First things first. There are (officially) no wedding bells, wedding plans or even an engagement announcement from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. The couple have been making headlines for the past year for their very public, globe-hopping romance, but despite the persistent rumors, as far as anyone knows they are still just dating.

That didn’t stop a caller on Travis and his brother Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast this week from trying to Trojan Horse some news out of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis by asking the siblings how they feel about fall weddings. The caller, William, said he and his girlfriend talked about getting married in the fall, but he unequivocally told her “good luck with that, I’m gonna be at a football game.”

“Ridiculous,” Jason laughed. “Sounds like this marriage is gonna work out great!”

Travis — who has gotten used to all manner of back door efforts to get him to talk about the couple’s relationship — countered with a very diplomatic answer. “I actually don’t know people who’ve gotten married in the fall,” he said on Wednesday’s (Jan. 8) episode. “My friends always do it in the summer.” Jason noted that “we can’t go usually,” when it comes to nuptials that take place as the NFL season is heating up as the leaves fall.

Travis agreed, counseling the couple to find a weekend when their preferred team is not playing a good team. “Also, if you really do have a problem with that, maybe it’s in her best interest to not have it in the fall so that she knows you’re invested in the anniversary every time it comes around,” he said diplomatically.

He added that the brothers really have no say on the matter, adding that he’s seen weddings in “f–kin’ February… [and] everywhere but the fall. So I’m not sure if the fall is a good wedding season.” Married father of four — with another on the way — Jason also noted that William can record the game because, “there are certain things that are more important than football and if the wedding is not more important than football, we got some bigger issues here.”

“Don’t make my friends have to not go,” Travis said about autumn wedding planning. “Don’t make my friends choose whether or not they’ll have to sell their tickets that week.” In his finest advice, retired Eagles Super Bowl winner Jason said that there are many things more important than football, and “not arguing with your wife is high up there.”

There was, of course, plenty of actual football talk as well, with the brothers setting up this weekend’s first round of NFL playoff games and answering another burning, intimate, “not dumb” question from a caller about their equipment. A woman who rang noted that after watching football with her family she had a query only the siblings could answer: “what happened to the jockstrap?”

“I don’t think you boys wear ’em anymore,” she said as Travis and Jason looked, well, dumb-founded. “You just see everything hangin’ and movin’ and runnin’ and, oh my goodness, oh my goodness!”

“Not as aware as this woman about what’s going on with the genitals throughout the game,” Travis said. “But watch the game for whatever you watch the game for. I’m not here to judge.” Three-time Super Bowl champ Travis will have some time to ponder that some more this weekend thanks to the first-round bye the Chiefs have because of their top seeding in the AFC. Their first game in a bid to be the first NFL team to win three Super Bowls in a row will take place on either January 18 or 19.

Check out the Kelce’s answer about fall weddings below.

As an artist, Joy Huerta says she likes a good challenge. So when the producers of Broadway’s upcoming adaptation of Real Women Have Curves reached out to her in early 2020 to see if she could write the songs for the musical, she was swept off her feet.

“I said, ‘For sure!’,” the Grammy Award-winning singer of Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy — who had never composed music for theater before — tells Billboard Español. “I saw [the 2002 movie] and said, ‘I love the idea, of course, let’s do it.’ I think it was the weekend before we went into lockdown.” She adds: “You dream of challenges, but you don’t know what those challenges are going to look like.”

Five years later, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is finally giving a glimpse of Huerta’s work ahead of its spring Broadway opening. First, the production released an acoustic performance video of “If I Were A Bird” three weeks ago, in which she sings with fellow Mexican actor and singer Aline Mayagoitia. Now, on Thursday (Jan. 9), arrives “Flying Away,” which Huerta — who is not part of the cast — performs in the clip accompanied by Nadia DiGiallonardo, Rich Mercurio and Yair Evnine. “They gave up so much so I could have more/ And if I don’t go what was all of it for,” say part of the lyrics.

“’Flying Away’ is a song of longing of this teenage girl becoming a woman, who is growing up in a double culture [as the daughter of Latin American immigrants.] She’s becoming her own person while she’s trying to discover who she wants to be, who she is supposed to be, and who her family need her to be,” Huerta explains. “It’s a big struggle for her, and I think she doesn’t wanna let anyone down, but she ultimately has to think about her, without forgetting about her family. ‘Flying Away’ is that type of song about, how can I spread my wings, how can I fly, how can I be who I was born to be without leaving everyone behind.”

Additionally, fans can stream four demo tracks from the show, including “Make It Work,” “Flying Away,” “Daydream,” and “Real Women Have Curves,” all performed by Huerta, here. All songs were written by the Mexican star along with composer/lyricist Benjamin Velez, whom she calls “a very talented guy.”

Known for Hot Latin Songs hits including “Corre!”, “Me Soltaste” and “Ecos de Amor” as part of Jesse & Joy, the duo she shares with her brother, Huerta — who could relate to the story as the Mexican daughter of an American mother — has enjoyed learning the craft of writing songs for a different form of art in this project.

“Also understanding in what way you are telling the story, because the way I tell stories is in 3 minutes. Here, I especially had time to strike a certain nerve, knowing that what I did or said was going to have a domino effect half an hour, 45 minutes later,” she says enthusiastically. “And that’s been phenomenal because for me now writing songs for Jesse & Joy, knowing what I know after five years of working on this project, it’s been fascinating — it’s like I’m stealing little tricks from different sides for both worlds, and it’s been quite fun.”

Based on the play by Josefina López and the HBO’s movie adaptation, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is set in East L.A. in 1987 and follows 18-year-old Ana García, a daughter of immigrants who struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desire of her mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory. The 2002 movie, directed by Patricia Cardoso, put a young America Ferrera on the map.

Now Huerta hopes the show helps people see real immigrants in a different light.

“Something that’s really affected me with this story is that all these issues that were happening in the 80s are still happening today, and you would think no, it’s 2025, so many things have changed, it should be easier, and it’s not,” the artist says, wiping tears from her eyes.

“I have dual citizenship, I feel very privileged, but it is very difficult for those who are going to live right now in this new change of government,” she adds. “One of the reasons I’m very excited about this play is that I feel like, whenever you try and tell the story through a family perspective, a family point of view, I feel like maybe we can stop looking at our differences and we can start looking at each other as people. And when that happens, I think change really starts happening.”

As for her aspirations not only to write but also to perform on Broadway, Huerta would love to do it one day, but right now she is enjoying the ride behind the scenes. “I would definitely love to do it at some point. I would also love writing more for musicals,” she says. “This has been such a rewarding and such a beautiful experience.”

Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is produced by Waitress producers Barry and Fran Weissler, and Jack Noseworthy. It has a book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin, music supervision by Nadia DiGiallonardo, and direction & choreography by Tony and Olivier Award winner Sergio Trujillo. Cast and additional creative team will be announced at a later date.

It arrives on Broadway following its 2023 world premiere at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T) at Harvard University, with previews beginning on Tuesday, April 1, and an opening night set for Sunday, April 27 at the James Earl Jones Theatre (138 West 48^thSt). Tickets can be purchased online now at Telecharge.com or by calling 212-239-6200.

Watch Joy Huerta singing “Flying Away” from Broadway’s Real Women Have Curves: The Musical above.

Jennie’s to-do list is growing by the minute. For the last year, the pop star has been so consumed with the launch of her own label and arrival of her highly anticipated solo debut album — plus, now, the impending reunion of Blackpink, the globally renowned K-pop quartet she is part of — that she hasn’t had a moment to envision her ideal release-night party. That is, if she even has time for one.

“I like planning parties. I like creating an album,” Jennie says. “It’s fun, but sometimes it gets hard. I’m just trying to make sure everything is perfectly done.”

Sitting on a cozy couch in a small back room of a photo studio in Seoul’s Gangnam district, Jennie’s post-shoot look on this late-October afternoon calls to mind Gossip Girl “It” mom Lily van der Woodsen after a particularly tiring day. Leaning back in matching black pants and zip-up hoodie after hours spent staring at a camera, Jennie slides on a pair of dark-lensed Gentle Monster sunglasses to give her eyes, and perhaps herself, a bit of a break. (She partnered with the eyewear brand in April 2024 on her own line, Jentle Salon.)

The 28-year-old appears at ease despite the chaos swirling around her. She’s also strikingly self-aware, which seems to be both freeing and consuming for her — she knows the pursuit of perfection is exhausting and never-ending, and yet she’ll settle for nothing less. Recently, this has manifested in the secrecy surrounding her upcoming album, which for the self-described “workaholic” is far from manufactured marketing mystique. Rather, it may well be a way to buy time until she feels the project she has dreamed of for so long is as close to perfect as possible — even as pressure to release it builds.

“It’s not nice to be someone who’s always like, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say anything,’ ” she says of the album she began working on in early 2024 — and that the world still knows very little about. “I want to say I’m almost there,” she offers. One of her biggest takeaways from the process? “I’m just going to say, ‘I don’t do well with time,’ ” she says with a laugh.

Since Jennie became a YG Entertainment trainee at 14 and a Blackpink member at 20, her career has been clearly defined and carefully handled — a meticulous approach that has yielded historic results and global fame. In 2019, Blackpink became the first K-pop girl group to perform at Coachella, and just four years later, the first Asian act to headline the festival. And the group — rounded out by Lisa, Rosé and Jisoo — made history in 2022 as the first South Korean girl group to top the Billboard 200, with its celebrated second album, Born Pink.

Yet that well-paved path to stardom also offered Jennie little time to explore her own creative voice. From Blackpink’s 2016 debut through 2023, she released just two solo singles, both through the group’s label, YG: the aptly titled Korean-English “Solo” in 2018 and the dance-pop “You & Me” in 2023, the latter of which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart. All the while, Jennie was growing eager to piece together “the puzzle of my dreams,” as she calls her solo-album-to-be. So in 2023, when Blackpink re-signed with YG for group activities and its members became free agents for the first time in their careers for solo activities, she jumped at the chance.

“While I was on my last Blackpink tour [it wrapped in 2023], I couldn’t stop myself from starting to plan ahead. I’m just like that,” she says. “I listed out the things that I want in my life and started pinpointing, or prioritizing, what’s my very next step. And instantly, I was like, ‘I still haven’t accomplished the dream of releasing a solo album.’ I wanted to satisfy myself by achieving that goal.”

With a clear runway, she set out to do just that. In December 2023, she announced her own independent label, OddAtelier (commonly referred to as OA). At the start of 2024, she began her “album journey” in Los Angeles, where she says she worked on “99%” of the project, whose title has yet to be unveiled. By September, she announced a partnership with Columbia Records, and in October, she released the album’s fierce and sassy lead single, “Mantra,” which peaked at Nos. 2 and 3 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. and Billboard Global 200 charts, respectively.

“It’s been a long process because American artists, they usually take a few years to make one album, but we have time limitations because [this year] she’s got to go back into Blackpink activities again,” says Alison Chang, OA’s head of global business and Jennie’s self-described “right hand.” “She really wanted to show her artistry through this album, and in the beginning, we were meeting producers and writers who she didn’t really match with. I think finding her sound throughout this process was kind of hard, and landing with ‘Mantra,’ that took a very long time. Just finding that first perfect single to let the world know this is the start of her solo career.”

And while Jennie’s years as a trainee prepared her for nearly every aspect of stardom, nothing could have braced her for the pressure and responsibility that comes with being truly in charge.

“The thing is, even back in the [trainee] days, I was never OK with what other people approved. I would check on every single team like, ‘Can I look at other options?’ ” she recalls. “So I am used to the process, but it’s more of a mental thing. The idea of ‘you’re on your own, make the right decision.’ And sometimes that’s the scariest feeling. Sometimes I wake up like, ‘I don’t want this overwhelming control.’ ”

---

“Just touched down in L.A.,” Jennie sings on “Mantra,” later noting, “We’ll be 20 minutes late ’cause we had to do an In-N-Out drive-by” — and days after its release, she found herself back in town.

She was there to perform the playful pop hit on Jimmy Kimmel Live! — her solo U.S. TV debut — and it was the first time in a long time she had seen her fans, who gathered en masse for the appearance. “Mantra” “was a good start for her because it [showed the] things people still expect from Jennie — she’s dancing and she’s singing and rapping at the same time,” Columbia vp of A&R Nicole Kim says.

Later that night, it was Jennie’s turn to be a fan: She attended Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour and snapped pics with Charli, Sivan and her pal and The Idol co-star Lily-Rose Depp. Jennie made her TV acting debut on the shocking 2023 drama about an aspiring pop star (Depp) and her controversial relationship with a producer (The Weeknd); Jennie’s collaborative single with Depp and The Weeknd, “One of the Girls,” became her first appearance on the Hot 100 under her own name.

Jennie feels “more freedom” in L.A. compared with her native Seoul, saying, “I could definitely go out and eat whenever I want to, wherever I want to,” but adds that the biggest difference between the two cities is who surrounds her. “I learn a lot from people [in L.A.]. It’s a great environment, especially for people in music, to meet people that can inspire you.” (She was back in November for Tyler, The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, where she made a surprise appearance during Matt Champion’s set to perform their 2024 collaboration, “Slow Motion,” and posed with Doechii backstage. In April, she’ll return to California to make her solo debut at Coachella.)

It’s why, Jennie says, recording most of her album in L.A. was “very intentionally done. I just really wanted to throw myself out there to experience it. [In Seoul], I was so comforted in an easy environment that I created a long time ago, and I didn’t enjoy it. I was like, ‘No, if this is your career and if this is your life, explore and learn.’ I kept telling myself that.”

Jennie had worked with just one producer, acclaimed K-pop veteran Teddy Park, prior to her debut album — so when it came time to build a new creative network in a new city, she says the process was “rough.”

“I struggled a lot in the beginning,” she admits. “A few months, I would say, was just me throwing myself out there, walking into rooms filled with new people. I just had to keep knocking on the door, like, ‘Is this it?’ ‘Is this it?’ and then eventually, we got to a point where I found a good group of people that I linked with, sonically and as friends.” (“Mantra” was co-written by songwriters affiliated with management, recording and publishing company Electric Feel such as Billy Walsh, Jumpa and Claudia Valentina, among others, and was mostly produced by El Guincho, known for his work with Rosalía and Camila Cabello, among other left-of-center pop girls.)

Jennie spent six years as a YG trainee before being placed in a group — the longest of any of Blackpink’s members — and while working on her solo album, she reflected on those early days, especially her individual tastes. Back then, she had time to listen to “so much music,” she recalls. “I can’t explain how much that helped in terms of the beginning era of making this album. I never really had a chance to look back at myself [during Blackpink’s rise], so [this process] was a time to really be like, ‘What was I interested in back then?’ Those times played a big role to get it started.”

So did her childhood. Born in South Korea as Jennie Kim, she recalls her mother playing a lot of ’90s pop music, which she says was “rare” for anyone living in Korea at the time. “She had a big passion for Western culture, too,” Jennie says. “She would be playing Norah Jones and Backstreet Boys … Naturally, I was drawn to R&B and, of course, Korea is known for its K-pop culture. So that was also very familiar. I was just always into the idea of music.” (Jennie says she and her mom still “live super close to each other,” allowing them to see each other often.)

From a young age, Jennie also craved independence. Following a vacation when she was 10 with her mom to Auckland, New Zealand, Jennie spent the next five years there attending school and participating in a homestay with a Korean family. That’s primarily where she learned English and where she ideated her alter ego of Ruby-Jane, inspired by the desire for a middle name like her new friends all had. “I feel like I am great at creating different characters within myself,” she says. “I like that about me.”

These characters, it seems, all come to play on her upcoming debut (along with a few features she’s hesitant to share more on just yet). “I intend to complete myself as Jennie Ruby-Jane, for that to be a whole person, in a way,” she reveals. “You’ll definitely know what I mean once the album drops, but because I’m playing with a lot of different genres and elements — I’m rapping here, I’m singing here, I’m harmonizing here, I’m talking here … The overall sound was me making sure I like every single [song]. I didn’t want to be forced into putting a song onto my album — that’s what I really fought for. And I was lucky to have all these people believe in me and support me so I could get to a level where we were like, ‘Wow. I think we’re ready.’ ”

---

When it came to her new label, Jennie knew what she wanted in a name: something that looked and sounded pretty, that represented herself and her team — but that wasn’t so specific it would box them in. “I wanted it to be [a name that signifies] we’re open to do anything,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone to label what we were.” OddAtelier, named for the French word for a collaborative workshop or studio, “just made sense,” she says. “Atelier is a place where we create art.”

Still, soon after deciding to launch it in late 2023, Jennie took a look at herself in the mirror and thought, “ ‘Do you realize the choice that you’ve made?’ It was really an all-or-nothing situation,” she says. “I didn’t one day decide I want to make a label for myself. For me, building the relationship with my team, we started dreaming together, naturally. Because a lot of them I’ve worked with for a long time. So when we had a chance to go our individual way, I thought that would be like six years in the future. I didn’t think it would be so soon. So I got the courage to start my independence in life, and every step of the way has been a learning process for me. I’m studying this whole new world. Now that it’s been a year, I can say I’m glad I was brave enough to have started this label. I couldn’t be more proud.”

As for whether she plans to sign other artists to OA, her response makes clear how overwhelming a moment this is: “I’ve been getting this question left and right, and my answer is ‘Please, I am so busy on this album. Let’s not even get my brain on that path just yet,’ ” she says while laughing through a polite sigh.

Chang, OA’s global head of business, met Jennie in 2019, when she was working with YG Entertainment USA handling licensing, merchandising and intellectual property for acts including Blackpink. The two “just hit it off,” Chang says. “We formed this bond, and then from there, we just saw each other every day, and it evolved into managing her stuff along with Blackpink. We went on tour together, and then [in 2023], she was like, ‘Hey, I want to create OA.’

“From the day I met her, I just knew, ‘Wow, this girl is so smart,’ ” Chang continues. “She knows what she wants. She’s ambitious. Our standards for each other are so high. As a solo artist, she’s able to spread her wings a bit more and have more authority over her creative direction and strategy for how she wants to develop into an even bigger global artist.”

The hope is that Jennie will become the Korean pop star to represent the Asian music market — a bit like Bad Bunny does the Spanish-language one. But she and her team couldn’t conquer the world on their own. Chang knew that if the goal was to break even wider in the United States, they would need more resources and experience. “It was just a given,” she says. “We needed to partner with an American label.”

She and Jennie took “a lot” of label meetings in late 2023, but ultimately signed with Columbia for its “proactiveness” and how much the team they met had researched Jennie ahead of time. “Jennie values her roots and heritage more than anyone else, and while she does want to establish herself as a global artist, including in the U.S. market, she also deeply cares about her base and wants to make them proud,” says Kim, who worked at HYBE with acts including BTS prior to joining Columbia. “And I think our team is working really hard to support her in achieving that.” (For additional support, Jeremy Erlich will co-manage alongside OA; as Interscope’s executive vp of business development in the late 2010s, he helped facilitate the conversations between the label and YG that ultimately led to their global partnership and Blackpink signing with Interscope.)

But as the web around Jennie spreads, she remains firmly at its center — and is intent on calling the shots. Jennie attributes that to the woman she calls the “No. 1 boss lady”: her mom. “I don’t even have to look anywhere else. She’s taught me how to be a woman, how to be a boss, how to be myself. She’s my idol,” she gushes.

While coming up in Blackpink, Jennie says she had to learn how to compromise; with her own album, the only person she has to do that with is herself. “It’s a fight between me, myself and I — I’m not easy to convince,” she says. “It’s not easy working with me.” And that’s why Jennie craved this experience: It forced her to look into a metaphorical mirror.

“I needed this. I wanted this,” she says, her tone growing more confident. “The more I get to know myself, the more I try to love myself. I’ve had a time in my life where I didn’t — I had no clue how to do that. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was living for. The time where I was feeling clueless. The fact that I’ve moved on from that phase and being so committed to myself, I’m very proud.

“It’s so easy to lose yourself, which is OK,” she continues. “There was also a time where I was feeling lost about ‘K-pop,’ ‘pop music,’ all these labels that I was chasing after … Now that I look back, I just want to tell myself, ‘Maybe enjoy it a little, feeling lost in the struggle, because there will be a time where you don’t even have time to think you’re lost.’ ”

---

Blackpink’s group chat is ID’d with a simple yet fitting emoji: a family of four. Jennie says her groupmates check in there as often as they can.

“We are all so caught up with life. Obviously, we can’t be calling each other every day,” she says. “Even though we know we can’t see each other so much, it doesn’t really feel any different than all the other years because we know we’re here for each other. They’re literally a phone call away. And at this point, we respect each other’s space so much. So if there’s anything to be happy for, to celebrate, we’re all in it together.”

For the group’s dedicated Blinks, Blackpink’s 2025 reunion, which will include new music and a tour — and follows Rosé’s just-released solo album, a forthcoming album and a role on The White Lotus for Lisa and an acting gig on a forthcoming K-drama and a Dior campaign for Jisoo — is indeed cause for celebration. “I’ve missed the girls. I’ve missed doing tours with them. I miss our silly moments,” Jennie says. “I’m excited to see what everyone brings. You know, everyone took their own journey [during] this time, and I’m excited to share that with the girls. I want to say it’s going to be the most powerful [versions] of ourselves that anyone has seen.”

As Blackpink’s members continue to grow, Chang says the best part of her front-row seat to Jennie’s journey has been seeing her evolution. “People don’t really know, but she’s a very shy, introverted person,” she says, “and seeing her throughout this whole process, I’m just really in awe of how much she’s grown. She put her heart into this.” As Kim recalls, while Jennie was recording her album, there were periods when she would be in sessions every day until six or seven the next morning: “It was surprising to me that she wanted to stay longer and write more. She was really, really passionate. It was inspiring for me to see her working so hard in the studio.”

Most of Jennie’s album, as a result, is rooted in ­deeply personal songwriting about “what I’ve experienced, what I resonate to or what I want in my life. That’s one other thing that’s changed from being in Blackpink, is that I get to say my message in my way.”

And with so much time to reflect — both in and out of the studio — parts of Jennie’s life came into focus for the first time, including the realization that this is her life. Given her fluctuating schedule, she says her body often struggles to catch up or get into a rhythm, but over time, she has become better at prioritizing self-care. Her ideal day off (“Which is rare,” she says) includes morning coffee or tea, Pilates, a sauna or bath, dinner with friends and organizing her home. “That’s healing for me,” she says.

Understandably, she was thinking of such things while getting her hair and makeup done earlier today as she prepared for her Billboard shoot, and they inspired a thought that she shared with her team. “I said if I ever had a chance to tell people that are in their teenage [years] that look up to this job or this world, all I can say from experience is, ‘This is your life — and you have a whole lifetime to live.’ Not the next 10 years, not the next three years. It’s amazing to chase after your dream, but don’t forget to live.”

For now, Jennie is taking her own advice. When asked if her solo debut is the start of a continued solo career, her answer is succinct: “Let’s not put pressure on me. I want to live my present for now, and then let me ease myself into the next thing.”

Has she ever done that before?

“Oh, definitely not,” she says. “Every day has made me into who I am right now.”

This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.