Stadium shows, records set on the Billboard charts, awards. All of it, nice. But for Teddy Swims, the moment he knew he’d really “made it” was when he collaborated with The Wiggles.

No lie. Swims is at the back-end of an action-packed tour of Australia and New Zealand, during which he performed at the NRL Grand Final, delivered a keynote at SXSW Sydney, and, yes, performed on stage with The Wiggles.

This morning, Swims stopped by Nova 100’s Jase & Lauren for a chat about the land Down Under, his tattoo obsession, and realizing his dream as an unofficial Wiggle.  

The Wiggles joined Teddy Swims onstage during his concert at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on Oct. 15, for a medley of “Rock-A-Bye Your Bear,” “Hot Potato” and “Fruit Salad.”

“Yeah, that was the coolest thing ever,” he remarks. “So, I reached out to them years ago when I first started coming up on Instagram, because they’re really my heroes growing up, and always wanted to collab with them. And so I reached out to them, like, ‘you’re my heroes. I love you’.”

Fortune smiled on Swims as he met the children’s entertainers backstage on the Today Show, ahead of the rugby league finale.

“I met them in the hallway, and they were like, ‘you want to play ‘Fruit Salad’ with us?’ And I was like, ‘oh my god!’… I was absolutely starstruck.”

@thetodayshow

The Wiggles and Teddy Swims is the duet we didn’t know we needed! 🤩 #9Today @The Wiggles @Teddy Swims

♬ original sound – The Today Show

Swims played his cards right and asked The Wiggles to join him at a show, which they did.

“Oh dude, it was so sick,” he recounts. “We did this whole three song medley, and the whole band was involved. It was the coolest thing ever. I think it was, like, I even said it afterwards, that was my ‘made it’ moment for me.”

Swims has some serious runs on the board. He made history in July when “Lose Control” became the first song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to spend triple-digit weeks on the chart, as it reached its milestone 100th frame. The next best is Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” which logged 91 weeks on the tally in 2021-22.

The Atlanta-born singer’s blend of R&B, country, and soul has seen him fly high on Australia’s charts, too. In January, Swims’ I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2) opened at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, while “Lose Control” went to No. 4 on the national singles survey.  

Speaking on Australian breakfast radio, Swims admitted he’s “running out of space” for new tattoos, but there’s countless blank canvases among his pals.

“Right before my son was born,” he notes, “I was trying to take a couple months off the booze and so we’d always have kind of party after the show in the green room and stuff, there’s so many people. So I was like, instead of fighting the urge to drink, I could just pull the tattoo machine out and all the drunks would just let me tattoo them.”

Swims’ I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy Tour of Australasia continues tonight, Oct. 23 with the second of three dates at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena. Matt Corby is the support act and Frontier Touring is producing the trek, which ends Oct. 29 with a sold out concert at Perth’s RAC Arena.

Stream his Nova interview below.

Since Jelly Roll arrived on the country scene over the past three years, he’s always put his wife Bunnie Xo and their relationship front and center at awards shows and on red carpets. But there was a time years ago when the hitmaker was struggling with substance abuse issues and their marriage wasn’t always picture-perfect.

During his appearance this week on the Human School podcast, Jelly Roll got candid with host Miles Adcox about one of his lowest points.

“I don’t talk about this publicly at all, but one of the worst moments of my adulthood was when I had an affair on my wife,” Jelly said. “Because it was the first time that I was like, ‘I really can’t get this right at all. I know I’m in love with this woman.’ It was just such a, just really, really, really blew me back.”

To get where they are now, Jelly said “I did a lot of work to repair that relationship, you know what I mean? The repair has been special. And we’re stronger than we could have ever been. I wish our story would have went in a way that it never had an affair, but – and I’m in no way glad it happened – but man, I’m proud of who we are today.”

Jelly Roll acknowledged that he was running with a much different crowd when he cheated on Bunnie, and among his friends at the time, abusing drugs and being unfaithful to your partner were par for the course.

“I was hanging around a bunch of people that were cheating on their wives,” he said. “When I was doing cocaine, I was hanging around a bunch of people that were doing cocaine. When I was drinking a lot, I was hanging around a lot of people that were drinking a lot.”

Since then, he’s dropped those friends, gotten clean and devoted himself to the marriage. When it comes to the friends he surrounds himself with now, Jelly said: “I wanted to be friends with people I wanted to be like.”

Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo have been married since 2016 and they renewed their vows in 2023. They share two children from previous relationships and have been very public about their IVF journey, with plans to keep growing their family.

You can watch the full hour-plus Human School interview below, with the affair conversation starting around the 48:30 mark.

Luke Combs and Opry Entertainment Group (OEG) will bring a new Category 10 entertainment venue to the Flamingo Las Vegas next fall. Inspired by Combs’s chart-topping 2017 hit “Hurricane,” the Category 10 brand’s flagship venue opened in Nashville in late 2024.

The three-story venue will feature Hurricane Hall, a main dining hall that will include three bars, a central stage and dance floor, as well as state-of-the-art video, acoustics and lighting. Hurricane Hall will offer curated artist lineups daily and host the brand’s free line dancing lessons. The second floor will include The Still, inspired by Combs’s songwriting talents, which will offer a more intimate area with a view of the stage, as well as an extensive collection of bourbons hand-selected by Combs. The Still will also have an adjacent outdoor patio space.

The third level will hold The Eye Rooftop, a covered rooftop space featuring a DJ booth, dance floor and bar with views of the Las Vegas Strip. The venue will also feature the Beautiful Crazy Women’s Lounge, located inside the women’s restroom on the first floor, which will offer a champagne bar, makeup counters, soft seating and Hollywood vanity mirrors.

Combs said in a statement, “I am stoked about having a second Category 10 location in Las Vegas. 2026 was already going to be an awesome year, but this takes it to the next level. I can’t wait for Bootleggers to have their own place to party on The Strip.” 

Combs is set to headline more than 20 dates in Europe and North America next year on his My Kinda Saturday Night stadium tour. He was recently named the highest RIAA-certified country artist in history, with more than 168 million units sold.

“With Luke’s enormous international appeal, securing the right Las Vegas location for Category 10 has been a priority since we first announced the partnership back in 2023,” Colin Reed, executive chairman of OEG parent company Ryman Hospitality Properties, said in a statement. “The United Kingdom ranks as the leading market for international visitors to Las Vegas outside North America. Combined with the UK’s continued embrace of country music and Luke, this is an ideal moment to bring Category 10 to one of the world’s great entertainment playgrounds.”

Reed continued, “We have formed a wonderful relationship with Caesars Entertainment through our Ole Red Las Vegas location, and we look forward to bringing more country music experiences to the market.”

“The addition of Category 10 continues to build on the momentum of a tremendous year transforming Flamingo Las Vegas,” added Dan Walsh, senior vp and general manager of the resort. “With exciting new experiences like the Go Pool, Pinky’s by Vanderpump, Gordon Ramsay Burger and Havana 1957, we’ve brought a whole new level of energy to our iconic resort. Category 10 elevates that energy even further, bringing one of the biggest names in music to the Flamingo and offering live performances with great food and cocktails at the best location on The Strip.” 

Monica isn’t a fan of sleepovers.

Instagram entertainment account TheNeighborHoodTalk reposted a video of a single father expressing frustration with not being able to throw his daughter a slumber party because some of the other mothers weren’t comfortable having a male host.

“When I found out why I couldn’t throw my daughter a slumber party I got very sad and depressed,” TikTok user markdjangocrazy‘s caption read. However, during his explanation he revealed that he was once taken advantage of by an older woman that he trusted when he was younger and still couldn’t understand why some parents would be apprehensive in letting their daughters stay over at his house.

Of course, a bunch of discourse went down in the comments, and Monica’s opinion was one that stood out. “We don’t do sleepovers,” the R&B singer wrote before suggesting that maybe he should’ve considered asking some of the moms to be chaperones. “My mother didn’t, I don’t either and that applied to my sons & daughter! In his case inviting some moms to be there overnight to chaperone may work but that would be a no for me as well.”

Many of the replies agreed with her, with the comments suggesting he shouldn’t take it personally, it’s just the times we’re living in.

In other Monica news, she and Brandy just kicked off their “The Boy Is Mine” Tour and hit a bit of a snag this past Saturday when Brandy abruptly left the stage at Chicago’s United Center after feeling out of sorts. “To my dear fans in Chicago,” she wrote. “Thank you all for the overwhelming love, support, and—most importantly—your prayers. I sincerely apologize for the abrupt end to last night’s performance in Chicago. After weeks of nonstop rehearsals, last night I experienced dehydration and feelings of wanting to faint. Everyone involved agreed that prioritizing my well-being was of the utmost importance.”

Joe Budden added another chapter to his feud with Drake earlier this month, when he called the 6 God a “bi—” after a federal judge tossed his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group.

“The Drake news broke about the lawsuit,” Budden said during a recent episode of The Joe Budden Podcast. “To me, it’s not that important. I was never one that believed that was going to go a different way.”

Budden then interrupted Marc Lamont Hill’s review of the lawsuit to give a summed-up version of how he viewed the proceedings.

“For the people that missed it, yesterday evening, somewhere around 6 or 7 o’clock, it was finally confirmed,” he said. “The news broke that Drake’s a bi—.”

The rapper-turned-podcaster continued: “The same sh– that I told y’all 11 months ago rang true yesterday at around 6 o’clock. Some tweet was going around that said Drake lost the n—a way and the white way. That was a good one. And people just started having fun with this.”

Essentially, a federal judge didn’t believe Kendrick Lamar was truly labeling Drake as a pedophile in diss tracks like “Not Like Us.” The judge looked at the heated back-and-forth as a “war of words” and said some of the subsequent lawsuit tied to the battle was “logically incoherent.”

Budden also trolled Drake with a post to his IG Story following the lawsuit ruling, as he posted a photo of Drake looking a bit fatigued.

Even back in February, Drake had some fun at Budden’s expense when posting a video of him getting out of a car on his PlotTwist burner Instagram account.

Budden fired back, calling Drizzy a “corpse.” “Drake, don’t shoot at me now that you’re ice cold,” he replied. “I’m not doing the back and forth with a corpse… Don’t go get shot all year and then pop up like Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s wanting to shoot at me now.”

Watch the clip below.