Nell Smith, the young Canadian singer-songwriter who captured the hearts of many with her collaboration with The Flaming Lips, has died at just 17 years old.

Her death on Oct. 5 was confirmed by her family in a statement on Instagram, saying, “It pains us so much to say that our feisty, talented, unique, beautiful daughter was cruelly taken from us on Saturday night.”

“We are reeling from the news and don’t know what to do or say,” they continued. “She had so much more to experience and to give this world but we are grateful that she got to experience so very much in her 17 years. She has left an indelible mark on the word and an unfillable chasm in our hearts.”

“Hold your kids extra tight tonight and for now please leave us to work through things. We will shout when we need you. Jude, Rachel, Jed and Ike.”

During a Flaming Lips concert on Oct. 6, frontman Wayne Coyne shared the sad news with fans, explaining that Nell had been in a car accident.

Before playing “Everything Has Changed,” Coyne said: “We have a very sad announcement to make tonight. We have a Canadian friend, her name is Nell. We recorded an amazing album with her three years ago, an album full of songs by Nick Cave. We have some very sad messages today – she was killed in a car accident last night.”

“We are reminded once again of the power of music and how encouraging it can be to be around people that you love.”

Nell was preparing for the release of her debut solo album in 2025, which had already garnered support through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Bella Union’s Simon Raymonde, the head of her label, shared his grief on Instagram: “We are all shocked and devastated to hear of the sudden and tragic passing of our artist and dear friend Nell Smith … While we all try and come to terms with the awful news, and out of respect to Nell’s grieving family, we are unable to make any further comments at this time.”

Nell’s relationship with The Flaming Lips was nothing short of extraordinary. The connection began in 2018 when Nell, then just 12, attended one of their shows dressed in a parrot costume, catching the attention of Coyne.

The moment sparked an ongoing friendship between Nell, Coyne, and her family. Coyne encouraged Nell as she began learning to play guitar, and their collaboration truly took off during the pandemic.

When their plans to record together were derailed by COVID-19, Coyne suggested an ambitious project: Nell would record covers of Nick Cave songs, despite not knowing much about Cave’s work.

The result was Where the Viaduct Looms, a 2021 album featuring Nell’s haunting renditions of Cave’s songs, backed by The Flaming Lips. Coyne remarked at the time, “It is always great to meet excited, young creative people. With Nell, we could see she is on a journey and thought it would be fun to join her for a while and see if we could get things going.”

Nick Cave himself praised Nell’s work, particularly her cover of “Girl in Amber,” writing on The Red Hand Files in 2021, “This version of ‘Girl in Amber’ is just lovely, I was going to say Nell Smith inhabits the song, but that’s wrong, rather she vacates the song, in a way that I could never do.”

“I always found it difficult to step away from this particular song and sing it with its necessary remove, just got so twisted up in the words, I guess.”

“Nell shows a remarkable understanding of the song, a sense of dispassion that is both beautiful and chilling. I just love it. I’m a fan.”

Nell Smith’s journey in music may have been brief, but it was filled with creativity, passion, and a bold spirit. Her collaborations with The Flaming Lips and her unique interpretations of Nick Cave’s work made her a force to be reckoned with in the indie music scene.

Smith’s passing comes during another heartbreaking moment for The Flaming Lips family. The band’s instrumentalist, Steven Drozd, is currently dealing with the disappearance of his 16-year-old daughter, Charlotte “Bowie” Drozd.

Both Drozd himself and frontman Coyne took to their social media pages on Monday (Oct. 7) to share a missing person poster of 16-year-old Charlotte “Bowie” Drozd, who has been missing since around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. According to the posts, Bowie was last seen on the monorail in Seattle, Washington, near the Space Needle.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Seattle Police Department at 206-625-5011 or call Bowie’s mother, Becky.

Listen to “Into My Arms” by Nell & The Flaming Lips below:

Forget the red carpet. Taylor Swift‘s new runway is the red-walled tunnels of Arrowhead Stadium.

On Monday night (Oct. 7), Swift made a fashionable entrance to watch Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs take on the New Orleans Saints for Monday Night Football, pairing a plaid, off-the-shoulder minidress with black knee-high platform boots. But the most striking touch of her ensemble was a series of glitter freckles strategically placed across her nose and cheeks. Some football fans paint their faces in the team colors, and some sprinkle on some sparkly freckles.

This isn’t the first time Swift has rocked sky-high boots at a Chiefs game. Last month, Swift wore blood-red over-the-knee boots with a denim corset and jean shorts as Kansas City played Baltimore for the first Thursday Night Football game of the season.

Swift has also been on a plaid streak lately. In August, when she took her Eras Tour staff for a night out in London before her return to Wembley Stadium, she wore a Vivienne Westwood plaid jacket and miniskirt set with a white ruffled blouse. Then, at September’s MTV Video Music Awards, Swift channeled Cher from Clueless with a yellow plaid Dior corset dress and black hot pants. Is she trying to tell the Swifties something with the plaid kick?

In addition to her game day fashion, fans are always curious about who is sitting in the suite with her. This time, she was joined by the dads: her own father Scott Swift and Travis’ father Ed Kelce.

Travis Kelce celebrated his 35th birthday on Saturday, so a Chiefs win on Monday night could turn into quite the birthday party in Kansas City.

See Swift making her entrance at the game below:

When Coldplay tours, the British rockers typically play to tens of thousands of fans per show – in fact, as of August 2024, their Music of the Spheres World Tour became the biggest rock tour of all time, according to Billboard Boxscore.

So when Chris Martin & Co. hit the stage at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg – a 650-person-capacity venue — on Monday (Oct. 7) afternoon for a SiriusXM Presents show in support of new album Moon Music, the crowd was freaking out more than a little bit. Which might explain why one attendee, toward the end of the concert, shouted out a request for a nonexistent Coldplay song.

The saga began when Coldplay gave fan-favorite Music of the Spheres track “Coloratura” a rare performance, explaining that people online had been clamoring to hear it live. After that, fans began shouting out song titles, with one guy yelling, “Fix It.” Presumably, the man was thinking of the Billboard Hot 100 hit “Fix You” from 2005’s X&Y, but Chris Martin wasn’t letting him off that easy.

“’Fix It’ is another song from another band, my brother,” Martin said, shaking his head before leading the band through “Yellow.” But after wrapping up their breakthrough hit (“Yellow” was their first Hot 100 entry back in 2001), Martin seemingly decided that perhaps “Fix It” should be a Coldplay song after all. Apologizing to the fan for getting a bit “cross” with him, Martin sat down at the piano and freestyled an impromptu tune on the spot, dedicating it to the dude.

“Here is a song called ‘Fix It,’ specifically just for that guy/ It’s OK if you come to a concert to call out the name of a song,” Martin sang, chuckling good-naturedly. “[But] I’d much prefer you don’t get the name of the song wrong/ Oh, fix it, let’s fix it/ It was broken a long time ago/ Yes, fix it, a famous song called ‘Fix It’/ That before today even I didn’t know.”

One can only imagine what it was like to be that man in that moment. In less than 10 minutes, he mangled a Coldplay song title in front of the band, got gently mocked by Martin, received an onstage apology and then had a brand-new song dedicated to him – one that will probably never be performed again. Iconic.

That unscripted moment gives a good sense of the vibe throughout Coldplay’s underplay, which was broadcast on SiriusXM later that same day. Thanks to the intimate space and a respectful but enthusiastic audience, Martin seemed warm and congenial, pointing at specific people in the crowd and sticking his tongue out for fans’ cameras. He even joked about the band going the Taylor Swift route with its back catalog. “We released Parachutes (Taylor’s Version), it’s going to do very well,” he quipped while speaking about their new LP, Moon Music.

Of the new Moon Music tracks, the live highlights were undoubtedly “The Karate Kid,” a gorgeous piano ballad that saw its first-ever live performance during the SiriusXM show, and “Good Feelings,” which brought collaborator Ayra Starr onstage and saw The Weirdos — Coldplay’s puppet alien rock band — pop up on the venue’s balcony. Much like their recent Saturday Night Live performance, Coldplay brought out Elyanna & TINI for an emphatic “We Pray,” too.

As for the anthemic sing-alongs, “Viva La Vida” and “A Sky Full of Stars” enjoyed wild responses from the crowd, while a live run-through of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” from 2002’s classic LP A Rush of Blood to the Head proved that Coldplay can still kick ass as a rock n’ roll band.

Although the mood of the show was light, joyous and celebratory (confetti blasted the audience more than once), Martin did take a moment to acknowledge that the concert took place on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.

“Today, on October 7, we send peace to the Middle East,” Martin said prior to “Coloratura.” The juxtaposition was perhaps intentional, given the opening lyrics: “We fell in through the clouds/ And everyone before us is there welcoming us now/ It’s the end of death and doubt.”

On Sunday (Oct. 6) night, the American Music Awards celebrated a half century with the two-hour American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special on CBS. The evening featured various walks down memory lane as well as new performances from today’s biggest artists, each one representing a different musical genre. For the boy band tribute, Stray Kids hit the AMAs stage and delivered the most visually incredible and energetic performance of the night.

At the outset of the performance, strings dangled from the ceiling, each one attached to various members’ limbs in homage to *NSYNC’s marionette-inspired 2000 American Music Awards performance of “Bye Bye Bye.” And it wasn’t just a visual reference – the *NSYNC smash hit came blasting over the speakers, with Stray Kids putting their spin on its choreography before singing their own banger, “Chk Chk Boom.” Dressed in black, each member of the South Korean boy band was bursting with energy, attitude and cool, supported by a fleet of backup dancers. Toward the end of their performance, they weaved a bit of “Bye Bye Bye” back into the “Chk Chk Boom” mix before wrapping it up to thunderous applause.

Prior to Stray Kids, *NSYNC’s Lance Bass and Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean introduced them and spoke on the AMAs’ boy band legacy. “Fifty years — the American Music Awards have been around long enough that a lot of boy bands have grown up with the show,” Bass said. “Lance and I are proud to be part of that legacy on the American Music Awards,” McLean added. “A boy band legacy worth remembering and even screaming for.”

Before taking the AMAs 50th Anniversary Special stage, Billboard’s Tetris Kelly caught up with Stray Kids, who thanked their Stays and paid homage to the boy bands who came before them, including *NSYNC.

American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special is produced by Dick Clark Productions. DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldrige. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.