Some artists have a grand vision for what their life would look like on the big screen. And though Ariana Grande has starred in two of the top three highest-grossing films adapted from Broadway musicals over the past two years in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, when the singer was asked recently what she envisions for a potential biopic she though small. Real small.

“A tiny mouse with subtitles the whole time,” Grande said in a chat with Backstage on Monday (Feb. 9) in which she joked that the film should be titled Scrap This and Don’t Watch It, saying she’s not really into the idea in general. “I would like that, actually,” she said, describing her vision for the film as more of a Demi than a Trenta, to use Starbucks size comparisons.

“It would be a tiny, beautiful short film with mice reenacting my whole life with little, tiny subtitles at the bottom,” said the 32-year-old star. “That’s the only version of it that I’m interested in.”

She gave Backstage some other intriguing answers in their rapid-fire Q&A, turning down the chance to define her career in one word — “I’m a long-winded woman” — before landing on “spontaneous or curious.” Asked which actor’s brain she would most love to burrow into while preparing for a role, she, of course, chose her pal Jim Carrey, whose Showtime series, Kidding, she guest-starred in in 2020 as Piccola the Pickle Fairy.

“I would love to be a fly on the wall of his beautiful mind,” she said, or, maybe Kate Winslet, who was Carrey’s co-star in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the trippy 2004 relationship drama Grande said inspired her 2024 Billboard 200 No. 1 album Eternal Sunshine.

After two years of promoting and talking about the Wicked films, as well as attending an endless series of red carpets and awards shows in support of the movies, in January Grande told Vogue Japan that despite not being used to taking time off in her nearly two-decade career, “I think it would probably be healthy to [take a break]… But yeah, these past few years have been pretty nonstop. And by few, I mean 15.”

That break won’t come anytime soon, as Grande will appear in the upcoming sequel Focker In-Law as well as next year’s West End revival — with Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey — of the Stephen Sondheim stage musical Sunday in the Park With George. The singer is also gearing up to launch her Eternal Sunshine North American tour, which kick off on June 6 at the Oakland Arena in Oakland, Calif. and is slated to run through an Aug. 6 show at the United Center in Chicago before hopping over to London for 10 gigs at the O2 in August and September.

To understand where music is going right now, start tuning into DMV rap, Mexican reggaeton, the new wave of indie and the electronic subgenres hard techno, hardtekk and schranz.

So advises SoundCloud’s newly released Music Intelligence Report, which assessed data generated by artists and listeners on the platform in 2025 to offer a comprehensive guide to the year’s key trends and to where music consumption, and creation, is going in 2026. Read the complete report here.

Among these trends, the report finds that users are listening to a more diverse variety of genres, with listeners on the platform since 2019 “now spending 4% less time with their most-listened genre, instead consuming a broader range of music,” the report states.

SoundCloud’s social networking capabilities encourage this exploration, and “the effect is potent. When a listener plays a track from another user’s Liked By playlist, they’re more likely to play music outside their most-listened genre and they are over three times more likely to like, repost or comment on that track themselves.”

This melting pot of musical interest lends itself to artists too, with the report finding that hip-hop in particular is “rapidly evolving, exploring entirely new sonic palettes and lyrical styles.” Specifically, artists like Witty and Aeter have released EPs containing both indie folk and alternative trap.

At the beginning of 2024, genre-tagging technology “labeled 25% of these hip-hop-influenced indie uploads as folk, indie or rock,” the report states. “In the second half of 2025, that share was up to 34% on average.”

“We’re seeing hip-hop evolving in real time on the platform, pulling from electronic music and guitar-driven music to create whole new sounds and energies that expand the very notion of what something like hip-hop might be. That’s really exciting,” says Wyatt Marshall, SoundCloud’s senior director of music intelligence.

“You get exposed to things through your social network that expand your musical horizons,” says Marshall. “It’s not just something that’s happening for listeners who are being turned on to a new favorite song. We’re actually seeing artists who are lovingly borrowing from genres outside of traditional lanes.” To this point, he also notes that 57% of Deftones listeners on SoundCloud have hip-hop as their most listened-to genre, “which is kind of amazing to see.”

Having successfully ID’d English rappers fakemink and Esdeekid as artists to watch in last year’s report, Wyatt advises listeners to remain on the lookout for more genre-blending from the region, given that the “UK underground rap scene really does have amorphous borders with things like electronic music and pulling from trends in U.S. hip-hop.”

All in, hip-hop is the most listened-to genre on SoundCloud in the U.S. in terms of total volume, with the biggest share of listening on the platform. SoundCloud’s top U.S. artists overall are YoungBoy Never Broke Again, followed by Rod Wave, Juice Wrld, Lil Durk, Future, Lil Baby and Playboi Carti.

Meanwhile, electronic music remains a SoundCloud juggernaut and is the platform’s fastest-growing genre. The report notes that electronic has accounted for a greater percentage of all listening for the third year running, referring to its year-over-year growth rate. In other words, electronic is increasing its share of overall listening faster than any other genre, even though its total listenership is smaller than hip-hop’s.

To wit, in 2020, roughly one in four tracks uploaded to SoundCloud was in an electronic genre. In 2025, it was more than one in three. Last year, the number of uploads hashtagged “#DJSET” also increased 39% year over year. Altogether, these uploads made electronic music SoundCloud’s fastest-growing genre in the U.S., where it accounted for “a greater percentage of all listening for the third year running.” Electronic was also SoundCloud’s most streamed genre in the U.K.

The report cites the widely observed popularity surge of the high-BPM electronic subgenres hard techno, hardtekk and schranz and also points out that while these and a variety of UK-born electronic genres like garage and minimal tech are booming, so is the dubstep being made by a new generation of U.S. producers.

“After 2010s dominance, dubstep is surging again with U.S. audiences — streams on tracks tagged #dubstep increased 35% last year,” the report states. “Expect dubstep to continue its resurgence moving forward in tandem with a continued rise of UK minimal tech house and garage.” Top U.S. electronic acts on the platform include bass producers Tape B, GRiZ, Levity, Subtronics and Richard Finger, along with the sounds of John Summit.

“When you zoom out on [Soundcloud’s] social connectivity, you see hotbeds of activity that you can think about like scene,” Marshall says. “If everybody here is talking about one kind of thing, that’s where the conversation is, that’s where the artists are pushing the sound forward and borrowing from one another too. Those social networks expand outward, and it gives this experimental feel to everything, where people are feeding off the collective energy of the group.”

And as far as the bubbling up genres, SoundCloud data points to Turkish cloud rap, wave and Southeast Asia breakbeat as “scenes we see growing,” says Marshall. “These are three that we see as something to keep your eyes on as we go into 2026 and beyond.”

Bad Bunny‘s triumphant, joyful halftime show helped boost Super Bowl LX to the highest peak viewership in U.S. TV history. While Benito didn’t de-throne Kendrick Lamar as the most-watched halftime ever, according to figures released by Nielsen Big Data + Panel on Tuesday (Feb. 10), an estimated 128.2 million viewers tuned in to watch his star-studded performance, the first halftime show to be almost entirely in Spanish.

That makes it one of the most-watched halftime shows in Super Bowl history, coming in at fourth place all-time behind last year’s Kendrick Lamar show (133.5 million viewers), Michael Jackson’s 1993 set (133.4 million viewers) and Usher in 2024 (129.3 million).

In addition, NBC reported that the second half of the game set an all-time media record with 137.8 million viewers, which set a new record for the highest peak viewership in U.S. TV history as the Seahawks expanded their 6-0 halftime lead into a 29-13 blowout.

Overall, Nielsen said that Sunday’s game was the second most-watched Super Bowl ever, just behind last year’s 127.7 million viewers. It was also the most-watched show in the history of NBCUniversal.

While Benito’s performance featuring guests Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin drew ire from many on the right, including President Trump, the set that warmly honored his Puerto Rican roots and ended with the singer shouting “God Bless America!” as he ran through a list of all the countries in the Americas was seen by many as a gesture aimed at spreading love and understanding during a turbulent time in U.S. history. The set ended with the singer holding up a football with the message “Together we are America.”

In a nod to Bad Bunny’s global stardom, NBC also reported that the Telemundo broadcast averaged 3.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl in the U.S. Spanish-language history, with the network’s coverage peaking during halftime with an average of 4.8 million viewers, adding up to the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in Spanish-language history.

The social media numbers were also in keeping with Benito’s global dominance, with total social consumption — including fans, owned platforms, broadcast partners, influencers and more — setting a record of four billion views after the first 24 hours, a 137% increase year-over-year. In addition, more than half (55%) of all NFL social views came from international markets.

By contrast, Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock and a handful of other country singers on a pre-taped livestream attracted 19 million views on YouTube in its first 24 hours, while Bad Bunny’s YT replay had more than 24 million in that time frame on top of the historic traditional TV tune-in. According to The New York Times, as more than 128 million tuned in to the Benito Bowl, around 6.1 million concurrent viewers were tuning in live to the at-times glitchy, out-of-sync “All-American Halftime Show.”

Tame Impala just might make a triumphant homecoming in the not-too-distant future.

Kevin Parker’s psychedelic pop project has got the year started in the best possible fashion, by collecting a second successive Grammy Award in the category for best dance/electronic recording, winning for “End of Summer.”

Then, last Friday, the West Australian dropped a remix for Deadbeat single “Dracula,” this time featuring the vocals of BLACKPINK star JENNIE.

Now, a hint that Tame Impala will support Deadbeat with a tour of Australia, the band’s first in these shores since 2022.

A social post shared this week by Frontier Touring, a division of the Melbourne-based Mushroom Group, features a simple poster emblazoned with the question, “End of Summer,” soundtracked with the epic, rave-y first release from Deadbeat.

The post is soundbedded by a snippet of the track, and is shared as a collaboration with Michael Chugg’s Chugg Entertainment, a joint venture with Frontier Touring.  Another cryptic clue is given with the phrase “’ll see you when I see you,” and a website endofsummer.au. Just punch in your email and wait for more.

Tame Impala last played Australia in 2022 in support of 2020’s The Slow Rush. On that occasion, an arena tour delayed by the pandemic, the dates were produced by Laneway Presents, Chugg Entertainment and Frontier Touring.

Parker did play arenas in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in the back end of 2025, although in a different capacity. For that run, he was the opening DJ for French electronic maestros Justice.

Deadbeat opened at No. 2 on the ARIA Chart last October, continuing a streak that has see all five of Tame Impala’s studio albums crack the national top 5, starting with Innerspeaker (from 2010) and Lonerism (2012), both of which peaked at No. 4. Tame Impala’s previous two albums, Currents (2015) and The Slow Rush (2020), went all the way to No. 1.

All told, Tame Impala has won 13 ARIA Awards, one BRIT Award and now two Grammys. Parker can add to his groaning trophy cabinet with the coveted song of the year at the 2026 APRA Music Awards, for which “End of Summer” is shortlisted.