Starrgirl, Ayra Starr‘s third full-length studio album, tops this week’s new music poll.

Listeners voted in a poll published Friday (Aug. 14) on Billboard, choosing the Nigerian Afropop star’s latest release as their favorite new music.

Starrgirl rose above a number of new releases this week — from music acts including KATSEYE, Phoebe Bridgers, Troye Sivan, Becky G and more. At the poll’s closing time on Sunday, Starr’s new LP came out on top with more than 87% of the vote.

Starrgirl, the follow-up to the singer’s The Year I Turned 21 album (released in 2024), is a collection of 16 tracks, including recent single “Tornado” and last year’s Grammy-nominated Wizkid collab, “Gimme Dat” — plus features with names like Zayn, Rema, Leon Thomas and Danny Ocean. Starr expanded her sound on the project, bringing in more dance and R&B notes.

“I’m so proud of the woman I’ve allowed myself to become through the making of this album and every version of me that had to exist to get here,” Starr wrote on Instagram on release week.

In an interview with Variety, the singer said moving to New York inspired the new music: “I feel like I was a different person in New York than I was in any part of the world, and I just liked who I was,” she said, explaining that as a woman in her 20s, she was just “acting my age. I’m living my age. I just liked experiencing life, and it wasn’t just about work, work, work. It was about enjoying all the work I’ve done and just allowing myself to be, you know? And seeing myself from the lens of complete, and ‘I am,’ instead of ‘I have to be.’”

“And that’s what Starrgirl is,” she said. “It’s not really an alter ego, but it’s a part of me that already is complete, does not have to perform, does not have to be. Because being a Black girl and an African girl, we grew up with, ‘You have to be this.’ There’s a certain type of anxiety that is deep, layers, layers, layers, layers within you, that you just feel like you have to unlearn. But when you remove yourself from that and go deep, deep you start to understand that you don’t need to be anything other than what you already are.”

Trailing behind Starrgirl on Billboard‘s poll this week are KATSEYE’s “WILD,” Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend and Troye Sivan’s “She’s the Best.”

See the final results of this week’s poll below.

Accusations that Selena Gomez duped investors into putting $1.2 million into mental health startup Wondermind are baseless, the star’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, says after Gomez was named in a lawsuit filed Thursday (Aug. 13). Rosengart will be filing a motion to dismiss claims made in the suit.

On Saturday (Aug. 15), the litigator denied allegations made against Gomez in the statement seen below, which was first published by People. Billboard independently verified the statement with Rosengart.

“The allegations that Selena Gomez engaged in any way whatsoever in any purported ‘fraud’ or other wrongdoing are completely meritless, both factually and legally. We will vigorously defend these false allegations and indeed are filing a motion to dismiss the baseless claims against her,” Rosengart said.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of five investors — Brent Saunders, Marc Roberts, EJ Solimine, Andrew Resnick and Mark Peikin — who are seeking the return of the money they invested in Wondermind, as well as additional financial damages for alleged wrongdoing by leadership at the company, which they say “quietly collapsed around them” while “not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors.”

The group claims that Gomez, Mandy Teefey (Gomez’s mother) and Danielle Pierson (former executive), who co-founded the mental health-focused company in 2021, led them to inves in the company in 2022.

Wondermind was envisioned as a suite of mental health media initiatives, including a digital magazine, a mobile app and a podcast.

The plaintiffs allege they were promised Gomez would be actively involved as Wondermind’s head of marketing, leveraging her huge fanbase and social media following to promote companity initiatives.

The plaintiffs allege Pierson — who no longer works at the company — told them Wondermind had a “potential future valuation” of more than $4 billion, and that she’d generated $40 million a year at her prior media company, The Newsette. They were also allegedly told the company had partnerships in place with JPMorgan and Fidelity, as well as major ad deals and interest in cover story features with stars like Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Elton John and Camila Cabello.

The lawsuit claims pitches turned out to be false, and that the investors only learned “the sheer magnitude of the fraud that the defendants had foisted upon them” when an exposé was published by The Cut last year that painted a picture of an apparently troubled financial state at Wondermind.

“The accounts in the Cut article collectively show that, from the outset, Wondermind had no plan for its future — much less a plan for achieving a multi-billion dollar valuation,” the lawsuit says.

The Cut reported in part that, after speaking with 14 current and former Wondermind employees, they’d learned Gomez distanced herself from the company soon after its launch, that finances were dire due to Teefey’s alleged erratic behavior and substance abuse issues, and that Pierson left Wondermind in 2023 due to a power struggle with Teefey; Pierson’s work at her previous employer was also under scrutiny.

“The information unearthed in this article proved not only that the company was, and is, in a state of financial calamity; it proved that the defendants’ representations about the company’s operations, personnel and financial prospects were a fiction. There was no legitimate enterprise in the works, much less a lucrative one,” Thursday’s lawsuit alleges.

Teefey denied allegations of company mismanagement, and said Wondermind remained viable, when The Cut article went to publication last year. “I started Wondermind because I wanted to help people with mental illness. It’s unfortunate that a few disgruntled employees with an ax to grind can spread lies about me and distort the truth. Even more disappointing that the media is willing to amplify their lies,” she said.

After nearly 30 years together, Slipknot is parting ways with keyboardist and DJ Sid Wilson.

The news came in a since-deleted Instagram and website post from the Grammy-winning heavy metal band on Friday (Aug. 14) after weeks of speculation about Wilson’s status in the group. The statement remains posted on the Instagram account for Knotfest, the music festival created in 2012 by Slipknot.

“Effective immediately, Slipknot will no longer be associated with Sid Wilson,” the statement reads. “We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

The Knotfest Instagram caption adds: “Slipknot have parted ways with Sid Wilson. The announcement could briefly be found on the band’s website.”

Billboard has reached out to a rep for Slipknot for further details.

Wilson joined Slipknot in 1998, having been recruited by the Des Moines, Iowa-founded heavy metal band as its ninth member for his impressive DJing skills. He joined just before the group’s mainstream breakthrough, when they signed to Roadrunner Records and released their 1999 self-titled debut album.

The project was the band’s first on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart (peaking at No. 51 in May 2000), where they’ve since landed six top 10s and three No. 1s: 2008’s All Hope Is Gone, 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter and 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind. In 2006, the band took home their lone Grammy, best metal performance for the song “Before I Forget,” among 11 career nominations.

Last month, TMZ reported that Wilson — known for wearing a gas-mask-like face covering amid the famously masked band — was notified July 31 that he’d been let go from the group. With no official word from the band or Wilson himself, comments from Slipknot guitarist Jim Root on Instagram planted seeds of doubt around the report. “Don’t believe everything you read,” Root wrote in a since-expired Instagram Story post, according to People. “Stop. Think. Take a breath. Sit with it for awhile. Maybe. Just maybe even wait until there’s more information.”

Friday’s posted-and-deleted statement exactly two weeks later is the first word from Slipknot on the status of Wilson, who also reportedly broke off his engagement to Kelly Osbourne in March.

Slipknot’s most recent album was 2022’s The End, So Far, which debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

Jack’s back, with a new, numbered vinyl and range of merchandise to mark a special occasion.

John Farnham’s benchmark-setting 1986 album Whispering Jack enjoys the 40th anniversary treatment with an expanded edition pairing the original LP with the live recording, Whispering Jack Live In Concert.

Recorded in Melbourne back in 1987, at the very peak of Whispering Jack’s success, Live In Concert has never been available on vinyl until now (it was original distributed on DVD-only).

With an expected shipping date of Sept. 18, the limited-edition release is pressed on black and white vinyl, and individually numbered from one to 2,500, with the collector’s edition reimagining the iconic artwork through an inverted design (see below). A two-CD set is also available.

To celebrate the milestone anniversary, Farnham rolls out a range of fresh merch, including apparel, t-shirts, mugs, accessories and more.

Whispering Jack is no ordinary ‘80s album. With the release, Farnham, a former teen idol who found himself at a crossroads in his career, enjoyed a hit quite like nothing the domestic industry has seen before or since. Released through Sony Music, the album spent 25 weeks at No. 1, en route to shifting more than one million copies, becoming the first homegrown LP to do so. It remains the highest-selling album ever in Australia by a local talent.

The collection houses the hits “Pressure Down,” “A Touch Of Paradise,” and Farnham’s signature song “You’re The Voice,” a top 10 hit in the U.K. and, four decades on, the unofficial anthem of Australia.

The legendary, ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted singer is the subject of the 2023 film John Farnham: Finding the Voice, which became the all-time highest-grossing Australian music documentary in these parts, and his life, career and catalogue will be celebrated with the new musical Whispering Jack: The John Farnham Musical, the world premiere for which will be presented Nov. 15 at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, presented by the Sydney Theatre Company.

Farnham’s fame has barely dwindled in his homeland, though the star is rarely seen in public since he underwent major surgery to remove a cancerous growth in August 2022, and embarked on a lengthy rehabilitation process.