EBiDAN’s “Yes! Tokyo” hits No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, on the chart released Aug. 19.

Released Aug. 11 to mark the group’s 15th anniversary, the commemorative track launched with exceptional physical sales of 1,313,739 copies to rule the metric, while also landing at No. 3 on streaming for a commanding overall point total. Several member-group “taiken nyugaku” (experience enrollment) versions of the track also charted simultaneously — the M!LK version debuts at No. 18, the GNJB version at No. 46, the Bullet Train version at No. 66, and the ONE N’ ONLY version at No. 80 — bringing the total to five versions of the same song inside the top 100 in a single week.

Hearts2Hearts’ “ICONIC HEART” debuts at No. 2. The SM Entertainment girl group’s Japan debut single was released Aug. 12 and sold 65,176 copies to hit No. 2 for sales while ruling radio airplay, marking a strong showing for a debut release. Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “Brand New” rises 4-3, continuing to lead streaming for another week.

Behind it, M!LK’s “Sukisugite Metsu!” rises 7-4, Spitz’s “Mishiranu Ito” 8-5 (No. 2 for downloads), M!LK’s “Bakuretsu Aishiteru” 9-6, ILLIT’s “It’s Me” 10-7, Sakanaction’s “Yoru no Odoriko” 12-8, and Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” 14-9 — each climbing three to five places as the top of the chart shifts upward across the board. Ado’s “Monstruo” lands at No. 10, soaring 88 positions from No. 98.

In other chart moves, both new and catalog titles post substantial gains this week. Veteran trio THE ALFEE’s “Crossroad -Ai no Menkyo Henno-” debuts at No. 11 after hitting No. 3 for sales. BUDDiiS’ “Kimi wa Toshi Densetsu” jumps 55 places from No. 75 to No. 20, and NCT WISH’s “YO-I-DON!” climbs 31 spots from No. 54 to No. 23.

Also worth noting is the debut of Florence Road’s “Hanging Out to Dry” at No. 97. The Irish four-member rock band made its first visit to Japan for a performance on the Sonic Stage at SUMMER SONIC 2026 in Tokyo Aug. 14. The gig appears to have driven a significant uptick in radio exposure, and the track lands at No. 4 on the metric.

The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.

See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from Aug. 10 to 16, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English X account.

Halsey’s no stranger to changing up her hairstyle.

The singer, who has long used her hair as a form of self-expression, showed off her latest look on Instagram, revealing that she had transformed her short cut from dark brown to platinum blond.

The 30-year-old artist posted a carousel of photos in which she poses in gray track pants, a white crop top and headphones, debuting her new hair color on social media. “Auprès de ma blonde,” reads the caption, which literally translates to “next to my blonde,” but in older French and Canadian French, it means “next to my girl.”

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On Aug. 10, the “Without Me” singer was seen in Los Angeles sporting her brunette pixie cut while moderating a Q&A panel with Hacks star Hannah Einbinder. Last month, during her European festival run for The Girl in the Tower, Halsey took the stage wearing long, dark braids with subtle caramel-blond streaks. 

Halsey, born Ashley Frangipane, has never been shy about switching things up, moving from blue hairdos to buzz cuts and Twiggy-inspired styles. As she continues to balance motherhood, new creative paths and her music career, her hair remains an undeniable part of her self-expression and a way to keep fans guessing about which look she’ll try next.

In an interview with Billboard,the artist opened up about how she approaches creative decisions with an open mind, a shift she said came after becoming a parent.

“Something really amazing happened when I did have my son, which is the absolute, glorious eradication and death of my ego,” Halsey said. “Nothing matters when I go home to him. He thinks I’m perfect and great and everything.”

Home in Nashville after the first North American leg of touring to promote Evanescence‘s latest album, Sanctuary, Amy Lee has been decompressing and busy getting her 12-year-old son back into school mode.

She’s also had time to reflect on the band’s 2026 so far — and can’t help but be pleased with what she says been “a really good year, and an emotional one” in the best of ways.

“This album and this moment, and all of the support that has come together at the same time just feels like something bigger than myself, and that I wasn’t expecting at this phase in my life,” Lee tells Billboard via Zoom. “It just feels like it’s that good moment. Life is full of so many ups and downs and mediums, and this is definitely an up, and it means more than anything could have in my first couple years coming out, when I still a kid and hadn’t seen so much and felt so much.

“It’s a lot to sum up, but it’s been emotional in a very beautiful, connected way. I feel grounded and lifted, spiritually, through my band, my team, the fans, the music, the tour. It’s been a really special thing so far.”

The empirical data certain bears that out. Sanctuary, Evanescence’s sixth studio effort, debuted in the top 10 of Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Independent Albums charts after its June 5 release. It contains the band’s first two No. 1 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits — “Who Will You Follow,” and “Afterlife” from last year’s Netflix animated series Devil May Dry. Lee was also part of “End of You,” a collaboration with Poppy and Courtney LaPLante of Spiritbox.

For Lee, the sole remaining member of the group that formed during 1994 in Little Rock, Ark., the success is about both the moment of Sanctuary as well as the 22 years that preceded it, which includes sales of more than 32 million albums and a pair of Grammy Awards.

“I think that it gets deeper the longer that you survive together, us and the fans,” she explains. “I think now that we’re past the 20-year mark I feel this incredible new depth that has to do with that, with the time. It’s not just about the new music and proving this next thing is great; there’s also this nostalgia power, a life we already have in the past, together. You have a connection because of the things you’ve been through together, and the fact is that this music — “Bring Me to Life,” Fallen and beyond — has existed for such a long that it has a place in people’s hearts, and whatever we do now is just adding to that, and also bringing in some new people.”

Bring Me (Back) To Life

Evanescence’s current run is also something of a culmination of work, side projects and other life-changing moments during the past decade. Lee released a solo album, Aftermath, in 2014, then brought back the band the following year, and took to start a family. That busy period enabled her “to find out who I was and what was next.”

To that point Evanescence had released three albums — the diamond-certified breakthrough Fallen in 2003, the double-platinum The Open Door in 2006 and a self-titled effort in 2011. The latter two also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Yet the group was encountering business issues, suing Wind-up Records for unpaid royalties (which was settled out of court) while the label was selling its catalog to what became Concord Bicycle Music. “There was a lot of business clean-up that had to be done,” acknowledges Jordan Berliant of Revelation Management, who’s been with Evanescence since that time.

And there was the matter of engineering Evanescence’s return, including some lineup changes and a new deal with BMG.

“Amy was ready to get back into music but was working on a lot of different directions in her mind,” Berliant recalls. “There were a lot of things she wanted to accomplish both as an individual, and then as a member or the leader of Evanescence.”

The former came first.

Though Evanescence returned to live duty and put together The Ultimate Collection vinyl box set, the rarities compilation Lost Whispers and a demo CD Origin, Lee released a children’s album, Dream Too Much, in 2016 and a single, “Speak to Me,” for the 2017 film Voice From the Stone. The band then recorded Synthesis, a top 10 effort featuring orchestral versions of its songs, arranged by David Campbell and featuring a collaboration with Lindsey Stirling.

“It was a very, very cool way to reintroduce people to the band,” Berliant explains, “and also kind of extricate the definition of Evanescence from being in kind of nu-metal prison and showing the world, and her, it could be more than that, that the songs themselves have a life beyond that era.”

Since then Evanescence projects, including 2021’s The Bitter Truth, have alternated with Lee efforts such as a teaming with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, Body Count, Bring Me the Horizon and Stirling, as well as a duet with Halsey for the 2025 action film Ballerina and the “End of You” collaboration. The prominent use of “Bring Me to Life” in HBO’s The Rehearsal breathed new life into the song and put some jet fuel behind Evanescence, as did tours with Korn and Muse.

“That really set the stage for elevating the touring,” Berliant says, culminating in Evanescence’s first stadium headline date before 40,000 fans on Oct. 21, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazin. “There’s a lot of stuff you can’t plan but it tends to happen when you put yourself out there and you’re succeeding,”

The efforts were not lost on Lee, either.

“From the management to our agents to the promoters, this has definitely felt like a moment when everyone really just gave us their best and truly wanted the best for this album and this moment for the band,” Lee says. “I couldn’t be more grateful. It’s beautifully humbling to be part of such a big thing I love so much.”

The Open Door

What Lee brought into Sanctuary was an urge for collaboration, started by working with co-writer Alex Seaver on “Afterlife.” “We were working on this minute-and-a-half piece of music for the (Devil May Cry) scene and had to hurry, hurry, hurry ’cause Netflix needed it,” she remembers. “But afterwards everybody was like, ‘This should be a full-on Evanescence song. It really sounds like it wants to be, so let’s finish it,’ and (Seaver) was like, ‘Yeah.’

“So I took the song in with the band and Nick (Raskulinecz, producer), and it felt like such beautiful fuel for (the album). It felt like a gift. And it turned out so well that we were like, ‘Why don’t we work with some cool people who say they want to work with us all the time?” (laughs)

Raskulinecz, who also produced The Bitter Truth, helmed five of Sanctuary’s 12 tracks, with the team of Jordan Fish and Zakk Cervini helming the rest, including co-writing with the band. “Who Will You Follow,” in fact, was the first song they worked on, and Lee notes that “we ended up really just catching lightning with them. It was like, ‘I love what you do, you love what I do. Let’s make some noise and see what happens.’ We had this special moment during the album creation where we had six days in L.A. with just the four of us, and it felt like the crux of the album happened in that time.

“It’s really, really inspiring and rare that you make those connections with other people, when you feel like they get you and you get them and at the same time you’re each bringing something into the equation. It’s really special to be chasing that.”

Fish and Cervini, according to Lee, also brought a fanboy element into their perspective towards Evanescence that also helped steer the album’s direction.

“They were both fully aware of and interested in and inspired by our music, the early stuff, in a way that’s different than somebody who’s a little older and liked it, but was already a professional at the time,” Lee explains. “They were influenced by us when they were starting out, so it was like a shared understanding of things I kind of forgot about a little bit, because I’m so busy having to criticize us. They helped us realize all those things that were beautiful in our music that maybe you forgot about.

“It felt like a very independent record for me, personally, in taking chances, doing things I wasn’t allowed to before but still doing my best to maintain the heart of the spirit of what it originally was.”

Lee jokes about “world domination” on the horizon, but Evanescence really is headed to the rest of the world now. The quintet begins its first-ever arena tour in the U.K. and Europe on Sept. 8 in England and has a couple more U.S. dates during October — including the Sick New World Texas 2026 festival in Fort Worth and Red Rocks Amphitheatre — before heading to Malaysia for a stadium date in November and Japan in December. Australia and New Zealand are set for next March, with other international touring, including festival appearances, on tap for 2027 as well.

“This album cycle is really special to me,” Lee says. “This production has been a really fun and fulfilling adventure, and my mind is on different things we’re gonna do with it and bring it to life — maybe documenting the show (on film), which we’re planning to do the right way, and also art with the songs, like music videos. My mind’s definitely been rolling around with imagery and themes and things like that, how and who to collaborate with on that. All those gears are definitely winding right now.”

New music is a far-flung thought, although Lee says that “I’ve hummed at least one idea to myself and recorded in my voice notes already, because I’m feeling inspired and fulfilled and all those good things.” But she anticipates it will be a minute before she’s ready to move on.

“It usually comes about a year in, when the music starts feeling kinda routine,” Lee says. “It doesn’t feel like that yet. But I do feel very inspired, and I think I’m committed to being better about striking immediately when an idea’s hitting, rather than leaving it in the background for years, so it`ll come at any time.”

Post Malone and Christy Lee are engaged after rekindling their relationship, People has confirmed.

On Wednesday (Aug. 19), Lee’s friend Marina Hollyer posted the news on Instagram Stories, sharing a photo of the couple with the caption “My best friend in the world just got engaged.”

TMZ was first to report the news. Billboard has reached out to Malone’s publicist for confirmation.

According to TMZ, Malone proposed to Lee on Tuesday in Utah, where friends also flew out to celebrate the occasion.

Malone and Lee were first linked in early 2025, when they were spotted together during a dinner outing in Rome. By March of that year, the pair had been photographed showing PDA, and they were later spotted together in Paris. People also reported on their April 2025 dinner date in Paris, where the two were photographed walking hand-in-hand after their meal.

However, TMZ reported in June 2025 that Malone and Lee had called it quits after several months of dating. The outlet reported at the time that the couple had separated nearly a month earlier.

It’s unclear exactly when Malone and Lee reconciled, though the pair were photographed together at the Khaite fashion show in New York in February 2026, including in the picture above.

Lee’s relationship with Malone began not long after the singer ended his previous engagement to Hee Sung “Jamie” Park, the mother of his daughter. He confirmed the engagement in 2022 after proposing during a trip to Las Vegas, and the couple welcomed their daughter that same year.

People reported in April 2025 that Malone and Park had seemingly split by early 2025, shortly before Malone began appearing publicly with Lee.

Neither Malone nor Lee has publicly confirmed the reported engagement at the time of publication.

Cardi B has made her feelings about KATSEYE‘s new song “Hootie Frutti” very clear: She’s a fan, and so is her family.

The rapper recently went live on Instagram and couldn’t resist singing the KATSEYE track, even breaking into some of the choreography.

“Y’all hating on the song [but] me, Kulture … and Blossom love it,” Cardi said during the Live, before continuing to dance and sing.

The clip quickly made its way around social media, with fans eagerly commenting their wishes for a remix version of the song with Cardi. Though this moment confirmed the rapper’s love for the track, there was another glimpse of praise when a video of her and her family watching the “Hootie Frutti” music video circulated. This separate video shows Cardi gathered with her family in a living space as the music video plays on a flat screen television at the front of the room. Cardi holds her daughter, Blossom, while bouncing to the beat.

Released on Friday (Aug. 14) alongside their EP WILD, “Hootie Frutti” is another signature pop banger that demonstrates the intense influence the group carries thus far into their careers. The track is driven by Brazilian phonk-inspired percussion and maximalist pop production, while its colorful music video transports the group to an underground Brazilian party.

The group also performed “Hootie Frutti” on NBC’s Today show following the EP’s release.

Evidently for Cardi, though, the song needs no further convincing. Between singing along, doing the choreography and watching the music video with her family, she’s making it clear which side of “Hootie Frutti” debate she’s on.

Watch the clips below.

Cardi B praises KATSEYE’s “Hootie Frutti”:

“Y’all hating on the song [but] we love the song.” pic.twitter.com/yhlCc16Sy9

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 18, 2026

@salutethebardi0

Cardi b with her family watching the music video of hootie frutti by katseye #fyp #cardib #relatable #katseye #kulture

♬ original sound – salutethebardi0