With just a few weeks left on what Garbage say is their final headlining North American tour, singer Shirley Manson is saying the loud part even louder. During a show in Denver on Sunday (Oct. 12), the outspoken vocalist explained to the crowd why the long-running group does not plan to mount such a tour again, telling fans at the Mission Ballroom, “It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”

Manson then laid out why the group feel that way in a broadside against what she described as the wild inequality in streaming payments to non-superstar working musicians, at a time when she said some pop stars are making “billions and billions and billions of dollars,” while the majority are just getting by.

“Most of the music industry is not made of these big pop stars. They’re made of working musicians,” Manson said. “And this is not a pity party for us. This is an alarm call for all the young generations of musicians who are in our wake and we feel duty bound to speak up for because there’s nobody speaking up for them,” she added to loud applause from the audience.

“The average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify,” she said, noting she has brought the matter up “every night” on the tour as a way to point out that there is no governmental body or union for musicians fighting to help young acts get paid.

“They’re sleeping in their vans. They’re holding down numerous jobs. And they’re playing their guts out every night,” Manson said of road dog touring acts. “The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherf–ers on streaming platforms who get paid royally by record labels, who get paid royally by Ticketmaster, who get paid royally by merch companies, who get paid royally — the list goes on and on and on. There’s accountants, there’s lawyers, they’re all f–king getting paid, except for the musician.”

At press time a spokesperson for Spotify had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment. In 2024, Billboard reported that Spotify paid out nearly $4.5 billion to independent rights holders in 2023, making up almost half of the more than $9 billion the streaming service paid to all labels and publishers that year.

After 30 years of road work, Garbage — which released its eighth studio album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light in May on BMG — are in the midst of their Happy Endings Tour, which will play the Knitting Factory in Boise, Idaho on Friday (Oct. 17) and wind down its North American run on Nov. 14 at the Corona Capital festival in Mexico City.

Manson said she brings up the inequity every night, because “you are the ones who will lose out on a generation of esoteric, risk-taking, creative, adventurous weirdos, rebels, agitators, provocateurs. You’re gonna get f–king white bread.”

Billboard’s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. For tickets and more information, click here.

Jon M. Chu showed a lot of courage when reaching out to the person who voices the Cowardly Lion in Wicked: For Good, with the director revealing that he simply slid into the famous actor’s DMs.

In an interview with Deadline published Thursday (Oct. 16), Chu teased that fans can expect a very familiar voice when Lion first speaks in the November-slated sequel to 2024’s Wicked. According to the filmmaker, he had a particular performer in mind — so he sent him a message on Instagram.

“I was like, ‘It’s not a ton of lines, but maybe you have a little time,’” Chu told the publication. “‘I know you’re busy. I’ll come to you.’ He was like, ‘Why the f–k not? Let’s go!’ And then we went ahead and recorded the lines.”

While playing coy about whose voice will be featured, Chu added, “Man, wait until the red carpet when the actor who gave us the Cowardly Lion’s voice steps foot on it. It’ll be wild.”

Released in November 2024, the first Wicked film was a major box-office success. It quickly became the highest grossing adaptation of a Broadway musical in history, and its soundtrack scored a historic debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

The epic saga will conclude on Nov. 21, when Part 2 arrives in theaters. The second film will feature two new tracks, with leading ladies Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo each singing one of them.

Of Grande’s, which is titled “Girl in the Bubble,” Chu told Deadline, “This movie had to be about the courage of someone popping their own bubble, a bubble of privilege or their bubble of safety. … How are the decisions each of them made affecting the other in their journey?”

Kali Uchis has never been one to follow the rules. From the start of her career, the Colombian-American singer/songwriter has carved her own path, unabashedly blending and bending musical genres — all while rejecting the notion that she had to conform to a single language or style to succeed. Her unrelenting commitment to individuality, however, hasn’t always been embraced, but it has ultimately cemented her as one of music’s most compelling innovators.

“I had a lot of doors closed in my face, and I had a lot of opportunities missed because I feel like nobody ever thought that this would get to this point,” Uchis says in her Billboard cover story. “A word that people used a lot was ‘unique.’ At the time, those aesthetics weren’t really popular. … I don’t think that people were ready for what I was doing.”

She reflects on those early struggles with a sense of pride and clarity, knowing that her refusal to compromise has brought her to the top of the Billboard charts and sold-out arenas.

“People kept telling me to stick to English, that it was easier to sell music that way,” she admits. “I always felt that [not] utilizing everything that God gave me into my art is the same as spitting in God’s face. … Why would God have made me with this duality if I wasn’t meant to project it into my art and use it to inspire other people and to create with all of this that I have?”

The hitmaker graces Billboard‘s latest cover story, revealed on Thursday (Oct. 16). The candid interview serves as a preview of her upcoming Superstar Q&A at Billboard Latin Music Week 2025, set to kick off Oct. 20 at The Fillmore Miami Beach. Her one-on-one conversation with Billboard Español‘s Isabela Raygoza is set for Tuesday, Oct. 21.

The full programming schedule and ticket sales are available at BillboardLatinMusicWeek.com.

Like countless other viewers, Selena Gomez was in awe of Bella Hadid during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on Wednesday (Oct. 15).

The model was a vision on the runway in a fiery red lingerie set, complete with a long train. After the show, underneath a video posted to Instagram of Hadid’s flirtatious turn down the catwalk, Gomez commented, “She is [fire emoji].”

If there was still any speculation that the Rare Beauty founder might harbor ill will toward the VS Angel, the sweet praise surely put it to bed. Both women were previously in relationships with The Weeknd, with Gomez dating him while he was on a break from his longterm relationship with Hadid in 2017.

In the years immediately afterward, the two ladies reportedly unfollowed and re-followed one another on Instagram a few times, sparking rumors of bad blood. But in 2023, Gomez posted a TikTok and captioned it, “I wish I was as pretty as Bella Hadid.”

In response, Lady Gaga commented at the time, “You look and are beautiful inside and out. One of my favorite ladies alive!”

Hadid was one of several stunning Angels who walked in the VSFS Wednesday night. The show also featured a number of musical performances courtesy of TWICE, Karol G, Madison Beer and Missy Elliott.

And just like any supposed beef between Gomez and Hadid, the former’s romance with The Weeknd is well in the past. The Only Murders in the Building Star married Benny Blanco in September — something she recently said she has trouble believing.

“Something great happens in my life, [and] I expect something bad to happen,” Gomez said during her Fortune’s Most Powerful Women panel. “I would say that’s my biggest conflict sometimes when wonderful things happen. I got married and then I was sobbing, because I was like, ‘I’m gonna die the next day.’”