It’s late May, and the official launch of Billboard‘s Song of the Summer race is just around the corner. Many of this year’s likely frontrunners have already been established — with more sure to join them in the weeks to come with the release of much-anticipated new songs and albums — as some longer-shot artists are also starting to show themselves as good value bets. And while plenty of new names and faces look to be elbowing their way into the discussion, some older artists are showing up in the mix for the first time in years — some even doing so posthumously.

On this week’s Pop Star Performance Review episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we do our best to size up what is sure to be a very heated race for the 2026 Song of the Summer crown. Host Andrew Unterberger is enjoyed by AJ Marks of r/Popheads and the Main Pod Girl podcast to run down the most obvious inner-circle contenders in the discussion, while also giving some dark-horse picks currently a little more on the fringes, and naming some personal favorites who aren’t particularly close to the discussion just yet, but who we’re pulling for just the same.

Along the way, we also answer all of the most pressing questions about Song of the Summer 2026: Is “Choosin’ Texas” still somehow the song to beat? Will any of the 42 Drake songs on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 stick around long enough to be a major factor in the discussion? Are we sure to hear from Morgan Wallen at some point in the race? Are we miscasting Olivia Rodrigo as a Song of the Summer-type artist? How might Zara Larsson or Kacey Musgraves be able to elbow her way into the race? Can Charli xcx dominate the summer discourse for the second time in two years? And perhaps most importantly: Does the Song of the Summer really still mean what it used to, anyway?

Check it out above, along with a playlist of some of our favorite Song of the Summer not-quite-contenders discussed in the episode, and please subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom.

And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:

Transgender Law Center

Trans Lifeline

Destination Tomorrow

Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe

Human Rights Campaign – In Your Area

It’s been a while since a duo has truly shaken up the pop, R&B and hip-hop scene in one fell swoop — and Saint Lucia’s Lu City is aiming to do so with an unmistakably French Caribbean twist.

Comprised of two homegrown musicians — singer Ryie, born Tyler Ryie Auguste, 30, and rapper LUJA, born Jean-Atem Farah, 29 — Lu City consciously operates in the footsteps of the culture-steering musical duos and groups before it. The duo’s catalog, anchored by two studio albums, trades on the suave swagger and sing-rap balance of OutKast, the genre fusion of early Black Eyed Peas and the moody 2010s brand of R&B that buoyed Majid Jordan. The template is familiar, but Lu City innovates by injecting every aspect of their sonic and artistic profile with the rhythms, lingo and feeling of Saint Lucia — and several other West Indian cultures.

At the encouragement of the King of Soca, Machel Montano, the duo named themselves after their affectionate nickname for their home country. “The same way we Drake calls Toronto ‘The 6,’ we call Saint Lucia ‘Lu City’ in our songs,” LUJA tells Billboard, just a week after the duo’s mainstage performance at the 2026 Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival. The OVO crew is a major influence on Lu City; LUJA grew up studying 50 Cent, Lil Wayne and Eminem but has been rocking with Drake “since 2009,” while Ryie remembers going from OutKast, Chris Brown and Miguel to Partynextdoor, who he calls his “favorite R&B artist.”

Growing up obsessed with music, both members of Lu City knew that field was their calling — it was just a matter of getting there. Their first stop? Saint Lucia’s Rodney Bay back in 2012. “Our manager, Eliot Bailey, owned a lot, and I used to walk around singing,” recalls Ryie. “He heard me one day, said I had a really good voice, and gave me a beat to see what I could do with it. The very next day, I wrote a song to the beat, brought it to him and he signed me.”

Soon after, a mutual friend introduced Ryie to LUJA, who sold him on a three-minute voice note of him rapping over Kendrick Lamar’s “Look Out for Detox” instrumental. “Eliot hung out with my older cousins and uncles, so when Ryie sent him the voice note, he was like, ‘That’s the Jean that I see in Rodney Bay drinking rum at 16 years old? He raps? And at this level?’” LUJA remembers with a laugh. “I was graduating that same week [with] no plans to go to university because I never liked school, so I signed to Eliot.”

By 2017, Ryie and LUJA participated in Digicel’s inaugural Music Academy (essentially a massive three-day writing camp set in Jamaica), where Montano served as celebrity mentor and pushed them to officially join forces as a duo. Their debut single, a collaboration with Montano titled “Let It Go,” arrived the following year, with their debut studio album, Lucidity, landing in 2022 via the King of Soca’s Monk Music label. Between Lucidity, 2024’s I Miss You, and the smattering of standalone singles in between, Lu City have crafted a genre-traversing catalog that spans R&B, soca, hip-hop, Afrobeats, bouyon and even zouk — but it’s all grounded by their impressive ear for melody, penchant for kwéyòl lyrics and the winning combination of Ryie’s honeyed falsetto with LUJA’s nimble flow.

Below, the rising Caribbean pop duo looks back on its early breakthrough moments, previews its upcoming EP and talks linking up with iShowSpeed on-stream.

Do you guys remember your first foray into songwriting?

LUJA: There was an English assignment that we had to write a story [for] based on a personal matter, and what I did was so well-written, I remember my whole family being in tears. I have a Syrian background, so I wrote something about what was going on there at the time. It touched my family so much that from there, I knew writing was something I had to do forever. When it comes to my music, I don’t write anything. I punch in, take a second to think, and then spit another line.

Ryie: I’m more of a story-driven writer; 99.8% of everything I write is reality. Either I want it to happen, or it has happened. I believe the stuff you write and say will actually come to fruition. You have to be very careful about what you put on a record. I also remember my dad giving me Michael Jackson’s Dangerous CD when I was around seven years old, and from then on, I just wanted to sing. I started mimicking different artists until I grew into my own.

How has the Lu City sound evolved over the years?

Ryie: We started off in R&B and rap, and then the sound grew into Caribbean pop. After that, we moved into Afrobeats because I used to listen to a lot of Wizkid and admired how he would mix his native tongue with English. But my parents always played zouk music, so we started incorporating that and bouyon as well.

Would you guys ever dedicate entire albums to different genres? Kind of like how Drake did with Iceman, Maid of Honour and Habibti?

Ryie: We would love that. We have a new EP coming that’s like that. We also have a single coming on June 4 with a pretty sick up-and-coming artist…

What do you consider your first local hit? Would you say it was “Sa Ka Fête?”

Ryie: Yeah, it was “Sa Ka Fête.” We started working on the song in Jamaica and finished it in Saint Lucia with the help of Shontelle and our producer, Shaquille “Delete” Wilkinson.

LUJA: I remember Ryie saying, “Yo, we need to do something that represents Saint Lucia and our sound,” so we made “Sa Ka Fête.” That was the first song we did, blending our cultural sound with the other styles we’re fans of. And we continued that with “Movay.” On this EP we have coming, we’ve decided to surprise people; there are certain genres that [day-one fans] want us to explore again, and we’re doing it on this project. It’s our most diverse one to date.

Your debut album, Lucidity, dropped in 2022. What were your biggest takeaways from that experience?

LUJA: When I look back on that project, every single song was its own life form. Because it was our first project, we put in more energy than we had for anything else.

Ryie: We really took our time. And that’s always our goal: to make something that lasts instead of rushing. It’s easy to vibe out and make a song in the studio because we can write any genre of music, but it’s more special when we take our time to really craft the song.

LUJA: We had people on that album who we were literally fans of. Kalash was, and still is, a god to us, and he was on “Asé”! Our debut album was one of the biggest moments of our career to date. Everyone on that project was someone we listened to on a daily basis: Jahyanai, Bamby, Jozii, etc.

What’s your creative process like?

Ryie: Sometimes we work separately, and sometimes we work together. I mainly like to be alone to catch the Holy Spirit when I’m writing. It sounds crazy, but that’s how I get the best results, because I’m not distracted.

LUJA: At first, all our studio sessions were together. We learned each other to the point where we don’t need to be in the studio at the same time anymore because we know each other’s process so well. I know Ryie is very hands-on with the beatmaking, and I’m more on the engineering side. We work much faster now because of that.

What are the biggest challenges you guys have faced during your journey in the music industry?

LUJA: The music industry is the hardest thing. A lot of people might disagree, but our challenges were very rough. All you need is one song, right? We were independent for 99% of our career, so we did literally everything ourselves to become one of the biggest names in the French Caribbean. It was just me, Ryie, Eliot and Delete doing everything, so it was very challenging — especially when you’re not making money. You don’t make money until you start doing shows. And everything costs money, so that was very rough.

Ryie: There was no blueprint for us in the music industry. Nobody’s ever really done what we’re doing from the Caribbean and taking it worldwide. Even Rihanna — they took her from the Caribbean, brought her to the States and made her a pop icon. It’s never been done before, and we’re still working on it.

What are your long-term goals? How do you define success?

Ryie: Take over the world.

LUJA: We might not be the best at everything, but we are the best at what we’re very good at. And that’s making good music, being passionate, never getting sloppy and elevating our sound. That is an appreciating asset in music if you want to go down in music history. We just want to be respected musically.

What was it like linking up with Speed on stream?

Ryie: He’s very fast, too fast for me! I’m a calm, chill guy.

LUJA: Speed has the most energy I’ve ever seen. We didn’t just run up on him; we got a call, but I’m not allowed to give details. We’ve had brief moments with him, but this one ended up being so beautiful and organic. We’re not the most sociable when you first meet us, but if you know us, we funny as hell, bro. All we do is laugh and joke, so when we linked up with him, it just clicked.

What else can we expect from Lu City in 2026?

Ryie: A lot of videos and a lot of content. More performances, too. And more interviews! We’ve been working on this EP and getting ready.

LUJA: Just know that this EP is just the beginning of a new chapter. It’s not gonna be our peak moment. This is our [Batman Begins].

Not too long ago, Riley Green started registering at hotels under a pseudonym. His fame had simply reached the level that necessitated it — but the move hasn’t come without some hiccups. Take this past March, when he was on tour in Australia.

“I locked my key in my room. Luckily, I had clothes on,” he recounts. “I went downstairs and [the front desk clerk] said, ‘We need to see your ID.’ I said, ‘I don’t have it. It’s in my room and it’s not going to [match] what’s on the room.’ ” Green takes a beat before deadpanning: “So I sleep outside.”

He’s clearly kidding about the last part. But the story illustrates just how crazy Green’s life has become since his flirty duet with Ella Langley, “You Look Like You Love Me,” came out in June 2024, followed by his smoldering “Worst Way” (with a correspondingly steamy video) and then another Langley duet, “Don’t Mind If I Do.” All three reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, and they transformed Green, voted People’s Sexiest Country Star Alive in November 2025, from a highly successful artist best known for plain-spoken songs celebrating traditional values into a shooting star — now with a catalog that has earned 5.9 billion on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate — and the internet’s country boyfriend.

“It was a perfect storm of him being completely on his A game with his writing, his artistry and his looks, and having this pop culture moment with Ella,” says his longtime friend Carly Pearce, whose own alluring duet with Green, “If I Don’t Leave, I’m Gonna Stay,” is out now. “People were wrapped up in ‘Are they together? Are they not?’ He was just ready.”

Read the full Riley Green cover story here.

Latin music festivals in the U.S. have had a rough run lately. In the past two years alone, Bésame Mucho scrapped its November 2024 L.A. edition with Shakira as headliner, Migo Fest in New York was called off last October before it got underway, and La Onda in Napa abruptly canceled two weeks after unveiling a lineup led by J Balvin, Maná and Christian Nodal.

The pressures on the individual festivals varied — from visa issues and broader political concerns to lineup instability, touring competition, soft ticket sales and the rising cost of mounting a festival — but together they underscored how difficult it has become to build a durable, exclusively Latin festival business in the U.S.

Sueños, by contrast, has kept expanding. Now in its fifth year in Chicago’s Grant Park, the festival has become a fixture on the city’s summer calendar while continuing to book top-tier Latin talent. That staying power is especially notable at a moment when the Latin music festival market appears both bigger and more fragile than it did just a few years ago.

Not every festival offered a full explanation for why it pulled the plug. But taken together, the recent cancellations have highlighted just how shaky the Latin festival business can be, even as demand for the genre remains strong. Billboard separately reported last September on visa issues as a growing concern for artists and the companies that work with them.

In a conversation with Billboard, Sueños and La Familia Presenta co-founders Aaron Ampudia and Chris Den Uijl spoke about what has allowed the Sueños festival to keep growing, from deep ties to its audience to city-specific lineup curation to the importance of consistency when the broader market gets tougher.

At this point, Sueños is part of Chicago’s summer calendar. When did it start to feel real that this had become a fixture, not just a new festival?

Chris Den Uijl: What’s amazing is that it’s kind of the official kickoff of summer this weekend [in the city], and to be able to tap into that energy gives us a really nice foundation to build off of. It also gives us a roadmap, because it’s our first big festival of the year as well.

Sueños has built a reputation for landing major names — from Shakira to Fuerza Regida, J Balvin and Kali Uchis. How do you decide when a headliner is worth the investment?

Den Uijl: There are a couple different ways we look at it. There’s the hard-ticket data, the streaming data, all of those metrics. But there’s also that community touch. We always have our dream lineups and we’re constantly trying to create them, but sometimes artists have different plans.

A big part of what we love doing is finding artists earlier in their cycle — the acts that are playing at 2 p.m. one year and could become headliners later. We want to be part of that growth. And what we’ve learned is that the timeline from being a developing artist to being a headliner is shrinking fast. So for us, it’s about staying closely connected to the community and to the leaders in the Latin space, so we always have our eyes and ears to the ground.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen cancellations of other Latin music festivals, including Bésame Mucho, Migo Fest and La Onda. What has allowed Sueños to keep growing when others have struggled to hold on?

Aaron Ampudia: Take it back to 2018 — we’ve been in the culture since before [its mainstream explosion]. We knew the culture wanted this. That’s why we launched Baja Beach Fest [in Rosarito, Mexico, in 2018]. Then we saw a really big gap in the United States that didn’t have anything, and that’s when we launched Sueños.

A lot of festivals or parties come together, but maybe they didn’t know the culture that well. Maybe they didn’t know what fans wanted. I’m Mexican American, and I feel like I know exactly what fans want to drink, want to eat, what they want to listen to, how they want to see it, what brands they like and what brands they don’t like. That’s a competitive advantage for us. And we got a head start because we were there from the beginning with a lot of these artists and with the audience too.

Den Uijl: It’s getting harder and harder every day to launch something new. The thing we really give credit to our team and our partners for is our connection to the community and our understanding of how the music is evolving, how a brand identifies with its audience and how the audience identifies with the brand.

Those are the foundational pillars that create stability when things are tough. And things were not easier for us at Baja or Sueños or [Coca-Cola] Flow Fest — the hardships that some of these other festivals had, we had too. The difference is the consistency we bring when it comes to lineup programming, communication and community. When things get a little tough, we all struggle together. When things get great, we’re all together. But our commitment is to win the war, not the fight.

When you look at those cancellations, what do you think people underestimate about how hard it is to build a durable Latin festival business in the U.S.?

Ampudia: People underestimate how much cultural fluency matters. This isn’t just about putting a bunch of Latin artists on a poster. You have to understand the fan base in a real way — how they want to experience the day, what kind of food and drink feels authentic, what brands make sense in the space, how people move through the grounds, what they respond to emotionally. If you don’t know that audience deeply, it’s very hard to build something that lasts.

What has mattered most to Sueños’ staying power: booking strategy, operational discipline, the Chicago market — or the broader La Familia Presenta playbook behind it?

Den Uijl: It’s all of those things working together. We’ve learned over time that there is not one shoe that fits all when it comes to programming music. Every market has its own styles, and that has a lot to do with where different Latino populations live in each city.

In Mexico City, for example, you have one mix. In Baja, you have another. In Chicago, you see a lot of Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Colombian influence alongside Mexican audiences. One artist could be a headliner in one city and sit in the middle of the lineup in another. The exciting part is being able to curate each festival specifically for the people in that city. If not, we’d just have the exact same lineup at every festival.

What have you done in recent years to make the business more resilient?

Ampudia: We’ve learned a lot over the past five years, especially around how the community wants to interact with the festival. A perfect example is the La Plaza stage. We introduced it in 2025 with a couple of local bands, and the response was massive. So this year we really doubled down and booked more local acts to give them an opportunity to showcase at Sueños and hopefully help them as they start their careers.

To Chris’ point, maybe one or two years from now they could be on the main stage. So for us, listening to the community and trusting the team is the perfect combination.

Den Uijl: Especially in the U.S. right now, it’s important to create a safe space where people can celebrate their culture and feel proud of who they are. That’s a big mission for us. We want the festival to feel like a stable, welcoming experience for the community, and that becomes part of the long-term value too.

Is the biggest pressure point right now artist costs, routing, visas, consumer demand — or something else?

Den Uijl: Travel has always been, and will continue to be, a road bump for all artists. I think for the Latino audience, and for Latin artists especially, it’s become a bigger road bump in the last few years. For us, communication, planning, understanding all the artists we have and doing a risk assessment on what that looks like — those things really anchor us in being able to book a lineup and feel confident that artists are going to show up.

Every festival deals with that, and some festivals get more of it than others. We did have a couple artists who weren’t able to come this year, but we also had other artists step in and the community was excited to have them.

Looking ahead, what does smart growth look like for Sueños?

Ampudia: It’s about following the path that we’re already seeing — a lot of community engagement, figuring out the next headliners we’re already working on for 2027 and 2028, and continuing to improve the fan experience. That’s what’s going to keep us on a steady growth path.

Den Uijl: At the end of the day, we’re curators for the community. We’re supposed to put together the perfect lineup and give people the artists they want, but it’s also important to remind people that artists have their own plans. Sometimes they have date conflicts, sometimes they want to do a hard-ticket show.

Where we see our value is in being able to look at the trends, understand what’s going to be hot and build something that continues to grow the festival. People are coming for the food, the dancing, the culture — but they’re also coming because they want to see their favorite artists.