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Kacey Musgraves has released a digital version of Deeper Well with an exclusive bonus track, “Ruthless.”
Musgraves shared the news about “Ruthless” on Sunday (March 17), pointing fans to her official webstore to purchase a digital download of her new album that includes the extra song. This 15-track version of Deeper Well, which has an alternate album cover, is priced at $6.
“When I love I love f—ing hard. BONUS TRACK ADDED TO THE RECORD,” she announced on Instagram, where she posted an image of handwritten lyrics.
“I don’t believe in violence but you know I won’t be silent/ I’m a lover, not a fighter/ But if anyone tried to hurt you, I would be ruthless for you/ Do something crazy — you know I would, baby/ I swear I’ve got your heart and if it came down to it/ I would be ruthless,” the lyric preview shows.
Deeper Well, recorded at New York City’s historic Electric Lady Studios and featuring singles “Deeper Well” and “Too Good to Be True,” was released on March 15 through Interscope/MCA Nashville.
“It was truly an amazing experience,” Musgraves recalled of recording at Electric Lady Studios in a segment for Sunday TODAY With Willie Geist.
“Every studio has its own energy, but this one has such a storied past. This building — and it literally being Jimi Hendrix’s apartment — right here, that’s some seriously good mojo. I just know so many amazing creatives are drawn to creating here, and there’s a reason,” she said.
Deeper Well is the singer-songwriter’s follow-up to Star-Crossed, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in 2021.
Billboard ranked the 14 tracks from the standard version of Deeper Well.
“Ruthless” is available with Musgraves’ digital version of Deeper Well here.
A second man has been charged in connection with the 2005 theft of a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz, according to an indictment made public Sunday (March 17).
Jerry Hal Saliterman, 76, of Crystal, Minnesota, was charged with theft of a major artwork and witness tampering. He did not enter a plea when he made his first appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul.
The slippers, adorned with sequins and glass beads, were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, nearly 20 years ago and their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018.
The indictment says that from August 2005 to July 2018 Saliterman “received, concealed, and disposed of an object of cultural heritage” — specifically, “an authentic pair of ‘ruby slippers’ worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” The indictment says Saliterman knew they were stolen, and that he threatened to release a sex tape of a woman and “take her down with him” if she didn’t keep her mouth shut about the slippers.
Saliterman was in a wheelchair and on supplemental oxygen during his Friday court appearance. His oxygen machine hummed throughout the hearing and he bounced his knee nervously during breaks in the proceedings. He responded with “yes,” when U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright asked whether he understood the charges against him, but he said nothing about the allegations.
The case was not openly discussed in court. The magistrate ordered Friday that the indictment be unsealed, but it did not become publicly available until Sunday.
Saliterman’s attorney, John Brink, said after Friday’s hearing that he couldn’t say much about the case, but: “He’s not guilty. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” Saliterman, who was released on his own recognizance, declined to comment to The Associated Press outside the courthouse.
The man who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, 76, pleaded guilty in October to theft of a major artwork, admitting to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case in what his attorney said was an attempt to pull off “one last score” after turning away from a life of crime. He was sentenced in January to time served because of his poor health.
Martin’s laywer said in court documents that an old associate of Martin’s with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value.
Martin, who lives near Grand Rapids, said at an October hearing that he hoped to take what he thought were real rubies from the shoes and sell them. But a person who deals in stolen goods, known as a fence, informed him the rubies weren’t real, Martin said. So he got rid of the slippers.
Defense attorney Dane DeKrey wrote in court documents that Martin’s unidentified former associate persuaded him to steal the slippers as “one last score,” even though Martin had seemed to have “finally put his demons to rest” after finishing his last prison term nearly 10 years earlier.
“But old habits die hard, and the thought of a ‘final score’ kept him up at night,” DeKrey wrote.
According to DeKrey’s memo, Martin had no idea about the cultural significance of the ruby slippers and had never seen The Wizard of Oz.
The documents unsealed Sunday do not indicate how Martin and Saliterman may have been connected.
In the classic 1939 musical, Garland’s character, Dorothy, had to click the heels of her ruby slippers three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home,” to return to Kansas from Oz. She wore several pairs during filming, but only four authentic pairs are known to remain.
The FBI never disclosed exactly how it tracked down the slippers. The bureau said a man approached the insurer in 2017 and claimed he could help recover them but demanded more than the $200,000 reward being offered. The slippers were recovered during an FBI sting in Minneapolis the next year. Federal prosecutors have put the slippers’ market value at about $3.5 million.
Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw had loaned the pair to the museum before Martin stole them. The other pairs are held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a private collector. According to John Kelsh, founding director of the museum, the slippers were returned to Shaw and are being held by an auction house that plans to sell them.
Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922. She lived in Grand Rapids, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Minneapolis, until she was 4, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She died in 1969. The Judy Garland Museum, which includes the house where she lived, says it has the world’s largest collection of Garland and Wizard of Oz memorabilia.
North West was interviewed about her debut album, Elementary School Dropout, at Rolling Loud 2024.
North is the 10-year-old daughter of Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — and Kim Kardashian. Ye took the stage on opening night (Thursday, Mar. 14) of the festival at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., with North and friends joining him at one point during the set.
In a clip shared by Rolling Loud on Instagram on Saturday, North is seen spending a few minutes with young reporter Jazlyn, aka Jazzy, the 13-year-old behind Jazzys World TV.
The interview was short and sweet.
First, North was asked how she was doing, to which she politely replied, “Good, how are you?”
The next question posed was about Elementary School Dropout — specifically, how the young artist feels about releasing an album, and what people should expect from it.
“It’s gonna be great,” North said.
When will Elementary School Dropout be released? Well, that’s apparently still up in the air.
“Like… I don’t know,” said North.
And when asked whether the project would have any collaborations with Ye, North continued to keep things cryptic: “Maybe! We don’t know yet!”
“Thank you Ms. @kimkardashian for helping out,” Jazzy captioned the video. In another post, she shared photos with both North and Kim.
North announced her album during a Vultures listening party in Phoenix on March 10, joining her dad on stage for “Talking,” the Vultures track on which she’s featured. “Talking” debuted at No. 30 on the Hot 100 with 12.33 million official U.S. streams in its first week of tracking; the Hot 100 entry made her one of the youngest artists to ever appear on the chart.
“I’ve been working on an album,” she shared with the crowd. “And it’s called Elementary School Dropout.”
Elementary School Dropout is an homage to her father’s 2004 album The College Dropout.
Watch North’s brief interview from Rolling Loud below.
Justin Timberlake‘s latest album, Everything I Thought It Was, has topped this week’s new music poll.
Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (March 15) on Billboard, choosing the 42-year-old pop star and actor’s as their favorite new music release of the past week.
Everything I Thought It Was brought in 61% of the vote, beating out new music by Kacey Musgraves (Deeper Well), Cardi B (“Enough (Miami)”), Zayn (“What I Am”), Willow (“Symptom of Life”), PARTYNEXTDOOR (“Real Woman”), and others.
Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was arrived six years after his 2018 album, Man of the Woods. The new set, his sixth, features previously released singles “Drown” and “Selfish,” which debuted at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, earning the superstar his highest debut in six years on the tally. The lead single from the project also marked his 29th top 40 hit as a soloist.
Everything I Thought It Was also includes a long-awaited reunion from *NSYNC, called “Paradise,” and the full band performed the track onstage at Timberlake’s one-night-only concert at Los Angeles’ Wiltern on March 13.
In support of his new LP, Timberlake is set to embark on a headlining North American arena tour. The trek launches April 29 at Rogers Arena in Vancouver and will visit major cities such as Las Vegas (May 10-11), New York (Jun. 25-26) and Atlanta (Nov. 16), before concluding Nov. 20 at KFC Yum Center in Louisville.
Trailing behind Everything I Thought It Was on the poll is Musgraves’ Deeper Well, which brought in 18% of the vote.
See the final results of this week’s new music release poll below.
Ariana Grande achieves her sixth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart as Eternal Sunshine bows atop the list (dated March 23), launching with 227,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending March 14, according to Luminate. Eternal’s opening frame also marks the largest week of 2024 for any album.
Grande previously led the tally with Positions (in 2020), Thank U, Next (2019), Sweetener (2018), My Everything (2014) and Yours Truly (2013).
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new March 23, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on March 19. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Of Eternal Sunshine’s 227,000 units earned in the tracking week ending March 14, SEA units comprise 148,000 (equaling 194.92 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs), album sales comprise 77,000 (it’s the top-selling album of the week) and TEA units comprise 2,000. Eternal’s first-week start is the largest of 2024 so far, surpassing the debut of Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 1, which bowed with 148,000 (chart dated Feb. 24).
Eternal’s first-week sales were bolstered by the set’s availability across 12 physical configurations (six vinyl and six CD offerings, all with the same tracklist), a standard digital download (in clean and explicit versions) and a “slightly deluxe” digital download (clean and explicit, which added four bonus tracks – all remixes and alternative versions of songs on the standard album).
All six of the vinyl editions were ruby red-colored, and five offered alternate cover art. (Of the latter five editions, four were sold exclusively through Grande’s official webstore, and one of them was exclusive to Target.) Combined, her vinyl sales totaled 33,000 — her largest week on vinyl ever, surpassing the 32,000 first-week sales of Positions in 2021. As for the CD editions, there was a widely available standard CD, four variants (all with alternate cover art) sold in Grande’s webstore, and a signed edition (also sold via her webstore).
Eternal was released March 8 and led by the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Yes, And?,” which debuted atop the tally dated Jan. 27. Grande announced the new album on Jan. 17 and ushered in the set’s release as the musical guest on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (March 9) and appeared as a presenter at the Academy Awards (March 10).
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time is pushed down to No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, despite a gain (less than 1%) to 68,000 equivalent album units earned. Noah Kahan’s Stick Season dips 2-3 (48,000; down 9%), Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s chart-topping Vultures 1 falls 3-4 (45,000; down 14%) and SZA’s former No. 1 SOS descends 4-5 (nearly 45,000; down 3%).
The rest of the top 10 on the new chart comprises former No. 1s: Zach Bryan’s self-titled set rises 8-6 (41,000 equivalent album units; up 8%), Drake’s For All the Dogs slips 5-7 (39,000; down 6%), Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) falls 6-8 (38,500; down 2%), Swift’s Lover drops 7-9 (nearly 38,500; down less than 1%) and Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album falls 9-10 (just over 38,000; up 2%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Madonna made headlines last week when a video clip of the Queen of Pop mistakenly calling out a fan in a wheelchair for sitting during her performance circulated online. The fan who caught Madonna’s attention has since spoken out about the much-talked-about moment.
“What are you doing sitting down over there? What are you getting sitting down?” Madonna was heard asking in the clip, singling out concertgoer Vanessa Gorman at one of her recent shows on the career-spanning Celebration Tour. The star then made her way to the edge of the stage to get a closer look.
When Madonna realized the woman was in a wheelchair, she changed her tune, saying, “Oh, okay. Politically incorrect. Sorry about that.”
“I’m glad you are here,” Madonna said, directing her comment toward Gorman, who was interviewed about the viral moment by TMZ.
As a fan, Gorman admitted she was starstruck over being noticed — not offended — and said that she knew it was a mistake. In fact, in a video taken from her viewpoint, Gorman can even be heard shouting, “I love you!” to Madonna during the interaction.
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“Some people are in wheelchairs and can stand. She had no idea I was paralyzed,” Gorman, who is a paraplegic from a motor vehicle accident in 1999, told TMZ on Friday (March 15).
She noted that she was glad Madonna apologized right away, and that she went on to enjoy the rest of the show.
Billboard recently attended Madonna’s last of five nights of The Celebration Tour at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California. Hear all about that experience on this week’s episode of the Pop Shop Podcast.
Dr. Dre opened up about his 2021 brain aneurysm during his recent visit to SiriusXM’s The Life of Mine With James Corden, saying that he had multiple strokes while in the hospital.
“It’s just something that you can’t control that just happens and during those two weeks,” Dre said to Corden on Thursday (March 14) while speaking of his hospitalization, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I had three strokes.”
Dre recalled going to the hospital after he woke up with a feeling behind his right ear that turned into “the worst pain.”
“I got up and I went on about my day, and I thought that I could just lay down and take a nap,” he said. “My son had a female friend that was there and was like, ‘No, we need to take you to the hospital.’ So they took me to urgent care.”
He continued, “Next thing you know, I’m blacking out. I’m in and out of consciousness, and I ended up in the ICU. I was there for two weeks. I’m hearing the doctors coming in and saying, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’”
The music mogul received treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He thanked his medical team for providing “excellent care” in a statement in 2021.
Although Dre asked doctors what he could’ve done to prevent the aneurysm, “nobody could give me an answer,” he said. “I had no idea that I had high blood pressure or anything like that because I’m on my health s—. I’m lifting weights, I’m running, I’m doing everything I can to keep myself healthy.”
“High blood pressure in Black men, that’s just what it is. They call it the silent killer. You just have no idea, so you know, you have to keep your s— checked,” said Dre.
Dre said his experience “definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure.”
The full The Life of Mine With James Corden episode with Dr. Dre is available on SiriusXM. As previously reported, Dre also chatted about Eminem, calling him “the best emcee ever. Point blank, period. Of course, there are going to be arguments about that because he’s a white guy. I don’t think anyone that’s rapping can touch Eminem on that microphone.”
NFL star Travis Kelce and Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan — Taylor Swift and tourmate Sabrina Carpenter‘s love interests — were photographed hanging out together this week.
Kelce, who recently made the trek to Singapore to support Swift’s Eras Tour, and Keoghan, who did the same for Swift’s opening act Carpenter, were reportedly both spotted at Justin Timberlake‘s pre-album release show at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Wednesday night (March 13).
On Friday, Keoghan posted a snapshot on Instagram Stories of himself with new pal Kelce, presumably backstage at the concert.
“When BK met TK,” he captioned the update. The picture shows Kelce smiling and giving a rock ‘n’ roll sign, while Keoghan leans in with a peace sign.
At the gig, which featured a surprise live reunion from *NSYNC with the debut of new ballad “Paradise,” a track from Timberlake’s new Everything I Thought I Was album, Kelce also met Chris Kirkpatrick and the singer’s seven-year-old son, Nash.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end took a sweet photo with Nash, which Kirkpatrick shared on Instagram on Thursday along with the caption “What an amazing night topped off by this special moment when @killatrav took a picture with Nash.”
Kelce and Swift first made their relationship public when the pop superstar started attending his Chiefs games in September.
Rumors of Keoghan and Carpenter’s romance were confirmed just recently, when the actor was caught on camera waiting for the Emails I Can’t Send singer by the stage at Singapore National Stadium earlier this month. The couple were filmed embracing after she wrapped one of her opening sets for Swift on The Eras Tour. Days later, they walked the red carpet together at the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty and later posed for a cute photo together at the event.
Shakira is opening up about her 11-year romance with Gerard Piqué.
In a new interview with The Sunday Times, published Saturday (March 16), the 47-year-old Colombian superstar spoke out about the sacrifices she made during her relationship with the soccer star, 37.
“For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football,” said Shakira, whose first new album in seven years, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women Don’t Cry Anymore), arrives on March 22.
The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer added, “There was a lot of sacrifice for love.”
Shakira and Piqué — who share two children, sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9 — announced their split in June 2022.
“We regret to confirm that we are separating,” they said in a joint statement at the time. “For the well-being of our children, who are our highest priority, we ask that you respect our privacy. Thank you for your understanding.”
Shakira met the Barcelona defender while she was promoting her 2010 World Cup anthem, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).” The pair confirmed their relationship on social media the following year.
In her Billboard cover story last year, Shakira said she believed in “till death do us part” in regards to her relationship with Piqué.
“My priority was my home, my family. I believed in ’till death do us part.’ I believed that dream,” she said. “My parents have been together, I don’t know, 50 years, and they love each other like the first day, with a love that’s unique and unrepeatable,” she continued. “So I know it’s possible.”
She continued, “It’s what I wanted for myself and my children, but it didn’t happen.”
Last March, the soccer star spoke out publicly for the first time about his high-profile breakup with Grammy-winning artist.
“I won’t say, I don’t want to,” Piqué said when pressed by Spanish media outlet El Pais about how the split had affected him. Instead, he chose to speak about their two young sons.
“Everyone has their responsibility to do what’s best for their kids,” he said. “It’s about protecting them. That’s the job of all parents with their kids. That’s what I’m focused on and that’s my role as a father.”
Meanwhile, Shakira has been outspoken on her side of the breakup, taking hard-hitting aim at Piqué on her Bizarrap collab “BZRP Music Sessions #53,” which rocketed to No. 1 on the Hot Latin Songs chart and ultimately broke 14 Guinness World Records.
