Anitta lit up Studio 8H during her Saturday Night Live debut.

The Brazilian superstar appeared as a first-time musical guest on the late-night sketch show on April 11, alongside host Colman Domingo.

Anitta, born Larissa de Macedo Machado, delivered two electrifying performances from her upcoming album Equilibrium, due April 16 through Republic Records.

For her first performance, the Rio de Janeiro native brought a striking visual to her newly released Shakira collaboration, “Choka Choka.” Dressed in a form-fitting brown ensemble and flanked by similarly styled dancers, she powered through the pulsating track amid flashing lights and a live backing band. When Shakira’s vocals kicked in, Anitta flashed a smile and kept the momentum going.

The singer-songwriter returned later in the show for an atmospheric performance of the moody track “Várias Quejas,” which translates to “Several Complaints.” Now dressed in a beautiful purple dress against a lush, greenery-filled stage design, Anitta delivered an emotionally charged rendition of the track, moving sensually with the groove of the live band.

Anitta has long been a trailblazing force in bringing Brazilian music to the global stage. From her viral reggaetón hit “Envolver” — which reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart in 2022 — to her standout performances at festivals like Coachella, she has continued to expand her international reach as one of Brazil’s most prominent musical exports.

The Grammy-nominated artist recently released her latest single, “Pinterest,” an acoustic bossa nova–inspired track infused with her signature pop flair. Issued in both Spanish and Portuguese versions, the song highlights her versatility and serves as part of her new album, Equilibrium.

The upcoming project follows 2024’s Funk Generation, which earned a nomination for best Latin pop album at the 2025 Grammy Awards.

Watch Anitta’s SNL performances below, and find streaming details for the full episode here.

Over the years, Justin Bieber has become a Coachella regular, both as an attendee and surprise performer. At the fest’s 2024 edition, he popped out as a guest with Tems and Wizkid to perform their hit “Essence,” and in 2019 dropped in on Ariana Grande’s headlining set to perform “Sorry” and tease new music, telling the crowd he had to get his “swag back” (major spoiler alert for those who clocked it).

But tonight, the only person Bieber had to show up for was himself. And he did just that.

Leading up to his headlining set on Saturday night (April 11), the pop superstar delivered two intimate shows at famed West Hollywood venues, The Roxy and the Troubadour. Both sets were filled exclusively with SWAG and SWAG II tracks, not only helping Bieber get a feel for the new material live but also – and perhaps more importantly – bringing him back to the stage for the first time in four years.

Now, the desert is a different type of stage entirely, especially compared to 500-capacity venues, but Bieber didn’t treat it as such. Instead, he managed to make a polo field of strangers feel like a late-night hang among close friends. 

The set design was minimal, featuring only a fluid, cocoon-like structure on which Bieber could walk around, lay down and at times even shrink into — equal parts playground and safe space. His only prop: a laptop (but more on that later). 

Bieber started strong with the boundary-setting “All I Can Take,” which also opens SWAG and serves the same purpose here: to remind himself and his fans that he will and always has given all that he can at any given moment. And it hasn’t been easy.

While Bieber openly chronicles such ups and downs across SWAG and SWAG II, hearing these albums live en masse crystallized their message. Together, they are a testament to his near two-decades of working out his identity, faith and purpose in the public eye. So much so that he spent the first 50 minutes of his set in the swagverse (save for a brief swerve into “Stay” featuring a surprise appearance from The Kid Laroi). Early set standouts included “Speed Demon” about keeping a tight inner circle and “getting better by the second” for it; “Go Baby,” his ode to wife and mogul Hailey Bieber; and “Walking Away,” his commitment to their family.

Next up: an acoustic portion, with Bieber seated in the center of an extended walkway accompanied by Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins. The trio performed songs including “Glory Voice Memo,” “Zuma House” and an emotional and extended “Everything Hallelujah” with Bieber including the new line, “Coachalla, hallelujah.” (Tears coated his eyes when he sang, “Hailey, baby, hallelujah/ Baby Jack, hallelujah.”)

It was a quiet yet overwhelming moment of gratitude, and proved that Bieber’s biggest strength – in addition to being one of the greatest and perhaps most effortless vocalists of this generation – lies in those softer moments, when he wields his star power to make thousands of fans fall silent to hear his prayers. 

“Tonight is such a special night,” Bieber said to the crowd, concluding the acoustic section. “But I feel like we gotta take you guys on a bit of a journey…” he continued. And oh baby, did he. 

For the next 25 minutes, Bieber essentially embodied a millennial iPad kid – meaning, he sat at his laptop on YouTube. Before inevitably falling down an internet hole, pulling up once-viral clips such as “Deez Nuts” and “Double Rainbow” (you either know ‘em or you don’t), he dove into the archive. He played clip after clip of his greatest career-launching hits, singing along to snippets of “Baby, “That Should Be Me” and “Never Say Never,” among others, as their music videos filled the screen behind him. Lil Bieber then threw it all the way back to Baby Bieber, playing the video that launched his career: his famous “With You” cover.

It was a clever and authentic (albeit, time-consuming) way into his past, a reclaiming that celebrates the little kid he was while still aligning with the man he is today. Plus, it was perhaps the most efficient way to power through 12 songs that, truthfully, may have otherwise felt out of place in the set – even to those who don’t want to admit it. 

But most of all, it was an oddly humanizing moment for someone of Bieber’s stature (especially when he pulled up clips of his younger self walking into a glass door or falling through a hole on stage). Underneath it all, there was an unspoken understanding of, “we’re good here” — like a long-awaited release. He revisited his roots, ran through the hits (including “Sorry” and “Where Are Ü Now) and poked fun at himself – like so many others have before. Only now, he’s in control – and owning it. Just look at his festival merchandise. 

Is it clocking to you yet?

He filled his final moments with “Yukon,” “Devotion” featuring Dijon, “I Think You’re Special” with Tems (followed by “Essence,” for which Wizkid also joined) and finally, concluding with his latest hit, “Daisies,” spotlighting Mk.gee on guitar.

For fans, Bieberchella may have been a celebration of his career thus far. But for Bieber, it seemed to be more about celebrating his hard-earned and much-deserved peace — the reward at the end of a long road that has required Bieber to believe in himself every step of the way. Even, or perhaps especially, when others were quick to count him out.

And now, he’s made it perfectly clear that there’s nothing more important than protecting that peace — for himself, for his family and for his creativity. And that’s exactly the kind of business worth standing on.

Sabrina Carpenter has addressed online chatter regarding her reaction to a loud, high-pitched cheer from the crowd during her Coachella performance Friday night (April 10).

The pop star seemingly wasn’t aware that it was the trilling vocal sound known as a Zaghrouta, a chant common to various cultures that’s meant to honor and celebrate. (Music fans might recall Shakira expressed herself this way amid her 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, while wagging her tongue at the camera ahead of singing “Hips Don’t Lie.” Shakira, who is half Colombian and half Lebanese, was paying homage to her Middle Eastern roots.)

During the Coachella livestream and in video recordings circulating the internet of Carpenter on stage Friday in Indio, Calif., the Man’s Best Friend singer was seen sitting at the piano with a confused expression on her face upon hearing the sound, and heard saying, “I don’t like it.”

When someone in the crowd loudly called out, “It’s my culture!” Carpenter retorted, “That’s your culture, yodeling?” before adding, “Is this Burning Man? What’s going on? This is weird.”

On Saturday, Carpenter followed up on the comments she’d made on stage.

“my apologies i didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly,” Carpenter wrote in reply to a post on X that accused the artist of reacting in a way that was “insensitive and Islamophobic.”

The pop star continued: “my reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended.”

“could have handled it better!” she said. “now i know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out.”

A Zaghrouta is often used by women in the Middle East and North Africa as a way to express joy, and — as explained by the educational resource Arab America — is “best described in English as ‘ululation.’ It is a form of a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound representing trills of joy. It is produced by emitting a high-pitched loud voice accompanied by a rapid back and forth movement of the tongue.” 

Carpenter headlined night one of the first weekend of Coachella 2026 on Friday. The lead slot comes just two years after the her debut performance at the annual festival — the time when she accurately predicted, “Coachella, see you back here when I headline” in an ad-libbed lyrical outro to her song “Nonsense.” Since then, she’s released two Billboard 200 No. 1 albums, 2024’s Short n’ Sweet and 2025’s Man’s Best Friend.

The director of Christian Nodal’s music video “Un Vals” has responded to controversy that’s sparked on social media regarding the casting of the video’s lead model, whom many have pointed out has a striking resemblance to both Cazzu and Ángela Aguilar — the singer’s ex-partner and current wife, respectively.

“It was our mistake not to realize this could happen,” director Juan Antonio Barbazán said on Saturday (April 11) during a virtual press conference from Madrid with select media outlets, including Billboard Español.

“JG Music approved the video, not Christian Nodal,” he added, referring to the singer’s record label.

In the music video released Thursday (April 9), which features a split-screen format, Nodal appears singing on the left while a couple stars in a love story on the right side. Nodal filmed his portion in Guadalajara, Mexico, while the two models were filmed in Spain.

The model in question, a Mexican content creator based in Madrid named Dagna Mata, has been the target of criticism on social media for her role in the clip. On Friday (April 10), she posted a video on her Instagram account expressing her thoughts. “I hope the focus remains on what it is — a job — because I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone,” she wrote in the caption.

“It hurts me to see an artist involved who doesn’t deserve any of this and shouldn’t be compared to anyone else either,” Mata said. “I had to emigrate from a country to achieve my dream of modeling and growing in the fashion industry.”

Also on Friday, in response to the controversy surrounding the music video, Nodal shared a message via his Instagram Stories that drew attention: “I don’t own my name, my image, or my music, and what has happened with the video is proof of that… But my voice, which is the only thing I have left, will always belong to you.”

A representative for Nodal and JG Music — the label owned by the singer’s father, Jaime González — told Billboard Español on Saturday that neither would be making statements.

Read everything the director of Christian Nodal’s “Un Vals” music video had to say below.

Are Christian Nodal’s music videos your responsibility?

For this project, which encompasses the entirety of Christian’s album, we worked on two complex videos — one for “Incompatibles,” which came out a month ago, another that hasn’t been released yet, and the rest are five simpler ones where we decided to use a split-screen format, like in “Un Vals,” where he appears on the left singing and the rest of the screen features figurative actors.

Who is in charge of casting?

The casting was done by us, the production company. We were looking for Mexican actresses in Spain, which wasn’t easy to find, and Dagna’s profile was sent to us. We liked her, so we chose her.

Did Christian approve the actress for the video?

No, we always choose the figurative actors. Christian didn’t see her. The comments about her resemblance to Cazzu and Ángela Aguilar slipped past us. At no point was there a strategy or anything of the sort. We didn’t consider it relevant to show her to Christian. Ultimately, other people appear in the video. It’s a large process, and not everything is consulted with the artist. It was our decision.

Was all of this planned as a marketing strategy?

As a production company, this damages us — the idea that it was a planned marketing campaign. It affects our work because at no point was this the intention. The production staff didn’t know who Cazzu was; honestly, we didn’t notice that detail.

Who makes decisions about Christian’s videos? It seems there’s a lack of communication between the singer and his father, who owns JG Music.

In this case, the client is JG Music. We deliver the videos to them and assume they’re approved if we don’t hear otherwise. I have no idea about the communication between them or the relationship they may have. What I do know is that Christian is a person with many commitments, and the music videos are just a small part of his project — he doesn’t handle that.

Does Christian have any specific requests for the themes of his videos?

From the moment we started working with him, he made it very clear that he doesn’t want his personal life to be involved in the videos. These should be artistic, related solely to the theme of the song.

Did Christian say anything to you after the controversy?

Yes, he sent me a message saying something like, “It seems like you hate me; you’ve gotten me into a big mess.” That’s when we started investigating what was happening on social media.

Are you aware of the impact the video caused?

Completely, and I accept responsibility. But ultimately, we all end up hurt: us as the production company, the model, and of course, Nodal.