“I feel very bad about how this call is lit,” says Josh Johnson on Zoom. “I did my best, but I am in a hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida and there were only so many lights to work with. There is some shadow being cast that is not wholly flattering — so you have caught me.”

It’s a few days before Johnson, 35, takes his third spin as one of the revolving hosts of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Nov. 11-14 — the program’s pater familias Jon Stewart hosts on Mondays — but the weeks before and after are bookended by his extensive Flowers stand-up tour. Hence, his location.

Johnson’s reference to the shadows in his hotel room has to do with his college major: theatrical lighting design at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. (He grew up in Alexandria.) Although he had done stand-up at open mics while in college, Johnson says that his decision to commit to a career in comedy happened after he moved to Chicago. “I moved there to start doing stand-up,” he says, “but I think if I got a couple of design jobs here and there, or had a fast track to the union, it would have been a slightly different story.”

It’s a good thing United Scenic Artists Local USA 829 didn’t come calling. Johnson’s turn at The Daily Show’s anchor desk is but the latest achievement in an increasingly successful career, which also includes the stage and social media.

He joined the program as a writer in 2017 and, along with his fellow scribes, is a four-time Primetime Emmy nominee. He was named New York’s Funniest Standup at the New York Comedy Festival in 2018, and has starred in several specials. He has more than 8.7 million followers across his social media, where he is quite prolific — and very funny — on the latest cultural and political news of the day. (His take on the announcement that Bad Bunny would host the Super Bowl Halftime Show — see below — is a must-watch.) He posts weekly stand-up sets on his YouTube channel on Tuesdays, and that content has been viewed nearly 430 million times in total.

That popularity has translated to his Daily Show viewership. His first night as anchor in July drew 590,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen — making it the most-watched non-Stewart-hosted episode of the year by total audience. His demographics were even more impressive. In the 18-49 age category most desired by advertisers 226,000 viewers tuned in, a larger audience than Stewart’s top-rated episodes — until September, when Stewart hosted a special Thursday night episode in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension by ABC. That show drew 443,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo. (It’s also worth noting that when Johnson scored that ratings achievement, he posted a video to his YouTube channel thanking his fans for their support.)

Despite these, um, flowers, Johnson was chill, thoughtful — and extremely modest — in this conversation with Billboard, where he talked about the challenge of his transition to the anchor desk, and his dedication to being fair to the public figures he covers, even if he’s not a fan.

You’re about to host your third week of The Daily Show.  What has the ride been like?

I’ve been having a lot of fun, and everybody’s been super supportive. So, it’s been really special, but I still have a whole lot to learn so I’m excited at every opportunity I get.

It looks like everybody on the show is having a blast. What’s the culture like there?

Everyone with a role has been in it long enough to feel really comfortable with it and inspired by Jon [Stewart]. For the most part, whenever I’m hosting, I look at it as an opportunity to learn more about what everyone else is doing. When I started as a writer I was so focused on writing and style and voice — and the writer’s wing in general — that sometimes I didn’t understand how a piece I’d written affected props or costume, for example.

Now being on the correspondent-slash-hosting side, I see what it takes to make something happen from that perspective. Understanding how everything comes together makes me feel like a better writer, because I’m now speaking more of a shared language. The show is a great culture for that. Everybody can learn from everybody else, even if it’s not their department. 

When you host, are you writing your own material?  

It’s a group effort.

Has there been any particular challenge to making the transition from writer to correspondent to anchor?

It’s probably hitting refresh after each show. That’s not a bad thing — but you could be on cloud nine after you do a show, and right after wrap, there’s this element of, “OK, but we do have to come back tomorrow and start again.”

At the end of a week, you get to enjoy everything that you did and be like, “Wow, what a great experience.” Day to day, hitting refresh is sometimes a challenge, although I’m used to it from doing so much standup on the road. You’re in West Palm Beach one day, Jacksonville the next day and maybe Tallahassee the next. I feel the same way about my YouTube channel where I post every Tuesday.

Tell me more.

Every Tuesday I post a new set. Sometimes, it’s extremely topical or political, and sometimes it’s more culture or pop. I really love doing that. We premiere live every Tuesday at 9:00 p.m., so you can hop in the chat, meet other people and have good conversation with everybody. Then the sets are available for free on YouTube for the rest of time. Outside of that, I’m touring. I’m going to continue touring into the future so if you miss me in your city, don’t worry, I’m coming back.

You’ve been a writer since 2017. At what point did you think, “I want to be on camera”?

It wasn’t something that I was gunning for for years and years. It started to set in as I got more comfortable with the show. I was having a great time writing for everyone on the show. Then as some years passed, I felt, “OK, this could be a cool move, and I can write material for myself when I’m hosting.” And I continue to work with the writers the same way when I’m on the other side.

In the ’60s, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies’ motto regarding political figures was “make them small” through humor and satire, which is what The Daily Show does so well. At this particularly volatile time in our country, do you feel like you are performing a public service?  

I can only speak for myself. I very much appreciate that people love and enjoy what I do, but I think the people doing public service are doing real public service. I don’t want to conflate making TV with making change. At the end of the day, it’s a comedy show. There are plenty of people out there doing their best to change things, whether it’s in their local community, their state, the world. The best I can do is raise awareness of who they are and what they’re doing. I wouldn’t want to take any of that shine away because there’s already so little of it on the people who really matter and are super important to the morphing of the world in the way that is a bit safer, a bit more equitable. Those are things that I also want, but to say that I am doing it would be too gracious to myself.

I just watched your stand-up bit on New York’s mayoral election, in which you break down the candidates and their campaigns in an authoritative and easily understandable way. Has your comedy always had a political bent?

Not really. That is a product of learning and working at the show for so long. The real testament to how the show has helped me grow is that before I was at The Daily Show, all of my observations were taking regular, everyday things to the most absurd place. Here, I learned more about, not just politics but the world and storytelling from the perspective of people who may know nothing about the story you are telling. So, you have to make it comprehensive, interesting and funny within the time constraints you have on TV.

When you’re not doing The Daily Show, you’re touring. Do those two things complement each other?

A little bit because even though they’re two very different things, expressing your ideas to an audience is never going to not make you better at expressing your ideas to an audience. So, doing as much as I possibly can to learn every day helps me be a better host and bring more spark to every show that I’m doing. It’s a nice upward spiral.

You are one of the most chill stand-up comics I’ve seen. You’re not a pacer or a mic stand fiddler. Has that always been your style?

Yeah, somewhat. I’m not necessarily a high-energy individual, so I think that’s really what you’re clocking. Even offstage, it’s going to be a similar speed.

You have talked about being confused with the NFL player Josh Johnson. Have you guys ever met or talked?

No. We’ve never run into each other.

Have you ever had a politician or a politician’s supporter come at you for something you said on the show or in your act?

No. I try to be fair in my assessments of people. Even if they’re people that I really don’t like. I still can acknowledge when they did a thing for the collective good or made a smart political play — even when it’s something that I consider to be terrible propaganda.

I do my best to give kudos where they’re deserved and that’s not so people like me. You have a better political understanding if you can be as close to objective as your political leanings will allow. I talk about everybody, and if I see something that does not hold water, I’ll say so, even if I like that person. When you start to visibly play hardcore favorites in the face of things that you would not let slide for another person, that’s when people get called out. And so, I only speak about politics in a way that is cyclical and universal.

What do you mean by that?

If you stay in the big arc of history and how politics works, you can see that there is precedent. We already had a Gilded Age, so there’s already a playbook on how people combated that robber-baron era. But there’s also a playbook for the robber barons to get and consolidate power. So many of these things are bigger than any one political figure, and they’ll last much longer than any one person’s political career.

It would be shortsighted to act like everything begins and ends with a Donald Trump or Joe Biden. These people are moments in time. Your lifespan will see many presidents, senators, governors and mayors. Holding them to account in the way that gets results that we benefit from the now is the way to [evaluate] them —  not so much how one person makes us feel.

There’s that phrase that “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” When you hear people saying that Trump or New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will bring about the end of the world, do you think that’s an overreaction?  Are you optimistic about where our country is headed?

I always lean towards optimism, just because that’s the best way for me to live. But I’m not ever going to pooh-pooh the idea that things can get worse than you imagine. I do think that with optimism and hard work, they will turn out better than someone could have projected.

I look at history the way I look at a ball on a table. A ball on a table can roll in several ways. It can return to the same point that it was at before. That’s the cyclical side — the repetition of the political arc that we’re seeing. When economists look back, they point out that depressions happen every so many years and recessions happen every this many years. But I acknowledge that the ball could eventually roll off the table. I acknowledge that you could squeeze the general American consumer to the point where they don’t bounce back the way they did in the 1930s and ‘40s — if we don’t have some sort of great resurgence without the right legislation, like FDR’s New Deal, put us back on track.

I do think we are at the table’s edge, and that’s not to be alarmist. That’s looking at it from a perspective of, you can’t have this many mass firings, tariffs, the gutting of government programs and a government shutdown all at once. People can go back and forth about how necessary some of these things are, and some of them, like layoffs, are seasonal. They create a lot of pain, but it’s something that we see all the time. For example, Microsoft slowly and quietly hires 10,000 people over the course of nine months, and then they do a massive layoff.

Do you think that’s happening now?

What I think is happening now is very different. A lot of these companies are masking their hiring freezes or layoffs as the results of AI. People are like, “Oh, AI is taking jobs.” In a lot of cases though, these layoffs were going to happen anyway, because the company isn’t making enough money or because they’re gutting themselves for the ability to buy back stock, or whatever. All these things wrapped up together puts us in a place we have been before, but through different means. And if not corrected — if not taken very seriously by people who don’t seem to be taking it seriously — the ball could roll off the table.

That’s terrifying.

Look, hopefully I’m wrong and everything is going to be fine in a week. I would love that. I love when people say, “No the Uber’s not going to get here for another 10 minutes.” And I’m like, “It’s probably going to be 20.” And then it’s just two minutes. I want to be wrong so bad. I want the next time that we talk for you to be like, “You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Things only got better after we had our call.”

I hope you are wrong too. Would you ever think about running for an office?

Here’s the thing. If you’ve ever been in the back seat of a car with someone who is not a good driver, and you see that the car is about to go off a cliff — saying so might be an astute observation, but it doesn’t mean you can drive. Sometimes, people think being subversive or calling something out is the same thing as being able to do drive, and it isn’t. So, I do my best to throw support behind people who, I think, are saying and doing the right things and have a track record that will allow them to get the things done that they’re promising. But as far as me hopping in, it would be a huge misstep; one of the saddest moves of hubris — the hubris I see in people who, think, “Oh, I’m famous so I can run for office.”

As soon as they’re campaigning, people are picking apart everything they say. And if they win, that’s when things get even worse, because then, it’s all their fault. So now, you’re the guy driving. And there are cliffs everywhere.

Atlantic Music Group (AMG) has tapped A&R veteran Jeremy Vuernick as its next executive vice president.

In the new role, Vuernick will report jointly to AMG CEO Elliot Grainge and Atlantic U.K. co-presidents Ed Howard and Briony Turner, overseeing the AMG roster to sign and develop new artists with global potential. He will be based in London.

The announcement follows the recent promotion of Howard and Turner to AMG’s global leadership team, a move the label has said was “designed to create tighter collaboration across the two territories, and to generate greater global impact for Atlantic’s world-class roster”.

In the past year, Atlantic has enjoyed transatlantic success for U.S. breakthrough artists such as Alex Warren, Teddy Swims, and Benson Boone, as well as British firebrand Charli XCX.

Vuernick brings with him two decades of experience in the music industry, largely in the A&R sector. He joined Capitol’s Astralwerks imprint in 2013, serving in senior capacities at the label before being promoted to executive president of A&R at Capitol Music Group (CMG) in 2019, where he oversaw the company’s portfolio of labels. 

Prior to his tenure with Astralwerks, Vuernick held senior roles at independent label Ultra Music, overseeing A&R, marketing, and sales. More recently, in 2024, Vuernick founded the Los Angeles-based independent company Queens Road Music in partnership with Atlantic.

The U.K. has long been one of the most influential markets in the world and a cultural leader in developing and exporting exceptional global talent,” said Vuernick in a press release.

“With Elliot cementing the natural relationship between the U.K. and US, and Ed and Briony leading the charge as two of the best creative leaders in the business, our combined force will take Atlantic and its artists to a new level of recognition and success.”

Grainge added: “I have worked with Jeremy for a number of years and I’m excited to officially welcome him into the AMG family. He comes to us with outstanding experience, instincts, and passion for artists, so he’ll be an ace addition to our newly aligned teams.

“Under the expert leadership of Ed and Briony, Atlantic UK has been a formidable source of chart-topping, game-changing artistry. With Jeremy now based in London, we are continuing to build our bridge across the ocean, ramping up our collective A&R and cultural firepower.”

Cris Lacy has been named chair and president of the rebranded Warner Records Nashville, continuing her role as one of the highest ranking women label executives in Nashville.

Formerly Warner Music Nashville, the Nashville label has been renamed after coming under Warner Records Group in September 2024. Lacy will continue to report to Warner Records Group Co-chairman/CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and Co-chairman/COO Tom Corson, as she has since the realignment over a year ago.

Gregg Nadel, who had served as Warner Music Nashville co-chair and co-president with Lacy for the last 14 months, will take on a new leadership role within Warner Music Group, which will be announced shortly.

Lacy started at Warner 20 years ago as an A&R executive after starting her career in publishing. She and Ben Kline became co-presidents at then-Warner Music Nashville in 2023, after John Esposito moved to a chairman emeritus role. Then last September, as Warner Music Nashville began reporting to Bay-Schuck and Corson, Kline left and Nadel came in to serve with Lacy.

“Nashville has always been synonymous with exceptional storytelling, expertly crafted lyrics and incomparable musicianship. Its growing influence is permeating other genres and is increasingly found front and center on the world’s stage,” Lacy said in a statement. “This move formalizes the cross-pollination that we’ve been developing over the years with our Los Angeles colleagues across areas such as A&R, marketing strategy, data/research, business affairs and radio promotion. Warner Records is a powerful brand, and we know that we’re stronger when we work together to propel our artists and their life’s work to new heights.”

Bay-Schuck and Corson jointly stated, “This rebrand marks an exciting new era for our flagship Nashville label — one that builds on everything that already makes it so special, guided by Cris’ extraordinary leadership. Her passion, vision, and unwavering respect for artistry define the label’s spirit and have earned the trust of the Nashville community. Together, we’re collaborating closer, and expanding the reach and opportunities for artists in a genre where the future feels limitless. This is an exciting next step as we continue to forge a global ecosystem that amplifies our competitive edge and impact for our artists.”

In addition to Warner Records U.S. and Warner Records Nashville, Warner Records Group includes Warner Records UK. Warner Records Nashville is home to such artists as Kenny Chesney, Cody  Johnson, Bailey Zimmerman, Ashley McBryde, Chase Matthew, Cole Swindell, Gavin Adcock and many others. The combined Warner Records U.S. and Warner Records Nashville rosters also include Zach Bryan and Dasha, among others.

For a brief moment earlier this year, all three major Nashville labels were helmed or co-helmed by women. Cindy Mabe’s departure as CEO/chair of UMG Nashville (now MCA) in February leaves Warner Records Nashville and Sony Music Nashville as headed by women. Taylor Lindsey became chair/CEO at Sony following Randy Goodman’s departure in January.

As the holiday season gets underway, an ultra-rare Mariah Carey demo tape is coming up for auction. This centerpiece of an historic archival release sourced from the collection of legendary producer/DJ Arthur Baker, the demo tape is being auctioned by Wax Poetics. The auction preview opens today (Nov. 11) with bidding going live Dec. 2 at 3 p.m. ET through Dec. 11 here.

In addition to the Carey cassette, described as “one of the only original demo tapes in existence,” the auction will include a verified certificate of authenticity, archival notes and historical context from Baker’s collection and the Wax Poetics archive team.

In a statement announcing the auction, Wax Poetics co-owner/CEO Alex Bruh said, “This tape is one of the most sought-after items we have come across. It captures the exact moment an era-defining artist was emerging, before the world knew her name. Our mission has always been to preserve and grow music culture with care, context and respect. This release honors one of the greatest singers and songwriters of our time by preserving a rare piece of her story.”

The story behind the demo tape dates back to the night when Carey was discovered. While attending a Christmas party in New York, she personally gave Baker (whose credits include Bob Dylan, Al Green and Planet Patrol) the tape, which contained covers and self-written songs she had recorded with Brenda K. Starr. He took Carey to his studio that same evening and was blown away by what he heard.

“I stick the cassette in and the first three songs are all hits,” Baker said in the press announcement. “And I’m thinking holy shit, it’s Madonna meets Whitney. She writes like Madonna, sounds like Whitney. This is it; I’ve discovered gold.” In the video below, Wax Poetics and Baker share more about that fortuitous evening.

The upcoming Carey auction follows prior Wax Poetics auctions featuring memorabilia from Don Blackman, Bootsy Collins, Louie Vega, DāM-FunK and Baker.

Since her days as a kid on Long Island, pop-rock singer-songwriter Julia Wolf has been fascinated by horror films. “My mom was putting on slasher films from when I was in the womb,” she says.

Over time, such grisly themes began to spill over into her music. In early 2024, she thought of the lyric “I’d slit my own throat just to see if you’d mourn me” while crafting a track about a recent ex — but then texted her sister and best friend to make sure that the line wasn’t overly morbid. Soon after receiving the go-ahead, she found another lyric, “I stalk myself on the internet just to see what you’ll find,” tucked away in her phone’s Notes app. Before long, Wolf had enough material to begin recording.

“It was just the choice of how vulnerable I wanted to get,” she recalls. “It’s something that took me until my thirties to understand that that’s what I want to do — be as honest as possible.”

The resulting track, “In My Room,” has pushed the 30-year-old from the indie shadows into a hitmaker. Propelled by its niche usage by a particular cult fandom on TikTok, its following has since carried over to the Billboard charts: the grungy song has reached a No. 27 high in 17 weeks on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and a No. 21 high on Hot Alternative Songs. And its success has opened doors that Wolf can hardly fathom, including an Instagram direct message from — and eventual collaboration with — Drake earlier this year, who opened their conversation by quoting lyrics from the breakthrough.

Raised on a steady diet of Avril Lavigne and emo music, Wolf began experimenting with music in high school at open mic nights and restaurant gigs around Queens. Debut EP Girls in Purgatory arrived in 2021 and full-length Good Thing We Stayed followed in 2023, with the latter’s pop-leaning singles “Get Off My” and “Gothic Babe Tendencies” with blackbear garnering buzz within the indie scene. As Wolf readied “In My Room” in 2024, she teased it relentlessly on TikTok. Though heavier and darker than anything she’d made before, the song quickly gained traction on the platform, thanks to Wolf tying snippets of the track to rotating images of different Twilight characters and scenes.

“Julia is the most Twilight-obsessed person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” NU.WORLD Management founder Tanner Barry, Wolf’s manager since 2023, says. “When it started working, it was so easy for us to keep playing into it.”

Lifted by several posts of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, Wolf released the song in full in March 2024. But as the trend began to wane, funding dried-up, according to Barry. At the time, they were working with independent distributor Stem, which was hesitant to back a bigger push for “In My Room” because of it being based around a timely fad, Wolf says.

“Since the song was already out for so long, they didn’t want to add any more funds to it. It was just me and Tanner thinking of what we can do to [grow] this organically.”

She remained convinced that the Twilight universe would remain the most receptive vessels for “In My Room,” and every time she continued to post the song with a clip surrounding the franchise’s characters, it’d rack up hundreds of thousands of views. Wolf and her team brought those stats to fellow independent distributor AWAL, and while they were in discussion, the track experienced its biggest viral wave yet, with a TikTok video celebrating Stewart’s beauty in a collage of photos. Today, the video has more than six million views. “We were all panicking like, ‘What do we do?’ ” Wolf remembers.

She quickly followed it up with a clip in the same format of Twilight co-star Ashley Greene (who portrays Alice Cullen), which has since surpassed 12 million views. Wolf and AWAL reached a deal this January, and the company helped boost Wolf’s visibility, in part by funding microinfluencer campaigns. The timing of the hit’s resurgence proved fortuitous: She had nearly wrapped the recording for 2025 full-length Pressure — which ultimately arrived in May — and the scorching hot single provided a push in the lead-up. Initial plans to release single “Jennifer’s Body,” a nod to a different cult fandom, were temporarily shelved, and she instead opted for an acoustic version of “In My Room” in February.

“She’s such a good singer,” Barry says. “I thought [the acoustic video] would be a good way to show people that she actually sounds like that.”

The following month, Drake surfaced in Wolf’s DMs. According to Wolf, he discovered the song after a woman requested that he play it at a club. “Shout out to that girl for having my back,” she says today with a laugh. The two then exchanged numbers and began to talk about making music together. Wolf recorded a few demos to send to the superstar, and one titled “Dog House” became the winner. Wolf’s raw vocal serves as the intro to the track, which erupts into a high octane rage-rap single that also features Yeat. The song arrived in September, and in turn became Wolf’s first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 53.

“She was at probably two million monthly listeners and jumped up just shy of 10 million,” Barry reflects of the A-list co-sign. “We were seeing the highest streams of [Pressure] on a daily basis. What Drake did so well, that we’re so appreciative of, is he allowed [the song] to be a showcase of Julia.”

Drake also supported Wolf in the months before its release, watching her perform at Toronto’s Velvet Underground in June and sharing some advice over dinner afterward.

“He was expressing how everyone has access to the internet and is able to say anything they want,” Wolf says. “The loudest people aren’t the right people, but it just feels that way. I get so in my head about internet comments and people being mean. He can definitely relate to that.”

But even with a coveted Drake collaboration opening up an entirely new fan base, Wolf remains devoted to the crowd that got her to this moment: In August, she performed an intimate showcase for 60 fans in Forks, Washington, at the location used for Bella Swan’s home in the Twilight movies. And her star only continues to grow: She released 2MUCHPRESSURE, a remix EP helmed by producer duo 2DUMB on Halloween and will begin touring arenas in support of mgk later this month.

“What helps me stay grounded is that ‘In My Room’ existed for so long when nobody cared,” Wolf says. “I truly believe that any song that I believe in can work. It just needs all these factors to get it to click.”

A version of this story appears in the Nov. 15, 2025, issue of Billboard.