If there’s one thing Mötley Crüe mastered in their hair metal heyday it was fighting for the right to party. But on the veteran band’s new single, they steal a page from another famously hard-partying crew from the 1980s: the Beastie Boys.

The originally snot-nosed rap trio quickly transformed into more evolved, socially conscious musos by the early 1990s, while the Crüe, well, they keep on Crüe’in. On Friday (August 23) the group announced the upcoming release of a three-song EP, Cancelled (Oct. 4), which in addition to their recently released original rocker “Dogs of War,” features a guitar-heavy cover of the Beasties’ 1986 Billboard Hot 100 No. 7 hit “Fight For Your Right.”

Other than the title, it’s an improbable left turn for the Vince Neil-fronted band, though a release announcing the EP noted that the group’s take on “Fight” has become a live fan favorite since it was first rolled out during a secret 2023 club show for 450 fans at the Underworld in London.

Produced by the band’s longtime studio consigliere Bob Rock, the Crüe’d take is pretty much what you’d expect from the group that also features original members drummer Tommy Lee and bassist Nikki Sixx and former Rob Zombie/Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5, who replaced original guitarist Mick Mars after his retirement in 2022. Packed with squealing guitars, pounding drums and Neil’s yowls over the chorus’s shouty gang vocals, the lyrics about smoking, drinking, parental complaints about long hair and raging all night somehow seems on message for the now-sixtysomething members who once made unadulterated debauchery their calling card.

The band’s debut release on Big Machine Rock marks the Crüe’s first new music since the one-off 2019 single “The Dirt (Est. 1981)” with Machine Gun Kelly. “It was really great getting in the studio and working on some tracks together,” they said in a joint statement announcing the EP, which will also feature the title track. “What started out as a couple demo ideas turned into this EP produced by Bob Rock. We look forward to getting back into the studio again soon and writing more new music, as well.”

Listen to Mötley Crüe’s “Fight For Your Right” cover below.

Just a few hours after the release of her new album Short & Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter dropped the music video to “Taste” Friday (Aug. 23) — but there’s nothing sweet about the Death Becomes Her-inspired bloodbath that ensues in the visual, unless you count the unlikely friendship she forms at the end.

The video opens with Carpenter singing a creepy lullaby: “Rock-a-bye baby, snug in your bed/ Right now you are sleeping, and soon you’ll be dead.”

She then sneaks into her ex-boyfriend’s house to hack his new girlfriend — played by Jenna Ortega — to bits with a machete, before realizing that the Wednesday actress had set up a decoy in the bed. Ortega jumps out from hiding and starts shooting Carpenter with a rifle, sending her falling out the second-story window, with the singer impaled on the fence below.

Such begins a gory cat fight between the two ladies who keep coming back from the dead — à la the 1992 Oscar-winning film starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn — involving weaponized hospital defibrillators, voodoo dolls and Ortega chopping off Carpenter’s arm after the latter bursts in on the former and her nameless beau in the shower. It all culminates with the “Nonsense” singer and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star having a steamy makeout sesh by the pool, before Ortega mistakenly murders their shared boy toy with a chainsaw.

“I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/ You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you,” Carpenter sings. “If you want forever, I bet you do/ Just know you’ll taste me too.”

At the funeral for their late love, the girls realize they’re better off as friends than as enemies. “Very insecure,” Ortega complains of her lover-turned-murder-victim, to which Carpenter responds, cackling, “Very insecure! You kill me.”

The Dave Meyers-directed project marks the third music video in Carpenter’s Short & Sweet era, following visuals for smash hit “Espresso” and Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Please Please Please,” which starred her boyfriend, actor Barry Keoghan. The new album marks the musician’s sixth studio album, following 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, which reached No. 23 on the Billboard 200.

Watch the “Taste” music video above.

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.

This week, Sabrina Carpenter releases her new full-but-not-too-full-length, Lainey Wilson captures two years’ worth of career hubbub on her latest LP, Coldplay leads a global All-Star prayer circle and much more.

Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet

The wait is over: Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is here, on the backs of the consecutive smashes “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” with 10 additional pop confections. Those range from the delectable obvious third single “Taste” to the rollicking acoustic betrayal of “Coincidence” to the frisky soft ’80s pop-funk of “Bed Chem.” For fans hoping for a coherent mix of the hooky confidence and slinky seductiveness of Carpenter’s latest singles with the clever detail and revealing lyrics of Emails I Can’t Send should have no complaints about Short n’ Sweet — outside of the brevity, anyway.

Lainey Wilson, Whirlwind

“Whirlwind” is the too-appropriate title to summarize Lainey Wilson’s career since 2022 breakthrough LP Bell Bottom Country, with the past two years being a blur of hits, gigs, cameos and accolades for the always-rising singer-songwriter. The mania has most recently led to her fourth studio album, in which she sounds more self-assured than ever on tracks like the strutting victory lap “Country’s Cool Again,” the Jerry Reed-inspired kiss-off “Ring Finger” and the rip-roaring lead single “Hang Tight Honey.” But she allows she probably won’t be able to do it forever, pleading “I can’t keep trying to keep up with Jones” on the album’s George Jones-referencing opening track.

Coldplay, Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyana & TINI, “We Pray”

Few would expect Chris Martin & Co. to lead off a New Music Friday single featuring an All-Star global cast of singers and rappers — but Coldplay have extended their pop-rock superstardom into its third decade largely due to their willingness to embrace younger artists and new sounds. So it’s not exactly shocking — and decently rousing — to hear Martin belting “We’ll be singing, Baraye!” over a booming Max Martin-co-produced beat as voices from around the world support him in hoping for simpler and safer times. “We Pray” will be featured on the band’s upcoming Mood Music album, due in October.

Central Cee, “Billion Streams Freestyle” & “Bolide Noir”

“Said that my b–ch was gay, got a billion streams,” U.K. rapper Central Cee boasts about his breakthrough hit “Doja” apparently passing the 10-digit mark in online plays. The hitmaking MC, whose takeover continues to make its way across the pond, releases two new songs this week to celebrate his achievement, both the gleeful “Freestyle” and the more downbeat “Bolide Noir,” featuring Paris rapper JRK 19, in which a bleary-eyed Cench raps, “When you’ve been through all the things that I have/ Everything else is a walk in the park.” Another rewarding release from one of the decade’s most exciting new rappers.

Mk.gee, “Lonely Fight”

In a year of major pop breakthroughs, bubbling up below the surface has been singer/songwriter Mk.gee, whose acclaimed debut album of emotional, intimate guitar ballads Two Star & The Dream Police has already earned him a fairly devoted cult following. That album only came out half a year ago, but the artist born Mike Gordon is already back with a new song: the gorgeous “Lonely Fight,” another transmission of aching guitar and warm fretless bass tied together by Gordon’s evocative but open-ended crooning. If you haven’t gotten on the bandwagon yet, be sure to hop on before LP2.

New Radicals, “Murder on the Dancefloor” & “Lost Stars”

The New Radicals hadn’t released any new music since their cult classic 1998 debut LP Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too spawned one of the most enduring pop-rock gems of its era, the recently DNC-featured “You Get What You Give.” Last night, however, they debuted two quasi-new songs, along with an open letter to Kamala Harris’ “super fan” husband Doug Emhoff, and a stated hope “to rally the cause of democracy and encourage all artists to get out the vote.” The “quasi” is due to both of the songs being covers of originals already penned by frontman Gregg Alexander — Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Saltburn-revived “Murder on the Dancefloor” and “Lost Stars” from the 2013 film Begin Again — so not quite enough to raise hopes for any kind of full Brainwashed sequel, but long-Radicalized fans will still undoubtedly be very grateful for the new releases.

It’s always sweet when an artist invites a superfan on stage during a show to give them a special moment with their favorite singer. But a recent incident in Slovakia during a Macklemore set at last weekend’s Lovestream Festival should give anyone wanting to hop up pause. Or at least make them take a beat to check their priors.

According to a Facebook post from the Slovak Republic Police earlier this week, one of Mack’s superfans ended up in the wrong kind of spotlight when she posted an image on her socials in which she was seen on stage with the rapper holding a mic as he put his arm around her shoulder.

A translation of the post found police explaining that, “a Slovak girl thrilled from a joint solo with Macklemore, forgotten that she was wanted.” The festival in the Slovak capital of Bratislava featured security from a number of police officers, and “the curious situation on the main stage did not escape their attention.”

Specifically, officials said, after Macklemore invited the young woman up to sing with him, “the woman immortalized this experience and bragged about it on the social network, which did not escape the attention of an observant citizen, who also follows the search for persons page of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Slovak Republic.”

The unnamed good citizen reportedly recognized the 24-year-old woman from the warrants page and informed police, who then detained her after she left the stage. At press time police had not disclosed what charge the unnamed woman was reportedly being sought for.

She was then ordered by the court to serve her prison sentence, which she had reportedly previously avoided. “The woman was subsequently escorted to the premises of the institution for the execution of the prison sentence,” police said.

At press time a spokesperson for Macklemore had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.

See the post here.

Sabrina Carpenter contains multitudes. The former Disney Channel star showed off her child actress chops, and then some, on Thursday night (August 22) on The Tonight Show when she performed a jazzy version of her inescapable Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Please Please Please” after joining Jimmy Fallon and fellow guest Zoë Kravitz in the basement for the host’s very silly signature “EW!” bit.

Channeling Michelle Pfeiffer’s iconic sultry piano-top performance from 1989’s The Fabulous Baker Boys, Carpenter kicked-off her performance of the strong contender for song of the summer seated atop a white grand piano. Looking over her left shoulder while singing into a bejeweled microphone, the singer revamped the pop bop into a swoony torch song with the help of three back-up singers, as well as a string and horn section.

Barefoot in a glittering black gown with a daringly plunging neckline, Carpenter crawled, then stood on the piano while emoting her way through the song with the NSFW chorus that she thankfully amended for NBC censors. The performance came on the night Carpenter dropped the anticipated follow-up to 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, Short n’ Sweet, which in addition to chart-topper “Please” also gave the singer her first top 10 hit in April, the equally inescapable “Espresso.”

Carpenter also showed up earlier in the episode alongside actress and Blink Twice director Zoë Kravitz for a trip to the basement for Fallon’s long-running sketch “EW!” Joining brace-face Sara on the couch, Kravitz and Carpenter, as Lucy and Hailey, bounded down the steps in colorful outfits bursting with cute as Kravitz — chomping on a gigantic wad of gum like her life depended on it — lamented being “so not ready” for school to start.

The summer camp chums also showed off their friendship bracelets, which the pals noted were, ahem, “very mindful, very demure,” to shouts of approval from the studio audience who clearly are on board with the viral phrase’s creator, TikToker Jools Lebron. Kravitz’s read “nightowl” because she stayed up “sooooo late,” while Carpenter’s was “Sweetie Pie,” because she ate “soooo much candy” and Fallon’s read “Splash,” because, she shouted, “I’m like a mermaid!”

As usual, the guests could barely contain their laughter at Fallon’s over-the-top ridiculousness, especially when they jumped up to do their “Espresso” dance, only to be interrupted, ugh, by Sara’s super annoying, dorky step dad, Gary. He then ruined the fun by busting out the most cringey version of the only song of the summer he acknowledges, “Kumbaya.”

The bit ended with the obligatory EW! speed round. In short: mullets (EW!), PopSockets (EW!), Hokas (EW!), Love Island (EW!), Stanley Tucci (cute) and pink drink (love!).

Watch Carpenter on The Tonight Show below.