This story is part of Billboard’s Global World Cup Series, a collection of 11 cover stories which pairs top soccer stars across the world competing in the 2026 FIFA World Cup with highly-touted musicians in accompanying countries.

In just a few days, the eyes of the world will turn to Toronto and Vancouver for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. At the center of that global spotlight stands Alphonso Davies, captain of the Canadian men’s national team. 

Though he’s battling through injuries and may miss the beginning of the tournament, the 25-year-old soccer star is a perfect encapsulation of the young and scrappy host team and the country they represent. He’s stylish and energetic, easy to root for, but not just happy to be here. He wants to win. He wants to show the world that Canadians aren’t just hockey-playing nice guys. They can be ruthless. They can win. And, as with globally popular artists like Drake and Justin Bieber, they can be the drivers of worldwide sport and culture. 

“A lot of people underestimate us Canadians,” Davies says.

Born in a refugee camp in Ghana after his parents fled the civil war in Liberia, the player known affectionately as Phonzy has already lived many lives. His family immigrated to Canada when he was a young child, and he settled in Edmonton, Alberta when he was 5 years old. By the age of 15, he was a budding star on Vancouver Whitecaps FC, the first-ever player born in the 2000s to play professionally in the North American MLS league. Soon, he was transferred to Bayern Munich in Germany, where he has won seven Bundesliga titles — the most recent coming less than two months ago, after recovering from recent hamstring and ACL injuries and an earlier diagnosis of myocarditis (heart inflammation).

Beyond the pitch, Davies is one of the most popular players in the world. He has more than 6 million followers on TikTok and more than 5 million on Instagram, and is often surrounded by music — afrobeats like Burna Boy and Davido, drill hip-hop like Tee Grizzley and Moneybagg Yo, and countrymen like Drake, who he got to know personally after attending his concert in Germany in 2025 (see our interview with Drake producer and Canada Soccer Music Ambassador Boi1da for more on that here). With high-profile fashion brand deals and friendships with online stars like iShowSpeed, he’s a star of the modern runway that is the arena tunnel, an occasionally drill rapper, and a man that everyone wants a piece of — especially now. 

Billboard Canada caught up with Davies to talk about the importance of music to him and his game, his favorite artists, his own forays into music and what he hopes the world will learn about Canada this summer.

You’re usually the guy picking the music before a game. How did that start?

One time after a couple of years at Bayern Munich, the team was staying in a hotel outside of Munich. I called my agent and asked him if he could pick up a boombox and bring it to the hotel. I jumped in and started playing my tunes, and from that day I kind of became the locker room DJ.

How important is music to you before a match?

I listen to a lot of music [before the game], just to clear my head so I can play the game of football, the game that I love. Being able to see the pitch before, knowing the atmosphere, knowing the calm before the storm, how it feels, that’s important too.

Do you have a favorite song that helps lock you in?

I don’t really have a favorite song, but I do listen to a lot of Drake. Him being Canadian and making good music, I listen to him a lot. But having a specific favorite song, I don’t really have just one. Just something that gets the tempo up, knowing the football that I play is very intense, each and every game. It helps get my mind clear and my brain focused for the game.

You released a hip-hop song last year called “München My Throne” to announce you were re-signing with Bayern Munich until 2030. Why was it important for you to announce the news through music?

That was a funny one. When I re-signed, the Bayern Munich media team decided to get a little studio and record a song. If you really listen to it, it’s not really my voice. I was just doing the adlibs and talking in between. But it was a cool idea because I love music. I love listening to music, and I dip and dabble in making music as well.

You released the drill track “Nur Weil” as part of Stugang alongside fellow Bundesliga stars Alexis Fambo and Stephan Mensah, and you’ve teased some other songs. When did you start experimenting with making your own music?

I’ve always had a passion for music. After becoming a professional football player I was exposed to the fashion world and to the music industry. I believe fashion and music along with football bring people together.

Recording and making music [myself] really started in Covid in 2020. Not being able to play football and staying at home for so long, me and my friends just decided to just make some music in my basement, record it and drop it and see where it goes. And yeah, I fell in love with that. And no, I don’t make music anymore. I think that time is done. My music career is over … for now. 

Who are the musical artists who inspire you most?

I listen to a lot of Tee Grizzly. I think I like his flow. I like what he talks about in his music, his story. And also Moneybagg Yo. Everything about those guys, the way they rap, the way they tell the story throughout the songs is very nice and they make it catchy as well. I think those two guys will be up there. And also Drake, as well.

What does it mean to you to represent Canada at the World Cup? 

It means a lot. Being able to go to the World Cup in 2022 with Canada for the first time in so long, it was a very touching moment. I shared that moment on social media when we made it, during my heart problem, my myocarditis. But playing at home in the World Cup in Canada will be amazing — not just for me, but for the whole country. Also for the players playing on the pitch to open our home, open Canada to the world and see how Canada really is. 

What do you hope the world will see about Canada when the games are hosted in Toronto and Vancouver? 

A lot of people underestimate us Canadians. A lot of people see Canadians as very nice. I mean, we are nice, but I think they see us over-nice. [They don’t see us] as being ruthless, having that grit between our teeth, being that team on the pitch that does anything to win. But stepping on the pitch, I think we can show the world that we can play football too. It’s not just ice hockey or baseball or basketball. To show the world that will be truly amazing. 

You were born in a refugee camp in Ghana before coming to Canada, and now you’re based in Germany. How has being Canadian inspired how you are as a person and as an athlete?

I vaguely remember our transition from Ghana. I was very young at the time. But my identity as a person and as an athlete developed in Canada. I loved playing all sports and I even tried hockey, but football was what I loved the most. It was not an easy journey, there was a lot of hard work, but I had good people around me to support me — from my parents to my former youth coach and now my agent, Nedal Huoseh.

Becoming a UNHCR goodwill ambassador was influenced by my family’s struggles as refugees. Taking on this role was important to inspire other refugees that anything is possible. 

What do you miss most from home in Canada when you’re in season in Germany or on the road? 

The number one thing is not the snow. I don’t miss the snow at all. But I do miss my family. My family is still [in Canada]. Not being able to see them every single day and only being able to call them six months out of the year, or see them one out of ten days out of the year, is tough. So, I miss my family, and just being in the environment of Canada. Tim Hortons, all that Canadian stuff, I miss it. But not the snow. Definitely not. 

Billy Ray Cyrus has been through it over the past five years. The “Achy Breaky Heart” country star and father of Miley Cyrus has struggled through two divorces, a near-fatal battle with sepsis that left his vocal cords paralyzed and a nasty, public falling out with his family that overshadowed his unexpected romance with actress Elizabeth Hurley.

“I had entered a period where I hadn’t worked for a really long time. And then I realized today, I said, ‘Cyrus, you’re working now, man. Be careful what you ask for. You said you wanted to get on the ride? Well, here you go,’” he told People magazine in a new cover story about his upcoming return to music after a nearly seven-year hiatus with the album The Hill (June 16).

Cyrus, 64, has been largely off the musical radar since his 2019 album, The SnakeDoctor Circus. In the interim, he divorced his wife of nearly 30 years, Tish Cyrus — with whom he shares Miley, 33, son Braison, 32, and daughter Noah, 26 — in 2022, before things took a dark turn he refers to as a “low point” in his life.

After getting engaged to Australian singer Firerose (born Johanna Hodges) just months after his divorce and marrying in Oct. 2023, Cyrus filed for divorce less than eight months later in a contentious split in which he cited irreconcilable differences and “inappropriate marital conduct.” That was followed by an emergency motion accusing Firerose of making nearly $100,000 in unauthorized “fraudulent” credit card charges; her attorneys labeled those claims “untrue.”

“When you’re completely on the bottom, that is the only way to go — up,” Cyrus said about the fallout from the brief marriage his attorneys labeled a “nightmare” in announcing the couple’s divorce settlement in August 2024. Saying he’s been “to hell and back a couple of times,” Cyrus noted that his family supported him during a 2024 bout of vocal paralysis following a near-fatal battle against sepsis that required hospitalization. Now, he’s happy that things have settled down in his private, including a seeming rapprochement with his children.

“Life is a series of adjustments, and I think my family always knew that,” he said. “We’ve all been through a lot, and we’ve seen a lot. Whatever happened is in the rearview mirror. The past is over and done. The future is what we have, and we got to look forward.”

As proof, son Braison produced and helped co-write his dad’s new album and daughter singer Noah duets with him on the moody cowboy lament “On Our Way Along.” “All these years later it’s going back to our roots as a family,” Cyrus said. “And to be in this moment with them, it’s just a great celebration of our family.” He’s also proudly smitten with Hurley, who he went official with last Easter Sunday after the pair first met on a movie set in 2022.

Watch the “On Our Way Along” below.

After shining a light on her journey as an independent artist in her Billboard cover story, RAYE attended Billboard‘s Indie Power Players event in New York City on Tuesday (June 9) for a well-earned victory lap.

After accepting the Indie Spirit Award from Billboard‘s co-chief content officer Jason Lipshutz, the British singer-songwriter took the podium at The Cutting Room in Manhattan and gave a moving speech chronicling her trajectory as an artist. Touching on many of the points highlighted by her cover story in Billboard‘s Indie Power Players issue, she spoke about wanting to be a musician since she was 10 years old, signing with former label home Polydor Records and experiencing throughout her contract the frustration of dealing with “people out there — in suits, sometimes — who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, ‘This is your ceiling.’”

“I just want to encourage us to ignore those lies,” she continued, shouting out J Erving — who was in attendance — for believing in her music and signing her to a distribution deal with The Orchard’s Human Re Sources when every other label and company she met with thought her “music was too complicated and weird.”

The celebratory night also included awards honoring Rubén Blades and Orchard founder Richard Gottehrer. RAYE also got to sign a poster of her first-ever Billboard cover, which went live in May and found the star also reflecting on her experiences with mental health, trauma and dating.

After closing out her This Tour May Contain New Music headlining trek in late May, RAYE is now gearing up to open for Bruno Mars on a run of stadium tour dates. But first, she’ll play a much smaller venue than the ones she’s become accustomed to as of late, performing an intimate set at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC for Billboard‘s Indie Live event on Wednesday night (June 10).

Below, read RAYE’s full speech, available to watch above.

I first want to just thank you for this honor. I’ve just been eating a lot of burgers recently, so I’m trying to suck in and look elegant. If I sound out of breath, that’s why.

Look, this is not a simple business. This is not a simple industry. This has not been a simple journey, but one that actually, maybe, sitting from this seat that I am now, maybe I wouldn’t change anything.

I’ve been very vocal in the past about spending seven years at a major record label. When I was a young girl — I was 10 years old — I turned to my dad in the school playground, and I said, “Dad, I’m going to be a recording artist.” That’s what I said. I was 10. Dad looked at me. He was like, “OK.” I was like, “Dad, no Plan B. This is it.”

I come from a place called Croydon in South London. We didn’t have any connections, we didn’t have any way in. Just a normal girl from a normal family in a normal town in a normal place. But what I did have for some reason — and I think it’s something that all of us artists have to have in common — is the audacity to dream audaciously. I don’t know why I believed that I could pursue music. I just fell in love with it, the craft of songwriting, and I dedicated every waking moment of my life to just figuring out how to make it work.

When I was a kid, you think, “Right, the steps I need to take is sign to a record label.” So that’s what becomes, “This is what I need to do.” But it turned out, when I did sign to a record label, it wasn’t everything that I had sadly hoped it would be. In fact, it was a lot of what I now want to call … I want to encourage all of us artists or anyone in this industry, there are people out there — in suits, sometimes — who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, “This is your ceiling.” Who get to look you in the eyes and tell you, “This is all you’re ever going to amount to. This is all you’re ever going to be able to achieve.” And I just want to encourage us to ignore those lies. You dust those things off, you give yourself a pep talk. And I’m so grateful, my dad is my manager, and he’s also my best friend and the sweetest guy in the whole world, and he will be like, “Rachel, you can’t let this get you down. You’ve got to keep going.” He’ll give me some football analogies, and then we’ll go at it again. It’s this tenacity to continue to dream audaciously.

So I’m so grateful that when I went independent, and I was looking for a home, I found Human Re Sources and J Erving at Human Re Sources — sorry, I said it twice. I haven’t written a speech, we’re just speaking from the heart right now. But yeah, J was the only man who liked my album. I went everywhere, I mean to every major label, every indie space, anyone who would take a meeting with my first album called My 21st Century Blues. Everyone thought the music was too complicated and weird and whatever, but J loved it, and I’m so grateful he did.

J believed, and it was such a beautiful moment, I’ll never forget it. Everyone was kind of whispering that my career was over, whispering that and kind of laughing at me once we’d shared our first two single releases, “Hard Out Here” and “Black Mascara.” You could feel it, you know? But I was like, “You know what?” Dad encouraging me in my ear. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is art, making good art, because that’s the only thing we can control. It’s the only thing we can control as writers, creators — you can’t control anything else other than your art. So I’ll never forget the day “Escapism” come out, and three weeks later, just started going like this. Since then, my life has just changed.

All those labels heard those songs. They said, “These songs aren’t going to go far. People aren’t going to understand this. People aren’t going to connect with it.” And if I’d listened to them, maybe I would’ve believed it. So I just want to encourage us to ignore the lies, ignore people that don’t need to have an opinion over what you are, who you can be and what you’re gonna do. You get to decide that. So let’s keep deciding to make art that inspires us. Maybe it’s seven minutes long, I don’t care. I like it, I believe in it, and that’s what I want to spend my life doing. I’m so grateful, so grateful, that after 14 years in this industry since I started as a songwriter at 14, I really feel like we’re just doing it now. I’m so grateful to J, Human Re Sources, The Orchard and independent artists, come on, let’s go! Thank you!

For Zack Zarrillo, starting Many Hats Distribution alongside longtime label veteran Fred Feldman in 2020 was all about creating a dream scenario as a veteran artist manager in the music business for the past 13 years. “We started Many Hats with what I would want as a manager: to know that I’m doing my job well for my clients and also making them the most amount of money possible, while still getting great service,” says Zarrillo, who got his start running a punk blog called Property of Zack while in college and has managed bands like Knuckle Puck ever since. “Many Hats started as a way to leverage my management company’s artist catalog for their own benefit to get them the best rates and to not give up a crazy rate to a distributor.”

Feldman, who cut his teeth at classic hip-hop label Profile Records in the 1980s and 1990s before embarking on a 25-year run as the head of Triple Crown Records, which he then sold to Round Hill in 2021, had extensive experience working in the indie label world as well as a six-year run at Warner Music Group’s independent label group, and knew himself that the rates that artists and managers were getting from labels and distributors were not always commensurate with the level of service they were getting in order to thrive in the industry. “I’ve heard every pitch, I’ve sat in every meeting, been promised the world, and gotten very little back for it for a higher fee,” Feldman says. “At the end of the day, you could be promised everything, but you’re responsible for your career. So we try to be transparent. That’s part of what a partner should do.”

Now, Many Hats — which offers pure distribution to clients, but also label services, physical distribution, marketing, promotion and more as needed, in exchange for just a 5% cut — has passed a significant milestone: this week, the company is announcing it has paid out $50 million to its artists in just five years in business, a big number for a tiny company without any venture or private equity backing. 

Many Hats has done it largely through word-of-mouth, as well as through a hands-on approach, some savvy catalog bets and a focus on growing artists’ physical business, even when they may not have thought of getting into vinyl themselves. The company now has two label imprints, Wax Bodega and Tight Knit; frontline deals with artists like Hot Mulligan, Mayday Parade and Saturdays At Your Place; frontline digital distribution deals with acts like the Pussycat Dolls and frontline physical with Mk.gee and Quadeca; catalog distribution for Green Day (digital), Mitski (digital), Alex G (digital) and Weezer (physical); and partnerships with Crush Management, Monotone Management, deadAir Records (distribution), True Panther Records (manufacturing) and more.

“In the first year we did a million dollars, and that was cool,” Zarrillo says. “And in the second year we did a couple million dollars, and it just has kept on growing. So to me, $50 million just makes it feel like, this is a real thing. We paid out close to $20 million last year, and I hope we can pay out $20 million or more this year. We’re not looking for explosive growth here — we want it to be manageable for ourselves and for our staff.”

Why did you guys form the company?

Zack Zarrillo: I’ve always believed in artists owning their own catalog, parts of it, maybe not everything. The first band I managed, who I still manage, are called Knuckle Puck, a punk band from Chicago. We released three EPs before signing to a label, and the label wanted to buy those three EPs for $10,000 with a 15% royalty rate in 2014. We had those EPs on TuneCore, and the band was making like $2,000 a month. So why would we sell it for $10,000 to make 15%, when that’s how much the band makes in five months? 

That kind of kept with me. And I’ve known Fred since I was doing my blog, and we’ve had a really great relationship, and we’ve worked on a lot of different types of projects together. I used to sign bands to his record label. And Fred came to me and said, “Hey, you’re doing this thing, why don’t we make it something else?” And that led to Many Hats.

Fred Feldman: [After selling Triple Crown], I thought I was done with music. But I saw what Zack was doing with his artists, and Many Hats grew out of his desire to make sure these artists have a different income stream by owning some of their music that they’re creating, and we built the company from there. I come from a traditional label background, for the most part in the indie sector, but definitely had a really great look under the hood at the major label system. Zack comes from a management side, but also an independent label side, and I think we balance each other out really well and understand what the artist needs.

You guys have both seen a lot of changes in the business over those years. What was it about where the industry was five years ago that made you want to start this company?

ZZ: At the time for my management company, we had artists making over $200,000 a month on DSPs, just on TuneCore, Distrokid and CD Baby, and someone from a Universal label called me one day and was like, “Hey, why don’t we give you a JV here, and you’ll move all your catalog over, and we’ll take 20% and then you can take whatever percentage you want on top of that?” And I was like, well, I definitely don’t want to do that. But I called Fred, and I remember where I was standing in Philadelphia, it was pouring, and I was standing under, like, a coffee shop to try not to get soaked, and I said, “Hey, I’ve never really thought about putting all this together. I would probably be able to have more power in the marketplace when speaking to, like, Spotify or whoever, if I was able to say our catalogs are doing millions of dollars a year, vs. one or artist on Distrokid.” And he said, “This is a great idea, we should do this thing together, we should go to Merlin to have a deal to go direct with DSPs.” 

Given your backgrounds, what did you think artists need from a distribution company, and how have you guys been able to provide that?

ZZ: Digitally speaking, artists need to be getting the best rate they can, and even though we take 5% our per-stream rate is still better than CD Baby or Distrokid or TuneCore. I think you need to have human beings actually answering you, and not slow customer service, or AI chat bots. If something goes right or wrong, we jump in. A couple times a year, we have a song go mega viral in our catalog that we’ve had for years, and we work hard, pitching playlists, marketing opportunities, and doing really well on the physical side. We’re incredibly bullish on physical distribution and physical catalog, and I think that’s another area where a lot of managers or artists just don’t care that much, and we often are able to educate and turn no business into a five or six-figure profit business for artists. And while the digital business is easier, the physical business is really rewarding. I can’t tell you how much an artist who didn’t care about physical six months ago loves to see their records at Rough Trade. We have a lot of experience with physical, and over the last 18 months, we’re seeing that business double for us, and there’s a lot of runway there.

What kind of partnerships have you guys made to be able to offer different services to artists?

FF: On the distribution side, we talk directly to retail, we’re out looking for exclusives, we do a tremendous amount of vinyl manufacturing through plants all over the world, several hundred thousand pieces a year. We can just make it seamless for them. If it’s a project where we are involved in the marketing and promotion, we will build out a team, we talk directly to the DSPs, we’ll start radio internally — we can do the building blocks of getting a record off the ground for a smart budget. We want to pay people, so we don’t want to spend money just to flex our muscles; if there’s no return on it, we’re not in that sort of bells and whistles game. We listen to what their needs are, and then we build out an approach. 

There is a tremendous amount of our business which is plug and play, just the pipes. In some of those cases, we’re the ones looking at it and going, “There’s a physical business here. Have you thought about going to retail?” People are looking for community, and record stores are it, and we want to be great partners to them, and we’re doing listening parties, people are showing up in droves at these in-stores. We’re a music company, not a tech company, so some of these strategies and thoughts are a little more old school like the way distribution used to be. And that’s what we want to do.

ZZ: We’re a high-touch company. Every email gets answered. A lot of people are in the unfortunate assumption that, if we’re only giving up a small cut, the company’s not going to care or do a good job. And I want to say, no — we don’t deserve more than 5% for your songs that came out one year, 10 years, 30 years ago for catalog we have, but we still have to do a really good job. We owe you that respect. And because of that, it just travels. We don’t chase anything on the distribution side, everything is 100% word-of-mouth. Our business would probably grow quicker if we chased a lot, but maybe then we wouldn’t be able to commit to our standards. That has worked really well for us.

How have things grown over the last five years to get to this $50 million milestone?

ZZ: We had almost no overhead to start; I was the one ingesting everything, distributing everything, so we were able to run things at a very low cost while we eventually sucked in a lot of catalog that started to throw off slight profit for us. And on our label side, we started to do some more larger releases, bands like Hot Mulligan or Mayday Parade or Arm’s Length. Our business just started growing in different ways. And we manufacture vinyl on behalf of a lot of clients that we don’t distribute, in addition to some that we do distribute. Over the last five years I would guess we’re closer to manufacturing 1 million records. 

FF: We got lucky with a couple of records that really started to take off, where we saw the potential at retail. We had a couple of tremendous viral hits; the Pinegrove shuffle was something where the minute the signs were there, Zack was on top of management, we connected them with TikTok. We just connect the dots. And people were hungry for something new. Artists are starting to get their catalogs back, they’re in between management — we can really help them figure out how to best maximize their catalogs and things like that. So it was just very organic and very natural.

You mentioned working with some of these artists like Hot Mulligan — how have you seen them grow within your system, and just as importantly, how have you guys continued working with them, even as they’ve grown, and I’m sure other offers have come in?

FF: We got them right when they were coming out of No Sleep [Records]. We made an EP with them, we did well and it was the right record. That led to their first full-length with us, and that’s where it really connected. At the same time their catalog came in, which we treated as a distribution [project], we were able to go to retail and sell a tremendous amount. This band was playing 300-cap rooms; all of a sudden they’re playing to 1,000 people a night. And then after that first full-length with us, everybody came around. They had major label offers, they were getting better support, money, touring, merch, all this stuff. 

ZZ: All of our deals on the label side are one-off deals, and they’re all 10 years or less licenses. That’s what I want as a manager, right? That being said, that puts us at significant risk of losing bands. And Hot Mulligan kind of got a once-in-a-lifetime [offer] elsewhere. We just called them one more time [and they stayed]. And now we have sold 25,000 Hot Mulligan records of their last one that came out in August. That’s astonishing for a pop punk emo band. That’s real teamwork, that’s real cohesion. Most of that is on the band; we’re not here to take all the credit for that. But the stuff does really have to work in unison, and I think we’re all kind of batting above our salary when it comes to Hot Mulligan, the whole team, from the band to management to us. We have paid this band hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it’s proof that you can bet on yourself if you have the right team and you don’t have to just submit to kind of the assumption of, well, to keep growing, we have to go to a major label. 

We try to focus on two to six albums a year that we can really sink our teeth into, because we also don’t have the budget like a major or like a funded venture company to just spend wastefully. If we’re going to commit, we’ve got to really make sure we get it back for us and the band.

What does this $50 million milestone mean for you guys? 

ZZ: This represents that this business is possible. It’s possible to do it your own way. It’s possible for artists to make a livable wage from music. My favorite day every month is when we pay out a million and a half dollars or more, hopefully, to artists. And we take that part of it really seriously. Fred and I are genuinely very invested in the artists we work with being able to live off this. I think a lot of management companies, with better infrastructure, or a company like ours behind them, could have more of their artists be independent. That continues to be a real focus of ours, and another focus is just distributing more independent labels. There’s more to grow there for us, too.

FF: It’s something that was just an idea that we built into a business. We did this ourselves, and I think this is just the start. This is our year that we’re sort of raising our head. And I think we have a proof of concept of how this can work. 

There are so many distribution companies these days, and this is a part of the industry that’s evolving very quickly. How do you see the industry continuing to evolve for distributors, and how do you guys stay ahead?

FF: What we try to do is just do the best work possible. We can’t be concerned with everybody else. We’re in service of the artists and managers, and that’s served us well, and that’s what we’re going to continue.