Following their 2022 debut concert, Live Nation Urban and Jesse Collins Entertainment are returning with this year’s Juneteenth: A Global Celebration for Freedom, set to take place at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre. This year’s lineup includes Miguel, Kirk Franklin, SWV, Davido, Coi Leray and Jodeci, with other performers and presenters to be announced.

The show will air live worldwide across all CNN platforms & nationally on the OWN network in a dual simulcast on Monday, June 19 at 8 p.m. EST. “We are proud to once again partner with Live Nation Urban to broadcast this powerful Juneteenth event on our platforms,” says Chris Licht, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide. “We want to be a destination for people to both understand and celebrate a holiday of this magnitude.”

The shows musical directors will include Grammy and Emmy Award-winner Adam Blackstone and The Roots co-founder Questlove, who both also contributed to the Grammys’ Hip-Hop 50 dedication. “OWN is honored to simulcast this year’s concert. Juneteenth continues to be deeply important to our audience and it’s this deep significance that makes this simulcast really feel like an opportunity to be of service,” said Tina Perry, president, OWN TV Network & OWN OTT Streaming. “We are taking this day to celebrate alongside American families and reflect on this historic turning point for our nation.”

Throughout the concert, CNN and OWN will air programming to “uplift and educate viewers about Juneteenth on its 158th anniversary.”

Last year’s celebration included an array of artists across genres, like Yolanda Adams, Billy Porter, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jhené Aiko, Lucky Daye, Robert Glasper, and The Roots.

Spoiler alert: This story contains the identity of the contestants eliminated on Wednesday night’s (May 17) episode of The Masked Singer.

After a wild season that has seen everyone from beloved actors (Dick Van Dyke, Malin Akerman, George Wendt, Lou Diamond Phillips) to the usual compliment of athletes (Alexa Bliss, Keenan Allen) and professional singers (Sara Evans, Debbie Gibson, Michael Bolton, Dee Snider, Pentatonix) and a variety of other celebs taking their turns in wild costumes, The Masked Singer aired the final battle of season 9 on Wednesday night.

In the end, it came down to Macaw and Medusa, two seasonlong front-runners who laid it all out in an epic battle for the title. Macaw seemed to have a legit run at the crown after a series of impressive performances, including emotional covers of Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying,” Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph” and Elton John’s “Your Song,” as well as a soaring take on One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.”

For the finale, Macaw went for another falsetto-heavy ballad, with a dramatic take on James Bay’s “Hold Back the River” that ended with the singer drenched in white confetti as they flapped their wings and swooned around the stage, returning later in the episode with what seemed like a potential deal-closing cover of Eric Carmen’s iconic 1975 power ballad “All By Myself.”

The guesses were all over the place, with the always-wrong Ken Jeong calling it the best performance this season and Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg doubling down on her guess of former One Directioner Zayn Malik, then noting that one of the clues was about coming out, which led her to guess star of stage and screen Neil Patrick Harris.

That added to the constellation of guesses over the season that ranged from Hoobastank singer Doug Robb to actors Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin, to vocalists Ryan Cabrera and Daniel Bedingfield. Nicole Scherzinger initially tagged Macaw as Darren Criss, before nailing the real Macaw: American Idol season 7 runner-up David Archuleta.

The singer, who has released eight albums since his Idol ouster in 2008 — including 2020’s Therapy Sessions — spoke to Billboard before Wednesday night’s finale, embracing his dance moves and why a potentially career-ending vocal cord issue and his drama-filled reality TV background almost kept him from feathering his Masked nest.

How did it feel when the judges jumped up and cheered you on during your Tim McGraw cover early in the season?

I honestly wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know what to expect as far as reaction. What I love about the panel is they’re just cheering you on. They’re also entertainers cheering on their peers, dressing up in costumes and singing songs they don’t normally sing. They know what it’s like to be under pressure, and they’re there to help you and lift you up. It’s a shockingly positive experience compared to what you usually experience with reality TV.

You showed off you dance moves in your “Faith in Me” video last year, and you definitely busted them out again during your 1D cover. Are you comfortable dancing onstage?

I’m trying to get more into dancing. I was taking dance classes in 2020 and I stopped, but it got me moving around more and I really love to dance. I wanted to have more to work with, but it was kind of tricky to move with that big Macaw head on my shoulders. “What Makes You Beautiful” was the most fun I’ve ever had onstage. I’ve never sung that song onstage, and everyone from my generation and younger loves and knows that song, so having everyone sing it at the top of their lungs was so much fun!

Did wearing the costume make it easier to move?

It did, because I didn’t feel like I had to be anyone in particular, like, “This is my image and this is how people know me.” Macaw was a great way for me to figure out if I was more out and present and colorful and vibrant.

Was that what appealed to you about Macaw? What were you able to do under that beak that you can’t without it?

I would say more than anything it was about allowing people to see me. A lot of my wardrobe lately has been black, gray and white or neutral because sometimes colors overwhelm me and I don’t want people to look at me. Red is the strongest color, and a lot of times I put a red shirt on and change out of it because it’s too intense. But to have a full red costume? That’s bold and says, “Look at me!” That was hard for me to accept. How do I make this big red bird work when I’m so used to staying hidden and staying in my corner? But I had to learn how to do it.

You said you weren’t sure you were ready to be judged again — why do the show then? What were you afraid of?

Just the pressure from the [panel] of being judged. I took it very seriously, because the way I grew up, the type of person I was, I was a lot more introverted and not able to speak up for myself. The way I was trained was to take criticism and instructions and follow them. I grew up in a very strict religion with a lot of rules I had to follow from my parents — you know the odd dynamic between my dad and me on Idol — so whenever I got judged, I would take it very personally and seriously. To be onstage again, I didn’t want to deal with that and what other people think of me, because I want to be my own person now. The Masked Singer panel is not judging, just commenting and supporting and cheering you on. It was healing.

You said in the episode that you had a major injury that silenced you for three months and a big personal upheaval that made you question whether you could perform like this again. What inspired you to overcome those setbacks and give it a shot?

What pushed me was learning what it feels like to allow myself to give me self-love. That was difficult for me because I spent so much of my life thinking that the right thing to do was not to love myself, that there were parts of me that aren’t OK. “I have feelings for guys and I am attracted to guys, and that’s not acceptable” is how I was raised. To step into that place and say, “I can love myself and I don’t have to be perfect” … I felt like I needed to go in a direction I haven’t been before, because where I was before, I hit my limit and it almost collapsed on myself. I hit the bottom, and what I was doing before was not working. It led to a very dark place and I decided I needed to go into a new space and re-create myself and try new things. In the process of doing that, I found a lot of happiness and light and hope. 

Your second song on the finale was the poignant “All By Myself.” What does that song mean to you? It sounded like you got a bit emotional afterwards.

That was the narrative I thought I was destined to have, because growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they teach the purpose of life is to have a family and get married and have kids. But as I dated girls, I realized I was not being honest with myself and it felt very off. It felt like these girls deserved to be with someone who genuinely connects with them and deserves them. They would say, “If you’re gay it’s OK, but you still need to marry the opposite sex if want to be happy.” I tried that, and then they say if you don’t you need to be celibate and alone, you can’t be in a relationship with the same sex if you want to receive God’s blessing. I contemplated that and said, “I don’t want to be alone. Why is this required of me when everyone else gets to have a companion?” That song embodied my whole journey: No, I won’t be by myself. I’m letting go of that narrative of my life and allowing myself to be who I want to love.

I hate to say it, but another second-place finish. Was that disappointing?

No, to be honest. Medusa was killing it and Bishop Briggs [Medusa] is an incredible performer. I don’t think TV does justice to how great a performer she is. She is so alive, and I got goosebumps every time she sang. Between her energy and the sushi rolls [Pentatonix as California Roll], I thought, “what reason is there for me to continue? I want to keep watching these people.” I wasn’t expecting to make the finale and it didn’t feel like I deserved it, but I just wanted to have fun. And the reason I’m here must be to continue sharing my journey with people, and hopefully it will lift people up. I’m happy that I made it to the finale of another competition.

Tell me about your new single “Up” and the album you’re working on.

It comes out on June 2nd and it’s about moving forward in my life. I had a hard time accepting myself, because they teach you that you can never accept this about you: If you admit that you’re LGBT in any way, if you’re gay, you are basically saying your’e rebelling, giving away the most important thing in your life, almost like you’re a traitor. I’ve tried everything, but to choose this, this is naturally who I am. I’m attracted to guys. I tried for over a decade to be anything but that. I thought I was a failure, so when I hit rock bottom there was nothing to do but embrace this and see what life is and embrace everything I am and just rise. There’s nowhere to go but up when you hit a dark place.

In Bang Si-hyuk’s Billboard cover story, the HYBE founder and chairman shared his personal feelings and the first steps the company was taking in preparing for the rise of generative AI in music.

“I don’t know how long human artists can be the only ones to satisfy human needs and human tastes,” Bang told Billboard editorial director Hannah Karp, before new details were revealed about “Project L,” HYBE’s first public undertaking with Supertone, the artificial-intelligence audio company that the K-pop corporation acquired through a $36 million investment this past January.

After two weeks of online teasers for MIDNATT, described only by official communications as “the mysterious artist” in collaboration with its legendary BIGHIT MUSIC label and recently created interactive-media unit HYBE IM, the secretive “Project L” was finally unveiled on Monday. In a never-before-seen debut single released in six languages, “Masquerade” was revealed with MIDNATT singing in English, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, utilizing Supertone’s technology to assist in multilingual pronunciation, tone and delivery, as well as shift MIDNATT’s voice from male to female.

As high-tech as the AI-enabled artist sounds, the inspiration and goals behind MIDNATT are far more human.

Despite fan theories of a virtual pop group, music-focused game or fully AI artist, MIDNATT is the very-much human singer-songwriter Lee Hyun. Configured as an alter ego for the veteran musician who debuted in 2007 under Big Hit Entertainment (before the label’s corporate rebrand into HYBE), MIDNATT’s sleek electro-pop sound on “Masquerade” is far from Lee’s career beginnings in vocal acts 8eight and Homme, or his signature, chart-topping ballads like “You Are the Best of My Life.”

“It started with the thinking that I want to try a different style of music,” Lee Hyun tells Billboard during an evening Zoom call from Seoul. “You can think of MIDNATT as myself trying a new genre. I didn’t come up with the name by myself, but I think the name started from my wish to express the boundary between wanting to try new music and take on challenges, and not doing that as an artist doing music for more than a decade.”

While Lee’s labelmates at BIGHIT MUSIC, like BTS and TOMORROW X TOGETHER, have transformed the global music industry, a project like MIDNATT (which translates to “mid night” in Swedish and “bare face” in Korean) allows a more senior soloist the rare chance in K-pop to take on a new musical identity and concept.

“[The song’s] producer Hitchhiker said, ‘You have something different in you, something alternative in you, so let’s bring that out,’” Lee Hyun says of a chat with the experimental producer, who has delivered his brand of mind-bending EDM for artists like BoA, Super Junior, f(x), EXO and NCT for over a decade. “He listened to the demo that I recorded for producer Bang [Si-hyuk] before I even debuted — I couldn’t even remember I did that — but he remembered that I recorded in an R&B style in falsetto. He said, ‘You have that voice in you; why don’t we develop your voice from there?’ And that’s how the whole project came to begin. I’m kind of feeling pressure right now because I didn’t expect this to be this big of a project.”

In fact, MIDNATT’s focus on accessibility and deeper connection with people worldwide looks to somewhat tackle a hurdle in the Korean-pop industry of getting listeners past any language barriers.

“When I would listen to music in other languages, I couldn’t immerse into the music as well as in my native language, and we were talking about how we could overcome those language barriers,” Lee Hyun adds. “The project came to be by talking about these language barriers.”

Even with global appeal among the HYBE artists (albums from BTS, TXT, SEVENTEEN and ENHYPEN made up half of the IFPI’s global top 10 album sales chart last year), the corporation saw their tech advancements as an opportunity to align with Lee Hyun’s larger conversations.

“Rather than a technology test, we initiated this project based on the desire to bring music and the artist’s message together, which are the essence of HYBE, to a wider audience through the convergence of music and technology,” explains Wooyong Chung, president of HYBE IM. “We decided to take on this project because of the stories [Lee Hyun] wanted to share, the musical challenges he wanted to take, and the desire to reach out to his fans in creative ways seemed possible with a little push from technology. With MIDNATT, we believed we could introduce a new dynamic to the industry by combining music and technology to create something fresh and authentic.”

For “Masquerade,” Lee Hyun initially recorded in Korean, with the song later translated into five other languages.

“I thought at first Vietnamese and Spanish would be really hard,” Lee Hyun recalls of the recording process. “But it turned out that English was the most difficult language to record in…of course, the technology improved the pronunciation and intonation overall. But since it’s my song and I have to record it, I did my best to be very fluent in the language that I’m recording in, because you never know, I might have a chance to do it live someday.”

For picking the languages, Chung adds that Supertone had already successfully worked in the chosen six (“We needed to create high-quality music,” he says). At the same time, metrics like engagement on different fan platforms also influenced their decision (“We also took into account the artist’s desire to communicate with fans who left precious comments on YouTube even if the artist may not be familiar with their language”). There’s also hope to develop more music in even more languages.

“Masquerade” also brings an unexpected but fascinating new perspective to the hot topic of artificial intelligence in music. While Drake, The Weeknd and Universal Music Group made headlines for taking down a fake song by the two superstars after it earned millions of streams and impressions on streaming services and social platforms, MIDNATT has the artist’s full permission for all AI editing.

“After I experienced it myself, I think it really depends on how you utilize it,” Lee says of artists and creatives who are wary of AI in music. “The sense of responsibility is what matters the most. So as far as it is used in the music, I think it is a great opportunity for me to make [my song] more accessible and more immersive to the fans worldwide.”

“We have been coping with new technology by exchanging ideas to ensure it to become a tool that helps people,” adds Chung. “Our principle for applying technology to music in this project is clear. The rights of artists to their creations must be protected with utmost importance. With that in mind, we strive to push the boundaries of what musicians can imagine and what music can express.”

Similar to UMG’s take that generative AI creations “demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists,” Chung agrees that “creating social consensus as well as proper legislation to keep up with the new changes are essential” to face this new era of music.

While Lee Hyun thinks “artists have to be discreet and cautious” with rapidly advancing tech, the hot-topic of AI itself seems to have added an unexpected, and ultimately unnecessary, intensity to his hopes to dream bigger with his new music.

“With the word AI aside, I just want everyone to know that this started out genuinely and kindly in my heart to bring immersive experiences with my music of MIDNATT,” Lee Hyun says. “I simply want everyone to enjoy my new challenge.”

And suppose more people hear “Masquerade” and MIDNATT’s music thanks to an artificially intelligent smoothing of language barriers? In that case, the challenge is on its way to realization.