On Wednesday (Jan. 28), the Recording Academy announced artists who will honor music legends we lost in the last year with performances included in the In Memoriam segment:

The Academy hasn’t said if there will be specific salutes to Brian Wilson, Sly Stone and Bob Weir. (Flack, Osbourne, Wilson, Stone and Weir all received lifetime achievement awards from the Recording Academy – Wilson as part of The Beach Boys; Osbourne as part of Black Sabbath; Weir as part of the Grateful Dead.)

Other shows have already had the opportunity to salute some of these artists. Andra Day sang Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” on the BET Awards on June 9. Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Yungblud and Nuno Bennencourt performed a three-song tribute to Osbourne on the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 7.

In recent years, the Grammys have put an extra spotlight on one or more recently deceased artists per year, sometimes as part of the In Memoriam spot and sometimes apart from it. Last year, Quincy Jones got a six-song tribute. In 2024, the In Memoriam segment included extended tributes to Tony Bennett, Sinéad O’Connor, Clarence Avant and Tina Turner.

In 2023, Loretta Lynn, Takeoff from Migos and Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac got extra shine in the In Memoriam spot, as did Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim the year before. In 2021, Little Richard, Kenny Rogers, John Prine and Gerry Marsden of Gerry & the Pacemakers got extra attention in the In Memoriam spot. (The latter group had a hit in 1965 with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which was a natural for the spot.)

In 2020, Boyz II Men sang “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” in tribute to basketball legend Kobe Bryant, who had died in a helicopter crash the morning of the Grammy ceremony. The In Memoriam spot that year put extra focus on Nipsey Hussle and Dr. John.

Sabrina Carpenter was the first performer announced for this year’s show, followed by news that all eight best new artist nominees would perform for the second year in a row. This year’s best new artist nominees are Addison Rae, Alex Warren, KATSEYE, Leon Thomas, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, sombr and The Marías.

The third performer announcement focused on Clipse and Pharrell Williams, who share three nominations this year.  Earlier today, Justin Bieber was added to the performer lineup.

Ice-T’s tweaking the lyrics of Body Count’s politically-charged “Cop Killer” to “ICE Killer” during a Warped Tour performance last July was by pure instinct.

Ice joined The Breakfast Club on Wednesday (Jan. 28), where he explained modernizing the title of Body Count’s 1992 controversial anthem to fit the political climate targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“When I did that, that didn’t happen just recently; that happened in L.A. when we played the Warped Tour,” he said. “When I was there, ICE was active out there. I’m in the midst of ICE raids. I’m in front of an L.A. audience and it just came up.”

Ice continued: “I didn’t know I was gon’ do it. It’s time to play ‘Cop Killer’ and my brain just said, ‘Do ‘Ice Killer.” But of course, when the girl [Renee Good] got killed, they bring that press to the front. They had me in the news fighting with the police and it was two years old. When a cop pulled me over and it made it to the news.”

The Law & Order SVU star is referring to the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7 while behind the wheel after dropping off her youngest of three children at school in Minneapolis.

“You know ‘ICE Killer,’ ‘Cop Killer’ it’s really protest,” Ice-T explained. “I’m just protesting. Like I said, I think we’re headed in some very ugly terrain and Black people ain’t got nothing to do with it. It’s bad. I think the moment somebody shoots an ICE agent, it’s gon’ get bad.”

Tensions in Minneapolis were raised over the weekend when two federal agents fired shots that killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, according to the Associated Press. The confrontation began when Pretti attempted to help a woman thrown to the ground by an ICE agent. He was wrestled to the ground by half a dozen officers and struggled to stand back up. Pretti, who was licensed to carry a firearm in public, was relieved of a gun in a side holster by an officer and fatally shot 10 times by two others while on his knees. Members of President Trump’s administration initially labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist” intent on killing ICE agents, but footage from multiple verified sources appears to contract the administration’s version of events. An initial report from the Department of Homeland Security also seems to confirm that Pretti was not brandishing his legal firearm or attacking officers at any point during the fatal altercation.

TMZ caught up with Ice-T out and about in New York City on Tuesday (Jan. 27), where he issued a warning for those joining the protests against the immigration raids. “Stand strong and stay out the way,” he said. “These cats will kill you.”

According to The Guardian, at least eight people have been killed by ICE agents or killed in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2026.

Watch the clip of Ice-T below.

Is Madonna a Harrie now? Well, the Queen of Pop certainly enjoys Harry Styles’ new single “Aperture.”

In an Instagram story, Madge posted “love your new song Harry!!!!” over an alleged quote from the former One Direction member that said “I was deep into disco while making it, lots of Sylvester, Bee Gees and Madonna, Confessions on a Dance Floor energy. Now, she’s doing a sequel, which feels slightly unfair. How do you follow disco after Madonna?” (Billboard could not confirm the veracity of the statement.)

Nonetheless, Madonna added another slide featuring the cover of Styles’ upcoming album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally with the words “On Repeat……….”

“Aperture” debuted on Thursday Jan. 22, with its accompanying video dropping hours later. The full album – produced by longtime collaborator Kid Harpoon – is due this March. “I was playing demos to friends and I’d be with friends and put it on and be like, ‘What do you think of this?’ And it just became really obvious that it was music that was meant to be played loud. That is when it feels its best,” Styles told John Mayer in a Sirius XM interview of his fourth full-length.

And with his upcoming dates at Wembley Stadium in London for his newly announced Together Together tour, Styles – who will appear as a presenter at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards and is set to perform at the 2026 Brit Awards – will break the record for most nights played at the famed venue in one year with 12, besting Coldplay’s previous number of 10.

As for Madonna – who is certainly used to praise from fellow artists herself – the icon released Bedtime Stories – The Untold Chapter, a collection of remixes and outtakes from her 1994 album Bedtime Stories; Confessions on a Dance Floor (Twenty Years Edition); and Veronica Electronica all in 2025.

Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello is using his voice to defend Minnesota.

On Wednesday (Jan. 28), the iconic rock guitarist announced the Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota, set for Friday (Jan. 30) at First Avenue in Minneapolis, with doors opening at 10:30 a.m. CT. Fans can purchase tickets via AXS.

“If it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, acts like fascism, dresses like fascism, talks like fascism, kills like fascism and lies like fascism, boys & girls, it’s f—king fascism,” Morello wrote in a lengthy, impassioned Instagram caption. “It’s here, it’s now, it’s in my city, it’s in your city, and it must be resisted, protested, defended against, stood up to, exposed, ousted, overthrown and driven out. By you and by me.”

“We are coming to Minneapolis, where the people have heroically stood up against ICE, stood up against Trump, stood up against this terrible rising tide of state terror,” Morello continued in his caption. “Where the people have stood up for their neighbors and themselves, for democracy and justice. Ain’t nobody coming to save us except us, and it’s now or never.”

The concert’s proceeds will go to the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by ICE in Minneapolis earlier in January. The event, which is all ages, will also feature performances by Rise Against, Al Di Meola, Ike Reilly and a few still-unannounced special guests across music, protest and community action.

Morello has long been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and his administration. On Jan. 12, he called out U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem for standing behind a podium that displayed a “verbatim” quote of a “Nazi mass murder slogan.” Last summer, Morello released the protest song “Pretend You Remember Me” in response to ICE’s ongoing raids.

Alongside Rage Against the Machine, which officially disbanded in 2024, Morello topped the Billboard 200 twice, won a pair of Grammys, was part of the 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction class and was saluted as one of the 50 Best Rock Bands of All Time on a 2025 Billboard staff ranking.

Check out Tom Morello’s Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota announcement below.

Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. 

This week: An early classic by The Cure slowly grows into a potential 2020s breakout hit, while a potentially big year for the Michael Jackson catalog gets off to an early start and a beloved soul staple scores a Netflix bump.

‘Cry’ing All the Way to a Billion Streams: The Cure’s Early Classic Finds New Streaming Life

It’s been a good past year for emotional alt-rock songs that never found a pop audience in their first lives finding a second life with 2020s audiences. A pair of fan favorites from Jeff Buckley (“Lover, You Should Have Come Over”) and Radiohead (“Let Down”) have even found their way to the Billboard Hot 100, despite not even being released as singles upon their ‘90s debut. Now, a newer (but even older) viral hit may be on its way to joining them: The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” 

The Cure has found a decent amount of pop crossover success during its lifetime, with 14 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including three top 40 hits (led by 1989’s No. 2-peaking “Love Song”). None of those hits, however, were 1979’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” which the goth-rock progenitors released very early in their career and which missed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic upon its original release — a stunning commercial snub in retrospect, given the song’s preternatural catchiness and Smokey Robinson-like lyricism. (In 2023, Billboard’s staff ranked it as one of the 20 greatest pop songs to never hit the Hot 100.) 

But that “never” may soon be coming to an end if the song keeps growing on streaming like it has. Over the last three months, the post-punk classic has caught fire on TikTok, with younger listeners gravitating to its chiming hooks and fragile masculinity (to the tune of over 107,000 videos, several with over one million likes), and that has translated to major streaming growth. In mid-October, the song was still garnering under a million weekly official on-demand streams, according to Luminate, but two months later (for the tracking week ending Jan. 23), that total had more than tripled, with the song now racking up over 3.1 million weekly streams. “Boys” even recently passed one billion streams on Spotify, becoming The Cure’s first song in the Billions Club. 

It’s all very good timing for The Cure, who recently announced a 40th-anniversary vinyl reissue of the song’s 1986 re-recording — which did bring the song to the U.K. Official Charts for the first time, with a No. 22 peak — along with the second-go-round version finally arriving on DSPs. We’ll see if “Boys,” whose original version just hit the U.K.’s top 40, can match the re-recording’s peak in the band’s home country, or get onto the Hot 100 for the first time. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER

Majorette Dance Challenge Revives Michael Jackson’s ‘Liberian Girl’ 

Just in time for the King of Pop’s upcoming biopic, which hits theaters on April 24, a Bad deep cut is surging on streaming. 

Thanks to a majorette dance challenge shared by TikTok user @jshun0729 — a coach for the Memphis Prancing Tigerettes majorette team — “Liberian Girl” has leapt 116% in streaming activity over the past two weeks. User @jshun0729 posted his video on Jan. 7, and the clip has since amassed over 5.6 million views, setting to motion a challenge that has united majorettes across regions and generations. Notably, several core members and fan-favorites from Lifetime’s Bring It! — a 2010s reality series following Coach Dianna Williams’ Dancing Dolls in Jackson, Miss. — hopped on the dance trend, helping the official “Liberian Girl” TikTok sound reach nearly 50,000 posts, while the unofficial sound attached to @jshun0729’s initial clip has surpassed 27,000 creates. On Instagram, MJ’s track plays in over 73,000 reels. 

According to Luminate, “Liberian Girl” earned over 240,000 official on-demand U.S. streams during the week of Jan. 2-8. The following week (Jan. 9-15), once the dance trend began circulating, those numbers jumped 36% to over 331,000 official streams. By the weeks of Jan. 16-22, “Liberian Girl” rose a further 58% to over 524,000 official streams. And the song’s rise is far from over. During the four-day period of Jan. 23-26, “Liberian” earned 410,000 official streams, a 60% improvement from its streaming totals a week prior (Jan. 16-19). 

One of the few Bad tracks to miss the Hot 100, maybe the 2020s can do for “Liberian Girl” what the ‘80s couldn’t. — KYLE DENIS 

New Netflix Smash ‘His & Hers’ Spurs Gains for Classic Roberta Flack-Donny Hathaway Duet 

Netflix’s new limited series His & Hers, led by BAFTA nominee Tessa Thompson and Emmy winner Jon Bernthal, has quickly taken over social media while thrusting a gorgeous duet from the late Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway back into the spotlight. 

“I (Who Have Nothing),” the opening track from the duo’s eponymous 1972 joint album, plays after a particularly heart-wrenching conversation in episode three — and the scene clearly struck an emotional chord with the show’s audience. 

During the week of Jan. 2-8, the duet logged just under 3,000 official on-demand U.S. streams (according to Luminate), setting the stage for a 1,204% increase to over 39,000 official streams by the next week (Jan. 9-15), following the Jan. 8 premiere of the six-episode series. “I (Who Have Nothing)” jumped a further 30% the following week (Jan. 16-22), making for a whopping 1,603% increase in streaming activity over the past two weeks. 

Flack & Hathaway’s English-language cover of the Italian song “Uno dei tanti” never hit the Billboard charts, but that could very well change should it maintain its new streaming momentum. — KD