Hayden Panettiere, the actress and singer best known for her roles in Heroes, Scream and Nashville, died Sunday at age 36. While Panettiere sculpted an enduring acting career beginning as a child, her work in music was an equally memorable part of her legacy — particularly through her role as country star Juliette Barnes on Nashville.

As Juliette, Panettiere performed dozens of songs throughout the ABC musical drama’s six-season run, many of which were released commercially through the show’s soundtrack albums. Her performances weren’t simply incidental to the series. Panettiere’s recordings made their way onto Billboard‘s country charts, giving the actress a legitimate chart history of her own. Her rendition of “Telescope,” for example, became one of the best-known songs associated with her Nashville character, while recordings including “Undermine,” “Wrong Song” and “Don’t Put Dirt on My Grave Just Yet” also charted.

Panettiere’s relationship with music began long before she stepped into Juliette Barnes’ boots. As a child, she contributed vocals to several film and television projects and recorded songs for movies including Ice Princess and Bridge to Terabithia. In 2008, she released “Wake Up Call,” her first single not tied to an acting role, demonstrating that a career in music was something she could pursue separate from her work onscreen.

Remarkably, Panettiere had already reached one of the music industry’s biggest stages before she was even a teenager. Her voice work on the A Bug’s Life Read-Along earned her a nomination for best spoken word album for children at the 42nd annual Grammy Awards in 2000, making her one of the youngest Grammy nominees in history. The Recording Academy lists Panettiere as a one-time Grammy nominee, with the nomination coming when she was just 10 years old.

From a childhood Grammy nod to country songs appearing on Billboard‘s charts, Panettiere’s music career stretched far beyond what her résumé as an actress might suggest. Here are five things to know about Panettiere’s music career.

Los Angeles officially belongs to K-pop this weekend with KCON LA 2026, but the city has been deep in K-pop all week.

This year’s KCON festival officially opened Friday (Aug. 14) at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena. Under the theme “Walk in SOUL CITY,” a play on the South Korean capital, festival producer CJ ENM is stretching 2026’s convention across K-pop, K-beauty, K-food and K-story programming, including the first-ever Olive Young Festa K-Beauty Playground, which boasts 55 different Korean brands. But by the time doors opened on day one, the city had already been running on K-pop culture for days.

HYBE America started things Wednesday with an industry party under the theme of “K-Pop’s Biggest Weekend.” The U.S. branch of the Korean-entertainment giant had a red carpet, photo booths, cotton candy machines and members of its global roster — boy bands &TEAM and Santos Bravos, as well as their pre-debut girl group SAINT SATINE — alongside Eric Nam, Ji-young Yoo and other cast members from K-Pop: The Debut, the Paramount and HYBE America film due in theaters in February 2027. The same night, YEONJUN of TOMORROW X TOGETHER played a special showcase for Billboard Live while &TEAM held a session at the GRAMMY Museum, where EVAN also appeared this week.

Running underneath it all has been the retail circuit, which has quietly become a parallel festival of its own. Retailers like hello82, KPop Nara, Makestar and Araise have staged near-daily signings and fan events with artists like Wonho, ZEROBASEONE, izna, MEOVV, KickFlip, KiiiKiii and more, allowing them to meet local fans directly.

The KCON festival grounds opened at 10 a.m. P.T., with the Artist Stage, Dance Stage and Toyota Music Den Stage all featuring multiple artists throughout the day before the night’s M Countdown concert next door at the Crypto.com Arena. And KCON’s centerpiece concert arrives with a structural change this year. For the first time in its history, the daily headliners are performing full hour-long sets rather than the abbreviated, TV-ready festival runs the event has always utilized.

Since launching as a one-day event in Irvine, Calif., in 2012, KCON has served as an important American proving ground for acts including BTS, TWICE, SEVENTEEN and ATEEZ well before they were selling out stadiums and arenas on their own. Last year, the city officially designated Aug. 1, 2025 as “KCON Day.”

Billboard is on the ground for KCON LA 2026. Here are the best moments from day one — and check back for more highlights throughout the weekend.

‘Violent Fairy Pop Core’ reads the block-capitals slogan emblazoned across Ariana Grande’s new, hardcore-inspired merch line. It appears to be the singer’s personal embodiment of the sound and aesthetic of her latest LP, Petal, which arrived last month (July 29) and feels like a distillation of the music itself: equally ethereal and defiant, with guitar-driven, lightly abrasive sounds propelling themes of femininity, freedom and contending with life in the public eye.

In the fortnight since it dropped, Petal has topped both the Official U.K. Albums Chart and the Billboard 200, with Grande scoring her best single-week performance of the 2020s thus far on the latter. All 12 songs from the album landed in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 40, while the newly-released video for its title track has also sparked intense online discourse about the singer’s physical appearance. The conversation has, at times, threatened to eclipse the contents of a project that is already preoccupied with the pressures of visibility.

Suffice to say, then, that Grande arrives in London at a charged moment. It makes for a particularly intriguing juncture in the wider Petal campaign, which has had a notably darker, disillusioned and more confrontational feel across its lyrics and imagery compared to the singer’s previous output — particularly given that, earlier in the month (Aug. 2), her representatives confirmed she is set to take a hiatus once these shows conclude her Eternal Sunshine Tour. She has also pulled out of leading the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, which was expected to open next summer in the capital.

That sense of an ending — or, to reference a previous Grande project title, a “bye for now” — inevitably hung over opening night at The O2 (Aug. 15), the first of a sold-out 10-show residency at the 20,000-capacity arena. The venue was previously at the center of the 33-year-old’s 2020 Netflix special, Excuse Me, I Love You, and it’s one she will call home again through Sept. 1.

But if Grande is approaching these shows as a farewell to this particular chapter, and potentially a more significant break from the spotlight, she certainly isn’t performing like someone ready to quietly bow out. It was an evening blazing with vertiginous vocal runs, an abundance of intricate video imagery, as well as live sample looping and the fans’ elaborate ‘fit checks and fervent enthusiasm.

Below, find the five best moments from Grande’s opening night of the London (and final) leg of her Eternal Sunshine Tour.