Lana Dey Rey finally got to wear that white dress she sang about on Chemtrails Over the Country Club. This time it was of the wedding variety, though. People confirmed that the 39-year-old singer born Elizabeth Grant married Louisiana-born alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene on Thursday (Sept. 26) after a brief romance that began earlier this year.

Del Rey has not made a public statement about the nuptials that took place in Louisiana, five months after the singer is believed to have started dating the airboat captain she referred to as “my guy” in an Instagram post from May. Her reps have not yet responded to Billboard‘s request for comment.

It is the first marriage for Del Rey, who briefly dated musician Jack Donoghue in 2022-2023 before it is believed she began her relationship with Dufrene. The couple were first spotted holding hands in public at the Reading & Leeds Festivals in the U.K. in August, and then went public on Sept. 7 when they were photographed alongside fellow guests Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at model Karen Elson’s wedding in New York City to Electric Lady Studios owner Lee Foster.

According to People, the couple first met in 2019 when Del Rey took a swamp boat tour on which Dufrene was her guide. The reportedly picked up their marriage license at the Lafourche Parish Clark of Court’s office on Sept. 23, after which they had 30 days to tie the knot before it expired.

Defrene’s bio on the Airboat Tours by Arthur site reveals that he worked at a chemical plant and spent his off days shrimping before getting his captain’s license. “He quickly realized that this was a great fit and he has never thought of going back to his previous career at the plant. Jeremy’s a great airboat captain and loves interacting with wildlife & customers,” it reads.

The Daily Mail obtained footage of the nuptials that took place by the water in Des Allemandes, La., the same bayou where divorced father-of-three Dufrene gives his tours. The photos show Del Rey being walked down the aisle by her dad, Robert Grant, wearing a flowing, floor-length white gown.

This summer, singer-songwriter Yeison Jimenez achieved his lifelong dream of selling out the coveted Movistar Arena in Bogotá, Colombia — not once, but three times, with more than 40,000 collective fans attending the shows. The feat was not only historic for Jimenez, but for any música popular (regional Colombian) artist. “No one in the genre has been able to [sell out] a solo arena throughout Colombia,” he says.

Música popular — which fuses ranchera and the string music known as carrilera in Colombia — was born more than five decades ago in the country’s coffee region, which has four departments: Caldas (where Jimenez was born), Quindío, Risaralda and Tolima. Initially known as música de carrilera or música de cantina, its inspiration derived from regional Mexican music and first gained traction in small towns and local bars with the help of genre pioneers including Darío Gómez, Luis Alberto Posada and El Charrito Negro.

As Jimenez tells it, música popular traces back to Gómez in particular. The former notes that when the latter arrived at radio stations with the newborn fusion in the ’70s, they told him he was crazy.

“This is not like vallenato, which is something authentically ours — we did not invent this,” música popular singer Pipe Bueno says. “We are a subgenre that comes from Mexico but with our essence and our flavor. The fact that we are Colombian gives it a different color.”

Lyrically, a regional Colombian song will often focus on despecho (heartbreak) or rejoicing in good times. Sonically, the arrangements can mirror the instrumentation of mariachi and ranchera music, such as trumpets, violins and the guitarrón (six-string acoustic bass), blended with the accordion, commonly used in vallenato.

As part of the new wave, Bueno and Jimenez — alongside artists including Paola Jara, Luis Alfonso, Jessi Uribe and Arelys Henao — have not only given the genre a modern twist but also propelled it to an international scale. Jimenez first reached Billboard’s Latin Airplay and Regional Mexican Airplay charts with “Tu Amante” in 2021, and he’s now touring nightclubs and theaters across the United States. Bueno, who entered the Latin Digital Song Sales and Latin Rhythm Airplay charts with his 2014 song “La Invitación” (featuring Maluma), has since collaborated with Grupo Firme and inked a deal with Warner Music Latina earlier this year.

“We are an aspirational genre,” Bueno says. “We have been at the top of the streaming charts alongside Peso Pluma. We are filling arenas. It wasn’t like this [when I started my career].”

“When we came into the game, we wanted to make music that would reach other countries and, above all, other generations,” Jimenez adds. “On one hand, there’s a lot of admiration. On the other hand, we are criticized a bit… I don’t pigeonhole myself because we are in another era.”

This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.

While accepting best crossover song at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards Thursday (Sept. 26), MGK (formerly Machine Gun Kelly) gave the biggest thank you to someone he used to have bad blood with: Jelly Roll.

Now, the two are both friends and collaborators, with their July duet “Lonely Road” taking home the crossover award at the ceremony, which the “Son of a Sinner” star didn’t attend. “Dude, Jelly Roll. Bubba!” MGK cheered on the stage on behalf of his song partner. “Jelly, I love you. We went from 10 years ago, hating each other, to elevating each other.”

“Comparison is the thief of joy,” the rapper-turned-rocker added, holding up his trophy. “There’s enough room on this couch for everybody. We found camaraderie in the chaos.”

Jelly and the “My Ex’s Best Friend” singer previously addressed their decade-old feud in a Sept. 13 vodcast episode, helping Spotify launch its musician-focused Countdown To series. “It is so funny how much I love you now,” MGK said during their conversation, sitting face to face with the country star. “God, I hated you so much back then.”

“You gotta understand there was only like seven white rappers on Earth at this time, so it was so competitive when you was in that pool, that we were kind of automatically forced against each other anyways,” Jelly added with a laugh at the time. “You were just like, just skinny and handsome. So I was like, I was just a hater. I was just a hater, dude! It’s hard to grow up in front of the whole world.”

In addition to dropping “Lonely Road” in July, Jelly and MGK also shot a music video costarring their respective partners, Bunnie XO and Megan Fox. The visual finds the musicians struggling to provide for their families, so they organize a heist that ends with MGK behind bars, leaving the Jennifer’s Body actress to raise their fictional newborn baby without him.

Watch MGK thank Jelly Roll at the People’s Choice Country Awards below.

With the mystery of “LG 6.5” officially solved, Lady Gaga is ready to let fans in on the making of her newest album, Harlequin.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Gaga explained that the idea for her new album of jazz and pop classics came to her after she finished filming Joker: Folie à Deux. After performing for so long as her character Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), Gaga felt that she still had more to say. “I had such a deep relationship with Lee,” she said. “And when I was done filming the movie, I wasn’t done with her.”

As for why she teased the album as “LG 6.5,” the singer explained that she didn’t want fans to see this only as her next album. “It is my record. It’s a Lady Gaga record, but it’s also inspired by my character and my vision of what a woman can be,” she said. “It’s why the album does not adhere to one genre … it’s not my next studio album that’s a pop record, but it is somewhere in between, and it’s blurring the lines of pop music.”

The new project sees Gaga taking on a series of jazz standards — such as “Get Happy,” “World on a String” and “That’s Life” — much like she did in her Tony Bennett duet albums Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale. While Gaga says she struggled with not having her friend and collaborator in the studio with her following his death in 2023, she thinks he would have appreciated Harlequin for its shapeshifting nature.

“If I had put rock n’ roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that. Tony didn’t love rock n’ roll, but he would’ve said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’” she explained. “He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am, and I always thought that was so cool. He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet … He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person. So he was definitely with us [in the studio], but he was mostly inside of me.”

As for fans still eager to hear what her long-awaited seventh studio album will sound like, Gaga remained tight-lipped, but offered a small hint. “The pop album is nothing like Chromatica. It’s a completely different record,” she said. “It’s meant to be ingested as a time in my life. And I’m also really excited about this idea that I don’t have to adhere to an era if I don’t want to. I can have a few going at once.”