the change in stature. 

“I remember working shows with [Merle] Haggard and Waylon [Jennings], and those guys,” Tracy Lawrence says. “They were pissed at us, you know. They blamed us because they had been dominant on the radio for years. And then all of a sudden, this young country wave comes along and they’re not getting airplay anymore. They were not happy about it, and they kind of blamed us a little bit for it. The only one that I remember not doing that was [George] Jones. You know, George embraced it. He did ‘[I Don’t Need Your] Rockin’ Chair’ and had all of us go out and tour with him and all these things. It was just a completely different experience. And that really stuck with me because I realized that we’re all going to go through this cycle.”

The phenomenon was lampooned in John Anderson‘s 1982 single “Would You Catch a Falling Star,” in which an artist’s crowds and transportation have all been downsized. “Nobody loves you when you’re down,” the Bobby Braddock-penned classic suggests as the legacy-act character struggles to revive a moment that’s no longer accessible. The audience in that song has determined the performer’s peak commercial period has passed, even if the artist hasn’t yet recognized it.

“At what point do you decide you’re nostalgia and what point did the outside world decide you’re nostalgia?” Bush asks. “There’s an internal meter and there’s an external meter, and pain [is] involved in the distance between when the two hit.”

The system sets artists up for that kind of downfall. The music industry succeeds by making stars, and it pampers and appeases them while they’re hot. It’s good for the executives’ short-term access to power, but it’s bad for the artists’ long-term mental health. In the most glaring example, Elvis Presley was famously buffered from the public by management and by his entourage, known as the Memphis Mafia, but was ultimately destroyed by his own success.

“When you’re in the middle of it, the ego gets in the way, and there’s all these people around you that are in that inner circle that protect you from the world and let you get away with stuff that normal people don’t get away with,” Lawrence says. “It’s really hard to have a good, honest perspective when you get wrapped up in it because you just get kind of carried away with yourself. Coming out on the other side, everybody doesn’t make it back out.”

Lawrence, Clark and Bush have all turned the corner. If they were uncomfortable being classified as legacy acts, they would not have consented to interviews on the subject.

Bush has made a point of asking nostalgia acts he knows in pop and rock about their experiences with the change. One of them told him that after accepting the transition, his professional life was awesome: He has a loyal core audience, knows what his fans will accept and regularly sees happy faces in the crowd. The legacy acts who deny their position, he added, are simply miserable.

Lawrence and Clark, after adjusting to the shift in their careers, were able to parlay their expertise into hosting roles with network gold shows. Both are currently nominated in the Country Music Association’s Broadcast Awards for weekly national personality of the year, for Silverfish Media’s Honky Tonkin’ With Tracy Lawrence and Westwood One’s Country Gold With Terri Clark. She ended her tenure with the show in early September; Lawrence told Billboard exclusively that he intends to wrap his Honky Tonkin’ affiliation in the next year.

Lawrence and Clark both addressed the transition musically. He tackled it in “Price of Fame,” a 2020 collaboration with Eddie Montgomery that Lawrence wrote with 3 Doors Down lead vocalist Brad Arnold. Clark embraced it through this year’s Take Two, a project that reframes her past hits as duets with the likes of Cody Johnson, Lainey Wilson and Ashley McBryde, whose appreciation for Clark underscored the significance of becoming a legacy act. Trisha Yearwood had told Clark that when artists realize it’s time to stop competing with younger acts and begin to serve as mentors, life becomes easier. McBryde, in the early stages of her national career, was possibly the first artist to tell Clark that her music had been an influence. Take Two strengthened that message.

“Not only do you embrace where you’re at, you get all that affirmation and form new friendships with some of the younger artists that you influenced when they were growing up,” Clark says. “That, to me, is a full-circle recognition of it’s about a body of work, and your lifetime of your work is not just about five or 10 years. It’s about the whole journey.”

As it turns out, the journey can actually be more satisfying after the hits stop coming.

“I’m much calmer than I used to be,” Lawrence says. “I don’t need as much validation as I used to.”

As a legacy act, the former stress of trying to find and continuously market new hits gives way to feeding the existing fan base, which can become more of a community. Whether those fans are coming to relive past glories or to simply revel in music they appreciate, they’re typically a supportive audience. Entertaining them becomes a different experience once the artist accepts that their legacy is enough.

“They relate to certain events and milestones in their own life with one of your songs, and you really have to stay in that place with it and not make it about you,” Clark says. “Make it about them. That’s when it’s not hard for me to sing these songs, when I see how excited people get.” 

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Olivia Rodrigo has spilled her guts all over the world this year — and now, she’s getting ready to do the same in your living room. 

On Wednesday (Oct. 2), the 21-year-old pop star announced that an Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS World Tour concert film is headed to Netflix at the end of the month, featuring footage from one of her August performances at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. “For those of you who didn’t get a chance to rock out in person, now you can have the best seats in the house!” Rodrigo wrote in a statement.  

“And to the fans who cheered, screamed and danced with me, I am so glad we get to do it all over again!” she added. 

Directed by James Merryman, the movie will capture the dynamic live show the three-time Grammy winner has brought to cities in North America, Europe and Asia throughout 2024, featuring songs from both her Billboard 200-topping albums: 2021’s Sour and 2023’s Guts. It’ll hit the streaming service on Oct. 29, just days after Rodrigo’s trek closes with four shows in Sydney Oct. 17-22. 

“I’m gonna miss it so much!” the “Deja Vu” singer gushed of the Guts World Tour in a handwritten note to fans. “I hope that everyone who came can watch & relive some fun memories, and that those who didn’t get tickets can watch the concert from the best seat in the house … I hope you get your popcorn out for the movie! Sending lots n lots of love your way!” 

The Guts World Tour — which marked Rodrigo’s first-ever arena trek — first kicked off in February with an opening show at Acrisure Arena in California. The eight-month run featured stops at some of the world’s most iconic venues, including Madison Square Garden in New York City and the O2 Arena in London. 

See the Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour concert film announcement below.

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