To hear former Little Mix member Leigh-Anne Pinnock tell it, when she tried to reach out to the label that originally signed her after she left the British girl group in 2022 the answer was crickets. Appearing on Paloma Faith’s Mad Sad Bad podcast on Tuesday (Jan. 6), Pinnock, 34, said she usually begins a new year with a good sense of what the next 12 months will look like.

Not this year, though.

“This New Year’s… a couple months prior I had a fallout with my label and basically left them,” she said of her decision to split with Warner Records after three years, a 2024 EP, No Hard Feelings, an Amazon Music Live City Session that same year and a handful of singles.

“It was crazy,” she added. “Like, they weren’t responding to us and… they were basically ghosting. It was wild… It’s like, ‘how can you do that to someone?’” When Faith asked if Pinnock was ever given a reason for the alleged ghosting, the singer said that the label boss — who she didn’t name — rang her up to chat and then “exited the call after two rings. I was like, ‘okay.’”

All that to say that, according to Pinnock, she’s never actually gotten a proper explanation, describing the situation as “quite brutal.” Pinnock said when she looks back on her solo career she feels as if she was doing “good” and described the reported radio silence from her former label as “weird” and “frustrating,” firmly suggesting that she doesn’t think it was her issue. “I feel like it was them,” she said.

Last week she also shared a video with fans in which she reflected on her difficult year, explaining, “So, long story short, the label have said no basically. They don’t have a budget to put my album out, so I’m ready to take the reins. It will be a new chapter and I just can’t wait. I’m leading this s–t!”

At press time a spokesperson for Warner Music had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Pinnock’s claims.

The good news, however, is that Pinnock is now in full control of her music and plans to release her debut full-length LP, My Ego Told Me To, via the Virgin Music Group on Feb. 20.

Actually, she’s been teeing the long-awaited album up for years, dating back to 2023, when she told Billboard that she’s an “R&B girl,” but wanted to incorporate other genres she loves, including reggae and pop sounds after releasing what was expected to be the collection’s first single, “Don’t Say Love.”

Pinnock, who has lined up a run of April European solo tour dates, has been teeing up the album for several months, posting an image of the cover in October on her Instagram, writing, “The journey to this moment hasn’t been smooth. I’ve navigated going solo after over 10 years in a group, left a label and gone independent. It feels like I’ve started from the beginning TWICE 🙈 but I truly believe everything has happened exactly how it was supposed to.”

Watch Pinnock talk about her label drama below (begins at 14-minute mark):

When Stephen Wilson Jr. performed a dark acoustic version of “Stand By Me” on the Country Music Association Awards in November, a large swath of the genre’s fans finally heard him for the first time.

He picked up some new followers that night – not only among consumers, but also in the music business. And yet, as important as the appearance was for Wilson, he barely remembers it. He had a bit of an out-of-body experience, which might have been the best way for him to navigate it.

“Something happened in that moment, and I’m glad I wasn’t there for it,” he says. “I think that’s just your body’s way of protecting you from it, so you can do what you’re supposed to do. So you can be the vessel you’re supposed to be, kind of uninhibited by your own emotions.”

The day before that opportunity, Nov. 18, Big Loud created more possibility by releasing a new single, “Gary,” to country radio via PlayMPE. The primary character can “fix about anything a hammer can’t handle,” as the chorus suggests, making him almost an anachronism as the world hurdles into artificial intelligence.

“AI ain’t gonna show up when your septic tank blows,” Wilson Jr. counters, “but, hey, Gary will, and if his name is Gary, you’re probably in good shape. At least, that’s just what I’ve experienced.”

“Gary” was inspired by a somewhat mysterious tragedy. In 2023, Wilson spotted a memorial billboard along the highway that paid tribute to a pre-teen named Gary. The details of the boy’s death weren’t obvious, but the name jolted Wilson.

“There ain’t a lot of boys named Gary these days,” he thought.

It became the first line of the chorus as he wrote the bulk of a song on his drive, honoring a simple, fictional man with numerous contradictions. Gary is not particularly religious, but worries that people no longer pray when they eat. He’s concerned about saving money for the future, but he smokes, engaging in an expensive habit that reduces his time on Earth. He’s talented and dependable, but mostly overlooked. He keeps up with the news of the world but doesn’t speak with his brother. Still, Gary is generally a good guy.

“The Garys that I grew up with were guys that could just fix everything,” Wilson says. “They always had a cigarette kind of stuck to their lip while they were talking, and they’d always shoot you straight and always did you a solid.”

Wilson bookended the chorus with the “ain’t a lot of boys named Gary” line, then captured the character’s complexities in the verses, written mostly without access to a guitar. When he finally put it all to music, he purposely matched a familiar, repeating, four-chord progression.

“That really repetitive loop was important because Gary’s a hustler, he’s busy – like, even when he’s retired, he’s trying to keep himself busy,” Wilson notes. “I wanted to add this feeling of unnecessary tempo to it, like he’s retired, but he’s on the move for no reason. He’s gonna run until his heart stops, and literally, it does at the end.”

He played it at some point for producer Ben West (Carly Pearce, Ella Langley), and when they started sorting through material for Wilson’s next album in December 2023, West brought up “Gary.” It wasn’t done, Wilson insisted. Over the next several months, he toyed with ideas for a bridge, and he finally developed one by breaking from the song’s narrative tone and elevating into a highly emotional section. He immediately added the song to his set list as he toured a one-man acoustic show, and it landed repeatedly with the audience.

When he shifted into a band format, his two supporting musicians weren’t familiar with “Gary,” so he had them sit out the first time until the bridge, then jump in and add a lengthy vamp after the last verse that extended the performance to more than five minutes. It worked so well that it became the de facto arrangement.

Wilson finally recorded “Gary” in February 2025 at Gravitron Studios, built in a converted house near David Lipscomb University. West and Wilson didn’t want the band – including drummer Julian Dorio, bassist Miles Burger and steel guitarist Scotty Murray – to grow stale sitting around while Wilson recorded the solo portion of the song, so they cut the back end of the performance first. They went after it with a certain recklessness.

“We wanted to be more like garage rock, kind of capture the live band,” West says. “It’s a little more guerilla recording style in that way, and we weren’t too careful about anything.”

Once the full-band instrumental was done, Wilson tackled the acoustic body of “Gary,” but there was nothing folky about the performance. West miked the guitar five different ways, capturing different elements of the sound in each track, giving them the ability to make that guitar sound bigger on playback. Most listeners wouldn’t notice it’s a solo performance unless they were told.

Wilson gave it a raw tone, too.

“I’m playing very high up on the neck, so you can actually hear the scrape of the pick hitting the wood on my fretboard,” Wilson says. “It’s actually like a hi-hat.”

Further experimentation led to what West calls “an orchestra of gut strings.”

“He hit this chord that had a weird note in it, and he had a really long reverb on it,” West recalls. “It’s the sound that starts the song, along with the harp, where it’s just like a chime, and it doesn’t sound really like a guitar. It could be anything.”

Changing the tone of the five guitar tracks or double-tracking Wilson’s vocals in different stanzas helped to create some drama to the arrangement, even as Wilson played alone.

“Up until the band part, it had to be just super-minimalistic,” Wilson suggests, “because Gary is super-minimalistic.”

Big Loud had a different song in mind for a single, but when the team heard “Gary” in October, the plan changed. Suddenly, West needed to cut more than a minute out of it to provide a single version that was less than four minutes.

“We were pretty brutal,” West says. “We got the knife out and started hacking away at the arrangement.”

They preserved the story, though, with “Gary” coming off as a quirky, lonely guy who feels his life slipping away and wonders if his classic blue-collar skills will go extinct in the next generation. That would mean all the Garys in society are at risk.

“We all kind of feel,” West says, “like Gary in a weird way, watching the world change around you, not sure where you belong in it.”

But Gary, and others like him, should always feel at home in country, even as AI challenges their identities and sense of purpose.

“Country music has always kind of figured out a way to celebrate the working human, the person that gets up and gets things done,” Wilson says. “I’m trying to figure out a new way to celebrate that character.”

Zach Bryan‘s wife, Samantha Leonard, had an extra special “something borrowed” on the couple’s wedding day in December.

As the country singer revealed on Monday (Jan. 5) on his Instagram Story, his new spouse paid tribute to his late mother, Annette, by adding a sweet detail to her bridal gown. Sharing a photo of Leonard laughing on the big day as someone helps put on her veil, Bryan wrote, “Samantha went out of her way to put my mom’s wedding dress lace on her dress.”

“I cried for a good bit,” he continued. “Meant so much sweetheart, thank you.”

Bryan followed it up with a photo of his mom on her wedding day, writing, “Wish you were here about now gorgeous.”

The Grammy winner and his partner got married just before New Year’s, with Leonard sharing photos from the stunning ceremony in Spain on Instagram. Bryan also posted a photo of himself and Leonard in their wedding-day attire and quoted his idol Bruce Springsteen in the caption: “Tougher than the rest.”

The news came as a surprise to fans, who found out that Bryan was in a relationship with Leonard after the pair were first spotted together in summer 2025. The musician was previously married to Rose Madden from 2020 to 2021, after which he dated podcaster Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia — who later accused him of emotional abuse — from 2023 to 2024.

Bryan has also been open in the past about how much his mom means to him, making Leonard’s gesture on the day of their nuptials even more heartwarming. In November 2024, upon the release of his song “This World’s a Giant,” the singer shared a lengthy Instagram caption about visiting Annette’s gravestone in Oklahoma, eight years after her death in 2016.

“I came to realize just like in the past, that she never would call me again,” he wrote at the time. “Told her I quit touring because I got accepted to get my masters in Paris next year, I told her I was back in Oklahoma, told her about all my best friends in New York and all the nights we howled with the moon, told her about the immeasurable laughter my band and me have shared these last five years, all the calluses on my finger tips, every tear shed, told her about making it on The Rolling Stone and most importantly told her about porch swinging with my beautiful sister.”

Bryan’s next album, With Heaven On Top, is set to drop Friday (Jan. 9).

Lorde, Stray Kids and A$AP Rocky will headline this summer’s Governors Ball Festival in New York. The festival announced the full lineup for the 2026 event at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Tuesday morning (Jan. 6), revealing that Baby Keem, Kali Uchis, BLACKPINK’s JENNIE, Katseye, Major Lazer, Pierce the Veil, Dominic Fike and more will take the stage from June 5-7.

Though Lorde played Gov Ball in 2017, this year marks her first time as a headliner, while Harlem native Rocky previously top-lined the event in 2021. He will have plenty of fellow New Yorkers to commiserate with that weekend, including Geese, The Dare, Del Water Gap, Arcy Drive and Lexa Gates, as well as up and comers The Backfires and Chanpan.

Other acts slated to perform this year include: Blood Orange, Clipse, Mariah The Scientist, Wet Leg, Amyl and The Sniffers, Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist, 2hollis, Ravyn Lenae, King Princess, The Beths, Snow Strippers, Thee Sacred Souls, Spacey Jane, Hot Mulligan, Fcukers, Rachel Chinouriri, Slayyyter and more. 

Fans can sign up now for the SMS pre-sale, which will kick off on Thursday (Jan. 8) from 10 a.m.-11 a.m. ET. The pre-sale is the only way to guarantee tickets at the lowest price; click here to sign up for a pre-sale passcode. Ticket prices will increase after 11 a.m. ET on Thursday when the public on-sale begins.

Last year’s 15th anniversary fest was headlined by Tyler, the Creator, Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier, along with Benson Boone, Mk.gee, T-Pain, Conan Gray, Wallows, Mariah the Scientist, Royel Otis and more.

Gov Ball is teaming up with Spotify this year for an in-app experience that will spotlight the overlap between a user’s listening history and the 2026 lineup, generating a “Festival Persona” based on the attendees’ unique listening habits and a custom playlist pairing the fans’ top artists on the lineup; click here to personalize your Gov Ball experience.

Check out the full 2026 Governors Ball lineup here.

Josh Charles has no complaints about appearing alongside his former Dead Poets Society co-star Ethan Hawke as mad scientists in the video for Taylor Swift‘s 2024 single “Fortnight.” Hell, after the clip won the video of the year prize at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, Charles got his a Moon Person for his role.

“I got a Moon Man. It was pretty cool. The Video Music Awards, when I grew up, was the thing,” Charles, 54, told Jimmy Fallon on Monday night’s (Jan. 5) Tonight Show. “The idea that that came just speaks to what an incredibly generous, awesome person Taylor Swift is.”

Now, here’s where things got a bit dicey.

Fallon asked Best Medicine star Charles about rumors that he “got into a fight” with Swift’s fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, on the set of the video, a tale Hawke first shared last year on the Rich Eisen Show. During that appearance, Hawke said that Baltimore Ravens superfan Charles would not leave Kelce alone about the Chiefs’ heartbreaking 17-10 win over Baltimore in the 2024 AFC Championship game.

Specifically, Charles was worked up about a specific call he thought went the wrong way, with Hawke counseling his fellow actor to “let it go,” even as he praised Kelce being “super polite” about the awkward interaction.

“A fight? No, he exaggerated this. It wasn’t a fight,” Charles assured Fallon. “I’ve always liked Travis Kelce. I just thought he was so cool. But that year they beat us in the AFC Championship game — they beat the Ravens — he was a real jerk that year. So I kind of fell off of him.”

Describing the mood on set of the clip that also featured co-vocalist Post Malone, Charles said when he met Kelce he was blunt about his assessment of the sure-fire future football hall of famer, telling him, “‘You know I always liked you and this year you were kind of a d–k.’”

Fallon couldn’t believe it, shocked that Charles would confront the three-time Super Bowl champ, and legendarily good guy baller, saying, “You said that to Travis Kelce? He’s one of the most lovable people I know!”

Charles was unbowed, saying, “I did. I said, ‘What was up with that?’ And he laughed. He was like, ‘You know what, you’re right. I’m gonna tell you why.” The actor then said Kelce admitted that the Chiefs were “most worried about that game” that year and they were determined to come out on top. “He’s like, ‘I knew I had to come in with some swagger,’ and he did,” Charles said of Kelce. “He got one of our veterans to commit a personal foul. He got in our heads, and it worked for them, and they won the game.”

In the end, Charles admitted that Kelce was “actually great. We talked all different kinds of football… Such a good dude. I really like him a lot.” And even though Charles now really likes Kelce the man, when it comes to the gridiron, the star said his feelings still run purple, black, gold and red. “I’ll root against him,” Charles doubled-down of the football star who may have played his final game on Sunday, which the Chiefs lost in a 14-12 heartbreaker against the three-win Las Vegas Raiders.

And while Charles’ beloved Ravens won’t be making a Super Bowl run this year, he can take solace that Kelce will also be watching from home as the Chiefs will miss the playoffs for the first time in a decade this year after a dismal 6-11 season.

Watch Charles on the Tonight Show below.