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.